Blood of a Thousand Stars

by Rhoda Belleza

  Kara thought Diac was trying to relay another hidden message. She quickly realized that she was partially right—this must be his way of telling her that Lydia had loved her. But what did it matter, now that Lydia was dead?

  “You romanticize what you did,” she whispered fiercely. “You built the overwriter because you could.”

  “We built it so people could somehow reconcile the horrors of war with the preciousness of life . . . we made it for survivors. If its purpose was perverted, that’s because man is.”

  Kara’s organs twisted in grief—and shame. She had already understood why the overwriter had held such appeal, when Diac and Lydia had first conceived of it: The past was too painful to be carried. Perhaps the Emperor saw that too, and considered that impossible decision to erase the Great War from memory.

  But he hadn’t. Did he change his mind, or did he die before he could use it?

  We made it for survivors. She was a survivor, wasn’t she? Did that make her case to erase Josselyn?

  Muffled shouting from somewhere deeper in the house announced the other captors’ return. Kai, who had been positioned all this time by the door, slipped out to greet them, leaving Kara and Diac alone for the first time.

  “How does it work?” Kara asked quickly. “How did Lydia do it?”

  He leaned toward her. “Any cube you’re erasing off needs to be primed.”

  Her pulse began to race. “Or updated? Like the cube update that went live a few days ago?”

  “Yes.” Diac looked toward the exit and lowered his voice further. “Second, the overwriter itself needs a host. A living host that has free will, intent. It can’t work inside, let’s say, a tree—but it can be preserved there.”

  “So Lydia was the host? When she used it on me?”

  He nodded as he leaned farther forward. A band of dim light fell across the valleys of his face. “But you have to know, to wipe your memory, Lydia had to wipe her own too. That was the sacrifice she made for you. For your safety.”

  “No.” Kara reeled back. Her headache emerged, like it was seeping out of the soft tissue of her brain.

  “You were young. She couldn’t risk you compromising yourself. And we needed you alive in case the younger one—”

  “In case she died,” Kara said, finishing his sentence. It was a plan designed so that a Ta’an would take the throne. Other people playing games, taking bets on their lives.

  “So if I want to use it, I have to give up my memories?”

  “What do you want to use it for?” he said hoarsely, in a changed voice: filled with electricity, with urgency. “Listen to me. Whatever you’re thinking, whatever half-baked plan exists, it’s dangerous. Even if it is intact, it has to be destroyed.”

  “Then why didn’t you do it?”

  “I . . .” Diac reached into his shirt pocket and fumbled for something, but he wouldn’t meet her eyes. “I was a coward.”

  “Take a number,” Kara said bitterly.

  He placed a pill on the table between them. “Neuroblockers,” he said quickly. “If anyone attempts to update your cube, this will prevent it.”

  Just then, the door behind them burst open, and Kara swept the pill into the palm of her hand. In one motion, Imogen stepped through and released her silver whip cable. It lashed several times around Diac’s neck, until it choked his cry into a long gasp, and his gasp into a soundless scream.

  Forgetting that her hands were bound, Kara lunged to her feet, but could only drop helplessly to her knees in front of him, could only watch as his eyes, panicked, turned suddenly opaque—whatever soul was there had fled.

  Her stomach bucked with nausea. When she turned, she saw that Imogen was watching her with an expression she couldn’t read.

  It was Kai who came forward.

  “Come on,” he said, again pulling the bag over Kara’s head, and cinching it around her throat. “Time to see what UniForce will pay for the return of a princess.”

  FIFTEEN

  RHIANNON

  NO matter where she moved across the palace, Rhee felt as if she were tethered to Julian—a distracting awareness that dominated every thought, dictated every decision. Despite the fact that he’d tried to kill her, that perhaps he still would, he hid in the basement several floors below. It was almost as if she’d traded Dahlen for Julian, since she was desperate for their friendship, and since they both hated her.

  And why wouldn’t Julian hate her? Rhee ruined everything she touched.

