by Sara King
“Rebel One, this is Rebel Six. We’ve got your comm online, but nothing coming over the waves. Might wanna check your equipment.”
Jersey swallowed, tears burning down his face. He didn’t care about the rebels anymore. He didn’t care about anything but his lifeline that was dying on the floor. “Hey,” he croaked, “Mag and I are gonna go take a breather. We’ll meet up with you again in twenty-two to forty-four hours.”
There was an awkward pause over the comm, then, “You’re leaving us?”
Again, Jersey’s heart warred with his intellect. The chessmaster in him knew, strategically, that they should press their advantage while the Coalition was off-balance. He knew they needed to take Rath, and that they needed to do it soon, or Fortune was about to lose the only glimpse at freedom it had had in forty years. He knew that to fail in making a big win now would be a blow Fortune would never recover from. He also knew Magali was slipping away, and if he tried to put her in front of a crowd again, he would never get her back.
“Even a Killer needs to get some sleep,” Jersey said as casually as he could into the comm. “We’ll regroup when she’s had some sleep.”
“Yeah, man, okay,” the pilot over the comm said, though he still sounded uncertain. “What are we supposed to do in the meantime?”
It was a good question. The obvious thing to do was to keep taking Yolk factories until they had built up enough confidence and support in the populace that they had enough numbers so they could actually afford an assault on Rath.
His heart, however, screamed the opposite. He wanted a normal life, wanted to be human again. But he also needed to have a safe place to do that. If he ended it and they ran now, the Coalition would come back in force and destroy everyone. If he didn’t, Magali was going to lose herself.
“Go recruiting,” Jersey said, trying to buy them some time. “Tell everyone you know we’re finally taking back what’s ours. Tell your brothers, your aunts, tell your neighbor’s little sister. Spread the word—we’re gonna win. When everybody’s had some sleep, we’ll contact you again with our next rendezvous.”
“You got it,” the pilot, a freighter captain named Drogire Myr, said, sounding much more confident, now. “See you guys in a couple days.”
If we decide to come back. Heart pounding, Jersey set the comm and glanced back down the hallway into the cargo bay where Magali was still laying where he’d left her against the wall, head cocked to one side, mouth open, eyes blank and staring. Her lips were moving.
Killer. Jersey’s heart skipped, seeing her mouth the word again. It was the same thing she had been saying for hours.
He had to help her. He had to help her now. Which meant he needed to get her somewhere familiar, somewhere that didn’t remind her of death and murder. Somewhere with no prying eyes. Somewhere safe.
Jersey thought of his childhood sanctuary, almost two hours away. He wasn’t sure she would last that long…
He couldn’t, however, think of anywhere else to take her. He hadn’t been free to explore Fortune since he was sixteen.
He went and crouched beside her. “Hold on, Mag,” he said. “I’m taking us to a place I know. It’ll be safe there. Okay?”
Her eyes flickered toward him slightly, but then unfocused again, her lips still forming that single word, over and over.
That decided him. Jersey got up, got the ship turned around, and set the autopilot toward the South Tear, still having the coordinates in memory. Then, once his course was set, he went back to once again pull Magali’s limp form into his arms. “Come on, Mag. Stay with me. We’re almost there. Almost there…”
Thought flowed around her like lazy wisps of smoke, disappearing whenever she reached for it. It felt like she was drifting, rising, pulling further and further away from something she no longer remembered.
“We’re here, Mag! Just hold on while I set up the camouflage and open the hatch.”
Something moved under her and her vision changed, tilted to the side, now, slightly blocked by a floor or wall—she didn’t care enough to try to determine which.
Sometime later, the voice returned. Hard, heavy arms slid under her body, pulling her from the floor. “I used to come up here when I needed to get away from my brothers,” the voice said. “There were five of us at home, plus two girls, plus Mom and Dad, Nana, Grampa Jim and the uncles and all their sons and daughters and grandchildren whenever they came over—place got pretty crowded.” There was a hesitation, then, “See the hills up there? There’s a really old lava flow from like sixteen thousand years ago. Hot mineral water boils up from the ground like a mile away, and it’s still hot when it reaches the falls up ahead. Dad almost turned it into his homestead, but Mom liked the lake in South Tear better, ’cause it had fish and was closer to the rest of the family. When I was a kid, I figured I’d make my homestead here, once I found a wife and settled down.”
