Memory's Blade

by Spencer Ellsworth

  “Stop,” she says.

  “Galaxy had a never-ending war for a thousand years. Had an Empire lived off the business of eternal war. Make the choice now, aiya?”

  “You don’t understand,” she says. “You’re still a cross.”

  I swallow my words, and clutch Dina against my breast. “Reckon I deserve that. Given what I said to you, back on the moon of Trace one time.”

  “You do deserve it.” Kalia bites off the words. “You’ll never understand.”

  “I’m just a spaceways scab, aiya?”

  The door buzzes. “Oh hell,” Kalia says. “I didn’t want to do this now.”

  Two soldiers stand there with Vanaliel, her arms bound. Her face is red. She’s been weeping, more weeping than even Dina done this morning.

  Kalia looks at Vanaliel, and nods at the guards, who withdraw from the room, leaving the three of us together.

  Whether she notices it or not, Kalia’s hand goes to one of her guns. “What do you have to say to Jaqi, traitor?”

  “I . . .” Vanaliel can barely speak. “The Saint’s consort asked it of me. Araskar. He asked me, for the loyalty I bear him from the battle of Rocina. I am no traitor.”

  “I know,” I say. “I planned it with him. More fool me.”

  Kalia clutches the handle of the gun at her waist and narrows her eyes, looking on Vanaliel. “You have committed worse treason than I could imagine.”

  I step in front of Vanaliel, holding my baby, and for half a second all my guts, which don’t feel so good after giving birth anyway, churn up because I see that look in Kalia, the look I last saw on a catwalk high on an Archive Tower, that look that says murder.

  “I’m leaving, Kalia,” I say. I take Vanaliel by the arm. “This one’ll come with me, to serve as my bodyguard. That’s her sentence for what she’s done, aiya?”

  “You’re not leaving.”

  “One day you’ll figure out that you need peace. Real peace. Without the red.” I hate that it’s ending like this, but I turn to leave.

  “You told me something once,” Kalia says, stopping me. “That you couldn’t run anymore. That you had given up on a normal life, and you had to fight.”

  “That’s what I figured on, when this fight began,” I say. “But now I’ve seen the other end of it. I seen what happens when there’s no end to the fight. This little girl deserves a normal life. Deserves to have her mama come when she calls, and at least know where her daddy’s laid to rest.”

  I reach for the door’s sensor.

  Kalia draws a gun—and points it at me.

  Oh shit.

  “You don’t leave, Jaqi.”

  “You gonna shoot me, and the babe too?” I sound a hell of a lot more confident than I feel. I didn’t figure she’d do this. But a part of me wonders. Those guns don’t miss.

  “If I can’t have a Saint, I’ll have a martyr.”

  I wet my lips. “That’s a hell of a thing to say.” And a moment later, I add, “Go on, then. I’ll be just as dead as Quinn.”

  Kalia lets out a roar like any Zarra.

  And shoots the table.

  Dina screams at the noise. The table breaks into a dozen pieces of warped plasticene, rebounding off the walls. I cover all of Dina and yell, “Aiya, Kalia, I got a baby here!”

  “I hate them so much,” Kalia says, and suddenly she’s just a fourteen-year-old girl, crying her eyes out. “I hate them so much. I hate them so much that it’s exhausting.” She sobs and sobs, and a dam breaks inside me, and I cry too, and then Dina joins us, and I figure we en’t shed near enough tears yet anyway.

  After a long time, I pull away and we stare into each other’s puffy eyes.

  “You ought to come with me too,” I say.

  “I’ve got an armistice to work on.” She says each word like it’s been pulled from her throat by a hook.

  “You mean that?”

  “I do,” she says. “I have to.”

  * * *

  The shuttle waits for us. I walk across the hangar, my throat still raw. Must have stayed there holding Kalia for an eternity.

  I think she’ll do okay.

  I still don’t know whether I’m doing the right thing. That’s the bit about being the Oogie of Stars that’s toughest of all, and I reckon the part that undid John Starfire. See, when it turns out that “Son of Stars” just means “real good with nodes,” I don’t get no special guidance from God. Kid en’t quite a god—vi’s got all the power and none of the sense. I get the same judgment anyone else does.

