How is it possible I’m still alive? It wasn’t supposed to end like this.
“Rho.” Sirna takes my wounded hands in her own. Her expression’s sober, weary. “There’s something else you need to know. The Marad has come out of hiding. While we’ve been away, they joined the conflict on the Sagittarian moon. They’re arming the rebels, threatening to invade the planet below. We think they have hadron bombs. It seems what the army was waiting on . . . was for us to go.”
“You mean—this was a distraction?” I blurt. “Ochus used a feint?”
Sirna sighs. “We’re all in the dark here, Rho. But right now, we’re going back to Phaetonis. You’ve been summoned.”
• • •
Right now is a relative term in space travel. Lightspeed and relativity, time warps, wormholes. Ochus’s game is far more complex than I thought. He didn’t just manipulate Psynergy—he manipulated us.
He turned our own tactic against us.
Caasy’s warning echoes through my mind. He was right: I was deceived. Maybe I still am.
Time is my enemy now. We’ll need four galactic days to reach Phaetonis, and waiting is torture. I’ve been forced to spend the first eighteen hours cooped up in a life-support pod getting my hands repaired. Apparently, Psy wounds take longer to heal than normal injuries.
But time can be an ally, too. My long hours alone in the healing pod have given me a chance to mull things over. In particular, something Ochus said: Why should I wish for death when the glory of my House will soon be restored? You read the prediction written in the stars.
I think back to the vision I was seeing in the Ephemeris all along, past the Twelfth House. The smoldering mass where the constellation Ophiuchus used to be.
It wasn’t just appearing to me—it was doing more: It was warping the other constellations out of shape. Like they were making room for something.
The Thirteenth House is coming back.
• • •
When I leave the pod, it’s late. The ship’s bell just rang twelve chimes, and the interior lights have been turned low. Sirna’s working an extra shift.
In her room, I pull up some research on one of the ship’s screens, looking for clues about the Dark Matter. I still don’t understand how Ophiuchus was able to destroy our planets with Psynergy—or how he managed to take out most of our fleet.
It turns out our own Holy Mother Origene delivered a lecture on metaphysical time, speculating that it might be reversible, asserting that time is nothing but a mental construct we create to make sense of the physical world. Theoretically, we should be able to travel through time in all directions, even sideways. She was running tests to confirm this theory when she died.
Empress Moira, still in a coma, was also doing work on metaphysical time. She believed that since time has neither beginning nor end, it must be linked in a smooth, continuous circle. In that case, we probably travel through the same points in time repeatedly.
I think about the vision of time I saw in the Ephemeris. It fits both theories.
But if Origene and Moira were both running active experiments on metaphysical time . . . that must be why they both built the quantum fusion reactors. They were collaborating. Were they on the trail of the time-worm? Could that be why Ochus awoke?
There’s a knock on the door. “My lady?”
“Come in.”
When Hysan walks inside, the first thing I want is to feel his arms around me and his mouth on mine, to be embraced in his warmth and light. But as soon as the impulse manifests, a competing one is born. A faction of dissent—the part of me that can’t let Mathias go.
Thanks to Hysan’s keen people-reading skills, it’s hard to take him by surprise. “What is it?” he asks, standing at the foot of the cocoon where I’m sitting.
I look down at the screen in my lap and shut it off. “I can’t.”
Hysan perches on the edge of the bed, leaving space between us. “I’m sorry he’s gone, Rho. He deserved better.”
Tears start running down my cheeks, and I’m helpless to stop them. “I . . . I closed the airlock door on him,” I say through the sobs—sobs that rattle my ribs and break my bones and stab my soul. “I didn’t let him come—I left him on that—I—I killed him.”
Hysan crushes me to his chest, and I crumble there, shaking and screaming and slobbering, and I can’t stop. Then I start to worry I’ll never stop.
The tears can never end. Dad and Mathias are gone. Cancer is barely hanging on. And for some reason, I’m still here.
