by Ella Young
KNIGHT
Ella Young
Copyright © 2019 Ella Young
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 9781689811606
To AO3 and FF.N,
For giving me my first writing platforms
CHAPTER ONE
Roirse, the capital city of Valiant’s northeastern continent, was home to many extraordinary things. Its builders had constructed the metropolis within one of the planet's deepest canyons, and it boasted the most exhaustive public transport system on the planet, spanning the hundreds of different levels within the city. The Cradle’s largest primary signumaria was located within Roirse, perched atop the northern plateau, and the temple built around it was renowned for its advanced medical research. Beside the temple was the Royal House, holding the palace of the Heir and the Representative Council Chambers. Set deep within the canyon itself were massive buildings that rose a mile in the air, to the lip of canyon. These structures, built of reflective glass and twisting helite beams, directed sunlight into the depths by day and mirrored the stars and Valiant’s three moons by night. The metropolis's name meant “Grand City” in the local tongue, and on the outside, it lived up to its reputation.
But there were two sides to everything, and Roirse was no different. Down at the canyon’s floor was the Lampless district. Once home to Roirse’s famous markets, it had since fallen into disrepair with the outbreak of starless sickness two hundred years ago. The city had deemed it too expensive to keep lit at all times, and the light that touched the ground was hardly enough to keep the disease at bay. Here dwelled the homeless, the sick, the unmentionables of society. Some were humans and some were stubs. Soldiers scarred by war and helite miners scarred by their work and those who couldn’t find any work at all hung about in the alleys, scrounging for what little made its way down from the upper districts. Many were criminals. Most were not. “Grand City” indeed.
Here in this district lived one particular stub, an avian of no more than sixteen, with emerald scales and a penchant for clothing that came in black. She found humor in the irony of Roirse’s name. She'd decided long ago that names were meaningless. In her lifetime she had gone by so many that the original was nearly forgotten to her. They showed nothing of the person or thing they described. Roirse, for all its glory, was just as rotten to the core as any other city in the Cradle. It was the seat of the Heir but also the epicenter of the war. It glimmered in the starlight at first glance, but the longer you looked the more filth you saw beneath the surface. When the builders had named the city long ago, she doubted that this is what they pictured it would become.
Her parents had had those hopes for her, once. They had given her a lovely name, something regal. Something special. Yet here she sat, stubbed and pushed aside to the worst parts of the city, living a life she knew they would be sad to see. But what did they care? They were dead. Dead and gone, like the name they had given her.
At present she sat on a couch in the messy but well-lit common room of the flat she shared with her friend and guardian, an equina named Vartaz. One side of the room was overflowing with broken parts of various electronics and assorted pieces of wire and scrap metal. The other was filled with ancient glassware and plastic bottles of chemicals that health codes demanded be stored apart from each other.
Vartaz, too, was a regal name—it meant “gift from above” in the equina language—but xer parents were not the only ones to think it a good fit for their child. It currently held the record of being the single most common name among the equina, and it was catching on among humans and avians as well. Vartaz was not a unique or particularly noteworthy name, and as such whenever the avian and the equina were discovered, xe could keep xer name. The avian could not.
“What about Liari Kehui?” Taz said, flicking through files on the pad in xer paws. Xe stopped at the photo of an avian about her age, with scales of teal. The emerald scaled avian leaned forward on the couch, brushing the veil falling from her circlet over her shoulder. Taz shifted to let her see the pad’s screen.
“No living relatives is good. Don’t need someone coming after us for identity theft again,” she noted. Taz smirked.
“‘Us’…that was all you, my friend. You got too cocky.”
“How’d she lose her wings?”
Taz squinted at the pad, scanning the page for the incident report. “It says here she became a stub after a flight accident. A passing speeder clipped her wings. She was lucky to come out alive.”
The avian on the couch scoffed. “If this is what you call luck, then yeah. But she wouldn’t have caught the sickness if she had her wings, I guarantee you.”
Taz gave her a look. “You’ve been a stub most of your life and you’re still here.”
“Yeah, well, my clock is ticking.”
Xe frowned and narrowed xer eyes. The avian knew xe hated it when she talked like that, but living wingless in a society where wings determined everything about your life could make one a bit jaded.
“So? Are you going with Liari or should I keep looking?” Taz prompted. The avian looked at Liari’s picture on the pad. She was smiling in her photo, looking carefree. One could just make out the secondary radial bones of her wings at the edges of the picture. The avian with the emerald scales sighed.
“Yeah. Liari is good.”
Taz clicked off the pad, looking relieved. “Pleasure to meet you, Liari.”
