Blood of a Thousand Stars

by Rhoda Belleza

  Daisies were everywhere—auto-cams on constant stream. They were technically called day-sees because of the light mounted on the bottom, but the word had been slurred over time into daisies. They swarmed the windows of their vehicle, while Dahlen’s handpicked guard of Fontisians rode madùcycles on either side and swatted them away.

  “Rhiannon!” a voice screamed, loud enough to rise above the chorus.

  She saw a man crawl over a barrier and make a gesture so obscene as their vehicle passed that Rhee almost looked away. The man was tackled by one of Dahlen’s Fontisian guards, who’d gracefully launched himself off his madùcycle. He had the man’s head to the ground within seconds. Rhee swiveled to look behind her as they sped past.

  “Ancestors!” Rhee hissed. “Can’t your men be more gentle?” She didn’t want the Fontisian guard to give protesters more cause for unrest.

  “Don’t forget that they’re your men,” he said.

  She didn’t answer. It’s not how the Kalusians would see it. The guards were all Fontisian, and like Dahlen they were part of the Order of the Light, a fundamentalist Fontisian religious group. The order was obsessed with maintaining peace, even if that meant working with Kalu and supporting Ta’an rule. They’d favored her father; he’d brokered peace between their two planets and ended the Great War all those years ago.

  But that didn’t mean the average Kalusian would be welcoming. To any Kalusian, a Fontisian was an outsider. Here was Rhee—their one true ruler, returned from the dead—flanked on all sides by security that, with their white-blond hair and sharp faces, looked a hell of a lot like the enemy. Judging by some of the sneers and looks of real fear in the eyes of the crowd, she wondered whether it had been a good idea for the order to take such a prominent role in protecting her.

  But no one else had offered to.

  “I don’t want to get off on the wrong foot. The order already has a reputation of being . . .” She searched for the right word.

  “Fanatical? Violent? Aggressive?” Dahlen reached down to shift gears roughly. The vehicle was self-driving, but as usual, Dahlen took no chances. He was worried, he said, that the tech would be hacked by Nero’s cronies; there would be no accidents today.

  “I’m trying to make friends of enemies,” she said defensively.

  “We will not apologize for our presence.” He scanned the packed streets of Kalusians as they passed. Fontisians spoke in negatives; it made everything they said sound forceful and stubborn. Though perhaps it was because they were forceful and stubborn. “Such a stance isn’t an adequate strategy when it comes to dissenters.”

  “Yes, because you have ruling a planet all figured out?”

  He cocked his eyebrow as they stared at one another through the mirror. “Because you do, Empress?”

  Rhee exhaled slowly but wouldn’t respond—she was working on staying calmer, hiding her feelings better. That word, Empress, still felt wrong. She remembered when Julian had called her Empress in the Nau Fruma marketplace, as the meteors rained down above them the very last time she saw him, how the title had filled her with dread.

  Her purpose then had at least felt clear, violent but uncomplicated. One life for many. Seotra’s for her family’s. But Seotra had been innocent. Her vengeance had been misguided, and she’d ended up killing one of her most powerful allies.

  Her purpose was different now, though just as clear as before—to bring about peace.

  They crested the hill, and for the first time in six years, Rhee caught sight, at last, of the palace. It took her breath away. It was the only thing from her childhood that had lived up to its memory—her organic memory. It was a feeling, different than the memories she had replayed on her cube, better than the crystalline perfection that made it seem smaller and quaint on her cube. In person, it was majestic. Red and gold, one thousand steps leading up to its entrance. The sun, as it set, looked as if it were slowly lowering itself on the southernmost spire—pierced open and dripping fire on the orange, backlit sky.

  As enormous, as beautiful, as vast as it was, what struck her the hardest was how strongly she sensed her father. She could see him pacing the marble corridors just hours before they’d leave for good because of the growing threat to their lives; her mother’s sobs that same night bouncing between pillars in the fountain room. Only hours later, the craft that was supposed to take them to safety on Nau Fruma had exploded, killing them both. When she recalled a memory organically, like she did now, she experienced it with every sense, every facility she had. She was transported in time.