“You were protecting him.” Hysan kisses my hair and strokes my back. “He had a way out, Rho. He had a skiff, and he was the best pilot of us all. If he didn’t leave, it’s because he was helping others, and he didn’t want to abandon them. Like you, he chose to do the honorable thing. Don’t take that from him.”
I really love the fairness of the Libran outlook. Or maybe it’s just Hysan. His special way of seeing the world makes me want to experience life through his eyes.
Our past and personalities couldn’t be more different, and yet everything about him resonates with me on a level that feels soul-deep. Mathias I’d been sure I liked since I was twelve . . . but Hysan was a complete surprise. Even now, I feel the same electric chemistry his closeness always produces. Any time we’re in the same room, there’s a magnetic pull between us, and my blood craves the Abyssthe-like buzz of his touch. Like he’s a real drug.
“There’s something else,” I say, pulling away from his hold and forcing myself to put more room between us. “Before the attack. Mathias and I . . . kissed.”
Hysan doesn’t react. He doesn’t move away or get angry, he just stares at me in silence.
“And I realized I have feelings for you both. I always have. And now . . . I can’t do this. With you.”
He nods. Even though he’s not emotional, I know he’s hurt because he’s retreating. His eyes are dimming, growing as light as air, until he’s so far removed from this moment that the only visible part of his right iris is the golden star.
He takes my hand and brings it to his lips. He presses his mouth to my skin and whispers, “At your service, my lady.”
When he gets to the doorway, he says, “My skiff’s been repaired. I’m leaving to help with the rescue. Take care of yourself, Rho.”
Without waiting for a response, he leaves.
42
WHEN WE LAND ON PHAETONIS, a full military motorcade squires us into the city from the spaceport. Captain Marq rides with us.
I expect to be taken to the hippodrome, so I’m surprised when we head into the international village. Today, it’s completely void of people, and leftover glasses and trinkets from the festival still litter the ground. My chest hurts just thinking of the night of Helios’s Halo, back when we had a tomorrow to fight for. When the Houses were friends. When Mathias smiled.
A special session has been convened to hear my report of what happened in the Wasp, and I’ve memorized what I’ll say. I’m going to share that Ophiuchus has a master—like Caasy predicted—and I’ll tell them about his plan to bring back the Thirteenth House.
I cross the plank into the Cancrian embassy, following Sirna. I’m relieved not to be in the arenasphere facing the Plenum for this report. After everything that’s happened, home is the only place I want to be.
Sirna walks ahead and leads me to the second bungalow, the only one I haven’t visited yet. The lobby is an open sandbox, filled with hammocks and embassy Waves for guests. The roof is an aquarium, housing various varieties of fish, seahorses, crabs, sea snakes, and even sharks. Sirna and I head straight to the top story—a vast, open-air ballroom.
The floor beneath us is the aquarium, and I realize it must span the entire height of the bungalow. The heavy fabric sky of Phaetonis hangs over us as Sirna walks off to her seat at the long table facing me, and then I’m left alo
ne, staring at Guardians and ambassadors from the twelve houses.
There’s no audience today. No soldiers, no cameras, no holo-ghosts. Just all the representatives who are still alive to attend.
Everyone is glaring at me. My eyes land on blade-faced Charon, who rises. I thought he’d been suspended.
I give Sirna a questioning nod, but she lowers her eyes. What’s going on?
“Rhoma Grace.” Charon’s voice thunders through the quiet, and I flinch. “You have been charged with cowardice. How do you plea?”
Cowardice. The word echoes tauntingly in my ears, the way treason did, when Admiral Crius accused Mom. None of this makes any sense. I’m on trial? I thought I was here to give a report on Ophiuchus.
I catch Sirna watching me, so I lift my chin, determined to act with honor. “Ophiuchus outmaneuvered us, but—”
Charon bangs his fist on the table. The silence that follows has an echoing quality. “Guilty . . . or not guilty?”
