All of it can be changed, child. Be thankful that you have been chosen.
No time. Xuân Thao ran toward the door.
The world tilted and changed: the door and Vu Côn’s figure falling away from her as she ran, the little jolt in her ankles and knees as the walls became the floor and gravity reasserted itself. The door remained tantalizingly far, and her worn shoes slid on the smooth surface of the sphere. The world slid by—she turned and saw Vu Côn at a distant angle from her, and the door snapping into kindling, Vu Côn falling to her knees, head bowed, as the hunting birds’ cries filled the air.
No.
She turned, again, to the door. It was too far away, and she had no time. Except . . . Except that some dark, deep part of her knew what to do. She reached out, stretching and expanding and moving muscles on sheer instinct. A tearing out, and the world once more contracting and tilting, and she was on the threshold of the door, falling into it.
Xuân Thao was on her knees in a long corridor, vomiting. She needed to get up. She needed to run again. They would follow, and this door wasn’t barred or closed. She paused then—why had the other door been closed?—and then she got up, and forgot those thoughts.
She’d never been in that part of the palace before. The walls were transparent and opened up onto a darkened sky, except that each section of wall had a view on a different moon—one of them pockmarked, one of them the shape of a flock of ravens, one of them large and red with an eye like a New Year’s Eve lantern, and on and on until it seemed there was no end to it. The floor below was also transparent: she stood on a deep and sweeping dark with pinpoints of scintillating light. When she moved, the floor flexed, like a taut cloth under an acrobat’s weight. She took one, two shaking steps—the floor was going to break if she went too fast, if she was too heavy. Was this just another test of theirs, to see how long she could survive in a vacuum?
“Elect.” Lianlei’s voice, wafting through the darkness of the door.
Too close.
Run, Ongjié had said. Get to the doors.
A corridor on the right, and the great hall, Vu Côn had said.
Xuân Thao took a deep breath, and ran, her eyes on the walls. The moons shimmered and twisted and became dragons wrapped around stars, trees growing out of planets, stars that were hairpin wounds, with filaments of white hair streaming out of a hole in the fabric of the heavens. Under her, the floor flexed, every step the beginning of a fall that was suddenly and heart-shatteringly arrested.
Behind her, the beating of wings. She ran, and the universe fractured and contracted, and that odd tearing in her chest came back, a nausea that grew and grew until it seemed to entwine with her heartbeat. Her legs hurt, but she ignored the pain. She had to get to the doors. She had to survive, one way or another.
She turned into the corridor almost without noticing it—half ran, half jumped in a much smaller space that was an endless corkscrew of pillars diverging into infinity—and then that space was gone, too, and she stood, panting, in the middle of another sphere.
This one was so large she could barely see its curve. As she moved deeper into it, lines of gold and silver began to follow her: pale and shimmering traceries on the floor that clung to her feet, an odd buzzing feeling climbing up her ankles. When Xuân Thao finally stopped, breathing hard, the traceries raced on, toward the wall of the sphere—and reared up, snakelike, in the middle of empty space, curving into a perfect circle that gradually irised open, revealing only darkness.
The palace doors.
Almost there.
Xuân Thao took one, two faltering steps. The pain in her chest flared up, unbearable. No. No. She put a hand on her own chest—felt the panicked beating of her heart, the way her legs wobbled, unsteady and weak. She could do this. Only a few more steps.
Ahead of her, distinct and sharp, the clink of a chain.
When she looked up again, Vu Côn stood in front of the doors. Not the woman she’d seen in the laboratories—the one who’d held up a hand to help Xuân Thao stand, the one who’d told her where the doors were—but a huge and serpentine shape with iridescent scales, a mane of streaming hair in which danced the oily colors of the sea. There was some distant similarity of shape between the masters and the dragon—they were both reptiles—but as unalike as a deer and a human, simply vastly different species. In the air was a sharp, unpleasant smell of churned waters, and the tight feeling in the air before the storms, droplets of seawater stinging Xuân Thao’s abraded skin and eyes like needles driven into wounds.
“Vu Côn.” The words burned in her throat.
The dragon didn’t speak. Her eyes were dark and wet, and the chain around her massive neck shone in the darkness, contracting with her own heartbeat. It vanished somewhere in the darkness, under the scales of her belly.
“Elect.”
Xuân Thao sank to her knees, even as Lianlei’s own coils slid to wrap around her—a cool touch that smelled of sheened oil and the tang of molten metal, climbing into her throat until she seemed to choke with it. She couldn’t hear the hunting birds anymore, but did it really matter?
“You did well.” Lianlei’s voice sounded amused.
“A failed experiment,” Ongjié said. His voice made traceries of gold and silver tremble on the floor. “Weak.”
“Of course,” Lianlei said. “They always are, in the end.” She sounded frustrated.
“Not worth staying for.” Ongjié shook his head.
“Of course not,” Lianlei said. “There’s enough data here for another cycle of genmodding.” She shook her head, and Xuân Thao felt its wind like lashes on her skin. “Enough to guarantee us a higher status with the council. Wasn’t that what you hungered for?”
Ongjié laughed. “That would be a start.”
A booming sound, in the air, deepening and expanding, burrowing under nails and muscles, an unbearable urge to run toward the gates, to tear out her own skin and bones until they no longer resonated.
“Time,” Ongjié said.
Lianlei snorted. The wet, burning coils around Xuân Thao tightened. “There’s always time left. Do you want to leave business unfinished?”
A silence, from Ongjié—except that the sound came again, unbearably loud. Ongjié twisted, his scales shimmering with the reflection of golden light, his eyes lidded and an unsettling, unusual expression on his face. When he spoke again, his voice was a fraction less assured. “More data? I think we have all we need, and the council gives us little choice. If you can bear it, finish here. I’ll see you at the gates.” He twisted again, and flew toward the palace doors. Vu Côn stood, stubbornly unmoving, until Ongjié spoke a word of power. The chain contracted, and Vu Côn didn’t so much move as was thrown aside. Luminous blood pearled from the links of the chain, pooled on the floor.
“Servants,” Lianlei snorted again. The hunting birds weren’t gone: they were nesting in the sharpness of her antlers, perching on them as if they were branches, their clawed feet and leg feathers merging with the bone.
A touch of something cold and sharp on Xuân Thao’s skin: the tip of Lianlei’s tail, raising her head to meet her gaze. Her eyes were translucent, the scales of her fluid, shifting body visible as a faint underlay beneath the sclera, and her smile all razored teeth. “Such a shame,” she said. “I had such high hopes for you, elect.”