Blood of a Thousand Stars Read online

  “How will you neutralize a neutral moon? More armed forces will only mean greater tensions. More violence. And air travel has been restricted—”

  “Then I will unrestrict it.” Rhee’s voice crested to a shout. She felt the anger dissolving everything inside and out. “That place was our home. For years. The people on that moon, they were family—”

  “Do not lecture me about family.” The Tai looked at her with a depth in her eyes that rooted Rhee to the floor. “And think twice before you choose to yell at me.”

  Rhee bowed her head. “Tai Reyanna . . .” She trailed off, unsure how to structure an apology when she had so much to be sorry for. Her outburst wasn’t just embarrassing; it was unfit for an empress. “I dishonor myself. I take your mentorship for granted.”

  Tai Reyanna took Rhee’s hands in her own. “I know you’re worried about the people on Nau Fruma. About Julian. But we’re not yet certain if he can be trusted . . .”

  It was a conversation they’d danced around before. Tai Reyanna hadn’t approved of Rhee reaching out to Julian in the first place. She hadn’t said why, and she didn’t have to. Rhee had considered and refused the possibility that Julian had been working with his father all along, that he might have been a traitor too.

  Heat flushed through Rhee; she shook her head. “It’s not just about him. The Nau Frumans need to know that I’m going to protect them.”

  On the holos, another explosion shook Nau Fruma, and the tiny sliver of calm she’d found slipped away. There on the projected image was the violence Nero’s hand had reaped. Did he enjoy his cruelty? Did he take pleasure in treating lives as if they were expendable?

  Rhee slipped her hands out of her Tai’s, trying to silence the panic that was making her ears burn and her head spin. “Does Dahlen know?”

  She’d have to find him in this enormous palace. He’d gone off with the Fisherman to scout the property and discuss security detail, his favorite subject as of late. It had been a shock to find that all the servants who’d worked for her family and stayed through Regent Seotra’s reign had abandoned the palace. Either they’d been scared off or paid, maybe lured by Nero’s promises—but it was a slap in the face, and a further reminder that the Rose of the Galaxy wasn’t as precious as she’d once been.

  Rhee hastily shoved one foot in her boot and then the other. “I’m going to find Dahlen.” They’d need a plan. She wouldn’t sit here moping, feeling sorry for herself.

  Rhee raced through the palace as Tai Reyanna called after her. The familiar twists and turns, the feel of the elaborate woven rug underneath her, even the smell reminded her of her childhood. But instead of the bustling energy, the warmth, the interplanetary dignitaries that had filled it with music and company, there was only an eerie silence throughout the halls. In it, an organic memory rose up, and Rhee heard Joss’s voice taunting her with its echo.

  Come and find me, Joss had called once when Rhee went to chase her. So many years she’d spent chasing the sister who wanted nothing to do with her. Who called her a baby, taunted her. Even now her sister’s voice flooded Rhee from every direction, driving her mad. She was inept; she’d never be enough; she’d never find her. She couldn’t keep up with Joss then, and she couldn’t keep up with Nero now.

  She hadn’t been raised to rule. She wasn’t meant for it. That was Josselyn’s role. But the very person Rhee needed most in the world, the one she’d publicly begged to come home, hadn’t appeared. Was she lost or in danger? Or was it the case that Joss didn’t want to come forward? Maybe she was smart enough to know what Rhee was only now just learning: Being empress was thankless, hopeless, and it was best to quit before you even started.

  It was such a cowardly thing to think—of her sister, and of her role as empress. She dishonored her father’s legacy, and Rhee felt the shame burn its way through the surface of her skin, mar her face, her features, so that she would wear it for everyone to see. Maybe everyone saw it already.

  When the hallway forked, she made a right, prompting a voice behind her to tsk. It was close. Too close. Rhee spun around startled, kicking the arc of a roundhouse—but a Fontisian girl slipped backward, just out of Rhee’s reach. Rhee recognized her at once: She had been standing on the steps when Rhee arrived—the one with the yellow-and-orange eyes.

