Dominion (48 page)

“Syl!” cried Ani, and she flung herself down beside her beloved friend, burying her face in Syl's neck and crying fat, wet tears into her hair.

“Oh, Syl,” she said. “Four years gone. Nearly five years, even, and I thought that you were dead!”

Syl couldn't move with the weight of Ani on her chest, and the ties at her wrists meant that she couldn't return the embrace either, but she wasn't sure she wanted to. Four years, said Ani, but for Syl it was a matter of mere months. The things that had been said on their last parting still rang in her ears, and then there was the small matter of Ani's red robes, and the mark of the Sisterhood indelibly staining her skin.

Ani pulled away, looking confused.

“Ah,” she said, “you're still restrained.” She laughed as she stood up—a dry, forced, adult laugh so unlike the teenage giggle Syl remembered—and moved to undo the stays. “It was just to stop you damaging yourself. You were unconscious, but still you kept trying to scratch the wound on your head.”

She stopped what she was doing, and stared into Syl's face, studying her.

“Look at you, though,” she continued. “You've hardly changed at all. You still look so young—”

“I don't understand,” interrupted Syl. “What are you doing here, Ani? Where's Syrene? Why are you wearing those robes?”

Ani looked surprised, and then she bit her lip as if to control a grin, and for an instant there was a glimpse of her mischievous younger self. But immediately it was gone again, and she was an adult once more.

“Of course—you don't know yet! Well, how could you?”

She twirled, smiling as Syl watched, perplexed, and red silk shimmied and fell around Ani in slow, lazy waves.

“Lady Syl Hellais,” she said, “you are looking at none other than the new leader of the Nairene Sisterhood. I am the Archmage Ani.”

In response, Syl said a very rude word.

Ani glowered at her, her face turning red, and Syl looked back, filled with dismay and disbelief. As they sized each other up, like two dogs before a fight, Syl did what came naturally: she opened her mind, searched for Ani, and found her. Syl felt Ani's thoughts bubbling hot, churning around her as though she'd immersed herself in a pot of boiling oil, and she experienced the flashes of anger, hurt, pride, arrogance, and power, and with them the truth of what Ani had said, followed briefly by something else, something like love—before Ani's thoughts were closed to her with the force of a trap snapping shut.

“No!” snarled Ani. “You stop that!”

Syl withdrew, and the old friends continued to regard each other suspiciously—one clearly older than the other, fully grown, and self-assured like she'd never been before, the other younger, but angrier. So much angrier.

“How?” said Syl finally. “How
could
you?”

“From where I'm standing, I'd say you're hardly in a position to criticize me,” said Ani.

“But the leadership of the Sisterhood, Ani? Have you lost your mind? I knew of your loyalty to it because you remained on Erebos, but to become its Archmage . . .”

She looked away from her old friend, finding herself repulsed by the tattoos so reminiscent of those she'd last seen on Syrene's cheeks, by that cold, dead eye that nonetheless seemed to be watching from a place beyond here, where there was no life, and no hope.

“I stayed because I wanted to fix things,” said Ani. “I told you that—and it's exactly what I'm doing.”

“By becoming what we hated?”

“What
you
hated, Syl, not we. Not I. You were always determined to believe the Sisterhood was completely bad, but you were wrong. We were a noble order before Syrene corrupted us, and I am reclaiming that nobility for all my Sisters. Syl, I've done so much already, but with you beside me I could achieve so much more. I would like you to join us. Put on your robes again, and help me to cure this society of its ills.”

“And if I won't?”

“Then you're free to go.”

“Really? But I'm tied to a bed.”

Ani sighed, as if frustrated by a particularly irksome child, and resumed loosening Syl's bonds.

“There,” she said when she'd done. “I repeat, you're free to go.”

Syl sat up and swung her legs around, but immediately she felt dizzy, nearly toppling off the bed in the process, and Ani leaped to steady her, holding her tight. Syl leaned against her, her head swimming, her heart beating so hard she could see it pulsing in her eyes, and she found that Ani was strong, and steady, and the touch and smell of her were achingly familiar. They stayed like that for a long time, neither saying anything, neither knowing what to say. Almost shyly, Ani's stroked Syl's back, and Syl let her. Now that she was sitting, she wished that she had stayed lying down. Her head throbbed, and her body felt so weak that, had Ani not been supporting her, she would have fallen to the ground. Her eyes closed. She had dreamed that Ani was the Archmage. She had dreamed of wormholes.

