Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  It’s dusk by now. An inner courtyard with alcoves and paths has been lit in the archaic style, flames burning from wicks set into bowls of oil. The waft of heat and smell of burning hits me with a vivid image of the collapsing sky-tower. My step stutters.

  Ti cups a hand under my elbow.

  Solomon says, “Perse? You all right?”

  People have gathered in the inner courtyard. The air buzzes with chatter about the raid and, spreading like fire, the news of the attacks on Molossia and Aspera. I keep my eyes on the queen-marshal. She pauses to nod at this official and that official and to brush a greeting kiss to the cheek of a Companion before heading into one of the intimate dining rooms. No one stops me as I step over the threshold into a chamber adorned with golden light and a gentle river’s flow of music being played by a musician on a sixteen-string zither.

  What a lovely tableau greets my eyes! The queen-marshal bends down beside seated Manea and lifts her new consort’s hand to her lips for a delicate public kiss. Eirene is a hard woman, a tough soldier, and a ruthless diplomat. But given the way her eyes soften as she smiles down at her bride, I have to grudgingly admit she seems to genuinely care for Manea. That doesn’t mean my family didn’t encourage the match. That doesn’t mean they don’t intend to cut out Sun as soon as they can, given rumors of Manea’s pregnancy. That doesn’t mean they didn’t try to goad the queen-marshal to imprison or even kill Sun at the wedding banquet. After all, Lee House runs the Ministry of Security, Punishment, and Corrections. They possess all the tools to make it happen.

  It does seem a bit like overreach that they would clumsily attempt to murder Sun with an embargoed weapon that killed Octavian instead. Aunt Moira has always been a cautious manager. She likes to keep her dirty work out of the public eye. Yet at the same time, it’s true one of Lee House’s responsibilities in the republic is extrajudicial murder, while the queen-marshal looks the other way and pretends she knows nothing about it.

  Yet Eirene’s drunken rage struck me as unrehearsed and impulsive. It’s Lee House I don’t trust. Sun showed her military promise at Na Iri. If Lee House waits too long, if she distinguishes herself in a way that can’t be ignored, then they’ll never be able to discredit her in favor of an infant who will need years to grow up.

  Chaonians love a winner. It’s what Channel Idol is all about.

  A dozen people are seated around a table laden with platters of food. The aroma makes my stomach growl. Aunt Moira registers my presence with such a lack of surprise that clearly someone already informed her I was coming.

  Aisa Lee—my mother—looks up and sees me.

  “Persephone!” She presses the back of a hand to her forehead, sways alarmingly, and almost tips over her chair, which is caught by an attendant. Then she slumps, closing her eyes as if she has fainted. I know her tricks. She’s waiting for me to run over to her to make sure she’s all right.

  I snag an empty chair beside Aunt Moira and sit down.

  Eirene glances at my mother, then at Moira, who gives the queen-marshal a shake of a head. The queen-marshal turns back to Manea, who to her credit hasn’t twitched at Mother’s embarrassing display.

  “Must you go so soon?” Manea asks Eirene in a slightly breathless voice that is one of the most effective forms of flattery I know, and which I never use because I detest it.

  “I must. I want you to return to Lee House until I get back. You’ll be well guarded there.” The queen-marshal is no fool. That’s how she survived her rocky ascent to power.

  As they murmur a few more inaudible endearments to each other, I load up my plate with ‘ulu curry, sesame peanut noodles, and fried squash. I hand that plate back to Tiana for her and Solomon to share and prepare a second for myself, adding green beans sautéed in oil and garlic. While doing so I watch my aunt look over Tiana and Solomon, but there’s nothing suspicious in the way she marks and dismisses them as hired hands. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s never seen Solomon before and has no idea who he is or that he’s anyone at all.

  “What are you doing here, Persephone?” Moira asks. “You’re supposed to be with Princess Sun.”

  “She got rid of me. Why did you blackmail someone to spy on me at the academy?”

  “Why would we need to spy on you when we knew where you were?”

  “You didn’t know where I was!” My voice squeaks horribly, cracked by indignation.

