Wandering Star: A Zodiac Novel

by Romina Russell

  I was jealous of the relationship Stanton had with her. I thought by doing everything she asked, I would one day be her favorite. It’s only now I know I wanted to be rescued.

  “I’m so sorry, Rho.” Stanton pulls and crushes me to him, and all of a sudden I’m sobbing into his chest, releasing a tidal wave of emotions I didn’t realize I’d been holding on to. When we pull apart, there are tear-lines on his cheeks, and at last, the heaviness that hung between us is gone.

  5

  BY THE TIME STANTON HEADS up to the settlement, my mood has completely lifted. I’m still really worried for Nishi and Deke, but at least I’m not alone anymore.

  Once I’m dressed, I ride the Vein to the surface, but instead of the beach, I head into the woods. About a kilometer into the forest, I step into the patch of sunlight I found my first week here—a small clearing amid Capricorn’s giant, gnarled trees. Birds and flutterbys (the insects that inspired Libra’s transportation system) flap around me, their wings spanning all colors, shapes, and designs. Horned hawks screech to each other from overhanging tree branches, and small rustles in the flowering bushes tell me pocket pigs are nearby, nibbling on fallen brainberries.

  I’ve been coming to this same spot every day to train. Lying back on the wild grass, I spend four uninterrupted hours cycling through Yarrot poses. Stanton thinks I’m continuing my Zodai lessons using the Wave tutorials Sirna sent me, but the truth nobody knows—not even Nishi and Deke—is that I came to Capricorn on my own mission.

  I made myself a promise when the Plenum impeached me. A promise to find Ochus and his master and to avenge Dad and Mathias. And I haven’t turned my back on that oath.

  Yesterday was the first time I saw Ophiuchus since our last battle, but all I got was a glimpse of his predicament, with no indication of where he is or how to find him. Since I need to be stronger when I face him next, I’ve gone back to Mom’s obsessive training schedule from my youth. The only goal driving me now is vengeance.

  I come out of my trancelike dance just in time for the House-wide lunch call. The overexposed sky turns velvety black, like someone’s flipped an off switch, letting the sun shine through only in select slivers. The light spells:

  LUNCH.

  I often skip the midday meal to go indoors and study the Ephemeris, but today I want to spend more time with Stanton, so I grab the plate and utensils I brought with me and cut across to the valley. I find him with Aryll at the end of the food line, and the sudden sight of my brother’s giddy grin reminds me of when we were little kids on Kalymnos. There’s a matching smile on my face as I join them.

  “Rho!” Stanton sounds surprised. “You’re lunching with us common folk?”

  “Every star falls eventually,” I say dramatically, and Aryll snorts so loudly that the Capricorns walking along the other side of the table snap their heads up to look at us.

  I smile apologetically at the teenage girl across from me, who’s watching us with a strange expression. When I meet her gaze, she just stares at me coldly.

  My grin falls off my face, and I focus on the food on the table. As I’m reaching for the bowl of hawk wings, I spy only silverware in the girl’s hands and no plate. I chance a glance at her again, and this time she’s smiling at me.

  Then, in a flash of silver, she sinks her knife and fork into her neighbor’s neck.

  A bloodcurdling scream rends the air as the middle-aged man falls forward onto the food, and the girl melts into the mass of black robes around us.

  Aryll drops his plate, and Stanton grips us both by the shoulder as more screams join the first. The shouts seem to be coming from all over the valley, confusing the crowd of Cancrians and Capricorns around us. No one knows which way to go.

  “This way!” says Stanton, pushing us toward the steep hill—but moments later we’re pulled back by the current of the crowd.

  Every direction we push in pushes back. People are moving closer together instead of farther apart, as if we’re herding ourselves.

  The acrid smell of smoke invades the air, and I finally understand—there’s a fire encircling us. It’s blazing on every side of the valley, sending puffs of black clouds over our heads. There’s no way out. “Rho!” Stanton shakes my shoulder, speaking loudly over all the noise. We’re crammed amid so many people and so much smoke that it’s hard to get air. “Are you okay?”