“Ani,” she murmured finally. “How did I get here? What happened?”

“We found you. We were monitoring the wormhole because it was due to collapse—just like you're about to do, I think.”

Ani eased Syl back onto her sickbed.

“Paul,” said Syl. “Where's Paul?”

Ani pulled away, but she left a steadying hand on Syl's shoulder.

“He's not . . . great.”

“But alive?”

“Yes, he is that. He's in a medically induced coma. When we found him we didn't think he'd make it, but the medics resuscitated him—several times, I believe—and they say he'll recover in time. Perhaps less handsome than before, but only a little. His friend Thula claims that a broken nose adds character to a man's face.”

“Thula! What of Thula?”

“Ah, Thula. Actually, I was delighted to meet him. Steven mentioned him repeatedly, and favorably.”

As Ani casually dropped Steven's name into the conversation, she could barely conceal her pleasure at Syl's surprise. Steven too was alive!

“You saw Steven?”

“Only the other week. He's with the Military, but that's a conversation for another time. Goodness, we really do have a lot to catch up on, don't we? Perhaps now that you seem to have stopped being quite so angry, and if you feel up to it, we can start to talk. Properly. Like adults.”

Ani summoned a nursing Sister, and Syl was given a syrupy liquid to drink, and an injection that cleared away some of her nausea and sharpened her thinking a little. Feeling slightly more in control of herself, Syl arranged her thoughts.

“Okay,” she said. “Start with Paul, please.”

“You and he are still an item, then, I gather?”

“Yes,” said Syl, defensive now, “we are, very much so. More than ever.”

Ani nodded, her features bland.

“I don't expect you to understand,” said Syl.

“I understand perfectly well, Syl. I'm not made of stone. But I do think you're making life very difficult for yourself.”

“It hasn't exactly been easy of late, you know, Ani—and it was Paul who made things bearable; it was Paul who pulled me through, who lifted me up every time. It was Paul who believed in me, even when I'd stopped believing in myself. It was Paul . . . it was always Paul.”

As she said it she realized just how true it was, and she thought her heart would break at the thought of losing him. Her words dried up, and she felt as though there were pebbles in her throat. Ani watched her, and her eyes were kind.

“Well,” she said briskly, after a few beats, “he took a really nasty bump on the head, but he's got that thick Scottish skull, you know”—she smiled encouragingly—“and I guess that saved his life. Everything else that was broken or injured can be fixed. We're fixing him now. But it will take time, Syl, lots of time, so we need to keep him asleep. He's peaceful, he's well cared for, and he's having the best medical treatment available.”

“When—”

“Tomorrow. You can see him tomorrow.”

Syl seemed about to argue, but then nodded.

“That would be good. Thank you. Tell me about Thula, please.”

“Thula's fine. We're rebuilding his foot—it was crushed during the boost—and he's completely deaf in one ear, so he's shouting rather a lot because of it, but Lista is taking extra-special care of him. He seems to have realized we're not going to kill any of you, so he's finally stopped threatening my staff. Or perhaps Lista has distracted him.”

Lista: the name was familiar to Syl.

“Lista? Do I know her?”

“You certainly should. You took her white robes that last day on Erebos, and gave her your dress to wear. That's how I met her. I saw your dress in the crowd during the evacuation. She was trying to hide, the poor thing—I felt so sorry for her. If Syrene had found out, she'd have had her exiled, or maybe even killed. Anyway, I hid Lista until I could get her some new service robes. She works for me now, and she's intensely loyal. But she thought you were called Tanit because that was what you told her.”

A cloud passed across Ani's features as she spoke Tanit's name, and the distance between Ani and Syl, which they were trying carefully to bridge, revealed itself once again. Syl knew that Ani had loved Tanit, had even been
in love
with her, and yet Syl had killed Tanit in front of her.

