And the Burned Moths Remain (2 page)

“For an account of the way things were, yours is stuffed with apocrypha. Pick one—fact or fable, it can't be both.”

“I welcome corrections.” The envoy inclines her head, a few degrees short of a bow.

The boy has wandered away, the chain heavy around his neck and shoulder and hips, the gleam of it disappearing with him.

“Why would I be a spoilsport?” the adolescent says, draping eir arms around the pagoda, flesh embracing stone. “Let me fill in the rest. The linguist, wise to her sovereign's intention, fled on a ship of horn and lamellar. She sought a then-nascent alliance of worlds as yet too far from the empresses' conquering gaze. Perhaps she imparted to them a crucial weakness of Tiansong, perhaps she gave them the secret of incense and moths. In any case, the empresses were overthrown. So ended their ruthless appetite.”

“So it ended,” the envoy agrees. “But you remain, Jingfei of Moth River, who speaks the words of eternity and gave us Tiansong. The mainframe which holds your memory and maintains your instances is your final secret, and I'm here to bargain for it.”

Jingfei straightens to her full height: she is shorter than the envoy, but her build carries perhaps more heft, though she does not think it'll ever come to a physical contest. “Your colleagues have asked before and you ask it again, but recall that I was a linguist, not an engineer. I've always ‘failed' this check, but my memory isn't in error. I can't hand over what I never had.”

Damassis pauses her recording; her subroutines, charting little maps on her face, dim and extinguish. Fortress dusk falls, shrouding them in a fall of phantom soot and combusting antennae. She does not look at Jingfei as she says, “If you insist on that, then you admit you're no longer of use. That the Record of Tiansong has outlasted its purpose and must be concluded.”

“So it will end,” Jingfei agrees. “And nothing will remain.”

*   *   *

Above the fortress' roof, suns and stars chase one another, their brute velocity leaving trails of shadows that fill the mouth with a taste of acid honey, that incise redshift after-images on the retina. Jingfei flies solid-state kites here, plated dragon-fish spilling mandarins from their whiskers, scaled horses with burning tails, and cloud-spirits the shade of opals. By tradition they are symbols of auspice and fortune, but Jingfei has given them blank faces and gaping mouths, gray tongues twitching like earthworms in dry soil.

She lets the envoy lead. Watches Damassis and her calm, unfailing even under this light, this sky. Previous envoys have shown unease, throats twitching and stomachs heaving, as she would expect of those unaccustomed to this environment. Perhaps Damassis has been trained, made familiar with the conditions of swarm-fortresses.

They walk—march—across the mirror sheen of the roof, to the pavilion shaped like a scorpion's pedipalp: red-black and downward, poised to snap shut. Within its septic glow the mainframe stands cold and absolute, shielded by a lesser cousin of the aegis that holds the swarm's shape and sutures shut its interstices. Damassis dissolves this protection with a whisper of decryption, a bracelet of code. She does this without fanfare, without throwing Jingfei a knowing glance over her shoulder. In this way Jingfei knows the envoy is confident in her authority, requiring no great show to make a point of what mastery she holds over Jingfei, over the fortress itself.

Despite this, or perhaps because of it, Jingfei again reaches to test the limits of the envoy's tolerance. “How long do people live, now, out there?”

“A citizen can see three hundred, with good augmens and cellular therapy.” Damassis' eyes acquire the distant glaze of data immersion as she interfaces with the mainframe. “The average is roughly two hundred and twenty; I don't have census data to hand.”

Peculiar
, the duelist thinks. Someone like Damassis should be connected at all times, with access to most information no matter its classification. “Two hundred and twenty! In my days, we could barely teach telomeres to hold on for longer than a hundred and eighty-five. Their Majesties aside, of course, may their mighty souls have found heaven's light.”

“When Tiansong fell, much was lost; if its reconstructive advances and altar-ghost system were still intact people could live to half an eon, perhaps more, preserve themselves truly in virtuality and reincarnate as needed. Even the clan-altars on Tiansong today are a sad mockery of what they once were.”

