The Changeling Game, Chapter 97

97.
The Rise of Dame Riddick

“It’s okay,” Kyra told Jack as they sat by the stream, watching Elodie play. “I understand. He was yours first, anyway.”

Somehow that just made Jack feel even more guilty.

“You understand, huh?” Jack asked. “I’m not sure I do yet. I’m getting married in the morning and part of me is like… what the hell just happened here?”

Kyra laughed and shook her head. “It’s not that complicated. He’s like me. Mostly stays away from connections to other people, but when one forms… it’s everything.”

Jack had to admit that made sense. “Still…”

“I’m not upset, Jack. I barely knew him. Most of what I thought I knew came from you, so…” She shrugged. “It was more a bond with you than him. In reality, I only really knew him for about a day.”

“I’m not all that far ahead of you, though. Realtime, not just thinking about him or imagining him, I’ve known him for maybe two weeks.”

“Longer than you actually knew either of your other Great Crushes, though,” Kyra pointed out, a wicked sparkle in her eyes.

“Hey! Not fair,” Jack laughed. “It’s just… all really fast.”

“It’s been building for centuries.” Kyra looked out across the woodland field.

It was, Jack knew, a place that neither of them had ever been or imagined. But her new, extended senses had allowed her to bring them there, to the rustic cabin where Michael was hiding her mother and little sister. They stood on the other side of a threshold, unseen observers with no actual physicality, but it was comforting to see that Elodie was safe and well.

“I remember Joren,” Kyra continued after a reflective moment. “He talked, a lot, about the importance of doing great things for humanity. You ever notice how great things are hardly ever good things? He set this all in motion. And now here we are, four hundred-some-odd years later, and time’s running out. Everything’s fast now. Or, at least, out there it is.”

“And in here? How are you holding up?” It was something she worried about, even if the Apeiros kept telling her that Kyra was safe and even beginning to thrive in their care.

“I’m a mind without a body,” Kyra said with a smile. “Time moves differently for me, maybe. I’m not really sure.”

“I’m working on that,” Jack sighed. “Gotta get the parameters just right to call up just the right ’verse…”

“For a body?” Kyra might not really have one at the moment, but she could still raise an imaginary eyebrow. “What are the parameters you’re using?”

“Well, it’s gotta be you,” Jack told her. “I mean, one of your analogues in the U1 cluster, same genetics, same overall string vibrations, so you still have a connection to the Kirshbaum mojo. I couldn’t access those until now, but now… I’m looking for a stream where you are physically healthy, and roughly the same age you were when you died, but somehow don’t have a four-shape or five-shape attached to your shell anymore.”

“So me, but brain-dead?” Kyra asked. “Got it. Can I add a parameter?”

“Absolutely.”

“A me who never went through the shit I did. Physically, I mean. I know all your schooling, and that book you love so much, talk about how virginity is a social construct, but I want mine the fuck back so I can ‘lose’ it on my terms. If you’re shopping for a Kyra body out in the multiverse, find me one where that’s true.”

“I think I can do that,” Jack said after a moment’s thought. It was a complicated order, but not impossible. Maybe a Kyra who had never actually left Earth? “Are you asking the Apeiros for some selective editing of your memories?”

“We’ve talked about it, yeah,” Kyra said. “I want to know what happened to me, but I don’t want to remember it happening. It’s funny, though. They say that kind of stuff spreads out into other memories, too… we’ve been experimenting with how it would affect them. Haven’t quite hit on the right combo yet, if you need me to still be… well, me.”

“Don’t know I’d want you to be anybody else,” Jack told her, wishing that they could hug for real rather than just simulate it in the non-physical world of the mind.

Kyra must have caught the wish. “One day soon. There’ll be nothing the two of us can’t take down together.”

They’d get to put that to the test soon, Jack was about to say, when she felt a mouth against the skin of her throat.

“Gotta go,” she told her sister. “He’s waking up. I’ll come back soon, I promise.”

“Enjoy,” Kyra said, a hint of wistfulness in her voice before she vanished. The cabin and Elodie faded away as well.

Jack opened her eyes.

