by K. B. Wagers
I wasn’t sure if they did it deliberately or if it was just habit for them. They were so linked, so able to know each other’s thoughts and feel each other’s emotions. They could move in tandem if they chose.
It made me suddenly, desperately, lonely.
“I miss Portis.” The words and the accompanying sadness slipped out before I fully registered them. I dropped the knife and pressed my hands to my eyes as the grief I thought I’d survived came back with a vengeance.
I expected hesitation, or at least a moment as my Trackers tried to figure out if I was faking my sudden tears; but there was neither. Emmory wrapped his arms around me, pulling me into his chest as Zin completed the circle behind. The pair of them were a wall, shutting out the world as I wept.
“I am so tired of being alone. Of being the one everyone expects answers from.”
“I know,” Emmory said, surprising me again when he didn’t deny it.
“I thought I was past this. I said my good-byes on Encubier. This is who I am—empress, Star of Indrana. Why am I losing it now over the thought that everyone is expecting me to be in charge for the coming battle?”
“You know it doesn’t work like that.” Emmory’s voice rumbled against my ear. “Do you want the list of everything you’ve endured since you came home and our wonder that you’re still standing upright despite it all?”
“You need to sleep, Hail,” Zin murmured, his arms tightening briefly around me before he stepped away. “I’ll go clear a path.”
“The grief doesn’t go away,” Emmory whispered against my hair after the door closed behind Zin. “It ebbs and flows like the tide. Sometimes I miss my brother so much the pain puts me on my knees and it takes everything I have to get back up.”
I hugged him close. “I’d thought I lost you both.” The words burned in my throat. “I know we’ve been through it before, but—”
“I’m here now.” I felt him shift as he pressed his cheek to the side of my head.
“I love you, you know that, right?”
“I love you, too.”
I held on a moment more before I pulled away and scrubbed at my face with a shaky exhale. “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“Not lecturing me about my behavior.”
Emmory chuckled. “I get it. You were geared up for a battle and it got pulled out from under your feet at the last second. I don’t blame you; the rest of us are on edge, too.”
“Yeah, the problem with me is that it’s all amped up beyond safety levels.” I picked up Johar’s knife and headed for the door.
“Hail, do you want to go home?”
I stopped and looked back at Emmory. “What?”
“Do you want to go home?” he repeated; his dark eyes were steady, not the least bit of uncertainty in them.
“I can’t quit. You know that better than anyone.”
“I’m not talking about quitting,” he said. “I’m asking you, Hail Bristol, if you want to go back to Pashati.”
“What brought this on?”
“I’ve been thinking more about something Gita said to me. This is more than one person should bear alone, empress or not. You don’t have to carry the salvation of everything on your shoulders. It isn’t right.”
A swell of emotion filled my chest. Crossing back over to him, I reached out and cupped his face with both hands. “Emmory, what did I do to deserve you?”
“You trusted me enough not to run.”
“I did, didn’t I? It was a good decision, all things considered,” I said with a smile. “Could you do it, Emmory?”
“Do what, Majesty?”
“Go home. Knowing what’s at stake.” I let him go and backed up a step but kept my eyes on his. “Could you just go home and pretend like that choice hadn’t doomed everyone?”
“No, Majesty.” The answer was grudging, dragged out of him.
“I thought so. Did you know Cire warned me we would butt heads because we were too much alike?”
His mouth twitched into an unwilling smile. “I wasn’t aware she had.”
“She was right. We are alike. Which is why I know that if death is coming for us, we’d rather meet it head-on than sit around and wait for it to take us.”
Emmory was correct about the value of rest, and when I woke several hours later the edginess and the need to punch something were gone.
“We don’t have to take all the BodyGuards with us to visit Thyra, Emmy.” I set down my chai and held my hands up at the Look I received in reply. For some reason, my Ekam was back to treating me more like an empress and less like someone who could take care of herself.
Could have something to do with you being on an alien planet in the middle of a situation that could turn to war at any moment, Hail; cut him some slack.
“I would bring more if I had them, Majesty.”
“Fair enough.” It was an unsubtle reminder that we were down to only seven official BodyGuards, the attack on Earth having thinned their ranks considerably. “We are bringing Jo with us, though, and she’s an army in her own right.”
“Let him do his job, sha zhu,” Hao said from his seat in the corner of my room.
I looked in his direction. “I always do.”
“Liar.” Emmory huffed a laugh. “We hadn’t even been back on Pashati a full day when someone tried to kill her. Not only did she hit the man before I could get to him, but she shoved Zin into Nal, the woman who was my Dve at the time.”
“How have I not heard this story?” Hao asked with a grin.
“I was reasonably sure she was going to shoot Emmory in the back. She was working for my cousin,” I supplied, picking up my chai and grinning at Hao over the rim of the mug. My humor faded as I remembered. “That seems like such a long time ago.” An unwelcome vision, of Nal’s face as she died, appeared before my eyes.
“Majesty—”
“It’s fine.” I waved my free hand before Emmory could apologize. “Anyway, I know this is a show of force and as much as I dislike the necessity of it, I realize it’s important to remind the Farians and the Farian Hiervet who I am.” I set my mug down and got to my feet, smoothing out the deep green sari I’d settled on with Stasia this morning. “We should get going. You minding the ship while I’m gone?”
