After an afternoon lying in the sun to recharge her skin, Gan now leaned against a dirt-streaked window of the automatic bus, lost in her own thoughts. She’d been daydreaming about Shestan and mainly trying to ignore the screaming pain of cramped, abused muscles from last night’s performance. The bus was on its way back to their Lordhome after Gan had been on tour with the troupe for many weeks. She was thinking about what it would be like to lie next to him in the sun again after so long.
She was jolted out of her lolling dreaming by *words*. She turned in shock as she heard someone behind her once again speak real, actual words, out loud, in a foreign language.
*Who was it?*
Luminoids in their seats stirred, as shocked as Gan as the voice continued to speak, seeming to change the language it spoke. Tress stood up, his eyes narrowed. He winced, his knees had been bothering him. He was in his late twenties. Gan knew Tress was close to the end of his performing life. The troupe had been reconfiguring their routines as best they could to compensate, to squeeze every extra day they could out for him.
Because, once he was retired, he would end up on some Lord’s property to stand on a pedestal in the corner of some Lord’s dusky room as a living sculpture and no more. And when Tress’s muscles failed further, the Lords would inject him with a fossilizing agent. They preferred light sculptures that they could gracefully reconfigure, but once a Luminoid began to fail to hold a pose, the Lords would lock their joints into place.
Gan always tried to avoid the eyes of Luminoids along hallways in Lord’s houses or halls. Some of them had been there her whole life, picking up sun from the windows and then glowing weakly late into the night.
“Can anyone here fucking understand me?” the voice asked from the back of the bus.
No one responded.
It was a trap, of course. Gan’s tongue had been cut out when she was three. Signing was forbidden. The Lords, of course, liked to give verbal instructions, so most Luminoids had ears. But those often would be punctured if a Luminoid ever passed on a secret. It was easy enough for a Caretaker to show a Luminoid where to stand.
This was a test, Gan thought to herself. Passing it would end in torture, death, or maiming.
“Do you know there is a war happening?”
Gan stood up to get a better look at the voice, despite herself. In the dying light coming through the bus’s dirty windows, she could see a tall man with hair that had locked up, like an Ox-man’s fur who’d been gone out long in the fields. He was thick, muscled like an Ox-man as well, but clearly a standard human. He looked like a Caretaker, or an overly muscled Steward. A Luminoid without the green, glowing skin.
Their eyes met, and his glinted in the light, as if there was polished metal buried behind the dark pupils.
The Luminoids around him turned also, and the green glow from their skin lit up the man’s face, casting odd shadows across his face.
“No one?”
*Caretaker?* Dosha signed surreptitiously at Gan from across the aisle.
The man’s eyes caught the slight wave of the hand, even when shielded from his view by Dosha’s body. He moved forward.
Gan teared up. Dosha was an amazing performer. A friend and confidante. She had gotten too lax, too comfortable playing in the troupe in the capital.
They stared at each other, Dosha with horror growing on her face, as the man stepped between them. An Ox-man’s weight, Gan thought.
Now that he stood within grasp, she could see that his forearms, under the sleeves of his long gray coat, were brown. And though Dosha had asked if this was a Caretaker, Gan saw no metal Fist on this man’s hand that the Caretakers used for punishment and correction.
“You sign,” the man said. “I saw it.”
Dosha slid down from her seat onto her knees, weeping. She held her hands into the air and closed her eyes.
Gan tapped the massive man on the back of his elbow.
*I sign.* She flicked the shapes emphatically at the man.
***
Only the troupe was supposed to be in the bus. Fifteen Luminoids, the greatest performers in all Skiaka’s holdings, on loan to the Lord’s Hall in the capital.
For ten weeks Gan had stood on stage and waited for the lights to fall. Waited for the audience of Lords to fade away from her sight. The greatest moment of joy for her, that, when their feathers and wide eyes disappeared behind the blanket of darkness.
Then Gan could pretend she was alone with only the troupe by her side as she slowly slipped free of her linens in synchrony with everyone else. Their bodies, free of coverings, would glow bioluminescent in the dark, as they had been bred to do.
It was a tiny moment of freedom.
A freedom she rarely found in the hot and acrid practice tents of Skiaka, trying to move through alien motions and dances a Caretaker sketched in the sand. Or when she would stand before the Lords, keeping herself frozen into position on a pedestal in a garden as the long night slipped by.
*I sign.* Gan repeated.
