Necroepilogos

Eseld stared into the empty eye sockets of her own denuded skull, lost in the static of the storm.

She was curled on her side, lying on a thin mattress, facing a wall of peeling cream-white paint and dull grey metal. Her naked skull was cradled in her arms; it weighed much less than she had expected, robbed of skin and muscle and brains. She ran her fingertips across the osseous texture of exposed bone, stroking her own parietal and frontal plates, cupping the gentle curve of her cheek, caressing the teeth still in their sockets above the subtle sweep of mandible, the jaw fixed in place with metal pins. She ran a thumb around the twinned orbits where zygomatic and maxilla had once held the soft jelly of her own eyeballs.

She was not alone. Su and Mala were here too. So was her beloved Andasina. Their skulls sat in a little row of three, propped against the wall of dull metal and peeling paint.

Eseld had cradled Andasina’s skull first, before embracing her own. She had left wet, salty stains on the bone. She had made terrible noises, howling and screaming and sobbing into a thin and lumpy pillow.

Eseld’s chest was a void. Her lips were slack. Her head was empty as the skull, both filled with storm-fury from beyond the walls. Her eyes felt raw and dry; she had cried for a very long time, when her sobs had matched the hurricane. At first she had wept hot and hard and urgent, when the tears had mixed with the taste of saint’s blood. But then the disciples had pried her jaw open and left her empty; her tears had turned cold and weak and slow, until she was flayed and de-boned and laid out with nothing left to give.

The storm raged on, pounding the exterior of the tomb with rain and hail and hurricane winds, beyond Pheiri’s hull, inside Eseld’s head.

Eseld envied the storm. She wished she could keep crying.

She stared into her own empty sockets, into a void where once had been meat and brain and life.

She did have a vague notion of where she was; she had been placed on a bed in the ‘bunk room’, inside Pheiri, which was the name of the huge armoured vehicle that the saint and her disciples called home. She’d been there for — some hours, at least? Time had ceased to mean anything. A hollow space could not keep count; the echoes multiplied any attempt.

“—winters too, they are most terrible and dark where I come from. They go on for months and months, with so much snow you can barely walk through it after more than a few days of the coldest weather. Sometimes the snow comes down mixed with ash, and nobody can go outdoors for days on end, or they get awfully sick. That’s when we use the tunnels between the houses, you see? Everybody stays indoors, where it’s nice and warm, and we do all our visiting without setting foot outside! Do you really not have proper winters where you’re from?”

That was Cyneswith, still chattering on. Her voice rose from somewhere past Eseld’s feet.

A reply came, hesitant and halting. “Oh. Um, I misspoke. We do. We do have snow. Especially in the mountains. Just not that much.”

That was one of the saint’s disciples. Their names had flowed over Eseld’s mind like water over heavy rocks.

Amina, perhaps?

“Mountains!” said Cyneswith. “Oh, what a delight! Real mountains? I’ve seen pictures of mountains in books, but we had nothing of the sort. Just the forested hills, and they don’t go up too far. Even a young girl like myself can climb those pretty easily. Not that we did much of that, not off the roads. All sorts of dangerous things live deeper in the forests.”

“Mm,” Amina grunted. “Mm, yes. Real mountains.”

Cyneswith giggled. “I know you say you’re not really a fairy, Miss Amina, but it’s very hard not to consider you as one regardless. Oh! Oh, I’m so sorry, I see I’ve made you embarrassed. Think nothing of it. I shouldn’t have shared that thought. Please, don’t blush on my account. Though you are very pretty when you blush.”

Rainstorm waves passed across metal walls; hailstones drummed like thunder. Tiny mechanical sounds whirred and hummed inside the tank — inside ‘Pheiri’ — joining the static haze inside Eseld’s head.

Eseld curled two fingers around her own left eye socket. The bone was dry and hard and empty.

Amina whispered: “Did she just … ?”

Cyneswith moved. The pressure on the foot of the bunk adjusted. “Miss Eseld? Miss Eseld?”

Eseld considered opening her lips and moving her tongue, but she knew that she would speak only soulless static.

She stared into empty bone.