  At first I don’t know why he’s asking, then I realize he and Aryll have been dragging me along with them this whole time. I haven’t been able to work my legs since that stabbing.

  “Yeah,” I say shakily. But I’m not. That girl wasn’t a hulking man made of ice. She’s a teen from a peaceful society, a House that prizes wisdom and collaboration above all. And she just murdered someone without hesitation.

  A loud, booming voice thunders down to us from the sky: “Stand silent and still!”

  A hush falls over the valley as everyone looks to the top of the steep hill, where twelve young Capricorns in black robes are standing over us. Fire flickers in every direction. The flames crackle louder in our silence, black smoke filling so much of the sky that Helios’s rays can barely break through it.

  “We are the Marad.”

  Gasps and screams sweep through the crowd, and I grip Stanton tighter, flashing to the morbid scene from Sage Huxler’s Snow Globe. Is this how that battle began? Will we be nothing more than a pile of ash tomorrow?

  “We are broadcasting to the Zodiac with a message: The age of the Twelve Houses is over. A new sign is rising—we are all Marad.”

  The teen girl must be up there, I realize, suddenly understanding what Hysan meant about the Marad’s tactics. They’re sowing fear from the inside. If that girl is Marad, anyone is suspect.

  A holographic army of masked soldiers suddenly materializes behind the twelve teens, and a Capricorn baby begins to wail. The soldiers are dressed all in white, and their featureless faces look like they’re made of white porcelain. They have no eyes, nose, or ears—just a mouth.

  “We demand that every Guardian renounce their position and denounce their House’s allegiance to the Zodiac. Every House that does not comply will suffer Cancer’s fate.”

  At the mention of my House, my gut hardens with something solid. It feels like hate.

  “We will begin with Sagittarius. The fighting between the government and the Scorp workers is just one more example of the Zodiac system failing us. Guardian, hear us well: You have five galactic days to pledge your allegiance to the Marad. On the fifth day, we will descend upon your planet Centaurion, and we will depart with your head.”

  All at once, the army vanishes into the daylight, along with the twelve Capricorns. The Marad must have Veils of its own. When they’re gone, even the heat of the surrounding flames can’t cut through the lingering chill.

  Stanton, Aryll, and I run to the long food table and join a group of Capricorns that’s throwing drinking water at the fire. Rain starts to sprinkle down on us, and we look up to see an ark flying through the smoke, showering the valley with water.

  Soon the fires have been put out, and healers arrive to tend to the wounded. Five are dead, including the man murdered in front of me.

  That girl knew who I was. She was waiting for me to look. The Marad wanted to send me a message—and I’m starting to feel like I want to send one of my own.

  We spend the rest of the day holed up in our hotel’s round room, flipping through various newsfeeds, trying to glean more information about the attack. It turns out we weren’t the only ones the army visited today—ours was one in a string of simultaneous terrorist attacks on every House.

  When the Marad threatened Sagittarius, the thunderous voice was also broadcasting to every inhabited planet of the Zodiac. No single voice has ever addressed all our worlds at once before. There hasn’t been any reason to—at least not for a millennium, since the Houses became sovereign territories.
We haven’t had access to one another’s security, satellite, or communications systems since—which means the Marad isn’t just violent and unpredictable. It’s also technologically superior.

  And now it’s targeted Nishi’s home next.

  The faceless porcelain head haunts my mind. I think of what Ferez said about choosing one sense over five, or one technology over eleven (Piscenes don’t have their own House-specific device). The Marad chose just one facial feature: a mouth. They aren’t interested in seeing or hearing their victims. They just want their will to be done.

  Brynda Wazel, the twenty-three-year-old Sagittarian Guardian, is now on the news, standing at a podium with the Archer crest hanging behind her. I met her briefly on Phaetonis, at an armada meeting, but we didn’t get a chance to talk. As she faces the Zodiac, her long-cut amber eyes are clear, and her hair is in a black braid that hangs down her back. She looks like an older version of Nishi.

