Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  Sun ignored the irritating tangent. “I sent Persephone as my representative to the memorial being held at CeDCA. It seemed appropriate for her to go, since that’s where she came from.”

  “Hhn.” The queen-marshal’s soft grunt was sometimes a measure of annoyance and sometimes just a measure, since Eirene was known as a cunning strategist who never played her hand too soon or too openly. “We shall see for how long this republic has space for the both of us. But for now, Sun, you have done well. I’m proud of you.”

  The admission, spoken so blandly, crashed a shock wave through Sun’s fierce heart.

  The queen-marshal settled an appraising gaze on her daughter, waiting, although for what Sun wasn’t quite certain. But she was absolutely sure she wasn’t about to let her mother see how much that scrap of praise mattered to her. Allowing none of her exultation to show, she dipped her chin dutifully, child to parent, the gesture as brief as the last flash of the solar disc when its rim crosses the sea’s horizon with its reminder, its promise, its portent, of a return.

  She offered a glass pitcher of scented oil to her mother, who emptied the oil over the wood. A laser shot from the queen-marshal’s obsidian eye kindled flame amid the dry tinder.

  The families came forward to set additional fires within the stacks of wood. Heat rose, spreading the scent of sandalwood into the night air.

  Alika took a place halfway up the steps to the platform and led the crowd in the Hymn of Leaving. The sound coming from so many throats was raw with the texture of grief and yet also vibrant with pride.

  Crossing the ocean of stars we leave our home behind us.

  We are the spears cast at the furious heaven

  And we will burn one by one into ashes

  As with the last sparks we vanish.

  This memory we carry to our own death which awaits us

  And from which none of us will return.

  Do not forget. Goodbye forever.

  50

  In Which the Wily Persephone Takes the Last Shot

  Solomon and I sit side by side on the train, waiting as the rest of the passenger cars fill up with matriculated cadets headed home for a truncated ten-days’ leave before they join the fleet. Chaonia’s military has a lot of rebuilding to do.

  We got into this car at the back of the train first, courtesy of not having to pack our things and clear out our racks after the graduation ceremonies and banquet. Solomon sits to my right with perfect straight posture and feet flat on the floor, eyes forward, wearing his performance ribbons and third-in-class award like the star cadet he is. I’m leaning left, bumping shoulders with Ti, craning my head so I can see her scroll mail, a flexible tablet she has unrolled in order to watch a video burned on it and sent by her family. Their situation is now so top secret that no trace of them remains on the net, courtesy of James.

  She smiles at me, then returns her attention to the image of her little brother. Kas is wearing a new cap and new clothes, but what he’s really thrilled by is a stand of bamboo in the family’s living quarters. Ti has an ear-wire attached to the scroll so I can’t hear what he’s saying as he reverentially holds a branch while excitedly describing its leaves to her. Nor do I try to listen in. My attention has fixed on a shelf in the background with ten books set on it. The map is going on a journey, and it makes me itch to think I once touched it and it’s sliding out of my reach.

  Zizou is on the ship too. I can’t get that kiss out of my mind. It shook me. I’m all about physical infatuation. I’ve been down that road more than once, only to discover that appetite fades and then you’re stuck figuring how much you didn’t really like that asshole after all. Or maybe I’m the asshole. Sun’s not wrong about me.

  But it shook me. I can’t stop thinking about him.

  “You’re thinking about him,” remarks Solomon. “You get this melty look on your face like you’re undergoing a phase transition into lovestruck marshmallow soup. It’s definitely sweet but also creepy.”

  “Fuck you, Solomon.”

  “Weak ass, Perse.”

  I just smile. This isn’t a simulation of an exam, but I have a surprise waiting for him anyway, a little piece of revenge. He won’t see my victory coming until it hits him square in the face.

