But that’s the biggest lie of them all.
Because nothing will ever be as I wish.
Not anymore.
12
“HOW ARE YOU?” ASKS PANDORA as soon as we’re outside, bathed in orange daylight.
“You don’t have to come with me. You can just point me in the right direction.”
“I need to check in with Mathias,” she says, leading us down the hill toward the other two fortresses. “And anyway, I agree there’s no point in you trying to do a reading. Even if the astral plane weren’t collapsing, you still wouldn’t See anything.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask, the words coming out sharper than I intended.
“You’re hiding,” she says simply, as though she were commenting on the state of the weather and not my mind. “You’re not even interested in recovering yet, so there’s no point.”
Pandora may not have Hysan’s powers of perception, but she’s experienced enough horrors firsthand to recognize a dead woman walking. I’ll have to do a better job of summoning my emotions.
A rivulet cuts through the valley between the first hill and the next, and we step onto a low stone bridge to get across it. The climb up the second hill is steeper than the first, and my muscles are cramping in pain, my body aching for more recovery time. . . .
But it’s nothing compared to what Nishi’s body must be enduring.
I fight down that thought by forcing myself to stay present as we enter the second Fort. In place of a communal reading room, the main hall is crammed with dozens of elevated rings where Zodai from every House are practicing sparring with each other using blue-bladed swords.
“Why is everyone using the same weapon?” I ask.
“The Marad’s technology is Aquarian,” explains Pandora. “The blue light it sends out is an energy wave. The Zodai tested every House’s weapons against the Murmurs in our possession, and they found the Barer is the only one capable of shielding people from its blast. But we’re also training in all Zodai devices, since they’re so different.”
We stop in front of a display of weapons with holographic tags hovering over each one. The Ripple, the Arclight, and the Scarab are familiar, but this is my first time seeing the other Houses’ devices up close. I avoid the Sumber and instead study a couple of the Earth Houses’ horn-shaped weapons by reading their text overhead.
The Capricorn Shrill is made from Seagoat horns, the insides of which are carved with a series of ridges using a centuries-old Capricorn technique. When sounded, the Chronicler’s breath passes through thousands of intricate airways to emit a sound at a frequency that shuts down the nervous system of anyone who hears it.
The Taurian Tremble is a stout, horn-shaped device that can be plunged into the earth to trigger a small, targeted earthquake. The Tremble is most effective when used in teams of three to create a devastating and contained quake within a triangulated area.
A crowd erupts in celebration, and I turn to look at the training area again. “What’s going on there?” I ask, pointing to the Zodai gathered around one of the center rings. Squinting, I recognize the pair of fighters—Skarlet and Mathias.
“They do this all the time,” says Pandora, following me as I move in for a closer look. I can’t take my eyes off them.
The match is like a sensuous and deadly dance between two beautiful warriors. As they spar, the audience cries out in excitement, and some even seem to be taking bets.
I’ve never seen Mathias move like this before. Skarlet lunges, and he parries. She flickers around in her red suit like a living flame, moving so stealthily and attacking so suddenly that it takes near superhuman reflexes to deflect her—which Mathias has. His fighting technique reminds me of Yarrot—his movements are smooth and connected and focused—and he only raises his sword to defend himself. He never strikes.
A bell rings, signaling the end of the match, and there’s no clear winner. The Zodai seem upset by this, and they start arguing with each other about who owes whom payment, but Skarlet and Mathias are laughing as they step off the ring.
“You’re tough for a crab,” she says, shoving him roughly.
“You’re pleasant enough for a ram,” he teases back, and then he actually smirks. “Well, some of the time.”
She punches him in what was probably supposed to be a playful touch, but Mathias cries out and cradles his arm. “Ow! The match was over!”
“I take it back,” says Skarlet, letting out a loud laugh. “You don’t seem so tough now.”
They walk side by side, their bodies tall and muscled and sweaty, and there’s a comfortable ease between them that he and I never shared. Studying him, I realize he’s less burdened than he used to be, and he’s almost emanating the same peaceful aura as Pandora—until he catches me watching.
“Hey, everything okay?” he asks, cutting over to us quickly, his gaze panning from me to Pandora. “Is there news?”
Skarlet comes up behind him, also looking alert.
We’re so primed for tragedy that apparently anything out of the ordinary is cause for alarm—like my presence in a physical training area.
“I was hoping to train with you today,” I say, looking from Mathias to Skarlet. “That is, if Major Thorne is finished with you.”
Skarlet smiles sweetly. “How nice of you to ask for permission this time.”
“I guess it’s only fair after what we went through last night,” I can’t help saying. Her eyes widen in warning since we’re within earshot of other Majors, and I add, “You know . . . how you stayed by my side until I fell asleep so the monsters couldn’t get me?”
Her frown eases a little, but her expression is still tense. “Can we speak alone for a moment, please?”
She seems to tag on the last word unwillingly, and Pandora takes Mathias’s arm and pulls him away. “I just spoke with your parents,” I hear her tell him as they walk, “and they asked me to tell you a new troop of Zodai from Virgo will be arriving tomorrow morning with Numen and Qima. They’ll need lodging. . . .”
