Shadow Call

by Michael Miller

  “I can’t.” Basra’s mouth twisted in distaste. “And before you ask why not, it’s because I don’t own much of theirs anymore.” He glanced at his infopad. “Or any of it, as of about three hours ago. I tried to warn you as we were approaching the Luvos Sunrise, but there were admittedly more pressing matters to attend to.”

  Nev shook his head, but he still sounded dazed, breathless. “How is that possible? The Dracortes can’t just buy back what you own without your permission—we couldn’t afford it, anyway.”

  That was my basic grasp, as well, of the power that Basra held over them in his inherited role as the investor, Hersius Kartolus the Thirteenth, though I obviously didn’t understand everything about the situation. These were forces so far over my head that I’d never had reason to consider them much before, and yet now they were coming down on our heads, ready to crush us.

  “Well, Solara isn’t playing by the rules, because she forcibly orchestrated a buyback by placing those resources under government control,” Basra said, “and, in so doing, escaped my influence over her.” He leaned back and folded his arms across his stomach. “The money to do so came from a loan by the Treznor-Nirmana family.”

  “Treznor-Nirmana?” Nev asked incredulously. “We’re too far in debt to them already!”

  It was true—the Dracortes being so indebted to the equally royal Treznor-Nirmanas was what had made his family so desperate for any advancement. Desperate enough to kidnap Arjan and me and torture us for what they could gain from us.

  Basra shrugged. “They were the lesser of two evils, perhaps. I’d be flattered under other circumstances, and pleased to be considerably richer. At least the trade didn’t go off without a hitch. King Makar Treznor-Nirmana opposed loaning Solara more money, and so he and his council are at odds right now. He might even be on the verge of being deposed, if he hasn’t been already.”

  Nev grabbed his hair. “What good does that do us? Whoever leads them, they’ll still practically own my family! What does Solara think she’s doing?”

  “Hey,” Arjan snapped. “Isn’t anything bad for your family good for us?”

  “In this case, Nev’s right—it wasn’t much good for either of us,” Basra said. “Treznor instability aside, this makes us sort of even, and yet Solara is still the one with the rather large navy. Not only that, but by seizing ownership of the Shadow grounds and placing the market under government control, she’s effectively keeping me from turning around and buying up all their Shadow—which would have been my next move.” He sighed. “Now I truly am just another rich person.”

  With that, he looked sideways at Arjan, his expression almost sulky. So he had definitely been stung by my brother’s comment, and tension was obviously still high between them. But we had a vastly bigger problem than who had offended whom—unless, of course, the offended party was one Solara Dracorte, psychopathic princess and soon-to-be queen of our system.

  She was precisely our problem.

  “Then…then we’re screwed,” Telu said. Her voice was higher, more afraid, than I usually ever heard it. “She’ll come in and take everything from us.”

  A force as strong as gravity tugged on me, but in the opposite direction, dragging me upright. It was my own gravity—the energy that kept me moving, breathing, fighting. There was no way, no way I was just going to sit by while this happened. “No,” I said, standing above everyone. “She won’t.”

  “And just how are you going to stop her?” Eton demanded. “You can’t do anything against a force like hers. We tricked the Dracortes before, but it was a surprise attack—they weren’t ready. We wouldn’t stand a farmer’s chance against a Bladeguard if we faced her on the field of battle with an army at her back.”

  But I wasn’t looking at him, or hearing him. All I could see was Arjan and Telu, staring at me with the faint beginnings of hope, Basra with curiosity, and Nev…Nev, I didn’t look at either, because he started to shake his head.

  And all I could hear was the whisper in my ear that came from no lips I could see moving: “Yes.”

  “She won’t, because I won’t let her,” I said. “None of us will. And I don’t just mean this crew.” I strode away from the table before they could argue. “Get ready, we’re going to Chorda. We need to talk to some fishermen.”

  In wanting to head to Chorda, Qole evidently meant to talk to everyone on Alaxak who could be reached. Chorda was the nominal seat of government—nominal because Alaxak had carried on quite well after the last governor died and the next appointee kept finding reasons to delay arrival. Finally, everyone agreed remote decisions were quite all right.

  It was also the largest gathering place, where the de facto leaders of other areas apparently came together to make consensus-based decisions.

  I didn’t imagine we were flying out immediately—word of a gathering had to spread, after all—so I excused myself from the table to go to the ship’s head. I never made it there, sliding down along the wall of the corridor to sit on the grating, my head leaned back, eyes closed.

  I had been to Chorda once, when I first arrived on Alaxak and started my search for someone like Qole. Arriving there had led me to here. I would be coming full circle.

  Except now everything was in tatters. I had tried to help Qole, tried to give up on my family, tried to give myself back to them…for all the good any of it had done. Now my parents were dead, Solara would be queen, and the people of Alaxak were going to lose their entire way of life.

  If not their lives if they tried to resist.

  My mind ran over what the clergy of the Unifier had told me about loss, what I believed, and it all dissolved in front of what I was feeling. Everyone being united right now didn’t seem all that much of a comfort, or a guide.

