by Rachel White
"And we won't be executed?"
Lieutenant Taarq glanced at his lap. "I can't say."
"And if she doesn't support us?" Rallis prompted. "Or if she supports us, but it's not enough? What happens then?"
"You get executed." Lieutenant Taarq's voice was calm and level, but Rallis could see the agony in his pale eyes. It was at once comforting and overwhelming. To have someone care that much about him—to have someone in love with him—Rallis had never experienced it before. He had never expected it to happen. In his thoughts on his future, he stayed alone for life, or married some quiet younger son of a minor House, a partner of Miana's choosing, arranged as an auspicious match for Yy. It would be a loveless marriage, of course, made for convenience, and they would politely tolerate each other until they died, but it would benefit his family, and that would be enough. Not…this. Someone so enamored with Rallis that the idea of Rallis's death made him visibly stricken with grief.
"What did the other rebels say when they were told I was the rebellion leader?"
"What?" Naravi demanded, swinging around. "What are you talking about? The rebellion leader?"
"They weren't told." Lieutenant Taarq drummed his fingers on the bench again. Beside him, Lieutenant Harn looked relieved to have Naravi's attention on something beside himself. "They don't need to be. That lie's purpose was only to allow you to meet the Empress. She wouldn't have talked to you otherwise."
"You're putting a lot of weight on this meeting," Rallis pointed out. If he thought about it deeply, he would become hysterical. "I'm not that reliable."
"Rallis isn't the leader of anything. What are you talking about? Where is Hivaar Myn?"
Lieutenant Taarq sighed. "You have a better chance than most. I'm sorry. I know it's not ideal. I just…it was the only thing I could think of."
"What if she finds out that I'm not who you said I was?"
"What are you talking about?" said Naravi, voice cracking. He was braced against the bench, gripping his knees so tightly his knuckles were white.
"Does it matter?" This was Lieutenant Harn, his voice low and flat. Naravi swung around, exhaling sharply through his teeth. "Even if you're not officially the leader, speak for the cause and she'll still listen. Like Amun said, he was just trying to arrange the meeting."
Which…Rallis could understand that, but it didn't stop his mind from coming up with any number of catastrophic scenarios. The Empress would find out he wasn't actually any kind of a leader and send him back to the Red Square in Adesa to await execution. Or perhaps she would skip the wait and have him executed on Jevell, right there in the throne room. They would pull out his nails and skin him alive and display his head on a spike above the palace as a warning to lying Adesi who tried to con their way into the Empress's graces.
He felt ill. Lieutenant Taarq's optimism only went so far. A single wrong word out of Rallis's mouth, and he would die—all of them would die. But it seemed inevitable that he would say the wrong thing. Nothing over the last few months had worked in his favor, so why would this?
The shuttle continued its laborious ascent. As they rose higher, the air around them grew colder and thinner, the metal walls damp and chilled to the touch. As uncomfortable as it was, it didn't keep him from drifting in and out of a weary doze, awake enough to react if Naravi went for Lieutenant Harn's throat but too tired otherwise to engage with his surroundings. When he glanced over and saw Naravi deeply asleep, he took it as permission to abandon his half-hearted supervision and let himself sink into unconsciousness.
He woke again sometime later, groggy and disoriented. The shuttle didn't look any different than before—the light was the same, the sporadic sounds of metal shifting still grinding in his ears—which meant it was difficult to tell how much time had passed, but he judged it had been at least a few hours. His mouth was dry and his neck ached from the harsh angle. To his right, Naravi was curled on the bench, fast asleep. Lieutenant Taarq and Lieutenant Harn were talking in low voices in Jevite but stopped when they noticed Rallis was awake.
"We're almost there," Lieutenant Taarq told him. "It shouldn't be more than another half hour."
"How can you tell?"
He got a slight smile for that. "Experience. And this."
This turned out to be a pocket watch Lieutenant Taarq produced from his jacket. It was just after five in the morning. "Can we stop and wash up before the meeting?" Rallis asked him. "I haven't bathed since the day before last. And I desperately need to piss. I don't think wetting myself like a child in front of the Empress is going to help me get into her good graces."
