Bluebird, p.28
Bluebird, page 28
Tell me a story?
“Hey, do you want to know about Bluebird? Listen to me, Cactus, okay? Just focus on my voice.” Perhaps it’s her imagination, but she swears that Ginka’s next shuffling step is a bit easier. “That statuette I have, the one of Dare of the Spire and his lover, Shen. There’s a story behind that.”
She pushes a door to the side and begins.
“Dare started out as an indentured, just like I did, in the slums of Kashraa during the initial Pyrite Invasion, five thousand years ago. But he was clever and sly, and he ended up tricking his master into revealing the location of his servitude contract – the secret room where his master kept hundreds of contracts. Then he burned down the entire place, stole a ship, and blasted off into the wilds of Kashraa. That was when he named himself.”
And when Rig had flown away from Pyrite, she’d chased away her fear and her loss with the story. With the idea of someone standing against Pyrite, wreathed in broken chains and fire, and deciding to name themselves after something that mattered.
“There are hundreds of myths about Dare,” she continues. “The most famous is that of Agaraan Spire. He was famous by then, and the one thing standing between him and Kashrini freedom was the Pyrite base of operations – Agaraan Spire. But no one could break into it. He made them think that he was giving up, that he was unarmed, and they just let him in through the front doors. He burned the place down from the inside out. He tricked masters, out-flew Pyrite fleets, and snuck Kashrini rebels into vaults to recover the long-stolen treasures of our people. People like to say that there’s a myth for every contract he burned up. One for each person he saved. He and Shen formed a crew of rebels and thieves, librarians and soldiers, inventors and arsonists.”
“Are you… an arsonist?”
“Yeah. I am. See, that ship that Dare flew in, the ship that shot through the sky and told every damn Pyrite looking at it that they could never catch him, that ship was known as the Night Bird.”
Those last two words echo throughout the tunnels.
Eventually the echoes fade into the beat of Rig’s determined footsteps and the rasps of Ginka’s labored breathing. An old strength sits in Rig’s bones, the history in her body waiting to be awoken. Even when she didn’t know the tales, they were there. And the first time she heard them, it was as though she saw a version of herself that she wanted to be, and knew the first step on the path towards that Rig. She walked with legs that understood the ground beneath her and saw with eyes that could name every star.
Ginka’s head shifts where it leans against Rig’s shoulder. “Night… bird. So that’s… why they call themselves that.”
“White wings and a bird painted on the nose. When I got my ship, the first thing I did was paint a bird on her prow. I painted it blue, exactly the same color as my skin.”
“I’ve always… liked birds.”
“Me too. I needed to… needed to become the story. I’d done so many horrible things under Pyrite, and when I realized that I couldn’t carry on as I had been, I had no other metric by which to measure myself. Dare was a mold. When I was lost, I’d ask myself what he would do. What would someone brave and honorable and cunning do.”
It says quite a lot about how far she had fallen when she realizes that after three years, she’s still asking the same questions. Only this time she’s doing so while staring at the crystal statuette of Dare and Shen.
Is she trying to save Daara because she truly loves her sister?
Or is she doing it because it’s what Dare, the hero of every Kashrini story, would do?
At the end of the day, does it matter?
Ginka makes a noise that she likely intended to be a hum but instead gurgles and cracks, and then mutters, “Names…”
“He named himself. I did the same. Traxi stumbled, she made mistakes, she was… flawed. Rig could put that behind her. Rig could be new, a fresh start. I could be who I wanted to be. Not what Pyrite told me to be, not what the circumstances of my birth forced me to be. Just me.”
She had left Traxi behind when she burned down her old spire, abandoned her old self to the flames. A phoenicae, from the old legends – a creature with the face of a person and the wings of a bird, bursting into fire only to rise as a newborn from the ashes. Only she’s not a phoenicae, not completely. Feathers on her wings are left over from her old body, weighing her down and dragging her backwards. Until Daara is saved, she cannot be completely free.