  I could be wrong. Aranella lied about forgiving Araskar, that much seems true, and she could be lying about wanting peace. But Araskar believed that she had really turned against her husband. And the memories I took from John Starfire support it. Aranella cared about her surviving children. More than she cared about the Resistance.

  I know what that feels like. I want Dina to live that normal life. Might be that’s selfish, might be that’s me thinking of myself before the cause. But I want her to call and hear her mommy answer, until the day I’m an old crone and she comes when I call.

  Kalia made me promise to read the Bible someday, so I got that tucked into my knapsack, along with every bit of fresh fruit, nuts, and vegetables I could steal on this ship. I already been snacking on it, walking toward the ship.

  “You actually wish me to go with you?” Vanaliel asks.

  “Yep, I need a good sword arm watching out for the babe.” She’s a fine slab herself, but I don’t add that bit.

  Vanaliel wipes her running nose and bows—that bowing again! “I will be with you until death, Saint—”

  “Easy, girl,” I say. “You got to relax. First order is to take it easy. No bowing.”

  “Yes, Saint Jaqi.” I see her muscles straining, trying not to bow.

  And then another voice. “Jaqi.”

  “Z.” I turn around and see the big fella. “Thanks for what you did. Loading up his body and all.”

  “Do not thank me,” he says. “I did what honor demanded.”

  Same old Z. I give him a serious hug, although I have to lean into him a bit to keep from squishing Dina, where she’s sleeping in a wrap on my chest.

  “Don’t suppose you want to come?” I whisper.

  “I will stay with you for a while yet,” he says, and my heart does a jump. “I must return to my people eventually. But as my honor is still lost, so perhaps I will find it in a strange galaxy. And it is my duty to help lay Araskar in the ground of his home planet.”

  “Thanks, big fella. Blood and honor.”

  He clutches my hand. “You are a nursing mother. It is proper now to say blood, honor, and breast milk.”

  “Is it?” I am looking forward to life on a ship with this weirdo.

  We turn toward the ship and I hear a shout from behind me. “Jaqi!”

  I turn around and see Toq. The kid is just standing in the middle of the hangar, his face crumpled up and about to cry.

  “Kalia know you’re out here?” I ask.

  He doesn’t answer. Just runs to me and wraps his little arms around me. “Don’t leave me here. I want to see Earth.”

  Aw . . . hell. “Does your sister know?”

  “I want to see Earth. Then we can tell her.”

  “How’d you know that’s where we were going?”

  “I didn’t. You just told me.”

  “You’re too clever a kid.”

  He clings to me, not saying anything. I sigh. I reckon I better get used to this. “Fine, you come along, but you promise me you’ll head to bed when I say so.”

  “You sound just like my mom.”

  I don’t move for a minute, because that thing’s back in my throat. “I guess that’s a good start, aiya.”

  Coda

  THE PLANET EARTH WAS steeped with the memory of life.

  Its oceans had risen, lowered, locked into ice and melted again. Cities fell, their towers reduced to spurs and skeletons. Grass grew over twenty billion graves. Deer gr
azed in the hearts of cities; jaguars and eagles prowled the empty steel structures.

  Still it waited.

  Once twenty billion humans had walked this planet, singing and writing and making love and dying. They founded empires, and marveled at the speed of boats, of trains, of spaceships, of the power they could have when they joined together. They found reasons to hate each other, and their empires fell and other empires rose again. They found ways to change themselves. They found creatures so different from themselves they could not perceive them in their true state, but they joined with those creatures and crossed the great gulf of the stars.

  A tiny, but persistent, virus undid them.

  A few humans survived, but forgot their star-spanning Empire, save in a few old tales of travelers to the sky. For them, Earth had become a vast, empty world, and they stayed inside their walls and feared ghosts.

  Earth remembered. Earth waited for the travelers to come home.

  On a hill above an ocean, in what had once been the greatest city in the world, and was now simply a stand of trees, the first node opened.

  The woman, lanky, still stooped and weary from childbirth, stepped through. The light from Earth’s star shone on her deep brown skin, on the skin of the child that she cradled against her breast.

