Grail - Elizabeth Bear [44]
The symbiotic fluid crawled out of her under its own power for ten seconds before she roused enough to choke and vomit. Then it came faster, sliding through the grate to a collection pool, from whence it could migrate to holding tanks for sterilization and storage. The patient pushed herself up on her arms as Tristen came forward to crouch beside her. She spat once more, and Tristen saw the bluish cylinder of her tongue protrude.
His helmet was retracted so she could see his face and perhaps be less alarmed than she might if confronted by an armored colossus. Tristen laid a hand on her shoulder. He slid the other under her arm to support her to her feet.
Her accent strange, her head still hanging behind ropes of hair, she said, “Thank you.” She lifted her gaze, dragging it up the length of Tristen’s body from boots to face, and recoiled. “… demon.”
In the giddy hour of Leviathan’s release, it seemed that all the world must bow before the allied might of the family Conn, now as of old. Tristen had never fooled himself that what must follow would be easy. But he had fooled himself, a little, on other matters. He had permitted the folly of optimism, committed the sin of hope, and prayed at the outset that there would not be too much blood.
There was blood.
No matter how carefully he awakened the survivors, no matter how patiently it was explained to them that the world was healed, that a Captain had come among them again, an Angel at her side—oh, they were grateful at first, of a certainty. Grateful, or cowed, for some tribes still remembered by legends the house of Conn and the tales of Tristen Tiger and the Breaking of the world.
But the art of governance—the basis of civilization—is the art of compromise, and it requires an honoring of the social contract by governed as well as governors. No tribe could have everything they wanted under the Captain’s custodianship—sometimes because it was not feasible, sometimes because it was not mete, and sometimes because it was not moral. And so the small grudges grew, when the reign of a Captain did not mean a golden age.
Or rather, in Tristen’s view, colored by his memories of Gerald and Alasdair, it did seem a golden age, those first years under Perceval’s care. Though resources were sparse and privation great, he thought the Captain—advised and assisted by himself, Mallory, Nova, Cynric, Caitlin, Samael, Chelsea, Head, and Benedick—served well. But there were those who seemed to believe that a Captain in the chair should mean their every whim fulfilled, and that Tristen found problematic.
He no longer believed that war was the answer to ills, or even to rebellion, necessarily. For all of him, he could not remember why he’d ever thought in the first place that war could be made to serve any hand without twisting back to strike deep at the wielder, like a viper swung by the tail. He had become, he realized with some irony, something of a pacifist. Not an extremist in that view; he would defend himself when he saw no other opportunity.
But neither could he always see alternatives. The world must be saved, and to be saved it must be united. There was a parable of sons and sticks that seemed applicable.
And so the time passed, and Tristen made himself useful, and tried to keep his claws sheathed as consistently as was safe, and possible.
No more than two years later, Tristen had met with Cynric and Perceval on the Bridge. (Nova was there as well, as she was everywhere.)
He had called the meeting to discuss with them what could be done to preserve the all-essential unity of the world, to foster a sense of social obligation and greater moral purpose in her disparate and competing tribes. While he had spoken, he thought he hid his trembling and nausea well, though he had to resort to his symbiont to conceal the worst of the symptoms of stress.
After explaining, pacing the green grass of the Bridge, he paused, turned to look his Captain in the eyes, and finished, “We must forge a nation from them.”
Cynric stopped him with an upraised hand. He