Dosha was young. She had a life in front of her. A life in the troupe that would be easier than pedestal-standing on some Lord’s hold far from the city. Dosha belonged where she could spend a few hours of every day passing among other Luminoids here at the capital, gossiping under the eaves of human storefronts, flirting with wide-eyed Ox-men, or even taking a Steward to bed.
Shestan would understand if Gan came back unable to sign. They could still lay down next to each other in the sun. And more. There were many things that didn’t require words, whether signed or spoken.
“Good,” the man said. He reached into bag by his side and pulled out something the shape of a child’s rubber ball. Limp feathers dangled from it.
Gan gasped as the man twisted it around, and a Lord’s vacant, alien, saucer-sized eyes stared at her.
Gan’s troupe filled the aisles to move away from the man as the automatic bus continued to trundle along. Some troupe members wailed, tears slipping down bright green cheeks. They were anticipating their deaths, or worse.
The Lords ruled all. The Lords created them to serve. And would destroy them all for this.
Yes, there were rumors and mutterings of distant holds that had killed a Lord. And those places had been burned off the face of the earth.
Gan glanced at the road ahead of them. They’d all been loaded inside and locked in hours ago. The bus had another hour to go before it reached the Lord Skiaka’s holdings for unloading.
“Do you know there’s a war?” the man asked, his voice not quite approximating the Lord’s tongue; he didn’t quite get the hisses and clicks correct.
*What do you want?* Gan asked.
“I don’t understand your sign language yet,” the man said. “But nod up and down for the affirmative, and back and forth for negative. Do you know there’s a war?”
Gan shook her head.
“We overthrew the Lords. They’re called Nesaru,” the man said, almost conversationally as he returned the head to the bag. “There are worlds where we dragged them out of the sky and people live free. And more worlds fall, yet. It’s not easy, this war.”
The man kicked the bag with the head under the seat.
*What do you want?* Gan demanded. She looked forward, down the road, and pointed. -What do you want when we arrive?-
The stranger looked down the road. He did not understand Gan’s language, but he understood the question. “I need a guide,” he said. He held up the duffel bag with the head in it. “I want Lord Skiaka’s head to add to my growing collection.”
Everyone in the bus stared in horror. This would be, for sure, their death warrant.
*Why?*
The man saw the query again in Gan’s body language and nodded. “Skiaka is a great military leader for the Nesaru, and a leading loyalist to the Satrapy. I was sent far behind the enemy line to cripple them. Every leading mind, every loyalist, every strategist, every leader, I am here to hunt them down where they think they are safest. When I am finished, they will jump when the shadows shift, tremble when they approach their own thresholds, and struggle to ever close their eyes for sleep.”
A shiver ran down Gan’s spine, a wave of excitement mixed with hope, and utter fear.
*They will destroy us all,* she signed with utter certainty.
“Will you help me?”
Gan shook her head slowly, but with emphasis. It felt like the bus spun around her.
“They tore your tongue from you as a child. They make you their playthings, not because they need to, but merely because they can. You are mere living art to them. I’ve seen your kind raped, killed, tortured, and maimed. But you shake your head. What have you to lose?”
*My life.* Gan signed at him. She thought of Shestan and the few moments she stole away with him. Lying next to him in the sun, curled up next to him at night, his breath light on the back of her shoulder.
“I can give you freedom.” The man leaned in closer to her. “How do you think someone like me gets behind the lines to a place like this? There is a ship, out in the forests, hidden away in a lake that it uses to hide its thermal signature.”
Gan glanced up. She understood some of that. She knew some of the Luminoids were traded off the world to places elsewhere, though she knows very little of the world beyond the holds and the capital city. But more world-aware servants told tales of being taken up above the clouds, seeing the world from so high up it was no more than a ball of ground and air.
Those stars in the sky had worlds. Worlds where people were free.
What would a full day alone with Shestan look like? A day without the brutal practicing, or holding a pose, be like?
Gan slumped, shoulders slightly defeated.
*What do you want from me? I am no fighter.*
He saw that he had her. “I don’t want Skiaka to get away. Time is critical. Get me directly there. Lead me to Skiaka.”
*There will be security, other Lords, Caretakers, Ox-men. You are just one man.*
He looked closely at her. “Do this, and I’ll tell you how to get to the ship. It’ll take you off world.”
*You can not kill them all,* Gan repeated firmly, tasting acid in the back of her mouth.
“Just show me the way,” the man told her. “And you’ll have freedom.”
*What about them?* Gan asked, pointing at the troupe.
