Mission Critical by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Publisher: Solaris
Published: 2019-07-09T05:00:00+00:00

KESTRE CAME TO in a familiar bazaar, the one in Transitional Space where she’d obtained the empty gun. Not just in the bazaar: in the home of the arms dealer, with weapons resplendent on every side.

“So you figured it out,” said a voice she had heard an eternity ago. The arms dealer came forward. The face that had once struck her as so indistinct, so empty of character, now reminded her of her own with its scars and effaced tattoos.

“You received fair price,” Kestre said, “but I have one more bargain to make.”

“Speak.”

“Take it back,” Kestre said in a rush. “Take it all back, from the moment I made the agreement with you. If your gun can reach through time, surely—surely there’s a way.”

“Of course there is,” the arms dealer said. “But there’s a price, always.” And the smile she smiled at Kestre was Kestre’s own, made grotesque with triumph. “You have one name left. Give it to me, and let me leave this place, and live your life. I can make better use of it than you ever have.”

A shadow passed over her heart. But it was a small price to pay after everything she had done.

Then the assistant spoke. “No,” it said. “Take my name instead.”

The arms dealer heard it too. “You?” she demanded.

“I am of House Elaya,” the assistant said. “I was just as responsible as Kestre for the massacres of the empty gun, even if it no longer exists. Take my name and be satisfied.”

“Well-played,” the arms dealer said. “Say your name, so that I may devour it.”

“Sa Elaya,” the assistant said, and for a moment its voice dwindled into static.

Once Kestre would have added the arms dealer back to her list; would have attacked her for her temerity. Now she said, “Thank you. You will not see me again.”

Once outside the arms dealer’s home, under the utterly dark sky of Transitional Space, Kestre said to the assistant, “Our House is well and truly dead.”

“It may be dead,” it replied, “but we endure.”

“So we do,” she said.

And together they walked out of the history of the Houses and into a history of their own.

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