Black Moon

by Romina Russell

  I run through my scarce belongings in my mind. Nothing I own has any monetary value save for my Wave, and I’m not giving that up.

  “Here.” Stan tosses something small and black, and Trax reflexively catches it.

  “What’s this?” he asks, holding the black scorpion to his eyes and scrutinizing the red dots on its shell.

  “It’s an Echo.” As my brother speaks, I meet Mathias’s midnight gaze, and I spy a look of realization as he connects this device to Link’s accusation on Sconcion. “You can use it to spy on all communications being sent nearby,” says Stan, and as he explains the technology to Traxon, the Leonine’s eyebrows climb progressively higher on his face. By the time my brother stops talking, Trax is staring at the device almost reverently. I have a feeling we’re never getting it back.

  He slips the Echo in his dirty trouser pocket and then asks me, “How will I reach you when I have something to share?”

  “I’ll give you my contact information,” I say. “But first, tell me about House Ophiuchus.”

  Traxon beams like a pet that’s just been offered a treat. “Before I begin, I have to preface what I’m about to disclose with a disclaimer,” he says in a strangely professional tone. It sounds like he’s reading from a script he knows by heart. “There’s been a lot of debate and dissent in the study of the Thirteenth House, so the facts I’m about to share are based on my research and what I believe to be true.”

  His shift into host persona is so sudden that I’m distracted enough to almost forget to hate him. “Based on what we believe about Ophiuchans’ biological makeup, we suspect they lived in a marshy world, a planet filled with poisonous plants and lethal wildlife—”

  “What do you know about the people?” I ask impatiently.

  “The majority of 13’s members agree Ophiuchus most likely represented Unity. At their best, Ophiuchans were thought to have been spirited, magnetic, compassionate, and clever; at their worst, they were jealous, power hungry, and temperamental. Physically, the House had the greatest diversity of the Zodiac—skin, hair, and eye color spanned the full range of the spectrum. And when they entered puberty, Ophiuchans developed scaly skin that protected them from some creatures’ bites and dangerous natural elements.”

  Corinthe’s reptilian voice slithers through my thoughts, and a slow chill ripples down my spine. What if the molting process Risers undergo is because they’re actually trying to morph into their natural, scaly bodies?

  And when they can’t, their soul takes its next best fit?

  “You’re tuning me out,” says an annoyed Traxon, frowning at me. “Look, I know threatening you with your secrets was a low move, and I wish I didn’t have to resort to dirty tricks just to get politicians to tell the truth for a change.”

  Did he really just call me a politician?

  “But forget about me a moment, and think about what’s best for our galaxy. There are fewer facts known about House Ophiuchus than there are about the Last Prophecy—and I’m talking about an entire world that was lost to our solar system, not some silly superstition. You are the only person who’s had actual contact with that House—with its Original Guardian, at that!—so only you have the chance to fill in those lost chapters of our history. You could interview him, talk to him, get his side of the story—”

  “What’s the Last Prophecy?”

  Traxon’s round eyes look like they’re going to shoot out of his head. “That’s all you heard?” he blares, and I cross my arms and stare at him in stubborn silence until he relents. “Come on, you know what the Last Prophecy is. You’re the Wandering Star, one of the best seers in our solar system. You have to know it!”

  “Drop the condescension,” snaps my brother, who’s standing beside me.

  Traxon rakes his hair back, and his finger gets stuck in a knot. “It’s a prophecy that was made by an Original Guardian,” he says, tugging at the tangle, “and it foretells how the Zodiac will end.”

  “How could something like that be around without us knowing?” Mathias leans against the wall beside the hay bench, near Pandora. He sounds as put off by Traxon as my brother.

  “Because it’s been forgotten,” says Traxon. “No one’s taken it seriously in centuries. Back in the day, people really believed in it, and there was even a myth that Zodai over the ages who saw this Prophecy would get tapped into a secret group of seers that was fighting to reverse it. Have you ever heard that old fashioned greeting, ‘Light of the sun be with you?’”