After a moment, Cyneswith’s weight adjusted again.

Amina said, “What’s wrong with her?”

“She’s had a terrible shock,” said Cyneswith. “But I think Miss Eseld is going to be alright. I have to hope she will be. She was so very brave, back in that awful mausoleum full of coffins, the way she threw herself between us and that terrible monster. She is a very brave lady. But even the brave have to rest. Give her time, and I am confident she will be restored to us.”

Eseld considered laughing, but she did not, for she would merely vomit forth the sound of the rain and the hail, insensible to mortal meat.

After a moment, Amina said: “She ate a little bit. That’s good, I think.”

A dry swallow from Cyn. “A little … human flesh, yes.” A forced laugh followed, a single exhalation of breath. “Forgive me. This is why I struggle to fully believe you are not all fairies.”

“You’re the same as us,” Amina said. “We’re all the same now. Except Elpida.”

“Yes. Quite.”

Eseld barely remembered eating, but she did recall the taste of human meat. Somebody had dangled a strip of bloody flesh before her face. Appetite had betrayed sorrow, and she had crammed it into her mouth, then licked the gore off her fingers, so as not to soil Andasina’s skull. Even storms needed fodder.

Amina sighed. Eseld heard a smile in that sigh, mixed with tension and worry, and a distinct desire to be elsewhere.

The saint’s disciples did not trust Eseld or Cyneswith, and they were not subtle in their distrust. They didn’t trust Sky either, but Sky was unconscious, laid out on a medical bed in some other room; Eseld had a vague memory of being carried through the main compartment of Pheiri’s innards, and glimpsing Sky’s limp, unconscious, armour-clad body carted off into the ‘infirmary’.

Eseld and Cyneswith had not been left alone since they had been brought inside Pheiri. Eseld had been frisked and stripped of the weapons she had taken from the tomb armoury, left helpless and unarmed, just like before, wearing only grey layers and the heavy wrap of her armoured coat. She had not been capable of resistance — sobbing and whining with her teeth buried in the saint’s flesh. She did not recall exactly what had happened, or when precisely she had allowed her jaws to be parted and the saint’s arm removed, or when the saint had brought the skulls of herself and her friends, and said ‘these are yours’. All was a jumbled blur of screaming and tears and blood in her mouth.

At first several people had tramped in and out of the room, talking at her, trying to get her to talk back, growing frustrated or angry. The saint had cleared the others away for a while. Then another person had checked her over in near silence, feeling for wounds with firm little hands, pressing strange instruments to parts of her flesh, and finally pronouncing her uninjured. Cyneswith had talked at great length, with both the saint and some of her disciples, to tell them the story of her resurrection and their journey through the tomb alongside Shilu.

A long time had passed. The saint and others had gone out of Pheiri, then returned; Eseld knew this by the sounds of their voices, and the sound of Pheiri’s ramp going up and down. Others visited the room, but she paid them no attention. She sank deeper into the storm and into the sockets of her own skull.

Eventually the saint had led another group out into the tomb. Eseld had overheard urgent words, angry words, but they meant nothing to her. All she knew was that the disciples were tense with expectation.

Down at the foot of the bunk, Cyneswith let out a matching sigh.

“Miss Amina?” she said. “You may as well sit down too. It’s not fair that you have to stand there in the doorway all by yourself.”

“I’m … um … I’m fine,” Amina replied. “The— I mean, I’m supposed to— I—”

“You want to join your friends, but you’re supposed to watch us,” Cyneswith said. “Ah! No, no, don’t blush, please. I take no offence. It’s obvious, you see? You don’t trust us, and that’s okay. It’s just, if we’re going to sit here and have a chat, we may as well settle in for—”

Boom-boom-boom!

A cannon roared and rocked just beyond Pheiri’s hull. Vibrations shook the bunk room.

Cyneswith yelped, jerking so hard that Eseld felt it through the mattress; Amina flinched and let out a small gasp. Mechanisms inside Pheiri went clunk-clunk, cycling fresh rounds into the great guns up on the hull.

Eseld stared into her own empty eye sockets. Storms were not moved by gnats and flies.