  A flood of cadets pours onto the platform. As they start boarding the train Ti slips off her wire and tucks the scroll into her travel bag. She quickly checks her makeup in a mirror built into her sleeve. People board our car and start taking seats. With my status as a Companion I could have reserved the whole car for myself, but I attended the memorial and the matriculation ceremony in the dress uniform I wore as Persephone Lǐ Alargos, and I mean to finish this part of my life in the way I began it.

  Despite the number of graduates cramming onto the train, despite the Stone Barracks members greeting Solomon and, after a hesitation, me, not one asks if the bench opposite us is free. Nor do they ask why I have a nonregulation silk scarf tied around my neck, although probably they’re envying the clever twist-knot Ti used to hide my bruises because they surely believe it’s there only to give a bit of vogue flair.

  They’ll never see me as one of them ever again, and I never was anyway. Sure, I came by the scores to get into CeDCA honestly, but I had Kadmos as my private tutor, his entire life dedicated to educating the children of Lee House, and at the time there were only four of us in the main line and thus under his primary care. The Republic of Chaonia provides education to all its citizens—it would be foolish and counterproductive not to—but no one would argue that the average cadet got the same level of preparation I did, much less a provisional citizen like Solomon, who had to scrape and claw for every minute of every additional post–standard level course. I’m not sure I could have graduated in the top tier of our class even if I’d tried. As a student I focused all my efforts on the beacon qualifications and settled for a solid seventy-third percentile most everywhere else. Solomon may have cheated by making a deal to get in, but he earned his third-in-class award by being exemplary in every way.

  Maybe the truth helps us understand where we stand. I’m just grateful I have people I can trust.

  “What hey!” Our rack-mates, now ensigns, Hồng Minh Lê Altadmor, Ikenna Sì Alluòyì, and Ay Jí Alimerishu sashay up the aisle and shove onto the bench opposite. But then they hesitate, looking at me for permission. The gesture makes me wince.

  Solomon says, “Sit down!”

  Relaxing, they sit. Ti’s met them already, but she fusses over them, making them comfortable by asking Ikenna about his glasses, admiring Ay’s painted hands, and laughing when Minh teasingly pinches her sleeve with the new surgical forceps she just got added to her multi-tool prosthetic hand.

  The departure chime rings. The doors close. The train leaves the station and begins its slow climb up the ridge.

  I am departing the academy for what may well be the last time. When I look back I see the debris field left by the Phene attack but also the fields where I’d played rugby and the classrooms where I’d kicked at Solomon’s ankles under the table when I got bored. He was my Perseus, because they took Percy away from me. That’s what Lee House does—they take and they take and they take.

  Just then, as if it’s read my mind, a message packet pings into my mailbox. The sender’s symbol is the emerald tree that designates the governor of Lee House.

  “What’s wrong?” Solomon asks, ever attuned to my moods.

  “Give me a moment.” I arrange my expression to something bland and false before I rise and walk down the aisle to the end of the car and into the vestibule. The door into the caboose is closed, and a pair of cadets are leaning up against it, making out. I cough. They startle and then, seeing my uniform which is the same as theirs, shrug and wave me away.

  The Honorable Persephone Lee of Lee House gives them a brusque two-handed withdraw gesture. This time they get out fast.

  Bracing myself, I open the packet, only to be shunted into a direct link to Aunt Moira.

  “Pers
ephone? It’s about time. Now that everything is sorted out, I expect you to come home immediately.”

  “I’m not coming home.”

  “You have to come home. If you don’t start preparing to become governor after me, the position will pass to Marduk’s line. You know what happens when one branch of the family loses power. Our line, and your life, will be sidelined forever, exiled to some backwater terminus. Is that what you want?”

  “I’m not coming home. I’m Companion to Princess Sun.”

  “So was I, once, Companion to Eirene. Those were the most exciting days of my life, although I admit we didn’t think of entering Idol Faire. What a lark for you kids! But then, my girl, I grew up and took on my family responsibilities.”

  “I thought you got imprudently pregnant by Queen-Marshal Nézhā and that’s why you had to retire from Companion duties.”

  “Who told you that?”