  “House Sagittarius has heard the Marad’s threat, and I am here to say we will never renounce our allegiance to the Zodiac. The Ninth House will not bow down to terror: We will stand our ground and protect our people against the Marad and anyone else who attacks us. We ask the other Houses to stand with us by protecting their own worlds and sending us whatever help they can spare.”

  When the image cuts back to the newscaster, I think again of Ophiuchus and how I could never prove his existence. The Marad seems to operate a lot like him. Even now, when the army has directly addressed us, it’s just as impossible to prove it’s real, or pinpoint its members, or strike back in any way.

  Next, the newscaster interviews an aged Chronicler who’s studied all the major conflicts in Zodiac history. He looks as old as Sage Ferez, and he’s transmitting from a Membrex. There are more than five thousand in the Zodiax in all.

  “This army is the greatest threat to our galaxy since the Trinary Axis.”

  At the mention of the Axis, the air in our round room hardens, making it difficult to breathe. Stanton, Aryll, and I look away from the wallscreen but avoid one another. It’s always the same reaction when that war is brought up in a room full of Cancrians. Because even though a thousand years have passed, we haven’t gotten past our guilt—Cancer was one of the three Houses that started the war.

  “It’s clear to me that the person or people behind the Marad knows their history,” continues the Chronicler. “In particular, they’ve studied the Axis well, and they are replicating the parts that worked—riling up the public with dramatics, operating in secrecy where we can’t prosecute them, and launching their war with coordinated attacks on every House that are reminiscent of the uprisings that launched the war a millennium ago.”

  I reach for my Wave just as it starts going off. Nishi’s hologram pops out, her eyes bright with terror. “Rho! Are you watching—?”

  “I saw,” I say as the newscaster starts reviewing Guardian Brynda’s leadership record. He cites her support for what’s referred to as “my” armada as a sign of her youthful impulsiveness. He calls it her most grievous failure.

  I don’t know how I can help Guardian Brynda or Nishi and Deke, but I’m starting to think that if the Marad is on Sagittarius, Ophiuchus will be nearby. I no longer doubt that they’re working for the same master—their methods are too similar and their attacks too coordinated. What I want to know is what the master is after. And to find out, I have to be where the action is.

  “I’m coming to Sagittarius, Nish. I’ll be in touch later.”

  Stanton’s head spins when he hears my declaration, and I snap my Wave shut, ending the call.

  “Rho, this isn’t your fight anymore—”

  “It’ll always be my fight, Stan,” I say, seeing the image that remains branded in my brain: a small pink space suit, frost covering what was once a girl’s face.

  “It doesn’t have to be.” My brother takes my hand. “You’re not alone. We still have each other. We can live anywhere, start over—”

  “Where, Stan? Where won’t the Marad and Ophiuchus and the master be able to reach us?” I hear the volume of my voice rising. I glance at Aryll, still sitting on the couch, and expect him to scurry off to his room as he always does when things get tense. But now he stays put. What happened at lunch seems to have toughened him.

  “There are Zodai on every House who’ve trained their whole lives to fight a threat like this one,” says Stanton, his voice soft and parental and inviting. “Let them handle it, Rho.”

  “It’s not just that.” I furrow my brow, trying to think of the right words to explain what I feel—the same sense of purpose that seeped into my skin the moment I became Guardian. Taking off the coronet may have changed Cancer’s feelings toward me, but it didn’t change mine toward Cancer.

  “I’m only alive because I was inside a crystal dome on Elara when the blast hit, and somehow it was a strong enough barrier to protect me from the power outage. But my friends and classmates and teachers are gone. Dad’s gone. And I can’t let them all become casualties of evil when I have the chance to make their deaths stand for something greater.”

  “Like what?” asks Stanton.

  “Change. If the Twelve Houses come together and fight back as one Zodiac, Cancer won’t be just a name on a long list of worlds Ophiuchus destroyed. Our people will have died to bring us something better. They’ll be martyrs in the triumph of unity over hatred!” By the time I stop speaking, my face is flaming like a small sun, and I’m mortified at how passionate I got—I sounded just like a Leo.

