Amal El-Mohtar

They bring daughters of earth back down to the land of death—but death does not claim them.

Red knows only because Red is patient, solitary, careful. She studied for this engagement.

One spared life might be worth more to the other side than all the blood that stained Red’s hands today. A fugitive becomes a queen or a scientist or, worse, a poet. Or her child does, or a smuggler she trades jackets with in some distant spaceport. And all this blood for nothing.

It is a trap. Poison would be crude, but she smells none. Perhaps a noovirus in the message—to subvert her thoughts, to seed a trigger, or merely to taint Red with suspicion in her Commandant’s eyes.

The enemy is insidious. Even if this is but the opening gambit of a longer game, by reading it Red risks Commandant’s wrath if she is discovered,

But the letter is a gauntlet thrown, and Red has to know.

She’s come to knot this strand of history and sear it until it melts.

her fingers clutching its alloy spine.

Two great empires broke themselves here, each a reef to the other’s hull.

Few of Red’s fellow operatives would have sensed that opposing presence.