  Cube memories weren’t like that at all. The cube was precise; it rushed to the very moment you needed it to and then pulled away with the same cold efficiency. Not that it mattered—she’d temporarily turned off her cube so that they couldn’t be tracked while they traveled.

  But there was another reason she hadn’t turned her cube back on. A deeper, unspoken fear she couldn’t yet voice: Nero’s ambition to find the overwriter. Rhee didn’t think it existed. Not really. It was a technology without precedent, and anytime she’d heard of it, it was only in conjunction with the G-1K conspiracy theories. Only those on the fringes believed—or those, like Nero, who were prone to dramatics and flair, ready to chase down any mirage to secure his reign.

  Imagine being able to speak through any cube, he’d said on Houl, to anyone at will, throughout the whole universe. Imagine being able to whisper to them, not through their ears but their minds . . .

  Terror and revulsion snaked their way through her. But she didn’t feel ready to tell Dahlen, not yet—not when the trauma of that night so obviously haunted him still.

  Nero had unofficially taken up residence in the palace after Rhee’s supposed death. But her return had forced him to retreat, physically in this case. Still, her adviser Tai Reyanna and her friend the Fisherman had been sent ahead to clear out the palace of any remaining Tasinn and install the Fontisian guard and private security that could be trusted. It had been a flurry of prep in just a week’s time between vetting loyalists and transporting them in secret.

  Dahlen nudged the vehicle forward through the tall iron gates, nodding at the two Fontisian guards as he passed. The guards closed the gate quickly behind them, against a surge in the crowd—some people crying, reaching out toward their pod, and others protesting, spitting as they passed. She vaguely made out the chant: “No more sharks!” but she couldn’t be sure. The slur for Fontisians grated against her ears, making her ashamed of her own people.

  As the gates closed, she saw a fight break out. A man had thrown another to the ground, and they’d been swallowed up in the center of the crowd. She sat up straighter to get a better look. Dahlen powered down the vehicle, and for a brief moment Rhee thought she heard the engine ticking off the last of its charge. But that was her heart: not a drumbeat, but a kind of wild crackling.

  “There’s a fight,” she said to Dahlen.

  “There are fights everywhere. We’re not to exit until the guards on the stairs are in place and they’ve ensured—”

  Before he could finish, she shouldered the door open and stood to face the crowd and look for the fight. The Fontisian guards rushed down the stairs toward her, but she held up both hands, demanding that they stay back. Dahlen had gotten out himself and walked calmly around the vehicle, like he was stalking his prey, but stopped at a fair distance—just a few feet behind her, nodding at his guards to follow her order.

  Rhee’s red dress flapped in the wind. She was close enough to the gate that the hem of her skirt pressed through the gaps in the iron rails. She put her hand to the metal, and the crowd grew silent. She’d say something now. Reassure them she was here, that the war would end, that peace would be restored. She felt their belief welling inside her, and commanding the presence of her people, she felt a genuine ability to change the tide.

  Her eyes latched on to a blonde girl in the front ranks a few paces away o
n the steps. She held a bow and arrow and her hair had been gathered in a thick braid that draped down her shoulder, practically alive, like a long white snake that she could charm. The girl’s eyes were a hazel shade, yellows and oranges threaded through her irises like the color of a Nau Fruman sunset.

  The girl opened her mouth, as if to call words of encouragement.

  And then from the other side of the gate, an egg launched into the air. There was a vacuum of silence, as if the thousands of people clambering forward had held their breath.

  It landed with a crunch three meters short of where Rhee stood, and for a split second she was hyperaware, focused on nothing but the vivid yolk pooling sadly against the drive.

  Then everything exploded. Whole pockets of the crowd seemed to collapse, tumbling people down beneath its weight. She flinched as protesters threw even more things. Trash. Rotten pulp of long-turned fruit. Glass bottles that shattered at her feet. Her supporters turned on them. She heard screaming.