She was surrounded by darkness. Riddick’s world. She could vaguely make out the vaulted ceiling of their bedroom above her. The Lord Marshal’s bed chamber was luxurious, with a plush mattress and silky sheets—apparently neither Riddick nor the man he’d ousted had extended their asceticism to their sleeping arrangements—but those sheets had been pushed to the side hours earlier. Riddick had been voracious in the wake of her hatching, maybe because he’d perceived it instead as her near-death. It appeared his ardor was returning.

He was nuzzling her throat, his hands moving over her skin. She tilted her head back, giving him better access, and began stroking his shoulders and arms. His shields were still too strong for her to pick up much of what he was thinking and feeling, but she was picking up a sense that he needed to reassure himself, yet again, that she was unharmed and hadn’t been taken from him.

She could definitely help with that.

It only took a few gentle nudges to get him to bring his mouth to hers. The hunger in his kiss was almost intimidating, but she could feel that same shadow of loss and grief behind it. He needed to know that she was safe, and safely his. That he hadn’t lost everything and everyone.

Shifting her position a little, she reached down and guided him inside her, tangling her legs with his. He groaned into her mouth as he filled her. For a moment, he went still, buried in her and holding her close.

He broke the kiss, lifting his head a little so she could see the mercury gleam of his eyes. “Jack… need you to promise me…”

Uh oh… She kept her thought shielded from him, though, reaching up to stroke his cheek. “Promise you?”

“Promise you’ll stay…”

The future shattered around them, infinite tiny variations on things to come. For an instant, in one fragment, she glimpsed him holding her hand, pain and nascent grief in his face as he hovered above her. “Fuck, Jack, why’d it have to be you…?”

It was a glimpse through the eye of the needle, she realized, her first glimpse of what might lie on the other side. If they threaded the needle successfully, managing to follow the one path that could have a future on the other side, that might be what waited for them.

Can’t look that far ahead, she warned herself. We’re all dead if we don’t thread the needle. Whatever’s on the other side will be a better fate than that, any­way…

But Riddick was still waiting for her. For her promise. What promise could she safely give him, knowing what was to come?

“I’ll always be with you,” she murmured, and felt him flinch.

It took a long time to soothe him, and she wasn’t sure she really did. By the time they were spent, “morning” had arrived on the Basilica and the sounds of activity in the corridor outside their rooms had begun to filter in. Riddick rose, hints of agitation still swirling around him, and disappeared into the massive bathroom for a few moments before emerging again, showered and dressed. He kissed her hungrily, gazing down at her with an expression that suggested he was struggling against the impulse to demand another promise from her, before his customary deadpan and smirk settled into place.

“I’m gonna go make sure everything’s ready,” he told her. “Don’t sleep in too long.”

“I’ll get up,” she laughed, hoping she didn’t sound nervous, “soon as I can remember how to walk.”

That got a genuine chuckle out of him. He was gone a moment later, his armor still piled on his desk in the outer room.

Well, at least he no longer feels like he has to have it on all the time, right? She sat up in bed, groaning. “Lucy? You around?”

I am here, sister.

“Is he okay? He doesn’t let me hear what he’s thinking.”

He believes you were in danger of death yesterday. It didn’t help that he had only just experienced Kyra’s death from her perspective, courtesy of my brother’s minions.

“Oh.” That definitely explained his need to hold onto her so tightly. His need for promises. Maybe it even explained this wedding business…

Are you uncertain? There was a hint of worry in Lucy’s mental voice.

“I dunno—” Jack stopped herself, struggling not to laugh. “I mean, I guess that means I am uncertain. You said that marrying him has no effect on the outcome of the war. Are you sure about that? He seems to need it a whole lot.”

She climbed out of bed as she talked to her sister, padding into the bathroom. She would shower, clear her head, maybe catch up with Vanessa, Poly, and Lola for a little while—

There was something different about the rooms, she suddenly thought as she turned on the water for her shower head.

I have studied the streams. Marrying him neither prevents nor ensures the successful “threading” of the “needle,” as you have taken to thinking of it. Bringing Kyra back supersedes it in every way.