I open my mouth, but I don’t know how to answer. My warnings launched the armada. They trusted me. I led them.
But it was Ochus who did the slaughtering.
Ochus.
When I fail to answer, Charon bangs his fist again. “Did you not claim that your Psy shields would protect our ships from your boogeyman?”
“The shields worked, but they were sabota—”
“Yes or no!” shouts Charon. “Did you not deliberately lead our fleet into the perilous Kyros Belt, the most dangerous part of Zodiac Space, an ice field you knew would claim most of our ships?”
“No! That’s not what happened. Admiral Ignus did a stellar job of leading us through the ice.”
Angry conversations rustle down the table, and Charon says, “Perhaps the admiral will testify.” He looks around the room, smug and confident. I’m sure he knows what happened to Ignus. Sirna told me he went down with his ship.
“Admiral Ignus died a hero,” I say. “He and all the others. Someone betrayed us.”
“Yes. Someone did. You.” Charon points at my chest. “You breached our trust, Rhoma. You weren’t ready to be a leader; you were a child seeking fame. That’s why the first thing you did after you were sworn in was run away. Not that it’s entirely your fault—your Cancrian mother didn’t set the best example. You then commanded your bandmate—a Sagittarian not subject to your control—to continue spreading your rumors and win you more fans. In the meantime, you and your lover stole a ship from House Libra—again, not in your Cancrian jurisdiction—and shortly thereafter you wormed your way before us and manipulated the Plenum into following you on a dangerous and doomed mission that you were always planning to survive, alone. We were all just part of your path to Zodiac fame, and you never cared who you hurt, did you? Not even your Guide, Lodestar Mathias Thais.”
Hearing Mathias’s name, I feel paralyzed. There’s a deadly, booming silence that follows Charon’s accusation, and it feels like it’s radiating from inside me. I don’t even hear my heartbeats or breaths. There’s just a vacuum where life had been.
“I’m a Cancrian,” I say, my voice low and shaking, “a nurturer. What you’re suggesting, it isn’t in my soul.”
“Isn’t it true the original plan was for Mathias to pilot your Wasp?” asks Charon, and I gasp. “Yet you went around his back to Admiral Ignus for an instructional program so you could fly it yourself. You’d been planning to abandon him all along.” His voice is no longer loud or impassioned, simply factual. He knows he’s won.
“Why . . . would I hurt Mathias?” I ask, my voice nearly gone.
“Because if he came with you, he would learn the truth—that there is no Ophiuchus. Admit your treason, child.”
“Objection.” Sirna’s on her feet. “This girl stands accused of cowardice, not treason.” Even though she’s defending me, she still won’t look at me.
“Fine,” says Charon. “We have heard enough. The defendant has admitted her guilt. Excellencies, what say you?”
“No, I haven’t—”
“We of Aries find the defendant guilty.”
Charon nods. “How says the Second House?”
“Guilty,” rumbles the Taurian.
“How says the Third House?”
The diminutive ambassador from Gemini hops up into her chair, reminding me of poor, lost Rubidum. “The Third House says guilty.”
Charon calls the Fourth House to vote, and now it’s Sirna’s turn. Sirna at least will stay loyal. She stands, and her voice rings low but clear. “House Cancer votes guilty.”
I freeze, stunned, while the rest of the Houses continue to vote. It’s unanimous. Albor Echus reads my sentence. “Rhoma Grace, you have been found guilty and are forever banned from this Plenum.”
None of this makes sense. They asked me to lead the armada—I wasn’t even allowed in on the strategy meetings—and now I’m the only one to blame?
I stare at the glass beneath me, and for a moment I wish it would break so I could just return to the Sea and be done with breathing. Then I think of Mathias, and I push that wish away.
Sirna rises and solemnly walks up to me. I think she’s finally going to explain what’s happening, but instead she removes the Cancrian coronet she herself placed on my head this morning. I watch her in bewildered confusion, and then my brain kicks in, and I understand what’s happening.