  Through the screams she heard a hoarse whisper, as someone from the crowd grabbed her through the rails. Iron pressed into her face. “Daddy’s girl better watch her back.”

  “No one wants you here!”

  “You took your sister’s throne!”

  Rhee yanked herself free. Something was spinning toward her, straight at her face. She dodged and nearly went down. Glass shattered with a high and hysterical noise. Gravel blasted her cheek.

  Dahlen grabbed her arm.

  “Let go!” She struggled to regain her balance, stepping backward on her dress and feeling the hem rip. In a panic, she thought of the cameras watching, recording every second of this—everyone across the galaxy would see that she was afraid, that she had no idea what she was doing. Nero would make sure of it. And even worse, she realized, was that it was true. When other rulers might have spent years cultivating a relationship with the public, she’d been planning Seotra’s death on another moon, in a foolish desire for vengeance. She’d been wrong. Now she felt like a fool. Naïve, like so many had said. “Let me go.”

  She managed to wrench free of Dahlen. He started to yell—Rhee wasn’t sure what over the sound of the crowd—when she heard it: a high-pitched squeal like a firework shooting up into the air.

  Not a firework, though.

  It struck the top of the nearby tower in silence. Rhee hoped it was a trick of the light. Then a massive blast of fire, and a deep rumble as pieces of the marble tower cracked away, sifted through the air, masses of stone as big as the vehicle that had carried them.

  The crowd split. More screams. They dove for cover as the first stones hit with an impact that shook Rhee through her feet all the way to her teeth. Dahlen found her again, and didn’t bother with her hand this time; he hauled her over his shoulder and ran.

  They crashed through the double doors into the palace as more of the marble came shuddering down from the sky. Fontisian guards streamed in behind them before the doors closed with a resounding echo. From outside came the noise of splintering, screams as protesters crashed through the barriers, shouts and thuds as the guards drove them backward. The UniForce soldiers that had been present earlier had mysteriously disappeared, and left the riot to fester into this. More bottles exploded against the palace, and several eggs too. They shimmered on the windowpanes, their yolks like suns dying in miniature.

  Empress Rhiannon was home.

  THREE

  KARA

  KARA made her way up the staircase, taking two steps at a time as she dug the heel of her right palm into her eye socket to ease the building pressure. She hadn’t stopped moving since she’d taken off from the dojo, and she wouldn’t now. It was all about multitasking. Urge the blood vessels to relax, be patient. Force her body to push through. Fight. Get what’s yours, Aly would have said.

  Aly. She’d lost him in the crowd. Rhiannon’s arrival back on Kalu had ignited something across the Kalusian territories. One second Aly was behind Kara and the next he was gone. If she had only waited, they wouldn’t be split up now. But if she had waited, the cylinder with the holo message wouldn’t be nestled in her pocket right now either. She hated how war had made everything split into either/or.

  Please let him be here, she thought as she rushed up toward the roof.

  Kara had been afraid Julian would follow her, so she had taken the long way back to Pavel. Returning had been its own kind of mission. The whole moon was protesting, and an explosive riot was the only reason she had made a clean getaway from the dojo. But on the way, she had seen Wraetans and Fontisians rounded up by the UniForce. It was illegal, since the moon was neutral—but that hadn’t stopped anyone, and Kara had done her best to be inconspicuous as she scanned the faces of the captured, some of them fearful, some furious, some in obvious shock.

  She hadn’t seen Aly.

  When Kara got to the topmost floor she saw the ladder had been pulled down. Her heart leapt. He was here. She scrambled up and popped her head through to see Pavel waiting for her. Just Pavel.

  “Where is he?” Kara asked as she heaved her leg over and crawled onto the roof.

  “I lost sight of him from the lookout. I hoped he would be accompanying you,” the droid said. His eyelights went red and his voice dropped. “It appears he is not . . .” His metal frame retracted into its compacted dome setting, like he had collapsed out of sadness onto the floor.