“It doesn’t even affect his commitment to the plan?”

It does not.

“So,” Jack concluded after a moment as she washed her hair, “I’m not doing it for the whole multiverse-saving thing. I’m doing it because he needs it.”

This is where I grow concerned, little sister. What do you need?

“Shit. I don’t know,” Jack groaned, leaning her head back into the water stream to rinse her hair. “A quiet life. Quieter. I wanted to study sociology and linguistics at Khair Eddine University, maybe even—”

She couldn’t talk about that, couldn’t think about that, didn’t dare articulate it.

“…teach one or both of those subjects one day, myself,” she continued after a pause spent soaping up. “Go exploring. Find new people and new creatures and get to know them. Watch Elodie grow up and make sure she can do and be anything she wants. Talk to my cats. Be one of Toal’s independent operatives. Run around the galaxy with Kyra. Rescue Riddick back after all the times he rescued me. None of it really fits together anyway.”

Is that last one what you’re trying to do now?

“Maybe. I don’t know. I love him…” She turned into the water stream again, rinsing off. “It just still feels really fast. But last night and this morning, I could also feel how… scared of losing me he is. I don’t know what to do about that.”

Except for binding yourself to him in this way.

“I guess.” Jack reached for the water valve and stopped, frowning. “I keep having this weird feeling that something’s watching me. I mean, aside from you.”

You are six-dimensional now, Lucy reminded her. You had noticed before that this ship is straddling two thresholds and exists in three ’verses. There was one you couldn’t touch before now, but now you can.

That was right; the activities of the last few days had pushed that to the side. Jack focused, concentrating on her strange new awarenesses, and put her hand into the stream of water still flowing from the shower. It was touching her, flowing in U1… but where else? She let her senses follow the water…

…and, with a delighted gasp, let her body follow.

It was, and wasn’t, the same room. She found herself hopping as she crossed the threshold, her feet coming down on wet, mossy turf that raised the ground level by a few inches. The walls of the shower room still surrounded her, but—

She was in a garden.

Around her, in a semi-orderly tangle, bushes and vines grew, blossoms adorning them. One bush rustled and a small head poked out, black eyes like shining beads peering at her. A mouse? Something buzzed past and she turned her head, focusing on a little bird, its plumage brilliant yellow, that passed fearlessly close to her and darted through the shower stream.

Other birds perched in the area, watching her with suspicion and looking with longing at the stream of water.

What is this place? Jack asked Lucy as she stepped aside. Immediately a dozen birds mobbed the artificial waterfall, flapping their wings as they bathed beneath it.

As I understand it, the Moribund attempted to make the Tenth Crusade straddle the entire U1 cluster, but he did not have the strength. He did, however, manage to connect the ship to both U1 and what I suppose you might call U1-a. His test of that connection was to release the plants and animals that had been stored for the ship’s arrival at Delubrum, but only in U1-a. The entire ship is naturalized by them… but, again, only in this ’verse. As his minions grow more connected to him, they begin to be able to see it. Most of them take it as proof of the existence of their Underverse.

Jack left her shower running for the birds and ventured back into the large bathroom area. A huge hummock of vegetation marked the location of the statue she’d evicted from U1. Some of its leaves were browning.

“Shit, when I moved the statues partly into Wonderland, I froze the plants growing on them here, didn’t I?”

They will recover.

“Are all the ships in the Armada like this?”

The ones manufactured with the construction equipment that had been on board the Tenth Crusade, yes. The rest exist only in U1. If you do, indeed, need to hide children from those who were too enthused by Zhylaw’s crusade against them, you could do so here.

Aside from the frostbite she’d inadvertently inflicted on a few of the vines, the place seemed almost Edenic. “Is there food here?”

Many of the plants that were sown throughout the ship were intended for agriculture. And there are many of the original food synthesis machines here. My brother removed them from U1 altogether, once he wished his minions to become raiders who relied on the resources they plundered rather than things they could make for themselves. I have discussed this with him, and he has agreed to permit humans to occupy this ’verse. Human children, anyway.