Lieutenant Taarq blinked, then laughed, sincerely. "Yes. I'm sure that can be arranged."
"Does your cousin need anything?" Lieutenant Harn asked.
"Probably." Rallis glanced at Naravi, who was still sleeping soundly. "I'll ask him when he wakes up."
Hours of sleeping against the wall had created a patch of cold against Rallis's shoulder. He sluggishly tugged at the damp cloth, wishing he had brought something more respectable. Expecting only to attend the revolutionary meeting, he had chosen one of his oldest, plainest jackets, the better to avoid attention. Now he was going to be wearing it to meet the Empress of Jev.
The shuttle creaked and groaned beneath him even more loudly than before. "Is it…supposed to do that?" Rallis asked Lieutenant Taarq.
"It's preparing to land."
"It sounds like it's preparing to fall apart."
Lieutenant Taarq laughed again. "They always sound like that."
Movement to his right made him turn. Naravi was sitting up, blinking sleepily around the shuttle as though he didn't recognize where he was or who he was with. It was obvious the instant understanding set in: he tensed, poised to spring, his face transformed into a mask of barely-contained fury.
"Naravi." Nur's heart, Naravi didn't even turn his head. He was glaring at Lieutenant Harn with even more venom than before. If he kept that up during their audience, they would be sentenced to death immediately. "We're nearly there."
"Fine."
"Please try to keep your temper," Rallis continued, dropping his voice. "If anyone finds out—"
"Let them. Why should I keep my temper?" Naravi's words rang against the metal walls of the shuttle. "He killed Hesse. If I could, I would gut him right here and now and I don't care who knows it."
Lieutenant Taarq winced. Lieutenant Harn looked stonily into the middle distance.
"Fine." Nur save him from impassioned boys. "Then don't speak."
"You spoke to me."
Rallis was going to throttle him. "You know what I mean."
Naravi rolled his eyes but didn't respond, so perhaps he was taking Rallis's words to heart. A good thing too, for not long afterward, the shuttle was groaning and creaking again, slanting strangely, and Rallis knew they had arrived on Jev.
He rose when Lieutenant Taarq indicated it was time and stood still while he was unshackled. Naravi, at his side, was practically shaking with fury as he watched Lieutenant Harn undo his bonds, but—thank Nur—he didn't attempt another attack. Together, they stepped out of the shuttle and saw, for the first time, the great capital of Jev.
Chapter Eleven
The first step out of the shuttle felt like a punch to the chest. Rallis had known intellectually that Jev was different than Adesa, but knowing and seeing were two different things. Emerging into the shuttle station, every sense being barraged with strangeness—strange sights, strange sounds, strange smells, even the strange taste of the air, thin and iron against his tongue—drove home the ugly knowledge that had been lurking inside him since he had first been pushed into the shuttle: he wasn't safe in Adesa anymore. His home was gone, and this new place didn't welcome him.
The station looked like a cross between a caravan depot and a harbor, though there were no caravan wagons or ships, only personal fliers and larger, multi-person shuttles, which docked and launched at intervals along a long concourse. Above them, polished metal rafters
arched and dipped in strange symmetry, while below their feet, sheet metal and tile intermingled in a design that was once very foreign and uncomfortably familiar. Ancient Uranyan patterns, Rallis thought—Jev's version, instead of Adesa's, but the similarities were there.
Hundreds of people filled the area, their voices echoing against the metal walls. Everywhere he looked, he saw Jevites, and every Jevite seemed jarringly alien. Their clothes were strange, of course, but even their features felt strange. Rallis, tall among the Adesi, was only average compared to those around him. They arranged their hair differently, and he didn't recognize the expressions on their faces. Because they had a shared past, he had assumed there would be at least some similarities between the Jevites and the Adesi, but it felt as though he had found himself on another world.
"This way." Lieutenant Taarq led them down the concourse, accompanied by legionnaires Rallis recognized as his subordinates from Adesa. They had never been introduced, and he didn't recall ever hearing their names even in passing, but their faces were familiar. The way they kept their hands near their holsters was new, though, and he didn't like it.