  The others shake their heads, but Hysan’s voice echoes through my memory. He said that to me in ’Nox’s nose a few lifetimes ago, when we left Phaetonis. I’d thought it a strangely antiquated saying, but nothing more.

  “What about it?” I ask.

  “They say the greeting originated as a way for believers of the Prophecy to test if they were talking to a fellow follower.”

  Again I find myself wishing Hysan were here. He must know about the Last Prophecy because he knows about everything else. But is he a believer?

  “When does the Last Prophecy say the Zodiac will end?” asks Pandora.

  “Sometime this millennium. I’m sure the Prophecy will be back in vogue in some nations now that we’re within range of its alleged deadline; bound to be some great end-of-the-worlds parties.”

  I force a mask of disinterest over my features, but I spy Pandora’s frightened face in the periphery of my vision, and I know she’s thinking of the omen she’s been Seeing, the one where our galactic sun goes dark.

  “How does the Prophecy say the Zodiac will end?” I chance.

  Traxon pulls at another knot in his hair. “Even I don’t see how this could happen. Nor do the Zodiac’s leading scientists, so there’s nothing to worry about.”

  “This is painful,” says Stan, crossing his arms like it’s the only way he’ll keep his fists under control. “Can you just answer a damn question without the benefit of your expert opinion?”

  Traxon glares at my brother and waits an annoyingly long moment before saying, “The Last Prophecy says the Zodiac will end in the third millennium.” Still staring at Stan, he draws out another pause, and then he finally says what Pandora has been dreading to hear. “When Helios shuts off her light.”

  23

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, THE four of us are having lunch in a different dining hall, far from the ninth tower. Platters of food sit between us, but only the guys are eating. Pandora and I are still digesting what we learned from Traxon.

  I let my head fall in my hands and close my eyes to try to focus. The Last Prophecy, Black Moon, the Marad, the master, Mom . . . my life is filling with too many more questions than answers, and the few facts I do know I can’t force into any discernible design.

  “The Taurian Guardian was tailing you last night,” says Stan, his mouthful of food muffling his voice.

  I snap my head up. “What?”

  “At the ball,” he says after swallowing. “When you started talking to Ambassador Crompton, she used an audio amplifier to eavesdrop.” He wipes his mouth with his napkin.

  Mathias frowns. “Why was she here?” he asks, abandoning his half-eaten steak. “She didn’t have to come to the event if she’s already sponsoring the Party. And if she was coming, why didn’t she give the speech instead of Crompton? She’s much higher profile.”

  “I’m not sure it’d be in the Party’s best interest to publically tie themselves to her right now,” I say tentatively. “She’s come under fire for her defense of Risers.”

  But Mathias is right. Why did she come? Was her sole reason to ask me to lie to the Plenum for her? Shouldn’t she be more concerned with what’s happening on Pisces? Shouldn’t we all be?

  “I really think Pisces is the key to everything,” says Stanton, his thoughts unsurprisingly straying to the same place as mine. “That’s where we need to be. Whatever’s happening to that world is
the master’s next move.”

  “But what does the master gain by wiping out every Piscene?” I ask, not exactly disagreeing, but just thinking through the theory out loud. “It’s the poorest and most selfless House of the Zodiac. They share every civic duty and have no monetary system or industry. Their only ‘exports’ are their visions.”

  “It’s a word of seers,” says Pandora, nodding along with me, “and now the master is blinding them.”

  Cold air rushes into my lungs, and I exhale.

  “Helios,” I whisper, leaning into the round table. Crompton’s voice sounds in my head—Maybe there’s just something she’s afraid I’ll See. It was his Sight, not his voice, that got him in trouble.

  Moira was our foremost Psy expert before she was attacked, and Origene and Caasy were ranked second and third after her. Who knows how many other attacks—like the Elder assassinations, the drowning on Oscuro, the explosions on Leo—have really been targeted strikes on our best seers? Ferez believes the hit on Capricorn was really to retrieve a specific Snow Globe the master was after—so maybe every one of these large-scale attacks conceals a secret.