  “Don’t be naïve, Persephone. It doesn’t suit a child of Lee House.”

  I planned so carefully! Covered my tracks!

  She leans a little away from me, as if I have begun to exude an unpleasant odor. “Oh dear. You didn’t really think you’d concealed yourself at CeDCA, did you? My goodness, Persephone. I thought you the cleverest of the children, and now I fear you are just the most egotistical.”

  Mother’s eyes crack open to check why no one has come to her rescue. She tries a new gambit. “My precious Persephone! Come give your old mother a kiss. Or are you ashamed of me? Is that why you ran away?”

  “Where is Father?” I break in, because I am ashamed of her. It’s even worse with Ti and Solomon here to witness.

  Mother begins sobbing, covering her face with her hands to disguise the crocodile tears meant purely to manipulate us.

  “Manea, could you be a darling and take your aunt home?” says Moira in the steadiest of voices. “You know how her nerves are. Then you can get everything settled as you wish.”

  To my surprise Manea rises, makes a composed farewell to the queen-marshal, and, with an unexpected display of soothing patience, guides my weeping mother out of the room. She is followed by the other household guests and all but three of the attendants: one gray-haired man remains behind with Ti and Solomon. Even the musician hastens out, leaving her zither behind on its stand.

  “Perseus’s death hit your mother hard,” says Moira to me.

  “Oh, please, don’t pretend she didn’t despise Percy. I’m sure she’s just upset because she can no longer leverage social invitations on the strength of him being one of the heir’s Companions.”

  “You have a heart like your father’s,” remarks Moira as she sips from a cup of tea.

  Anger goads me on. “My father? Is he—”

  I break off, remembering I am on assignment for Sun. It takes me a moment to compose myself by imagining I am back at the academy preparing for inspection: rack tidy, uniform neat and clean, standing at attention with arms at my side.

  “Is he…?” Moira prompts. The corner of her mouth twitches. She’s enjoying my discomfort and anger.

  In a cool tone I say, “I thought he would be here too, given the honor shown to Lee House by Manea’s marriage.”

  “He had work to complete and means to join us later. We’ll have to see him at Lee House.” She rises. “Eirene, is there anything else I can do for you or the fleet?”

  Eirene breaks off from a communication she’s been receiving while she picks through the squash, beans, and ‘ulu left behind on Manea’s plate. “Zàofù will have the list. Can you find Aloysius for me?”

  It takes me a moment to recall that Aloysius is Baron Voy.

  “I lost track of him at the wedding banquet, and he hasn’t been back to his suite in the palace,” Eirene goes on. “I know he was intending to move full-time to his compound at Sublime Point. Perhaps he’s in transit, although it’s odd he’s not answering my ping.”

  “Why is he needed now?” Moira asks with the prim disapproval that seems to be her preferred expression.

  “I need him to convey to the Yele League my extreme displeasure at the news that Admiral Manu has defected to the Phene.”

  “I thought the defection was just a rumor.”

  “There was a confirmed sighting on Hellion Terminus seven months ago. It’s taken this long to reach us by back channels. Although I find it strange it would be confirmed exactly when the Phene make a major surprise attack.”

  The queen-marshal for the first time looks directly at me. I can’t say
I like being the focus of her interest, the way her organic eye examines me in the flesh while her obsidian eye measures me by some metric I can’t see.

  “So you hid this one for five years at CeDCA. That’s very good optics. A real citizen soldier, with street credibility. Well executed, Moira.”

  “It would have played out better had Perseus not died,” says Moira.

  “Is there any more news on the investigation?” the queen-marshal asks.

  “Father told me his death was an accident,” I break in.

  Both women stare at me, surprised I am discourteous enough to interrupt, then exchange a glance with each other. Even though Moira was required to give up her position as Eirene’s Companion, it’s clear the two still trust each other. I’ve forgotten how deeply these connections run, because I stepped away for so long. Because I worked so hard to pretend I wasn’t part of them.

  But Ti is right. I was never Persephone Lǐ. I just played her as would an actor on Channel Idol, and I probably got all the details wrong.

  “You and I will discuss that issue later,” says Moira to me.