At the far end of the shuttle terminal, they climbed into a waiting flier. They weren't bound this time, but the legionnaires who boarded with them kept wary eyes on both Rallis and Naravi, ready to act the instant they decided to make a break for it. But what use would that be? Even if they got out of the flier, where would they go? It wasn't as though he and Naravi could catch the next shuttle home. The only way back to Adesa would be to throw themselves off the edge of the citadel, and that would solve the Jevites' problems for them.
"We're going straight to the palace," said Lieutenant Taarq, drawing him from his thoughts, "but you'll have time to prepare before your audience." He sounded less confident than Rallis would have preferred. In the distance, the white domes of the palace rose over the city. Rallis recognized them from Orun's stories in childhood. How strange, to be seeing them now.
Arriving at the palace spurred another flurry of action. Rallis was dragged helplessly along, like a stick caught in a river current. They were met by more armed legionnaires who surrounded them with unnerving efficiency. Their wrists and ankles were shackled, of course. Nearly everyone around Rallis had a gun. And yet they acted as though he might run at any minute.
Inside the palace, Lieutenant Taarq directed the servants to take them to a washroom, but there was no time for a bath. Rallis had barely relieved himself and splashed water on his face before he was ordered back into the wide, tiled hallways that made up the palace and led onward.
As they walked, he took in the sights, quite overwhelmed. Everything was polished to a mirrored shine. Marble walls supported intricately mosaicked ceilings depicting scenes from Jevite legends. They passed by arching windows that overlooked the palace grounds, which were full of lush flowerbeds and bowing trees, a rarity for Jev. Space was limited. Anything that could be used for leisure was better served as buildings or farmland. The gardens beautified the palace, but they demonstrated the Empress's might, as well.
They stopped abruptly in front of a pair of double doors twice Rallis's height. "We're here," said Lieutenant Taarq to Rallis in an undertone, and then he was striding forward to talk to the legionnaires guarding the doors. They bowed and pushed the doors open and Rallis followed Lieutenant Taarq into what was unmistakably the throne room.
Inside, perhaps a dozen people were gathered, Jevites in the bone-white uniforms of the legion or dark, traditional dress. Most of the civilians were wearing the badge that indicated they were part of the Suulsen, though some were probably the cabinet that Lieutenant Taarq had mentioned. They were all male, between the ages of twenty and fifty, and all of them were watching Rallis with deep, unfriendly attention.
In the middle of the throng, a woman in a simple white dress was sitting on a marble chair, almost too small to be called a throne. Despite that, Rallis knew her immediately. Breathless and haggard and unwashed, dressed in two-day-old clothes, he found himself face-to-face with the Empress of Jev.
His first impression was that she was unexpectedly short. Jevites were naturally a taller, rangier people than the Adesi, but Empress Laiaraina's head came up to just below Rallis's shoulder when she approached and stood before him. She appeared neither young nor old: her face was still mostly smooth with youth, but faintly lined around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. Her hair was gathered into a plait that wound around the back of her head, more practical than artistic, and she wore no jewelry at all. The stillness with which she held herself reminded him of a doe about to take flight, though there was no hesitance or uncertainty in her demeanor. Her eyes were most striking: brown and clear and very steady, she seemed to be peeling the skin away from his face, inspecting what was underneath.
After a few moments, she said, in unaccented Adesi, "You're the leader of the rebellion."
Nur's heart, how was Rallis supposed to answer that? He opened his mouth and closed it again, floundering. When he looked to Lieutenant Taarq, he received an encouraging nod. "Yes," he croaked in Jevite. It felt strange to be speaking his fathertongue after so long. His mouth didn't know how to shape the word. "I am."
Her eyes widened. "You speak Jevite," she said, as the Jevites around her murmured and whispered. To the side, Lieutenant Taarq was gaping as though Rallis had struck him across the face.
"My father was from Jev, your Excellency. I learned from him."
"Interesting. Lieutenant Taarq neglected to inform me of this."