A Guardian can only be sworn in on her own House’s soil—that’s why we had the salt water at my ceremony—and the same goes for stripping a Guardian of her power. They couldn’t do it at the hippodrome. . . . It’d have to be done at the embassy.
Sirna clears her throat and speaks loud and clearly across the roofless room. “You are hereby stripped of your title as Guardian of the Fourth House.”
43
THE VERY LODESTARS I SENT here now hustle me out of the embassy, alone, and escort me across the plank. Then they turn me loose on the streets of the village.
I don’t know where to go. For the first time, I’m on my own. I have no faithful protector, no safe house, no embassy to run to. I don’t even know how I’m going to get off this planet.
I amble dazedly around, like I’m in a stupor. After weeks of racing forward at breakneck speed, I’m done. My services aren’t needed anymore.
I watch the world around me as though I’m not part of it. I don’t feel like I’m part of anything anymore.
I was deceived after all. Mathias warned me to slow down and think things through, but I couldn’t see past my own obsession. And now I’ve lost both him and Hysan—and the respect of our entire solar system.
Suddenly I realize people have started to trickle out from embassies. Mostly Acolytes and university students—those who didn’t set out in the armada. When they see me, they point and come closer.
Something moldy explodes on my head, and immediately more vegetables start flying toward me. The crowd converges around, calling me filthy names that bleed into each other. Traitor! Murderer! Coward!
They throw their dead at me, too. My husband, my father, my sister, my friend, my daughter—everyone lost someone. And like the Plenum, they too need someone to blame. War leaves all kinds of wreckage.
I recognize one of the faces among them—Lacey, the Piscene from Helios’s Halo. Her face is splotchy and wet with tears. “You were supposed to save us,” she says through her sobs.
A thrown flute glass shatters and slices a cut across my cheek. Fighting tears and covering my face, I drop to my knees, as the circle closes around me. I wonder if the same people who chanted my name to lead them days ago will now rip me to shreds.
Suddenly an air horn blares. “Stand back,” says a man’s voice. “Clear the area.”
I raise my head. My attackers are retreating, but no soldiers are in sight.
People stumble backward, shielding their faces, and a few of them fall to the ground. I hear
slaps and punches, but I can’t figure out what’s happening—until an invisible hand grips my upper arm and lifts me to my feet.
“Your veil, my lady.”
A collar slips around my throat, and a golden figure appears before my eyes.
Hysan came back.
“We’re invisible now. Let’s get out of here.”
He takes my hand and hurries me through the crowd, shoving people aside. As soon as we leave the village, we race toward the train station.
The city around me is brimming with energy, but I can’t access it. I feel as though I’m watching and hearing through a glass wall, unable to cross over and join reality. Only when we’re seated inside a train car do I manage to catch my breath. “Thank you,” I say, feeling too fragile to say more.
He frowns and touches my cheek. “You’re hurt.”
The cut throbs, but it’s minor. “Why are you here, Hysan?”
Dimples half mark his cheeks, like his smile is only halfway back. “You’re not an easy girl to forget.” He wraps my hand in his. “Plus, you’re my only real human friend.”
He makes it hard not to stop everything and kiss him sometimes. “How did you get here so fast?”
“Equinox.” His eyes glitter. “We’ve been traveling at hyperspeed ever since Ambassador Frey contacted us.”
“Frey voted to expel me.”
“He had no choice. He and Sirna struck a deal to keep you out of prison.”
We steal into the spaceport, and as before, Equinox is parked at the far edge of the vibrocopter pad, veiled from view. Hysan assures me Equinox’s Psy shield remains intact, thanks to his Talisman.
When we climb aboard the ship, two people are waiting for us—or rather, one person and an android.
Lord Neith sits at the helm, playing digital mah-jongg with ’Nox, while a little girl watches and suggests moves. It’s Rubidum.
“Rubi! You made it!”
Zodiac Page 34
