Chapter 1-2

All three of Narsompasi's spaceports had been built away from the central continent and its tenacious swamp-dwellers. Ports Septentrional and Austral were built near the poles, on cold rocky islands. Port Isola was built in the tropics, but in the middle of the ocean on an isolated archipelago. It was by near-universal consensus the nicest part of the planet. As I looked out from the Spirit dropship over the glittering water, I found myself relaxing for the first time since I had landed on Narsompasi.

We landed in the evening. I decided Ruz and I would rest in a hotel and meet Talita Valzeshia the following day. I released the Spirit dropship from my service. Before it flew back to Port Austral, I asked the Salarian gunner what he could tell me about the Valzeshias.

"I could tell you stories, but I couldn't tell you which stories are true. Valzeshia was never a formal leader. Narsompasi's spaceports all had elected Asari-style governments- I guess we still do, for all the Jiralhanae care- but she never stood for any office. We mostly elected Salarians. It was enough for the Valzeshia family to own the shipyards the cities were built around. Well, they owned a lot of other things too."

I thanked him and found somewhere to sleep. The following day, Ruz and I rented a hovercar and left Port Isola proper. One of the nearby islands was given over to tourism and comfort. There was an isolated, walled, luxurious mansion on it. We landed by the gate and were met by the gendarmes responsible for keeping Talita imprisoned. There were only two, but they were Mgalekgolo, so if Talita had wanted to mount an escape attempt she wouldn't have been able to do so casually. The gendarmes had received orders from Lirinus to let us pass. The giant armored gestalts waved us through, rumbling to each other as they did so.

Talita Valzeshia stood on her doorstep, smiling broadly, wearing expensive but casual clothing of mixed Asari and Salarian style. She had been expecting us. "Hello, Qelet B'Norai! It is so good to meet you! It is such a welcome surprise! Come inside!"

She walked us to her dining room. She was not what I had expected. She would not stop talking. "It is such a welcome surprise to have you here, I cannot tell you how repetitive the last ten years have been. Some days my daughters visit me, but otherwise I have so little to do. This is why I was so happy when Lirinus called me yesterday and told me you were coming. A Batarian! I have no rapport with Jiralhanae, and I am not certain whether those two piles of worms guarding me even speak at all, but I understand and like Batarians. And a B'Norai! Are you descended from Degeul?"

"Degeul?" Degeul B'Norai was a dim piece of family history. There was a bust of him in my childhood home, but I couldn't remember off the top of my head what he had done, or even when he had lived. "I think so. I'm honestly not sure. Why?"

"I knew Degeul! I remember it well, because it was just after the Quarians all came running out of Rannoch." That would have been a little over three hundred years ago. "They stole so many things. A sharp Batarian mercenary came to me and told me how he needed loans for ships, men, equipment, all these matters. To protect his people from Quarian thievery! I worked with him, and he was very cunning, and I liked him. He was so cunning that he took his new ships and cut right into the Migrant Flotilla, and took back everything the Quarians had stolen, and many other things too! And he paid me back everything I was owed without any compulsion, and you know how in the Terminus Systems this is so rare!"

Ruz seemed to be following this story closely. Talita took notice of him. "I am so sorry; I never got your name! I am losing all my etiquette, languishing as I am in this place."

Ruz was surprised that she would want to talk to him. "Dir Ruz."

"Dir Ruz! It is so good to meet you, Dir Ruz. I would like to be savvier about your people. I do not know much. You are Kig-Yar?"

"That's right."

"Good, good, good. I try to learn all that I can about the Covenant while I am here, but it is so difficult to penetrate. All of this antecedent scripture! I do not disagree with it, but I do not understand it either. I think that I require spiritual guidance. I think I should talk to these San'Shyuum or Prophets or whatever I am meant to call them. Please let the Prophets know that I would love to meet them and learn all about the Covenant and its religion and its needs. I would love to speak with the Terminus Exarch and learn all about how he plans to rule this most lively and interesting part of the galaxy."

We reached the dining room. Talita had prepared a meal for us. It smelled great.

"Have you had a proper Narsompasi meal yet? The fish of this planet are delicious, but sadly also fattening. In my captivity I have become a very good cook, but a very bad dieter. I worry that I have gained too much weight and become unhealthy."

Ruz had a belated thought and could not stop himself from asking something. "You're… a prisoner of the Jiralhanae?"

