Knight

by Ella Young

  "Our starless sickness ward," Ulahim said somberly. "Only Luminants are allowed access. We have three others on staff; you will be our fourth."

  Knight frowned. "Why have a ward at all? What good do you think a Luminant will do against the sickness?"

  Ulahim put a hand on her shoulder and led her away. "Like the Hegemony, we too are looking for a cure. We have a research facility on Hruna, another resource world. Patients are only kept here for a short while before they are transferred. Our other three Luminants staff the Hrunan facility."

  "Will I be sent there as well?"

  Ulahim exhaled through his nose. "I hope not. We could desperately use your skills here."

  He showed her what remained of the facility—the operating suites, four of them—and the secondary signumaria at the temple's heart. Knight lingered at the entrance to the chamber where it was housed, drawn to it.

  The signumaria was a small obelisk. Only one or two people could fit within it at a time. It was constructed of permacrete instead of helite like the primary signumaria. Knight felt uncomfortable before it and quickly moved on despite the pull.

  Ulahim went on to introduce her to the staff. Nurses and priests alike seemed overjoyed that she was there.

  "It's been a while since a Luminant found their way here," one of them said. "Too many are afraid to even reveal they have the gift." For fear of what the Hegemony would do to them, Knight knew. She'd known too many Luminants who had been there one day and vanished the next, leaving no trace behind. More "volunteers" in the Hegemony's search for a cure.

  Before Knight knew it, they were back at the temple admissions desk.

  "My shift is coming to an end," Ulahim told Knight, glancing at a chrono on the wall. "We will start on your training tomorrow. Until then, I have your bunk assignment. You can meet up with the rest of the new recruits in the mess hall."

  Knight nodded and took the slip of paper Ulahim offered her. She thought about asking for directions to the mess hall but figured it would be easy enough to find.

  It was not. After wrong turn after wrong turn, she finally found her way to the large common area. As the current shift ended, personnel from all over the base trickled to the cafeteria line forming at the other end of the room. Square metal tables with chairs dotted the room, some pushed together to accommodate larger groups.

  Knight stood in the entrance to the cafeteria, momentarily lost. She was struck by just how strange it felt not to have Taz by her side at this moment. She drifted off to one side, eyes scanning the room for any sign of her friend.

  "You look lost," someone said at her elbow. Knight glanced down to see an aquarin, of all beings, looking up at her with six silvery, unblinking eyes. The alien couldn’t have been more than eleven or twelve, given the size of her cranial fins. Her skin shimmered under the harsh overhead lights and she shifted on her feet, revealing the braces that protected her spindly limbs from the intense gravity of Levala.

  Knight shrugged, putting on an air of nonchalance. "Just disoriented. I just got here. It's a lot to take in."

  "It really is," the aquarin agreed. "I joined not too long ago myself. It was my first time off of Nakut."

  "Really?" Knight said, disbelievingly. "Where are your parents?"

  It was the young aquarin's turn to shrug. "They didn't come with me."

  At that moment, a familiar face burst through the crowd, looking more than a little relieved.

  "There you are," Taz said. Knight wouldn't admit how happy she was to see her friend.

  "Here I am."

  "Who's this?" Taz looked to the aquarin girl. The girl flared her dorsal fins and extended a hand, palm up.

  "I'm Toshi." Taz placed xer own palm over the aquarin’s.

  "Taz."

  Toshi looked to Knight. "And you're...?"

  "Knight," Knight offered. Toshi's eyes widened.

  "Knight? Like Knight, from Valiant?"

  Knight blinked. Weinan had mentioned she was known throughout the Remnant. It was just strange to see a non-Valiant—hell, a non-Roirse—being recognize her. “That’s me.”

  Toshi bounced on her feet. “This is so cool. I’ve never met someone famous before.”

  “I’m hardly famous.”

  “Are you kidding? You were all Lhiyrra talked about on the news. The war is far from him. You brought the war to him.”