Cyneswith stammered, “W-what, what—”

“It’s okay, it’s okay!” Amina said quickly, almost embarrassed. “It’s just warning shots. Elpida said Pheiri might have to fire warning shots. It’s okay. It’s just warning shots. U-unless there’s any more … ”

Two pairs of startled lungs filled the bunk room with rapid panting. A swallow — Amina — and then a little forced giggle — Cyneswith. Silence stretched on, drowned beneath the distant whip and whirl of hurricane winds.

Amina blew out a long breath, then spoke strong and clear: “Thank you, Pheiri.”

Cyneswith said, “Is that the custom, here?”

“Y-yes. Pheiri’s keeping us safe, after all. Melyn and Hafina do it, and they’ve been here longer than us, so … ”

Cyneswith cleared her throat gently. “Thank you, Pheiri!”

Both zombies fell silent. The howl of the storm and the drum of the rain rushed back to fill the space. Tiny mechanical sounds ticked and hummed inside Pheiri’s body, purring and glugging behind bulkheads. Awkward feet shuffled on the decking.

Cyneswith said: “I would tell you to go join your friends. But I know you can’t, and I’m not in charge of you, anyway. They’re all watching your leader, aren’t they? She’s gone out to speak with Shilu?”

After a moment, Amina muttered, “It’s okay. Elpida will be okay. I don’t need to watch.”

“Did they leave you here because you’re the smallest?” Cyneswith asked.

“Oh. No.”

Eseld cupped the rear of her skull, pressing her palm to the thin plate of occipital bone. All her machinery was gone, her soft mechanisms of grey matter and electrical impulse, the seat of the soul ripped out and eaten up.

Where had her soul gone? Had it fled her skull and entered this new body — or was she a husk, filled with wrathful storm? Perhaps no zombie had a soul after all. Perhaps she had been wrong all along, and God had not died or been murdered, but had absconded from the world with all the souls of all the peoples of earth, leaving only this dead and empty meat behind, to gorge itself upon itself for the rest of all eternity.

Eseld was exhausted, but sleep was impossible. Her eyes hurt too much. Besides, storms did not sleep.

She stared into her own corpse and considered cursing God.

After a long time — minutes or hours, Eseld couldn’t tell — a pair of feet approached the bunk room door, tentative and light but without attempt at stealth. A third voice spoke from the doorway.

“H-hey,” said — which one was that? Eseld didn’t know. “Hey, Amina. Hi. I’m to, er … take over, if you want to go forward. Into the cockpit, I mean.”

“Mm!”

Eseld heard Amina fly across the decking, feet hopping out of the bunk room and into the larger compartment beyond. She chattered back, suddenly breathless: “I’ll see you later, Cyn. Sorry, sorry, but I have to go see! I do! You were right! Later!”

And then Amina was gone, the sound of her feet swallowed up by Pheiri’s innards.

A long, heavy sigh fought in vain against silence and storm, followed by an awkward swallow, both from the new arrival.

Cyneswith said: “Do I get the impression that Miss Amina doesn’t like you very much?”

“S-sorry?” said the new arrival. “Um, uh, yeah. Yes. I mean, I think so. Amina and I don’t talk much. Or at all, really.” Cloying silence crept back in, washing the air with waves of rain. Eseld expanded to fill the room. Then the disciple spoke again, with halting desperation: “I’m Ooni, by the way. If you didn’t catch my name before. Hello.”

“Mmhmm,” purred Cyneswith. “I remember you, Miss Ooni. I’m very good with names. Or at least I like to think so.”

Ooni walked into the bunk room, much deeper than Amina had ventured, clumsy footsteps thumping across the deck. Eseld heard her sit down on the opposite bunk with a creak of metal and a little pop of one knee joint. The room was very narrow and cramped; when Ooni spoke again her voice was close, pitched low and soft, as if Eseld were merely sleeping and should not be awoken.

“How is she?” Ooni asked. “Eseld, I mean, not Amina. Did she sleep at all?”

“No change,” said Cyneswith. “I believe she may have drifted off for a small nap, for a little while, but I cannot be certain.”

Silence, perhaps beckoned by a nod. Storm crashed and raged inside Eseld’s skull.

