The Changeling Game, Chapter 77

77.
Sleeping Beauty, Sleeper Agent

“Tell me about the girl,” Dame Vaako said as she carefully unwound her hair.

Lord Vaako, busy removing his armor, glanced over at her with a frown. “We found her on a ship with a few dozen other passengers and crew. She almost escaped and fought better than any of the others tried to. There’s little else to tell. We converted most of the others on the way back, but she remained untouched in every way for delivery to the Lord Marshal.”

“Untouched in every way?” Dame Vaako raised an eyebrow. She was almost certain her husband never visited the Breeder Pits, but after the way that other girl, Kyra, had hung on him when they’d returned from Crematoria…

Vaako sneered. “Untouched, Chantesa. In every way. My soldiers know discipline. As do I.”

True. Even those marked as “breeders” arrived at the Basilica in decent enough shape if her husband’s ship brought them back.

In the last year, even though many of the Lords and Dames had begun to dream of making an assault on the Melpomene System, and some had even begun devising strategies to propose for such an attack, they had been held in check. Only a few ships had been allowed to launch raids on the Sol Tracks as “practice.” Chantesa had heard that there had been similar lulls in the purification of worlds, after each transition from one Lord Marshal to the next, and that it might take another year or two before their new leader either committed to the Way… or was deposed.

In the meantime, raiding parties were grudgingly allowed to go out so that the fleet could still know battle. Most of the “breeders” brought back by the other Lords after such raids had already seen hard use, some even on the verge of death. Never the ones her husband brought back. When he’d presented the girl to Riddick, she undoubtedly had been untouched.

Of course, everyone remembered what had happened the time one raiding party had brought back another girl, who closely resembled Riddick’s quarry and who had endured some hard use before being turned over to him. It had taken the raiding party more than a week to die. Chantesa still shuddered when she recalled it; they had been placed so no one in the Basilica could avoid hearing their screams, although no one could see what was being done to them. Somehow, the Riddick had found a way to make Necromongers, who were supposed to be above pain, scream… and only he, himself, had seemed immune to the horror of their suffering.

Later, she heard whispers that he had compelled the Quasi-Dead to extract all of the memories of that girl’s tortured days of captivity from her mind… and make the entire raiding party relive them from her perspective, on an infinite loop, until their own minds finally shattered. The girl herself, physically healed, converted, and with no memory of being abused, was now the wife of a Purifier on another of the Armada’s ships, and the Riddick apparently had never seen or spoken to her since.

It had been effective, though; no other raiding party since had dared take even a taste when they found a doppelgänger for the girl he’d sought. He always insisted, she’d noticed, that his “rejects” undergo immediate conversion.

It fascinated her that the actual girl, the one the Riddick had been searching for the whole time, seemed to fear him. She hoped to learn more. If the girl was here against her will and had no love for their Lord Marshal… perhaps they could help each other.

Not long after, as they were preparing to sleep, news came that the Riddick had taken the girl into the chamber of the Quasi-Dead and had compelled all would-be observers to leave. They were still in the chamber when she and her husband rose in the morning. She managed to slip close to the grilles for a moment before one of the Riddick’s guards ushered her away.

The girl lay on the dais, posed much like the “Sleeping Beauty” character that Chantesa remembered from her childhood and surrounded by the Quasi-dead, while the Riddick, legs folded and head bowed as if meditating, sat behind her head, his hands on her temples.

“What do you think he’s doing to her?” she whispered to her husband as she was handed back to him.

“I know not, nor do I care.”

Oh, damn you. Grow a little imagination… Faithful and biddable—and formidable in battle—as Lord Niels Vaako might be, he could also be stultifyingly dull.

It was almost a full Standard day before the Riddick emerged from the chamber, the still-unconscious girl in his arms, and carried her away from the Necropolis. Gossip had run wild in that time, growing increasingly imaginative and ridiculous. The girl was far too old be his daughter, and she seemed far too young to be a wife… of an age with, or slightly younger than, the girl Kyra whom he’d attempted to rescue and then avenge.

Dame Vaako loved a good mystery.

“I think I’ll find out what the witch knows,” she told her husband when they rose the next morning.

Aereon of the Elementals had been given a suite—Irgun’s old suite, in fact—after the Riddick had taken over. Interestingly, he hadn’t released the witch and had insisted that she continue to wear the strange stone chains that the late Lord Marshal Zhylaw had called—for some reason that had seemed to amuse him and him alone—the “cherry bombs.” She spent most of her time in the chambers, only occasionally emerging to walk the battlements and listen in on Court business.

