White Star Phase: Book One of the Ascendants Chronicle

by Scott Beckman

  Despite her concerns, she took the stairs. On the second floor, she moved more slowly and yet each hall she peered down, she found empty. When she reached Lord Qataga's wing, she avoided the main hall to his chambers and went instead into a side bedroom with sparse, dusty furniture. The arched window opened with a noisy creak and snow blew in. She found a rope under the bed where Fiskahn's guard had said it would be and secured it to the bed's heavy iron frame, then around her own waist.

  Outside the window, a narrow ledge ran along the wall to the window in Qataga's sitting room. Torye ran her hand along the ledge and bit her lip. No ice had gathered, but the storm made the journey seem more difficult. She hesitated. For the second time, her hunter's caution told her that something was wrong. She searched her senses, looking for the source of her fear.

  Behind her, a closet door moved slightly. To other ears, the creak would have been lost to the wind, but Torye's keen hearing picked it out. She turned and looked at the closet, the door open a finger's width with only darkness visible within. "Come on out, then."

  The man who stepped out had a dark trimmed beard and black eyes. He was armed with a thin silver sword, the length of one edge carved with orange symbols that flickered like fire in the Red Star's stormlight, but he kept it lowered.

  Torye stared. Time stopped. The cold and the storm disappeared, then the room and all its furniture, until all that remained was the bearded man in a void. Torye heard her own breathing like thunder in her ears. She didn't blink. She didn't breath.

  The bearded man shook his head at last. "You were supposed to go out the window. I was going to pull on the rope to take you off balance. Then, as you hung against the palace wall, I was going to cut the rope. Your last moments would have been terrible but the end would have been quick."

  Torye found her voice. "Why?"

  "To protect Mourisiel," he said. "To save all the thousands of people who make their homes here. The poor, innocent souls who fight for survival in this harsh world."

  "I'm here for Theina."

  "She is a prisoner of war. A civil war. She led a rebellion against the Mourisians. She will never again see the light of day."

  "What do you care about the Mourisians?" Torye asked bitterly. "We fought them together, Cryse. Our father fought them. By the stars, what has happened to you?"

  The bearded man paused. "I did what our father never could. I found a way to beat them."

  "By siding with them?" Torye went to untie the rope from around her waist and Cryse stepped forward, swinging the sword but stopping it just short of her neck. Torye paused in her efforts and glared. Her fury was mirrored in her brother's eyes. "Father would be ashamed of you."

  "You don't understand," Cryse said. "Father didn't have the resolve to do what needed to be done. I do. Besides, you sided with them yourself."

  "I had to," she said. "They would have killed me. I thought they killed you."

  "When the attack started, I was already gone."

  Torye's eyes widened. "You betrayed us."

  "It was the only way to gain their trust." Cryse lowered the sword. "Now I am Qataga's majordomo. When he dies, I will rule Mourisiel and I will make it a place Father would be proud of."

  "You killed our father," Torye said. "He would have hated what you've become."

  "He hated me anyway. He only ever loved you."

  Torye scoffed. "The world you see is an illusion."

  Cryse trembled. Something inhuman flashed in his eyes. "I see the world as it is. Everyone else lives in a dream." He took a step forward. "And now I send you to dream forever."

  When Cryse charged, Torye stepped through the window and let herself slide down the palace wall. The drop plummeted to snow-covered rocks far below but the rope around her waist caught her. She hung limp for only a moment, fighting back the pain of the rope suddenly cinched tight, and then pulled herself up by it so she could plant her feet flat against the palace wall.

  Cryse looked down from the window briefly, then disappeared. Torye felt the rope tremble as he began to cut it.

  With the strength of desperate prey, Torye walked up the vertical wall. The veins of her forearms stood out in stark blue against her pale skin and her knuckles turned white as the snow falling from the gray sky above.

  Just as the rope snapped and went slack, Torye leapt up and caught herself on the window's edge. She gritted her teeth and swung towards Qataga's window, her fingers threatening to slip with every moment they remained on the icy stone.

  Cryse peered out the window again. "You're strong," he said. He lifted up the other end of Torye's rope. "But you're not strong enough."

  He wrapped the rope around his forearm once and pulled. One of Torye's hands slipped but she held on with the other. "Cryse, help me!"

  Cryse wrapped the rope around his forearm a second time. "I'm helping Mourisiel, sister. I wish you could understand that."

  Torye glared. "You're only helping yourself."

  She released the stone edge and grabbed the rope with both hands. Her sudden weight yanked Cryse half out of the window but he caught himself just in time to keep them both from tumbling to their deaths. Cursing, he spun his wrist to unbind himself from the rope but before he could, Torye used her last bit of leverage to leap up and grasp him by the collar.

  The end of the rope fell out the window and hung below Torye, but she held herself up by Cryse, and he in turn placed both hands on the window sill to keep himself from falling out. "Let me go!"

  "Damn you," Torye said between gritted teeth. Her feet found purchase on an inch of stone that jutted out from the palace wall and she pushed herself up. When half her body was through the window and her weight no longer threatened to drag Cryse out, he pushed himself back from the window and they fell into the room together.

  Cryse went for the sword where it lay on the bed but Torye knocked his feet out from under him and scrambled toward the door. He caught her ankle briefly but she kicked him in the jaw and he released her.

  She fled from the room, headed back the way she had come, as it was the only way she felt familiar. Cryse came after, sword in hand, shouting commands for his soldiers to get her. That part of the palace was still empty, however, and Torye soon made it to the ballroom again.

  Most of the partygoers had retired for supper but a number of them remained, sipping their drinks and discussing the day’s affairs. Torye ran by one group and caught a fleeting glimpse of Fiskahn, his eyes wide.

  Guards at the exterior doors moved to stop Torye so she changed direction and went through an open window. She landed in a garden. The outer palace walls were another hundred yards and beyond them, the narrow and winding streets of Harivaz offered escape, dark under the Red Star and crowded with people.

  The palace doors opened behind Torye as she sprinted down the white brick path through the garden. Cryse shouted behind her, still distant. A pair of guards stood at the edges of the garden gate but they looked out rather than in and did not turn to investigate the majordomo's shouting. Torye passed by them at full speed and though they made pursuit, their armor made them slow. Torye soon entered the teeming throngs of Harivaz' citizens and lost them.

  Thank you for reading White Star Phase!

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