  Now, she was wearing a dark tunic that squared at her shoulders, like many others of the Fontisian order did. Her blonde braid was now coiled in a bun.

  “Who are you? Why are you following me?” Rhee fired out questions quickly, to conceal her embarrassment: The girl was part of the guard that Dahlen oversaw.

  “I didn’t mean to startle you.” She wore her bow and arrow strapped to her back. Her ears were slightly pointed, like Dahlen’s. “I’m Lahna.”

  Rhee straightened up, smoothing her dress, trying to preserve some semblance of dignity. “You’re one of the archers?”

  The girl raised her eyebrows, so light they were nearly white. She gestured to the bow behind her. “Does it not appear so?”

  The gesture felt familiar. Then Rhee remembered she had seen Lahna on Erawae too: She had been sparring in the courtyard when Rhee had met with the Fontisian Elder, Escov. He’d revealed that Josselyn was still alive. That the order had helped hide her—so thoroughly that even they didn’t know where Joss had gone.

  “Where’s Dahlen? We’ll have to arrange for aid to Nau Fruma. There’s been—”

  “A bombing. I know.” The girl pivoted on her heel and began to walk away. “I’m not to delay.” If it was an invitation, it was hardly a compelling one. Still, Rhee followed.

  “Where are we going?” she asked, quickly falling into step with the girl. Of course Dahlen already knew. He always knew. There are things he knows, and things he doesn’t know he knows. It’s what Elder Escov had told Rhee on Erawae—that Dahlen had some critical piece of information and kept it hidden deep within, even from himself.

  “The north wing study, which Dahlen has turned into a strategy room. He’s arranging for aid to the moon. He set up a briefing as soon as we heard of the bombings,” she said, her eyes panning left and right as they walked briskly down the hall.

  “Good,” Rhee said. Dahlen understood her. Movement, action, strategy. But something irked her, tugged at the edge of her nerves. “And how long ago did the situation room and Dahlen’s strategy come together?”

  “I can’t decipher your real question, Empress. Please oblige me and ask it outright.”

  “Aren’t you the same kind of charming as Dahlen,” Rhee shot back, “which is to say, not at all.” She immediately regretted firing back, if only because she wore her embarrassment on her sleeve.

  Lahna smiled, as if satisfied with Rhee’s reaction. Ancestors. Who cared what this girl thought? It was true there was a deeper, veiled question. She’d become empress to take control of her destiny, and that of her planet. And yet since the very second she’d stepped into the role, things were constantly done for her—without her input. She was as powerless as she’d always been.

  “What I meant to ask,” Rhee stated evenly, in her best diplomat’s voice, “is if Dahlen sent for me? If he’d intended to consult me at all?”

  Lahna stopped abruptly and cocked her head. Her eyes narrowed, and the left side of her mouth tilted the tiniest bit higher. “Don’t you smell roses?” she asked.

  Rhee was irked by the girl’s misdirection. “What?”

  “Roses,” Lahna repeated, frowning. She obviously wasn’t going to let it drop.

  Rhee looked around and realized they were passing through the east wing. “My mom’s garden—it’s right outside. You can see it from this window.” She crossed the threshold into a guest room. A breeze fluttered the curtains, cool despite the season. It would rain soon, and Rhee loved the hot thunderstorms of her childhood. She moved toward the window, but Lahna grabbed her forearm and yanked her down to her knees. For
a second, Rhee’s breath caught: They were so close she could make out the fringe of Lahna’s eyelashes, see the soft lines of her mouth . . .

  She pulled away forcefully. “Are you out of your mind?”

  But before she could stand, an arrow sailed through the window, cleaving the air directly where Rhiannon had stood, even as Lahna shoved her roughly backward.

  She came up against the wall and gasped. “How did you know?”

  “The window should have been kept closed,” Lahna answered curtly.

  Three more arrows whistled as they cut through the air, and Lahna unsheathed a sword with a speed Rhee had never seen. It was a blur, the metal reflecting light for a split second as she whipped the blade through each one in turn. She dropped to her knees again and rolled right up against the wall beneath the window, shoulder to shoulder with Rhee.

