Reclamation

Look here, and here.

Little Eye held Roof Beam's hand as they struggled to keep up with Nail, half-clambering, half-wading through the marshes. At the same time, Eyes Above hunched in front of her hearthstone while Storm Water fed fresh charcoal into the flames. At the same time, Eric rattled past in the back of the sledge while Teacher Heart drove the team through a landscape obscured by foul black smoke. Both of them had headcloths wrapped so that their faces were shielded from drifting ash.

"Aria," said Jay again. "Aria, can you hear me?"

"Yes," she said. With a little effort, she separated a piece of herself to focus on her own body. "I'm all right. I'm…" A thought surfaced. "Can I show him what I'm seeing?"

Yes. That is part of what the Eyes are for.

And Aria knew how it could be done. She focused on the crater. The Mind took the sight and gave it to one of the shadows behind the chamber wall. Aria watched the chamber and she watched the shadow's image paint itself behind the smooth wall. It formed itself from a film of the liquid held in the tubes. She looked at the smoking crater, and looked at the image of the crater on the wall and looked at Jay looking at it.

"Where is this?" asked Jay hoarsely.

"Narroways," said Aria, even though she hadn't known a moment ago. "The Vitae dropped a…" The words surfaced, from the stones or the Mind or her own memory, she didn't know. It didn't matter. "An incendiary device. A clean bomb."

Jay laid his hand on top of the image. Aria saw the lines of his palm, the prints of his fingertips and the flat white blobs where his skin pressed against the wall. "What you create you may some day be forced to destroy," he said, but he didn't speak Standard. Her ear heard gibberish, but the Mind did not. The Mind knew and so Aria knew, had known, always would know.

"But how?" she whispered.

There are others here who speak that way. I have been listening. I have neglected nothing. Aria saw a quartet of Vitae faces, leaning far too close to her. These are they.

Then Jay was a Vitae. Jay was Aunorante Sangh. She tried to feel horrified, or angry, but she couldn't. She could only feel delighted with herself and her newfound vision.

"Aria," said Jay. "What else can you see?"

"Everything," she said, and a warm rash of confidence filled her. "I can see everything."

Jay's breath quivered in the air. He rested lightly on her surface as he leaned toward her body. " Can you see Contractor Kelat?"

You can. Look here. Aria saw another chamber, almost a twin to the one she encompassed. In this one stood colorfully robed Vitae. They laid scanners and analyzers against the walls and argued over what they found. Aria knew that if she reached, she could hear them. If she wanted to, she could be as aware of that room on the other side of the world as she was of the one where her body stood.

A black-robed man (Contractor Kelat, she knew) stood with a trio in blue. They bustled around a capsule that reminded Aria of the one she had carried across Amaiar. Curious, she reached toward the room until she cupped herself around it. She looked down from the ceiling and inside the capsule; she saw her sister.

"Trail?" She strained her awareness, trying to feel her sister, but the capsule isolated her. She could feel nothing but the restless Vitae.

"You see Broken Trail?" asked Jay. "Show me."

Yes. Let us show him! The Mind's eagerness was so infectious that Aria didn't even hesitate. She looked hard at the chamber around Broken Trail until its image replaced Narroways' devastation on the wall in front of Jay.

A broad grin split the Skyman's face. "Too late," he said to the image. "They're too late, Kelat! We've won!" His voice dropped to a husky whisper and he struck her wall lightly with the side of his fist. "We have!"

The Vitae won? thought the part of Aria that was still lodged in her body. No. We came here to stop them. To save Trail.

What does it matter? crowed the Mind. They will let us work! They will let us see and hear and move again! We will be alive again! Pure, innocent joy raced through her until Aria felt she might drown in the sensation, but she couldn't stop drinking it in. She was free, she was limitless and infinite in her vision and knowledge. All that lacked was work. All she wanted was to be told how to use her sight.

This despised one asks in what way she may serve?