Bright Shards (The Vardeshi Saga Book 2)

by Meg Pechenick

  He raised a hand to stop me. “Avery, wait—”

  “I think we’re done here,” I said, and walked out.

  CHAPTER TEN

  I left Hathan’s office with no direction beyond the drive to put as much distance as possible between myself and that tiny room. The panic I had been fighting to suppress had broken free, and it raged within me like a wild creature. My breath came in gasps, my heart slammed in my chest, and I could hear the blood rushing in my ears. I had been in a small sealed room with a man who had attacked me only days before. The rational side of my mind knew that the Flare no longer possessed him, but my animal self had been screaming at me to run from the moment I stepped through the door. The worst part—the part that made me feel even more powerless than the knowledge of my own vulnerability—was that I didn’t hate him. I was afraid of him, but I didn’t hate him. I wanted to. It would have been so much easier. My parting words, I think we’re done here, were the same ones he had used to dismiss me on the long-ago day when I had begged for his help against Vekesh. I had flung them back at him in the hope that wounding him would bring me some relief. It hadn’t. The dismay in his eyes as he recognized my chilly dismissal as his own had triggered another rush of shame. I didn’t want to hurt him. Even knowing that he despised me, I couldn't bear to think that I had caused him pain.

  I walked for a few minutes, trying to take deep steadying breaths, oblivious to my surroundings. Eventually my steps slowed. The throbbing in my head and wrist subsided to a dull buzzing. I looked around and saw that I had made my way to the medical clinic. Peering in through the windows that faced the corridor, I saw that the lights were off in the main chamber, but the rear alcove with its two narrow recovery cots was dimly illuminated. I tried the door and found it unlocked.

  Inside, Sohra was kneeling beside one of the cots, her head bowed. She held her mother’s limp hand in both of hers. The sight of Daskar shocked me. She had always appeared ageless to my eyes. Now it was as if she had aged decades in her two days of unconsciousness. Her face was gray and sunken. Fear robbed me of breath for an instant. I watched until I was certain of the subtle rise and fall of her chest. Then I sat down cross-legged on the floor next to Sohra. I didn’t say anything, but without lifting her head, she murmured, “Eyvri?”

  “If you don’t want company, I’ll leave,” I said.

  To my surprise she said, “Stay.”

  “Have you been here since the end of the quarantine?” I asked.

  Sohra nodded.

  “And she’s been like this the whole time?”

  “A few hours ago she stirred. I thought she was going to wake up, but . . .” She didn’t finish the thought.

  “Has Ahnir tried anything to bring her out of it?”

  “He’s afraid to, since he’s not sure what she took. He says the safest thing is to watch and wait. The doctors on Prime and Elteni should have some advice, but we won’t hear back from them for another day.”

  I frowned. “But aren’t there doctors on other ships nearby? We can’t be alone out here. This is one of the busiest regions of Vardeshi space, isn’t it?”

  “There are other ships, but they’re forbidden to communicate with us. It’s one of the safeguards when there’s been an outbreak of the Flare. No contact of any kind until the crew has been processed and cleared.”

  “What if our ship were damaged? Or someone needed surgery?”

  She shook her head.

  “That’s a pretty harsh protocol,” I said.

  “We don’t take chances with the Flare. You of all people should understand that.”

  I sighed and leaned my head back against the side of the cot. “Yeah. I guess I do.”

  “Do you hate us now?” Sohra asked.

  “No.”

  “But you’re afraid of us.”

  I didn’t want to lie to her. “Yes,” I said. In my mind I heard Hathan’s voice. You should have been afraid of me all along.

  “And you’re leaving.”

  I turned my head to look at her. “How did you know that?”

  “It’s what I’d do. We said we’d keep you safe, and we haven’t.”

  “There was always a risk.” Even as I said the words, I wondered why I felt the need to say them.

  “Anyway, Earth is bound to recall you after they hear about this. How could they not? That’s twice now you’ve almost been killed. Two different commanders. They’re not going to give us a third chance.”