“Why couldn’t I come here before?” Jack focused for a moment, by the table she had claimed as her own, and pulled her towel and comb through from U1.

It is part of the U1 cluster. A minor variant upon the world you know. To consciously navigate the variants within a universe’s flow cluster, you must have a six-shape, not just a five-shape, or you will get lost. The way a handful of the Demons did, to their misfortune, when they were exposed to so-called Kirshbaum rays.

Jack nodded, setting the comb back down in U1 and walking over to the closet she had taken over. She could feel the subtle differences between the two versions of the ’verse, and was certain she could tell them apart and move between them… but if the Demons had only been two ’verses wide when they encountered the “K-rays,” they might have swiftly vanished from their originating ’verse and been unable to find their way back from one of its variants.

“This is important, isn’t it?” she asked Lucy. “Being able to feel the different streams in the cluster. I’m gonna need to make sure that the main U1 stream stays on the course that’ll let us thread the needle.”

Yes. And you will need to pay attention to which courses of action unravel the variants in the stream. And they are unraveling.

“Already?”

Since the day the first apeirochoron was made. Whole branches of the cluster died that day, and most of the branches created since then have been increasingly limited in how they could form. Joren Kirshbaum stole infinity from the multiverse and locked it into a box.

“More like Pandora’s box than I realized,” Jack muttered, drawing her chosen outfit from U1 to…

Fuck it. Eden it is.

She hadn’t put names on many of the ’verses she had access to, but if the shoe fit…

There were abundant signs that the plants and animals had adjusted their habits to deal with the way that things were moved around, and doors were opened and closed, in the suite. Jack was amused to realize that the mattress and sheets currently on the bed must have been looted in the centuries since; in Eden, the bedframe was empty and filled with a raspberry patch… and what appeared to be a small cherry tree.

A few of the raspberries were ripe and hadn’t yet been eaten by wildlife. They tasted wonderful.

“I’m gonna need to set aside some time to explore this whole place,” she told Lucy. “Find those food machines you men­tioned… make sure they work… and make sure there are good places for any kids the Necros bring back to use as rooms. That are actually comfortable. Can’t have them sleeping on raspberry patches.”

Do not get too distracted by the children. The battle will soon be joined.

“I know.” She sighed. “I need to get back to U1, don’t I?”

Perhaps not quite yet.

“Why not?”

Come with me.

She could see Lucy, almost, her eyes catching glimpses of a shadow here, a leg there, the sparkle of eyes…

“Okay,” Jack said, following her out of the suite.

“Weird,” she heard Nichelle of the Ennead Kids say on the other side of the threshold. “Did you just see that door open and close on its own?”

“Oh, like you don’ already know we livin’ on a haunted ship,” Malik retorted with a snort.

Jack found herself struggling to contain her laughter, wondering if they might hear her across the threshold.

You like them a great deal, Lucy observed.

“You bet I do. Wish I’d had friends like them when I was back in school in Settlement Point.”

You were very lonely then.

“Yeah. I keep wishing I’d just said fuck it to all the overcautious bullshit and brought Kyra back there with me. Maybe when MilitAIre caught me out, his plans for keeping me safe and my secrets hidden could’ve included her. And then she’d never have gotten hurt again. Let alone killed.”

Perhaps not. But then what would have drawn Riddick into battle against Zhylaw, to break his power? This war cannot be won without Riddick, because it cannot be won without the Necromongers and the Furyans standing together against the Demons of the Darkness.

“I hate it when the best possible outcome is so fucking brutal,” Jack muttered.

When the war is won, all possible outcomes will be able to manifest again. Every possibility will play out in some ’verse. The sorrow will be balanced by the joy. For every ’verse where something has gone wrong, there will be another where it has gone right. The true nature of infinity will unfold again, there will always be one more ’verse where things can go a different way.

“That what we’re fighting for?”

Part of it.

It was an alluring thought. If she succeeded in threading the needle, following the one path that could break the power of the Kirshbaum dynasty and annihilate the substance used to make apeirochorons, wherever it was found… worlds could bloom again. Other possibilities could unfold. A girl named Audrey MacNamera could grow up somewhere peaceful, maybe follow a dream of scholarship to a beautiful new world and the arms of—

“There is always one more ’verse,” she whispered to herself. It was as close as she could come to a promise.

