Out Past the Stars

by K. B. Wagers

  “Make what right?” Thyra moved toward me, Priam and Adaran following, and I got the sudden sense of a pack of predators homing in on a kill.

  I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed. All six of my BodyGuards put their hands on their weapons and in a heartbeat I was faced with a choice—back down, or potentially make this situation even worse than it was.

  I jumped from the dais with as much casualness as I could feign, the move putting me closer to Emmory than Thyra, and I closed the distance even more by turning my back on her and strolling toward him.

  Hao was probably the only other person alive I trusted enough to put my back to a killer and know that I wouldn’t end up dead.

  “I don’t have a lot of time to bounce words back and forth with you, Thyra. You murdered people. Shen and Farian alike. Now that this information has come to light, surely you don’t think the Shen will just walk away without some justice.”

  “Funny that you would speak of justice, Your Majesty,” she replied as I turned back to face her. Priam was watching me again, those wide black eyes fixed on me, and something that looked very much like hatred lurked under the surface of his gaze.

  “I don’t see anyone laughing.”

  “We dispensed justice as the Farians asked us to do. We protected our children from those who would do them harm. You have done the same, yet I don’t see anyone calling you a murderer.”

  “You’d be surprised,” I murmured. “However, you dispensed justice under the pretext of a lie, Thyra. A lie the Shen were trying to expose. It is different.”

  “It is no different!” The exclamation from Priam startled everyone in the room, and the self-control of my Guards was likely the only reason he didn’t get shot. “Why are you defending those monsters when you should be helping us?”

  “Priam!” Thyra said something else in their sharp language and after a last look at me, he vanished.

  Thyra turned back to me, folding her limbs together and bowing. “I am sorry for his outburst, Your Majesty. This has been difficult for him.”

  “For him?”

  “To see what they have done to you. The Shen are unpredictable things.” She waved a limb in the air. “We know your time with them was painful and carried with it a great amount of grief. I wish you would let us help you.”

  “I’m fine.” This time I couldn’t back away, couldn’t reach back for Emmory to anchor myself against the sudden sick heat in my throat as the memory of Sparkos came roaring back.

  “You don’t need to lie to me, Your Majesty. I know you are not well. You are not the Star who should have come to us.” Her voice was soothing. “I wish only to help.”

  I suddenly, desperately, wanted to let her.

  “Hail.”

  I froze at Emmory’s voice over our private com; my muscles tensed as I prepared to take a step toward Thyra. “I am fine,” I repeated, though my voice was too soft to be a proper declaration. “I do not want your help.”

  Thyra’s black eyes flicked briefly to Emmory before they returned to me and she smiled. It was a patient, awful expression that made my skin crawl. “I see. Thank you, Your Majesty, this has been most informative.”

  She and Adaran both disappeared.

  “What the fuck was that?” I asked, and rubbed my shaking hands over my face with a second muttered curse.

  It was late evening by the time I made it to Aiz and Mia’s quarters on board my ship. Emmory hadn’t said a word as I’d gone straight to my quarters and drunk two shots of whiskey, probably because I’d spilled at least half of it in the process, before heading back out again and through the Hailimi’s corridors.

  The interaction with Adora and then with Thyra kept replaying in my head. It bounced around with such force that it made my head ache. The venom in Adora’s voice wasn’t anything new, but the hypnotic rhythm of Thyra’s that had almost convinced me to walk toward her shook me to my core.

  Every instinct I had was now screaming at me to run.

  Talos answered the door and the echoes of grief on his face made my own chest hurt in response as I shoved aside everything else. The front room was packed with people, all of them standing with heads bowed and crossed hands pressed over their mouths.

  “How are you, my friend?” I offered my hand, relieved when he took it and let me pull him into a hug. The harsh words I’d thrown at him on Sparkos when raging in my own grief came back to haunt me. I’d accused him of having a family to save, only to find out now that wasn’t true.

  I could imagine the pain all too vividly.