Rallis slid a glance toward him, but he still only looked stunned. "He didn't know, your Excellency."
She touched her chin with long, dark fingers. "What's your name?"
"Rallis Yy, your—your Excellency." Lieutenant Taarq had instructed him on how to speak to the Empress, but all of his lessons were slipping from Rallis's mind. "Thank you for speaking with me." Was that what a rebellion leader should say? Perhaps he ought to have been more ferocious, but he was far too scared for that.
"Are you the one who arranged the attacks on my legionnaires?"
Ah, gods, he was in over his head. "No, your Excellency."
Her brow furrowed. "Was it not your rebellion that planted those bombs and assaulted legionnaires?"
If he said yes, he would be admitting to hideous treason. If he said no, he would be deemed a liar. Either way, he was damned.
"Your Excellency," said Lieutenant Taarq, snapping out of his daze to come to Rallis's rescue, "it hasn't yet been determined who was responsible for those attacks, but there's evidence that it may not have been the rebels. We're still working to discover the identity of the culprits."
Empress Laiaraina's frown deepened. Around her, her retinue murmured amongst themselves. "What purpose do you intend for this meeting, lieutenant?" she asked. "While I appreciate your success in capturing the rebellion leader, I don't understand why you've brought him here, only to tell me that the rebellion is toothless."
"Not—not toothless, your Excellency." Lieutenant Taarq slid another anxious glance toward Rallis. "The rebellion may not be the cause of the violence, but the sentiment is there. There's a great deal of anger at Jev."
It seemed a dangerous statement, but the Empress nodded. "Yes. That's certainly true. The events of the preceding months have not fostered love for us amongst the Adesi."
She meant the All Council massacre. Rallis hadn't realized that anyone on Jev—except perhaps Lieutenant Taarq—cared about that incident at all.
"Exactly, your Excellency." Lieutenant Taarq strode toward the throne, more confident now. "I believe this is an opportunity to begin to mend those divisions."
"By coddling vigilantes and traitors?" one of the uniformed Jevites snapped. He was older than Lieutenant Taarq and his insignia looked different. A higher rank, perhaps?
Lieutenant Taarq gave him a deferential half-bow. "Not coddling traitors, sir," he said softly, "but by listening to the legitimate demands of those we're trying to learn to live with. You
r Excellency…I've lived on Adesa since nearly the beginning of the occupation and I've seen how sentiments have changed. The Adesi people are angry, and in truth I believe much of that anger is warranted."
"You don't know your place, lieutenant," said one of the Suul.
Empress Laiaraina held up a hand. "You may respond after the lieutenant is finished."
"Thank you, your Excellency. What happened to the All Council and the subsequent violence inflicted on Adesi civilians after Adesa surrendered have created an atmosphere of distrust and anger. I believe that if we truly want to stop this rebellion, we need to find ways to work with the Adesi, instead of trying to subjugate them further. Citizen Yy is here to speak for the rebels. I brought him here because I hope this can be the starting point of discussion."
He stopped as abruptly as he had started, looking faintly abashed. All eyes went to Rallis. Now what? Lieutenant Taarq had already covered everything that he might have said with far more eloquence and passion. He was a better rebel than Rallis was.
"Citizen Yy." This was the Empress, her attention on Rallis again. "If, as Lieutenant Taarq says, you are here to speak to the rebels' purpose, I'm willing to listen."
"Thank you, your—your Excellency," Rallis mumbled. "I… The Adesi are frightened and anxious. After hundreds of years of ruling ourselves, it's painful to be subject to another, and one we can't see or influence. You and your Suulsen are here on Jev, miles above us. Your legionnaires massacred our leaders—"
Angry clamor broke out among the Jevites in attendance. Rallis forced himself to ignore it all. It wasn't words, only sounds in his ears.
"You massacred the Heads of our Houses," he continued. "The Adesi value our families and our connections with one another above all else. To kill the Head of a House like that—it's not just murder in our eyes. It's the destruction of that House, its culture, its history. Everything. It's taking away not just its present but its past and future too."
