Chapter Text
“Thou canst not leave this ship,” the Dálkot had started, “for thou hast seen too much.”
Under any other circumstance, Mahi would have panicked. ‘Seen too much’ generally meant execution. Under the circumstance where Eván had worked a strange persuasion against her death, she felt as if the floor had tilted under her. Of all the synchronicities she’d ever experienced in her life, this was certainly the most impactful of the lot.
“I understand,” she said. This time, even though she was alone with the Dálkot, she felt nowhere near the panic she had felt when she was in the same room as the Dálkot and Eván. Eván’s presence had distorted everything from what it was supposed to be. Without him here – and she mentally apologised to him for thinking so – the world made sense again, and nobody was unsure of where they stood. With just a nineteen year old civilian and a Dálkot in the room, there was no question as to the hierarchy of power.
“May I say something, my Lord?” she asked, her gaze fixed on the metal toes of His boots.
There was a pause of seconds. “Speak.”
“If I can’t leave, then I wish to help Eván – I’m sorry, Tám – to adjust.” She took a deep breath. “He is not familiar with – well, many things about modern B’itá, especially regarding the military. We did our best but we probably missed things. He trusts me and if I am around I can assist in mitigating any misunderstandings he may have of your will.”
“Thou claimst to know any part of B’itá better than mine self?”
Oh fuck. “No, my Lord,” she said, frantically organising her thoughts in a way both logical and respectful. “But – I apologise – Ev– Tám is… wary of you. I hoped I might ease the transition as he continues to see my Lord every day.”
This silence was longer than seconds. Mahi watched the armored boot tap on the floor, and wondered when this had become her life.
“I see,” the Dálkot finally said. “Because this is preferable to the case whence thou sittest in a bunkroom with no purpose for indeterminate time, I shall allow it. Thou wilt wait in the cell block atrium when I return thee, and Alisias will collect thee. Further logistics may be discussed at a later hour.”
“Yes my Lord,” Mahi said. “You are very generous,” she added, because that seemed like a smart thing to do.
“Perhaps too generous,” the Dálkot said. “Thou wilt follow me as I retrieve the first of thy co-conspirators for interview.”
Mahi followed Him. She snuck a peek at His back once, and realised that He was still wearing the robes He had been wearing yesterday.
Voldemort was still waiting for him by the door. Harry also waited, which he thought was very tactical of him, until they had entered the mysterious Room of Requirement hallway before he got angry.
“Where the hell is Mahi?” he asked.
Voldemort gave him a strange look. Had it been anyone else, Harry might have said it was tired. On Voldemort, it just looked like he was annoyed Harry hadn’t come to some impossible conclusion faster – as if everyone were a genius like Voldemort was.
“Mahinkac Petá has elected to remain on the ship and to assist you, Tám,” he said. “Think not of her. She will be occupied with moving into her new quarters.”
“I think that’s very suspicious of you – ”
“Tám,” Voldemort said, and Harry nearly froze, but for his feet, which managed to keep walking.
It wasn’t the misapplied name. He was, twistedly, getting used to being called ‘Tám’ by now. His freezing was entirely to do with the tone, a tone Voldemort hadn’t yet used in the future, but which had in the 1990s – had for all the time Harry had known Voldemort, in any form – meant there was the danger of a curse approaching.
“I have been very patient with you,” he went on, voice barely lightening. “I have allowed you to stall at our continued reunion by distracting me with your friends. I have allowed you to convince me to pardon them for their thievery and subversive actions. I have even allowed you to order the Mark to let you bring too many people into that cell – I did see you had smushed them all into one, do not make that face,” he added, when Harry grimaced. “I have been exceedingly lenient, dearest, in a way that does not match me.”
They reached the end of the strange hallway. Harry realised, as Voldemort waved open the double doors, that there had been no other doors in the hallway, and they hadn’t gone up or down any stairs. Surely they had walked through the space where the ‘questioning rooms’ were located? But no – the double doors led to an open room, lined all over with plants and which even had a fountain built into the right side. To the left a staircase with a deep red patterned rug over the steps wound up to an upper level and vanished into three possible hallways. They were dark, and Harry couldn’t see what was inside them.