  The Church had never talked about your sister not only betraying you, but having your parents assassinated. I knew the blood was on her hands, but I wanted to blame the Bladeguard who had done it. I couldn’t reconcile what had happened with what I had known of Solara—fun, frivolous, quick to laugh, and even quicker to grow bored. I had seen her as my one ally on Luvos, the person who had risked everything to help me save Qole.

  Only if I thought hard could I remember incidents like the shredded gown that now struck me as suspect. Solara had never cried over anyone else’s pain, or when one of her pets had died, despite appearing to dote upon them. At such times, I would occasionally catch that same assessing look in her eyes that she’d given me as I cradled our dead mother. Specifically, I recalled a beautiful caged bird in her quarters whose wings kept breaking, supposedly when it flapped too violently against the bars. But now I doubted the cause, never mind the many times Solara had made splints for the poor creature.

  I also remembered a pale, trembling companion of hers, whose arm had been horrifically sliced. Solara had insisted it was an accident, that they were pretending to be Bladeguards with a pair of ceremonial swords they’d lifted out of a display. The odd thing was that there had been two cuts. The girl hadn’t argued before being rushed to the med bay. In fact, she’d hardly said a word—something I’d attributed to shock but now guessed was pure fear.

  These things had occurred only when Solara was young, so they were dim in my memory, nearly forgotten. She must have grown more careful, calculated, since then. She’d put her cheerful, trivial mask in place, hiding her true, dangerous, sick self behind witty banter and subtle manipulation.

  And now my little brother, Marsius, was alone with her. I almost couldn’t stomach the thought. Nor this:

  If I had been so wrong about her, what else was I wrong about?

  “You keeping it together?”

  I had secretly hoped Qole would find me and we could speak privately. I wanted to ask her how she had moved on after her family had died, one by one. How she had dealt with day-to-day life when everything felt surreal, pointless, and unavoidably mundane. How I wanted
reality to reflect how broken I was, but instead, gravity, light, and everyone else just carried along as they always had.

  However, it wasn’t Qole who loomed over me. It was Eton, his broad face impassive. I knew he didn’t like me, and I couldn’t blame him. I didn’t much like me right now.

  I took a deep breath. “Everything normal is still…normal. We still have to prep the ship, talk to one another, do the same things we do every day.” I looked up at him. “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?” Eton frowned, the lines on his face making the question seem more like a threat. I imagined he would look menacing even while giggling and flying a kite.

  I rested my arms across my knees. Function at all was what I wanted to say. “Sleep. Eat. At some point, your life fell apart. Does it get better, or are you…is it always like this inside?”

  Eton folded into a cross-legged position, surprising me by how sudden and seamless the motion was. “Why the hell do you think my life fell apart?” Something in the flatness of his voice was more disconcerting than his usual crabbiness.

  I now knew he was one of the luminaries who had trained at the Royal Academy years before me, earning a place through sheer skill, despite not being royal. One day he’d simply disappeared. Since putting together who he was, I’d tried to quietly unearth what had happened, to no avail. Whatever it had been, his reputation was deserved, as he was a mountain of muscle that moved more gracefully than anyone had a right to.

  I didn’t think it would be wise to tell him he’d been my subject of study. “I can’t imagine you’d be here if it hadn’t,” I said instead.

  His eyes narrowed, but he didn’t argue. “I was a mercenary before this.”

  That still didn’t explain his exit from Dracorva but was nonetheless fascinating. There were countless mercenary groups in the systems, many acting as proxy armies for the families. Some were a league apart, virtual factions unto themselves. It was the perfect place for someone of Eton’s talents to vanish.

  “I saw plenty of death, but at one point I…” He trailed off, rubbing his thumb and forefinger, as if considering the mote of an emotion that was getting the better of him. “I killed a girl about Qole’s age. I left after that, and when I met Qole, she reminded me of her. Being here gives me purpose.” Eton’s voice gained more of an edge. “And no, it doesn’t get easier. What you learn is you have to hold on to something stronger. Figure out what you’ll fight for no matter the cost, and then don’t let go of that. That’s it. That’s all you get, Prince.”

  I tried for a laugh, and winced at the sound. “ ‘Prince’ no longer. I thought it was my destiny as such to create a better existence for people—that was my cause worth fighting for. Rather neat how none of it is true anymore.”

  “Destiny is bullshit.” Eton grunted. “You don’t get to live in the future, and you aren’t in the past. All you get is right now.”

  I frowned. “Oh? What do you think I should be doing right now?”

  “You can pull yourself together and be useful to this crew.” His eyes bored into mine. The ship bucked on a few sudden waves as he stood, never losing balance. There must have been a storm coming in. Fitting. “If your being here helps us, then we’re good. If you’re more useful gone, then you’re gone.”

  “A threat. Goodness. I was starting to think we were having a real conversation.”

  To my surprise, something like warmth flickered in Eton’s eyes. “I’m sorry about your family,” he said. “But I can’t help with that. I can help with this one, though.”

  I nodded as he walked away, message received.