“I'm sorry, Ani,” she said, because she was sorry, sorry for the pain she'd caused her friend, though she felt little actual remorse for Tanit's death. What she'd done had been necessary—kill, or be killed. “I'm truly sorry for what happened that day. I wish there could have been another way.”

She wanted to explain, to lay it all out body by body, corpse by corpse, detailing the killing spree that Tanit and the other Gifted had started, and had been hell-bent on finishing, beginning with Elda and ending, almost, with Paul Kerr. However, she knew an apology followed by an explanation would seem like no apology at all, so she left the words unsaid. Automatically, she reached for Elda's amulet around her neck, the one with
Archaeon
scratched on its surface, but found that it wasn't there. It must have been lost in the accident.

“Are you looking for this?” said Ani. She slipped her fingers under the neckline of her own gown and pulled out the familiar necklace, its ugly brown locket flopping against her chest, all wrong against the sumptuousness of her robes. “I've been keeping it safe for you since they scanned you for internal injuries—no metal is allowed in the scanners.”

She turned the locket over and over in her hand as she spoke, and it pivoted on its clasp.

“I remember what you said about Elda, Syl, and I'm sorry that I didn't believe you. I know all about Archaeon, all about Syrene's plans and schemes, for how could I not? I hold her position now, and have access to everything that was once hers. I even sleep in her bed, but before that I was her scribe. I was her trusted aide, the last of her beloved Gifted, and she kept me close. I know how she warped the Gifted to suit her own purposes, but I also believe that Tanit was not to blame for what she was made to do. She was a child, Syl. We were all children, manipulated by adults for their own ends. And yes, I loved Tanit. I loved her deeply.”

Syl stayed quiet while Ani spoke on, her voice flat and low, as if this was a story she'd repeated to herself many times.

“I think that Tanit loved me back, Syl, in her way, but I know she worshiped Syrene above all others. I recognize now what kind of creature Syrene was trying to turn her into, and would have turned me into as well if she could. I have thought it through more often than you could know in the years since you killed—well, since Tanit died. I believe you did what you felt you had to do to stop Tanit. I wish it had not been so extreme, so final, but for the life of me I can't imagine what the alternative might have been. In the end, perhaps Tanit's death was a mercy. After the crimes that she and the other Gifted had committed—the murders, the burnings—they could not have been saved. Maybe they were corrupted beyond salvation, but they were corrupted by those who were older than them, and who should have protected them.”

There were tears in Ani's eyes, but they remained unshed as she talked, and she looked past Syl, twirling the amulet, her eyes focused on nothing at all.

“I have had four years to mull it over, to come up with other endings to their tale, and I have, countless times, yet still I've never been able to completely convince myself of the possibility of any of them. But you—you had minutes, if not seconds to make a decision. And your life was threatened too. For what it's worth, Syl, I understand what happened. I don't like it one bit, but that's neither here nor there. And I'm no longer the child I was. I have moved on, and I too have done things I'm not proud of in the interim. Many things. I now know the universe isn't black and white. Sometimes it's just gray. But then, sometimes, it's filled with colors so beautiful you can't even begin to imagine.”

Ani stopped, and seemed to notice that she still held Elda's locket between her fingers. Absently, she brought it to her lips, then slipped it back under her robes. Syl did not protest. Perhaps Ani now needed that reminder of the past more than she did. Instead she reached for Ani's hand.

“I've missed you, Ani Cienda,” was all she said.

“It's good to have you back, Syl Hellais,” said Ani, and they both smiled a little, and for that moment it was enough. Ani turned to leave, declaring that she did not wish to tire the patient out, and as she made for the door, Syl asked one last question, the one that she had been most afraid to have answered.

“Ani, what of my father?”

But Ani was gone.

S
yl remained on Erebos, confined to the medical suites over the days that followed. Her injuries were still healing, most visibly an immensely itchy but relatively superficial cut on her forehead. In addition her thighs were bruised black from the force of the collapsed panel that had kept her in place for the worst of the turbulence. However, for this she was vaguely grateful, because the chief medic, Velarit, said it was probably the anchoring weight of that panel that had saved her life. She found she was breathless too, as her lungs had been compromised, which left her more tired than she could recall ever being, seemingly able to hold a conversation for more than half an hour at most before she needed to lie down to sleep.