“Envoy,” the duelist says with a shocked little laugh, “are you berating a world for not allowing its conqueror to appropriate its advancements? Are you berating
me
for not having stolen the tech when I gave you Tiansong?”

“Your monarchs and magistrates scorched the earth to spite us. They didn't think what that would do to their descendants. Or yours. What history does Tiansong have left?” Damassis looks up from the mainframe, the irises of her eyes playing lamp-glass to the light of optical overlays. “If they had their way there would be nothing of the world but a handful of stellar dust.”

“That isn't wrong—their pride shone like the sun, blinded more than their warships ever did—but why tell
me
? I was never involved in those decisions.” Jingfei cants eir head at the duelist; they exchange a glance. “You plugged me into this because I was the only compatible, willing body at the time. It'd have served you better to capture an imperial engineer or an empress, but you were a little scared of them, weren't you? Back then the Hegemony was little and weak. Each of our rulers seemed to you a god or a demon, full of teeth and nightmares. You could have no rest until all of them were exterminated.”

The mainframe's surface trembles, liquid, a sigh of ancient code knitting shut over the laceration of a glitch. The envoy draws away, disconnecting. “I've finished the calibrations. Your next bodies should have a normal span, two hundred years or more.”

“My thanks. It was getting distressing, having new bodies that barely live past ten years. I'm fortunate—fifty, eighty years to go.” Jingfei wrinkles her nose. “The one just decanted will see, what, six months? So tragic.”

“You feel no terror at her imminent death?”

“Envoy,” the adolescent says, “the terms of my sentence specifically forbid network implants. When I want to talk to myself, I have to do it face to face. We can't even synchronize what we see, let alone what we
feel
. Even if we did, what's death? We have died so many times. It's stopped being scary or novel.”

“Do you consider yourselves separate individuals then?”

“When you make a decision, you choose out of many forks in a path. I like to think that's how it is with us. Not distinct individuals, no, but—” Jingfei waves a hand. The adolescent watches her out of the corner of eir eye, sly, wary. “I take it your engineers have had no luck reproducing the system?”

“Some.” Then, reluctantly, “There's always a critical flaw, causing data loss. The identity and memories never carry over perfectly; concurrent instances can't be maintained beyond two or three. The subject's identity, sooner or later, fragments. None of the … selves is a complete person. They function more like organs, and not very well even then.”

“For what it's worth, this isn't all that good or elegant a trick. In my time—” Here Jingfei stops again. Flutters one hand, as though to apologize for a wandering mind. “If you can't get this information out of me, what then?”

Damassis' jaw tautens. When she speaks again her voice is low and harsh, and she flinches as if scalded by her own anger. “Then nothing. I'm disposable in ways that you are not. You are unique, the altar-ghost that keeps you alive the same.”

“And because of that, I'm a prisoner here, will always be. It's not much of an existence, envoy. To the last aristocrat and scholar, those I served would prefer a single glorious life over countless rebirths fulfilling no point save to endlessly stew in defeat.” Jingfei reaches toward the aegis, holds short of touching it. “I would've thought you'd be satisfied when I sold you my birthworld. What haven't you taken? What haven't you won? Even my rulers weren't so hungry—they left some meat on the bones of their subjugated, some spirit on their subjects.”

To that the envoy makes no response.

*   *   *

Jingfei sits in a room of mirrors. In the fortress there are many like this, cells to trap and torment, back when Jingfei was still being interrogated, but her torturers soon struck an impasse. They could destroy her instances, but her bodies were innumerable and disposable. They could not demolish the mainframe, a unique artifact as yet impossible to replicate. They had nothing to threaten her with.

And so, envoys: the title a euphemism, but also not. Hers is likewise. She has always asked them to call her what she is—traitor of Tiansong, its final betrayer—but they insist on that piece of politeness, that negation of verity.

Because every fraction of her recall is preserved, collected at the moment of death so it carries over to the next instance, she never forgets. The evening was colorless when she landed on the hot, dry soil of a distant shore. The scales of her ship crumbled to jade chips and silver filigree, as though no longer able to bear the weight of her decision. A choice like molten lead in her heart and in her hands, dense and searing, blackening all that she touched.