Ooni said, “Is she … alright, with those skulls?”

“Your leader said not to take them from her.”

Ooni sighed. “Yeah. They are hers. S-shit, uh … do you need to sleep? You seem kinda … ”

“I’m fine, thank you. Somebody needs to watch over Eseld. But I am curious. How do I ‘seem’ to you, Miss Ooni?”

Ooni let out a strange laugh, hesitant and awkward. “Like you’re not afraid.”

“Should I be afraid?”

“Well, no,” Ooni said — and seemed surprised at her own answer. “No. No, you shouldn’t. You’ve fallen into good hands. I-I think.”

Eseld heard the smile in Cyneswith’s voice: “Did you volunteer to come and tell me that?”

Ooni was silent for a moment. “W-well, sort of. I thought you might be afraid. But, oh, uh, this is your first time around, isn’t it? You’re a real freshie. You and Sky both. Not like Eseld.”

“I don’t know the true meaning of so much fairy-speak,” Cyneswith said. “But I think I understand your meaning, yes. I died, and now I am here. This is my first trip to the realms of faerie.”

Awkward silence settled deep and hard, broken by storm’s rage. Eseld wanted to rear up and grab Cyneswith by the shoulders, to shake her until her teeth chattered. Enduring Cyn’s lack of comprehension back in the tomb had been one thing, but now Eseld’s own metaphor for the world lay in ragged tatters — angels had become demons, demons had metastasised like cancer, and her belly was warm with the blood of a saint. She could not stand it any longer. She had listened to several of the saint’s disciples explain to Cyneswith the nature of the world, some of them with great patience. But Cyneswith did not seem to accept the reality of undeath and nanomachines and obligate cannibalism.

But Eseld could not do any of that. She stared into empty sockets.

Hurricane fury drenched the air with static haze. Wind howled like the voice of God pouring forth a deluge of air to blast the tomb flat. Pheiri hummed and murmured, like a mechanical cocoon. Eseld became all these things, emptied out and refilled over and over and over again.

A stealthy tread crept up to the bunk room door; the creeper — whoever she was — thought she was being clever and quiet. Perhaps she was, for her footsteps were very gentle. But Eseld had a hunter’s ears, tuned to rabbits on the open heath or foxes on the forest floor. The eavesdropper stayed silent, and did not interrupt.

Cyneswith said, “Miss Ooni? Pardon my presumption, but your face makes it plain that you have something to say.”

“They took me in, too,” Ooni answered, very softly.

“ … yes?”

“Elpida, I mean. The Commander. All of them. Pheiri, too, in a way. He makes decisions as well. Them … all of them. I wasn’t here with them at first.” Ooni’s voice grew in confidence as she spoke, then faded as quickly as it had rallied. “I was … I was an enemy, I suppose. And I thought maybe you might … maybe I could help … if you were afraid, I mean.”

“That’s very sweet of you, Miss Ooni,” said Cyn.

Ooni swallowed, dry and hard, then said: “Elpida ate a piece of me, too.”

Eseld blinked.

After a moment, Cyneswith said: “She did?”

Ooni swallowed again. “Yeah. Not for nutrition, though. It was a … a symbol I had tattooed, right here. Here, see?” A rustle of cloth followed. Cyneswith made a little sound of acknowledgement. When Ooni spoke again, her voice was tight and strained. “It was, uh … a bad thing, um … it was a … a symbol … uh … ”

“Miss Ooni,” Cyneswith said, “you don’t have to explain. I wouldn’t understand the intricate details of these fairy matters, anyway.”

“Yeah, yeah, of course. I just … I-I wanted to help, but I-I can’t explain it. I was a … I was in another group, and they were … difficult … people. And Elpida, the Commander, she should have had me shot. She should have killed me and eaten me. She had me, dead to rights, and it’s what we would have done to her. She could have killed me. She should have!” Ooni was almost panting now. “But she didn’t. It took me a long time to see, to understand what she did, and why she did it, when she took this piece of flesh off me. She … she … made me … clean.”

Ooni sobbed the final word, then heaved for a while, sniffing back tears. The bed creaked beneath Eseld — Cyneswith, reaching forward, perhaps to pat Ooni on the knee.