All she wants is to rip all those old feathers off.
With one hand she shifts a piece of rubble out of the way, and with the other she adjusts Ginka’s weight against her. There’s a flight of stairs in front of them, winding around a central pillar of some kind. At least the stairs seem to be going in the right direction.
“Tell me a story,” she says, giving Ginka a gentle tap on the shoulder. “Come on. Keep talking. You gotta stay awake somehow.”
“I… I don’t have any stories.”
Tell me about your arms. No, that’s not… She changes her question. “Tell me about your bird. Tell me about Crane.”
Getting up the stairs is its own challenge. She has to take each step first and then practically haul Ginka up after her, trying her best not to strain Ginka’s injuries in the process while also making sure that Ginka doesn’t have to carry too much of her own weight – again, injuries and strain thereof.
“Crane…” The first word is nothing more than a soft exhale before Ginka properly finds her voice. It’s a scratchy and broken voice, but it’s there, nonetheless. “Crane was my Handler. My Raven. My transgression.”
“Because you cared about him?”
“Because I married him.”
Oh. That makes a lot of sense, now that Rig thinks about it. Also, it’s pretty fucked up that getting married got her kicked out of Windshadow, but not that fucked up compared to the fact that she’s pretty sure Ginka didn’t get these prosthetics after losing her arms in some accident. Having prosthetics is such a neat solution to the whole ‘having to carry around a helltech generator’ problem; and that neatness, above all else, reeks of faction amorality.
“You must’ve loved him a lot to risk that.”
“Operatives… We’re disposable.” Blood dribbles down her lips as she talks, a thin line of red painting the corner of her mouth and dragging down her chin until it drips onto the grimy steps. “Cheaper. Lesser than. Crane looked at me like… like I was worth something. Worth everything. I stumbled into loving him. Didn’t even know what it was ’til it happened to me. But him… He chose to love me. Loved me on purpose.”
“Sounds like he had his head screwed on straight. Despite all that rubbish Windshadow propagates. You know,” she offers, “you could change the favor you want from me. I don’t know if I’ll have any luck getting you Grace, but I’m good at smuggling people across the galaxy. I could get you to him.”
Ginka coughs roughly as she replies, “N-No. If I go back… I can’t go back. Not yet. I have to figure out… what to do.”
“Don’t you miss him, though? June’s said before that it hurts her when I stay away for too long. Sometimes I can’t help it, but I try to be back whenever I can and call when it’s safe to send a message. I get why you’re choosing to stay away; only don’t you think maybe it hurts Crane, too? I’m sure I could get you back to him without that bastard Umbra knowing. You don’t have to play by the rules of his damn unicorn hunt.”
As much as Ginka’s a zealous loyalist, there’s got to be a breaking point for her. Everyone has a breaking point, even the ones that desperately don’t want to admit it.
“Think about it, Cactus,” she says as she pulls them up the last two steps. “You can change your favor. What do you really want?”
She can feel Ginka growing colder against her. Is that just the chilly air?
Ginka’s voice is nearly silent, cracked sob. “I want to go home.”
Rig swallows painfully. She makes an aborted movement to June’s handkerchief, still tucked safely into her breast pocket, before realizing that she’d just get it irreparably dirty. She can’t do that. If she closes her eyes, she imagines that she can smell June’s perfume. She wants to go home, desperately wants it, but the image in her mind is incomplete. Home is Bluebird. Home is also June. Selfishly, she wants both – needs both with a desperate desire that she can’t quite repress.
“Okay. I promise.” The words reverberate through the collapsed ruin they’re standing in. “We’ll be back on Bluebird in no time, I’ll patch you up, and then once we’ve saved Daara, I’ll get you home, you hear me? I will.”
Silence.
“Cactus?”