As her voice fades, Skarlet says, “I had to call a healer I trust last night to covertly close Corinthe’s wound, and then I had to change her scrubs so no one would know anything happened. This whole thing is too risky—I’m telling my commanding officer what we did before it gets out.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Then you need to go to Eurek. And after you’ve explained to him how you forced me to help you, you can tell him what we learned from Corinthe. It might be important.”
I wait a few seconds to pretend I’m thinking it over, and then I say, “Fine. But tomorrow.”
“No,” she says, crossing her arms over her chest. “Now.”
I blow out a hard breath, and without meeting her gaze, I say, “We’re launching my brother to Empyrean tonight. So I would rather not do this now.”
After a moment she says, “Tomorrow then.”
When she leaves, I find Mathias waiting for me by the weapons display. “Pandora told me about Stan,” he says, his musical voice soft. “She said you wanted to take your mind off the Ascension by doing some physical training.”
I nod.
“Then let’s get you fitted with a Barer,” he says with newfound energy, and we step into what seems to be a stockroom of weapons. Mathias rummages through the Barers until we find one with rings that fit my fingers comfortably. Since it’s suited to a person’s dominant hand, I have to transfer my Zodai Ring to my left hand to make room.
“The Barer’s strength is completely dependent on your connection to it,” says Mathias as we climb inside an elevated ring to test it out. “It’s similar to the Zodai Ring—the more attuned you are to its energy, the easier it will be to call on it when you need it. This is where your Centering skills come in handy—you’ll need to be completely focused on the energy you’re wielding for it to work
the way you want.”
“How do I do that?”
“You dig down into the energy you feel buzzing in your hand until you’ve bonded with the weapon. Unlike the Ripple, the Barer isn’t about having good aim—it’s about concentration. Generally speaking, those who are best at Centering themselves do best with this weapon—so you have an advantage.”
As he talks, I flash back to us on Oceon 6 when he taught me how to use the Ring. I remember the way my emotions jostled my mind then, adding their own voice to the conversation. But I can’t remember how those feelings felt.
“Metals in the rings convert energy from the atmosphere into electricity. When you’re ready, make a fist and think of the shape you want the energy to take—it can become a sword, or a bow that fires off electric blasts, or brass knuckles that deliver electric jolts every time they connect with your opponent.”
I close my eyes and reach inward, toward the humming in my right hand. It’s similar to the Psynergy from my Ring, only the electric current in the Barer is more of a physical sensation than a mental one. I can feel my skin tingling and the hairs on my arm stiffening from the static. I concentrate on honing the energy into the long blade of a sword, and then I squeeze my hand into a fist.
I hear a crackling sound, and I open my eyes to see a blue flame.
“I’d be impressed if I weren’t so used to you impressing me,” says Mathias, his midnight gaze bright with admiration. “The second part is projecting a shield around yourself—that’s how you can repel a Murmur attack.”
“How does that work?”
“You have to dig deep and pull the Barer’s energy through every part of your body. Only thing is you need to Center yourself first so you’re protected by a barrier of Psynergy. Otherwise, if the blue energy touches your skin, it will electrocute you. So the first thing you do is access your Center and feel the Psynergy bonding with the Barer’s energy, and then you spread the shield through your whole body. It takes supreme concentration, and you have to feel every single inch of yourself, or you’ll risk leaving holes—”
“I can practice that on my own time,” I say before I shut down from information overload. “I’m more interested in learning your fighting technique. There isn’t much of a point to wielding this weapon if I don’t know how to use it.”
First he teaches me how to turn the Barer into a bow. It takes me longer to envision the right shape to manifest it, but once I do it’s easy enough to shoot electric blasts. The sword is hardest for me to wield, and Mathias and I spar for hours until the muscles of my arms and legs grow leaden. I’m not very good, but that’s not important.
I don’t plan on fighting fair with it anyway.
When I’m worn out—which doesn’t take long—we sit on a bench far from everyone else and fill up on water. As we drink, we watch the dozens of fights going on throughout the space, our thoughts adrift.
“Rho,” he says after a long silence, “I’m sorry about your brother.”
My throat goes dry even though I’ve had two glasses of water, and I stand up to pour myself a third. When I sit back down, Mathias says, “I’m sorry I didn’t save him.”
I take a long drink and don’t look at him. “I should go see Hysan,” I say after swallowing. “I told him I’d check in by now.”
“I’ll walk you—”
“No, I’m fine. I could use the alone time.”
He nods, and I know he understands. But before I get up, he says, “I missed you.”
I stiffen and look at him, and his ivory face grows pink as he goes on. “When I thought I lost you . . . that you’d never wake up . . . I guess I understand how it must have felt when you thought I was dead.”
I stare into his indigo eyes, and it feels like the first time since the Sumber that I’m truly seeing someone—or maybe it’s just the first time I’m letting someone see me.
“You’re my best friend,” he says, his gaze strong and steadfast. “And if you want to talk, I’m here. Anytime.”