Hao rose. “I’ll be with Dailun and Alba in the ready room working on that timeline for you.”
“I’ll come see you when I get back.”
He put a hand on my arm. “Don’t trust them, Hail. Whatever they say.”
I nodded in acknowledgment and followed Emmory out the door. The other BodyGuards waited at the bottom of the Hailimi’s ramp and came to attention as we disembarked from the ship.
I felt the weight settle onto my shoulders. Somehow I could keep it at bay while in the safety of the ship, but setting foot on Farian soil once more meant I was empress, Star of Indrana.
Bugger me.
I straightened my spine and headed across the patterned surface of the white landing pad, making for the group of guards set a polite distance from the ship. Farther away, behind a second row of guards, I could see the throng of Farians who had gathered.
“Emmory, what’s that all about?”
“They’re hoping to catch a glimpse of the Star of Indrana,” Jo murmured with a grin before my Ekam could answer. “You’re something of a celebrity, Hail.”
“Uff.” I exhaled with a shake of my head, remembering the statue Hao had mentioned. “I wish they wouldn’t.” The way the two guards snapped to attention as we reached them told me I wasn’t going to get that wish.
“Star of Indrana, we’ve been sent to escort you to the gods,” one of them said, executing a deep bow.
4
I bit back a curse and only just managed to keep the shocked disappointment off my face. It had been almost a full day but the Pedalion apparently hadn’t announced the news of the Farian Hiervet to their people. The fury was back in my gut and for a moment I wished I’d decided on my uniform and gun
s rather than a sari. My arrogance had led me to assume that the Pedalion would do what I ordered—and maybe they had—but there was little chance that everyone on Faria would change their minds overnight.
“Majesty.” Emmory put a hand on my back. The guards had started toward the sharply angled building at the end of the pathway and I lengthened my stride to catch up.
We followed the guards through the winding corridors and past the now-familiar entrance to the Pedalion chamber to a smaller entryway at the end of a hall. The guard knocked twice and Priam opened the door.
“Your Majesty,” he said with a smile that sat oddly on his alien face. “Thyra said you were coming.”
“Yes, where is she?” Anger made my voice sharp and Priam backed up a step. I batted away the guilt as the expression on his face dropped away.
“I’m right here, Your Majesty. Good morning.” Thyra unfolded herself from the nearby desk and stood. The room was half the size of the Pedalion chamber so it wasn’t terribly cramped with all of us, though I was grateful to Emmory as he sent Gita outside along with Kisah, leaving the five of us alone with the three Farian Hiervet.
“Good morning. You want to tell me why the guards who escorted us are still calling you gods?”
The look on Thyra’s face wasn’t familiar enough for me to get a handle on, but her next words made me suspect it had been surprise. “I couldn’t tell you, Your Majesty. The Pedalion assured us that our people would be told the truth.”
“They are not your people.”
“Of course, Your Majesty.” Thyra dipped her head in acknowledgment. “Habit, you understand, is hard to break. What can I do for you today?”
“You said you needed to show me your history. What did you mean?”
Thyra held out a limb. “I can re-create memories for you to view. It works much like your smati recordings, though our ability is part of our genetic structure.”
“Majesty, you should not let her touch you.” Emmory’s protest was soft over the coms.
“I am reasonably sure she won’t kill me after going to all the trouble of bringing me here, but if she does, go ahead and lay waste to this place.”
“And if she takes you over or something worse?” he asked.
“Fair point. You do this with me, then.”
“Are you ready, Your Majesty?”
I looked at Thyra. “My Ekam will need to be shown also.”
“It will be more difficult, but I understand.”
I reached out for Emmory’s arm, giving him a moment to pass along instructions to the others before I closed my hand around Thyra’s outstretched limb.
We didn’t move, but the room around us vanished, replaced by another. One that seemed endless with row upon row of upright tubes that glowed a faint greenish-blue in the dim light. The creatures inside flickered, at first appearing humanoid before they solidified into the familiar form of the Farian Hiervet who was showing me this. I wondered why Thyra was going to such trouble to hide who they were.
“My people started as an experiment, Your Majesty, and ended as outlaws. We were created to be the perfect soldiers, the perfect infiltrators. We are not ourselves. We are a reflection, a mirror of everything around us.” She looked down at us. As tall as we were, Thyra stood head and shoulders above both me and Emmory.
“You can see right through that, though, can’t you?”
“What gave it away?”
“Nothing you did. The Star of Indrana will see the rot.” Thyra gestured at the space around us. “It has been known for a long time, and I have seen your life unfold, thanks to Sybil. You have a knack, Your Majesty, for getting to the heart of things.”
“Seems it’s necessary.”
“We cannot help what we are; the ability that allows us to hide in plain sight is both conscious and not.”
“It’s a defense mechanism?”
“That is not how it started, but it is what it has become,” Thyra said. “We can consciously manipulate our surroundings and our appearance, but when my companions and I landed on Faria so long ago, we mimicked their appearance unconsciously for our own protection. We were traumatized by our fight with the Svatir and expected the Farians to treat us in the same manner.”