"Dir Ruz, you have it just right. Fifteen years ago, I hear that alien invaders are storming through the Haivattan Gate, on the far side of the Terminus Systems. I say, 'Piffle!' I do not think it will amount to much. But the invaders do very well, and five years after that they come to Narsompasi. They demand that the Narsompasikar surrender their leadership. And some people somehow consider me leadership! Although I have never held a public office of any sort! The nine-foot tall Jiralhanae Chieftain is not sure what he is supposed to do. The fleet leaves suddenly and strands him here, so he has no guidance. He yells at me very rudely to go to my home and stay there. I accept because I think it will only be a short stay… but now it is ten years later! My shipyards are in a shameful state and my daughters tell me the Rachni have risen from the grave and are terrorizing the central continent of Narsompasi!"

What had confused Ruz was that capture by Jiralhanae usually meant being tortured, consumed, generally maltreated. Lirinus must have recognized ten years earlier that Talita might be useful and awarded her special treatment. It wasn't clear whether Talita realized this. But it wasn't what I had come to Port Isola to discuss. "I'm here to talk about those shipyards. Your shipyards. The Covenant needs them operational. If you can get that done, I'll have you released."

Talita smiled warmly. "Good, good, good. This is just what I was hoping for. I knew that an heir of the great Degeul B'Norai could only be on Narsompasi to do what is right."

"You're comfortable building ships for the Covenant? You would need to profess the Great Journey."

"Yes, yes, yes. I know how to build spaceships, and I am willing to do it for the Covenant, and it is a lucky thing, because I believe the only people left on Narsompasi who know how to build spaceships apart from myself are my daughters. Only…" Talita took a bite of fish as she thought things over. "I would not wish to mislead you. There are serious challenges here. Things might not go so fast."

"Talk me through it."

"My father- he was Volus- taught me that these things are a question of collective expectation. A shipyard functions because so many different people expect it to function. This expectation is why they all work to- Dir Ruz, why do you look at me like that?"

It was the first time I had ever seen Ruz attempt to act apologetic. "Didn't mean to distract you. It's just this idea your mother must be Asari, but your father would be a different species. It's strange to me." He hesitated. "Aren't the Volus the ones that always wear atmosphere suits? It doesn't make any… forget it. It doesn't matter."

"That is fine, Dir Ruz. The biology is not intuitive. Back to business. For the shipyards to reopen, people must believe in them, and to believe in the shipyards people must believe in Narsompasi. If they believe, then I can build! The first thing is that they must believe Narsompasi is a safe place to live. But no one will believe this, because of the resurrected Rachni."

She was playing dumb. I didn't want to indulge it. "If you've been studying the Covenant, you already know the Yanme'e cannot usefully be compared to the Rachni. They communicate, they are capable of fellowship."

"You have convinced me! I see the truth of your words! All you must do now is explain this to everyone else on Narsompasi. It may also be helpful if the Yanme'e used their wonderful talent of communication to show the least bit of desire for fellowship. Can you convince your invasive insect friends to stop stealing Narsompasikar land?"

"Queen Yalat will take what land she can, but the help Chieftain Lirinus gives her is reluctant. If we can convince the Salarians in the swamps to stop attacking Yanme'e worker drones, Yalat won't have a pretext to call in the Jiralhanae gendarmes."

"Lystheni."

"Come again?"

Talita adopted a harder tone of voice. She wanted me to take her words seriously. "Not Salarians, the swamp-dwellers are basically all Lystheni." Talita must have seen that I thought this point was pedantic. She chastised me sharply. "Do not roll your four eyes! Listen to me! It matters more than you think! You are not a noble politician or righteous pundit on the Citadel, lecturing the peoples of the galaxy about law and tolerance! You are on the hillbilly frog planet! You had better learn how to think like a hillbilly frog if you wish to be a success!"

"Do I look like I'm coming from the law and tolerance angle? What government do you think I represent? I'm coming from the Covenant angle. The brutal, warmongering, caste system angle. High Charity says Lystheni are just Salarians."

"Not on Narsompasi! Believe me, I once thought as you do." For a moment, Talita looked a little less serious. "But, after one hundred years or so here, I finally got so I could tell the difference."

"Let it be. I'll refer to the swamp-dwellers as Lystheni if you don't refer to Queen Yalat's hive as Rachni."

Talita narrowed her eyes. "It is a deal. But now that we have resolved these important questions of etiquette, the problem remains. No one will believe in the shipyards so long as Narsompasi's lands are being seized by a horrible two-ton alien bug and her Yanme'e larvae."

"As I was saying, if it is impossible to convince Queen Yalat to stop provoking the swamp-dwellers, which it seems to be, then we need to convince the swamp-dwellers to stop responding to the provocations. That way the Jiralhanae gendarmes won't have any reason to involve themselves."