Voldemort headed for the steps without hesitating, and with the man’s mood potentially still dangerous, Harry followed him. As they ascended, there was a machinelike chirp, and only after jumping did Harry realise it was coming from a small, dark metal shape that was sitting just to the side of the upper landing and doing something to the edge of the rug. The top of it looked like a beetle’s shell, only beetles weren’t that large.
“What’s – ”
“Cleaning jon[1],” Voldemort said, and wrinkled his nose. Delicately, he lifted one foot and tapped it with the toe of his boot. “Shoo.”
The beetle robot – Harry was pretty sure jons were robots – made a strange blip blip noise and curled into a ball before rolling away at speed. Harry blinked, and it had vanished.
“Now,” Voldemort announced, “we will have breakfast.”
The Dálkot had not, in fact, appeared for a meeting. He hadn’t even demanded Alisias’ presence. After twenty minutes of fruitless and increasingly frustrated waiting, Siti left to attend to her usual work with a promise of hunting Alisias down and pushing her into the app drive’s energy dispersal shaft if she didn’t bring a follow-up report with either the threat nullified, or the next steps clearly outlined. Alisias paced in the conference room until she had talked herself out of trying to message the Dálkot directly, and then forced herself to go get some work done that didn’t involve the H conspiracy, H’s unprecedented access levels, or indeed anything that wasn’t to do with the normal running of the country.
But it was not to be. A summons for her popped up. She was to report to the cell block where she had placed K’ezz and his conspirators. At least that answered the question of where the Dálkot had gone when he awoke.
She went. Additional details arrived as she entered the warpway. She did not swear, but only because her jaw reflexively clamped shut and rendered the noise coming from her throat into an incomprehensible muffle.
Petá was to remain on the ship, and Alisias was to escort her to a conference room that had been rapidly retooled into a habitable one-room type of flat. She pressed her way into the ship map, hoping it wasn’t true, but there was indeed one conference room that had been detached from its usual array and was now free-floating.
As she watched, it vanished.
Surely not. Surely it hadn’t been connected to her Lord’s segments of the ship. But she was having this thought out of habit alone. She could perfectly well believe that it had happened, but the only question was why. Why Petá? She’d already glumly expected that K’ezz would remain on board. Had K’ezz demanded a friend? Requested a friend? Either option was bad, because it would mean the Dálkot had acquiesced to a demand or a request from somebody who should not be able to give such a thing to him. But now that she thought on that – why was the Dálkot even considering allowing K’ezz to remain aboard? Why act as if he wanted it?
It was a question she had had since the beginning. She had been trying to ignore it. She worried it would keep presenting itself to her anyway.
At least Petá was alone in the atrium. Alisias rapped her heel on the floor, and the girl jumped.
“I’m to escort you to your new quarters, Petá,” she said. “Follow me.”
She followed with a quiet “Yes, medá.”
At least Petá fit into the nonsensicality that had formed around her in a sensical way. She was a civilian, and Alisias was the Leften on duty. Petá followed seamlessly along with Alisias and deferred to her body language. She didn’t ask questions or make faces. She bowed from the waist and thanked Alisias once she had been delivered to the room, and the reasonable nature of it all led her to pause, instead of leaving immediately.
“Petá,” she said.
The girl straightened up hastily from where she’d been prodding the bedspread. “Yes!”
“Are you aware of why you have been housed on this ship?”
“Yes, medá.”
Well. There was that.
“And are you agreeable?”
She watched Petá’s face carefully. The feed would deliver snapshots of microexpressions and any indicative pulse or sweat changes, but when Petá answered, she showed no sign at all of either lying or being scared.
“Yes, medá. I am.” She paused, and her expression cracked for but a second as the tattoo on her temple whirled. “I think I’m probably making one of those bad early life decisions, but it’s too late now.”
Alisias’ brain spun to a brief halt. She covered it with a nod, and forced herself to spit out a polite farewell and a warning not to leave the room unescorted before she hurried herself back to the workroom she’d commandeered.
Surely Petá hadn’t asked for this? A fascination with K’ezz made sense for the Dálkot, if only barely, but he had no reason at all to grant any request from Petá.
What in hell was going on?