  “I'm glad I made some noise.”

  Taz grunted, an irritated sound. Toshi looked at xer, confused, but didn't push it. She instead reached back to grab Knight's hand and tugged her towards the cafeteria line, a sign of familiarity that took the avian off guard.

  "We should hurry and get in line before they run out of the good rations. I've eaten too much ravera beast stew the last few days," the girl said. Knight glanced back at Taz, who shot her an amused look as xe trotted along beside them. Knight thought about dropping Toshi's hand but decided against it. The girl obviously needed someone. Levala's base was intimidatingly large. Knight couldn't imagine coming here on her own.

  They went through the line and got their food. Toshi guided them to an empty table.

  "So, what are you doing here?" the aquarin asked the moment she sat down, shoveling a spoonful of stew into her mouth. "Are you still going to go after Lhiyrra's inner circle?"

  Knight caught Taz frowning at her. She sighed. "No, actually. I'm Luminant. They need me more as a healer."

  Toshi frowned. "That's not what you're good at though."

  Tell me about it. Knight thought. But this was the price she paid for joining up.

  "What do you do on base?" Knight asked. She anticipated something small, something easy. Something that couldn't get a kid into too much trouble on a military base.

  "I program computers," Toshi said simply.

  Knight raised an eyebrow. It wasn't all that unbelievable, really. Knight was a good chemist for being as young as she was. It wasn't a stretch to believe that maybe Toshi had a thing for computers.

  "That must keep you busy."

  Toshi nodded emphatically. "I think Ferrao likes it that way. Less opportunity for me to get into trouble."

  "How did you come to sign up?" Taz wondered. Toshi chewed slowly.

  "Would you be asking that if I was older?"

  Taz was taken off guard. "I didn't mean anything—"

  Toshi grinned and waved xer off. "It's fine. My parents are big Hegemonist supporters. I couldn't stand it. So I stowed away aboard a ship and I found my way here. Ferrao couldn't just cart me back to Nakut, so he let me stay. And I've made myself useful. I want to earn my keep."

  Knight intimately knew the feeling. She may not have liked the idea of being a healer, but if that's where she was needed then so be it. She was doing something, at least. And how boring could any job on a rebel faction's military base be?

  As it turned out, Remnant life was hardly as exciting as Knight had anticipated. The first five days of the tenday she spent under Ulahim, learning what she could. At first, she didn't see the point; she was a Luminant. Healing was second nature to her. What could she possibly have to learn?

  "We can't depend on Luminance for everything," Ulahim answered her unasked question. "Healing takes its toll on the body. In some cases, healing too fast can complicate things." Knight thought back to her broken ankle on Valiant. She no longer walked with a limp, but it still ached from time to time. "For the times you cannot use Luminance, you will learn how to care for a patient in other ways."

  This sounded exciting, but ultimately meant she cured the smallest wounds that came in: a sprained ankle, a torn ligament. The day was busy, and she found herself unable to rest between patients. Oddly enough, despite the small wounds, she grew tired. Ulahim noted this.

  "Stamina will take time to build. Come, there is more to learn than this."

  Knight assumed her time with the surgeon on Caesyn would prepare her for what she would be learning. She was wrong.

  The surgeon had his own way of doing things. Under the surg
eon it had always been his methods, his salves. His surgeries were mostly minor, fixing damage Luminance could not heal such as hardened arteries and faulty heart valves. Knight was needed solely to close the wounds. But it was clear Ulahim expected her to learn everything short of becoming a nurse herself.

  He taught her how to place an IV, how to take vitals. It was mostly tedious, and Knight almost regretted revealing her Luminance. She found herself missing the thrill of tailing a new victim, of slowly plotting the downfall of yet another politician who had benefitted from the coup.

  The second half of Knight's tenday was much more engaging. She, Taz, and the new recruits were all assigned to an aquarin drill sergeant. He walked without braces and seemed to relish in the shocked looks this got him.

