Empress of a Thousand Skies

by Rhoda Belleza

  Which meant: She was free to care only for hers.

  She would find a way to sneak off at the next stop, where Nero would be meeting with the governments of Kalusian allies to discuss the political climate. The Urnew Treaty was in turmoil, and the public was becoming restless. The news of Seotra’s death—or rather, disappearance, since his body had been incinerated—was everywhere. Nero had been covering all of it and had been on air for twelve hours straight. He’d arranged to make an emergency appearance on Navrum to try to rally support for Kalu’s interests.

  “The brave and honorable people of Kalu don’t just need answers; they demand action,” Nero’s holographic image said sternly. The man a row in front tried to adjust the size and volume of his holo projection, and Rhee leaned forward—straining to see and hear. “The people who killed our Princess Ta’an and took our Regent Seotra think we’ll bow down, run scared. But it’s they who are the cowards, jealous of our freedoms, trying to destroy our Kalusian values—”

  Dahlen kicked the man’s seat, and he lurched forward, dropping his handheld. The holo disappeared.

  “Apologies,” Dahlen said, barely audible. The man scowled back but said nothing.

  Nero was misguided at best, and Rhee knew it would likely only further notch the galaxy toward war. But it was a rallying cry, a call for revenge against those who’d killed the family he served. He’d loved her father, and the brilliant speech he’d given after his death—praising his accomplishments as emperor, urging continued loyalty and patience as the last Ta’an learned to rule—had inspired a galaxy.

  An idea opened up in her mind, like a fist unclenching: The sooner she got to him, the sooner she could unveil herself on his broadcast. Too many people had already died, and now her priority was to take back the throne and restore the terms of the truce. It was only as empress that she could root out the true traitor. Stepping into her role as empress would make her untouchable, and with that impunity she would find her family’s real killer.

  The speaker system came online with a single crackle of interference. “Approaching a patch of solar wind. Cubes will go temporarily offline,” a mechanized voice said.

  The announcement triggered unease in the cabin; people were uncomfortable offline, even for a few minutes. On the zeppelin this close to the sun, electromagnetic waves had caused signal losses throughout the trip. The passengers were so distressed about it, no one had noticed Rhee and Dahlen had been moving from one passenger car to another. Now he motioned for her to gather her things.

  It was perfect timing. As they slid out of their seats, a service droid was just entering their car, tall and lean, its metal dull with age. “Tickets, please,” it announced in a low monotone.

  The droid offered the screen on its chest to a squat Chram woman with tiny iridescent scales that looked gray from Rhee’s angle. In the first row, the woman touched her finger to her cube and simultaneously pressed a finger to the droid’s screen with her other hand. It blinked blue and beeped an approval when the woman’s data was accepted.

  The overhead speakers crackled to life again. “Approaching a patch of solar wind. Cubes will temporarily go offline in two minutes.”

  Dahlen leaned forward to whisper to Rhee as she pushed past him into the aisle. “Whatever happens, don’t touch the droid’s screen.”

  “I know that already,” she snapped back. Once her fingerprint was in the database, they’d match it to her DNA. With any luck, however, while the droid was offline they could sneak past it and return to a car that had already been checked.

  Rhee counted seconds in her head as she dodged a tentacle and brushed up against the fur of a Yersian, which generated a charge on her bare skin. Several passengers shrank away from her, obviously unhappy to be sharing the train car with a Marked girl. Dahlen’s presence didn’t offer them any reassurance, the tattoos crawling along his neck, his cheekbones sharp like cut glass, his dirty blond hair matted like an animal’s against moon-white skin. It was almost as if pheromones radiated from his skin and warned everyone of danger.

  “Please remain in your seat,” the droid said, as Dahlen tried to pass.

  “Won’t you kindly move?” Dahlen asked, with such exaggerated politeness Rhee couldn’t believe the droid didn’t register the sarcasm. Before she could prevent him, he grabbed her hand. “My sister isn’t feeling well.”

  Julian was the last person who had taken Rhee’s hand.