  That possibility hadn’t occurred to me. I had been assuming that, even if the Echelon rerouted us to Elteni for processing as Reyna had predicted, one of their ships would take me the remainder of the way to Vardesh Prime. The Council hadn’t factored into my thoughts at all. Was Sohra right? Would Earth pull me back now, a scant month from my destination? They knew nothing of the Flare. Would they be able to see anything past the fact that a second Vardeshi commander had tried to kill me and nearly succeeded? Did the fact that he had been infected with a mysterious disease at the time make the picture better or worse? Finishing my journey on an Echelon vessel would be anticlimactic, but it would still be better than being turned back like an Everest climber within a few steps of the summit.

  After a pause Sohra asked, “Do you think this will be the end of the alliance?”

  I remembered Reyna’s matter-of-fact assertion that even if Vekesh had killed me, it would only have slowed things down a little. “No. But I think it’s probably the end of the exchange for all of us.”

  There was a longer silence. Finally she said, “You know, I really did want to see Earth.”

  Awkwardly I shifted onto my knees and put my arm around her. She didn’t let go of her mother’s hand, but she rested her head against mine, her silky black hair falling against my cheek.

  After I left the clinic, I drifted around some more, trying to avoid running into either Reyna or Hathan, although I had calmed down sufficiently to recognize that my abrupt exit had left a number of issues unresolved. Sooner or later I was going to have to face one of them, if only to find out whether I was still a member of the Ascendant’s crew. Which would be worse, going through the daily round of my novi duties while resolutely avoiding Hathan’s eyes, or idling in my quarters as a passenger? I wasn’t sure. The excruciating awkwardness of the first scenario probably trumped the boredom of the second. But I had spent two long weeks on the Pinion sequestered away from my friends, and on the whole I thought I would rather be uncomfortable than lonely.

  I had wandered as far as hydroponics, which was no longer a forbidden zone, though only a handful of the edible plants within had been approved for human consumption. I walked along one narrow row and then another with no real aim in mind except to breathe air perfumed by growing things. I heard Sohra’s question again in my mind. Do you hate us now? I had answered honestly, or I thought I had. But now I started to doubt myself. Could a question of that magnitude be reduced to a simple yes or no? I didn’t think I had it in me to hate the Vardeshi. I had given them too much of myself. But I was disappointed in them. Growing up in the years of their silence, I had imagined them as enlightened, cerebral, inhabiting a realm of celestial calm to which humanity could only aspire. When they had come into my life for real, I had seen the hundred tiny ways in which my fantasy was flawed. But that benevolence, their defining quality in my eyes, had been real. Vekesh’s betrayal and the revelation of the anti-alliance factions had shaken my faith in them, but it hadn’t destroyed it. I was only too conscious of humanity’s failings. What right-thinking civilized race would want to prolong its acquaintance with us?

  Now, however, everything was different. The ground had shifted under my feet. The Flare had uncovered a current of violence as dark and potent as any that ran through human veins. The Vardeshi weren’t angels or emissaries. They were guilty of the same bigotry and malice as we were; they just hid it better. And it wasn’t only in the abstract that they had fallen short of my vision of them. I was still reeling from the knowledge of Hathan�
�s true feelings toward me, but he wasn’t the only one who had been indicted. What about Saresh? I had been trying not to think about him, but I didn’t think I could put it off any longer. Had I been wrong about him from the beginning? Were the things that drew me to him—his empathy, his kindness, his patience—all lies? And what about the Listening? Had that been just another elaborate deception? If the Flare exposed its victims’ secret intolerances, then the casual cruelty Saresh had shown Zey was his true self. I hadn’t just lost Hathan. I had lost them both.

  The door opened. I looked up to see Saresh stepping through, almost as if he had heard his name in my thoughts. I watched him approach. He moved stiffly, no doubt due to the bruises Reyna had mentioned. I could have gone toward him, to shorten the distance between us. I didn’t. He stopped in front of me. When we’d first met, I had been too dazzled by his good looks to see beyond them. Now all I could see was tiredness and strain. I felt the sympathy rising in me and forced it down. He wasn’t my friend. He wasn’t who I’d thought he was at all.