  "Some of you will never see the front lines," he said, pacing in front of the group on day six. "But all of you must be prepared in the event that the fight comes to you. You will learn to fight and to defend yourself, and you will be expected to perform as though you were shipping out tomorrow. Understood?"

  A chorus of yes sir's rose from the recruits.

  The work was grueling, and Knight loved every second of it. She excelled at strength training and agility, and quickly caught on to sparring. She wasn't the best shot with a gun, but the challenge was nice. She had something to work towards.

  Taz didn't enjoy the drills nearly as much.

  "I can't believe I let you talk me into joining," xe said after one particularly taxing session. Xe stretched, and something popped loudly. Taz groaned. Knight elbowed her friend.

  "It's not all bad. At least you know your ship-building skills aren't fueling the government that ruined our lives."

  Taz threw her a look. Xe was not amused. Together, they left the training fields behind and made the long trek to the mess hall. Toshi found them there. She'd been tagging along recently. At first Knight had found it annoying—everyone needed someone yes, but did that someone have to be her?—but the young aquarin had grown on her.

  "How was drill?" Toshi asked, a hint of a smile in her voice. As an aquarin, she was one of the few exempt from physical training. Most of her people—with the exception of the drill sergeant—were given a free pass from participating. Alien gravity, coupled with the lower density of the non-Nakutian atmosphere, proved to be too much for most of them. There were so few of them on the base, anyway, that it wasn't hard to find other tasks for them. Taz grumbled something unpleasant under xer breath and went back to lunch. Knight laughed.

  "Brutal as ever," she responded.

  Tendays passed in a similar fashion. Under Ulahim, Knight grew more confident in her ability to heal. She would have been more content to be in a chemistry lab rather than administering medicine, but she was getting better at the latter. Sparring was her real strength, her skills making themselves known as she dodged jabs and landed her own blows with shocking accuracy. In her second month of training, the drill sergeant gave her a nod as she felled her opponent. It was high praise from him.

  Still, the Remnant already had soldiers. A Luminant couldn't be wasted in combat. So Knight continued to spend most of her time in the temple. Ulahim seemed to pick up on the fact that she didn't enjoy her work and did his best to encourage her.

  "The Divari have given you a gift, and you have done amazing things with it," he said one day. Knight smirked humorlessly.

  "If this is all the Divari can do it's no wonder there's a new Heir on the throne," she said. Ulahim looked taken aback at her derisive tone but said nothing. That was another aspect of healing that Knight loathed: the religion. They were so intricately intertwined it was almost impossible to tell one from the other. Humans had doctors, the Cradle had priests. Humans had infirmaries, the Cradle had temples. There wasn't a healing facility around that didn't have its own signumaria. Despite it being a military installation, the Remnant base was no different. In this instance, Knight thought, the humans had the right idea.

  Knight made it a point to steer clear of the signumaria. She didn't like what it represented. But sometimes it was unavoidable. The wards were divided, half on one side of the signumaria and half on the other. In order to reach certain wards, it became impossible to circumvent. In her third month on base, she walked past it on her way to the burn ward…and stopped.

  Something was off about the signumaria, she realized. She'd walked past it dozens of times and never noticed, but today she thought that it didn't look quite right in the context of the temple. Then it hit her: it was closed.

  It was no unusual thing for the signumaria to be closed. Upon his ascension, Lhiyrra had deemed it sacrilegious for any but an Heir to enter. Communing with the Divari was sacred, he said. Not for the average folk. So every signumaria across the Cradle, even the primary temples, were locked shut.

  But this was the Remnant, who at its core held the ideals of Ivet's rule. The Divari were for everyone. So why, then, was this signumaria not open? Knight stepped closer, her work momentarily forgotten. The closed door beckoned her forward. She felt an inexplicable pull towards the bipyramid on its door. With one hand, she reached out—

  "It won't do you any good," a voice said from behind her. Knight gasped, startled, and yanked her hand away. She turned to see Ulahim standing behind her. "It's shut tight. No one can open it."

