“We have the Republics, then?” the queen mother held herself tightly.

“I have them, yes,” Shelador replied, his image more wavering than usual.

“You are in the capitol?”

He waved an irritable hand in a dismissive gesture. “I shall be by week’s end, lady mother.” The harshness of his voice conveyed more than the words themselves.

“Is there something amiss, dear son?” insincere sweetness dripped from the question.

Shelador chose to ignore the tone. “No. Yes. Perhaps. I don’t know, really. Something...”

“What is it?” she demanded, suddenly businesslike.

He caught the change, and answered without sarcasm. “There was something... odd... in the air on the day of our defeat of the Iskan army.

“Odd?”

He shook his head. Perhaps odd, perhaps.... I don’t know,” frustration crept into his voice. “It’s as though I could feel something out in the grass. Watching.”

“Not the Iskans?”

“Hah!” he laughed derisively. No, not the Iskans. The Iskans are gone. Though their great Shadra of the light consumed herself in a failed attempt to keep us from them. I myself cut the great boy general down and buried him beneath his own dismembered guard. We slaughtered their soldiers to the last man and dog and left them to rot in the sun.”

His obvious relish at the fate of their enemies disturbed the queen mother, although there was no reason it should. Ever had the all demanded total annihilation of the enemy and desecration of his shrines. What he’d done had been proper and she should be proud of him for it. But her stomach rolled slowly as she watched the glee in his eyes as he described the crushing of the Iskan defenders’ last hope.

“Hmm?” she replied, realizing she’d missed something.

“I asked, mother dear,” he spaced the words widely, mockingly, “that if it wasn’t the Iskans I felt, what might it have been?” His head was tilted as he peered voraciously through the communications portal, striving to locate any sign of weakness.

She straightened and pulled herself back to the matter at hand. “Have a care, Shelador,” she warned. “The weed has more agents than the other, and none of them has reason to be pleased with you.”

The mad boy king laughed out loud and a change seemed to come over him. “I do not fear the weed. Nor do I fear its minions. I am the living embodiment of the all, and they are as dust to me.”

The queen mother’s eyes widened in shock. That was not Shelador’s voice! She quickly waved the portal into nothingness, stepping backward a pace, hands wringing together. The voice had borne only a fraction of Shelador within it; most had been that of the all. The boy was not strong enough for communion! He would be consumed!

This was wrong. This was terribly wrong. The woman paced an agitated route through her chambers, no longer the queen mother, but now only a mother. How could it be? Shelador was a tool, no more. Yes, he was a powerful tool, and difficult to control, but still a tool. She had borne him into the world as a tool and had shaped him and sharpened him over the years as a tool.

Nor had it been easy! oh no! She remembered her first glimpse of him, soft and squishy and wailing in the midwife’s arms. In her former body, things that looked as Shelador had at that moment had been food. But not him. He’d been a tool.

She remembered how the midwife had placed him in her arms and how she’d had to show her queen how to hold him. She remembered how she’d felt when he’d first suckled at her breast.

The pacing had begun again, more urgent, more violent. She remembered, and with each memory, her rage grew. She remembered how he’d looked at her as he nursed, the feeling of his tiny fingers around her outstretched pinkie, the unbelievable softness of his baby cheek against her skin.

If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

She remembered sneaking into the nursery to watch him sleep until the old king had relented and ordered the crib moved to the royal bed chamber. She remembered his first tottering steps. They’d been into her arms, and how happy had that made her?

Her old self, she barely remembered these days. The stain of the melding, the cloud of the joining, and the insulating properties of twenty-five years imprisonment in squishy pink meat had conspired to rob her of the sense of what she’d been.

She’d been a priest, of course. She’d been strong! Oh so strong. Efforts completely beyond this frail cocoon had been commonplace and effortless to her.

Female? Yes, she had been so even then, but not as these humans understood it. She’d been a type five. Type ones had been the reproducers, predominant in the hierarchy living only to pump out the eggs, thereby fueling the all’s neverending genocides. Type twos had been nurturers, raising the young in their first years. Type threes had been the teachers, type fours the pleasurers. She’d been a type five. Fives counted. Fives computed. Fives built tools.

Nothing — absolutely nothing in her genetic makeup, nor in her personality had ever been geared toward any sort of contact with offspring. She’d harbored no desire for males, and had brooked none of their desire for her.