  “What if the master is trying to destabilize the Psy to keep us from Seeing what he’s planning?” I ask.

  “If that’s true,” says Mathias, and in his tone I hear the same seeds of skepticism as when I told him my theory of Ochus on Oceon 6, “why not destroy the Fish constellation all at once, like he did with our House? Why did his attack come with a two-month incubation period?”

  I think about the master’s most recent attacks. They were on Capricorn and Pisces . . . and neither of them used Dark Matter.

  “He needs a more powerful weapon to take out planets again,” I say slowly, “and he hasn’t used Dark Matter since the armada.” Not since Ophiuchus told me he wanted to change sides.

  I have to find him again and convince him I’m not weak. As hateful as it is to admit, I need his help—and I especially need to do whatever it takes to keep him from returning to the master’s side.

  “Mathias is right, though,” says Pandora. “Two months is a long incubation time.” She spins the Philosopher’s Stone in her hand. “Having seen his army up close, the master is too organized for this kind of delay not to be deliberate.”

  “Maybe he wanted to lull us into a false sense of security so we’d stop searching for him,” says Stan. “It’s worked, hasn’t it? The Plenum declared Peace.”

  None of us speaks for a while, and I get the impression we’re each lost in our own train of thought.

  “Something about the Tomorrow Party jolted me.” We all look at Pandora.

  “It was a word that threw me . . . Captain. It’s probably coincidence; I mean, it’s such a small, random, insignificant detail.” She looks to Mathias, but his expression is still unreadable.

  When she speaks again, she sounds smaller somehow, like she’s had to travel to a dark place to retrieve these words. “Captain was what the Marad called their senior officers.”

  None of us says anything, but my heart starts racing like a percussive progression that’s building to a drumroll. She’s right, it means nothing, it’s just a word, barely a clue—

  I try drowning the realization rising within me so the words won’t pass through my lips, but my heart is too loud to hear my thoughts, and they break through despite me.

  “The Tomorrow Party.”

  I sound breathless even though I haven’t moved. “Stan, you said yourself the Party is only catering to the elite. Every prospective member is young and ambitious and special. They’re being recruited the same way Risers were wooed to join the Marad—hopeful meetings about ideology that soon devolved into a darker agenda. And they seem to have unending funds that can’t be corroborated, just like the Marad. The master is the only person we know with deep enough pockets to pull this off.”

  “You’re saying the master is behind the Tomorrow Party?” Mathias asks, not bothering to disguise his disbelief. “Why?”

  “Because violence was uniting us.” Everyone waits for me to go on, and my heart keeps beating too hard as the thoughts in my head begin to connect. “The moment the Plenum forgave me and made me Wandering Star, we became powerful, and that made us a threat. So he—or she—decided to change tactics. The master is a student of history. He or she knows the best way to divide us is from the inside. Just imagine what will happen when this Party goes public with Black Moon. This kind of movement is bound to rile up every House’s passions. It’s the perfect distraction. Instead of a common enemy we can gang up on, he’s making us point fingers at ourselves.”

  I’m reminded of something Hysan once told me—The greater our need to unite, the deeper we divide. “It’s what happened during the Trinary Axis, and in the Cancrian poem about Ochus. By undermining our unity, we’re easier to pick off.”

  My words of doom suffocate the conversation. I’m sure that, just like me, my friends are combing through what they know and trying to poke holes in my reasoning. But I’m certain I’m right—this sounds exactly like something the master would do. Just like he turned our own tactics against us during the armada, he’s now trying to turn our brightest people against each other. He’s sewing seeds of distrust to destabilize our fragile unity and ensuring his own victory by sabotaging us.

  He never went away. He just found himself a new army.

  My army.

  “What about Fernanda?” asks Stan. “If she’s a sponsor, could she be behind everything?”

  I shake my head. “If she was the master, she wouldn’t be so outspoken about Risers. I think she was just taken in by this Party, like the rest of us.”