  More arrows soared through. A dozen. Two dozen. White ribbons attached to the shafts looked almost beautiful as they whipped and trailed. Rhee could barely think over the noise of the arrows piercing the walls and the furniture. A blizzard of feathers spilled from the pillows. The air shimmered with cotton fluff and sawdust. The girls sat side by side, staring.

  And then suddenly, it was quiet. The arrows had stopped, and in the vacuum Rhee could hear her own heartbeat. She let out a shallow breath.

  Then there was the drumming of footsteps down the hall, then Dahlen’s voice moving from the hallways of the great palace and further away. She could tell he was outside now as he and his guards combed the gardens. The smell of roses only intensified; they were slicing through her mother’s bushes with their blades, hacking through the growth. Rhee willed herself not to cry.

  The room was suddenly full of her guard: guards pulling her to her feet, guards asking her if she was all right, guards muttering and speaking in code. The Fisherman carefully shouldered his way into the room. His blue skin had turned a shade of purple as if he’d flushed with anger, and the features crowded along the bottom of his face looked puckered and angry. An unlikely ally who hailed from the Outer Belt, he’d helped Rhee disguise herself as a Marked child on Tinoppa by attaching the octoerces to her face. He had also saved her life—and Dahlen’s—by ripping the ceiling off the facility on Houl with a harpoon gun and ushering them to safety.

  “Who left the window open?” Dahlen’s shout rose up from out below them.

  The Fisherman gave the room a sweeping look of disdain. A hundred ribbons shuddered on the hundred arrows embedded in the door.

  “A soon-to-be-dead man,” the Fisherman said. “I’ll weed out the traitor.” His eyes met Rhee’s for a moment, and he nodded just before he exited, saying nothing further.

  Rhee moved away from her guards and bent to pull the ribbon off a nearby shaft. “That bastard,” she said.

  Tai Reyanna pushed inside the room. The tan skin around her eyes was creased with worry as she grabbed a handful of the ribbons. “All the notes say the same thing.”

  Welcome back, Empress. I won’t be ignored.

  Your presence is humbly requested at the Towers of the Long Now.

  Nero’s residence.

  Lahna stepped through the maze of arrows that had pierced themselves into a pattern on the floor. “He’s not very subtle, is he?”

  “No,” Rhee said. “Madmen seldom are.”

  SIX

  ALYOSHA

  HE tried to call out, but the pressure on his chest was too much. Last thing he remembered, he and Kara had taken shelter behind a sand dune. He must have been thrown in the blast.

  Kara. Where was she? He hoped there was magic in the world. He wouldn’t die. She wouldn’t either.

  The pain was unbearable. Stupid. He was wavering in and out of awareness and could hear wailing, people calling for one another, tiny vibrations in the debris that surrounded him.

  He clawed his way into consciousness. Here here here, he tried to call out. Instead he just thought it. Kara. I’m here. I’m sorry. Then darkness took him again.

  He heard a motor, the familiar sound of all-terrain wheels spinning their way through the sand. Far away? Maybe not. His hearing was still shot from the blast, but at least the cloak of darkness lifted. His eyes hurt from the light. He blinked, but all he could see was the blinding brightness.

  “Alyosha!” Pavel’s voice. “I’ve been looking for hours.” Pavel’s ridiculous robovoice that he’d never, ever change to sound more human. Pavel had survived. He’d found him.

  Aly tried to answer, but he coughed instead. His eyes ached from the light.

  “Where’s Kara?” he managed to whisper.

  “I haven’t found her,” Pavel said. “I’m hooked into the database and monitoring the descriptions of survivors. I came for you first.”

  “What happened?” His head throbbed. Everything hurt. He pushed himself up to his elbow only to fall down again. At least he had all his pieces; he went one by one through every limb and figured he could move each one when the time came. At least there was that.

  He lifted his head and saw there were soldiers sorting through what was left of the camp. Debris had somehow made it all the way into the dunes thirty meters out.

  “What happened?”

  “The WFC dropped an em-bomb, presumably to free the prisoners.”

