Anger burst from every soul on the bridge like the blossoming of blood red flowers in a summer's nightmare. Lareet felt it press down on her. She stiffened every muscle under every inch of her skin to stand against it.
“They've already won,” she said, struggling not to gasp the words out. “If we move quickly, we can save three thousand of our sisters. If we don't, we lose three thousand of ours to kill three of theirs. Tell me truthfully, Sister, if this were an ordinary war, would you take those numbers?”
They stood there, hands gripping each other. She felt Umat's anguish, her need to see her sisters and their children safe batter at her. It was hard and unforgiving and loud. But for once in her life, Lareet knew Umat was wrong. She stood there holding her sister tight, and did not let it into her blood.
Slowly, like the tide pulling back from the shore, the anger around them faded. The confusion steadied. One by one, the sisters-in-command stopped panting.
Umat looked at Lareet in complete disbelief. Her muscles sagged. Her sharp ears crumpled. Tears welled up in her eyes.
“Turn that thing back on,” she murmured.
“Lareet? Umat?” Scholar Arron's voice was tight with anguish.”We're running out of time here. It might be too late already. Answer me, please…”
Umat looked at Lareet, pleading with her entire body. Lareet dipped her ears and spoke up. “Scholar Arron, will you grant our sisters safe passage to the colonies?”
“I'll convoy them myself if I have to,” said a strange man's voice. “I'll swear it on whatever you want.”
“Then tell us what to do.” Umat sank slowly into the captain's chair. “We've lost.”
Mother was crouched over a pile of clean clothes when the Human came to the back door.
Theia had seen right away that the Queens-of-All had no idea what to do with them. That much had been written in the tightening of their skin and the tense angle of their ears. Mother was an enemy and a failure, and they had all kinds of possibilities for her. But Mother was no longer a mother, or at least she wouldn't be for much longer. Her will was being claimed by the Ancestors. As soon as it was fully claimed, she'd be an Ancestor, only her body would still live on earth as a father. Where he walked, each step would be heard, and the Ancestors would prick up their ears and pay attention to everything that went on around him.
Aunt Armetrethe had the grace not to look too surprised when the Queens had told her to take her Changing sister home and care for her. It was clear, though, that Aunt Armetrethe didn't know what to do with them either. She knew what she was supposed to do, but Mother's Changing had ruined whatever tidy, vicious plans she'd put together to prove, once and for all, that she and Aunt Senejess had been right and Mother had been wrong. She nursed a hatred that must have had the Ancestors howling, but felt she had to do some kind of duty toward the new father.
So she cleared out the back chamber of the house, had the cousins bundle up all of Praeis's and Theia's possessions there and commended Theia to watch over her mother until the Change was complete and she could be taken, under proper escort and cover, of course, to a male house.
It wasn't easy. Mother was still lucid for hours at a time, but she was frenetic. She couldn't sit still, even when she saw how distressed Theia was.
“It's a stage of life, nothing more, Theia, but why now, why now, why now?” She paced from the door to the window and back again, with little, jerky steps. “You need to get back to the colonies. I was wrong to bring you and your sister here, wrong to bring you here, get back as soon as you can, you have near family there still, take shelter with them and live your life away from Queens and hate and war and all the things your mother was fool enough to think she could fix with her triumphant return.”
“I promise, Mother,” she said, just to try to ease her.
“You promise, you promise, of course you promise.” Mother ran her fingertips across the windowpane. “You are a good daughter, a fine, well-grown, strong daughter.”
Then, just as suddenly as they started, the words would stop. Mother's eyes would focus on nothing at all, and she'd be running her hands over the wall, or pressing her nostrils against the glass in the slit window, or picking at the clothes from the satchels as if trying to decide which ones felt best.
Now there was this man standing in the threshold, popeyed behind his faceplate, watching Mother sort through the clothes and rub them against her face and arms.
“Well?” said Theia in English. “What is it?”
The man coughed gently through his breath filter and looked at his boots. “I've got a message for Praeis Shin t'Theria. I was told to come to this door, I think, anyway.” He had a nasal voice, and Theia's ears wanted to crumple at the grating sound of it.