  Lahna had explained how all along, Veyron had been working against Nero. He was the only member of the resistance in Nero’s inner circle. With his death, the resistance had begun to disintegrate.

  Again and again, Rhee was transported back to that moment. With her cube off, the organic memory was more salient than ever. She could practically feel Veyron’s hand around her throat, smell the incense that burned in the temple.

  And then—Dahlen’s sudden arrival.

  Veyron had made sure that Rhee would be saved. He followed Nero’s orders so that his own family, his people, wouldn’t be targeted, so that the resistance could continue their work. But he had made sure the Fontisian would intervene.

  All along, he’d been on her side.

  And she’d killed him.

  “You’ll first be coming out here,” the Fisherman said, mercifully yanking Rhee from her thoughts. He pointed to the holo image of the west wing of the palace. He had enormous hands and fat fingers to match; he poked at the image repeatedly, and it wavered where he touched. “Zoom in here. Here.”

  The droid was nearly as tall as Rhee was, shaped like a cylinder with a shiny chrome finish and four small wheels at its base. The projected image zoomed in so far and so fast Rhee felt herself go dizzy, like she’d plummeted into the holo. Now, only a white static took up the full image.

  “Does this droid know how to do anything useful?” the Fisherman bellowed.

  “Seventy-five percent zoom,” Rhee clarified to the droid. “You’ve gone too far.”

  “What is the point,” the Fisherman said, tobacco-laced saliva flying from the corners of his mouth, “of a machine that requires even the smallest details to be spelled out?” The Fisherman’s eyes were tilted down at a forty-five-degree angle, and when he was angry—which was often—they closed up into slits and gave him an amphibian quality.

  “It’s not a military droid,” Tai Reyanna said. “It doesn’t have the training.”

  Lahna gave Rhee a small smile like they were both in on a joke. The Tai and the Fisherman were constantly at odds.

  “Well, perhaps it would oblige me to take a few minutes out of its busy vacuuming schedule to get reprogrammed!” He got down low and yelled into what would be its face. The droid rolled back as if startled and ran over the fabric of Rhee’s dress.

  “Be careful,” Tai Reyanna said sharply, the crisp Kalusian accent coming through more than ever now that they’d returned to the palace.

  “Calm down,” the Fisherman countered. “The girl ran halfway across the galaxy; I think she can handle a bit of dirt on her dress.”

  The Tai glared at him from under her duhajt. She nudged the droid forward and off Rhee’s dress with a very unladylike kick of her foot. Lahna let out a noise that could’ve passed as a cough but was most certainly a snort.

  Protective had become Tai Reyanna’s default state, while aggravated had become the Fisherman’s. Rhee had learned to tolerate both. Appreciate them, even, especially since the Tai had taken a great risk to return with her, and the Fisherman had agreed to take over security details after Dahlen left.

  I’ll keep you alive, but I don’t have to be nice about it, he’d said in that gurgly accent. Tai Reyanna had nodded happily at that. They seemed to band together only when it came to Rhee’s safety.

  The droid adjusted the image—correctly, this time. Rhee circled the hol
ogram and looked carefully at the balcony where she would soon stand.

  “I’ve got archers all along the west tower, facing you and facing out toward the surrounding buildings. We’ll have to keep an eye out for the east tower; Nero runs security out the top floors and it’s tighter than a Derkatzian’s you-know-what.”

  “And here?” Lahna asked, pointing to the cluster of icons at the base of the palace.

  “The Tasinn are on the ground at the base,” the Fisherman said of her royal guard, now, she suspected, loyal to Nero, “and if they choose to act up—which, don’t worry, they won’t—we’ll be in position to regroup, fire down, extract you through this sky bridge here . . .”