  “Torn between grief and rage.” He released me and pressed his forehead to mine for just a moment. “I grieved for my family a long time ago, Hail, but the wound feels—”

  “New?”

  “We have lost hope. That last flicker that our loved ones would return to us is gone. The last possibility that there would be peace with the Farians and we could stop this endless war is shattered like our hearts. It’s all gone.”

  Fear joined the hurt. “Talos, the Pedalion—”

  He stopped me with a shake of his head. “You will need to speak with the Thínos about this, Hail, not me. But if you have any care for them at all, I will ask you to wait. Now is the time for grief.”

  “May I speak to them?”

  “I will ask.”

  “Majesty,” Emmory murmured from behind me in the hallway. “If the Shen go back to war over this, we are going to be caught right in the middle.”

  “Tell me about it,” I replied. “Wait here.”

  Emmory didn’t protest out loud, but I felt his sudden tension and reached out to touch his arm. “I’ll be all right, Emmy, I promise.”

  “It’s not you I’m worried about, Hail.”

  “I know, but you can’t come with me.” I left him in the hall, the door sliding shut between us.

  There was a solemn stillness in the air. The Shen reached their hands out, murmuring “Astéri” as I passed. Their grief coated my tongue like ash, so thick I could taste it with the heat of anger just beyond. Poorly banked coals that would flare to life if I wasn’t very careful. I didn’t blame them; I couldn’t. I was feeling that same anger myself and if it had been my family sent to die like this, I would—I had already waged a war over that very same thing.

  Here on the edge of peace, the slightest misstep would cause a war like no one had ever seen.

  Mia met me at the door of her room, eyes reddened from tears. “Hail.”

  “I am so sorry,” I whispered, everything else between us falling away in that moment. I wrapped my arms around her and pressed my lips to her temple as she clung to me. “Mia, if I had known—”

  “There is nothing you could have done to save him. He was dead the moment the assassin sent his soul back to those butchers.” The fury in her words was a snarling thing even as she leaned into me, seeking comfort and support. “In all the things I have seen, never was there a single hint of this.”

  When I opened my mouth to reassure her, the iron tang of blood hit me like a slap.

  “Where is Aiz?”

  She turned her head toward the bathroom. “He will not stop. I tried, Hail. His grief and rage will eat him alive.”

  “Can I?” The open-ended question hung in the air, whispered against Mia’s hair, and she nodded once.

  “He may kill you.”

  “You’ll bring me back.” I slipped out of Mia’s arms, ignoring the sudden ache her absence brought, and approached the bathroom, my stomach twisting into knots.

  14

  Aiz sat on the floor of the open shower with his back to the door, some strange concession to keep the blood contained into a space easily cleaned.

  “Go away, Hail.”

  I will never, for the rest of my life, forget the way his voice sounded. I knew that soul-rending grief. Had felt it too many times breaking my heart to pieces. The depth of his pain was as sharp as the knife he drove relentlessly into his forearm. The wound fountained blood, then closed, and then
he did it all over again.

  “We are friends, are we not, Aiz Cevalla?”

  “What kind of question is that?” He hesitated for just a second before driving the knife into his skin again.

  “An honest one. Answer it.”

  “When I lie to myself it looks like the possibility of a friendship with you.”

  I couldn’t stop the smile. “Only the possibility?”

  “I learned too long ago that you humans live such brief lives. The grief of having your friendship and losing it in the blink of an eye can rip a heart apart. I stopped caring about mortals a long time ago.”

  “Liar. You were there for me on Sparkos when I lost myself. Even though the circumstances had spiraled out of your control, you thought of me.” I knelt behind him, reached a hand out, and pressed it flat on his back, feeling the muscles stiffen at the contact. “I overheard you and Mia talking after I killed myself. I wasn’t coherent enough at the time to realize how much my descent into madness bothered you or why, but something shifted that day and looking back I can see it. You chose to be my friend when I needed you, risk of grief and all.”

