by Tessa Elwood
Especially since you probably knew what she intended and didn’t stop it, she doesn’t say.
I sink forward, elbows on knees, fingers laced behind my head. “It wasn’t want you think.”
“And what would that be?”
I close my eyes. “Please, Mrs. Divs. Just tell me.”
Her bony fingers crawl over and pat my shoulder. “Now then, Kit dear, you know that’s not how this works.”
“This?” I push upright, her hand falling away as my own rises to my hair. “What this? It’s not a game!”
She nods at the dark wall-screen. “Well, your mother seems to think so.”
“I can’t help that!”
“Can’t you?” Mrs. Divs lowers her cup to her lap. “Forgive me, Kit, but I do find it odd that after Yonni cursed your mother’s name for absence and abandonment, the moment Yonni’s dead you run out and track the woman down.”
“No, I didn’t.”
Her jaw sets. “Don’t you come running to me for information, then turn around and lie about—”
“It was before, all right?” I say, half rising off the couch. But there’s nowhere to go, and I need to know what Mom said. I sit, breathe, and lower my voice. “Yonni needed meds. I knew Mom worked at the Archive though—through one of Yonni’s lovers. She’d tracked Mom down for me, because she had the resources and she was—she was kind.”
She’d come to visit once, years ago, when I was a bawling mess on the couch and Yonni rocked me. I thought I’d seen Mom in the street, but it’d turned out to be a stranger, and then the tears wouldn’t stop.
Two weeks later, Missa arrived with a thin digisheet of information, which she handed to Yonni with a soft, if she ever wants to know.
Mrs. Divs doesn’t comment, not through body or expression, an ancient impartial wall.
Yonni could do that, too, listen without judgment.
“Yonni needed meds,” I say, again. “Expensive meds. Mom was an Archivest at the Archive. She also used to be hooked up with the Accountants—you know, the survivors from the indie planets? The ones we gutted? It was a super secret when I was little, so I figured if her boss at the Archive knew, she’d be fired.”
“Did you tell her boss, then?” Mrs. Divs asks.
I shake my head. “Threatened to, if Yonni didn’t get her meds.”
“And your mother delivered?”
“Yeah.” I fold my arms across my chest, fists tight against my shirt. “The only one, out of everyone, who did.”
Mom took care of everything. Yonni’s medication, her glass treatment bed, found the small off-grid clinic that would take care of her and allow me to stay overnight. Not that it helped. Nothing helped.
Then after, when Yonni’s body was taken and it was just me alone in the room, Mom had stopped by and asked, Does this cover my end of our bargain, or have you other demands to make?
If I’d had a soul, it’d have screamed, but there was nothing left for me to scream with.
No, we’re even, I said and walked past her out the door. I never thought I’d see her again. Then one day, months later, I opened the door and there she was.
You want to get coffee? she’d said, and after a minute, like an idiot, I’d said, Okay.
Infinite seconds drag.
Then Mrs. Divs straightens and crosses her ankles, cup in lap.
“‘I wish I could tell you how this ends,’” she says, my mother echoing through every ancient syllable. I raise my head. “‘I have my theories, but this history isn’t mine to make. I’ve heard that good things come in threes, but I believe in fours.’” Mrs. Divs pauses a beat, her voice more her own. “And then she did something very odd. She cupped her hands together and blew into them, saying, ‘The question is a matter of heart.’”
Heart. Not brightheart.
It wasn’t a secret message.
Except, she’d cupped my hands just like that, that last night, as she used to when I was little.
Mrs. Divs sets aside her tea. “Now tell me, Kit, what do you think that meant?”
Last time, unlike when I was young, my hands weren’t empty.
You’ve the whole world, remember? What will you do with it?
The bracelet.
I stare at the empty wall-screen, my wide-eyed face reflected back.
I wish I could tell you how this ends.
You’ve the whole world.
This history isn’t mine to make.
“What did you give me?” I ask under my breath.
“You know what she meant, don’t you?” asks Mrs. Divs.
“No,” I say, fast, too fast.
Mrs. Divs, on the other hand, is measured and slow. “Ah, Kit. You never were much of a liar.”
I jump to my feet. “Thanks for the tea.”
Her cane flashes out and traps me between the couch and the coffee table. She tsks, head shaking. “I’m a little worried, dear. More than a little, truth to tell. Here’s your mother talkin’ about threes and fours, when once would be enough for anyone. How long you think she’ll keep this up?”
I clench my fists and don’t jump the table, or clatter over her delicate painted dishes. “Please, Mrs. Divs, I have no answers.”
“Then maybe you best find some.” She removes her cane. I cross the room in a heartbeat. As I open the door, she calls, “I hear the Records Officials will be doing a routine check of properties soon. Should be interesting.”
Not unless she tells them about Dad. She’d only have to mention him in passing and I’d be on the street. No money, no food, no bed, no Yonni.
Except for the world in my empty hands, and the sins of my mother.
“You do what you think is right, Mrs. Divs,” I say and close the door.
I take the stairs two at a time, hands shaking and dizzy down to my bones. I need to eat. I need that bracelet.
