“But she refused you!” Mitigan howled. “She deserves to die. She refused you!”
“She has that right,” said the wind. “Do not all my beings have that right? Even you? You may ruin yourselves by your choices, still I will not take them from you … ”
Mitigan turned frantically, lunging toward me, the knife aimed at my heart, but the wind came after him, raising him, taking him up as the vortex had done, twirling him, spinning him, up and away, away, glittering with weapons, howling with rage, away …
And all the while, for that tiny eternity, Behemoth looked me in the eye until I felt I had drowned in that look. Willingly. Forever. I did not want to come away.
“Still your kind may choose,” it said in a fading whisper. “Choose truth; choose lies; still you may choose, even now.”
I saw sunset. Only that. Behemoth gone. That rough beast gone. That enormous glory gone. That terrible beauty, gone. Leaving only its purpose evident all around us.
“Saluez,” cried Lutha, her fingers busy with the lashings. “Oh, Saluez.”
Far above us in the dusk, a sudden star bloomed and moved, swimming toward us through the evening.
“A ship,” said Leelson disbelievingly. “It’s a ship.”
The ship hung above us for some little time while we stared and mumbled. It had grown quite dark before it broke into two glittering parts, one of which descended. When it set down beside the camp, we saw it was a tender. It was from the Vigilance, as it turned out, a battle cruiser of the Alliance.
We stood slack-jawed while the lock opened, the ramp came down, and a woman alighted.
“Chadra Tsum,” said Poracious wonderingly. “Just as I saw her in Simidi-ala. And there behind her, that’s old Thosby Anent.”
He was a crooked man, with a lopsided walk. “Ah,” he cried as he hobbled toward us, his eyes scrunched almost shut with delighted self-importance. “Ah, Vigilance! See the ship’s name? Ah? I’ve been watching, waiting. Vigilance!”
He went on past us to stand upon a small hillock, looking about himself like a conqueror of worlds as he drew deep, dramatic breaths and tapped himself upon the chest in self-congratulation.
“Let me guess,” whispered Poracious to Chadra Tsum. “You told him we were here, expecting rescue, but he had to think it over. He couldn’t make up his mind to do anything about it?”
Chadra Tsum nodded, murmuring, “After some time had gone by, I asked if he would attempt to rescue you, and he said, ‘That’s the plan!’ Days went by, however, and he did nothing at all. So I commandeered an Alliance ship in his name. Then, when it was the Vigilance that showed up, he assumed he had done it himself.”
“Quite a coincidence,” Lutha murmured.
“Not really,” said the woman. “It’s the only battleship assigned to this sector. That’s where Thosby got his password in the first place.”
“I’m surprised you’ve come so quickly,” I managed to say. “Poracious and the king only prayed to you this evening!”
“You mean you really did that?” the woman breathed. “You know, I’ve felt something for days, as though you were speaking in my mind. Isn’t that strange?”
Poracious took her by the arm and led her a little aside, where they spoke animatedly to one another. Leelson joined them, and then others from the ship. Leely watched them for a moment, his face intent, then he wandered away toward the sea. I stayed where I was, with Lutha. In a few moments Snark joined us, then the ex-king, none of us making a move to join the general rejoicing. It was as though the four of us had been pulled together.
“Why did it let the ship come?” whispered Lutha. “Why?”
“Didn’t you hear what it said?” I murmured. “We have a choice. We’ve always had a choice.”
“Between what and what?” asked Snark.
“What choices are there?” Jiacare counted them off on his fingers. “What truths we choose to see. What lies we choose to ignore. Whether we become Firsters … or something else—”
He was interrupted by a raised voice from the group down the slope. Someone said loudly that ships were still disappearing in Hermes Sector and the captain wanted to get away quickly. Someone else reinforced this, but Poracious demanded, loudly, that the Procurator’s body be retrieved. There was a muttered argument, then general assent. The group broke up, with individuals going different directions.