  “Can we talk?” he asked quietly.

  “I don’t think there’s anything to say.”

  He winced ever so slightly. “I can understand that. I’ve spoken to Reyna. She thinks you may have some . . . misconceptions about what the Flare is.”

  “I think I had misconceptions before,” I said. “A lot of them. Now I think I’m finally seeing things clearly.”

  He nodded slowly. “Then you believe that everything you saw and heard was true. You believe Hathan hates you.”

  “He does,” I whispered.

  “And me? You believe that I hate Zey? My own brother?”

  Tears stung my eyes. “I don’t want to think that.”

  “But you do.” His tone was gentle, with no recrimination in it.

  “I know what I heard. The things you said . . . Those words came from somewhere. Some part of you was storing them up. A disease can’t do that.”

  “It doesn’t have to. Our minds do it all on their own. How much petty, small-minded bigotry does any of us witness in a lifetime? I’m a Vox. You’d better believe I’ve heard plenty of slurs against Blanks, spoken by people who assumed I would agree with them. And Hathan was the son of Novak Takheri even before he was second-in-command on the ship bringing the first human to Vardesh Prime. Our people have called yours a thousand different names, and he’s heard them all. Some of the anti-alliance factions openly courted him after he was posted to the Pinion. And that was even before Vekesh went to work on him. You don’t have to believe something to remember it.”

  “He did though,” I said.

  “He believed it when he said it. He doesn’t believe it now.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “Because he’s my brother, and I know him. And because Zey is my brother, and I love him. I didn’t, though, for the eight hours that I was infected. Those were the worst hours of my life.” He waited until I looked at him, then said firmly, “It was true in that moment. But it isn’t true now. Hathan doesn’t hate humans. He doesn’t hate you. He didn’t mean any of the things he said. Or did.”

  “But he did them,” I choked. Something in me broke loose at the words. As he had done in the past, Saresh seemed to sense the tears coming before I did. He stepped forward and held me against his shoulder while I cried in great, racking sobs that shook my entire body. In that moment I despised myself for my weakness. Saresh hadn’t proven his innocence or Hathan’s in any conclusive way. As desperately as I wanted to trust his assurances, both for Zey’s sake and my own, I knew I couldn’t. But of everyone on the Ascendant, he was the only one who understood what it meant to me to have been attacked, not just by any Vardeshi, but by Hathan. He was the only one with whom I could be honest in my grief. I needed his compassion, even if I failed Zey as a friend by accepting it.

  The storm of tears had subsided and I was pulling back, wiping my eyes on my sweatshirt sleeve, when I heard the scrape of a footstep behind me. I turned around. Zey was standing a few paces away from us in the same narrow aisle. I jerked away from Saresh as guiltily if we’d been caught kissing, knowing even as I did so that the damage was already done. There was no way to justify or explain away what I’d been doing. The betrayal was clear.

  Zey looked from one of us to the other. I braced myself for his anger. To my surprise, though, he just sighed and said, “You’re probably sick of hearing this, but I’m going to say it anyway, just in case the person you need to hear it from is me. Eyvri, the Flare doesn’t mean anything. It’s not real.”

  “Not real,” I repeated.

  “That’s right.”

  “How can you say that? You still have the—” I gestured to the lingering bruises on his neck.

  He brushed his fingers across them. “These? Oh, the attack was real. No one’s denying that. But the feelings weren’t. Saresh doesn’t hate me.”

  “How—” The word scraped like broken glass in my throat. “How do you know?”

  Zey looked at me incredulously. “What do you mean, how do I know? I know him. I’ve known him my whole life. And if that weren’t enough, there are hundreds of firsthand accounts of the Flare written by ordinary, ethical people trying to come to grips with the horrifically violent things they’ve just done. Don’t get me wrong, it was awful. But it’s over, and if you read the histories, you’ll see that the Ascendant got off pretty easy.” He paused. “On second thought, don’t read the histories.”