Talita shook her head. "Two hundred and fifty years ago, when I first conceived of building spaceports on Narsompasi, people told me my idea was crazy. They told me the Lystheni would never accept it. I talked to the Lystheni, and I won them over, and I built my spaceports, and I became a very successful woman and showed them all. So, trust me when I tell you that your idea is crazy and the Lystheni will never accept it. They are not going to… how do you even imagine this would work? The drones just walk up to Lystheni settlements and make off with Lystheni livestock, and the matriline does nothing?"

Unfortunately, I thought she was probably right. "Maybe there's nothing we can do to quell the conflict in the swamps. What if we quarantine it instead? The Narsompasikar cityfolk don't have much in common with the Narsompasikar swamp-dwellers. Could we convince the cityfolk that rural violence is simply not their problem? If we do that, it will pacify the cities and restart the shipyards. That's what we're really trying to do here. It wouldn't even be untrue, as neither the Yanme'e nor the swamp-dwellers want to conquer or govern the cities."

"The divisions you speak of are real. I have exploited them myself. But, you see, I am not a two-ton bug. No. The cityfolk will always sympathize with the swamp-dwellers enough to be distressed by their defeats at the hands of the Yanme'e. Or the hands of the Jiralhanae gendarmes, speaking freely."

"I talked with a Salarian gunner from Port Austral who was part of the gendarmerie. His attitude toward the swamp-dwellers was aggressive enough."

"You talked with an urban Salarian. Many of the cityfolk are urban Lystheni. And if yours joined the gendarmerie he was an outlier to begin with."

"That's two ideas of mine that you've shot down. Do you have any of your own?"

"Yanme'e are not Rachni, of course, but I still feel the Rachni serve as a relevant precedent." Talita meant that Queen Yalat and her hive should be expunged. "Chieftain Lirinus has been doing his thankless work for ten years. How patient and inflexible can his support of the Yanme'e really be? Let him slip a few of those nice shiny Wraith tanks to the Lystheni and turn a blind eye to what follows."

"Queen Yalat has a Deed of Settlement awarded to her by the Terminus Exarch. If her settlement goes under, the Exarch himself will learn of it. He will interpret it as an insult against his own person. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that he'd consider glassing Narsompasi in response. Certainly, Lirinus and I would both be executed."

"Deed of Settlement. My research into the Covenant has only lightly touched upon their legal system. What exactly does a Deed of Settlement entail?"

"Queen Yalat is entitled to colonize Narsompasi's central continent without consideration for those who have not embraced the Great Journey. The spirit of the Deed is that the colony seek to be self-sustaining, but its letter allows Yalat to grow willfully dependent on the soldiers and resources of Narsompasi's gendarmerie."

"Without consideration for those who have not embraced the Great Journey. Can the Lystheni not simply convert?"

"For a mass conversion to be recognized by the courts, we would need it to be conducted by a San'Shyuum, and there are none available to us."

"Can the terms of Yalat's deed be amended?"

"Only by command of the Terminus Exarch, or by Yalat's agreement."

"By Yalat's agreement. Hmm! I do not like to say this, but perhaps we consider the crude thing."

"The 'Rachni precedent' wasn't the crude thing?"

"Could I pay Yalat to amend the terms of her Deed, and give up any claim to the lands she has not yet settled? Most of my fortune is intact. My family had good contacts with the Shadow Broker network, before it went dark. Many of my daughters saw the future better than I did and insisted that we use the Shadow Broker to convert our wealth into Covenant assets."

This thought was so simple that it had not occurred to me before Talita proposed it. "If Yalat agreed, it would work. I don't… to tell the truth, I don't have any idea whether Yanme'e care about money. Ruz?"

Ruz looked up from his plate. "I've never haggled with one personally, but the old joke about invertebrates is that the Yanme'e only pretend not to care about money, the Lekgolo really don't care, and the Huragok don't know what it is."

"When I offered to pay off the two Mgalekgolo wardens outside, they ignored me," Talita said, as Ruz got right back to focusing on his meal. "So, I think this joke is at least one-third accurate. Okay! This meeting has gotten somewhere."

"Has it?"

"We are agreeing in principle. This is not such a bad result for a first crack at our many problems. Here is what we do. We work together. You will be our face to Queen Yalat and Chieftain Lirinus, whose numbers you have, and I will be our face to the Lystheni Dalatrasses and the cityfolk ward heelers, whose numbers I have. That way everyone is comfortable. You will broker the financial negotiations between myself and the Yanme'e, and you will talk to Lirinus and get me released from house arrest. I will put up the money to halt Yanme'e expansion, advise the Dalatrasses not to respond to Yanme'e provocation any more than they must, advise the ward heelers to preach order in the cities, and ready my shipyards for a grand reopening. The revival of Narsompasi is on the horizon! You agree, in principle?"