  Pandora looks unconvinced. “The liar’s best tool is his honesty,” she says. “On Aquarius, there’s a saying about that—Truth builds trust, and trust blinds truth.”

  I think of Aryll, and how every time he fed me a false truth, I trusted him more. But I still don’t think Fernanda is the one behind everything.

  “All I know is the Tomorrow Party is a distraction, and we’re playing into the master’s hands, again,” I say, meeting my brother’s determined gaze. “You’ve been right this whole time, Stan. We need to get to Pisces and defend that House before it disappears from the Zodiac. If the master is trying to get rid of our best seers, that means his biggest move is coming.”

  “But if he’s targeting our best seers,” says Pandora softly, “why hasn’t he killed you yet?”

  “He’s been trying to this whole time,” says Stan darkly.

  But I remember the Marad soldiers saying the master didn’t want me dead yet. Then I think of my recent experiences with Skiff, Fernanda, and Ophiuchus, and the truth is too obvious to obfuscate. “Because he wants something from me.”

  And knowing he wants me alive is more terrifying than being marked for death.

  24

  MATHIAS AND PANDORA DON’T SEEM as confident in the Tomorrow Party’s complicity as Stan and I are, but as we head back to the ninth tower, I feel a unity of purpose with my brother that feels familiar and right.

  Our agreed-upon plan is to go back to our rooms and pack so that we can leave this planet as soon as possible. But first, there are a few things I need to do. When we reach the burgundy-and-blue cloth, Stan activates the staircase, and while he and Pandora climb up, I pull Mathias aside.

  “I’m sorry about . . . earlier,” I say, standing with him by the sandstone wall, in the shadow of the staircase.

  “I don’t want to talk about the Libran—”

  “Well that’s kind of a problem, because I need you to coordinate transportation with him to see if he can fly us out of here.”

  Mathias’s midnight eyes scrutinize mine, and the acidic guilt gnaws at me again. He nods tersely. “But you and your brother need to slow down with your theories,” he says, his jaw tight. “You’re assuming a lot of things without proof.”


  “I know, but I think we’ve been trusting only what we can touch for so long that we’ve forgotten the importance of trusting our instincts, too. Maybe if we used them more, they’d be better honed.”

  He grimaces with disapproval. “And what of your brother’s instinct to steal that device from Scorpio?”

  “It proved useful, didn’t it?” I say weakly.

  “Rho, he’s not coping well. You’re not helping by encouraging him, and you can’t let him lead you down his reckless path.”

  “I’m not. I actually think having a sense of purpose again will help him heal,” I say hopefully, and to end the discussion, I add, “But thanks for looking out for us.”

  He nods and goes to climb the stairs, but he stops moving when I don’t follow. “Where are you going?”

  “Reading room.” The line between his eyes deepens, and I add, “I’m thinking if we can’t predict the master’s next move, maybe a star can.”

  “Ophiuchus?” It sounds strange to hear Mathias say the name seriously and not spiked with sarcasm.

  I nod. “Then I’ll find Nishi and tell her everything, and we’ll come get you guys once we’re packed and ready to go. I just need you to arrange the pick-up details with Hysan.”

  “What if Nishi doesn’t believe you?”

  I start walking down the hall. “If the choice is between abandoning her and knocking her out, I will be carrying Nishi out of the castle.”

  • • •

  I’m relieved to find the underground reading room empty.

  Standing amid the holographic lights, I stare into the rocky rubble that was once the brightest blue jewel in the Zodiac and try pushing everything far from my mind. Last night I trusted my heart over my head and it led me to Hysan. I now try letting my instinct lead me again as I sink into my Center, and when jittery Psynergy invades my lungs, I call out to Ophiuchus with my mind.

  Almost instantly a wintry wind overtakes the cave. I pull on my black coat, so I don’t shiver as the Thirteenth Guardian’s giant icy shape takes form and grows to twice my size. His black eyes watch me impassively as the temperature steadily drops.