  She and Eirene give each other a kiss on the cheek, the kiss of trust and reciprocal loyalty. Moira Lee may have tried to shame and insult Sun to ensure her unborn grandchild’s future standing at court, but I would swear on my eight-times-worthy sister’s honor that my aunt is a loyal Chaonian and not a traitor serving the Phene.

  The queen-marshal leaves.

  Moira snaps her fingers. “Come, Persephone.”

  The inner courtyard has cleared of people. Everyone has a job to do now that the queen-marshal is riding to war. The five of us make our way at a brisk walk toward a secondary landing field. Moira and I walk three paces ahead.

  “I know you took over the lab to discredit Princess Sun and her father,” I say. “But who betrayed the lab to the Phene? That’s treason.”

  “So it is. It’s possible Prince João betrayed us when he realized he’d been found out. We never discovered where he was hiding, although he emerged as soon as he had Eirene in his sights. She’s always had a weakness for his … personality.”

  “Why would he betray his own research to the Phene? Him being complicit doesn’t make sense. I reject it as an explanation. You know what I want to know?”

  “I don’t, but I sense you are about to tell me.”

  Rack tidy; uniform neat and clean. “How did you find out about the lab?”

  “Manea has a gift for pillow talk.”

  I laugh. I’ve underestimated my cousin, a girl I neither liked nor disliked growing up. She was so different from me I never knew what to say to her, and so we weren’t close even though we grew up in the same compound.

  “Why is that funny?” Moira demands, bristling.

  I glance back. Ti winks at me with a smile surely powerful enough to drag secrets out of the most laconic mouth.

  “I thought the answer would have more to do with skullduggery and surveillance and less with sex,” I answer.

  Moira’s not a smiler, and she doesn’t smile now, but her eyes wrinkle up. “You of all people should know better. How many lovers did you have at the academy? That one, I must say … Jade Kim, is that the name? Incredibly gorgeous.”

  My face is going to burn off. In fact, it would be better if it did.

  Solomon chokes down a laugh. I flash him a glare deadlier than serpents’ venom, but it has absolutely no effect on his smug amusement. Tiana wears the blandest mask imaginable, while Moira’s gray-haired attendant looks bored.

  “I never told anybody anything secret!” I protest, losing hold of my composure.

  “No, it seems you didn’t, because no rumor of your presence there ever kissed the lips of Channel Idol. I kept expecting the gossip to hit, but it never did. Impressive self-control, in that department at least.”

  She’s needling me, and as much as I want to like her for it, I don’t hear any affection in her voice. Resh offered me warmth and security, which is the reason I grew up knowing what love feels like.

  We reach the landing field. A Swallow awaits us. Is it the same one that was sent for me? Its factory-issue voice has a fresh sheen of eagerness.

  “Peace be upon you, welcome, and please be seated. Welcome, Moira Lee. Welcome, Persephone Lee. Welcome, Putra Sì Almari. Welcome, Tiana Yáo Alaksu.” The voice ceases in a whir of distress as the ship tries to identify Solomon in reference to its current registry.

  “His name is squarehead,” I say, because I’m still furious at him.

  But if it wasn’t my parents and Moira who used him to spy on me, then who was it? And why? Why would anyone care about the disobedient daughter who thought she’d run away but really hadn’t run away at all?

  Ti takes the duffels from Solomon and stows them into the lockers, then takes a seat beside Solomon, who is staring around trying not to look out of his league. Putra Sì Almari takes the pilot controls, while my aunt sits in the copilot’s seat. I wedge into the navigator’s chair. The hatch seals. As we wait for our turn in the queue, aircars lift off around us as officials and officers head for new assignments, rearguard security posts, and the front.

  Where is Sun now?

  “Is there any news from Molossia?” I ask, then remember that James broke the lock on my net access. I do a quick trawl, but I don’t have high-end military clearance, and news of the crisis is being censored.

