Sena came to it naked with her hair pinned up. The hair on your neck is fine as a gosling, Nathaniel whispered.
She ignored him and straightaway eased into the pudding of tentacles, leaning forward until she lay on her stomach, fully cupped in their gentle tossing motion.
The sensation was pleasant and strange as the watery pink arms oozed over her chest, abdomen and thighs.
Are you proud of yourself for evading me? What did you tell him while you were alone in the tincture?
To help block him out, Sena thought about the Pplarians who knew the road before her. They had come down from the sky, stranded here eons ago. Put here, they said, as a punishment. They knew about the Yillo’tharnah. The Pebella of the Pplar had heard the rumors out of Stonehold, like everybody else. Unlike everybody else, the Pebella put stock in those rumors and had invited Sena to the Pplar for an audience.
When she had seen the markings on Sena’s skin the Pebella had tasked a group of Pplarians already in Isca City with the construction of the temple on Incense Street.
Why?
Not because they worshiped her. The Veydens worshiped her. The Lua’groc worshiped her in their horrible outlandish way. But the Pplarians? The Pplarians felt sorry for her. They had seen this bargain made before. The Yillo’tharnah rising from sleep, seducing Their “chosen one” with the not-quite-promise of freedom, the tantalizing false hope of escape.
The Pplarians had assured her of this: that the way was false, that the Yillo’tharnah had never failed to catch Their prey after the prey had foolishly set Them free.
“You are in a trap,” the Pebella had told her. Yul and the rest had vigorously agreed. “It is better not to free Them. You will fail as every other Sslia has. Under Their power, your ambit will be broken, the Lua’groc will have their sacrament of flesh and the Abominations will entomb your soul.”
“But I have the Gringling’s notes,” Sena had said.
To which the Pebella had answered nothing but told her servants, “Give the Sslia what help she needs.”
The temple had been built, the colligation begun. Sena would not give up. She would not relent. She would fight until the end.
Yul had brought the nautrogienilus and the airship from the Pplar. The Pebella was not on board. Her presence had been a ruse, orchestrated to coincide with the gathering at Sandren.
The airship was not for Sena’s comfort. What it provided was something rational for Caliph to pursue. Caliph could not see Sena, therefore the vessel was now essentially the same as her. Caliph would follow it relentlessly, under the assumption that she was aboard. Even while she left and did other things, the Pplarian ship would draw the High King relentlessly into the south. This was part of her plan.
You’re taking him to Ooil-Uauth? Nathaniel asked. Why? It’s pointless. It’s extraneous to the fabrication of the ink. You don’t need the altar …
Her thoughts had slipped out. He had heard her. She scolded herself frantically but on the surface remained calm. “Extraneous, is it? Then why did you drive your servants through the jungle? Why did you tell them to build your house there? If I am going to do this, I am going to do it right. I am going to follow the steps. And if you don’t like it—”
Fine! Nathaniel raged. He cursed her with ugly slurs.
As Sena lay in the bed of pink tentacles, Yul came into the room. Yul could not see the thing that haunted her but one of his eyebrows lifted slightly, a betrayal of his thoughts that despite his foreign preferences, Sena reminded him of an alien pinup, posing on a pink anemone.
The nautrogienilus’ foot supported her weight while its arms arched over her back. Its tentacles flexed, tips brushing her shoulder blades. Sena did not close her eyes as the first arm slipped into her skin.
“Do you need anything?” Yul asked.
“No.”
Yul lowered his hairless head and left the room.
The tentacles pierced her because she allowed it. She controlled it. All the arms moved in orchestra, slicing precisely. She could have done this herself but the creature provided her with the fortuity of conservation.
The beast needed few holojoules to guide.
Each microscopic mouth chewed with surgical skill. She did not bleed as the first corner came up, tugged gently by a single arm. The meat beneath her skin was paler than pink, it was nearly white and shining. Fine radiant filaments stretched between the integument and a deeper glow of tissue. There were several layers. She did not enjoy it. She set her teeth. But this was necessary. Nothing else would endure the trip. Her skin embodied perfection at an atomic level—just like Caliph’s blood. Therefore, like his blood, it would last.
The melon-colored blush of chewing organs took no notice of her thoughts. They moved rhythmically, until finally she shut her eyes.
* * *
THE nautrogienilus finished its methodical work, having avulsed a perfect square. It held the thin slab of flesh aloft, dangling from tubiform arms.
Sena stood up. A field of light, evocative of the backswept membranes of a damselfly, streamed from the corresponding breach between her shoulder blades. The excised area was surreal in its perfection, as if drafted by an architect. Its upper edge ran level with her shoulders, its bottom chined the center of her back. She had directed the nautrogienilus to remove a quadrate from the only location on her body that would accommodate a flawless, unmarked sheet. It was the only part of her, of the necessary size, where the platinum designs never crossed. As if this span of skin had been prepared for exactly this purpose, planned in by the Entities who had gifted her with immortality.
The Pplarians said it was part of the deception, that she was following exactly where others had gone before.
To that, Sena had not argued but said simply, “I have to try.” She was different. This would be different. Her plan would see her through.
The skin taken from her back covered more or less thoracic vertebrae three through seven, representing seven inches top to bottom and a perfect tenth of her frame’s full height. There was a beauty to the numbers and the ratios.
The tiny mouths on the tips of the tentacles gobbled at the underside of her dermis but Sena whisked it away. As she held the slice of her back, seven inches by seven inches seemed an extraordinary span.
With broad angles of light still gushing from her, she placed the specimen on an oval tray. The room around her was an ooidal pocket punctured by blue-gazing duct-like portholes. Cool air slugged in. The walls, floor and ceiling all blended into one and moved in gentle ensemble. Most of the equipment in the room, the trays, racks and shelves, were living or once-living dentin.
A three-foot fibril sprouted from a workbench like the feeler of a white roach. It bent under the weight of a citrus-blue berry of light that quivered at its tip. Under the luminary, Sena carefully separated her skin, like layers in an onion. It did not resemble human flesh and came apart easily into three distinct strata, each identical in size and appearance. She placed each of the three squares in a separate tray and began pinning down their edges. While she worked, the room expanded and contracted around her, gently, almost imperceptibly, as if breathing.
Yul came back into the room. This time he ignored her unclothed body and offered a polite greeting in White Tongue having to do with the moon.