  Rhee wrenched her hand away from Dahlen, annoyed by the obvious lie. And yet why not? With her face still purpled with the mark, and her non-pointed ears hidden beneath a hood, she might have been Fontisian. In that split second, she realized: The boy she disliked most in the world could have been the brother she’d never had—both orphans, rigid in their beliefs, born for strife and loss and revenge.

  The droid pivoted its base so it blocked as much of the aisle as possible. “Please provide your ticket information before proceeding.” It sprayed its screen with a pine-scented sanitizer, angling it down toward Rhee. She felt the skin on her neck tingle.

  “Approaching a patch of atmospheric solar wind. Cubes will temporarily go offline in one minute,” the speaker voice announced.

  “Here, let me,” Dahlen said, feigning irritation. He touched the space on his neck two inches above his cube and moved to touch the screen. Just before he did, a small charge shot from his ring to the screen. It was so subtle that no one would’ve seen it apart from Rhee. The droid rolled back an inch, and light shuddered across its touchscreen, as if it had flinched.

  “Unreadable,” it said.

  “Perhaps your reader is defective,” Dahlen suggested, still with that tone of politeness that to Rhee’s ears sounded obviously false. “Let me try again.”

  “Can I assist?” a second droid said. Turning, Rhiannon saw that they’d failed to notice an additional ticket collector had entered the car.

  The speaker crackled. “Approaching a patch of atmospheric solar wind. Cubes will temporarily go offline in ten, nine, eight . . .” Now they’d attracted attention. She heard the sucking sound of someone’s tentacle: a Nilapas, babbling in his native tongue, no doubt trying to shush them. Rhee could feel herself sweating under her tunic. Still she tried to move slowly and with grace—a quality Tai Reyanna had urged again and again.

  “Excuse me, can you give her some room? She’s not feeling well . . .” Dahlen said.

  The second droid ignored him. It angled its screen down toward Rhee. “Please provide ticket information.” When Rhee hesitated, a red light began blinking on its touchscreen, prompting her with use instructions. Now the first droid rolled over Dahlen’s foot, closing in on the other side, and both droids began to speak at once.

  “Please provide ticket infor—”

  They were interrupted by a thunderous boom that shook their cabin. Rhee’s ears popped. A girl to the side yelped, her light blue skin turning a dark shade of purple in alarm, and a Kalusian man in the front row flinched in his seat. Rhee remembered the sensation of her cube going dark, like her energy had been sapped all at once. Immediately, both droids powered down in the aisle, their armlike attachments hanging limp at their sides. A section of Yersians groomed one another’s fur in agitation.

  Rhee exhaled. Just in time.

  “Let’s move,” Dahlen said in a low voice. The doors between compartments had come unlocked as well, and Dahlen cranked the handle and leaned heavily on the door to open it, gesturing Rhee inside. As they barreled through the door, Rhee crashed into someone. She reared back and then stifled a gasp. It was the royal guard.

  Her royal guard.

  She couldn’t tear her eyes off the stunners on their belts. The broad-chested man she’d bumped into wiped the spot on his khaki uniform where they’d touched, making a big show of being disgusted. The mark on Rhee’s face felt as if it were on fire. The other guard stood there, smiling. She noticed for the first t
ime how cocky they seemed, like they owned every place they cared to set foot on. Had they been like that even under her charge? Under her father’s charge?

  Dahlen had gone perfectly still, and Rhee felt a pressure inside her mounting.

  “Apologies,” she said in a terrible Fontisian accent, then bowed out of nervousness—realizing too late that bowing was reserved for diplomats and Tais.

  The taller Tasinn got a good laugh. He took a step forward to block the threshold, standing so close that Rhee had to tilt her head all the way back to see his face—a long chin and a sloped nose. He looked like a jackal. She suppressed the urge to bare her teeth. What were they even doing here, outside of Kalusian territory? Rhee felt Dahlen’s hand squeeze her shoulder protectively. She swatted it off.

  “Don’t I get a bow too?” the taller Tasinn asked in his crisp capital accent, the one Tai Reyanna had preferred she spoke with.