A little while later, Ooni spoke, voice firmed up once again: “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to cry. I hadn’t spoken to anybody about that. Hadn’t realised it myself. I … um … I meant to come here and help you. But, thank you.”

Cyneswith said, “You’re welcome, Miss Ooni. I had no idea that fey creatures could suffer such.”

A moment’s silence. “Uh, right. Anyway, I was trying to say that Elpida, the Commander, she made me clean. So now it’s my job to do the right things, to stay clean, to justify what she did for me, to … make her proud, I suppose. I … I don’t know if that helps you, or … or Eseld?”

Cyneswith said: “I’m sure it warms her to hear you speak of it.”

Eseld stared into her own eye sockets, lost far away amid the storm.

Ooni’s situation had nothing in common with her own. Another disciple at the feet of the saint. But why had Ooni been spared, when Eseld’s friends had not? Eseld wanted to surge to her feet and punch Ooni in the jaw, to pull her apart with hurricane winds and fling her naked bones to the sky. But she could not find the energy or the motivation, not even to blink a second time.

Ooni puffed out a big sigh. “Anyway, I’ve gotta stick around in here for a bit. The Commander’s outside, and everyone’s watching her talk to Shilu. We have a couple of packs of cards, kept by Mel and Haf. Do you know how to play cards? I didn’t know, but—”

Those stealthy footsteps from before suddenly announced themselves with a smart little stomp; another zombie entered the bunk room.

Ooni cut off and rose to her feet with a creak from her bunk.

“Leuca!” Ooni said. “I didn’t hear you coming, were you meant to be in the … control … ”

“I was listening,” said ‘Leuca’. Her voice was dead and flat, with nothing in it for the storm to drown.

Cyneswith cleared her throat. “Leuca? I’m terribly sorry, but I thought your name was Pira. Am I mistaken?”

A beat of silence. “Pira, to you.”

“Lady Pira,” said Cyn.

“Just Pira.”

“Very well, Miss Pira.”

“Mm.”

Ooni said, “Leuca, is everything—”

“The away team is fine. Nothing is happening. They’re talking to the Necromancer right now, but it’s all preliminaries and I don’t care.” A pause. “You.”

Silence.

“She’s got battle shock,” Ooni said. “She doesn’t respond to anything. Just strokes that skull.”

“Can she hear us?” said Pira. “Does she know we’re talking?”

Cyneswith answered, her voice gone carefully polite. “I believe she does, yes, Miss Pira. She responded when we gave her food. And she is currently awake. Her eyes are open.”

A heavy tread crossed the cramped space of the bunk room in three short strides; a lighter tread backed away into the corner — Ooni, making room for Pira. A rustle of cloth moved just behind Eseld’s head, like a piece of storm brought close. A weight pressed on the edge of Eseld’s bunk. A shadow fell across the yellow-white bone of her naked skull.

Pira was crouched behind her, peering over her shoulder, peering into those same empty sockets.

“Your skull?” Pira said.

Eseld didn’t see any reason to answer.

“Your skull,” Pira repeated. “I’ve never held my own. Must be a strange experience.”

The storm returned to fill the gap left by such inane words, rain-static flowing into the bunk room, hailstone drumming drowning out—

“I watched the Commander remove the flesh from all four skulls. I watched her clean them. Brush them down. Rinse them. Sanitise them. Before that, I watched her remove the flesh from your body, and from those of your friends.”

Ooni hissed, “Leuca—”

“I’m talking to Eseld,” Pira said, in the same dead, flat tone. “Be quiet or go away.”

Ooni decided to be quiet.

A moment passed before Pira spoke again. “Elpida killed you and your friends. We all did. We all held the guns, all pulled the triggers, all ate the meat. We have collective responsibility. Melyn and Hafina are exceptions, because they’re not zombies, not like us. They don’t eat meat. I’m a zombie too, just like you. But I didn’t eat. Do you know why?”

Eseld didn’t care.

“You don’t know why,” Pira said. “So I’ll tell you why.”