  In fact, Channel Idol has started its Idol Faire coverage as if no crisis is going on at all. The first round’s entries are flooding in: Ji-Na the smiling ribbon dancer, odds-on favorite to win this year’s event; a family of cousins doing acrobatics in the ancient theatrical tradition of the One Hundred Skills; an extremr attempting a sixteen-second exposure to vacuum; an all-terrain race between teams of raptor riders across the badlands of Thesprotis Terce. Seeing the cheery ads and hearing the chirp, chirp commentary of the announcers hits me like whiplash. In my mind, an image of the dead cadet in the lab darkens my vision: the way the blood pooled in viscous crimson around his elbow; a lock of his long black hair come loose from the regulation bun to stick to his bare neck.

  The Swallow takes flight, the pressure jolting me out of the memory. I must focus. We stay low for the flight across the bay. It’s a windless day, and the water gleams, a window into another world. The shadowy bulk of a charybdis swims deep beneath the surface like the family secrets that have been hidden from me.

  “Aunt Moira, I’m a legal adult now. I have the right to the highest security access of Lee House.”

  “I’ll grant you access to the basic security grid once we reach Lee House.”

  In my lifetime Moira has always run Lee House although she is the youngest of the three sisters. It was always understood my mother isn’t fit for the duty. I’ve never sat alone with my aunt in all my life—as alone as this is, with three people attending us—and in the world of the Core Houses it’s almost the same thing. After five years I’m finally ready to ask the question I only whispered to Resh, who told me we must not question the burden we’d been given.

  “Why is my mother the way she is?”

  Moira gives me a candid look. “I don’t know. The behavior started when she was a girl. She can only see other people in reference to how they make her feel. It’s a narcissism we could never eradicate. When she brought back your father after a trip to Yele we thought he might stabilize her. In his own way he does, mostly by overseeing the supervisory post we’ve given her. He keeps her division running smoothly. That keeps her occupied so I can oversee the ministry without her interference.”

  “She brought him back from Yele? It wasn’t a match arranged by the family?”

  “With the seers of Iros, that dubious sect? Hardly. We vetted him before we allowed the legal binding. Well, to be accurate, Nona vetted him, and Nona allowed it.”

  My aunt Nona, murdered by terrorists according to what I was taught. A war criminal responsible for the slaughter of unarmed refugees as well as being my progenitor, according to Sun.


  “I was against allowing Kiran into Lee House, even with the obvious benefit to us in having a seer of Iros to conduct interrogations. Your father is not a nice man, Persephone. He’s Yele through and through. Arrogant, contemptuous, and aloof.”

  “At least he’s always been honest with me.”

  “If that’s meant to be a dart to prick me, know I have very thick Chaonian skin. As do you, Persephone, and never forget it. We do no favors to our republic by bringing in these foreigners to dilute our strength.”

  But her comments run right off me as my thoughts keep circling back to what Sun said. Am I a clone of Aunt Nona? Is Manea? Was Resh? This is not the right time to ask Aunt Moira such an explosive question. Anyway, we have bigger problems.

  “Where is my father? Why wasn’t he at the royal palace?” I ping him.

  “He should be answering,” says Moira. “He’s at Lee House.”

  Neither of us receive an answer.

  35

  In Which the Wily Persephone Is Ready to Move Fast If Need Be

  We put down outside the family hangar. Kadmos is waiting. When he sees Tiana and the duffels the two exchange a complicit smile as at a job well done. When he sees Solomon his eyes narrow. He shakes off whatever he’s thinking and turns to address me.

  “The Honored Consort Manea let me know you have returned to us, Honored Persephone.”

  “She did? I’m surprised she would have bothered.”

  In the low voice he uses when he means to admonish without scolding, Kadmos says, “The Honored Manea has the gift of thoughtfulness.”

  “There’s a trait,” mutters Solomon.

  I flash a rude gesture at him, and his answering grin is all taunt and teeth. At that instant I forgive him. Holding on to my grudge isn’t worth it. In this world we can’t afford to lose the companions who have our backs. Everyone makes mistakes; everyone succumbs to pressures, many of which are out of their control. What matters is whether he would stab me in the back. I believe him when he says he never told more than the most mundane details. The question then becomes: Why did his blackmailer only want mundane details about my life?