Lucy, she realized, was leading her toward the throne room.

“Is that what the afterlife really is?” she found herself asking after a moment. “Our four-shapes, or five- or six-shapes, disconnect from our shells and connect up with all the other ’verses we exist in? We get the chance to live out our days in other ways?”

Perhaps. Or perhaps, in time, you become aware enough of those other lives that your consciousness moves past them to the shape that is formed by their totality, and you hatch into the next shape yet.

“Is that what happened to you and the other Apeiros?”

Yes. And no. We are still bounded by shells. Most of us. Shirah surrendered her shell centuries ago and is carried in the shells of her children. They bear her name in turn. She does not feed on them the way—

Lucy stopped, and Jack could swear she saw a shiver pass over her sister’s n-shape.

“The way the Moribund pulls energy from the Necromongers?”

Yes. She feeds her children power, instead, and strengthens them so that they can bear and wield it. Those who can wield the most are candidates to become the next Lord or Lady Shirah, and have their four-shapes merged with her six-shape to continue on with her forever.

“So it’s symbiotic instead of parasitic?” Jack nodded. She remembered Lucy calling Michael a lightbearer, and the power he’d blasted into her to save her life had felt strangely intimate. “When the Apeiros aboard the Scarlet Matador died, what did she do to us? You said something, a while back, about seeding yourselves into others at death. Is that what she did?”

Yes. And no. Her six-shape was trapped inside the apeirochoron. No part of herself could escape, except the …“esper”… part that each of us has, that can use the wiring and communication system embedded in each box to reach out to each other and stay in contact. The part we used to make contact with you, when we felt you moving ships during your great battle. All that she could do was hatch you into your five-shapes by making the ship straddle two ’verses… and whisper into your minds a little at her end, hoping some of you would hear her and understand. As you and Kyra did. As the smallest of the others on board, Lailah, Abdul, and Farida, now do. Those three were still so close to their own hatchings that they are learning quickly. Had my sister been free of her box when she died, she could have seeded all of you with far more power than that.

The throne room, as Jack followed Lucy into it, had been transformed. The writhing ugliness that she had seen when she’d been brought before Riddick, with its spiked pillars and statues depicting suffering, was hidden beneath heaps of vegetation. Vines climbed from level to level, garlanding the formerly stark room with blossoms. Birds and insects flew between the flowers.

“Does the Moribund like how the ship looks on this side?” Jack found herself gasping. “Because it’s beautiful.”

He does. And he is aware that you have paid him a compliment and is… disgruntled about it.

“So that’s really all there is to it?” she heard Riddick asking. It pulled her away from her questions about the Moribund as she focused on him instead.

He was sitting on the throne, his three top officers standing near him. Vaako, Toal, and Scales, she recalled. Toal looked like a younger and slimmer version of his father. All three men seemed to have relaxed around Riddick, some of the formality they’d shown him previously falling away.

“That’s as much as any Lord Marshal has ever done or said, yes,” Toal said, smiling. “There are no vows, either way, other than the promise to keep her as your own until Underverse Come.”

“My older brother was preparing to get married when the Armada arrived on Sunna Prime,” Scales told the group, grinning. “After seeing what he had to deal with, getting ready for that—hall rentals! Meal tastings! Picking out invitations and arguing over which guests would sit where, ye gods!—I am rather glad that it’s so much simpler here.”

“Simpler, yeah,” Riddick mused. “But is it strong enough?”

“What man could ever take her from you?” Vaako asked, frowning and cocking his head.

“I can think of three,” Riddick grumbled.

“Who?” Toal bristled on his behalf.

“First,” Riddick said after a moment, “her father. John MacNamera. Doubt he’d take kindly to his daughter bein’ involved with someone like me. Second, her C.O.”

Toal started, looking surprised.