Pira leaned over Eseld’s body. A periphery of flame-red hair floated like a forest fire on the horizon, framing a sliver of pale skin, dusted with freckles. Pira murmured into Eseld’s ear.

“I know what it feels like to press a gun to Elpida’s flesh.”

Eseld blinked.

“I know what it feels like to pull the trigger, and want her dead, and mean it.”

Eseld blinked again. Her throat bobbed; her mouth was so dry, she could barely swallow. How had she not noticed that until now? Her chest was quivering inside, as if her heartbeat was struggling to match the storm. She was coated in sweat and tired enough to die. She could not keep this up. She would cease to exist.

“I dumped the entire magazine of a submachine gun into her belly,” Pira said. “Three bullets made it past her armoured coat. Chewed her up with a gut wound, would have killed any other zombie. Left her torn open, bleeding out. And I meant it. I meant it more than you meant that round aimed at her head.”

Eseld stirred.

For the first time in hours, she moved her neck. Her muscles felt like rock. She turned to look at the face of one who would wound a saint.

Pira was beautiful, in the way a forest fire was beautiful — how had Eseld not noticed before? A cold, sharp, fire-hardened expression, wrought on a face like pale wood, framed by hair the colour of grass aflame. Celestial blue eyes left nothing concealed.

Eseld opened her mouth, and rasped: “You shot her?”

“Yeah, I shot her. She bleeds just like everybody else. Do you know what she did to me in return?”

Eseld shook her head.

“She came back for me. She counted me as one of her own, one of her comrades, even though I’d put three bullets through her belly. She called herself my Commander. And she’s right, she is my Commander. She feeds me mouthfuls of her blood, every few days, to keep me from starving, because I don’t eat, I don’t cannibalise other zombies. She does it with her hand, so I can drink from her palm. I am hers.”

“ … why … why are you telling me this?”

Pira eased back, giving Eseld some breathing space. The bunk room opened up either side of this flame-sprite forest spirit, with dull grey walls and peeling paint and thin blue blankets on narrow mattresses. Pira stood up; she wore tomb-grey trousers and a matching t-shirt, with heavy boots on her feet. She carried a pair of pistols in a holster around her hips, and a machete strapped to one thigh.

“Get up,” said Pira. “You’ve been lying there for hours. Any longer and you’re going to get bedsores. You’re undead, not invincible.”

“B-but—”

“Get up.”

Eseld wanted to coil back around her own skull and press herself against the wall, to sink into the static of the storm; Pira’s blunt intonation did not intimidate her, because she didn’t care anymore if she lived or died. The saint might eat her, or the disciples might tear her apart, or they could leave her here to rot into the blanket. It made no difference, changed nothing about the outcome, and would not grant her any clarity or truth, for she was nothing except soulless meat, powerless before the angels and demons and monsters which still stalked the world in God’s absence. Meat, was all she was good for, all she would ever be, and—

“Stop that,” said Pira.

“Stop what?”

“Retreating inside yourself. Pay attention to me. Get up.”

Eseld was still not intimidated — but Pira had already cracked her shell and drawn her forth like a morsel of wriggling meat. The storm seemed further away every second, just noise beyond the walls. Resistance was more bother than acquiescence.

Eseld sat up, slowly and painfully. She discovered that many of her muscles had gone stiff and sore with long stillness; how long had she really been lying there? She winced and hissed as she moved. She eased her legs over the side of the bunk until her socks touched the cold decking. She brought her skull with her, cradling it in her lap.

Cyneswith was sitting a few paces to Eseld’s left, eyes wide with shock, mouth covered with one hand; she looked so small and dainty in tomb greys. Ooni was at the opposite end of the bunk room, up on her feet, eyes darting between Eseld and Pira as if a brawl was about to break out. Ooni was not like Eseld had expected — she was dark-haired and green-eyed, willowy and gangly.

Pira stared down at Eseld’s disrobed skull.

Eseld swallowed to clear her throat. “I’m not leaving me behind.”

“Mm,” Pira grunted. “You would fight me for it, yeah. I can see that. Keep it, it’s yours.”