Magali thought about how she’d always wanted to live at one of the Tear’s many hot springs when she and Patrick were first making their plans to escape Fortune, but then had decided on Mezzan to make sure her father and his war couldn’t follow her.
“Is Steele up there?” Magali whispered, seeing a cliff, wondering if he was going to put her back there for a Nephyr to find.
“No, Mag,” the man whispered. “You’ll get some rest, that’s all.”
Magali considered how hard it was to sleep on the edge of a cliff as she started drifting again.
He was losing her. His angel, his beacon in the darkness, his hope, was a shattered mess in his arms because he had forced her to keep going when she didn’t want to. Out of selfishness, out of anger and greed, he had pushed her over the edge.
Sacrifice a queen…
…for a checkmate.
His sanctuary, Jersey realized, was going to be his tomb.
After everything that he’d done, all the horrible acts he’d committed in order to survive, that he had pushed Magali Landborn over the edge was too much. Jersey’s chest ached with the guilt, and, like acid, it had dissolved a hole through the old barrier he’d put up against the shame of what he had done to stay alive. He was just as much of a monster as the rest of them, he knew it as much as he knew he no longer deserved to breathe.
If he could get her to wake, if he could get her aware again, he would make sure she survived long enough to be safe, then he would simply disappear. She didn’t deserve the burden of a monster’s presence.
“Almost there, Mag,” he whispered. He ducked into a tunnel left by molten rock, still climbing, his heart heavier than it had ever been.
His one chance at redemption, and he’d destroyed it. Crushed it. Stamped it out as viciously as he had obliterated so many other things of beauty in his life. Destroyed that one thing of beauty, that tiny glimmer of hope, in the name of revenge.
For over a decade, he had clung to sanity by hope alone. Hope of rescue, hope of companionship, hope for acceptance. And then, after a gift from the Cosmos had offered him an anchor against the horrors and his hopes had started to become reality, he’d intentionally pushed her over the edge. Knowing the unforgiveable nature of what he had done, Jersey felt himself losing that tentative hold of his own sanity.
“Stay with me, Mag,” Jersey said. “Please. You’ll like this place”
His sanctuary was at the top of the lava-tube, a recessed bubble-like room beside a waterfall that opened up where several tubes had broken open and shifted in a violent earthquake, only to have the flow disappear inside another tube and fall back into the earth. The waterfall’s basin was one of the many hardened magma-bubbles, and the rock walls were glittering with blue-green crystals that had formed from years of mineral-rich water spraying from the falls—one of the many things Fortune could have harvested and sold, had Yolk not been discovered. In his youth, ever since his dad had shown him the lava tubes, it had been Jersey’s place of refuge, of solace. It had always felt important to him, a place he could go to be alone and recharge.
“Come on, Mag,” Jersey said, ducking into his magma-bubble sanctuary. “I used this place to draw. You’re safe in here.”
The magma-room, like the rock beside the falls, had developed blue-green crystals along the ceiling and a crack in the wall, bristling down to a large outcropping in the floor. Set upon the tips of the four biggest crystals of that outcropping was an ancient piece of plywood that Jersey had used as his drawing table, and beside that, a rough stool he had made himself. Jersey’s last piece of art, left only half-finished on the age-bubbled wood, lay forgotten beside a set of pencils, all now darkened and moldy from the passage of time and the damp from the waterfall. He ignored it all and rushed Magali over to the back of the room, where a nylon hammock still hung between two crystals.
“I used to sleep here,” Jersey said as he lowered her into its folds. She gave no indication she’d heard him at all, so he sat down beside her, trying to keep talking, keep her focused. “Sometimes I just wanted to spend a little time alone, but sometimes I got stuck. My uncle’s skimmer wasn’t that dependable, and the instruments sucked. You know, bad weather, couple times the engine broke down and I’d have to wait for Dad to come rescue me.”