“Please come in,” she said, when her guards announced Dame Vaako’s arrival.

Chantesa was surprised to see that the woman had left Irgun’s rooms almost completely unchanged. Perhaps she was in denial about the length of her stay, and refused to do anything to make the rooms more her own because that would mean accepting her standing as a long-term prisoner of the Armada… fascinating.

“We don’t see much of you,” she commented, running her finger along the edge of Irgun’s desk. Someone, at least, was keeping the place clean.

“I very much doubt most Necromongers wish to see any of me,” Aereon replied. It was difficult to look at her at times. Parts of her seemed to disappear in the air currents. But there were moments when Chantesa could almost swear that she saw something else, in the thinned places… something worse than emptiness.

“And why is that?” she asked. “Your people are neutral in our conflict, yes? Why shouldn’t we be… closer?”

“That,” Aereon said, her words slow and precise as if talking to a child, “is the nature of neutrality.”

“And yet you were on Helion Prime warning them about us.”

“I was not the source of any warnings. I was there for another reason.”

“The Riddick?” Chantesa asked. “Were you there looking for him? Because if you were looking for the prophesied Furyan Warrior who would take down our leader, that hardly seems neutral either.”

“The prophesied Furyan Warrior who would become your leader.”

Good parry. And possibly even a valid point. Except that rumors kept swirling about how the Riddick was seeking to break the Way. Funny how those rumors seemed to always come out of the night he’d killed one of the other Lords in a Breeder Pit…

Sumptuous brothels or not, Chantesa preferred to call them by that name. It better fit the lives that the unbelievers trapped inside them actually lived. There but for the grace of conversion…

“Did the prophecies ever mention a girl?” she asked.

“You mean Kyra? No.” Aereon shook her head. “It seems that the whole purpose of her existence was to bring him here, nothing more.”

“There’s another girl. The one he’s been looking for.”

“He has asked me several times about his Jack, yes.”

Chantesa frowned. “I thought Kyra was his ‘Jack.’”

“Apparently not.” Aereon smiled. “He’s asked again and again for answers about who she really was. But I doubt he can find them. Not if he won’t embrace your faith, and it’s clear that he won’t.”

Fascinating. The witch seemed pleased that the Riddick would be denied answers. She wondered if that was why the chains remained on. There was something duplicitous about Aereon that delighted her. Especially if the witch and the Riddick were not actually friends.

“Maybe the other girl will know.”

Aereon’s breath hitched, almost inaudibly, but she caught it. “This other girl… is here?”

“Captured a week ago and given to the Riddick almost two days ago, yes. You must not have attended that Court session.”

“Tell me about her.” The witch’s voice was mild, only hinting at the slightest bit of curiosity, but Chantesa could feel some deeper avidity behind it.

“Young. Tall. Slender. Pretty in her own way. She matches the description he sent out. And she seems to fear him.”

“How curious. I would have thought his quest after her to be impossible.”

“Who is she?” Chantesa asked.

“No one that I know of. Which is odd. Except… yes, of course. I should have realized sooner.”

Oh, now this was intriguing! “Realized what?”

“When I learned the identity of the Furyan Warrior I was seeking,” Aereon said after a pause, “I hired a mercenary to locate him and bring him back to Helion Prime. In fact, I hired several mercenaries, but this one was a particularly crass and difficult man. He had a story to tell—and he insisted upon telling it—of how Riddick had swooped into a high security psychiatric hospital, under everyone’s noses, had extracted two teenage girls from custody, and had taken them offworld with him.”

Aereon rose from her seat and began to pace as she talked. The air currents she stirred up made parts of her vanish in a disconcerting and almost nauseating way. No wonder, Dame Vaako thought, she had so few visitors and even fewer invitations to come out of her chambers.

“The girls were a Jane Doe who apparently went by ‘Jack’ and had a prior history with Riddick, which he had hoped to use to lay a trap,” Aereon continued, “and Kyra Wittier-Collins, a rare female serial killer known to many as the Black Fox of Canaan Mountain. The mercenary believed that both of these girls were Riddick’s lovers, but the world he believed Riddick had spirited them away to was not the one where he was ultimately found, so I suspect Toombs was wrong. And based on Riddick’s questions to me…”

“The Riddick went to Crematoria seeking this ‘Jack’ but found Kyra there instead,” Dame Vaako breathed, delighted, “but had never met her before?”

“It appears so.” Aereon turned the smile of an approving schoolteacher on her. “And yet it also appears that he came to care about her a great deal in a very short time. Odd, given his reputation for aloof detachment and antisocial tendencies. It would seem that he has, in fact, formed genuine bonds with other people, such as they are, at least twice.”