“Yeah,” Riddick continued, nodding at Toal, “she has a C.O. His name is Michael. He’s a ‘Furyan Warrior’ like me, too, and there’s pretty much nothin’ she wouldn’t do for him if he asked, let alone commanded. And third… and this is the real kicker… if true love actually exists, then hers is named Ewan.”

Vaako was the one who seemed most discomfited by that.

“He ever comes knockin’, she’s probably gone.” Riddick rubbed his temples for a moment before he continued. “Ain’t nothin’ I can do about any of ’em, either. Raise a hand against one of ’em and I lose her even faster. Girl’s way too forgiving a lot of the time, but that’d be beyond her limits. So if any of you were starting to think of ways to do me a favor, you put it out of your mind right now. She’d know.”

Both Toal and Scales deflated a little in response. Jack felt some tension leave her body when they did.

Was he right?

If her father showed up, and demanded that she leave Riddick’s bed, would she? If Michael showed up and told her that being Riddick’s wife compromised her mission objectives, could he order her to break things off with him? And if Ewan—

She still couldn’t let herself think about Ewan. Not here. Not now.

I am going to thread the needle. I have to thread the needle. Everybody dies if I don’t. That’s my only mission. That’s my only goal. The rest, all of it, is something that has to be gained or lost for that pur­pose…

But, she decided, it didn’t have to be the only thing she did. As long as it didn’t compromise that mission, she could be Dame Riddick, be the touchstone he needed. Even if it didn’t help her mission, it would help him…

…and it was, she decided, what she wanted to do. She might have fallen in love with more than one man—four, if she was being honest—but he was the first she’d ever felt that way about. And maybe, once he felt more secure about their connection, the wall between them would finally come down.

So you are decided now, Lucy said after a moment.

They were walking back to the suite, Jack realized. Exactly when she’d left the throne room was hard to recall, because she had been so lost in thought.

“I am, yeah.” She focused on the hallway, empty in U1, and isomorphed back into it, leaving Eden behind for the moment. “So let’s go get ready for this wedding.”

The dress she’d chosen was the most vibrant thing she could find, made of the same odd, scaled hide that most Necromonger clothing was constructed from but in vivid shades of blue and green instead of the black that almost all of them wore. Part of her was tempted to think of it as her “mermaid dress,” but she found herself shying away from that phrase. It belonged to another part of her life that she couldn’t linger on now.

Lola, Vanessa, and Poly had all dressed up as well, shunning black for colors that subtly suggested their human status. The Ennead Kids, who had somehow taken the bits and pieces of discarded clothing and jewelry from the tables and assembled them into high-end versions of the outfits they’d worn when she’d first seen them, were eager to get things started. They preceded her into the throne room and started performing an a cappella wedding march as they entered the great hall.

If you’re really doing this, the Moribund grumbled, I suppose I will have to make my minions aware.

I’m really doing it. And what I said before is still true. You grew a beautiful garden on the other side of the threshold.

I’m sure the larvae you bring on board the ship will enjoy it, he grumped. It was, she decided, as close to a thank-you for the compliment as she could expect from him.

Riddick had risen to his feet and was standing in front of the throne. His three would-be Firsts had moved to stand at the sides of the dais. Courtiers were hurrying into the room from all directions, newly aware that something important was about to happen. From the corner of her eye, Jack spotted a familiar flutter of white on the upper level.

The gang’s all here. Let’s get this done. She gave Riddick her most dazzling smile—and even her cousins had been forced to admit it was a good one—and crossed the floor, climbing the steps to stand beside him and take his hand.

Antonio and the other Ennead Kids were making everyone clear a space in front of the throne.

“This one’s for you, Jack B. Badd!” He called out as the crowd calmed.

She could feel the shock throughout the room as the Ennead Kids began to perform. How long had it been since anything of the kind had happened in the Basilica? Had anything like it ever happened there?

Nine voices wove together to build a stunning, vibrant tune as the group broke into coordinated dance moves, spinning and flipping without a single missed beat or sour note. Jack could feel Lucy’s fascination, and even the Moribund himself observing with curiosity and reluctant admiration.