Magali’s breath hitched. “Dad,” she whispered.
Thinking she wanted to talk about her dad, to anchor herself with memories, Jersey quickly offered, “He was tall. Really good looking guy. Blue eyes. Blond hair.”
“No.” Magali sat up so suddenly that Jersey’s auto-sentry systems engaged and he felt the spasm of juice in preparation for a fight. He quickly relaxed, forcing the system to disengage, hoping she hadn’t caught it.
She hadn’t. Her eyes were still unfocused. “He is short. And he is brown-eyed and black haired.”
Jersey honestly didn’t know what to say to that. David Landborn was almost as tall as Runaway Joel, with stark blue eyes and blond hair he liked to keep buzzcut short.
Then Magali was lying back down, relaxing again.
“Tell me about him!” Jersey cried, coming to her side and taking her hand. “Tell me about your dad, Mag. Tell me everything you remember about him.”
She ignored him completely.
Desperate for something, anything to stop that downward slide into oblivion, Jersey just started talking, giving her something to listen to, to anchor her. “I was a weird kid,” he said, leaning forward to watch her eyes for any hint of recognition. “I always felt like I was a piece of a puzzle, but I got put in the wrong box. I drew these weird drawings all the time—like crazy stuff—mind-bending stuff. I don’t even know how I did it. One line just became another, then another, then boom, there were these pictures inside a picture within a picture. My dad and your dad thought it meant I was a Yolk baby, but I dunno. I think I was just different.”
Magali seemed to be zoning out again. He saw her lips start to move again. He heard a soft, “Killer, killer, killer.”
Hearing those words again, knowing they came from such an innocent, Jersey felt a surge of fury inside.
“You’re not!” Jersey roared, slamming his fist into a crystal by his elbow, making it shatter into a thousand blue-green pieces as his rage flowed out, reengaging systems, threatening to overpower him.
Magali blinked at his fist like she was seeing it for the first time.
“You’re not a killer,” Jersey growled, as the glittering pieces tinkled away from him. He hit himself in the chest with a thumb. “I am. I’ve done horrible things, Mag. Things that will stay with me forever. I can try for the rest of my life to wash that rot away, but it’s always going to be there, eating me alive. You had no choice, Mag. You did what you were forced to do. You’re so much more. You’re beautiful. Clean inside, Mag. You don’t have that rot within you. I do.”
Magali slowly lifted her head to look at him.
“So I swear to Aanaho,” Jersey growled, his chest heating, “if I hear you say it again, I’m gonna hunt down whoever put it in your head and eviscerate them, then drop their severed head at your feet. That’s a Killer, Mag. And that’s what I can do, and have done, in the past. You call anyone a killer, say it to someone who deserves it.”
She seemed to be listening. Partially.
“Your dad said it best,” Jersey growled. “You’re the sum of your choices, Mag. You didn’t choose what happened to you—all you can do is choose what to do from here. You don’t wanna be a Killer? Then don’t. You have the power, Mag. People aren’t just little leaves adrift on a great big ocean—they’ve all got little mice paddling them where they wanna go.”
Magali focused on him a couple minutes more, then silently turned back to look at the wall.
Frustrated, Jersey looked around his sanctuary for some other distraction.
There was a chessboard on a tripod in the corner, still set up exactly the way he’d left it, halfway through an ancient masters’ game. Beside that, a kerosene lamp with a cracked glass chimney sat against the wall, a bottle with five spare matches still sealed beside it. Maybe he could light one of the matches, use the light to draw her back…
As he was passing the sixteen mildewed, dust-covered books along one wall—books on art and philosophy from his father and books on chess from David Landborn—he hesitated. He grabbed one of the books on chess. “You remember chess?” he asked, shoving the book in her field of vision. “Your dad taught me how to play chess, if you wanna play.”
Immediately, Magali’s face darkened and she turned her head away. “Don’t like chess.”