  So I’m startled to see the small smile spreading across Stanton’s face. “You just reminded me so much of Mom.”

  The statement is as gratifying as it is terrifying. Seeing my mixed reaction, his grin widens. “She used to get just as worked up with Dad whenever he didn’t want me to skip a day of school to help her with her latest cause. Remember how she was always trying to save a community from something? Poverty, pollution, natural disasters?”

  I nod. I was rarely around for those discussions because I was in the midst of Yarrot or Centering or reading the Ephemeris. On those days, Mom would leave me to train alone, while she’d set off with Stanton to work on her newest project, and when she got home she would test me.

  “The speech she used to convince Dad to let her take me to Naxos Island after Hurricane Hebe must’ve been amazing,” says Stanton thoughtfully. “And she was right. I found a baby in the wreckage.”

  Aryll nods reverently, and I get the sense he’s heard this story before, and it’s maybe even why he worships my brother so much.

  Stanton looks from Aryll to me. “You’re right, Rho. You and I want the same thing: We want to save Cancer. Only you’re doing it by rescuing its people, and I’m taking care of our wildlife.”

  He pulls me in for a hug, and my heart falls as I realize he’s not coming with me. “Promise you won’t do anything daring or brave,” he whispers in my ear.

  “I’m a coward,” I say when we pull apart. “It’s official, the Plenum held a ceremony and everything.”

  “It would’ve been nice to have been invited—”

  “I’m going, too.”

  The grin freezes on Stanton’s face, and he turns from me to Aryll.

  “I’ve never liked this planet, you know that,” says Aryll nervously. “And I’m no good with wildlife—if anything, Stan, I’m slowing you down.” He holds up his hands, which are covered with nicks and cuts. “Look, I’ve never known what I’m good at. I don’t have any talents or skills that make me special. I just want to fight back. I want to be a part of this.”

  His electric-blue eye looks directly into mine, as if committed to the assumption that this is my decision and not his or Stanton’s. This is the first time I’ve seen Aryll so animated.

  “Are you sure?” I ask. “You’ve been through so much . . . don’t you want to get away from the violence?”

  “Do
n’t you?” he shoots back.

  I sigh and turn to my brother, who’s still staring at Aryll. Somehow, his shock seems to have already settled into resignation. “What if you came with us, too?” I ask hopefully.

  He shakes his head. “That’s not me, Rho. My place is here.”

  “I’m going to bed,” announces Aryll, turning around. “We can talk tomorrow . . . or something,” he throws back as he slips into his room.

  Stanton and I stay up watching the newsfeeds late into the night, neither of us saying much until we’re ready for bed. “Can’t you talk Aryll out of coming with me?” I ask.

  My brother shakes his head. “Just . . . give him a chance. I’m starting to think there’s more than choice and chance at play in everything that’s happening here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know . . . like in the story of Hurricane Hebe.” I shake my head and arch my brow, completely lost. Stanton sighs in frustration. “You’re going to make me spell it out?” I nod. “Fine. I think the stars may have put Aryll on our path for a reason.”

  He rolls his eyes at himself, and he sounds so much like Mom that I can’t tell if he’s being serious. Stanton’s never been big on fortune-telling—like Dad, he’s spent his life looking down more than up. He pecks me on the forehead and walks toward his room.

  “I still don’t know what you’re actually saying,” I call after him.

  “Aryll saved my life once.” He looks back at me from his doorway. “Maybe this time he’ll save yours.”

  6

  BEFORE GOING TO SLEEP, I hail Equinox from my room. Hysan checked in with me on my Ring earlier to make sure I was okay, but we didn’t have time to really talk.

  Since he’s programmed ’Nox to patch me right in whenever I call, I hologram myself into the ship’s front nose using the hotel room’s transmitter, which is more powerful than my Wave. I stand in front of the wall device, and it beams a holographic replica of ’Nox’s crystal-capped front nose into my room just as it scans a holographic replica of me into the ship.