Song of Many ’Verses, Chapter 2

2.
The Mutineer and the Mermaid Queen

Every few months, someone shows up claiming that they know exactly how my “tricks” work. They think they’re going to make a name for themselves proving it. None of them have ever been ready for the discovery that they aren’t tricks at all, and that everything happening on my stage is real.

—Minnie Sulis, Introduction, Magic Is Real, 2075

U1c.27358
2075.02.18
Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, Earth

“You shouldn’t be in here right now, you know.”

In the mirror, Howard smirked and leaned against the dressing room door frame. “Are you about to reveal a set of breasts I haven’t seen?”

Min laughed, touching up her lipstick. “You never know. It could happen.”

She’d made stranger things appear, after all…

“Not today, though.” His eyebrows went up. “This is a family-friendly performance.”

“Yech.”

“Speaking of family,” he continued, grinning, “I hear some of yours is in the audience tonight.”

Now there was a depressing thought. “My cousins, mostly.”

Unfortunately, none of them were Wittiers.

“Reunion afterwards?” He seemed oblivious to how unpleasant a thought that was for her.

“Maybe,” she hedged. “You want to meet them?”

Howard pretended to swoon, pressing his hand to his heart. “She’s finally introducing me to her family…”

Oh. So it was like that.

Min rose from her chair, aware that she only had a few minutes left to get ready. Not the best time to deal with Howard’s insecurities. She winked at him as she settled her top hat on her head and picked up the rhinestone-encrusted wand that had rested next to it.

Okay, some parts of my act are just props…

“Does that mean you’ll introduce me to yours?” she asked him, keeping her expression light and teasing as she approached him.

His smile died. “They’re a bunch of holy-roller nutcases who’ll probably think you’re a witch. Why would you ever want to get to know them?”

“I am a witch,” she laughed, reaching up to stroke his cheek. “But you’re not the only one with a horror show for a family.”

“Mizz Sulis?” The assistant stage manager appeared in the dressing room doorway, just in time to prevent Howard Collins from possibly disarranging her hair and lipstick. “Five minutes to curtain.”

“Thank you, Emily.” Not that she wanted to dodge one of Howard’s kisses, but reapplying her makeup to make sure she looked family-friendly wasn’t high on her list of ways to spend those last five minutes.

He smiled, understanding that it was time for her preshow routine. “See you after the show, babe.”

“They’re going to come swarming in here, you know,” she told him with a deliberate shudder.

“I wouldn’t miss it.” He winked and left the room.

“That makes one of us,” she muttered. Some of her cousins were perfectly lovely, especially the ones on her father’s side, but Joren always creeped her out—

Don’t think about them right now. It’s time to prepare.

She turned toward the lighted mirror, beginning to take a slow, deep breath—

And gasped instead.

Behind her and to her right, reflected in the mirror, stood a young woman. Tall and slender, in her late teens or early twenties, she had shoulder-length blonde hair, enormous green eyes, and an angular, elfin face and wore a strange, tight gown made of what looked like blue-green scales.

Min whirled, how did you get in here poised on her lips.

The room was empty.

U1
2522.11.29
G. Long. 127.1° G. Lat. -27.1°
Mirach System

Jack opened her eyes and took a deep breath, feeling like it had been hours since her last.

“Shit.”

At least, Lucy said from somewhere above her, she only saw you.

There was that. “She’s got a lot of power. More than I was expecting. Still only two ’verses wide in her five-shape, though.”

As you were, once. The man. I sensed that he is important to our search.

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure that was Howard Collins. Kyra’s ‘pa.’” Jack frowned, recalling everything she’d overheard. “Seemed pretty anti-religion for someone who’d end up a New Christy Pilgrim.”

It appears that they both changed their minds about religion at some point. She repudiated her power, as well.

“Something big has to have happened to push them that way,” Jack reflected. “Probably something traumatic.”

It was her third time observing Minnie Sulis; she’d already determined that Kyra’s mother had had an arsenal of esper abilities. About the only thing that Minnie hadn’t been able to do yet was cross more than one threshold between ’verses.

And that is what we must learn more about, Lucy agreed. What happened during the months she wouldn’t write about in her books.