I tried to think if there might be a route forward without the help of Talita Valzeshia and could see none. I needed someone who knew how to build spaceships and, however she presented herself, Talita seemed to be the only one available who fit the bill. "Agreed," I told her.

Ruz finished the last of his plate. "This fish is really great," he said.

"Thank you, Dir Ruz. Let me see… details, details… the matter of Covenant religion. The Lystheni are being greatly inconvenienced by the lack of legal recognition we discussed, and I would not like to think that I might suffer such inconveniences myself. You said that I cannot properly convert without a San'Shyuum present?"

"It can be done remotely for individuals, and if you have the endorsement of an Anuranite agent that won't be a problem."

"Good, good, good! I have not practiced Siari ceremonies in some while, so that is okay. I am all ready to become a humble pupil receiving High Charity's wisdom. May I have your endorsement?"

"Sure."

"This is such a meaningful moment for me! Is there some shahada for me to say?"

"All together, all as one on the Great Journey."

"All together, all as one on the Great Journey! That is such a nice sentiment. Another religious question. Years ago, one of my granddaughters became obsessed with ancient mythology. She started collecting antique artworks, which have been collecting dust in my house for quite some time. Are these permissible?"

"Yes, of course."

"It is only that there has always been some speculation that the old Asari gods were in fact Protheans, or Forerunners, or some other antecedents. This is the easy explanation for the biotics, you know…" She waved her hands and there was a flare, and Talita levitated Ruz' empty plate three feet above the table by way of demonstration. I had seen biotic gimmicks any number of times before, but Ruz watched the plate with wide eyes. Talita finished her point. "I am an evolutionist myself, but it is not the issue. I am afraid that Asari mythology and prehistory may become politicized in our Covenant in the future, in some way I cannot predict."

Out of curiosity as much as anything else, Ruz and I toured the collection of mythological art before we left. All of it was very terrestrial, very pre-industrial, pre-ferrous even. I didn't see how any of it could be viewed as politically sensitive. I reassured Talita that all of it was fine, and she seemed a little relieved.

There was one painting that made a particular impression on me. It represented the story of Khajune the Terror Goddess and Heroine Pereshina. Pereshina traversed Thessia hunting ardat-yakshi, which enraged Khajune who was mother of all ardat-yakshi. So, Khajune captured Pereshina and chained her up in the Temple of All Vices. Pereshina knew that Khajune was invincible, but that the Temple of All Vices was not. Though chained, she had the biotic force to break the pillars of the building. The painting showed Pereshina smiling serenely as the ceiling collapsed on her head and the heads of many howling ardat-yakshi sybarites. Khajune wailed in the sky above the temple.

"It's very goofy," Talita said. "That trick with the plate is about all I can do. I don't think anyone could collapse a big marble building like that. These old stories are all very goofy."

As we flew back to Port Isola in our rented hovercar, Ruz asked me a question. "Boss, how many of those things are out there?"

"What things?"

"Asari."

"In the Terminus Exarchate, not that many. In their Republics and the rest of Citadel Space, billions and billions."

"They're gonna destroy the Covenant." This was a treasonous sentiment, but Ruz spoke it as matter of fact as if you had asked him the color of the sky.

"What makes you say that?"

"It's the Prophets. There are only millions of them. And they're inbred. They need a eugenics program just to maintain their numbers and keep their problems from getting worse."

This was universally known, even if it was usually put more delicately. "So?"

"So, after High Charity wins the war and rules all the known galaxy and is sitting there feeling good about itself, here come billions and billions of subject Asari. The Prophets will have children with them. There will be many half-Asari, half San-Shyuum children. Inevitable as gravity. The San-Shyuum fathers will give their good jobs to their Asari daughters, and the caste system will go to pieces."

It was an interesting point. I argued against it less out of conviction than to order to think things through. "Asari children aren't 'half-alien,' not really. Asari with San-Shyuum fathers will still be only Asari. The Prophets will probably be fine denying their daughters leadership positions. For the sake of the caste system, as you say."

"For a time. Not forever. And the Asari have time. The segregation that is the base of this empire will erode and vanish. The whole structure will crumble down."

"You're very calm about this."

"It won't happen suddenly. I will not live to see it. You will not see it. But Valzeshia may live to see it." He hissed quietly. He had managed to unnerve himself. "I'll bet she sees it now."