  "With you and your flowery talk of the Divari, I'd think you'd want the doors open," Knight said. She didn't mean for her tone to be quite so hostile.

  "I do," Ulahim stepped closer. "But they won't open for me. Or anyone, for that matter."

  "Why?"

  The other avian reached the base of the small obelisk, running a copper scaled finger through the grooves of the runes.

  "How much do you know of the story of Suhar's children?"

  "Enough," Knight said. "They tried to kill the Heir, and when Suhar found out he had them killed instead."

  "There's a line in the sacred texts, often overlooked. It never makes it into the story. 'And the Divari came to him, saying, "Treachery lives among you. An attack on the Heir is an attack on your gods. You must put a stop to their plans, or we shall shut our eyes against you.”’" Ulahim glanced at her, expecting a reaction. Knight shrugged.

  "And?"

  "How have the Divari always interacted with the Cradle?"

  They haven't, Knight thought, but didn't say it aloud. She knew the answer Ulahim wanted. "The signumaria."

  Ulahim nodded. "Lhiyrra likes to say that the signumaria closed when he told them to. But that could not be further from the truth; they were closed the moment Ivet was killed."

  Knight swallowed thickly. She remembered that night. The chants, the mob, the fear in her mother's eyes. She'd only learned later what had happened to Ivet—executed with xer loyalists before a crowd, xer body tossed off the palace like common trash. The young Heir's father had been among those killed with xer.

  Ulahim didn't notice Knight's sudden attitude shift and continued. "Many have tried to open them since. But when priests started to put the pieces together, that's when Lhiyrra came up with this lie. He assigned guards to every signumaria that he could, so that people wouldn't learn the truth. But any disciple of the Divari knows: they have abandoned us."

  Knight blinked, unsure of what she was hearing. "You think they've abandoned us?"

  "Oh yes," Ulahim said matter of factly. "Have you noticed that there have been no new Luminants born in seven years? Seven years, to the day. And no new Heir, either. It's our fault, too. We allowed Lhiyrra to take power. We let this happen. They have every right to turn from us."

  "Then why continue to pray?" Knight asked, frustration creeping into her tone. This was just confirmation that no loving deities watched over them.

  "Hope," the older avian said. He sighed and crossed his arms, his eyes distant. "It's said that Edaui could still return. We believe she could reopen the signumaria, undo what's been done. She is the Voice of the Divari, after all."

  "Edaui is dead," Knight said bluntly. The Cradl
e had made it clear they would never accept a stub Heir. They'd made their decision and Knight had paid the price. In her mind, the old name had died the night her parents were killed.

  Ulahim exhaled. "Maybe so. Maybe it is folly. But until such a time as Lhiyrra makes it known that she is dead—and if he is responsible for her death, he certainly will—we continue to have faith. The Divari could return to us again."

  It was all nonsense. Every ounce of it. Still, Knight looked at the door to the signumaria, and she felt the pull at her breast. Something familiar, like a feeling she'd forgotten. She was compelled to touch the door.

  Disgusted with herself, she turned away. "I have things to do," she said, and left Ulahim alone by the signumaria.

  Knight finished her work as swiftly as she could, desperate to get out of the temple. The interaction she'd had with Ulahim beneath the signumaria unnerved her and she wanted to put as much distance between herself and the temple as possible. When her shift ended she hurried through the base, away from her work, head down. Outside the windows of the base, rain came down in sheets. Knight could hear it thundering through the permacrete. The weather, she thought, was not helping her mood. Valiant, as a desert planet, rarely got rain, and Caesyn's forests were watered by underground springs. She was unaccustomed to storms and the energy in the air put her even more on edge.

  She made it to the mess hall in record time and looked for her friends, frowning when the familiar faces of Taz and Toshi didn't appear. Not interested in eating alone, Knight forewent the long line of soldiers waiting for rations and instead headed for the main hangar that her friends often frequented.