She’d viewed the young as impediments to traffic, no more. So why was she breaking the furniture in her chambers because the all was using her bab— tool. Her tool. Her tool. She repeated the mantra, mumbling steadily. Her tool, her tool, with his ten little pink toes. Her tool, who blew such sweet bubbles of delight when she tickled his little round belly. Her tool, who’d been so delighted with his first taste of melon. Her tool, who’d looked up into her eyes with such absolute trust as he lay in her arms.

Something was wrong with her face. A questing hand came away wet. The tears infuriated her further. Humans wept, not such as she! She was not human — she was a type five technician! But she was a type five technician trapped inside a meat bag, blubbering like a farm animal while the all made free with her baby!”

* * *

“Better?” Joblar asked, cinching the bandage tighter about Koli’s thigh.

“It’ll do,” the trader spat angrily. “Gods damn them all to the deepest hell,” he hissed as the tightly wrapped wound throbbed. “Who ever heard of a tea total soldier, let alone five? And slave herders no less!”

“On the bright side,” the dall observed, “at least he handled a sword like a drunken miner.”

“Well enough,” Koli groused. “He cut me near to the bone.”

“But not near enough, eh? I’d scold the lout had you not split him neck to navel.”

Koli freshened his scowl. Joblar was taking the liberation of the Gryphon’s Perch slave camp rather more glibly than he’d expected. He’d have expected the dall to hack up or at least urinate on the bodies of the dead guards, but he sat calmly joking about Koli’s swordsmanship. Not even a trace of eagerness to cast open the pens.

Joblar noticed the trader’s regard and arched an eyebrow. “Am I not behaving as I ought?”

Koli leaned back, straightening his leg and shifting on his rump. “Now that you mention it....”

Joblar shrugged. “I owed them a debt for my people. The debt, with your help, has been paid. It’s over.”

“Is it?” Koli wondered.

Joblar waved a hand, still bloody from the killing in the cabin. “And why should it continue? Those who kept me here, those who worked my people to death, are dead.” He shrugged broadly. “What else can I do? Can I keep their spirits from peace? Brother Koli, I cannot imagine they had souls to travel to the next life. Shall I spend my remaining life chasing after empty specters?

Koli was hearing something he couldn’t quite grasp. Something in the dall’s words that almost wasn’t there, but was. He squinted his eyes and tilted his head, wishing for some shade so that he might hear with his good ears. “These only kept you here, Joblar,” he pointed out. “What of those who brought you here?”

“Oh, aye,” the dall’s voice went brittle. “What of them. And what of the murdering vermin who attacked our village, slaughtering those too old or too young to keep up?

“What of the slavers who bought us? Who sold us as food for the royal tables? What of them?

“What of the royals who chewed the flesh of our young as though they were beasts of the field? Who raped our females and then butchered them to keep their tastes from being known?”

The rage that had been hidden behind the impenetrable slave face facade had broken free. Tears were streaming down his muzzle, and his eyes had gone red-rimmed. “What of that diseased spawn of deformed devils who sat upon the throne in Elion and ordered us cleared from our lands?

“I am alone, master trader,” he stated hotly, attempting to regain some of his composure. “My people are dust, my ancestors lost. I am a single dalla in a world where a dall dare not measure himself in the street. What, exactly am I supposed to do? Can I find them and kill them all, every one? Am I immortal?”

Koli scratched vigorously behind his ear, ruminating. “Oh, I don’t think you’ll have to kill every one.”

Joblar reared back in speechless surprise.

“Besides,” Koli added, “you aren’t alone, are you?”

“The slaves?” Joblar shook his head. “They are not my people. I am the last of the Blue Deer Dall.”

“No,” Koli sighed. “Me. Thanks to our ill-trained friend here, I’ll probably live, if the filthy condition of his blade doesn’t do what his strength of arm could not. And somewhere out there, the Tairn wanders. Gods help us, we’re brothers now, the three of us, so long as we breathe. And so long as we breathe, you’ll not be alone.”

Not alone. The trader kept telling him that, but he couldn’t force himself to believe. Perhaps some day it would become easier. “If you’re alright,” he sighed, “I’ll find the key and open the pens.”