  Rhee could barely concentrate, even if she’d been the one to call the meeting to be briefed. Her outfit, painstakingly created just for this publicity event, involved a corset made of bone in the style of the second-wavers. It dug into her ribs and pinched her waistline to unnatural proportions. There was a scratchy material that capped at her sleeves and ran the length of her skirt, which cut an A-line silhouette all the way down to the ground. She had clutched the coin in the palm of her hand just as she did now; she’d held it all morning, since the dress she wore was of poor design. Why create a garment without pockets?

  Tai Reyanna had supervised as the tailor fastened on the final stitches—it was a dress Rhee had been sewn into, and would later need to be cut free of. It seemed like a metaphor.

  Joss would’ve known what to do. Graceful, quick-thinking. The girl who should be empress lost among the galaxy, while Rhee stood in the gown, a poor approximation of a leader and an empress.

  In just under an hour, she and Nero would appear side by side to announce the newest terms of the cease-fire on live DroneVision. It was exactly what Rhee had wanted, and why she’d joined such an unsavory alliance. But he’d slipped in an extra condition: that Fontis lift travel sanctions on the highly protected remains of Wraeta.

  There could be only one reason: This cease-fire deal was a means to an end. Nero didn’t care about restoring his credibility with the United Planets, as everyone was speculating.

  He was after the overwriter.

  Rhee had never fully believed that the tech even existed. But Nero spoke with such conviction on Houl, when he’d said the overwriter had capabilities beyond anything Rhee had imagined. He said with the overwriter he could whisper to people, not through their ears but their minds . . .

  Whether or not it was true, Nero was either certain that it was, or desperate—and either made him very, very dangerous.

  Rhee needed to know what he had planned.

  But how? She felt no closer to understanding him than she had before their alliance.

  As if in response to her doubts, the sound of Nero’s voice echoed through the room. It seemed he was unavoidable. A shiver traveled up her spine.

  “On the coming hour, we invite everyone to join as Empress Rhiannon Ta’an shares an important announcement . . .”

  Immediately, the droid parroted the words.

  “This useless piece of scrap!” the Fisherman said, giving the droid a good kick. The holoprojection had gone iridescent, a light so faint it was barely readable to the humanoid eye. It was likely the same in the Fisherman’s case.

  Rhee sighed. “You know it can’t help it.”

  And it was true—this model was a particular kind of tech used by Derkatzians. Their retinas were shaped differently, and their eyes could detect something like seven times the amount of light compared to hers or the Fisherman’s. The projection settings were humanoid or Derkatzian, and it had likely glitched, switching between languages without being prompted.

  The Fisherman continued grumbling. Rhee’s head was starting to hurt.

  “Please,” she said. “I’m trying to think.”

  What good was the Fisherman’s security plan anyway, if she couldn’t get into Nero’s head, couldn’t understand what he was plotting? Despite her pretended civility, and the time she had been forced to suffer in his presence recently, she was no closer to understanding what he really wanted.

  The droid had begun talking—Derkatzian this time. The Fisherman had accidentally reset its language, and now he was cursing up a storm.

  And that’s when it hit her. Humanoid or Derkatzian. Two-faced.

  Rhee needed a double agent.

  And she knew just who to ask: Julian.

  Lahna had arranged for him to be kept in the depths of the palace. Though Nero insisted that daisies follow Rhee at every conceivable moment—a development that fanned Rhee’s suspicion and uneasiness—the Empress had demanded that the guts of the palace be reserved as a place of worship, which meant they’d be free of cameras. For now, the place was sacred, and thus offered the privacy she craved—though privacy from Tai Reyanna was an entirely different challenge altogether. Upon their return, the Tai had insisted on being with her as much as possible. She seemed nicer, less stern. The warmth was out of character and brought Rhee less comfort than Tai Reyanna probably hoped it would. It only served to remind Rhee that things had changed, that you could come home and find it unrecognizable—that the memory you held on to had merely been a mental construction, and that nothing at all stayed the same.

  Rhee made her way down below, where her ancestors were projected via holo onto all four walls of the room. Offerings were clustered below each image on low tables that served as mini altars. There were the typical offerings: grain, fruit, candies.

