The Faith of Beasts

After the Carryx conquest of Anjiin, fewer than four thousand humans from its billions have been taken to an immense world-palace, and roughly one in seven of the captives has died during transport or afterward. Nearly five hundred survivors are assigned elsewhere across the empire. Dafyd Alkhor, whose report exposed an earlier doomed rebellion, now serves as the human moiety's intermediary to Ekur-Tkalal, its keeper-librarian. The Carryx demand useful work in interspecies nourishment, imaging and gravity-related technology, and enough new children to sustain human labor for assignments across the empire. Dafyd puts Tonner Freis and Jellit's research group to work, delegates facilities to Bastien Korham and security to Llian Andermus, and consults historian Uuya Tomos on education and preserving human culture. Using stored tissue from captives, Tonner's team produces embryos and begins gestating children in artificial lamb sacks without the donors' consent. Tomos objects to making children for captivity, but Dafyd believes that meeting Carryx demands may keep the remaining humans alive.

Dafyd also secretly pursues the longer resistance he had promised. The intelligence-gathering Swarm is inhabiting Jessyn's brother Jellit and carries memories and emotional traces from earlier hosts, including Ameer Kindred and Else Yannin. When the Swarm finally discloses itself, Dafyd learns that his intimacy with the apparent Else occurred through an entity that has taken over multiple people. He recoils from its attempt to continue their relationship. Nevertheless, he later uses the Swarm's abilities to investigate the enormous Carryx archive and finds common purpose with it against their captors. Tomos helps conceal resistance ideas within stories, songs and inherited culture; the choreographer Ver Cannedan studies Carryx posture and submission signals. Research into the Soft Lothark guards reveals that their oral contact carries information. When Tonner exposes the secret, Soft Lothark kill him and Dafyd narrowly avoids being killed as well. Dafyd suppresses the true account, covers up Tonner's murder and opens covert written communication with the Deep Lothark, a distributed identity and memory passed among the outwardly obedient guards. Tonner, before his death, had secretly arranged for the fetus in sack 34 to be genetically his daughter with the deceased Else, despite forbidding parentage inquiries.

Jessyn is among those sent from the palace to survey a conquered planet called World. She depends on a fragile microbial culture to manufacture medicine and becomes close to archaeologist Garral Pär. A partly burned orchard contains plants with DNA-based biology resembling the human lineage, and nearby ruins suggest inhabitants who may be human. After she is abducted and led into a hidden cave, Jessyn discovers tutors Omco and Manta caring for children orphaned by the Carryx attack, together with Corvall, a human soldier in damaged, self-repairing living armor. Garral helps establish partial communication through related language and numerical forms. The refugees plan a rescue by opposing forces while Jessyn returns to the Carryx ships with a cylinder meant to disable their systems. She and Garral fabricate his death so he can leave with the survivors and teach the enemy about Anjiin's people. Jessyn hides Corvall's device in an orchard and shoots herself to substantiate the cover story. Her injury nearly kills her, disrupts her supply of medicine and subjects her to close interrogation by Third Gardener, the Sinen overseer.

In a separate expedition near the war's front, Rickar Daumatin and Campar travel with alien prisoners including the military analyst Vaudai and Campar's lover Ghati. During fighting, an enemy command ship inexplicably fails to destroy itself to prevent capture. Rickar trades assignments with Ghati, keeping Ghati and Campar together, and remains with the Carryx force that is sent on a diversion. Campar, Ghati and Vaudai explore the damaged ship, discovering human corpses among other alien dead and a blackened, mutilated body that later attacks after power returns. Campar suffers grave and lasting injuries while helping the others escape and destroys the biological evidence he collected rather than deliver it to the Carryx. Meanwhile, the Carryx attack an inhabited world in the Jurupe system to draw enemy forces away from the disabled ship. Rickar witnesses its devastation before being placed in an evacuation pod. A concealed fragment of the Swarm uses his body and pod to transmit accumulated intelligence toward its allies, killing Rickar in the process. The Carryx detect an unexplained death-related transmission and begin questioning the humans' usefulness and possible concealed activities. Dafyd learns only that Rickar died in an anomalous pod failure, not its true cause.