Jack glanced over at the three books, resting on “her” table by “her” couch. The tomes had been fascinating, the diary astonishingly helpful for honing some of her own abilities, but they had left her certain that something critically important had occurred and been left out of them—or possibly, in the case of Minnie’s diary, torn out of it—something that had derailed Minnie’s life and might even have provoked her cousin Joren’s heinous acts. Something she needed to know more about before she tried to bring Kyra back.

“Damn.” Jack climbed to her feet and stretched. “I was really hoping we could bring her back soon. Still too many variables in play…”

It will not be long.

“Feels like it’s long already. How much time has elapsed?”

In U1, it’s less than a minute after you sat down to begin.

“…the hell? How come I’m so hungry?” Jack had been sure she’d missed lunch somehow.

For you, it’s been six hours.

“Even for my shell?”

Your six-shape and your shell are linked, even when they seem separated. You lived six hours in that minute.

Jack grimaced even as her stomach rumbled a complaint. “Good to know. That means I have to limit how long I visit anywhere in the past.”

If we decide on a long journey, storing your shell in the Core Chamber will be enough. The rays will keep it replenished.

Fortunately, the ridiculous fourteen-person banquet that had been wheeled in for breakfast had plenty of leftovers, apparently only a few minutes older than when she’d gotten up from the table. Jack found herself digging into them hungrily. “So I’ll stay fed and rested in there, and hang out with a few hundred of your brothers and sisters.”

She’d have to figure out just where she’d put her “shell” in there. The Core Chamber was pretty crowded since she and Dame Vaako had orchestrated the relocation of all of the Moribund’s captured apeirochorons into it. And Jack’s head had felt a little crowded as hundreds of new Apeiros woke from their torpid states and became curious about her.

“Maybe that’s where we should do all of this,” Jack continued after a moment, after swallowing down some food. “Am I gonna get sleepy six hours early today?”

Audrey Hepburn MacNamera, I have watched you pull all-night movie marathons with your roommate Janice on dozens of occasions in the last year and a half. And other all-night activities that I have no wish to describe, even more often. You will be just fine in that regard.

That startled a laugh out of her, fortunately while her mouth was empty. “Did you just trot out my full name like my mom?”

Yes. And yes, I must concede that your circadian rhythms have advanced six hours. It is something none of us have known until now. Only three of us exist outside of the apeirochorons, and none of us have engaged in this kind of travel before. The Quintessa Corporation has strictly limited our movements to a linear progression in time. And our bodies—

“You live thousands, maybe even millions, of years. It’s not like you’re gonna notice all that much if that clock speeds up by a few hours.”

This is true. Lucy’s n-shape flickered on the edge of her vision. Jack wondered if there would ever come a day when her regular, three-dimensional eyes could see her sister and understand what she was looking at.

“So. Now what? Another run through that timeline?” She poured a glass of mint tea from the ornate berrad she’d acquired, reminding herself not to be surprised that it was still hot. The hours might have passed for her, but not for it.

Soon. Not yet. Did I understand correctly that Joren Kirshbaum was attending the performance that night?

“Yeah.” Jack rose and walked over to the small pile of books on her couch. “She signed this one ‘all my love,’” she continued, flipping to the front pages of Magic Isn’t Real, “but I heard her thinking about how creepy he was. I want to know more about that. What they really were to each other. Hey, is Joren Kirshbaum still alive? It’s been four centuries.”

Yes. Like the others of his cursed lineage, he is connected to the ’verse you like to call Hell.

“So he’s been out there this whole time,” Jack mused. “By now he has to have figured out what his ‘inventions’ are really doing to the multiverse.”

I doubt he cares.

“Yeah, that tracks. I still want to know how it all started.” Taking the book with her, she sat back down by her glass of tea and took a sip.

Jack had spent much of the last two weeks, since her… wedding… reading all three of the books written by Minnie Sulis, née Minerva Kirshbaum-Wittier, and trying to find just the right ’verse in the U1 “cluster” from which to extract an alternate version of Kyra. The more she dug into the Kirshbaum family history—something that was shrouded from the public in her time, but which Minnie had been intimately connected to—the more she became certain that she needed a ’verse where most of the events that had led to the Quintessa Corporation’s founding had transpired, enough that Kyra would still have the innate control over apeirochorons that all Kirshbaums apparently possessed. After several days, she and Lucy had settled on one that mirrored U1’s timeline almost exactly until Kyra was roughly six years old, chosen because it branched off when, for a variety of different possible reasons, she never left Old Earth.