“I’ll tell them as well.”
*I want Shestan to come with me,* Gan signed.
He frowned and cocked his head. Gan drew her two index fingers together. “You have someone else in there you need to save?”
Gan nodded.
“Lead me to Skiaka, and as many people as can fit in this bus can go. But that is all.”
Gan must have given him a look, because he nodded sadly. “It will be months, maybe years, before we can take this planet. But know this, the more damage I do, the more we cripple them from this far, the faster the war will be. The sooner all this will fall.”
*I will do it for Shestan.* Gan’s breathing came faster and faster.
He pulled out a long machete from his bag and handed it to her.
*I’m not a fighter.* Gan shook her head. But she wrapped her fingers around the smoothed handle.
The man stepped away from her and regarded the troupe. He held up the bag with the Lord’s head in it, knowing full well everyone had seen what was inside when he had shown it to Gan.
“I am called Pepper,” he announced, his name being something only a human would pronounce, it being free of clicks and hisses. “I am here to kill the Lord of your hold, and then many more after. Stay in this bus, and I will return and give you safety. Warn anyone, or oppose me, and I will kill you without hesitation.”
*They are Luminoids,* Gan signed, as much to them as to Pepper. -They speak no secrets.-
***
When she had been a child, Gan had once visited the slaughterhouse on the edge of the hold during the meat season. One of her mothers had taken her, and Gan stood in the windows and watched as the Ox-men killed the trapped animals, one by one.
Slaughter, she thought, running behind the man who called himself Pepper. It was slaughter that she had witnessed just now.
The Caretaker who had unloaded the bus had stared at the large man for a brief second, not understanding how some stranger not on the manifest had appeared. In the second he had raised his hand with the metal Fist, Pepper stepped forward casually and hit him in the face.
Which then just disappeared.
The body, neck pulsing blood from it, dropped to the side.
Pepper had shook brain and skull from his fingers, looked back at Gan, and asked, “Where?”
She’d led him along the Receiving Path. Through the Welcome Flower Garden and then past the main doors of the hold where she knew there would be more Caretakers, and several Ox-men.
At the servant’s entrance they’d scattered startled Stewards and a Runner.
Now they ran down the hall toward the dust baths, where Gan knew the Lord and its family would be resting in the mid evening. Along niches in the hall, Luminoids watched them run past with unblinking eyes, their pale green light barely reaching the polished stone floor.
One of the Lordlings skidded around the corner, wide eyes glinting as it raised a weapon in its feathered wing hands. Its long neck bobbed as it shouted commands, and five armed Ox-men thudded forward.
“There we have it,” Pepper said, and shoved Gan off into a niche. She struck the posed Luminoid inside, tasted blood on her lips, and heard the weapons begin their deadly chatter.
She flinched as projectiles struck the wall near her and stone chips smacked against her legs. Blood dribbled down her calf.
The Luminoid she clutched stared impassively off into the distance, arms down by its sides, legs tight together. The niche smelled of shit, someone hadn’t come by yet to clean it up.
Gan dared to peek around the edge of the wall, and saw Pepper standing in front of the Ox-men. His flesh was riddled with gunshots, and blood dripped through his coat. Underneath the skin, metal flashed green in the Luminoid light.
But despite tattered flesh, he walked into the middle of them all with machete drawn and began slicing.
And Gan retched again.
When she looked up, he stood at the end of the hall, covered in Ox-man and Lordling’s blood, the crushed head of the Lordling under a foot. He turned back to her, his face a hellish, viscous, dripping red, and Gan pointed.
He stepped through the carefully carved columns and into the dust baths, and the high pitched, birdish screaming of the Lords echoed all throughout the hallways of the hold.
***
There would be alarms, of course. Gan knew that. She’d tried to explain this to the man from another world. Skiaka was a powerful Lord, and no matter how many Pepper killed here on this hold, there would be a response coming from the other Lords.
But he either didn’t understand her, or care.
Seeing the slaughter, she understood that maybe he just didn’t care.
Those they left behind would pay a price, Gan knew. She’d felt that when she’d made this deal. There might even be a price others paid, on other holds. The Lords were cruel and powerful in their reactions.
So Gan pelted through the hold as fast as she could. She ran into a Caretaker with a team of armed Ox-men coming in from the rear entrance.
She skidded to a halt and held the machete to her side. She pointed down the hall and screamed, and they ran off. Because why would they assume a Luminoid had done something? Why would they look for a weapon?