  I rested my forehead just above my hand. “You did not have to be gentle with me, Aiz, but you were. Even through all these long years, the cruelty of the universe has not snuffed out the spark of kindness in you I can see so clearly.”

  Another hesitation. Another wound, but with this one he wrenched the knife out and stabbed it back through his arm immediately.

  “Hurting yourself won’t bring them back,” I whispered. “You didn’t say the words to me, but they were hanging in the air between us.”

  “I could offer you solace because I knew your grief was false.”

  “Cowshit. It was real enough to me, and you would have said the same regardless.”

  There was a moment of silence and then Aiz let out a shuddering breath.

  “Bad enough when they murdered him,” he whispered. “When we realized they had somehow stolen his soul from Jibun it was like a knife in the chest. But there was always a hope we would rescue him someday.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I failed him.” The heartbreak in his voice made my vision blur with tears.

  “You did no such thing,” I murmured, shifting closer, sliding my other hand over his bloody forearm before he could bring the knife down again. I steeled myself for the pain of the blade but it didn’t come. “You have led your people to the peace he wanted.”

  “I haven’t,” he whispered. “We have no choice but to resume the fight for this horror.”

  “Aiz.” My breath caught and I blinked back the tears, Adora’s words ringing too loud in my ears. The pain seethed under his skin and rather than say the words I took what I could from him, clenching my teeth against the burning onslaught.

  “Stop.” Aiz turned his arm over, linking his fingers with mine. “This is not your pain to carry, Hail.”

  “You are my friend, Aiz, my crew.” I grappled for the right words. All of them felt so weighty in my mouth. “I will carry all that pain and more if it means you don’t have to. Let your rage go, Aiz, and let the grief take its place. Your sister and your people are also hurting. Be there for them.”

  “And then?”

  I lifted my head from his back. I knew I couldn’t tell him the Shen couldn’t fight; even if I believed it the words would fall to the floor without being heard. I knew that rage all too well. So I said the only thing I could. “I will not force you to peace, but I also cannot fight this fight with you if that is where you choose to go.”

  Aiz sighed, but didn’t speak.

  “Just promise me that in the morning we can speak of it before you decide?” I whispered. “That is all I will ask of you.”

  “There is nothing you can say to me that will make this better.”

  “Not to make it better. To give you a way forward past this endless cycle of pain and death. I know you want vengeance. All I can say is I’ve been down that road and the victory tastes like ashes in your mouth. Trust me, Aiz, as your friend and for the sake of your people, please, don’t commit to war when we are so close to peace.”

  His exhale was quiet, just a breath of air almost drowned out by the clattering of the knife to the floor. “After everything I have done to you. I owe you that much, don’t I?”

  He did, but it felt shitty to admit it out loud so I gave him an awkward hug and then got to my feet, stepping out of the way so Mia could rush forward and wrap her arms around Aiz after he stood.

  I pulled my boots off on a clean patch of floor before I headed back through the Shen. Talos met me at the door and opened it. I met Emmory’s worried gaze and offered up a soft smile.

  “Hail?” Aiz’s call floated on the air.

  I turned to look at him. The Shen had lifted their heads and watched us with their hands still pressed to their mouths, their mourning ritual halted in favor of this moment.

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you, Star of Indrana.” Aiz folded his hands together, touching them to his heart, lips, and forehead before he bowed to me. “It has been an unexpected honor to call you a friend.”

  I set my boots down at Emmory’s feet so I could echo the gesture. “It has and I hope it continues, Aiz Cevalla. I will see you in the morning.” I stepped through the doorway and it closed behind me.

  “Are you all right, Hail?”

  “It’s not my blood.” I swallowed down the pain and headed down the corridor. “I need a shower.”

  I caught myself twice mumbling the words to the Aparadha Stotram as I washed Aiz’s blood from my hands and hair. Now that the moment was over, the adrenaline dump had left me shaky and nauseated.

  Stasia handed me clean clothes and shook her head at my whispered “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s fine, Majesty. It’ll clean.”

