Blood of a Thousand Stars

by Rhoda Belleza

  Kara took a close look at a nearby worker’s handiwork and realized it now: It had the makings of a third eye. They were making comm tech, for people who didn’t have cubes or couldn’t afford them.

  The Miseu girl ran up a spiral staircase in the back corner, and Kara followed.

  Upstairs was a labyrinth, curtains separating off spaces into private nooks; Kara realized too late as she was trampling through that these were workers’ sleeping spaces. She went hopping through, stopping and starting, trying to give people their privacy. But she got tangled in curtains, and woke so many souls up. There was no logic to the layout she could immediately discern; the hallway seemed to have a system all its own. Kara chased and chased. She caught a glimpse of the Miseu turning a corner and she followed, stopping at the end of a long dark corridor.

  The girl entered a door that slammed behind her. Kara stood at the other end, chills working their way up her spine. She fought every instinct to turn around. She had to get her cipher. She needed it to access the overwriter.

  Or what if the overwriter was here?

  The knocker was missing—stolen, probably. She tapped lightly instead with her fist. A few seconds later, a hidden panel slotted open in the door, and a pair of bright gray eyes peered out at her.

  “Kalusian girl,” he said in lieu of a greeting. “You look like you’re in need of guidance.”

  “No.” Or was it yes? She looked down the corridor behind her. There was nothing. It seemed longer than it did on the way in. Usually, she was good at this kind of thing—bluffing, lying—but her confidence felt chipped away, thinned out. Her head spun. She turned around, not knowing what to say except for the truth. “The Lancer sent me.”

  Without another word, the man slotted the eyepiece closed with a final-sounding click.

  Kara lurched backward, tightening her jacket around her, suddenly feeling cold and exposed. At the other end of the corridor, a Derkatzian in an oversize coat looked in her direction, his yellow eyes catching in the light. She turned the other way. A Chram leaning against the wall dropped his eyes quickly—but not so quickly she didn’t understand he’d been observing her.

  Kara had the sudden, pressing feeling that she had made a mistake.

  She shouldn’t be here. She should go, disappear, melt back into the darkness behind her. She flew out of the corridor, hurtled between rooms as the Chram seemed to follow her, and burst into the plaza outside. Her heart stopped when she spotted Issa not five feet away—wearing a third eye now, almost exactly like the one she remembered from childhood.

  “Find what you were—?” Issa swallowed a sound of surprise when Kara grabbed her arm roughly. Her heart skipped—a man in a white robe was staring at her. Kara risked a glance: On the other side of the plaza, another man was watching her. How many were there?

  “I think I made a mistake.” Panic swallowed her. Spotting a narrow street between buildings that she prayed would lead back toward a pod that would take them back to the ship, she hauled Issa that way.

  “What in the choirtoi is going on?” Issa said, in a low voice. But Kara could tell she didn’t really expect an answer. Somehow, she had felt the danger too.

  Another mistake. They careened around the corner only to realize they had reached a dead end. They would never get out. A silhouette had already appeared at the end of the alleyway. Waiting. They’d communicated via cube. Kara could never outrun a networked enemy.

  They spun around and tried to backtrack toward the opening that led out to the plaza. They were close; they ran alongside windows and saw the crowd in the plaza was thinning as the sun edged close to the horizon. Kara could more easily pick out her observers now, many of them still idling at the stalls, pretending to be buyers.

  “This way,” Issa said, her voice low with understanding. She’d seen them too. So Kara wasn’t imagining things.

  Issa tugged Kara toward another alleyway, this one concealed behind a hanging curtain, and plunged through it. Kara struggled for a second with the heavy fabric before ducking in after her.

  The first thing she saw was Issa, struggling with a man nearly twice her size. Her heart lurched as Issa caught a heavy blow directly to the head. She staggered sideways, coughing, clutching at her chest as if something pained her there.

  “Run!” Issa gasped out.

  But Kara moved instead for Issa. A foot kicked her knees from behind, and as she fell, a rough-hewn bag was pulled over her head. An acrid, synthetic scent filled her nose.