She swirls her head around fast enough to crack her neck. Ginka’s eyes are shut and sunken into dark sockets, her face sickly pale and sweat-slick. A vein twitches in her forehead. That, and the barely noticeable rise and fall of her chest, are the only signs of life. Rig hastily presses a hand to her forehead, fingers slipping on the sweat, and tries to guess Ginka’s temperature.
Cold. Way too cold.
No. No this isn’t going to happen. Ginka’s not going to die. Rig can do this.
She looks forward, into the darkness ahead. The stairs have come out into another hollowed out ship hull, and the thick metal walls have blocked out all chance of moonlight.
And yet in the dark ahead of them, firelight flickers.
INTERLUDE
Names and Numbers
There are very few places in the heart of Ossuary space where true privacy exists. Spirit X-74, as a member of Windshadow, knows better than any civilian just how impossible it is to find a restaurant or park or even a deafeningly loud publica where one can speak with full certainty that what they say will actually remain secret. That rule changes a little when a Handler is involved. Mechanical eyes and ears are still present nearly everywhere, but there is no better way to circumvent a system than to be part of that system. A Handler knows exactly what sections of each planet have no surveillance.
Currently, X-74 is lying down on the back of an open-air skiff, legs crossed and hands tucked behind her head, with complete certainty that no all-seeing eye is watching her.
A canopy of gold hangs overhead, amber-colored leaves glowing with sunlight, the white bark of the trees turning yellow in the light. A summer breeze drifts through the forest that she and Thrush-Seven are resting in, lazily warming her skin and tugging at her hair – No, wait, that’s Seven.
She cracks her eyes properly open. “Are you playing with my hair?”
“You were falling asleep. I didn’t think you’d mind.”
“I don’t. And there’s nothing wrong with me falling asleep. We aren’t on mission and it’s nice to take the day off for… What are we taking this day off for?”
“Technically, it’s for training in forested environments,” he cheerfully reminds her.
“Ah, yes. Anyway, I’d rather sleep out here than in the Operative barracks. I understand that so many of them work together frequently, and that I’ve worked with so few of them, and that presumably their stupid pranks are all in good faith – stress relief, that sort of thing – but my fellows can be so… so rude.”
Seven smiles and shakes his head in sympathy. “The Handler in the barrack next to mine got her keypad combination changed to a string of zeros. She almost broke down her own door before the perpetrators told her.”
Even the dumb shit Handlers do is on a different level than the dumb shit Operatives do. “It’s such bullshit to deal with. I miss being on a ship. I miss being able to sleep with you instead of being five buildings away.”
“About that. I… I wanted to… There’s something I wanted to discuss with you. We have been together a year now. Doing… whatever this is.”
“Doing it rather well, in my opinion.” She recalls the adrenaline-filled, heated aftermath of their last mission. “Unless you’re not happy with something? I thought, since our mission performance improved drastically… Am I doing something wrong?”
“No, no, of course not. This isn’t related to that.” He takes a deep breath. “I want you to know who I am. All of who I am. Not just… I want you to know my name.”
Oh.
Oh.
That’s… She doesn’t know how to respond to that. He’s a Handler; him knowing his name isn’t forbidden. Surely he can tell whoever he wants, right? Surely he won’t mind that she can’t give him her name in return?
“However,” Seven continues, “I realized that if I told you my name and you had nothing to tell me in return, it wouldn’t be… even. I don’t want there to be that imbalance between us. So I snuck a look at your file.”
Her eyes are wide open now. “You–” Her jaw isn’t quite working properly. “You stole it.”
He stole her name. Hers. What would that even be like? Part of her – most of her, on days when she’s with Seven – knows that she’s a person, that she’s not just the weapon Windshadow made her into. That knowledge has always felt sort of secret, something that is just between Seven and her, and having a name – her name – feels like it would solidify that, somehow.
Indisputable proof that she’s an actual person.