The room dropped away and was replaced by a sterile white lab with a dizzying array of consoles and technology I couldn’t even begin to recognize or guess at their purpose.
A single Hiervet was in the middle of the room, curled up on the floor, surrounded on four sides by a shimmering field. I put a hand out, surprised when it connected with the flickering blue wall. The Hiervet inside didn’t react. “Is this real?”
“No, Your Majesty. It is a memory, but it will be solid under your fingers for as long as I can maintain it.”
“Who made you?”
“The best word for your understanding would be a business,” Thyra replied. “The Infrastructure created us. We were their crowning glory, the pinnacle in bio-soldiers. Created to fight in wars we had no stake in, then decommissioned when the next new thing came about. We had no rights. We were sold as property to the highest bidder. There was a revolt and my ancestors stole the technology used to create them, fleeing to your galaxy where we could hide in the shadows of this deserted corner of the universe.”
The room changed again, resolving to military barracks. Hiervet standing at attention, waiting for instruction. The sounds of shouting outside filtered into the room, but none of the soldiers reacted.
“We struggled to survive. We were alone and hurting and wanted nothing more than to be left to live our lives in peace.”
“How long ago?” I asked, watching the Hiervet around us as they trained and lived. I wondered how much of this Thyra was manipulating to make sense to me, but I couldn’t detect a lie. The answers were being given freely; however, that didn’t mean they were the truth.
Couching a lie within the truth was the easiest way to make it believable. The question was, what part of Thyra’s easy explanation was she trying to hide from me? My gut said there was something.
“We don’t keep track of time the same way you do, Your Majesty. My answer would make no sense. We have been here long before you humans.” Thyra gestured around us. “It was enough time to help distance ourselves from our past and let those who created us lose interest in finding us.”
“Not much distance from your past. You attacked the Svatir.”
The same expression as before, the one I thought was embarrassment, flowed across Thyra’s face. “It was a misunderstanding,” she said.
“I’m sorry, a what?” I cleared my throat. “You started a war with them by accident?”
“We were searching for a place to live. Your galaxy was thought to be deserted. We stumbled upon the Svatir while exploring; we did not realize how dangerous they were. We were excited at the possibility of other living beings after so long alone. We tried to make contact, and it went badly.”
I watched her, still unable to decide if what she said was the truth or a lie. There was precious little I could go on as far as the kind of body-language tells I was used to. And I wasn’t about to inform her that Dailun’s story—the Svatir’s memory of this event—was wildly different from the story she had just spun.
One more puzzle. One more reason to doubt that these Hiervet could be trusted.
But their cooperation was important. Without the blessing of their former gods there was no way to get the Farians to stand down, and the war that would erupt with the Shen would drown all of us in blood.
The world around us morphed into a battlefield. Screams of the dying hold the same terror and pain no matter what race you are, and they filled the air. The explosions shook the ground.
“It had been a long time since we’d had to fight but it is wired into our very souls, and despite our efforts the monster within us surged to the forefront with a vengeance. We’d kept the weapons we’d fled with; the fear of our creators finding us was always in the back of my people’s minds, I think.
We fought back, and in doing so our people lost themselves again. A small group of my people and I escaped.”
There was a flicker, a slight flutter in her right eye as the lid slid almost closed, but Thyra appeared to stop it with a conscious effort. Something about what she’d just said was a lie; I just didn’t know which part.
“My squad and I were separated in the retreat; our ship was damaged and we made a last desperate jump.” Thyra waved a hand and the battle vanished. “We ended up here.”
Faria. I watched as the memory of the Hiervet’s arrival on the planet replayed around us. I didn’t recognize any of the faces, but I assumed Aiz and his father, even Adora were somewhere in the crowd. Possibly the elder members of the Pedalion as well.
It would have been the same had the Hiervet landed on twenty-first-century Earth. I could see the awe, the fear in their eyes.
“You lied to them. Told them you were gods.”
“They assumed and we didn’t correct them.” Thyra tapped her limbs together, the movement suggesting more embarrassment or agitation. “We were alone and scared. Faria seemed the perfect place to hide, especially once we realized what they could do.”
“Do?”
Thyra’s smile was so human it was unnerving. “Their ability to control energy.”
“You—” I fumbled for the words as I stared at her. The scene around us continued, forgotten. “Mia said healing was not a skill unique to the Farians.”
Another look I couldn’t identify slipped across Thyra’s face at the mention of Mia’s name, disappearing before I could get a handle on what it might indicate.
“We have been in your galaxy a very long time, Your Majesty. So have the Farians. So have the Shen. You humans are so young.” Thyra shook her head. “A practical impossibility to have not only survived but thrived in this isolated place.”
“If you tell me we only survived because of you, I might punch you.”
Thyra laughed, a strange throaty exhale that sounded like an airlock cycling. “No, Your Majesty. Humanity is responsible for their own survival, as miraculous as it is. We looked in on you when the future was revealed to us, but otherwise thought it best to leave you alone.”