  Kara fought wildly. Her foot made contact with flesh, but instead of letting her go, yet another pair of hands seized her wrists and bound them. She thought of Aly—what would he have done if he were here? But he wasn’t, she reminded herself. He wasn’t.

  “Stop that,” someone hissed. A woman’s voice.

  Kara tried to scream, but as soon as she opened her mouth, fingers forced the gag in, practically down her throat.

  “We’re not going to hurt you,” another voice said into her ear. “Princess Josselyn.”

  TWELVE

  RHIANNON

  IT had been a week since Dahlen had left Rhee, a week since she’d publicly aligned herself with Nero. In that time, she and Nero had come to various agreements that they would announce in a joint broadcast later today—both Kalu and Fontis would pull out of neutral territories, air travel would be reinstated in the Relia Quadrant, and both warring parties had agreed to a cease-fire over Wraetan airspace.

  For now, she was maintaining the façade of a unified front.

  And so far, it had worked.

  Along with everything else Nero touched, her popularity soared.

  Well, not soared exactly, but she’d been featured favorably on the holos. Her approval rating was up. And though Rhee couldn’t stand to see her own frozen smile and stiffly worded statement replayed endlessly on the holos, as time passed, she was increasingly certain that the decision—her decision—had been a necessary one.

  For the first time since the war began, the United Planets had agreed to converge in Sibu to discuss the terms of an intergalactic treaty—their cooperation, too, a result of Nero’s diplomacy, especially his announcement of a dispersal of his troops from around Wraeta. Soon, she hoped, she would restore enough peace, and enough faith in the Ta’an dynasty, that she’d be free to oust Nero for good.

  For now, the war still raged, ravaging the system in tiny pockets that grew larger—and more unpredictable—with each passing day. The blast on Nau Fruma. Another rash of explosions in the Outer Belt. A few skirmishes that, somehow, always seemed to occur near UniForce peacekeeping troops. Rhee shivered, wondering where else violence had stuck itself, like a sliver burrowed underneath the skin.

  Loneliness had crept into her too, in the same way: slow and unexpected. She caught herself balancing the coin across her knuckles, moving it between her index finger and pinky just like Dahlen had done. His departure was like a sudden sting—the pain was easy to ignore at first. And by the time it had spread through her like an infection, it was too late.

  The ache wasn’t like missing her parents—that wound was huge, undeniable, and she had been able to stanch it with the promise of revenge. She had no idea how to rid herself of the ache of missing Dahlen. It was her own doing, after all.

  She turned the holo off. Rhee had insisted all the guards keep their distance. She couldn’t stand the idea of a stranger taking Dahlen’s place; it only made his absence more noticeable.

  Silence filled the room, thick as smoke from a fire. Then, there was a flash of something uncomfortable: the feeling of being watched.

  Don’t be such a little girl. But it wasn’t unreasonable to be so on edge, with everything that had happened. Though he ostensibly took measures to protect her, she couldn’t put anything past Nero. He could still have her killed and simply frame someone else—again. Maybe the negotiations were just a game. She took com
fort in the fact that Lahna was positioned outside her door.

  The sun had gone down while she’d sat here watching the holos, alone. Moonlight from Nau Fruma peeked through the slats of her balcony door, razoring the dark tiled floor with light.

  Again, the feeling of being watched pricked her skin into goose bumps. She couldn’t give in to paranoia. Couldn’t appear weak.

  Rhee walked to the balcony door, craving something she did not know how to name. Even though going outside was discouraged—the threats against her life weren’t few, as Dahlen might have said—she punched a code into the door’s keypad. Obediently, it opened. Moonlight flooded in. Cool air drenched her. The smell of roses from the garden—her mother’s garden—drifted into the room.

  A shadow flicked in the corner of her eye. Fear spiked in her blood. She backed away from the balcony door and closed it with the punch of a button, straining to see the dark corners of her room. Like a child, she thought again, a little girl afraid of the dark. But now she had Veyron’s knife in the folds of her robe.