If I can trace my transaction card and give it to Decker, I’ll be five hundred short—assuming he doesn’t jack the price. I’ll have to do a job for him.
Which is exactly how Greg started dealing.
I’m not Greg.
I slam out of the stairwell, feet pounding the rhythm of Mom’s voice.
Good things come in threes, but I believe in fours.
Three what? Explosions? So far, we’ve had only one, and only two broadcasts.
The question is a matter of heart.
Not that she had one.
I smack my keypass to the security panel and swing through the door. It slams behind me. The room’s darker than it should be, the curtains pulled close.
The curtains were open when I left.
There are people on the couch.
I spin on my heel—don’t think, don’t scream—and reach for the door.
Arms wrap me from behind, a hand on my mouth, a clamp on my waist. Small breasts bunch at my back. A woman.
“Now,” she whispers in my ear. “Don’t you go screaming.”
I bite her palm and twist my whole torso. She yelps and I’m free. I jump into the kitchen—she’s blocking the exit—and pull one of Yonni’s big carving knifes from a drawer. Yonni hated knives, I don’t know why the hell we have them. It’s probably dull as hell.
“Back off.” I hold the knife in front of me. The blade glints. “Just back off.”
The woman backs up, hands rising and ready. “You have some nerve.”
“I have—you’re in my suite! Who the hell are you?”
Across the room, the curtains whoosh open. A thin male figure stands dead center, silhouette swarmed by yellow dust.
“It’s beautiful out there,” he says in a pretty singsong. “We see glimmers of the world.”
The Brinkers. The Brinkers are in my suite, and one of them is hiding.
My fingers tighten on the knife, but that will
make it harder to throw. I breathe, ease up, relax my bones. Tension screams “scared,” and scared screams “gut me.”
I glance at my back, but the kitchen’s empty and the cabinets aren’t big enough for even a child to fold into.
“Where the hell is the other one?” I ask.
“Where do you think?” bites the girl.
“They caught him,” the skinny one turns, floats forward. “He wasn’t fast enough. He’s theirs now.”
“And that’s on you.” The girl has topknots again, pulled tight enough her skin stretches. She steps closer.
“How the hell do you figure?” I lift the knife higher. “You people dosed me.”
She ignores this, calling over her shoulder. “Play the vid.”
“If you mean Mom’s latest,” I say, “I’ve seen it.”
“She said it was a matter of heart.” The skinny kid crosses the room to lift the remote from the table, his light brown hair haloed white. “She loves us.”
“Right,” I say. “That’s why she blew up the Archive and screwed our House.”
“Yes, exactly.” The skinny kid grins, a beautiful skeletal thing, then points the remote at my wall-screen. It wakes, bright enough to take on the afternoon sun.
I focus on the girl. “What the hell do you—”
“Shut up and watch,” she says.
On-screen, a large purple planet hangs amid star-strewn space, dark, splashed by cloud white and sea blue. Nothing special.
Except for the floating black rectangles ringed around it.
Flight stations. A whole slew of them, spaced at even intervals around the planet’s center, seamless except for a pale silver tube that winds from bottom to top. The stations look small, but they must be massive—each a fifth of the planet’s height.
“You see them?” asks the skinny kid. “They eat hearts.”
Every third station begins to spin. Slow at first, then gaining speed, while the stations between them glow a pale white. Then bright white, then blinding—until each glowing set of two could be a single sphere of white fire.
The fire beams straight into the planet’s heart.
It melts everything—blackens the clouds, buckles the land, wrecks the seas in a twisting mass of dying color. The planet cracks all the way across. I can almost hear it scream. Can almost feel it.
Fuel. They’re gutting it for fuel.
My hand lowers. “Which world is this?”
“Casendellyn,” says the girl. “The last of the independent planets. I’d have thought you two old friends, seeing as it’s where your mother was born.”
Mom’s home? I mean, I knew she was from an indie, but . . .
The newsfeeds never showed a vid.
My stomach’s a sinkhole.
Galton must be held to Account, Mom would mutter to herself, working on her digislate while I sat quietly nearby, kicking my feet against the kitchen chair and wondering if she’d ever look up. I’d made a skytower out of bread. She never did. Must. Will. They will know our loss.
“How do you know where she was born?” I ask. The Enactors didn’t. The Prime didn’t—or else he did and didn’t let on.
“Because we’re facing the same damn thing.” The girl crosses into the living room, yanks the remote from the skinny kid and points at the screen.
A new smaller planet appears, more green than purple with candy-puff cloudscapes. Three flight stations ring its horizon to the left, one to the right, an empty gap in the middle. Far in the corner of the screen, deep in the dark stars, lies the outline of another.
“Casendellyn was thirty years ago,” says the girl, “but this? Last week. While you’ve been jacking around playing hard to get, they’ve moved all the stations in place but two.”
The skinny kid moves close to the screen, hands splayed on its edges, nose brushing the clouds. He sings, soft and light as a lullaby. Something about trees and flowers and the forests of home.