“And now he has his ‘Jack.’ Why would she be afraid of him?” The possibilities were endless, and rather delicious. Had part of the mercenary’s tale been true? Perhaps he had spirited her away and made her a child-bride, only for her to escape his control. Had she possibly even used the other girl to lay a false trail away from herself? Would she, maybe, wish assistance to escape again, for a reasonable price?

“Perhaps you should ask her,” Aereon suggested, a hint of a smile touching her lips.

Perhaps I should.

“She’s adorable.”

Audrey and Kyra stood side by side, watching Elodie splash in the creek behind the house that Audrey’s mother, and Alvin, had bought in the small town where Deckard Tech was located, just outside Wyndham Landing. Audrey turned and smiled at Kyra.

“She is, isn’t she? She was born a little over six months after I took off.”

“Yeah,” Kyra said, nodding and smiling back. “I thought so.”

The backyard melted away and they were in the woods on the slope of Canaan Mountain. This space was Kyra’s rather than Audrey’s, shaped by her visions and memories.

“You did?” Audrey followed Kyra into the forest as they talked.

“Yeah. When you told me and the Mezianes about the brother you never had, that’s when it all made sense.” Kyra grinned apologetically at her. “I didn’t say anything because you’d have been pissed off at yourself if you knew. So, did Alvin turn out to be an asshole when you got back?”

“No, he turned out to be surprisingly not-dickish,” Audrey laughed. “And yeah, I was pretty upset to realize I ran away from the thing I’d always wanted most.”

“Family,” Kyra said, nodding. “Yeah. I miss that, too, sometimes. The way it was when I was little, anyway. Your cosmic family is nice, not as scary as I used to think, but… Tizzy, do you know how much longer I’ll be stuck out here? My memory isn’t good enough to just live in it.”

Kyra’s forests, Audrey had noticed, tended to be a little “blurry,” missing most of the details that would truly make them feel real. Maybe that was why she preferred to spend her time in—

As if on cue, a much more detailed and precise landscape opened to them: the bonefield from the crash planet, beneath its blue sun. The memories that Audrey—as Jack—had once shared with Kyra were almost as vivid as life, not to mention missing almost all of the actual traumatic moments. No wonder Kyra spent so much time replaying them and exploring their confines.

“I’ll ask the Apeiros. They don’t make a whole lot of sense when I ask them about you, but I’ll try again—”

Wake, little sister. Wake…

“Do I have to? I wanna stay with Kyra…” But the vision was shredding and the crash planet, and Kyra, had already vanished. It wasn’t a dream any more than the starfield of the Apeiros was a dream, but she was all too aware of its lack of normal physicality. That had to be especially hard on Kyra.

Not now, Audrey. You must wake. You will see her again soon.

Audrey opened her eyes. The strange carvings and draperies of Riddick’s bedroom greeted her.

Fuck.

Your species makes very little sense. The act of reproduction as a malediction. Why? Her sister was lurking somewhere in the shadows directly above her, mostly hidden by the high, vaulted ceiling. Audrey thought she could make out the glitter of eyes.

“We got five hours to unpack it all?”

We do not. One of the Necromonger court is on its way to speak with you. I still struggle to tell human sexes apart, especially with these creatures, but I believe it is female.

“Fun, fun, fun.” Audrey sat up, noticing that Riddick must have slept beside her on the bed, neither of them beneath its covers. “Where’s Riddick?”

In another part of the ship, making arrangements to ensure your safety. The Moribund no longer threatens you.

“I figured that’s why all my memories are back,” she said, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “Well, almost all of them… What the hell did he do with my shoes?”

On the other side of the bed.

She put them on and laced them up. They weren’t exactly combat boots, but they were still better than sock feet until she knew the lay of the land. “So how come you have a hard time telling Necromonger sexes apart?”

They have no reproductive capability.

“Huh. Did we know this about them?”

No.

“You let Michael know yet? Could be important.”

I will.

She needed a moment to regroup. “Okay. I’m smack-dab in the center of the Necromonger Armada. Its new leader is my old friend Richard B. Riddick, who apparently killed the old leader and took over right after they turned Helion Prime into a ‘Black Planet.’ Just what the hell was Toombs thinking he was gonna do with me here? You know what, never mind. That guy would use ‘boobs’ for a password if a system would accept it. Long as he’s nowhere near Elodie, fuck him. Do I have marching orders from the General? Is there a plan here?”