  Rhee balled her fists at her side. Suddenly, she remembered Julian flicking his hair out of his face, explaining how diamonds form under high temperature and pressure. How did beings in the Outer Belt deal with organic memories like this, flooding your brain without warning, at the worst possible moments?

  She’d come all this way to find out the truth about her family. It wouldn’t end here, at the mercy of two arrogant men heady with the tiniest bit of power. Rhee couldn’t be caught, couldn’t afford to have their cubes scanned. And so she bowed. It was a beat too late, though, and they must’ve noticed.

  The big-chested one hooked his thumbs in his belt. “Where are you two headed?”

  “Nau Fruma.” She felt Dahlen stiffen. Too late, she realized she should have named somewhere on Fontis instead. She hadn’t known why she said it—only that it was the first place that had formed on her tongue. It was home.

  “The moon? I didn’t know there were convents for the Marked there.”

  “There are likely a number of things you don’t know,” Rhee mumbled.

  “What did you say?” he demanded. He tried to push her hood back, but Rhee dodged out of his reach.

  “That there are a number of things to see if you go,” she said, with a simpering smile.

  The taller Tasinn to the right laughed. “It’s best you didn’t touch her,” he said to his partner. “Marked and a Fontisian? If the little thing’s not covered in germs, then she’s certainly got the worst luck I’ve ever seen.”

  “Probably right,” the round one said. He eyed Dahlen. “You don’t talk much.”

  “Afternoon, sirs,” Dahlen said, lowering his head. He was a looming presence at Rhee’s back, but his voice remained passive.

  “Sirs! I like that. This one’s got the right idea.”

  The taller one nodded. “Perhaps you could teach this one a thing or two about manners.”

  As if she needed the lesson in manners. Her guards had acted as shadows in the quiet palace of Nau Fruma, receding into the background when she became focused on history lessons or lost herself in play. They rotated in and out, so she never became acquainted with one for long—though they hadn’t seemed interested, standing like sentries at doorways, their faces neutral whenever she passed. Rhee wondered now if they’d been instructed to do that, and where their instructions came from today. Seotra’s council?

  Rhee’s ears popped again. With a clap like a lightning bolt, they emerged from the atmospheric pressure patch. People sighed happily and even cheered. The Tasinn looked relieved too.

  But Rhee felt panic moving down her body like sweat. The doors behind them opened with a hiss, and now the mechanical voices of both ticket collectors crested in unison, like a shout.

  “Please provide your ticket information before proceeding. Please provide your ticket information before proceeding.”

  With no options left, Rhee broke into a run. She tried to push past the Tasinn, but a blow to her chest knocked her off her feet and drove the breath straight out of her lungs. Stars exploded in her head. Dimly, she could hear Dahlen shouting, and the droids announcing trouble. When she could finally take a breath, the oxygen shocked her into awareness again: The taller Tasinn had hit her with one of the steel batons the royal guard always carried.

  “Jumpers,” the guard said. “I’d bet Kalu on it.” By the way he smiled, Rhee could tell he’d been baiting them, that he’d known the whole time. Turning to the droids, he gave them a dismissive flick of his wrist. “Leave. We’ll handle it from here.”

  “Want me to get a read on them?” The big-chested man stepped forward, and Rhee saw he was holding a cube reader.

  Time slowed. He was Veyron’s build, and Rhee grasped for organic memories of her trainer—of all the sparring sessions she’d had with him over the past year. Every recollection was a pin shoved through her beating heart, but she pushed the pain aside, calculating all the ways she could break this man’s arm should he try to access her cube. Assuming Dahlen didn’t kill him first.

  She tried to climb to her feet, but the taller Tasinn pinned her again with the end of his baton. “Don’t bother,” he said, with the pinched expression of someone confronting a particularly disgusting piece of garbage. “Like you said, these two probably carry diseases. Throw ’em straight into the pen instead.”

  FOURTEEN

  ALYOSHA

  ALY was on his way to Portiis because it was what Vin had wanted them to do, and because he had nowhere else to go. He thought of this one time he, Jeth, and Vin had been on leave there. They had spent their last night staying up way too late and drinking in Jeth’s backyard, talking about nothing and everything—about the things they’d do, the places they’d see, how none of them were going to be anything like their fathers . . .