When somebody said the word ‘breakfast’ to Harry, he had always expected there to be toast, bacon, eggs, and beans involved. Sometimes there would be porridge involved too. Very rarely there might be yogurt. He had been vaguely aware, too, that in the muggle world of the 1990s cereal with milk was also an option, though the Dursleys had not been a fan of cereal – not hearty enough – and at Hogwarts cereal never appeared. The fact that he hadn’t ever seen it at the Weasley’s house had always made Harry think cereal was a strictly muggle thing. His friends in the 3010s had always eaten porridge or cereal with the occasional dollop of yogurt or splash of milk, as far as Harry had observed, so he had just assumed that that was what people ate for breakfast now.
Harry didn’t – he liked his toast and beans, although he’d been annoyed by how much of his ákákát budget the bacon ate up once he could get it. It was certainly far too expensive to justify eating it at every breakfast the way the Dursleys had, so he had comforted himself by imagining their offense.
He had no idea what ‘breakfast’ had meant to Voldemort in the 1990s. Harry suspected that if you had asked him, he’d have concluded Voldemort didn’t eat at all.
Voldemort still apparently didn’t eat at all, for all that he’d gotten a bowl of strange white porridge and put it in front of him. Beyond the possibly-porridge and the small platter of scrambled eggs, however, the food on the table between them wasn’t breakfast at all as far as Harry was concerned. There was cheese and thin slices of some kind of fancy ham, and there was a bowl of fruit. There was a smaller bowl of shelled nuts. There was even a bloody salad. Who ate salad for breakfast? Voldemort, apparently.
Harry had taken some of the cheese, some eggs, and an apple, because those felt like reasonable snacks for all that he wasn’t hungry. This was clearly about appearances, because Voldemort wasn’t eating anything in favor of staring at Harry. If only the porridge had been a normal, oatmeal sort of porridge, he would have taken some of that as well. But it was white. Harry certainly wasn’t going to touch it.
Even if he had been hungry, Harry didn’t think he would have been able to eat. They were in a large room that Harry regretfully labeled a dining room, for all that the table was more a square than a rectangle. There were a whole lot of plants in the corners, including at least two that Harry suspected of being small trees, and an impressive amount of dust and a couple of dried leaves gathered in the one corner without plants.
To get to Voldemort’s dining room, they had walked through rooms and rooms of display cases and handwritten labels for objects that would have better belonged in a museum, with Voldemort assuring Harry that he could have the ‘full tour’ soon – whatever that meant.
A few of the cleaning beetles were still skulking outside, as if they’d been banished before they’d finished. Harry could believe it, and he could believe that Voldemort didn’t use this dining room all that much, too. There was a whole strip of the right-hand wall that was just a window into space, and Harry really didn’t like that. He couldn’t imagine Voldemort liked it all that much either.
He wanted badly to ask after Mahi, and after what ‘elected’ meant when Voldemort said it with that particular tone. But Voldemort might still be in his dangerous mood – dangerous enough to get pissed if Harry asked the question again so soon. He couldn’t have his oracle message hers while Voldemort was staring at him like that, either.
So instead Harry Potter, Prophecied Vanquisher of Voldemort, took a pitiful bite of scrambled eggs and tried to make innocuous small talk with the man he was once meant to Vanquish.
“So you live here?” Merlin, he sounded like a twit. “Er – I mean, I knew you lived somewhere on the Dark Mark. But is this the part? Or – ”
“Dis is my wing, yes,” Voldemort said.
“You have a museum in your home. In your – spaceship mansion?”
A short sound escaped from Voldemort’s mouth as he inclined his head a bit. Harry only belatedly realised, thanks to a quirk at the corner of Voldemort’s lips, that it was a laugh. “I suppose one could call it a spaceship mansion. Da pent’ouse in Ládá ‘as more livin’ spaces, technically, but I prefer it up ‘ere.”
Harry almost fell off his chair. “You have a penthouse in Ládá?!”
“I do.”
“But I was in Ládá! Are you telling me you could have walked by me on the street?!” Harry’s brain caught up to his mouth. “No, wait, I would have heard an announcement on my oracle if you were. Like what happened yesterday.”