  Then, as soon as she’d relaxed her grip on the hilt, the balcony door slid open for a second time.

  A shadow moved across the way, and Rhee lunged. She wielded her knife, but not fast enough. The assailant knocked it out of her hand. The defensive movement was familiar, the way the person wove back, struck in a wide arc with the left hand. Suddenly, Rhee could hardly breathe.

  “Julian?” Rhee called out to the shadow.

  He stepped into the light and pulled back his hood. His sandy hair was longer now, and even though it had been only weeks since that night under the meteor shower, he looked older. It was something about the cut of his jaw, the line of his brow. Her heart warmed. Every fear melted away. Her pulse sped up, with excitement, with anticipation. He’d finally come.

  ’Til I see you next, he’d said that day on Nau Fruma when they last parted. The stars were raining down on them then.

  “You got my messages . . .” Rhee moved toward him instinctively, and she paid the price. Now it was his turn to lunge, pinning her to the dresser. She tried to call for help, but he muffled her scream with a rough palm.

  She spun to the right, but he anticipated it, blocked her off, and grabbed her forearms. He knows, Rhee realized. He knew about Veyron’s death. She wiggled her left elbow free, but again, he blocked it deftly; it was a feint to bring her legs around his torso from behind anyway, but he easily grabbed her legs and turned her on her side, like he’d known that was coming—because he had.

  He picked her up, took his left forearm to her neck, and slammed her against her wardrobe. His right arm pinned her left wrist down.

  Rhee knew this dance. It was skill, it was practiced. It had happened a thousand times before. She could hardly breathe, though it had little to do with the arm against her throat.

  She wasn’t used to their height difference—had he grown in the short time between Nau Fruma and now? At least some things hadn’t changed; it was clear he still favored his left side. It was the same hold he’d put her in the last time they sparred. Rhee hadn’t looked up then—she’d been afraid he would kiss her.

  Now, she was afraid he’d do something much worse. Rhee looked up this time, but darkness shielded Julian’s clear blue eyes from view. The eyes that used to tell her everything she’d needed to know, even before he spoke. Heat spilled off him. Being here, with him hovering over her, was new and unknowable and terrifying. Her best friend. The boy she used to race through the sand dunes on Nau Fruma. The one she’d said goodbye to under a sky raining down in rock and fire.

  “Did you think I wouldn’t find out?” His lips brushed against her ear.

  Rhee squeezed her eyes shut. He’d come to make her pay for what she’d done. A vision flashed through her memory, visceral and organic: Julian’s father, Veyron, bleeding at her hand.

  He doesn’t know, she thought.

  He didn’t know Veyron had tried to kill her first.

  Julian pressed his forearm harder into her throat. Her windpipe strained under the pressure. Heat and sweat gathered in all the places their skin touched: wrist, arm, thigh. The reality sunk in that he was truly here to kill her, that every moment they’d shared before this meant nothing in the face of Veyron’s death. Did she think their friendship was so powerful as to make her immune? Think you’re special? someone had whispered in the crowd on Tinoppa, when she’d rushed forward in her own haphazard attempt to kill Seotra.

  “Remember what he used to say?” Julian asked. “That you weren’t a tactical thinker. You react. You never get in front of the fight.”

  “Shut your mouth.” Rhee eased her free hand behind the folds of her robe, then remembered he had kicked away her knife. Was she willing to stab him, like she had his father? We’re friends. The thought raced through the wrinkles in her brain. Julian wanted her to die. Why did this devastate her, when Rhee herself knew that the singular desire for revenge was more powerful than friendship, reason, love? Hadn’t she done the same thing? Blamed a man for the actions of another? Rhee gathered herself. This needed to be fought like a battle.

  “He also said I was graceful where you were clumsy,” she told Julian now. “What was that word he used to describe you? Uninspired.”

  Julian pressed harder. “You know what’s uninspired? This charade to take back your throne is uninspired. Killing him was uninspired. Partnering with Nero? Uninspired.”