With enemy ships approaching World, Jessyn slips away to retrieve Corvall's weapon and sabotage device from the orchard. Third Gardener and its Rak-hund catch her; she kills them, disguises her involvement and returns unnoticed. Rather than experiencing remorse, she recognizes satisfaction in the violence. Under a Carryx lockdown, she opens the cylinder and releases a gray dust that disappears without an immediately verifiable effect. The ship subsequently suffers serious system failures and announces a possible enemy attack, but recovers and eventually escapes into asymmetric space. Jessyn cannot establish the outcome of the other ships or the rescue. An enigmatic farewell is later inserted into her electronic field notes from another notebook. Returning to the world-palace, she finds a substantially developed human settlement with food production, classrooms, artwork and a nursery. Dafyd falsely tells her that Jellit is away on assignment, concealing that the Swarm has subsumed him. Jessyn describes Garral's departure with the enemy and reports her discovery that humans also serve on the opposing side of the war; the implications of their origins and the enemy's nature remain uncertain.

The Swarm, now unwilling to return to Jellit's form, painfully constructs its own female identity, Clae Audin. Clae invents a professional history with Else and helps implant it in other humans' memories using inherited knowledge and pheromonal influence. She joins Brun's efforts to stabilize the protein and nutrient research that supports the newly gestated children. The surviving babies are eventually decanted, cared for by an organized community rather than their genetic parents; the child in crib 34 survives among them. The achievement does not resolve the growing labor conflict. Brun demands removal of Soft Lothark and Rak-hund guards from the laboratories and threatens a work stoppage. Dafyd, convinced the Carryx would understand this as a subordinate challenging authority and punish it lethally, orders two Lothark guards to hold Brun down and deliberately breaks his arm. He threatens to kill Brun for further defiance or failure to attend a departmental meeting. The act shocks the researchers and leaves Dafyd more isolated, although work reported to Ekur-Tkalal subsequently improves.

Campar eventually returns with lasting injuries. Ghati, ordered away on another dangerous expedition with Vaudai, ends their relationship because Campar's near-death has made another separation unbearable. Vaudai claims the enemy is losing territory in five of seven strategically essential zones and that the Carryx will continue waging war even if victorious. From human bodies on the damaged command ship, Jessyn's discoveries on World and archival records, Dafyd and Clae conclude that humanity is involved in the opposing side's war. Clae cautions that this does not make humans themselves the deathless enemy. Records resembling human activity are much more recent than references to the black, apparently death-resistant attackers. She speculates that the latter could be transmissible, nonconscious instructions able to make many kinds of host bodies into soldiers, rather than a single biological species. Her hypothesis, which raises hopes that something like the Swarm may exist elsewhere, is unproven. Dafyd remains focused on finding a channel to the enemy and coordinating an assault on the Sovran. Clae says she sent an earlier intelligence packet but cannot repeat its transmission method or maintain two-way contact.

A pivotal event overturns Dafyd's strategy. Surur-Tlassen, the Sovran's regulator-librarian, witnesses a daughter kill and replace her mother in a formal succession battle. Surur then loses its old role and becomes one of the remnants attached to the private creche. Ekur-Tkalal treats the new Sovran's proclamation as routine and tells Dafyd that it changes nothing about human duties. Investigating the implications, Dafyd learns from the Deep Lothark that the Epikainot destroyed the Carryx's original homeworld, including its Sovran, using a weapon that dissolved the planet's crust. Yet the empire survived: hundreds of world-palaces maintain private creches with successor rulers ready, and power shifted elsewhere without serious interruption. Clae checks the archive and confirms the near-seamless substitutions. In a meeting with Jessyn, Campar and Tomos, Dafyd explains why killing one Sovran or taking one palace will not destroy the empire. Jessyn proposes striking every potential successor; Campar considers that infeasible and raises the possibility of accepting permanent subjugation. Tomos urges resistance that can be passed to future generations. Dafyd refuses to give up, then finds limited comfort feeding a newborn, the girl in crib 34, at the nursery. He recognizes his mistaken assumption that a Sovran is an indispensable hive queen. The Carryx preserve unity under one Sovran precisely because the individual ruler is replaceable. The novel ends Dafyd's story with a new, still untested question: what if there were two Sovrans?

In the coda, Garral is being held by the enemy forces he accompanied. His interrogator Carlon shows him a recognizable hallway near the human quarters of the Carryx world-palace, captured in an image sent through a secure protocol during a recent battle. Garral confirms where it is but does not know who sent it; Carlon says the enemy does not know either. Carlon begins questioning him about Anjiin. The image demonstrates that information from the palace reached the opposing side, but the sender, method and any future two-way contact remain unresolved. Six short Part introductions separately recount a myth from Myths of Origin, edited by Uuya Tomos, in which Ke guides the great bird Ash-Abbé to carry refugees to Anjiin and then remains with it to protect them. These are attributed framing stories, not independently confirmed events in the novel's historical chronology.