Once her treason was finalized—the negotiations finished—it was almost a relief.

She has her eyes shut when the envoy enters. Jingfei knows her own gait, the rhythm of her footsteps and the rustle of her robes. This is different, a harder beat to the boots, a sleeker whisper to the fabrics: gossamer collars, chitinous sleeves. “Your colleagues learned long ago that there's no point torturing me,” she says. “But that didn't stop some of them. One shattered my fingers, then my wrists, then my ankles. Another vivisected me and planted fractal seeds in my stomach so I'd feel every bud and shoot of circuit-flowers. The problem with remembering everything, envoy, is that I remember
everything
. The trauma doesn't overwhelm the rest because the mainframe won't let one set of data overwrite another, but there's been more bad than good. The mind defends itself by forgetting, Damassis Ingmir. Take away that survival trick and what do you think remains?”

“I can't be held accountable for their actions. But I offer my—” Hesitation briefer than the writhing flare of space-time pinned down. “My sympathies.”

“Where are you from exactly? From your original name I'd guess Salhune, but I'm too out of touch to guess much else.”

“My origins are irrelevant.”

Jingfei opens one eye. Her images and those of Damassis overlap, warping and melding at intersections of glass. “When did you marry into Iron Gate? You must have duties beyond this; your predecessors always let me in a little on their lives, on current fashion, on the latest planets brought into Hegemonic peace. Even their favorite games or hobbies. It's my sole connection with the outside world. Come, must I beg?”

“I don't see the point of taunting you with details of a life you'll never have again.” Damassis unholsters her gun.

The duelist moves. The edge of her palm cracks against the envoy's wrist and the gun falls. A low hum of velocity shadow, music to her after so long, and the fang of her blade comes to rest at the envoy's throat.

“I thought death didn't frighten you,” Damassis whispers, her words fluttering against Jingfei's eyelashes.

“I contradict myself constantly, envoy, and my mouth wasn't the precise one which uttered those exact words.” The duelist angles the blade sideways, as though she means to sheathe it in Hegemonic flesh. The weapon will soon fall apart, but for now it can still execute. “In my time, I honestly wasn't any sort of fighter, but it's surprising how much practice you get once you decide disputes should be settled by single combat.”

“I meant to present the gun as my third and last gift to you, to show you that I won't hurt or humiliate you simply because I can. That I will not deprive you of your dignity. As my apology on behalf of—the others.”

Jingfei collects the weapon and laughs, a sound of moth wings in susurrus as they circle killing fire. “Not worried I'd shoot you with it?”

“I've told you before that I'm disposable. I am my duty.” Damassis touches her neck where the sword licked it, her skin still vibrating in echo to the blade. “I will say again that I've been sent to negotiate, not interrogate; we're past that. What is it that you wish for?”

“What would anyone in my position wish for? The impossible. It's pointless. I don't have what you want. The secret of the altar-ghost isn't mine to give.”

“Tiansong will be set free,” the envoy goes on as though Jingfei has said nothing. “That's what you want, no? A second chance, to undo what you did. Your world is valuable, but we can afford the loss. Its history has been much buried, but
you
are the Record of Tiansong. What has been forgotten or eroded you alone recall. The languages, the festivals of seasons, the times of worship and contemplation—everything. All this you can return to them, their savior risen from the ashes. It'll never be the same Tiansong you knew, but it's the closest that can be had, under the circumstances.”

A shriek of shattering glass. Cracks radiate, on and on, from the far end of the cell. The duelist has been still, her arms at her sides, the gun clipped to her sash. In the reflections another Jingfei flits by, disappears. Shards of mirror fall, chiming.

The duelist turns to Damassis, offering no remark or explanation, though she listens for the receding noise of small bare feet. “Why do you want to understand the mainframe so desperately? It has its uses, originally meant to harden the empresses' transfer and moot the need for taking over another's body, but what would you begin to do with it? The Hegemony stands impregnable. At this point even if there exists a dominion equal to yours, the damage you'd inflict on one another would be past bearing for either side. For all intents and purposes you are unchallenged.”