  Kara knew how he felt. She was on her knees still, blinking into the setting sun, feeling the ache behind her eyes sink deeper and deeper into her skull. She trembled out of fear and frustration—and suddenly the heat, the anger, felt overwhelming, intense, like she’d burst into flame from the inside out. It was that same panicked feeling she’d gotten when she came home to her house ransacked, and Lydia gone. That hadn’t ended well.

  “They took him,” she said. “They must have.”

  Pavel didn’t answer. He rolled toward her in his dome shape and nudged her shoulder gently. It made her feel a fraction better, a little less alone. But when his faceplate rotated toward her, she caught a glimpse of herself reflected back in its sheen. Her eyes were green.

  They’re changing color again, Aly had said.

  Kara had to let it be; she wouldn’t be able to manage the sting of those eye drops with her headache this bad.

  She angled her face to the left. Was her face changing? And how long before anyone might guess who she really was: the lost princess, Josselyn Ta’an?

  The possibility felt unreal, like a bad hologram that stuttered, a fractured projection—the same moment in low fidelity, looped over and over again. It was enough to drive a person crazy. But how could you reconcile these two identities—the city girl with the never-ending con, and the resurrected princess? But wasn’t that the dream? Being royalty, putting on the red dress, the centerpiece in a parade while millions watched on? Maybe so—but the thought made Kara recoil.

  “You have a DNA cipher,” Pavel said.

  “That’s what it is?” Kara reached into her pocket and produced the wooden cylinder she’d taken from Julian. Aly would have been fascinated. He would’ve taken it apart and rearranged it, and she would have watched the fine movements of his hands—easing pieces in and out of place as he bit his lower lip, theorizing where it had been made and who could have sent it.

  “It’s responsive to your fingertips alone. I detect sample cells that match yours embedded in the fiber of the wood.”

  “That’s . . . kind of gross. But kind of cool.” It sounded like something Lydia would have loved—had she left this for her, or had the Lancer? Excitement shot through her again at the thought that this message was made for her, and her alone.

  She placed it on the floor in front of her and that same blue beam emitted, producing a holo of the galaxy. The Outer Belt edged out of the frame. As she stood there on the roof staring at the image, Kara felt like she was practically flying, headed toward the De
suco Quadrant, past Tinoppa and Naidoz and finally the tiny dwarf planet called Ralire. She watched as the holo zeroed in, past the atmosphere, farther, farther, until she could see topography and finally an aerial view of a city. Then the words unfurled across the skyline.

  The past is gone, but the future you seek is here: 678.900.05.

  “Those coordinates are on Ralire.” Pavel emitted a red pointer beam and circled a section on the northern hemisphere of the dwarf planet. “Twelfth celestial body from the sun. I don’t comprehend how you can seek your future there.”

  “It’s not literal,” Kara said. If the message was only for her, then it was referring to her past—her past as Josselyn Ta’an, the one that Lydia had taken away. It had to be. Which meant . . . “I think this is talking about the overwriter.”

  “You and Alyosha had always discussed the possibility of it being on Wraeta.”

  “Because that’s what Lydia told us.” Kara leaned forward and pivoted the cylinder on the floor, so the coordinates grew a little bigger, a little brighter. “But what if someone moved it?”

  Or what if Lydia had lied?

  “Are you suggesting we go to Ralire?” Pavel asked. “Two-thirds of the planet is covered in black ice, with prairies and valleys in the southmost region—but it also has the most crime of any habitable body in the system. It’s not safe.”

  But when was the last time Kara felt safe anyway?

  The beach.

  The memory came to her smoothly, quietly, like it always did. She and Lydia had moved around a lot, but for a while they lived in Luris, a town in the north of Kalu—cold and gray, by dark waters on a rocky shore, where Kara would watch crabs crawl in and out of layers of wet rock. A choppy ocean, and a forest at her back. It was her favorite place in the world.

  “You have to be careful,” Lydia had told her one day.