  She was followed by another child. A boy. Then two hulking figures, man and woman, who carried a shrouded, unmoving figure—and two spades.

  On that hill, they dug. Dug until they were coated with sweat and dust, until the hole was deep enough for the tallest to stand in, and there they buried the shrouded body. The two largest figures maneuvered the body into the ground, and cast the dirt onto it.

  The first woman knelt over the hole, and said, “I reckon you finally came home. It en’t much, but it’s what I could do for you. This little girl will know where her daddy lies.” She pulled the shroud aside, and traced the scars on the dead man’s face. “You lived well.”

  And her tears fell onto Earth’s surface, with the dirt that filled the grave.

  After they finished, the baby turned toward the sun, blinked, and stretched. Her mother gently rubbed the child’s soft cheek.

  “Nice place, aiya?” she said to the others. “Let’s find something to eat.”

  Acknowledgments

  And then there were three. With even more people to thank since A Red Peace released.

  I owe it all to Beth Meacham, who believed in this project when it was a few rough pages, when it was one novel, and when it was a three-book proposal. Sara Megibow is a giant among agents, and Katharine and Mordicai did a wonderful job publicizing Starfire. Thanks to Kameron Hurley, Mary Robinette Kowal, and Beth Cato for great blurbs, and the Barnes & Noble Sci-Fi & Fantasy Blog people for the promotion. Thanks to Wendy Wagner (the best tour buddy!), Duane at University Bookstore, and the crew at Village Books, Barnes & Noble Eugene, and the Book Bin for the Starfire events. Thanks to everyone involved with Cascade Writers and Codex Writers, with special mention of my Obi-Wan, Eric James Stone.

  Thanks to the readers who enjoyed A Red Peace and Shadow Sun Seven and got the word out.

  Langley Hyde continues to be Starfire Beta Reader Supreme, wading through a half-finished, mostly bracketed nonsense draft with a keen eye and Blade of Biggerify. She turns up the stakes and kicks out the jams. (In this metaphor, the jams are better metaphors.)

  Big hugs and thanks to Khaalidah Mohammed-Ali, my sister in swashbuckling, for a fun blow-off-steam project between homework. Thanks especially to Effie Seiberg, Cory Skerry, Sean Patrick Kelley, Joey Elmer, Rebecca Mablango-Mayor, Rachael K. Jones, and my wonderful coworkers and students at Northwest Indian College for support and sanity.

  All credit and love to my parents and siblings for years of support, from Super Tiger till now. Thanks to my children for their patience with a writer dad. You deserve a better world than we're giving you, but we're doing what we can.

  Everything good happens because of Chrissy, and so I end with enough love to fuel a thousand stars.

  About the Author

  Photograph by Chrissy Ellsworth

  SPENCER ELLSWORTH’s short fiction has previously appeared in Lightspeed, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Tor.com. He is the author of the Starfire trilogy, which begins with Starfire: A Red Peace. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and three children, works as a teacher/administrator at a small tribal college on a Native American reservation, and blogs at spencerellsworth.com.

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  Also by Spencer Ellsworth

  Starfire: A Red Peace

  Starfire: Shadow Sun Seven

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Entr’acte

  -1-

  -2-

  -3-

  -4-

  -5-

  -6-

  -7-

  -8-

  -9-

  -10-

  -11-

  -12-

  -13-

  -14-

  -15-

  -16-

  -17-

  -18-

  -19-

  -20-

  -21-

  -22-

  Coda

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Spencer Ellsworth

  Copyright Page

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novella are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  STARFIRE: MEMORY’S BLADE

  Copyright © 2018 by Spencer Ellsworth

  All rights reserved.

  Cover illustration by Sparth

  Cover design by Christine Foltzer

  Edited by Beth Meacham

  A Tor.com Book

  Published by Tom Doherty Associates

  175 Fifth Avenue

  New York, NY 10010

  www.tor.com

  Tor® is a registered trademark of Macmillan Publishing Group, LLC.

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9576-4 (ebook)

  ISBN 978-0-7653-9577-1 (trade paperback)

  First Edition: February 2018

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