  Tears sprang to her eyes, though she wasn’t sure if they were from pain or Julian’s words. But it was all true, wasn’t it?

  “Is that why you killed my father?” he whispered. “Because he saw right through you? Because he knew how power-hungry you really were?”

  “No.” She was almost glad that was all she could manage—she felt her dignity, her resolve, wane with every second she stared up at him. At the hate in his eyes. At the memory of Veyron’s blood spilling over her knife, hands, cloak. If Julian didn’t have her pinned, would she have already dropped to her knees and begged forgiveness?

  But no—his father had tried to kill her.

  “Then why?” he spit.

  He didn’t know that Veyron had been the one to betray her. He didn’t know that his father was the one to make the deal with Nero first—a deal to destroy Rhee and stop her ascent. She could tell him now, set the record straight. But for what? To clear her name on the off chance Julian would spare her life? It would only sully the version of Veyron he had, reframe every memory into something dishonorable and sinister. The father, the trainer, the loyalist—he’d disappear.

  Rhee had already killed Julian’s father. She couldn’t kill the memory of him. She wouldn’t.

  Instead, she drove her hip into him. He’d budged, only barely, but it was enough of a surprise—he’d loosened his hold on her wrist. She yanked her right hand out of Julian’s sweaty grip. Her elbow made sickening contact with his neck. He stumbled back, gasping. Rhee lifted her knife from the floor and pointed it at him. Julian was swimming in anger, she could see, focused on everything he thought he knew.

  They stood a meter apart now. He pulled his own weapon out of his waistband behind him. It was a hatchet. Small, compact. She scrambled for the memory—he used to use it in the greenhouse. Or to dig up rocks in the garden. Her mind reeled with the need to remember this completely inane detail, like part of her was desperate to go back, back, back.

  “That knife doesn’t belong to you,” he said, using the hatchet to point at Veyron’s blade. What he’d meant to say was It belongs to me.

  She twirled it. A showy, obstinate move, even as her heart was breaking. “Then come and get it,” Rhee said. Suddenly another organic memory rose. She’d found a shell of a crab once by the shore, perfectly preserved. Rhee had held it up to the sun, admiring it, when Julian snatched it out of her hand and jumped into the river. Come and get it, he’d yelled to her, while she peeled off her ceremonial dress
to dive in after him.

  She couldn’t think of such things. Not of Julian, her Julian. In the dojo they’d never held back. The more skill and stamina you brought, the more you showed respect to your opponent. You had to challenge one another truly; it was in the service of both fighters becoming better than they were. But their sparring never had truly violent ends. It was never about winning, and it was never about harm.

  But tonight was different.

  If Julian was here to avenge his father, he would fight until the death. And Rhee would not take that honor away from him. She had only one option. She didn’t have the luxury to die—not now, not with the threat of Nero. She was the Empress and had come back to rule, to reclaim her responsibility and live the legacy she’d been born into.

  Which meant that Julian would die tonight.

  He moved in, his eyes never leaving hers. Rhee swiped at the air, just missing as he ducked. He was only a shadow, she told herself. An opponent. They moved in a half circle around her bed, and when he swung his axe, she ducked, and it wedged into the wood post behind her. The sound of wood cracking startled her; she hadn’t realized they fought in near silence, as they always had in the dojo. Rhee scrambled back, and Julian struggled with the axe; he couldn’t free it.

  Rhee thought she heard footsteps down the hall. Someone had heard them. Lahna, she thought. Lahna and her bow.

  “Julian,” Rhee tried, but he threw a punch with his protected arm; Rhee slashed wildly. If she’d hurt him she couldn’t tell. He drove his forearm into her elbow to disarm her, and the knife went clattering to the ground.

  They both dove. Rhee ended up on top of him. She punched his ribs as he finally seized the knife. She recoiled as he slammed the knife toward her at full force, and just managed to block his wrist with her forearm. The blade was so close it fogged at her breath.