  “You’ve imprisoned a royal child, Aunt Moira. Your own child!”

  “If not held safely there, then my child would be dead. You must return to Lee House. Eirene will back me up if you continue with this stubborn refusal.”

  “Gosh, then I’ll have to tell Queen-Marshal Eirene that my father, who as you recall was allowed and even encouraged to marry into Lee House, was complicit in the smuggling operations of the seers of Iros.”

  “Eirene already knows. I told her myself, and I was glad to do it since I never favored that marriage. Is this the best you can do, Persephone? Because now that I think about it, it’s a mystery how Kiran was able to escape on Tjeker. I wonder if you aided him.”

  “I did not! I was choked out.”

  She smiles at my defensiveness. “So we’ve been told. You have no proof.”

  “Zizou was there.”

  “The testimony of Gatoi is inadmissible in Chaonian courts. As I said, I expect you to return to begin your training as heir to the governorship of Lee House.”

  “I’ll also tell Eirene that my father shot Octavian while conspiring with my mother to assassinate her heir.”

  “The discovery of illegal tech and a store of late bloomer syrup in the Tjeker hermitage points to the seers and their Phene allies as the instigators of the assassination attempt against Sun. There’s no proof Aisa was ever anything but an ignorant dupe of Kiran. Lee House is blameless. If it comes to your word against mine, Eirene will believe me, not you.”

  Eirene will believe Aunt Moira over me. The surge of fury and frustration that blasts through me could surely power the academy for a full year.

  She clucks her tongue pityingly. “Really, Persephone, I have far more experience with this than you do. So that’s settled. I’ll expect you home tomorrow.”

  I should have known better than to think my family would let me go. Tears fill my eyes. My chest aches and my throat hurts, and I can tell I’m about burst into a harsh, snotty cry.

  Then I remember that just as I am not my parents, Sun isn’t her mother.

  Eirene built the military might and fledgling empire of Chaonia in a mere twenty-five years after the disaster of her older brothers’ defeats. She managed it because she is prudent, duplicitous, shrewd, ingenious, subtle, charming, violent, and pragmatic.

  But Sun is Sun.

  I dry my tears. “You and I know the truth, Aunt Moira. As long as you leave me alone, and never again try to recall me as Companion, I won’t tell Sun that my parents are the ones responsible for Octavian’s death.”

  My aunt doesn’t ask if I would dare betray my parents, much less Lee House, in such a way. We both know the answer. She fumes, considering Sun’s temperament and her well-known attachment to her loyal bodyguard. Of course she doesn’t know I’ve already told Sun, but that’s not my problem.

  I need to be sure, so I take one more shot.

  “The thing about Zizou, though, is that even if his testimony isn’t admissible, his actions have revealed the thing you must be most desperate to keep secret.”

  “What are you talking about?” Her tone tightens.

  “The Phene don’t care about me. They care about Nona Lee, architect of a massacre that killed thousands of innocent Phene civilians as well as dedicated troops. And who knows what else she’s been responsible for over the years.”

  “Nona is dead.”

  “Sure she is. Which is what makes it weird that the Phene think she’s alive. Otherwise they wouldn’t have programmed Zizou the way they did. Because you know something else, Aunt Moira. You know that cloning is illegal and has been for hundreds of years. It’s so unethical and dangerous that clones are given no legal rights as citizens. Which means that among other things, they can’t inherit—let’s say—the governorship of a Core House. I mean, if the truth were to come out. And just imagine if people were to discover that the queen-marshal herself has married—”

  “You think you’re so clever.”

  “I do think I’m clever!”

  I wait.

  At last she says, “We’ll continue this conversation another time.”

  “No, Aunt Moira, we won’t. I’m not coming home, not today, not tomorrow, not ever. From now on, all communication from you or Lee House will be routed through my cee-cee and Sun’s high secretary. I hope you understand me.”

  I cut the connection.