Riddick had been busy with his own things for much of that time, making the most of his new control over the Armada and his new “insider” standing among the Necromongers. She mostly saw him at night, when he returned to her side voracious for—

There was a knock on the suite’s outer door. It opened and Lola leaned in. “Dame Riddick?”

Oh really, now? Lucy sounded amused from somewhere above her.

“We’ve had this discussion, Lola. I’m still Jack.” She smiled to take any possible rebuke out of her words. People were awfully hung up on her rank these days. But it bugged her, more than a little, that her own name seemed to be vanishing behind the cloak of his… even if it was good camouflage. The more she became Dame Riddick, the less people seemed to care who “Jack B. Badd” might have been before then, and the more thoroughly the trail back to Audrey MacNamera remained broken.

That was a good thing… wasn’t it?

“Trying to set a mood, actually,” Lola replied with a grimace. “Your Lord Husband has requested your presence in the throne room. I think the raiding parties are returning.”

Jack groaned. At least, she thought, they’d waited to come back until after she’d finished setting up the new quarters over in Eden. Hopefully there would be enough beds. And, hopefully, the Ennead Kids had gotten enough practice with the new …choreography… she’d given them. “At least I managed to get lunch in first…”

“Lunch?” Lola looked confused. “We just finished breakfast half an hour ago.”

Damn it. That was right. “Six and a half hours ago for me. Astral projecting is some weird shit.”

She drained her glass of tea and then stood up.

Lola moved to her side as she emerged from the suite. In another moment, several other people had fallen into a kind of formation around her.

All queens had entourages, Dame Vaako had told her when she’d uncharacteristically complained about it all. Audrey MacNamera loved being surrounded by people, but even she needed moments when she could sneak away on her own. The Dame’s comment had made her think of the morning, right before she’d met the Apeiros for the first time, when she’d told Takama that she didn’t want to be a queen… and Takama’s response.

A mermaid doesn’t need to be a queen to raise a tsunami, she thought as she led the way to the throne room. But if she is a queen, can she raise a supernova? ’Cause I might need to today.

“You got something on your mind, Vaako. What is it?”

The Lord turned to look Riddick’s way, unease on his face. It seemed like all of the would-be Firsts were still struggling to comprehend the fact that he could hear their thoughts when he chose to. Not that he’d needed to this time. Vaako’s body language was practically screaming at him.

“I imagine it is the same concern that I have,” Toal said when the silence began to drag out. “These raiding parties are accustomed to being able to take… certain liberties… with captives who have been identified as ‘breeders.’ Even now that everyone is to be converted, I worry, and I think he does too, that the liberties may still be taken by those who have chosen not to understand the reasoning behind the changes.”

It was almost like listening to one of Jack’s memories of General Toal talking. “For their sakes, I hope they didn’t.”

“And if they did?” Scales asked.

“You’ve seen what I did to the last crew who pulled that shit. Your god won’t mind. Seemed awfully entertained, even, last time.”

The three men shared uneasy glances.

“You got a specific raiding party in mind?” Riddick asked. “Some Lord who thinks he ain’t gonna die before his ‘due time’ no matter what he does?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Vaako finally said. “I assume you remember Lord Navok. From the night when you killed Lord Breslin in the Greensleeves Stew.”

“Lord Navok.” Yeah, he remembered.

“This is part of the Necromonger Way. Do you really think you can change us? Will you die trying?”

He’d wanted a good excuse to take the fucker out ever since then. But he didn’t much like what finally having that excuse meant. “We’ll see if he makes it through the day. Gotta admit, though, I didn’t know the name of the guy whose head I cut off ’til just now.”

“He was not especially missed,” Toal admitted, his lips twitching with suppressed amusement.

“And Navok?”

“An effective if unimaginative commander,” Vaako volunteered. “Profligate with his troops’ lives. He attained his rank in large part because the sixth Lord Marshal liked his company. They shared many philosophical stances.”

“Like killin’ kids? And fuckin’ ‘breeders?’”

