“No?”
“No.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
This is an argument of single syllables.
“Warden, if we have a human, we must take our revenge for Saya. She deserves to be avenged.” Scizzor is almost begging me.
“Humans are still sacred, Scizzor. And this one is under our guardianship. She is not an enemy. She is a prisoner. And she must not be unjustly harmed.”
“When you said we were going to take on prisoners to get funds to avenge Saya, I never thought you would take a human.”
“Neither did I. But here we are.”
Scizzor wants to go right through me to get to Silver. But he won’t. There is only one thing Scizzor wants more than to kill the terrorists who destroyed our sister — and that is for the rest of us to remain alive and unharmed. He will not lay one clawed finger on me.
“You were not supposed to know,” I tell him. “Tusk was not supposed to tell you.”
“And that makes this betrayal better?”
“I am first hatched. I do what I need to do to keep us safe. The IHPZ needs allies and has funds, so we are forming an alliance with them. That means we cannot kill humans. You know that.”
“So we will never have revenge. Humans are responsible for Saya’s death. If we cannot kill them, we cannot do anything.”
“We can, and we will do plenty. But it will not start with hurting this human.”
“Let me see her.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Don’t you trust me, Warden? Are you not guardian enough to keep the human safe?”
“Nobody is guardian enough to protect someone you don't like, Scizzor. That’s why I didn’t want you to know.”
The bond between those hatched together in a scythkin brood is stronger than anybody can imagine. Far stronger than human sibling bonds, which can be very strong indeed. It is a link which binds us inexorably and inextricably for life. We may be an exceptionally violent species, but never within the brood. I hope that continues to hold with our step-kin, Scizzor.
“What about Saya? She never got to spawn,” he tells me. “We had an opportunity for our line to live forever, and that scum took it from us. We didn't just lose Saya. We lost all her descendants. We lost an eternity.”
“I know what we lost, Scizzor. I am trying to ensure we do not lose more.”
“I want to see the human,” he repeats.
“That is not a good idea. You may not be able to control yourself. You could do something we would all regret.”
“I wouldn’t regret it.”
“If we kill this human, that will be construed as an act of war. We will have the IHPZ and every brood allied with them hunting us down. It won't just be Saya who is lost. It will be all of us. I will break this human. I will tame her. And in that way, I will avenge our sister.”
Silver
“You better break her so throughly she doesn’t remember who she is or what she was.”
The scythkin sounds angry. And when a scythkin is angry, nobody is safe. I thought this was a prison. A proper prison. But this is less a prison and more a vessel of vengeance.
I have to get out of here.
I was mildly afraid before, and then I forgot my fear completely. But now it is back, a big, thick, horrible thing in the very middle of me. These aliens are monsters. They deal death with as much ease as I breathe.
There is more too. Something in the back of my mind which makes it all worse. Guilt. Rage.
I know what I did was wrong, in the sense that killing is always wrong, or at least, it always feels that way if you have a conscience. I had good reason for what I did. I had all the justification in the universe. But still. I can hear the pain in that brutal monster’s voice, and some weak, pathetic part of me feels sorry for him. Because I am human, and what do humans do other than feel sorry for those around them?
“I am going to do what needs to be done. And you need to trust me, Scizzor.”
“Trust you. After you sneaked a human aboard and put her in your personal chambers. There is no punishment beyond your doors. Have you slept with her?”
I refrain from answering, which Scizzor clearly takes as a denial.
“If you do. Make it hurt.”
I whisper a prayer for myself. This is not good. This is so much worse than the IHPZ. They tried to break me with canes and whips, but they didn’t want to kill me. They wanted nothing more than to rehabilitate me into some kind of mindless human subject, the same way I thought Warden did.
The real consequences of my actions are standing a few feet away. I can smell death in the air. My death.
I run, but there is nowhere to run. There are no holes to crawl into. There is only this alien room, and the manifestation of doom which is bashing at the door.
There is a screeching sound as Warden pulls the damaged door closed. The twisted metal and the grinding gears go right through me, tugging at every nerve.
He finds me curled up naked in the corner of the shower, shivering with the chill of being wet and cold and the fear of dying. I hate being this pathetic, but there are imperatives which come with human flesh. I am an animal, and I am afraid.
Warden makes a shushing sound, even though I am not making any noise, and he crouches down near me with his arms outstretched, picking me up off the shower floor.
“It’s okay,” he says, even though it is obviously not okay. I am not just in prison. I am in danger.
“You have to send me away,” I tell Warden. “You have to get me off this ship. He’s going to kill me.”
“He’s not going to hurt you.”
“I think being ripped apart by your brother would hurt,” I say through chattering teeth. I hate the physical effects of fear.
“He’s not going to hurt you,” Warden repeats. “But I am going to put you in more secure quarters. I wanted to keep you as a pet would be kept. I wanted to domesticate you, but that will not work now. I need to ensure that you are out of Scizzor’s grasp.”
“I can’t be out of his grasp on this ship. Put me in a shuttle. Send me off to wherever. But I heard him planning to kill me.”
I don’t know why I am bothering to beg a scythkin for mercy. For all I know this was part of his plan. This could all be a set up to frighten me. And I know there is no escape.
He carries me from the shower through a door at the back of his chambers. The hall here is dark and echoes with every step he takes, so loudly it almost drowns out the panicked beating of my heart.
I have been close to death many times before, and never panicked. But it’s different when you have a weapon in your hand and some way to defend yourself. As a prisoner, I am helpless.
I find myself having to trust Warden to protect me. I don’t like the idea of relying on a scythkin to keep me safe, but I have no choice. They have taken my choice along with my freedom. They have taken everything from me and left me as a whimpering, sniveling, shaking little human in the arms of a being a thousand times more powerful than I am.
* * *
There is a wall with a circle on it. It glows dimly as Warden puts his hand on it. There is a sound like something sharp moving through something hard, a puncturing noise, and when he pulls his hand away, there is blood, just a drop — but a drop is all it takes.