“Likely,” Voldemort said. He sipped on his glass of juice, a type which Harry didn’t recognise. Probably weird future juice. “I do not go down there often, so it is unlikely we would have crossed paths in that way.”
“When was the last time?”
Voldemort didn’t reply immediately, but stared vaguely at the space above Harry’s head, like he was trying to remember. “Mm, 3016,” he said. “On Yitá. My presence was required to dismiss the previous governor.”
Yitá – when the Mark had given Harry such a scare from apparating in unexpectedly. Voldemort had actually been on the ground, then, and in the same city. Ládá was massive, but it still felt like a close call. Harry hadn’t realised at the time exactly how close it had been.
Only, maybe not. Mahi’s flat wasn’t exactly anywhere near the governor’s tower.
“I remember that,” was all Harry said. He decided not to mention that he’d been having fun with his friends. Voldemort’s current mood seemed unlikely to take it well. But now he was worried about Mahi again, and he couldn’t think of anything else to say that wouldn’t be confrontational.
They picked at their food in silence for another five minutes – rather, Harry picked at his food, and Voldemort didn’t eat and stared at Harry – before finally, something must have caught at Voldemort’s brain. His eyes glinted. “It occurs to me,” he said, “dat I promised you gender tier-y?”
He had? Harry had to sort through all his jumbled memories of the past two days before he realised where he’d heard those words before. Voldemort had offered him ‘gender tier-y’ in the food court back on the ground, while Harry’d had his coffee and kale crisps, but for the life of him Harry still had no idea what that was. “Could you say that in Ilkas?” he asked.
“Gender theory. I suppose this will be a better language of instruction for it, anyway,” Voldemort said. “The pronouns match.”
Harry was officially lost.
Voldemort apparently didn’t find his bewildered expression offputting, because he pulled the Diary out again and withdraw a piece of flimsy and a stylus that had somehow been hiding inside of it. Harry wasn’t going to ask how that worked. “Now,” he said, placing the flimsy down on the table between them, “I must admit I am not an expert on this in the manner a focused academic might be. But I have enough knowledge to give you the basic overview, and probably to direct you elsewhere if you want more information. Is this agreeable, darling?”
Well, it wasn’t Voldemort picking at Harry’s backstory as a counter-revolutionary – or whatever he thought Harry had been doing that wasn’t fighting Voldemort – or threatening his friends, or forcing Harry to talk about the fact that his name wasn’t actually Tám. He could go along with this. “I still have no idea what we’re talking about.”
Instead of answering, Voldemort just smiled at him, and propped his chin on his hands. “Perhaps it would help to have examples. Take the both of us, for instance.”
“Er,” Harry said.
“By your understanding, we are…?” And he trailed off, as if prompting Harry to finish his sentence for him.
Surely Voldemort hadn’t forgotten even this.
“We’re men,” Harry said, and felt like a right berk for having to say something so obvious.
But instead of acquiescing, as was natural, Voldemort sighed. “You’re usin’ Engklish akenn, darling. Not men. Try to keep to Ilkas?”
Harry was suddenly and keenly aware that he didn’t think he’d actually learned the Ilkas word for ‘man’. He knew ‘person’, and he knew ‘human’. But surely there must be a word, and he must have learned it! Where was it? He racked his brain.
“… Énjamof[2]?” He was pretty sure that was one of the words Issa had used to fill out his fake citizen registration. Harry had ignored it at the time because he hadn’t been able to tell what English word it had come from.
“That is a word,” Voldemort said. “But énjamof is – ah – more for the body. One wouldn’t ask that in polite company, although often you can make some assumptions. I do think that the Engklish man means both énjamof with maná[3]. That’s really only one of six.”
“The fuck,” Harry said before he could stop himself. “What are you talking about? There’s only – ” He double-checked the language he was using to speak. “Okay, well, I’m not totally clear on the Ilkas words for these, but in English I know men and women. That’s it. There’s two kinds of people, right?”
Voldemort opened his mouth. Then he closed it again. He looked at the ceiling for a moment, and then stared down at his plate. Even though the porridge must have long since gone cold and gluey, he ate a spoonful of it, and proved that at least he hadn’t modified himself so much he was no longer human enough to eat.