In truth, the place was still scary as fuck, but at least her brain was in better order now. She’d flowed with the replay that the Apeiros had allowed to be fed through the “Quasi-Dead,” her memories falling back into place as they spooled past. Everything made sense again. Some things made too much sense.

She wasn’t entirely delighted by the person she’d turned into, with most of her salient memories gone, over the last year. That version of Audrey MacNamera had lost almost all of the good therapy she’d received for her traumas, via Ewan, MilitAIre, First-AId, and Michael, and had simply buried them and refused to look, turning more than a little neurotic again in the process. And she’d developed this weird sheltered, privileged-girl righteous sense that she was personally going to right all the major wrongs on her home planet…

Great, and now instead, I’m back in a situation where a whole bunch of people are expecting me to be instrumental in saving a universe…

More than just one, her sister told her from somewhere on the ceiling.

“So no pressure or anything… does General Toal have a plan for this?”

His plan has been to nurture you until you are ready to hatch into your six-shape. Then we can show you everything.

“And… this current situation is, what? A setback? An opportunity? A major clusterfuck?”

We do not know yet. It appears to be connected, but tangentially, to our goals.

“Then my current directive is… gather intel and wait?”

Essentially.

“Okay, I can do that.”

The one who wishes to speak to you is at the door. The guards will not admit it.

“Should I—” Audrey laughed. “Why the hell not? I’m here to gather intel, right?”

Before she’d regained herself, she thought, she’d been genuinely terrified. She could start with that and see where it took her. As she walked over to the doors, she slipped into the necessary role. And introducing Audrey MacNamera as the Petrified Captive…

She opened one door up a crack. “Who…who’s there?”

“Go back inside, girl,” one of the guards on the doors said. “No one in or out. Lord Marshal’s orders.”

“B…but…” She let her eyes dart between the players in the hallway as she pulled the door open further. Two guards, posted on either side of the ornate doors in overwrought armor, and an elegant, beautiful woman, dressed in a form-fitting gown, hair severely coiffed, heavy makeup and her natural darker skin tone both helping to conceal the deathly pallor of most Necromongers.

Female, she told her sister. Our guest is definitely female. See the kind of ornamentation she’s wearing? It’s culturally coded as feminine. Especially in this kind of culture.

“Surely the Lord Marshal would have no objection to a friendly visit?” the woman cajoled in a sultry voice. One of the guards seemed to be struggling against its pull. “If his young guest were to invite me in?”

The two guards shared nervous glances.

It’ll be fine, Audrey pushed at them. Hopefully they weren’t shielded.

They glanced at each other again, shrugging.

“C-can she come in?” she asked, still stammering. “Please?”

After a moment’s hesitation, the guards let the woman pass.

Audrey twisted her hands together, watching her guest prowl into the suite. There was something in her walk, in the way she looked at everything, that suggested she already owned all of it and was just deciding when to take possession. Arrogance, confidence, absolute belief in herself.

Audrey had just the foil for that.

In comparison, she would be stammering, gauche, frightened, desperately in need of guidance and protection… easily manipulated, easily controlled… or so her guest would believe.

“W…what’s your name?” she asked as the woman continued to survey the room, oblivious to Audrey’s shadowy sister watching her in fascination from the vaulted ceiling.

“You may call me Dame Vaako,” the woman said. Chantesa, her mind volunteered silently.

Pretty name, she thought. “I’m, uh, Audrey.”

“Not ‘Jack?’” Dame Vaako asked.

Audrey flinched, blinked, and gave a jerky shake of her head. “N-not Jack.”

I mean, it was the only name I ever told him… She couldn’t exactly blame Riddick for wanting to use it, and for maybe needing the nostalgia of it. She’d had enough names now, and played enough roles, that she wasn’t sure she could truly reject, or even claim, any of them. And if the semi-amnesiac Audrey MacNamera of the prior year was her actual authentic self, she had a whole lot of work left to do on herself.

Jack wasn’t the name, among all the names she’d worn, that she would pick first… but it would do just fine.

But this Dame Vaako didn’t need to know any of that.

“Pity,” the Dame said, running her finger over a shelf edge and then rubbing off the dust she’d collected on her fingertip with her thumb, “he’s been trying so hard to find a girl named Jack.” The woman’s eyes moved to the bedroom beyond the sitting room, taking in the rumpled bed. Although her expression was deadpan, Audrey could feel the way her mind was awhirl with calculations.

Okay. First choice. Should she play really dumb and ask “who,” or make a logical leap?