-~-~-~-
Morning dawned bright on Roirse’s Temple district, the highest level of the canyon-built city. The light was brightest here, and it bounced off the pale permacrete walkways in blinding rays. The avian now called Liari rested her elbows on the protective railings of the pedestrian platform and stared down the thousand meters to the grimy floor below. Speeders whizzed through the air, carrying levian and equina businesspeople to their final destinations. Winged avians dove between walkways on swift air currents, many ignoring the designated flying areas in lieu of a faster route. All sorts mingled on the pedestrian walkways, some chatting idly, others with their faces glued to pads. A tall avian strutted past Liari, wings tucked tightly to his back. His face contorted with disgust as he caught sight of the stumps on her back where her own wings should be. Something twisted in her stomach and she felt heat rise to her face, but she had faced such looks often enough that it didn’t show.
Liari glanced at the chrono on her wrist, noting the time. She had half an hour before her appointment. That wasn’t too early to arrive, was it? Showing up early was a plus anyway. That’s what schools looked for in a student. Liari turned to the building behind her, a tall classic structure built into the canyon wall. Its stone facade gaped before her, cold and uninviting. But she'd promised Taz she would try. And xe would be so ecstatic if she actually made it in…
Liari found herself wishing Taz were there. Xe worked in Valiant’s shipyards as a mechanic. With the war going on, xer skills were needed now more than ever. Getting the day off for Liari’s interview had been all but impossible.
“You could just not show up,” Liari had suggested, to which Taz threw her a bemused look.
“And lose our only source of income? Great plan.” The equina placed xer paws on Liari’s shoulders. “You’re going to do fine, with or without me. They’ll love you.”
Liari smiled, for Taz’s sake, but the scars where her wings should be had ached. They ached even now, staring at the door to the academy. She took a deep breath. Her application had gotten her this far. Liari was an exceptional chemist for her age. She would get in.
She would get in.
Liari finally worked up the courage to enter the building ten minutes before her interview. She smoothed the front of her ilhuei, the traditional wrap that all avians wore, and stepped inside.
The building, which housed the Fi
rst Royal Academy of the Sciences, was ancient. The builders had constructed it millennia ago, back when the wide canyon where Roirse was carved was merely a creek bed. The large glass doors opened to a massive antechamber. The polished brown stone floor reflected the lights five stories up, and the once rough-hewn stone was worn smooth by centuries of foot traffic. Beautiful stone arches of the same material as the floor curved over doorways and windows, and artwork lined the walls. It was all a grand testament to the masterminds who had built it, using nothing but crude stone tools. A massive staircase yawned before Liari, easily two meters wide. Its twisting steps carried students and faculty upwards to the actual labs and lecture halls localized by discipline on each floor. Liari had memorized the floor plan far in advance: administration occupied the ground floor, with biology and chemistry on the second, physics and astronomy on the third, engineering and mathematics on the fourth, and specialized laboratories on the fifth. Students of all races milled about the foyer. Well, all races but humans. Many hugged pads to their chests, while others lounged on furniture filling the common area, lost in their studies.
Liari inhaled deeply, taking in the smell of academia. Her heart swelled, but she couldn’t shake the anxiety that plagued her. She was painfully aware she was the only stub in the crowd. Already she saw heads turning her way, heard whispers. Liari swallowed hard and lifted her chin.
She would get in.
With a determined breath, she strode forward towards the dean’s office.
The signs directed her behind the staircase to a surprisingly small room, where a levian receptionist sat at his desk. He looked up, took Liari in, and smiled. It was not a smile that reached his four eyes.
“Can I help you?” he asked in a clipped tone that said something else. You’re not supposed to be here.
“I’m here for an appointment with Dean Novai.”
The levian’s eyes tightened and his odd smile remained frozen in place. “An appointment?”
“It’s about my application for enrollment.”
The levian clicked his tongue and glanced down at the pad on his desk. “Ah, yes. Our Charity Initiative. Have a seat.”
Liari hated the way he said “charity”, but obediently took her seat.
With her ever-changing identity, Liari had never had much in the way of a standard education. Most of what she knew was self-taught from the textbooks Taz had brought home for her. History, literature, and physics were not subjects that she excelled in. They bored her, too tame for her tastes. But chemistry was a whole different beast. She loved watching the reactions between chemicals as two things became something else entirely. By carefully following the instructions in her books she could create and destroy simultaneously. She created tried and true compounds, and experimented on her own. She showed promise. Taz saw her progress and saved every last penny xe made to afford the Academy's exorbitant application fee after Liari’s name change. In the end, Liari had failed every entrance exam except chemistry, but chemistry had been enough. It had given her a chance.
The only thing that stood in her way were her wings—or lack thereof. Wings were everything to the avian people, so much so that the highest form of punishment for criminals was their surgical removal. To be a stub was to be less than avian; in recent years, the physical similarities between humans and avians had made stubs even more taboo.
Almost since they first appeared in the Cradle over two hundred years prior, humans had been second-class citizens. With them came starless sickness, and the deaths of millions. The close resemblance between the species did not work in the avian people’s favor.
"They're almost human," people would say of stubs. Some, mostly Hegemonists, believed the Divari abandoned stubs because of the resemblance. Truth be told, Liari didn't care that she didn't have wings. She got around just fine without them. It was everyone else who was preoccupied with whether or not she could fly. Sitting in that office, Liari could almost feel the waves of animosity flowing off the levian receptionist. Her heart sank further.