The uneasy look passed through the three men again.

“Yes,” Scales said. “We have been hearing whispers, since you took your wife… your human wife… that Navok intends to challenge you on ideological grounds. For not converting. For keeping a human woman but refusing to allow anyone else to. For closing the stews… and for ending the killing of children.”

“You think Jack’s human?” He wasn’t entirely sure what she was anymore. Or what he was, for that matter.

Toal shook his head. “We know better. We have seen. Perhaps if more saw what she is capable of, it would help—”

“I can’t just broadcast what she is and does to the whole ’verse,” he snapped. “I’m protecting her.”

“And we wish to help you do so,” Vaako said. “But none of us know what you are protecting her from.”

Everything. Fuckin’ everything. He didn’t even know where to begin. Sometimes it seemed like there was nobody out there who didn’t want a piece of his wife. And he sure as fuck couldn’t tell them that one of the things he was protecting her from most of all was their own god.

She is in no danger from me, the Moribund spoke up in his head. I cannot eat her now that she has hatched into her six-shape. If that is what you think I still wish to do.

And yet he could still feel the creature’s hatred and resent­ment… of her.

“You’ll know soon enough,” he told the men in the meantime. “An’ she might be about to make that show you want, anyway, if the raiding parties brought any kids back with ’em.”

“There will be several,” Vaako told him. “I have spies on all four ships. Which is how we know that you will need to make an example of Lord Navok.”

“You really didn’t have to dance around that topic, you know.” Riddick felt a smile tugging at his lips. “Been wantin’ an excuse to ghost that fucker for a year now. You could’ve just said ‘Merry Christmas.’”

“He will have a plan,” Scales said, frowning. “Accomplices.”

“Sounds like a party.”

“Your Jack could end up in the middle of it,” Toal pointed out.

He kept the pang of worry that sparked in him off of his face. They’d gone over every parameter; she’d be fine. “Guess she’ll definitely get a chance to show off what she can do, then.”

He was curious to see what it would be, himself. If nothing else, the girl was inventive.

And she was so much else, too.

Instructions had been sent to have all four raiding parties, and all of their prisoners, brought to the throne room one group at a time, with Lord Navok’s party last. The floor itself had been cleared for them, all of the usual onlookers retreating to the upper level and side corridors. Dame Vaako, however, had staked out a convenient spot so that she could fall in with the Dame Riddick when she made her entrance.

Jack, as the girl still insisted friends call her—and Dame Vaako was relieved to still number among those—turned a sweet smile on her as she joined the group. “Good morning, Chantesa!”

“Good morning, Jack.” She glanced over Jack’s shoulder at the girl’s bodyguard. “Lola.”

“Dame Vaako.” Lola nodded at her. The former police woman was slowly thawing toward her, but took her duties far too seriously to ever be completely friendly.

Good, Dame Vaako thought. Today of all days, she needs to be as alert as possible.

Jack blinked and looked at her. “Why? What’s wrong?”

Of course. The girl could read thoughts. That made things a little simpler. She concentrated on her mental words, hoping she could communicate as clearly as possible the things she dared not say out loud. My husband believes that one of the other Lords intends to stage a coup today. She visualized Lord Navok in her head, including his main lieutenants in the image.

“Well, that’ll keep things interesting,” Jack murmured, before humming a few bars of melody.

Around and behind her, the nine performers in her entourage picked up the tune for a few more bars. Jack nodded, looking satisfied. Beside her, Lola looked more alert than ever, poised for battle.

“Where are your two other friends?” Dame Vaako asked. “Vanessa and Poly?”

“Making final preparations for the kids,” Jack told her as they approached the throne. “Which is good because they’ll be out of harm’s way. You want to duck and cover with them?”

It wasn’t even a little tempting. “When not at my husband’s side, my place is by yours.”

That earned her another of the girl’s sweet smiles.

“Things will probably get hairy,” Lola warned both of them.

“Sooner or later, an example’s going to have to be made,” Jack sighed. “Guess we’re all better off if it’s sooner, right? So we can get back to business.”

Lola shrugged, her gaze turning to Dame Vaako. “Are you armed?”

“I have a weapon or two on me,” she said, feeling a little smug… but a little worried. Her weapons were most effective as surprises, in close quarters.