And were there not still screams coming from in the dust baths?
Gan ran on through the gardens in back until she came to the sleeping houses Stewards were up, holding artificial lights and murmuring to each other. Gan pushed through them to the Luminoid bunk houses and broke through a door. A Caretaker ran past outside shouting at everyone to get back inside.
Shestan’s bed was empty. Many beds were empty. Most of them were on pedestals somewhere. Only the light dancers were here to sleep and recover, as they practiced their forms during the day with Caretakers.
*Where is Shestan?* Gan asked, waking up dancers.
They blinked and stared at her, until Kiki, a middle-aged woman, grabbed Gan to pull her close. Kiki’s eyes watered slightly. -He is at the entrance to the summer garden.-
Gan didn’t move. The entrance to the summer garden, like the hall leading to the dust baths, was for the frozen.
Kiki hugged her hard, a soft sob escaping her as she did so. *I’m sorry,* she signed when she let go. *I’m sorry.*
Gan turned for the door. At the last second, she turned back. She hit the side of the bunkhouse loudly. *There is a bus,* she signed in the dim light of her own glowing skin. *It offers freedom, if you can get to it. It’s at the front of the hold.*
But no in the bunks believed or understood her, and there was little time.
She stumbled out and on toward the summer gardens, ignoring the shouting and chaos around her.
***
She found Shestan, his hands raised overhead to create an arch leading into the summer gardens. He locked gazes with Assah on the other side. Their fingertips met in the air.
*He is not for you,* Gan signed. She grunted as she slowly pulled Shestan down from the pedestal he’d been placed on.
She lay next to him, side by side, staring into unmoving eyes.
*I was too late. I didn’t know,* she signed. But she’d been gone for ten weeks, enjoying her fling in the capital. Dancing every night in the dark for the Lords, spending the days sunning and laughing with the troupe, and early evenings exploring the city as long as she wore her location collar.
Shestan lay there, still.
*He would have attacked, whether I helped or not. I didn’t do anything wrong.*
A flybug landed on Shestan’s nose.
*I thought we could be free. Together.*
Free. It sounded intoxicating. And yet it came with a dose of fear. Free to make mistakes.
Gan wrapped her hands around the handle of the machete.
Free.
Shestan didn’t twitch or blink as she pushed.
You’ll be free, she thought, staring into his eyes. Free forever.
When she stood up and pulled the machete out from his chest, there was a groan. And then Shestan faded away into the dark.
***
Pepper found her late into the night. How, she could not say. He wrapped a crinkly blanket around her. “To foil heat signatures,” he explained. “We left the bus behind, they can track that.”
Then he lead her by her shoulders in a new direction.
He knew the land outside the hold better than any of them. They spent the morning inside of a cave, their bodies glowing ever so faintly in the dark.
*I am not a fighter,* Gan signed to Pepper as he sat by the entrance to the cave. In the morning light, she could see that he was still damaged, his skin in tatters, strange machinery visible underneath. Some of it was repairing itself, but she could see that it had taken a toll on the man. He looked exhausted, and thinned.
“It isn’t too far,” he said. “Three days walking. Then you’ll be safe.”
*But that’s it. Only us,* Gan told him. She pointed back toward the hold. -All the others in other holds, all those we left behind?-
Pepper shifted. “I can only help a few.”
*But we can help more.*
He didn’t understand her. She kept signing until he closed his eyes and she was forced to give up.
They woke up and walked at night. Members of the troupe, and a few other Luminoids that had joined them. As they moved at night they kept themselves wrapped carefully in those strange blankets. They rested during the day, and Gan would keep trying to sign.
By the time they would reach the lake, she would make him understand.
She was not a fighter.
But she was not going to leave this world.
This killer might have come to cut down the greatest of the Lords. But there was more they could build here, in secret and in silence.
*If there is a war,* she signed, *then you will want more like me. More to spread out, find things out, pass them back. You need guided. We need to be ready.*
They could make things happen faster.
*I want to live to see everyone free. And never feel shame for trying to leave myself.*
And the man who spoke smiled at her. “You aren’t leaving, are you?”
Gan smiled back and shook her head. *No.*
“My ship will let us communicate more about this. But, I chose well back on that bus, you are a fighter.”
Gan shook her head again, and smiled wider. *No.*
But she would bring the war all the way here, Gan knew, and she would stand on a free world. This world. She would see it with her own eyes. She would walk in the night with faded skin.
She would choose wherever she would walk, from this moment on.