  It takes me a full minute to breathe myself down and stop shaking in time to the rattle and hum of the moving train. When I’m calm enough I open the vestibule’s exit door window and stick my head out, looking back down the track. We’ve hit the top of the ridge and entered the forest, so all I see are coniferous trees and, floating above them, the lonely peaked top of the Sun pagoda where once there were three landmarks rising into the sky full of hopeful promise. There were once three children—Ereshkigal, Perseus, and Persephone—born from the same person’s womb, and now there is only me.

  If Sun is right, Perseus was the only one who was really the biological child of Aisa and Kiran. But we were still siblings, and that means something in every way that can matter because Resh made sure of it.

  I wonder if my big sister suspected the truth. I wonder if the truth really makes you free. But I do know my bonds have loosened and I can finally stretch to see just how very far my reach may go.

  The door opens from the carriage. Ti looks in with the efficient and never overwrought concern of an effective cee-cee. She has to pitch her voice louder to be heard over the wheels and the wind.

  “Perse? Are you all right? Here, hold on.” She closes the window, dabs my tears away with a handkerchief, tidies my windblown hair, and straightens my uniform. “Why does Solomon have so many more service ribbons and awards than you do?”

  “Oh! Solomon!” I say brightly. “Let’s hurry back so we don’t miss the show.”

  “What show?”

  I lead her back into the car. Cadets eye us as we head down the aisle to where the others are seated. I’m not sure what they’re most curious and keen on: Tiana’s elegant and fashionable presence, my notoriety as a secret House cadet taking up a citizen’s place at CeDCA, or the sheen of a first-place ranking on Idol Faire for “Princess Sun and her Companions.” Ti’s already ordered me a pair of pomegranate-color gloves, not that I could wear them with my military uniform. But on the other hand, I’m a Companion. We make our own style.

  I wave Tiana in to the window seat and sit facing my rack-mates with a smile.

  “That smile bodes trouble,” says Solomon.

  I look down to the forward end of the car as its connecting door opens. Solomon follows my gaze. He stiffens with shock and awe as his aunt Naomi appears. She heads down the aisle toward us.

  “Oh no way. I thought she was gone already.”

  I point at him with a two-fingered shooting gesture. “You are so dead, Solomon.”

  Minh jumps up to greet Naomi and introduce her to Ikenna and Ay. Ti and I stand and greet her too. Solomon doesn’t move, like he’s been struck to stone.

  Naomi says, “What a coincidence! Conductor Song ser
ved with your uncle Kila in the Twelfth Battalion. We’ve had quite a nice chat. He says I can borrow the caboose for an hour. You and I need to have a talk, Solomon.”

  “An hour?” gasps Solomon.

  “You’re right. An hour won’t be nearly long enough for everything I have to say you, young man. Two at minimum. Come along.”

  I smirk in his general direction.

  “Dammit,” he says to me.

  “Your language, Solomon!” scolds his aunt. By the way he flushes to the tips of his ears I can tell she’s just getting started on what is going to be an epic smackdown.

  I sit, crossing my arms over my chest. “I’ll call that even, then.”

  There’s a lot in his expression he doesn’t dare say aloud in front of his aunt, but Solomon’s not a grudge-holder, not like me. His shoulders drop. His grin breaks out.

  “I guess you learned something at CeDCA after all,” he says.

  He and his aunt head for the back.

  “Remind me not to cross you,” says Ay.

  “You know,” I say, “I wasn’t sure if you three were going to take your original postings or take the chance with me.”

  Ikenna makes a pff sound between lips and tongue. “You’re Companion to Princess Sun. Are you kidding me?”

  “Yeah,” adds Minh. “Why would we pass up a gift horse like this?”

  “You have to call her Honored Persephone now,” says Ti, deadpan.

  “No, you don’t,” I say, feeling awkward.

  She goes on, “Asshole is an acceptable alternative.”

  “Hey!” I shoot her a look as the others chortle.

  “It’s like we have a full rack again,” says Ay.

  So it is, except the academy is behind us now. We’re headed for unknown territory.