Lola reached into a pocket and drew out a small sidearm. “Ever fired one of these?”

“I haven’t,” Dame Vaako admitted. “It looks like a miniature version of the guns our troops carry into battle.”

“That’s exactly what it is,” Lola told her, putting it into her hand. “It can’t actually do a Necromonger any lasting harm, but it packs a punch and will at least knock one across the room.”

“Thank you.” No matter how chilly Lola’s expressions toward her might be, Dame Vaako reflected, arming her like this was a huge step.

Even as Jack and her entourage finished arraying themselves on one side of the throne, the soldiers in the hall came to attention. The heavy bootsteps of the Lord Marshal and his three top commanders sounded on the stairs behind the throne. They came into view, the commanders moving to the opposite side of the seat of power even as the Riddick positioned himself in front of it. Her husband caught her eye, a question on his face. Had she warned Jack?

She nodded and gave him a small smile. All would be well. The girl would be protected.

He looked relieved but gave her an admonishing look, cautioning her not to be too confident.

“Bring in the first group of raiders,” Riddick commanded his soldiers. “Lord Vosloo’s ship.”

In a moment, Vosloo and his platoon entered, accompanied by twice as many captives. Only a few of them looked the worse for wear, most of them men who had undoubtedly tried to go down swinging. There were half a dozen children among them… and a baby.

Jack moved forward to stand next to Riddick. “Before I take custody of the children, who are their parents? And who’s the baby’s mother?”

She’d played the right card; as cowed as the prisoners might have been, they were willing to speak up once their children were in play. Jack beckoned them to her, speaking softly with them for a few minutes. Strangely, even though the conversation should have been audible from a few feet away, Dame Vaako couldn’t catch any of it. From the looks on the faces of other nearby courtiers, including her husband on the far side of the throne, no one else could, either. Riddick, she noticed, seemed to have no trouble following what was happening.

After a moment, all of the parents filed back to join the other captives, except for one woman who remained by Jack’s side.

“My Lord Marshal,” Jack said, her speech suddenly formal, with the polish of many rehearsals, as she turned to Riddick. “I beg a favor of you. Until this woman’s child is weaned, I ask that she remain unconverted and in my care along with her baby. Will you let me claim her as mine?”

Even before Riddick could answer, though, Dame Vaako felt it: her god approved.

“Of course, Dame Riddick.” There was a hint of amusement on the Lord Marshal’s face.

“Thank you, my Lord,” Jack said, dropping in a formal curtsey before the throne. Then she gathered the children, leading them, and the mother with her baby, back behind the throne and through the doors to the Chamber of the Quasi-Dead. Strangely, Dame Vaako thought she caught a glimpse of …trees and birds?… through the doors as they passed between them.

“You’ve done well, Lord Vosloo,” Riddick said. “Followed all my commands. What reward would you like?”

Lord Vosloo stepped forward, his expression both pleased and carefully formal. “I wish to be elevated from Captain of the Green Viper to Commodore of a flotilla.”

Riddick’s smile widened. “Sure. You’ve demonstrated your command skills. We’ll discuss which captains you want under your command after the show’s over. And who else on your crew has earned rewards and promotions.”

The captives were marched out of the throne room by Purifiers who had been standing by. Vosloo and his crew climbed the stairs to one of the upper levels.

I hope he’s really on our side, Dame Vaako found herself thinking. Outward obedience wasn’t always mirrored by inward motives; hers hardly ever had been, after all.

“He is,” Jack murmured, coming to stand beside her again. “The next two crews are, too.”

“How do you know that?” she whispered back, but all the girl did was smile and tap her finger against her temple a few times.

She was right, though. The next two presentations played out similarly, although thankfully there were no more babies and only four more children. Lord Jianming wished, as his reward, captaincy of a larger and more powerful ship in the fleet, while Lord Gurn asked for permission to retire from his captaincy and join the Elder Ranks aboard the Basilica. Riddick seemed unsurprised by their requests and already prepared to accommodate them. And then there was only one raiding party left to see to.

During the prior audiences, there had been noise throughout the room, whispers and bits of chatter and gossip. Everything became still and silent as Lord Navok entered the throne room with his crew and captives.