  They were due back to duty the next day, and they nearly fell asleep in formation they were so damn tired. Sergeant Vedcu made them clean the squad bay for half a day—scrubbing floors that were already spotless, thinking that maybe they’d die on their hands and knees with a washrag as their only witness.

  “Worth it,” Vin had said.

  Vin never had any regrets. Never let anything stop him. What was that expression, for the kind of guy who went big?

  He knows how to live.

  And now Vin was dead while Aly hid out in the cargo hold of an interquadrant zeppelin. It was as terrible as it sounded—hours trying to spot your own hands in the dark; a crinkly tarp on the cold ground for a bed; storage containers as bathrooms, placed all over like he had to mark his territory.

  But the worst part? Having all the time to think. To wonder, a million times over, why he was the one who’d survived. Aly had never killed anyone before, and he’d thought that if it came down to it, it would be in a face-off against an enemy on the battlefield. Instead, Aly had killed his best friend to get a stupid apology he didn’t even deserve.

  The crash on Naidoz had left him weak. Sometimes, when he started to fall asleep, he felt himself tumbling toward icy dark water again and woke up with a start. Pavel had had a surprisingly effective floating mechanism, but Aly had had to drag Vin to the surface. By then he wasn’t moving on his own, but his eyebrows remained arched in surprise, like maybe even in death he was thinking, For real?

  Pavel had helped him bury Vin, there on that cold, rocky planet. Aly had left the hammer on his chest.

  Now metal wire sparked at Aly’s fingertips as he tried to rig the door open. He dropped it with a curse and looked at his throbbing hand. It wasn’t the first time he’d electrocuted himself learning this system. His fingers were cold, clumsy. Distractions weren’t helping him any either. Stop thinking about Vin.

  “Soldering iron,” Aly whispered to Pavel, who wordlessly passed him an attachment shaped like a stylus. You couldn’t get the system open without a barcode—so this was Aly’s only option. After a few more adjustments, the door slid open. The sound of compressed air had never been so sweet. The lightbulb outside in the hallway was unscrew
ed, just as he’d left it—which meant he would be invisible. He counted off a few seconds—enough so that anyone watching or listening would assume he’d slipped out into the hallway—then moved into a crouch again.

  Time to catch the choirtoi who’d been stealing from him.

  After the crash, Aly had walked for a whole day to the nearest town, where he stole a pod outside an oxygen bar and booked it to the neighboring planet of Fannah. He felt bad about the pod, but he had to get the hell out of the Kalusian territories, fast. Besides, he was sure it would be recovered practically as soon as he ditched it. Then the holos would be on fire with all the Revolutionary Boys conspiracy theories. If and when they found Vincent’s body, Aly would be on the hook for another murder.

  From Fannah, he’d hitched a ride on a freighter headed for the Outer Belt. With a stolen ID, a head scarf, and a fake Chram accent, Aly had managed to sneak on board alongside thousands of refugees fleeing Kalu’s newly declared “military zones”—code for places that would get wiped as soon as they started dropping em-stones that rendered anything that ran on electricity useless.

  He was a refugee, twice over.

  At least during the forced evac of Wraeta he hadn’t been alone. Even as they’d walked for seven days to the nearest port, there were entire families alongside them, babies they all took turns holding, other kids to make up games with. It had been the most arid season in decades during that exodus. They’d arrive at each stop covered in a layer of dust so thick, people joked they couldn’t be told apart. It’s why they’d called them dusties.

  Now Aly had nowhere to go and no one to walk beside him. He thought about calling Jeth, but if he powered on his cube, he might as well surrender: Half the Kalu army would be on both of them like white on rice. A part of him wanted to hustle to a far-off planet and just disappear, but Vincent’s voice kept coming back to him. But if one of us doesn’t make it, he’d yelled as they burned through the atmosphere. His dying wish was for Aly to go to the United Planets; he’d been sure that they would help. Then again, he’d also believed Princess Josselyn might still be alive, so he was probably out of his mind.