  Stepping into the low-lit room, she could immediately breathe easier.

  Julian still hadn’t spoken to her since the night he broke into her room. Every day she visited, though, steeling herself against his glare. He didn’t want to be here, but he couldn’t leave either. Where else would he go?

  When she and Lahna entered, Julian turned away from her in disgust. With his hair cropped short in a new-wave style, he looked older.

  “Do you still wish you had killed me?” Rhee asked. She willed her hands to be steady, and clasped them tightly when they refused.

  “Do you still wish you hadn’t killed my father?” he returned. He glanced at her sideways, his chin down, the blue of his eyes even more intense, more piercing. She saw how much he hated her.

  She didn’t answer—she didn’t need to. Now she knew the betrayal had been for nothing. She’d been wrong. About Veyron. About almost everything.

  But no matter how she tried, Rhee couldn’t forget what they’d been. The first night she’d returned to Nau Fruma for good, after her family was killed, Julian had left the cast-off skin of a snake for her to find on her windowsill the next morning. And the next day, a rock in the shape of a heart. A scrap of vermillion fabric, a shard of stained glass, a twig of dried lavender. These tiny objects were her lifeline to the world outside the palace.

  The tables had turned now; he was the prisoner within the palace walls. Rhee could tell it boiled his blood that after everything, he needed her protection and cover—which she was happy to give in meager hopes of forgiveness, and redemption.

  “I’ve come for your help,” Rhee told him. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Lahna shift her weight between her feet.

  Julian snorted. “You think I’d help you?”

  “If it serves our mutual interest.” In that moment, she made a decision. To trust him. To hope. “Nero is looking for the overwriter.”

  Lahna arched an eyebrow. “What?”

  So Dahlen hadn’t told her. Rhee looked from Julian to Lahna, then back again. “I’m not even sure if it exists. But he’s looking for it.”

  “Choirtoi,” Julian breathed out.

  “We need to know what he’s up to.” She took a deep breath. “What I did was unforgivable. I know that. But Nero is to blame.” She half expected Julian to object. But he didn’t, so she pressed on. “Veyron knew that he must be stopped. He died for it. I’m sure Nero never
doubted his loyalty. Is that right?”

  Julian nodded. His face was guarded.

  Lahna stared at her. “You’re not suggesting . . . ?”

  Rhee took a deep breath. “That Julian take his father’s place. Offer yourself to Nero. Your loyalty.” She paused. “If we can figure out what he’s doing and stop it—together—then you’re free to have your revenge on me.” She focused on staying very still; it was the only thing that would stanch her tears.

  “You trust a boy who set out to kill you?” Lahna’s voice was sharp with disbelief. “He could double-cross you and ruin you completely.”

  “And yet even you bowed to him,” Rhee said.

  Julian came closer, the same murderous heat coming off him in waves; for a moment, Rhee thought he might just kill her where she stood. Lahna’s hand twitched, but she did not draw her bow.

  “I’ll help you,” he said softly. He paused, so close to her she could feel his breath against her forehead and cheek. “But then I will take your life.”

  “Unless I take yours,” Rhee said. Her grief felt like drowning.

  For a second, they stood there staring at each other. His blue eyes seemed dark, almost black, in the dim light. Then, finally, he nodded.

  “And one more thing,” she said, before he could turn away. “How did you get past my guard?”

  It was a question that had been bothering her for days. Even without Dahlen, she still had a robust guard of Fontisians from the order, along with some loyal Kalusian palace staff, who manned the halls of the palace, the gardens, and all of the entrances.

  Julian rolled his eyes. “I stole a uniform and guessed at the code words. Honor. Loyalty. Bravery.”

  The breath hitched. The secret passwords to get her guards to stand down—they made up her ma’tan sarili, chosen in a private family ritual. No one had known the words apart from her mother and father. And Julian, of course. He’d known everything about her.

  The past didn’t just die. It killed too.