Like combat and weapons-training, chess had been one of the things her father had forced on all his recruits, and like Jersey, it was pretty clear she had resented it. He scanned the room desperately for some other item that David had given him.
Tucked between two crystals beside Magali’s hammock was a tiny wooden box. A calligraphic character in a language he didn’t recognize had been inlaid into the box’s top, and inside was the one thing that David Landborn had ever given him—an old Aashaanti necklace. David had said that a friend of his had found it during the Triton Wars, and that it had once belonged to an Aashaanti archon.
Jersey quickly grabbed the box from its niche of crystals to reveal the object inside.
Magali must have seen the wooden character carved into the lid, because her head turned to follow it. “Dragonfly,” she whispered, starting to sit up. There was an odd sense of longing there.
Jersey, who was fumbling for the object inside, hesitated, uncertain what a dragonfly was. An airborne pest? The hieroglyph necklace inside did look kind of like it had wings…
And not only had Magali turned toward the box, but her eyes were focused again.
Very slowly, Jersey closed the lid and held it out to her, showing her the front. “Your dad gave me this. I don’t know what the character on the box says…I think it might be Old Japani.”
“It says dragonfly.” She was blinking at the box, tears suddenly welling in her eyes.
Jersey didn’t bother mentioning that Old Japani was a dead language, banned since the Triton Wars, and she couldn’t possibly read it.
“Dragonfly,” she whispered again. “Dad.” She reached out for the container gingerly, and Jersey let her have it. Her fingers whitened in a fist around the wooden cube.
“Open it,” Jersey offered. “There’s an Aashaanti necklace inside.”
Ignoring him, Magali peered down at the thing in her hands in silence. He watched her tears drip on the ancient wood.
“David gave it to me the first time Milar actually won a game of chess against me. I mean, for months, I don’t think he won a single game. He was going to give up, because our dads were making us and neither of us wanted to do it. I was sometimes even mean to Miles about it, like he was supposed to be a Yolk Baby, you know? I know it made him feel so stupid. Milar told his mom he didn’t wanna go anymore, and the next day, David showed up with that, and—”
“No,” she interrupted, scowling at him like he was lying to her. “This was Dad’s.”
Jersey hes
itated. “Yeah. Your dad’s. I said that.”
Magali glared at him, then turned away again.
“He told me I could have it if I taught Milar chess. He said it was very old and very important, and only a master strategian should carry it. He said sometimes even the most brilliant minds have to realize they have more to gain from a loss than from a win.” Jersey felt bad, remembering. “So I threw the next game, not because I was worried about Milar’s confidence, but because I wanted the artifact. But the joke was on me—that win was what Milar needed to take interest and start playing for keeps, and I actually had to start fighting for every game. David Landborn put that necklace in my hand when Milar finally beat me for real.” Jersey picked at a crack in the floor beside his knee, feeling disgusted with himself. “Master strategist.” He snorted. “A few weeks after Landborn gave that to me, I got both Milar and me taken by the Nephyrs.” He shook his head. “It’s yours if you want it.”
“Goodbye, Dragonfly,” Magali whispered. Then her fingers tightened on the box, harder and harder, until Jersey heard the wood splinter. Then Magali screamed and hurled the remains across the room.
The black Aashaanti hieroglyph pendant bounced against the wall and skittered across the floor.
As soon as it slid into sight, Magali stiffened like she’d been hit.
Because Jersey was desperate to keep her from slipping back out of sight after she’d crawled this far out of the brink, he quickly went to retrieve the necklace from the wood splinters.
The Aashaanti necklace was rather plain—a hieroglyph of a birdlike object set in a small, pitch-black stone. Or metal. Jersey hadn’t been able to figure out which.
“Here,” Jersey said, gingerly prying a hand from her face and dropping the necklace into her cupped fingers. “You can have it.”
Magali’s entire body went rigid upon touching the necklace, and at first, Jersey thought maybe it had knocked her back into the void that was trying to claim her. Then, very slowly, she whispered, “Dragonfly.”