13
AFTER A QUICK SHOWER IN the women’s locker room, I pull on the Veil collar I slipped into my pocket this morning and activate its invisibility.
Mathias’s heart-to-heart left me feeling raw, like a wound that was scabbing just got exposed, and I don’t want to risk running into anyone who might irritate it further. Especially since there’s more I need to do before tonight.
The entrance hall in the third fortress is hushed and riddled with semiprivate terminals where Zodai are sitting at screens and pulling up information. A massive wallscreen wraps around the upper half of the room; it’s divided into twelve sections, and news from every House is updating in real time. I flatten myself against the wall so that no one runs into me, and I scan the headlines.
The Piscene death count from the master’s Psyphoning is nearing half a million. There’s a chart showing a correlation: With every wave of Piscene deaths, the hole in the Dark Matter around Ophiuchus expands.
It seems the governments of every House are as divided as their citizens. Most don’t want to believe Crompton is the original Aquarius or that he’s going to usher in the end of the Zodiac. Capricorn’s Chroniclers have been citing the Axis more than ever, noting that this is exactly how the century-long civil wars started. The master is re-creating our past—and without trust in each other, we’re doomed to repeat it.
I trail along the room’s perimeter and turn into the first passage I come across. Torches bracketed along the stone walls illuminate my way, and soon I reach a crossroads where the corridor splits in three. I pick a direction at random and keep going, until I come upon a lounge with couches and tables and food, where Zodai in different colored uniforms are meeting or snacking or napping.
I trace my way back to the crossroads, and this time I pick a different path. It ends in a set of open doors, where a pair of Majors stands guard. This must be where they keep the more sensitive information.
I close my eyes and reach down to the humming of the Barer’s electricity, and I mentally mold it into a bow. When I open my eyes, an arc of blue energy glows before me. I turn to make sure the passage behind me is empty, and then I fire a blast of electricity down the dark hall.
The blue ball of light blazes down the stone corridor, and the guards instantly raise their silver tasers to eye level and charge after the electric arrow.
I dart through the entryway they were protecting and enter a narrower stone passage. A series of doors line both walls, and I carefully crack open the first one. It’s an empty room of semi-private terminals, like the ones in the entrance hall. Since no one else is in here, I sit down at a screen and try to pull up the menu—but a retinal scan is required.
Time to see how much power I actually have on this base.
I deactivate my invisibility collar and line my eye up with the scanner. A light flashes, fleetingly blinding me, then the screen dissolves into a navigational menu with headings like Tomorrow Party, Marad, and Ophiuchus. I click on the last one, and holographic surveillance footage beams out.
The Thirteenth Guardian is asleep in a bright white cell that looks just like the one Corinthe is in, with metallic sensors spaced out along his body. Metal cuffs wrap around not just his ankles, wrists, and neck, but also his waist, chest, and knees. A needle sticks out from his neck, hooked up to an IV, presumably what’s keeping him sedated.
My breathing stalls when I magnify his face. He’s young.
He doesn’t look a day over eighteen.
His hair is so black it’s like Dark Matter, and his skintone seems to shift from light to dark, like he’s not one shade but many. Its texture makes me think of snakeskin.
I click on the small map thumbnail, and a holographic rendering of The Bellow replaces the footage of a sleeping Ophiuchus. A red line outlines the path to his cell, and I take a moment to memorize it before shutting the screen down and returning to the m
ain menu.
There’s nothing noteworthy under the Marad heading, but there are a number of updates for the Tomorrow Party. It looks like Hysan’s encrypted communications with Ezra have paid off because Zodai managed to track the Party to the Artistry Pride of House Leo. It’s the preferred destination for controversial figures in hiding, since artists are known to judge the least.
I close my eyes to review what I know. I have a general location for Nishi. I have access to Ophiuchus. And I have the perfect distraction.
I’m leaving for Leo tonight.
I shut down my terminal, and my Barer hand buzzes with static. I study the intricate designs etched into the metal rings, and I don’t feel the same initial distrust and disgust I had for the black pearl Scarab a few months ago. Now, having a weapon isn’t weakening but empowering—it’s the difference between dependence and independence.
I reactivate my Veil, and when I leave the room, a woman’s laugh floats down the stone passage. Recognizing the sound I instinctively and invisibly step up to the partly open doorway and peek inside.
My whole body hollows, and it feels like déjà vu.
Hysan is sitting on a bench in a small training space filled with outdated exercise machines. He’s in a pair of shorts and no shirt, and sweat gleams across the Ariean-worthy contours of his torso and arms, his chest rising and falling like he’s just finished an intense workout.
“Why won’t you train with the rest of us in the other Fort?” asks Skarlet, who’s also barely clothed, baring every single line and curve of her figure. She’s wearing shorts and an athletic bra made from some kind of Ariean sweat-absorbing workout fabric that’s so thin and skintight it might as well not be there.
“I was already here,” he says, his husky voice choppy from exertion. He stands up to grab a water bottle off a stone counter that juts from the wall and takes a swig.
“Is that really why?” Skarlet edges closer to him and leans into the counter. “See, I think you’re here because you’re afraid.”
Thirteen Rising Page 9