She wouldn’t play that dumb. The Dame would figure out Audrey was running a game a whole lot sooner if she got caught in that kind of lie.

“Why?” she asked instead, a tremor in her voice. “I don’t… I don’t…”

“Yes, child? Don’t what?” Dame Vaako walked over to her. She had to be wearing some killer heels; she seemed only an inch or two shorter than Audrey, but the proportions of her body suggested she would be at least half a foot shorter if they were both barefoot. Maybe that was why her dress was so tight around her legs, to keep her from taking too-long steps in her shoes and overbalancing.

“I don’t understand why I’m here,” Audrey whimpered, breaking her voice twice and letting her eyes grow large and fill with unshed tears. This was the moment when a lot of people would become uncomfortable and find an excuse to retreat, and when especially empathetic types would try to comfort her… what would someone like this Dame Vaako do?

The hand that Dame Vaako brought up to her cheek was chilly. It was a good thing that it was in character for Audrey to flinch, because there was no avoiding it.

Dame Vaako was straddling two ’verses. She could feel it.

Not the way Irena and Colin Kirshbaum had been, though. Or at least, she didn’t think so. It was easier to tell when she was observing from another ’verse herself, but…

Almost all of Dame Vaako was in U1… but something else, something not of this ’verse, was piggybacking on her. There was a strange energy exchange happening…

“Don’t be afraid, child, I won’t hurt you,” the Dame said.

“Your hand’s so cold,” she stammered, shifting her vision so that she could see what filled Dame Vaako’s space in her other ’verses.

Empty interstellar space surrounded her in twenty-seven other ’verses. And yet—

Ohhhhhhh, would you look at that. This whole ship’s crossing a threshold…

She wondered if she could tap into its string vibrations and connect to that ’verse. Crossing over and adding it to her five-shape should be safe to do from inside the ship.

Experiment time after I get rid of our guest, she told her sister, and felt Her amusement above her.

“It’s the Necromonger Way,” Dame Vaako was telling her. “We give up the frailties of human life for something far more glorious. The Underverse.”

“W…what’s that?” At least they hadn’t named their alternate reality Elsewhere, too. That Under plucked at memory.

Beneath, below, under… you weren’t talking about the Necromongers’ Underverse, were you? she asked her sister, and instantly felt Her derision.

“Oh child, there is no way to tell you about that. The only way to see it is to be Purified—” The Dame staggered back, wincing. “No… not allowed… what…?”

That was unexpected. “Are you okay?”

Dame Vaako looked like she’d just developed a nasty headache. “I’m fine…” She shook her head as if trying to clear it.

“Do you need to sit down?” She let her voice fill with worry, as if her sudden concern had temporarily overwhelmed her fear.

“I should go.” The Dame was trying to sound imperious, but a note of odd desperation had crept into her tone. She moved unsteadily for the doors, and for a moment Audrey worried that she’d lose the battle with her heels and dress and totter over. “We can talk again soon… I look forward to learning more about you…”

Whatever had just happened, it had completely cut through the woman’s equilibrium.

Dame Vaako slipped out of the doors, trying and failing to look nonchalant as she went.

“Well. That was weird,” Audrey said.

My brother struck at her.

“Your who?”

For all that we have disowned and repudiated him, the Moribund is still my brother.

She hadn’t been sure until now about the relationship, but that did confirm a suspicion of hers. She had to come at so much of this sideways… “He doesn’t have to be my brother, does he?”

Her sister’s silent laughter filled the ether. No, little sister, he doesn’t wish to be tied to you that way, any more than you wish to be related to him. But he no longer wishes you harm.

“That’s something, at least—”

“Who… the fuck… gave you permission to let that bitch into my rooms?” Riddick demanded of the guards outside.

Hooboy.

She couldn’t tell him from here. His mental shields were as impenetrable as Michael’s.

Walking over to the doors, she cracked one open again. Riddick, outside, was glaring at two very cowed-looking guards. “M-me…” she stammered, more for the guards’ benefit than his. “It was me… I asked if she could…”

“For fuck’s sake,” Riddick muttered.

Furyans use reproduction as a malediction too? Audrey’s sister asked, forcing her to stifle a laugh. It was a good thing musical comedy was one of her fortes and she could keep a straight face through almost any skit.

He pushed past his guards and into the room, compelling her to back up. She scrambled back, keeping up the fearful act while the guards closed the doors and Riddick loomed before her.

He leaned close, breathing in through his nose. “You don’t smell even a little scared, Jack.” He drew back and pulled off his goggles, silver eyes locking with hers, a hint of a smile on his lips. “So what are you playing at?”