It wasn’t absolute silence. More than one of the captive women was crying. Several of them had clearly been badly used. There were no children among them, and no men. Just more than a dozen brutalized women. All of them, Dame Vaako noticed, clad in tattered blues and greens.

The message wasn’t even particularly subtle. Lord Navok’s raiders had brought back nothing but “breeders,” all of whom had been dressed as effigies of Jack and then abused accordingly.

“Hmmm,” was all Riddick said for a moment as he surveyed the group. There was no sign that the message bothered him. “Looks like someone didn’t quite do his job to spec.”

Navok frowned. That was his cue to take offense. “I have been Captain of the Widowmaker for two decades. I know exactly how to do my job.”

“Yeah,” Riddick said, the barest hint of a smirk touching the corner of his mouth. “But see, your job changed a little, and it sounds like you didn’t understand your new instructions. Do you need them explained to you again, Navok?”

No Lord. No Captain. No Commander. No title whatsoever. It was both a threat and an insult, and masterfully delivered. In the last two weeks, it had grown easier and easier for Dame Vaako to admit just how good Riddick was at being Lord Marshal.

“I don’t need your heresies explained, Riddick,” Navok replied, trying to return the insult with the more familiar phrasing. But, Dame Vaako knew, that wouldn’t really work. Riddick, like his wife, preferred no title at all. If Lord Navok had been hoping to goad him into a rage, calling him by the name he liked better was hardly the way to do it.

“Ain’t heresies if your god’s in favor of ’em.” Riddick was smiling now. That, Dame Vaako reflected, was when he was at his most dangerous. “And he is. Ask him.”

Navok scoffed. “You are not one of us. How would you know what our god wishes?”

He can’t hear you, can he? Dame Vaako found herself asking Tokoloshe.

It is not that he cannot hear me, her god replied, filling her with the awed delight she felt whenever He spoke directly to her. He has chosen not to listen.

What slime!

It will all resolve itself shortly. There was a hint of anticipation in Tokoloshe’s “voice.”

“I know that until thirty-one years ago, the Necromonger Way didn’t involve killin’ kids,” Riddick was saying, that dangerous smile still on his face. “Seems like a lot of heresies proliferated after that. I’m just cleanin’ it all up. So lemme ask you this, Navok. Are you a heretic?”

“You pollute that throne, you and that breeder whore, and you dare call me a heretic?”

Riddick’s eyes narrowed, but Jack started laughing. The look that Navok turned her way was one of pure hatred.

It’s about to happen, Dame Vaako realized. In a moment, whether or not the Lord Marshal rose to Navok’s bait, the mutinous Lord would either have to attack or bend his knee. And Navok wouldn’t bend.

“It’ll be okay,” Jack whispered, giving her shoulder a gentle squeeze.

“You know, I haven’t actually fucked her on the throne yet,” Riddick said in a musing tone. “Great suggestion, though. Bit hard to do without drawin’ an audi­ence—”

With a roar of outrage, Navok grabbed a spear from a nearby guard and launched himself at Riddick.

Navok’s platoon went on the attack as well. Scattered throughout the great hall, other Necromonger soldiers, apparently on his side, moved to join the fray.

Not enough. Not nearly enough. If Lord Navok had thought that he had popular sentiment on his side, he had been wrong.

But, Dame Vaako thought with a chill, there were still enough to do some damage. And several of them were coming right at Jack’s entour­age… and her with them.

“Showtime,” Jack said, her voice calm.

“Thought you’d never ask,” the leader of the Ennead Kids, Antonio, murmured.

And all nine of them vanished, as did Lola.

A strange, swift pandemonium followed. Spears disappeared from mutineers’ hands only to sprout from their chests. Courtiers who had found themselves in harm’s way vanished, reappearing seconds later in safer parts of the room, staring wildly about in confusion. In moments, only Navok himself was left of the mutineers, facing off against Riddick.

I am being feasted well today, Tokoloshe murmured in Dame Vaako’s head as she watched the combatants.

None of them went to the Underverse, did they? she asked her god. Few people would be less deserving of that reward, she thought, than those mutineers.

Not a one. They will fall forever.

Riddick was toying with Navok, letting him almost get the upper hand before turning his moves against him.

“I don’t want to kill you now, Navok,” Riddick said as they circled.