“Jackie, don’t you know,” Antonio sang, “you’re up in his soul…”

She knew the tune intimately, and knew they’d chosen it on purpose. It went in a different direction, though… startling her as it painted an accurate picture of just what she was even doing on the Basilica.

“Thread the needle, Jackie!
We know you’ll find the way…”

Did you tell them about that? she asked Lucy, stunned.

I did. Surprise!

More of this would not be entirely amiss among my servants, the Moribund grudgingly admitted.

The song concluded with a flourish, the entire troupe bowing down before the throne, before her and Riddick. He looked positively energized as he stepped forward and addressed the room. Whatever misgivings he might have seemed to have been set aside.

“Got a few announcements to make to all of you,” he told the room. “First up, new instructions for all ships goin’ out on raids from now on. You already know that nobody’s bein’ brought back as a ‘breeder’ anymore. Nobody’s bein’ cut out as ‘useless,’ either. Everyone’s a convert except kids. But here’s the new rule where babies an’ kids are concerned. You bring ’em back. Alive. And once you do that, you bring ’em here. And you give ’em to her.”

He pointed at Jack, smirking.

“What will she do with them?” called out one of the lords, looking entirely too scandalized for someone wearing tiny skulls for decoration.

“Ain’t your concern,” Riddick said, his grin widening dangerously. Maybe he was hoping that man, in particular, would raise a fuss and could be smacked down.

The man seemed to know it, too, deflating.

“Who is she?” someone else called from the crowd.

“Glad you asked,” Riddick told them, taking her hand. “I present to you: Dame Riddick. She will stand by my side from now ’til Underverse Come. And you are all to treat anything she says as comin’ from me.”

And apparently, that really was all there was to it.

The Ennead Kids began another song a moment later as various Lords and Dames of the Armada approached the throne to formally present themselves to Jack. Within a minute or two, Dame Vaako appeared at her side, putting an arm around her and introducing her to many of them, murmuring small asides to her about them as well. Riddick, after a weighing glance, allowed it, smiling and shaking his head. Jack focused on pairing names with faces and memorizing them, getting a sense of the minds behind each.

Those who had risen to the level of Lord or Dame, she realized, were the members of the Armada who needed less supervision and correction from the Quasi-Dead or the Moribund himself, naturally inclined to follow the path he had set before them. Those most inclined to resist his will were buried in the lower ranks, weighted down by telepathic soporifics. A very few among the highest-ranking, most of them older officers, could see a little way into Eden.

“Here she comes now,” Riddick suddenly growled beside her. “You ready for this?”

“Guess I’d better be,” Jack answered him, taking a deep breath.

Walking toward her, flanked by two guards, was a familiar figure dressed in white. Jack took in the white hair, the imperious posture, the elegant veil and white dress that her mother would have said was meant to upstage a bride at her wed­ding—

Yeah, good luck with that.

—and the hidden darkness masked by her whiter-than-white outward appearance.

Irena Kirshbaum, emissary of the Quintessa Corporation, approached the throne under guard and laden down by chains made of kirshbaumium. As their gazes met, Jack watched Irena’s eyes fill with confused recognition.

Game on, Jack thought as the two of them locked eyes.

The woman’s breath hitched. Then she squared her shoulders and stepped forward, offering her hand to Jack. This time, when they made contact, it was she who flinched, maybe sensing the dizzying number of ’verses that Jack was connected to.

“Aereon of the ‘Elemental race,’” Riddick drawled, his formal words undercut by the irony lacing his tone, “allow me to introduce my wife, Dame Riddick.”

It was all Jack could do to control the sudden urge to smirk as Irena Kirshbaum’s eyes widened, just a little, with imperfectly concealed horror. Had she even realized who she’d attempted to murder just the day before? Or that she had ensured the destruction of her family dynasty by doing so?

Instead, she gave “Aereon” her sunniest and most guileless smile, pure innocence—pure theater but who would ever know—as if they were new friends meeting for the first time instead of the deadliest of enemies.

Game fucking on, Demon of the Darkness.

For a moment, she even felt the barest hint of the Moribund’s gleeful approval.

The story will continue in
Song of Many ’Verses