  I stared from one of them to the other. “So you’re just . . . over it? You’re fine. Both of you. You’re cool now.”

  “No,” Saresh said.

  Zey said, “We’re a long way from cool. He knows I’m pissed at him. But not that much more pissed than I’d be if we’d been out in Downhelix and someone slipped something into his drink that made him take a swing at me. The action is separate from the intent.”

  “It’s not the same,” I whispered.

  They exchanged a look. Then Zey said, his tone surprisingly gentle, “Why not?”

  “You weren’t … alone … He didn’t have … as much time …” I couldn’t seem to find the right words. It was impossibly strange to be fumbling for them with Saresh and Zey standing shoulder to shoulder in front of me, for all the world as if one of them hadn’t, mere hours ago, laid killing hands on the other’s throat. The bruises were still there. How could it be that Zey and I had emerged from nearly identical experiences with opposite perspectives on them? How could he assert one brother’s innocence, and by extension the other’s, with such easy confidence? Hadn’t he heard the venom in Saresh’s voice when he belittled him for being a Blank, a condition I knew caused Zey deep frustration and insecurity? Not since the moment on the Pinion when I stumbled across my crewmates silent and still, immersed in a group Listening, had I felt so unsettled. I said tonelessly, “You weren’t there. You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Zey said steadily, “I didn’t say it didn’t hurt. I just said it wasn’t true.”

  I could feel the tears starting behind my eyes again. He was wrong, but I had no idea how to tell him so. I turned to leave. His voice stopped me. “Wait. This is for you. From Khiva.” He held out a new flexscreen. I went back to him and took it, then left without another word.

  The only bright spot in the rest of that day was Ahnir’s announcement at evening briefing that Daskar had awakened and seemed to have suffered no ill effects from her long bout of unconsciousness. After the briefing, I ate a quiet dinner with Sohra, who was visibly relieved when I didn’t press her to talk. I didn’t mind the silence. It wasn’t in me to make light, incidental conversation. Zey was at a different table with Ziral and Ahnir. Hathan and Reyna sat together, their food pushed to the sides to make space for their tabletop display. I couldn’t tell from my angle what they were looking at. I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  After dinner I went directly back to my quarters. Shortly after the senek hour, Reyna messaged me to ask if we could talk. I would have liked
to refuse, but I couldn't think of a reason that didn’t sound like an excuse. We met in the lounge, on the balcony level, a luxury afforded by the Ascendant’s larger proportions. As I sat down she said, “Thank you for meeting me. I won’t keep you long, but there’s something I need to say. I think you should stay on the Ascendant.”

  I stared at her. “You’re joking, right? You’ve been trying to talk me onto an Echelon ship for two months. I thought you’d be thrilled.”

  “I was speaking for the Echelon then. I’m not speaking for them now.”

  I glanced down through the transparent railing to where Saresh and Hathan sat half-hidden in one of the raised platforms. Reyna followed my gaze. “I’m not speaking for him either. These are my words, no one else’s. I think you should stay.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’ve seen what this ship and this crew mean to you. You would have been miserable on the Izdarith. This is your mission. This is where you want to be.”

  “Not right now, it isn’t.”

  “This isn’t where anyone wants to be right now. But this ship was your home. If you think it can ever be that again, you should stay.”

  “What makes you think I’d be allowed to do that, even if I wanted to? Isn’t this exactly the kind of thing the Echelon was hoping would happen? Now they can say that if I’d been on one of their ships, the outbreak would have been contained immediately, and I never would have gotten hurt.”

  Reyna tilted her head a little, her eyes narrowed in thought. “I think you may be surprised by their response. Fear of the Flare runs as deep in the Echelon as it does in the Fleet. It’s like fire on one of your old wooden ships—an instant killer. Our protocols are good, but they aren’t airtight. We’ve seen our share of devastation too. Every other ship out there right now is thanking their sigils that it happened to us instead of them. No one with any political sense would claim outright that they would have handled it better. The Echelon may think that, but they won’t say it.”