“The more fool you, then,” Navok grated, lunging forward.

Riddick dodged easily, leaving a cut from his blade on Navok’s cheek. “That ain’t what I meant. See, you got some atonin’ to do before you go. You need to live out everything you put those ladies through on your flight back here. Where’s the fun in killin’ you quick?”

“Breeders are not ‘ladies,’” Navok snarled. “They are nothing!”

He launched his spear at Riddick and spun to the side. Riddick dodged the shaft easily but—

Dame Vaako heard several of the other Ladies of the Armada scream as Navok lunged right at her, backhanding her aside. As she sprawled to the ground, tucking and rolling as best she could, he grabbed hold of Jack, pulling her against him and putting a knife to her throat.

“Just like this warm breeder whore you call a Dame is nothing!”

Regaining her footing, Dame Vaako pulled out the tiny gun Lola had given her, but then groaned. It wouldn’t do harm to a Necromonger, although it might knock Navok across the room, but how badly would it hurt Jack? She would have to use one of her hidden blades in­stead—

“You know,” Jack said, as if there was no knife pressed against her skin. “If you wanted me to warm you up, you could’ve just asked.”

“Another word out of you and I’ll cut your filthy breeder throat!”

“You will never leave this hall alive,” Vaako growled. Toal and Scales, meanwhile, were circling, trying to get behind Navok. “And you will never see the Underverse.”

“Worrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrd…” Jack drawled, calling Navok’s bluff.

Dame Vaako heard her voice join the chorus of screams as Navok slashed his knife across Jack’s throat—

And nothing happened. Although she could have sworn the knife had bitten in deep, there was no blood. No wound. As if either the knife, or Jack, was a hologram that the other had passed through.

The tiniest flinch had rolled through Riddick’s body. He was, Dame Vaako realized, deliberately holding himself back from charging at Navok. Now he folded his arms, watching the two of them with a small, amused smile on his face, showing no sign of the tension he had to be feeling. “When exactly did you infect Lola and the Ennead Kids with Threshold Syndrome, anyway?” he asked Jack, almost as if they were alone.

“End of last week,” Jack said. “You got anything you want to say to this asshole?”

Navok still had the girl in his grasp, staring between her and Riddick in confusion and growing horror. He was trying to stab and slash at Jack, but his blade kept passing through her without leaving even a mark, like a holo-prop. Around Dame Vaako, awed murmurs were spreading.

“Nah,” Riddick told her, his dangerous smile back. “He’s still gettin’ off way too easy. But I wanna see this.”

Jack grimaced. “As you wish…”

The knife—definitely not a hologram—clattered to the floor as Navok abruptly clutched at his head. No longer holding Jack against him, he staggered back, dropped to his knees, and screamed. And kept screaming. His open mouth seemed to glow as if his head was full of red-hot coals—

It was. Fire was consuming him from the inside. Within seconds, Navok’s screams cut off, his whole body locking up for an instant before he collapsed to the floor, the fire inside him now devouring all of him.

Jack shuddered and walked over to Riddick. He put his arm around her and she leaned her head against his shoulder. “That,” she told him in a pained voice, “was a whole lot worse than I thought it would be.”

“I won’t put you in that kind of position again, Jack, I—”

“Not that part.” Jack gestured at the disintegrating ashes that had once been Lord Navok. “That part. I hate killing.”

But you do it so well. Why did Dame Vaako have the sense that Tokoloshe was mocking Jack?

“How did you do that?” Toal asked, staring at her in awe.

“There’s a ’verse where Mirach’s core is right here instead of a light-hour away,” Jack said, staring at the ashes. “I just needed one hydrogen atom from there. Shit. Sometimes I think maybe the Quantifiers are right.”

“Not even a little,” Riddick murmured to the girl in his arms. “Just hold on a few more minutes. We’re almost done with the show.”

They had known, Dame Vaako realized. Even before she or her husband had tried to warn them, they’d known that there would be a mutiny against them this day. And they had used it to deliver a warning of their own.

And, it dawned on her, to test the fidelity of the subjects who had grown closest to them in the last two weeks. Including her and her husband.

“Next time you want to get all theatrical,” Jack grumbled, “we’d better be doing a musical comedy.”