  * * *

  It took a week to activate some sort of communication chain that existed between the towns and villages of Alaxak, and to give folks time to wrap up any fishing runs and off-load the Shadow in their holds. Somehow, Qole and I managed not to talk about anything other than logistics. Perhaps it was more by design than the chaos of the moment, at least on my part. She wouldn’t have wanted to hear what I had to say, nor did I want to say it. And maybe I wouldn’t have to, because I suspected someone else would say it for me.

  The question was, would she listen?

  On the designated date that had been set, we landed in the ocean without the hiss and explosion of steam that was typical after the heat of atmospheric reentry. Qole had flown in-atmosphere to conserve fuel, and put us down on the water outside Chorda.

  Despite Alaxak being in the grip of an ice age and technically classified as a “frozen” planet, the period was warming. All that meant was that the temperatures had risen enough so that the equatorial band was no longer covered in ice, allowing vegetation and animal life to start creeping in. Humans had arrived in the middle of this process—thousands of years ago, well before the Great Collapse—and some, now known as native Alaxans, had decided that the climate could be considered survivable.

  Other villages and towns dotted the coast, and Chorda was the largest of these, situated near a rare equatorial forest. The Kaitan Heritage taxied toward the cliffs. They rose above us, high, jagged outcroppings reaching out into the ocean like the canines of a carnivore.

  Oddly, we taxied into the bay adjacent to the one to which our coordinates directed us. Qole muttered something about this dock being a lot quieter. We exited as a group, down the cargo ramp of the Kaitan into the deep evening. It was definitely quiet. There wasn’t another ship in sight. I wondered if no one had bothered to come, if this was a useless effort. The gust of wind that hit had rain in it, misting me with a sheen of moisture noticeably warmer than Gamut’s.

  “Ugh, give me a real winter anytime instead of this muck.” Telu shivered and lifted the ruff of her jacket.

  “The first time I came here I thought Chorda was frigid,” I remarked, looking around us. I’d practically been a different person then. I’d even looked like one.

  Stairs, weathered to a degree that made me believe they had been cut before Shadow fishing was the way of life, climbed steeply up the cliff. When we reached the top, the steps dropped down again immediately. In front of us lay an old caldera, a giant valley ringed by cliffs, forming another harbor to the sea. The stone walls that protected us from the wind also created favorable conditions for tall deciduous trees to take hold. The green spread was broken by the twinkling lights of warehouses, the cannery tower, and the larger dock where madness was unfolding.

  “Looks like everyone got the message,” Basra murmured, staring down. What might have been a typically peaceful, if industrious, scene was a riot of glowing contrails, flaring thrusters, and thundering turbines. Alaxan vessel standards were as nonexistent as air traffic control, and ships of every size, type, and make were jockeying for position to land in port.

  Some freighters had skiffs attached to every surface, huge spools of mag-cables connected to each one. Some were tiny, gnatlike, retrofitted fighters with tiny scoops to capture Shadow. Still others were obvious amalgamations of two entirely different ships for purposes I couldn’t imagine. The variety and inventiveness of the modifications were unending. There were roughly eight hundred Shadow-fishing ships on Alaxak, total, and it looked as if the bulk of them had come.

  “Most everyone is here,” Arjan said in a wondering tone, as if he had never seen this either.

  “Good,” Qole replied grimly. “Let’s find out how angry they are.”

  * * *

  “Pretty angry!” Telu yelled over the roaring hubbub of the gathering hall. The converted warehouse, lit with the eerie glare of Shadow lamps and furnaces, was a far cry from the royal meeting chambers and corporate boardrooms that represented my political experience. If the variety of ships outside had been a revelation, it was nothing compared to the characters milling around us by the hundreds. Most were captains, Qole told me, since not every crewmember would fit. Weathered and rugged, they wore custom leathers or well-patched synthetics and sported a variety
of tools I had never imagined, let alone seen. Several of them were missing hands or limbs, or had suffered some accident that caused them to make do with rough prostheses. Modern medicine could have aided any of them, could they only access or afford it. I suddenly understood Arjan and his disdain for anything more than an eye patch a bit better. And for royals.

  As if reading my thoughts, Telu muttered, “Good thing you’re dead, hey?”

  Not only was I supposed to be dead, I’d disguised myself as heavily as possible, leaving nothing that would hint at royalty. I fit right in.

  At a glance, citizens of my home planet would have deemed everyone here dangerous and uncivilized, instead of competent and independent, as I knew them to be. Part of me wondered if my family would have felt differently about exploiting these people if they had ever experienced life on Alaxak—a thought that became buried under a cavalcade of other painful reminders. Now is not the time. Just don’t think about them.

  “What are those?” I asked quietly, nodding toward the middle of the gathering hall, where approximately thirty waist-high black cylinders stood in a ring.

  “Those are the talking stumps,” Telu helpfully supplied, and then fell silent as she scanned the teeming space.

  “Stumps? As in tree stumps?” I frowned. “Those are thicker than any trees I’ve seen on the planet.”

  She glanced up at me through a shock of hair. “Been over the entire planet, hey?”

  I looked for a snappy comeback but couldn’t muster one. “Point.”

  Telu looked at me again, concern flickering across her face. Then she sighed. “They’re petrified. There’s one for each village representative.”