  Aly nodded. It was the first one that dropped when he and Kara were running for the dunes. “But there was a second one,” he said. The explosion was the last thing he remembered before he and Kara were torn apart.

  “A second bomb was deployed by the UniForce over the center of Nau Fruma. There’s now a skirmish in the marketplace in the aftermath.”

  “So who has boots on the ground?”

  “Apparently, everyone,” Pavel said.

  Slowly, things were taking shape: silhouettes, colors, moving forms against a scrim of white. A cargo craft lifted off the ground above the camp, packed so full of people someone was about to fall out. They were Wraetans and Fontisians—people he’d been interned with. They were escaping, thank Vodhan.

  It was the same type of cargo craft he’d boarded as a kid during the Wraetan evacuation, a WFC vehicle. Lots of kids from the Wray had joined up when they first came through. He remembered watching them go, jealous that someone could just leave the Wray behind. Aly had wanted to leave too, abandon that little crap town and leave behind everything and everyone in it, most of all his dad.

  But he hadn’t joined the WFC. Even at that age, he was done with Wraetans and Fontisians, done living under Vodhan’s rules and feeling guilt every time something felt good. So he’d gone and passed for a Kalusian, joined the UniForce instead.

  And now, the very WFC he’d fancied himself too good for had come to save him. It was a sign, from Vodhan maybe. Or maybe just a big fat coincidence, but it didn’t matter. He’d take it.

  “We need to find Kara.” Aly pulled himself to his feet and dusted off, weaving back and forth as he made his way over the dunes. The sand was definitely shifting below him, but it felt like the world was spinning; he was dizzy, and practically clawed his way up to get a better vantage point of the camp.

  “There are aid workers arriving now,” Pavel continued, following him. He might have said more, but they crested a dune and took in the view. Past the camp was the town of Nau Fruma, now teeming with screaming civilians. Aly saw people clutching each other, some with bloody limbs or torn antennae or bruised faces or bleeding gills. But no Kara.

  Nau Fruma had always been a diverse hub of trade and diplomacy, but now it struck Aly particularly like a shaken microcosm of the whole universe all in one tiny marketplace, thrown together and turned upside down, no one knowing who to trust or where to run. It was still night, but on Nau Fruma it never got completely dark, just a tepid gray. The mass hysteria in the streets made it seem, for a moment, like the smoky, dusty air of the moon had come alive with flailing, crying tentacles.
/>   Kara. She could be anywhere in this madness. Captured by a UniForce soldier or in conflict with the WFC or just swept away by the stampede of panicked Nau Frumans and freed prisoners.

  Why had he pushed her like that? Talked all that taejis about her coming back, told her what to do? Aly knew as well as anyone what it was like when people told you what to do, who to be, made you twist yourself inside out so that your own soul was unrecognizable.

  The fighting had torn through the marketplace and, like a storm, passed on to other neighborhoods. The crowds had thinned as people found the med stations that were popping up, or fled, as some soldiers went down and the first wave of the WFC took off, escorted by a blaze of escape pods holding Wraetans and Fontisians who’d been innocently detained. Could Kara be in one of them?

  Aly was cursed. No, no—he was just really goddamn stupid. Only he could’ve messed this up the way he had. It was the second time she’d saved him and he’d pushed her away.

  If he just shut his eyes, maybe he could feel where she was. Maybe they’d come together somehow, through a magnetism he couldn’t explain or describe. A heat, a need, a longing.

  He should have told her when he had the chance how important she was, how much she meant to him—instead of running his damn mouth off. There were a thousand other things he should’ve said. I’ll never leave. I’ll never give up. I’ll never let them hurt you. So many nevers—he thought his heart and lungs would burst from the weight of all of them.

  It wasn’t working. Vin would’ve told him to visualize, but with every second the dread clawed at him.

  He pushed through the thinning crowds but couldn’t find her anywhere.

  “You may have suffered a concussion,” Pavel was saying. He didn’t even know how long the droid had been talking to him, hadn’t realized that P was still by his side. “If you won’t seek treatment I can consult my limited medical databaaaaaaa—” The droid stalled out.