Pira sat down on the opposite bunk, so that she and Eseld were face to face. Eseld said nothing — she was still numb and exhausted, even if she had finally torn her eyes away from her own skull and her soul from the gyre of the storm. She felt the pull all the same, eyes dipping back down toward the bony plates of her own cranium. She started to caress the orbit of the left eye socket with two fingers.

“Why are you doing that?” Pira asked.

Eseld looked up. She could not think of an answer.

“You must have a reason,” Pira pressed, her voice flat and dead.

A nasty impulse bubbled up from within Eseld’s chest, hotter than rain, harder than hail.

“Because,” she spat, ramming two fingers through the eye socket so the tips brushed her own fleshless sphenoid bone. “I’ve already been skull-fucked to death. I may as well jam my own fingers in there too.”

Pira smiled.

Eseld almost choked. That smile was nasty.

“The Commander,” Pira said. Her smile died as quickly as it had blossomed. “Elpida. She bleeds like anyone else. She’s not a saint, or a demon, or an angel.”

Eseld blinked rapidly. “How did you know—”

“I listened to you,” Pira said. “You’ve been muttering for hours, on and off, especially earlier. The others tried to talk to you, but I listened, and I understand what you’re thinking. But you’re wrong. She’s not an angel, or a demon, or a saint. Though that last one is a good word for what she might become one day, eventually, if she’s right, if she’s setting us on the correct path.”

Eseld shook her head. “She ate me.”

Pira nodded. “She did.”

“You … you all ate me. Me and Andasina. And Su and Mala. You hunted us and you ate us.”

“We’re all zombies,” said Pira. “We’re all no different.”

“No,” Eseld murmured. Then stronger: “No. No. She’s different. She is a saint. She is. Even if she’s … rotten, or … I don’t know. I could taste it in her blood. She’s different.”

Pira nodded again. “Mmhmm. She is. Do you know why? Do you know what she’s got, which we all lack?”

“Divine grace.”

“Ideology. Purpose. Clarity.” Pira stared, unblinking as a skull. “And I believe in her. I believe in what she has chosen to do. She’s made me believe. But she’s only human. Or only undead. She’s not perfect, she makes mistakes, she fucks up, and sometimes she gets herself shot in the stomach. So you — you could have landed that bullet, and it would have killed her, because she’s not a saint. She’s not invincible. She would have returned to the resurrection buffer, and waited out another ten, or ten hundred, or ten thousand years, just to try again. Do you understand?”

Pira’s cold blue eyes finally sent a shiver up Eseld’s spine.

“Are you—”

“Threatening you?” Pira said. “Yes. I am.”

Ooni whined, “Leuca—”

Pira raised a finger and Ooni went silent. The sound of the hurricane beyond the tomb rushed into the gap, roaring in Eseld’s ears. She stared into those eyes of celestial blue, empty and cold as winter skies.

“If you make an attempt on the Commander’s life,” Pira murmured. “I’ll kill you myself, if the others don’t get to you first.”

“Hypocrite,” said Eseld.

“Yes.”

Eseld found that she was not afraid. “Fair enough.”

Pira took a deep breath; something unclenched in her face, behind her expression. A smile leaked into her eyes, but did not touch her lips.

“Good. Now we understand each other. I’m not going ask to you to believe in her, not yet. It took me lifetimes of failure and pain to understand, and I still barely just have enough faith left for the Commander. But I do have it, and I’m not going to ask you to share it.”

“Then why talk about all this?”

“Because despite all that faith, she’s just another zombie. And I’m going to tell you—” her eyes flicked to Cyneswith, still silent behind her own hand “—both of you, all about just how badly she can screw up, the kind of mistakes she can make, the errors of judgement, the flaws in her thinking.”

Eseld frowned. “Why?”

“Because the Commander has been unwell. And for some reason your presence has healed her. I think it’s best if you understand why. I think it’s best if somebody other than her explains to you where we’re going, where she’s leading, so you can make your choice.”

“You’re going somewhere? Where?”

Ooni said: “Metaphorically speaking, she means.”

“Thank you, Ooni,” Pira said, without looking up at her.

Cyneswith spoke. “And, Miss Pira, where is your Commander leading you?”

“Telokopolis.”