Frustration ruffled T’sha’s crest. She turned toward the male speaker. “What volunteers have we…” The sentence died away as she saw Pa’and and she saw Br’sei.
“Your pardon,” said T’sha to her advisers. She rose above them and flew to meet the new arrivals. “Engineer Br’sei, what are you doing here?”
No words came. What was he doing here? What had driven him to the heart of this disaster? For a moment he honestly couldn’t remember.
“A moment please, Speaker?” said T’sha to Pa’and. Pa’and dipped her muzzle and soared away to the cluster of waiting males.
She was exhausted, Br’sei could see that at a glance. The color had run from her skin, leaving her pale and gaunt as if she could not inflate herself fully anymore. Her words felt brittle against his muzzle as she spoke.
“Tell me what has happened, Engineer.”
Br’sei deflated. “Ambassador D’seun is trying to convince the New Home Law Meet that the New People should be turned to raw materials.”
He expected an explosion, but it did not come. She just settled lower in the air as if she had lost all strength and only the wind kept her from falling. “Openly now? What changed?” She looked up at him, sorry and tired, and too full of these things to be afraid.
He let himself drop until his eyes were level with hers, and he told her how the New People came to the base as the ambassadors arrived and how they spoke with each other and all seemed well, until D’seun…until D’seun…
“Until D’seun and his words overrode whatever the New People actually said.” T’sha brushed her wing past her eyes. “Life of my mother, Br’sei. He’d have them kill a whole world full of people?”
Br’sei dipped his muzzle.
“And they’re listening?” A spark rose in her, burned, and swelled her skin with its heat. “No one has called this what it is?”
But Br’sei noticed even she did not say the word insanity. “There are promises involved,” he told her. “I haven’t tracked them all yet.”
“Ambassador Z’eth.” T’sha turned her face to her ruined city. Its miasma of scents and voices washed over her.
She stretched her wings to their limits. “Why?” she whispered to the wind and the pain and the ruin. “Is it my greed? Did I destroy the balance of our lives?”
“No.” Br’sei pressed closer, making his words strong and heavy so she could not mistake them. “Not yours, D’seun’s. You have to go back. You have to tell them what’s happening. They’ll listen to you. You’re—”
“I’m what?” she whirled to face him, and he felt a dare in her words. “I’m nothing, Br’sei.”
“You’re an ambassador,” he said evenly. “One of their own.”
She dipped her muzzle. “An ambassador who tried to do everything at once, who tried to compass worlds, and now her own city is dying because of it.”
Br’sei shrank under her words. He couldn’t help it. “This disease is not your fault.”
“Perhaps not.” She fanned backwards. She was shrinking again as the spark within her faded away. “But it is my responsibility.”
Br’sei felt his bones go absolutely still. “You will not come back? You will let the New People die?”
“Are they children?” she asked bitterly, dismissively. “Have they no ambassadors to speak for them?”
“Yes, they are children.” He swooped closer. She could not do this. She could not turn away and leave him, leave them, he corrected himself, alone to face the insane and the greedy. “They do not understand what their words mean to us. I am sure of it.”
T’sha drew closer, until her muzzle touched his. “What changed your mind, Br’sei? You were not so sure of them when you and I went to view their city?”
Br’sei held size and place. “I had not met them then. I had not seen them for myself.” He pressed his muzzle even more tightly against hers. “You were an engineer once, Ambassador. You understand how deep the roots of our instincts sink. You know what it is to feel the balance, the wonder of new life that is sane and whole. You’ve brought such life into the world with your own work. There have been moments when you just knew that this was good and it would work.” Now he pulled away and spread his wings. “I looked at them when they came fearlessly to meet us, and I just knew.”
For a moment, he had her. He could tell by the shine in her eyes and the angle of her wings and the taste of the air near her skin. But in the next moment she had swollen, and risen, and turned away.