  I choked down the smartass comment about the benefits of black clothing and instead dressed in the soft dark pants and tank top.

  Hao was in the main room, leaning against my desk and talking to Gita. Their fingers were intertwined and there was a look in Hao’s eyes I hadn’t seen in a very long time.

  I closed my eyes against the sudden well of emotion, my heart feeling like it was going to burst. The thought that my brother—my stubborn, ridiculous brother—might have found love again after the loss of Gy filled me with comfort. He’d lost so much, some of it because of me, and I wanted to see him happy again.

  I had the power to do it, at least in some manner. To build a future of peace and safety for those I loved and those who depended on me. I couldn’t fail that fragile, budding promise trying to find the sunlight.

  They lapsed into silence when I emerged from the bathroom.

  “You’re sitting on a drive about to go critical, little sister,” Hao said by way of greeting.

  “Tell me something I don’t know.” I whispered a silent prayer of thanks for the fact that someone had stocked the liquor cabinet in my quarters before Admiral Hassan had left Indrana. At this rate I wasn’t going to have any left when we headed home. “Hai Ram,” I muttered, and poured myself another glass of Calasian whiskey. I knocked half of it back without turning around.

  “What’s the plan?”

  “If this blows up in our faces?” I stared at the whiskey swirling in my glass. “We’ll have to cut and run.” I hated the words coming out of my mouth. Hated even more that there was no way around them. I had one ship and no way to stop the Shen if they renewed hostilities with the Farians.

  Renewed hostilities, Hail? Really? Don’t you sound like a noble now. Is that what you can call a conflict that’s going to destroy two civilizations and potentially ruin humanity in the process?

  The sharp-tongued voice burst back into my head with a vengeance and I leaned on the counter, squeezing my eyes shut at the wave of terror that accompanied the words. It mixed with the terrifying lure of Thyra’s voice from earlier and sat like acid in my throat.

  “I talked to Rai a little bit
ago.” Hao didn’t seem to notice my moment of panic. Or maybe he did and figured the change of subject would help. That was actually a very Hao thing to do.

  I paused in the act of pouring a second drink and stared at him over my shoulder. “Go on.”

  Hao smiled. “There’s some understandable hesitation about preparing for an unknown threat, especially since Rai can’t tell anyone the information is coming from you.”

  “Like it would make any difference,” I replied with a laugh, and finished my pour.

  “It would, Hail. Your word has weight and not in the ‘I’m Empress of Indrana’ fashion. Ow.”

  I turned to see him rubbing the back of his head. Gita was giving him a flat look, and I had to hide my smile behind my glass. Their behavior settled me, as strange as it was. This interaction was comforting.

  This was what I was saving.

  “Let’s hope we don’t have to use them,” I said, sinking into the chair at the desk. “If we can’t run them off with this plan of yours and the fighting reaches that far, we are in the deepest kind of shit.”

  “Works for me,” Hao replied. “Your mysterious army of Hiervet isn’t the pressing issue right now anyway, is it? The fact that the Shen are going to go to war with the Farians as soon as Aiz finishes”—he waved a hand—“whatever it was that was going on in his rooms.”

  “He was putting a knife through his arm. Repeatedly.”

  Hao sucked air in from between his teeth. “The more I learn about immortality the less I think it’s a good idea.”

  “Hao.” Gita’s warning was quiet and I looked between my Dve and my brother. There was something more there I was missing, but neither seemed inclined to share.

  “He’s right.” I took a sip of my drink and scratched at my scalp. “Shiva, I’m tired. Aiz promised to listen to me in the morning before he did anything. I’ve got one chance to convince him not to go to war.”

  “You don’t think the fact that Yadira and Delphine promised anything they wanted in exchange will be enough?” Gita asked.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t tell him,” I admitted. “It wasn’t the right time. Do you think if Aiz asks for his sister’s head, or Thyra’s, that they’ll still say yes?”