“Right,” he said. “This will be more complicated then I expected.”
Harry crossed his arms, drank his orange juice, and waited.
After another long pause, Voldemort finally focused back on him. He clapped his hands together – rudely bringing Harry’s attention once again to the fact that the nails were painted – and sat back in his chair with a straighter spine. It was like the Voldemort of the 1990s had finally come back out to play. “Very well,” he said. “Tám, please understand that nearly everything about this topic has changed since – since you were last awake. I do not understand why your friends did not grant you a basic lecture on theory, or at the least obtain an introductory book for you – but it is no matter. I can give you the same information.”
Harry didn’t appreciate how Voldemort was implying that his friends hadn’t done their jobs. He bit his tongue, though – all he said was “Okay.”
And just like that, Voldemort was off.
“The first thing to understand, then, is that there is a distinction between the body and the mind, or perhaps the personality,” he said. “A human’s body is a physical object which does not shape-shift under usual circumstances, and so can be said to be non-fungible. Human bodies also tend to overwhelming follow one of two – let us call them body plans. I will assume you are familiar with them, dearest?”
Harry stared at him. “What, you mean like… like…”
He would not say it. He could not say it – not to Voldemort’s face. He refused to have any conversation with Voldemort that referred to what was between people’s legs.
“I refer to the, ah – lower body architecture,” Voldemort said. Then, thank Merlin, he looked away as if he too were embarrassed. Served him right. “There is no need to go into more detail than the fact that in Ilkas, one would call a person with a flat chest, possible facial hair, and no womb an énjamof, while the person with a rounded chest, no facial hair, and a womb would be a kænamof[4]. Does this make sense?”
Those were really weird words for men and women, but that followed closely enough. Harry nodded.
“Now forget the form of the body for a moment. There are three major ways one can choose to present oneself, and all may be had regardless of the shape of one’s body. I understand that two of them are – let us say, descended from prior expectations for how énjamofs and kænamofs would look, but again, that was pre-gender enlightenment. As they called it.”
“And you’re ‘enlightened’ too?” Harry couldn’t stop himself, but Voldemort didn’t even seem to notice his sarcasm.
“I see no point in contesting established theory,” Voldemort said. “There’s more complicated ways of describing this – I believe the words ‘harsh’ and ‘soft’ are sometimes used – but it is my opinion that for those specifics a book would better serve. I can of course source one should you desire it, dearest, but the overall point is that people do overwhelmingly tend to be either a maná, a nabá[5], or a wamá[6].”
He paused to look at Harry. Harry squinted back at him, unable to figure out why people hadn’t just kept words meaning what they meant.
“And?” he finally asked, when Voldemort still hadn’t said anything.
“I would offer that friend as an example,” he finally said. “Petá. Consider her hair and clothing choices. The outfit she has been wearing during all of… this… blue trousers and the brighter green tunic. She has only a small part of her hair put up and the rest of it loose. These are all generally speaking more wamá sort of things, and her registration record confirms she is a wamá. You are – dear, do forgive me for saying so, but you look like a nabá, not a maná, though if I’m not mistaken saying you’re a ‘man’ while using English would translate to maná in Ilkas?”
“I have actually no idea what you are talking about,” Harry said, and Voldemort almost visibly slumped.
“Am not equipped for dis,” he muttered in English. Maybe he’d meant it to be quieter than it was, or maybe he was so used to using English to say things he didn’t want other people to hear. Either way, Harry heard him just fine, and felt quite smug that Voldemort probably hadn’t wanted that.
“The point is,” he said, returning to Ilkas, “that there are six options now. Anyone can be a maná, or a nabá, or a wamá, theoretically whenever or however they want to. I understand some people swap – I don’t pretend to relate, but it does happen. The body is a different situation, in that you’ll have to be born with one and it will be either an énjamof or a kænamof, so factorialise it. Those are the options.” He paused. “You can choose to switch to the other body type later in life, too, if you really wish to. But that does not feel relevant – unless you do wish to know more, darling?”
“What, so – I could just decide to be a woman one day?”
“If you wished to swap from being a maná to being a wamá, then certainly,” Voldemort said. “Switching from énjamof to kænamof would require medical assistance so it would take longer to effect the change, but it would also be possible. So, I suppose, yes.”