"Liari Kehui?" an older avian with lavender scales appeared in the doorway: the dean. Liari leapt to her feet, knocking her knee against the chair as she did so.
The dean took one look at her, and Liari felt right then it didn’t matter what her credentials were, how much effort she had put in, or how high her test scores were. The academy wanted a nice rags-to-riches story, a candidate who didn’t deserve her plight. A stub didn't fit into their carefully constructed narrative.
“That’s me, yes.” Still, Liari would give it her all. Maybe the dean could see past her scars. They shook hands, and the dean showed her inside the office. Liari took one last look at the levian eyeing her from behind the desk before the dean's door fell shut.
“It’s a pleasure to finally meet you. I must admit, we were excited to receive your application." The dean sat down at her desk and motioned for Liari to take the seat across from her. Liari obliged. "We’ve never had someone so qualified to attend the Academy at such a young age.”
Liari leaned forward, folding her hands politely in her lap. Something like hope was growing in her. “Thank you, Dean.”
“In fact, this meeting is just a formality,” the dean said with a small smile. "Our chemistry department head thinks you will be a great addition to this institution."
Liari's heart soared. She couldn't help the brilliant grin that erupted on her face. She imagined Taz getting the news, throwing xer arms around her. Xe was going to be ecstatic.
“Now, we can get you a fitting as early as tomorrow, but I understand if that’s rushing things a bit.”
“I'm sorry, a fitting?” Liari blinked at Novai. The dean looked confused by the question.
“Well of course. For your prosthetics.”
Liari’s jaw twitched. Prosthetics. Her wings. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and tears came unbidden to her eyes. She blinked them away before they could fall. “Dean Novai, with all due respect, I’m not actually interested in prosthetics. I don’t see the point to them, actually.”
“The point?” Novai looked at her with expression that told Liari she had said something completely absurd. “You’re now a member of the First Royal Academy of the Sciences. You must look the part.”
“I thought that just meant buying a new ilhuei.”
“Certainly not! I know you’ve never been able to afford them before. This will be life-changing for you! No one will know there is anything wrong at all.”
Wrong. The familiar hurt turned to anger in Liari’s stomach, churning like a coiled snake. She frowned hard. “I didn’t realize there was something wrong with me.”
Dean Novai’s perfect smile faltered. “No, I didn’t mean to imply that. I just meant…”
“I don’t want to be a stub? Is that it?” If Taz were here, xe would calmly put xer paw on her arm and talk her down before she said something she’d regret. But Taz wasn’t here, and Liari had no filter. “I’m perfectly happy the way I am, thank you. So that’s a no to the prosthetics.”
Novai’s eyes hardened. “I’m terribly sorry, but there is a uniform code all Academy students must abide by. If you can’t conform, I’m afraid there’s no place on our campus for you.”
Liari wanted to protest. She wanted to scream and shout and reach across the table, make the dean accept her for what she was. But in that moment, she couldn’t. She sat rooted to her chair, unable to move. Liari wasn’t surprised. This was how it always went. Not every stub longed to be “normal." Not every stub wished to fly. Liari, just once, wanted to be defined by who she was and not whether or not she had wings. Apparently even that was too much to ask.
So she sat there, staring at the floor, jaw working in anger. The dean waited for her response. The look on the dean's face revealed she thought she’d won, that Liari would relent and get the prosthetics. It would be stupid not to take this opportunity, wouldn’t it? After all, no one this young had ever been admitted. But Liari couldn’t stoop so low.
“Than
k you, Dean Novai,” she said, standing and clasping her hands in front of her, “but I have changed my mind.”
The dean blanched. “You will never receive another opportunity like this, Liari. Not living as you are.”
As you are. Liari’s eyes darkened. “We’ll see about that.” And without another word, she turned on her heel and stalked out of the dean’s office.
-~-~-~-
It was a long walk back to the Lampless district. Liari purposefully missed the pneumobus home, choosing instead to walk the one-hundred and fifty-two levels down to her flat in the gutters of Roirse. As she descended, the clean pedestrian platforms grew grimy with dirt and litter. She wanted to feel sorry for herself, but all she felt was anger. Anger at her situation, anger at those who had put her here. Anger at the Cradle, in general. Anger at everything. She kicked a broken bottle out of the way, off the platform, and listened as it clattered down through the levels until she could hear it no more. Liari hoped it hit someone on the head.
Taz was home by the time Liari finally reached the flat. Xe looked up from the news program playing on xer pad and grinned at her, hopeful.
“How’d it go?”
Liari looked up from her feet and glared. Taz’s face fell instantly. “I’m so sorry. I know how much this meant to you.”
“I’m fine,” Liari muttered. Inside, she thought about how much she would love to punch a wall. She threw herself dejectedly on the floor and rested her elbows on her knees. Her anger had grown and now she was seething, raging at the injustice.
