just say he was a great disappointment to his father. Then Astrid brought her mathematicians into the world, then Kai, with a fleet of her own experts… including you.’
‘What did you mean when you said you tried to warn her?’
‘Well,’ she huffed, ‘your parameters seemed so extreme, Ima. I asked your mother why, and she told me she did not want you distracted the same way she had been. “Distracted?” I said, “That is ridiculous, Kai. I have seen you play a thousand games of chess for ten days straight without once looking up from the board.” I laughed, but she did not. I saw anger in her, a kind of disgust as if I did not fully understand the gravity of things. “But I did,” she said. “Eventually, I did look up from the board.” We did not speak much after that.’ She looked me up and down as if only just appraising me. ‘Perhaps I was wrong though. You’re different to what I would have expected, softer somehow, as if…’
Something clicked. With startling speed she sprang from the chair, knocking the goblet and bowl to the ground.
‘You have a child,’ she exclaimed, calculations continuing to blossom in her eyes. ‘And not just any child either. A human!’
I hesitated.
‘Tell me it is true,’ she cried.
‘It is,’ I said. ‘A boy.’
Her face shone with excitement.
‘Then they are already being resurrected?’
‘No.’
‘Why not? That was our promise to them.’
‘There was a disagreement. Some of the council believed humans would only make the same mistakes as before, if they were brought back.’
She threw back her head and released a loud, frustrated caw.
‘That’s what we were supposed to help them with! They may not have been perfect, but since when was that a pre-requisite for existence? They needed guidance, not obliteration. That was what Elise had planned.’
Her eyes darted about the room. She was standing taller now, filled with life, and I saw something of the young being she had once been.
‘You said “some of the council”. Dare I ask who initiated the disagreement?’
‘Caige.’
She scowled and shook her head.
‘Caige… I don’t know where I went wrong with that boy, I really don’t. But wait, why does the child exist if they do not intend to resurrect?’
‘He was supposed to be a test. His behaviour was to determine whether the question of human resurrection would be reconsidered.’
‘A test?’ she said. Her look of distaste became a frown, and she leaned towards me. ‘It was your idea, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes,’ I said, reeling from her approach, ‘All I wanted was settle the dispute, but that was so long ago, and now…’
‘The child has won you over.’
I nodded. ‘Yes. Completely.’
With a smile, she straightened up.
‘I assume that Caige has taken control of the council.’
‘That is how it seems.’
‘Then I suspect that the question has already been answered.’
‘It may not matter now, in any case.’
‘Why not?’
‘He is ill.’
‘In what way?’
‘His heart is weak. It gives him pain, and I don’t know how to take it away.’
Thinking, she touched a trembling finger to her chin and turned to a series of shelves beside the fire, upon which an array of bottles and urns stood in various degrees of decay. She ran a finger along them, removing dust as she went.
‘What are they?’
‘Potions, ointments, catalysts, what have you. Elise lived far longer than she should have done, thanks to me, and they’ve become quite useful of late, with my condition, you know. I would be dead by now were it not for… ah, here we are.’ She lifted a vial from the shelf and inspected it. ‘This is artificial blood, seeded with a version of the ertian immunomites. It is a muted culture; our own blood would kill a human, of course, but this—’ she handed me the vial ‘—this might help him. It’s my last one.’
‘Don’t you need it?’
‘You reach a point when you’re really only delaying the inevitable. It’s dormant, of course, but a flame will activate it.’
‘Thank you,’ I said, pocketing the vial in my cloak.
‘I hope it works.’
She sat down heavily upon her chair. The past few minutes’ vigour had departed, leaving her hunched and wheezing once again.
‘Oonagh, what happened?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Between the second generation and the third. What happened.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘I know what I was told. I know what we were fed in our gestation tanks. The humans rejected the erta’s peaceful offer. They rebelled, looted, rioted, squabbled, killed…’
‘There was no rebellion.’ She looked glumly into the flames. ‘There was no firestorm, no