“Don’t tell me you’re a woman now or something,” Harry blurted before he could stop himself. “I don’t – I don’t think I could handle that.”
“I am a maná,” Voldemort said, and then paused for the briefest moment. “I believe I have always remained the same, and I will tell you I am also an énjamof – but darling, I’m only telling you this because of our close acquaintance. It would be a very rude thing to ask of anyone else.”
“What? Surely you can just tell?”
“Not technically,” Voldemort hedged. He stirred his porridge, but didn’t eat any more of it, and fell silent even when Harry squinted at him and tried to silently force more words out.
“Perhaps,” he finally said. Harry leaned forward despite himself. “I – ”
“Voldemort!” hissed a voice from the doorway, louder and screechier than Harry would have expected from such a low, growling tone. “Why didn’t you come back faster? You were gone for too long and I hated it. I had to get my own fo– Why is there another human here?!”
Harry stared at the cobra. The cobra stared right back at him, and unfurled her hood slowly.
“Darling,” Voldemort hissed plaintively, and Harry finally lost his mind.
“Rássælt,” Siti said coolly from the other side of the card table. Vidár shot a glance over eir shoulder at her, and raised an eyebrow. An’anna obviously leaned a bit farther back into the couch cushions, her own hand of cards coming up just enough to hide her mouth from view.
She resisted the urge to turn and go right back on shift. “K’in,” she said.
“So very kindly, why don’t I have the threat report in my infeed? Even just a DM about it being neutralised?”
Alisias yanked the Kot of Swords out of Vidár’s hand instead of answering. “Re-deal me in,” she said, ignoring the squawk of outrage. “Can somebody unlock the henk drawer?”
“Rássælt,” Siti ground out.
“Go talk to the Dálkot,” Alisias said. She collapsed against An’anna, who was already taking the deck back. “I wash my hands of it. I’m done.”
“Maybe H actually stands for Headache,” said Vidár.
“Oh, let it be true.”
“Why do I have to talk to the Dálkot? Why can’t you talk to the Dálkot? You’re the Leften, he likes you more.”
“Does he like anyone?” An’anna muttered, re-dealing.
“And as the Leften, whose job description does not technically involve national security unless the Dálkot tells me so, because my job description is whatever the Dálkot tells me to care about, he clearly doesn’t care! You go talk to him, it’s your job description.”
“I still can’t believe he just let those kids go.”
Alisias gestured at Vidár even as An’anna hid her face again. The angle didn’t do much to obscure her from Alisias, though, and it seemed she was smirking behind.her cards “You see!”
“Your job description is also captain of the Mark.” Siti pointed her own cards accusingly at Alisias. “Don’t you think it’s concerning that on your ship, there’s an unknown quantity running around with the ability to open any door at will?!"
“This is incredible,” she heard An’anna mutter.
Vidár’s mouth dropped open. “What, H can what?”
“Open all the doors. He – he?”
“The Dálkot referred to him as a maná.”
“He can open all the doors on the Mark at the same clearance level as our Lord, and Rássælt so kindly showed me footage of him speaking the security language. You know, the awful one?”
“Isn’t only the Dálkot supposed to be able to – ”
“Yes!”
To Alisias’ dismay, she and Siti had shouted at the same time. Their eyes met briefly, and Alisias had to look away first.
“My report – ”
“You haven’t had to follow the Dálkot around a convention hall full of skittish civilians, deal with him running off with no explanation and coming back with the mystery coffin person, who he then pardons instantly for co-opting an ASP security oracle, brings aboard the Mark, refuses to disclose information about, and as far as I know is currently having breakfast with. And who turns out to have full door clearance. Also there’s a second civilian who is staying on the ship for an unknown amount of time, I sure wasn’t told anything. I have gotten maybe 5 hours of sleep out of the last 36 or some hours.” Alisias folded her cards back into the deck – her hand sucked anyway and she couldn’t contribute to any of the current towers – and went to open the henk drawer in the bar, because nobody else had done it yet. “I am going to get extremely high and play politaire with whoever wants to play. If you want to talk with the Dálkot so badly you can ask him yourself.”