“We’re gutting our own House.” The girl throws the remote at the couch, then glares like she wants to throw me, too. “And all you can talk about is being frickin’ dosed.”
As opposed to gutting an indie with no military, no backup, and a whole population with nowhere to go? I almost shoot back.
Except she’s right.
The knife burns in my hand. I wave at the screen. “How can they gut anyone? We have no ruler. Don’t they have to find the Heir first, to sign off on that?”
Only a House Lord would have authority enough to make that kind of call.
“Lady Galton insisted,” says the girl. “She thinks the other two Houses will launch an attack. Apparently they’re allied now and hate our guts, and wars require fuel.”
“The other Houses are allied?” I ask. “Since when?”
“Since one of Lord Fane’s kids married the Westlet Heir. The Lady’s got everyone so freaked, even the Prime didn’t argue.”
Of course he wouldn’t. A new fuel supply would serve him, too.
I return the knife to its drawer. “What do you want?”
The girl throws a thumb at the screen. “This on the feeds, like your mother does her thing. People need to see this, they need to know.”
“And she can hack the core-splitters,” the skinny kid says. “She blew the Archive and planted a virus in the core House network. She can hack anything.”
“A virus?” The feeds hadn’t mentioned a virus.
The kid closes his eyes as if watching the code dance. “It’s beautiful. They can’t stop it, not even the best of them. They search and search and just when they think they understand, it becomes something else. Your mother is a god.”
That’s where they’re getting the god thing from? Something Mom did to the network? A virus that’s still spreading?
I look to the girl.
She crosses her arms. “Where is Millie Oen?”
And here we go. Again.
“Mom’s dead.” I push the drawer closed, hard.
It doesn’t drown out the girl’s snort. “She wouldn’t be caught in her own explosion.”
“Well, she was.”
“How do you know?”
“I just do, all right?” I feel it. The same way I felt Yonni—no recourse, no hope, no way to explain except that it just is.
The girl crosses the room and leans over the counter island that separates us, fingers tight on the ledge. “We lost one of our best people to Enactors over you—”
“Me? How’s that my—”
“And our home is slated for scrap. ‘I just do’ won’t cut it. If we go down, I’m taking you with us. You think the Archive explosion was bad? Just you wait.”
I almost tug the knife out again. “And what am I supposed to do? Bring her back to life?”
She doesn’t flinch, she doesn’t even seem to breathe. “Figure. It. Out.”
The skinny kid steps closer, too. “There’s a control point. That’s how she’s playing messages out and killing the power. There’s a datahost trigger somewhere, and you know where it is.”
“Do I?” I snap.
He nods with regal assurance. Hell, he could double for Mrs. Divs.
The girl pulls a small digisheet from her pocket and slaps it on the counter. “We’ve made five vids—space them out, bunch them up, put them on a goddamn loop—I don’t care. Just get them on the feeds. Otherwise, I swear I will hunt down and eviscerate every person in your life you remotely give a shit about, starting with that pretty boy two floors down.”
My eyes snap to hers.
“Or maybe dear old dad, currently shacked up on level four.” She grins, and my lungs give out.
The skinny kid slides up behind her. His smile fresh, devastating and real.
“Don’t worry.” He reaches across the counter to touch my forehead with soft fingers, like a
benediction. “It’s okay. You’ll save us. You can be a god, too.”
I pound on Niles’s door with the side of my fist. “You in there? You better be in there.”
No answer. The door a blank, the hall a blank, and Niles a potential blank, too—lying dosed and unconscious on the goddamn floor.
My fault. No one would register his existence if not for me. Kissing him in the damn street—the whole House probably saw. If the Brinkers know, it’s a sure bet the Enactors do. They’ll think I’ve given him all of Mom’s secrets—which, guess what? I may actually have.
Thanks, Mom. Hope you’re enjoying hell.
I pound harder. Another second and I’ll kick my way in. “Niles.”
The door opens and there he is—hair mushed, shirt askew, lashes blinking. He rubs them with the back of one hand, while reaching for me with the other. “Kit? What’s wrong?”
Sleeping? How the hell could he be sleeping?
Probably because he got none last night.
I grab his collar, pull it aside, and check the base of his neck. Make a full circuit, feeling for punctures. Nothing.
They haven’t got to him yet.
“Kit?” Much more awake now.
I come round to face him. “How do you feel? Was anyone here?”
“No,” he drags out the word. “Why?”
I press two fingers under his jaw and check for a pulse—as if he isn’t standing right here. I snatch my hand back.
Pull it together, Kit. Threats don’t work if you kill the person first.
Except the Brinker wasn’t making threats. Those were promises.
I need to check on Dad.
“Sorry, sorry.” I skip back and toward the elevator. “Didn’t mean to wake you. Go back to sleep.”
“Oh hell no.” Niles sprints ahead to block the way, hands on hips. “You can’t give me a heart attack and then just take off.”
“Doesn’t seem to have done much damage.”
I sidestep and he moves with me, bouncing on his toes. “I love how you think I’m not serious,” he says.
“I love how you think I care,” I snap.
His heels hit the floor, his eyes narrowed. “What’s going on?”