“I didn’t steal it – I’m good, but that’s not my specialty. I was only able to catch a quick peek. And I was going to let you choose,” he continues hastily. “If you wanted to know your name or not. I know that it’s… a risk, and I wasn’t going to force that choice on you, but–” He looks away from her, staring morosely at a patch of forest. “You don’t have a name. It seems as though you were either brought into Windshadow before your birth parents could give you a name, or it was never added to your file.”
“Oh.”
She hates herself for the disappointment she feels. It was foolish of her to have gotten her hopes up in the first place. Of course she doesn’t have a name – her, the Zazra, not a human like Seven, not important enough for a name.
“But,” here he perks up, “I figured that’s no reason for you not to have a name. If you want one. I brought a number of books with me today. Some are novels with interestingly named characters, some discussing Zazra naming conventions, and a few are historical in case you wanted to name yourself after someone important.”
“Seven…” She tries to block out the memories from that horrible clean-up mission. “If you do this, we can’t undo it. How do we not end up like… like Erian and Wei did?”
“They screwed up a mission. Our performance in the field has been flawless for a year now. There’s no reason for any Controller to come after us if we continue to excel.”
True. “May I ask your name first?”
“Crane.” He laughs and explains, “Since our caretakers knew that we were being raised to become Handlers, bird names were considered auspicious. You have no idea how many friends I had named Hawke or Robin.”
She hums, considering the tune of it. “Crane. It suits you.”
“Thank you.” He tucks a strand of dark hair behind his ear and smiles with a touch of nervousness. “I’d hoped that it would still fit me, after everything.”
Crane. She rolls the name around in her mind and finds that it’s an easy name to smile to, the a tugging naturally at her lips, the c sounding like the start of a kiss.
What does she want to name herself?
Because she does want a name. She wants to have what he has, she wants to stand on equal footing next to him, she wants to be able to give him all of herself in return. The idea of naming herself after someone else, be it a character or a historical figure, doesn’t really appeal to her. It might be selfish, but she doesn’t want to share. A Zazra name, then? Perhaps, but she doesn’t know anything about being a Zazra, not really. She wasn’t raised as a Zazra, and all she knows about being one is what she can do with her hands, and that is something she has only recently begun to explore.
She wants to name herself after a feeling. After the warmth on her skin and Seven – Crane at her side.
A star-shaped leaf flutters down from the trees above to land gently on her chest. Absently, her fingers pick it up, turning it over, the light beaming through the golden leaf, illuminating each and every vein that runs inside it. Ephemeral, yet no less beautiful for it.
A single, perfect ginka leaf.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
A Night Bird
Rig stumbles toward the firelight with renewed desperation, increasingly aware of just how cold Ginka is getting. Ginka is in her arms now, no longer responding, no longer able to take even the smallest of steps. Even though she can count Ginka’s ribs by feel, it’s shocking how heavy the Zazra is, Rig’s back bowing beneath the weight.
As she gets closer, the firelight solidifies into a campfire, and the warm orange glow it casts pulls shapes out of the darkness. A large frigate is squatting by the fire, gangplank down and engines cycling through a low power sequence, judging by the sound. Figures sit around the campfire. Some small enough to be children, some tall as grown adults.
Another few steps closer and the fire reveals that the people are all wearing headscarves.
They’re all Kashrini.
All the air seems to sink out of her in one great exhale. She’s barely aware of putting one foot in front of the other. One moment she’s staring at the campfire in the distance, and then next she’s almost falling to her knees in front of her fellows.
Her head tilts up to face a man standing in front of her.
The man is easily a foot taller than her, skin a shade more purple toned than hers, and a scar running across his cheek. His hands brush over the grip of a sawed-off shotgun strapped to his thigh. A few of the others behind him reach for weapons, as well – she imagines that the grimy nature of her and Ginka’s appearance doesn’t exactly endear them.
“Who,” he demands, “are you?”
“I’m Rig.” Her hands tighten around Ginka’s body. “My friend’s named Ginka. Please, we need help.”
None of them stand down. “Everyone running around the Throttle needs help. Half of them would sell us out for a single kydis.”
