Last of Her Name

by Jessica Khoury

  “Just sit,” I say to Pol. I settle onto a seat and pull a harness around my chest. Pol, looking furious but surely realizing that attacking the tensor is futile, sits beside me. The ship accelerates, and the crumpled gun rolls past us with a clatter.

  I stare at it, my mind seizing on the way the metal is bent.

  “You crushed our gravity generator,” I say to the tensor.

  He sucks in a breath, as if about to deny it, but then nods.

  “We almost died!”

  “I’d planned to rescue you, but the effort of taking out your generator knocked me out. By the time I woke, you’d already entered Sapphine’s atmo. I’ve been looking for you ever since.”

  “It was you who scanned us back at Amethyne,” Pol says. “You followed us here. Do you work for the Committee?”

  A look of anger flashes across the tensor’s face. “Of course not.”

  “Then why are you after us?” I ask. “What’s all this for?”

  He turns back to the controls. The metallic silver tattoos on his scalp glint when he moves. “Volkov. I was trying to get to him on Amethyne, but there were too many Reds around. When I intercepted a military bulletin, saying a small caravel had escaped the planet and that it had to be brought in at any cost, I decided to go after you myself.” Glancing back at us, he adds, “Volkov has something I want. I intend to trade you for it. Considering the expense he went to to go after you, I figure you might be the only thing valuable enough for him to make the deal.”

  My stomach drops, partly from his confession, and partly from the ship’s Takhimir drive engaging. The stars outside blur and then seem to turn to mist as the hazy glow of warp surrounds us. Stillness overtakes the Valentina.

  Pol unclicks his harness, but the straps remain in place. I try mine, but it’s also stuck.

  “Forgive me,” says the tensor, cool as ice. “I’ve overridden your locks. I’m afraid you’ll have to stay put until we reach our destination. But I thought you’d be more comfortable out here than in the brig. I have snacks, if you’re hungry.”

  Snacks! What does he think this is, a blazing pleasure cruise?

  “You don’t understand!” I shout. “I have to save my friend! She’s a prisoner on Alexandrine.”

  “In these skies, everyone’s trying to save someone.” He opens a cabinet and pulls out waters. Crossing to us, he offers us each a bottle. Pol refuses, but I take mine, drink it, then spit it on the floor.

  Even in the worst of circumstances I still have a petty streak as wide as the Belt.

  The tensor sighs and holds out a hand. The water rises, weightless, and he holds out the bottle. This time, only a few spidery black lines creep from his eyes. When he releases the liquid, it falls gracefully inside. “You could have just said ‘no, thank you.’ ”

  He opens a few ration bars, and my hunger wins out. I break off cube by cube, savoring each bite. They taste wonderfully of grainy mush, not a fleck of seaweed to be found.

  “My name is Riyan, by the way. It’s only fair you know it, since I know yours.”

  “What do you know about us?” I ask.

  “I installed a vityaze scanner a while back, so I can eavesdrop on some of their comms. For the past fifteen hours, all they’ve talked about is the pair of you. You’re quite the notorious duo. ‘Dangers to the freedom of every Jewel in the Belt,’ they’re saying. Impressive.” The tensor sits on the couch across from us, watching me curiously. “You don’t look like a princess, or a terrorist.”

  “That’s because I’m neither.”

  “Doesn’t surprise me. The Committee often defaces their enemies, branding dissenters as violent psychopaths or insurrectionist spies, just so they can shoot them without public outcry.”

  He unclasps his cloak and folds it neatly, setting it on the cushion beside him. Underneath it, he wears all black, some sort of armored cloth that accentuates his lean form. He’s of a height with Pol, but perhaps half his weight, sinewy and long. When he sits, he caves into himself, arms crossed and one ankle propped on the opposite knee. His shaven scalp makes him look older than he is, and I can’t help but study his silver tattoos with curiosity. They’re perfectly symmetrical and stand out in sharp contrast to his dark brown skin, circles and lines and arcs stamped in a complex geometric pattern. They march down the back of his neck, and I wonder if they continue down his spine.

  I realize he’s staring at me, fully aware of my wandering eyes. Heat rising to my cheeks, I look down, locking my jaw.

  “We could work together, you know,” I say.

  At that, Pol snorts and Riyan just sighs.

  “What?” I look between them. “We all hate the Committee, right? I want Clio back, Pol wants a revolution or something, and you …” I wave a hand at Rian. “What do they have, exactly, that you’re after?”

  His eyes lower. “Something important. Something I should have kept a better eye on, or it would have never been stolen in the first place.” Then he shakes his head. “But I’m not interested in a revolution.”

  “Either you’re on our side,” says Pol, “or you’re on theirs.”

  Riyan rises to his feet, arms rigid at his sides. “Your side? Ha! Where was your side when pirates attacked one of our cities and razed it to the ground, killing nearly a thousand tensors? We called for aid, but did the Empire come? No, but they had the audacity to call on us when the Unionist army knocked at their gates. Did they send food when we went through famine twenty years ago? Oh, they sent it, but they charged us thrice the cost because they knew we had no choice. When has your side ever been on our side?” Now he looks at me, his dark eyes shining with cold anger. “What makes the Leonovs any better than the Committee?”

  I flinch under his gaze, my eyes lowering.

  “That’s why we have to fight back,” Pol says. “We have to change things, make the galaxy equal for all.”

  “You don’t get it, aeyla,” Riyan replies. “You can knock down one tyrant, but another will always rise to take the crown. When has the galaxy ever been equal? When have my people ever been free of persecution and fear? I left Diamin for one reason only: to recover what Volkov stole from me. I’m not here to make bargains or treaties with anyone.”

  He stalks past us, his dark form reflecting on the polished white floor. With a wave, he sinks a panel from the back wall, stepping through into a hallway beyond. The panel rises again behind him, sealing itself seamlessly.

  I groan and rub my temples. “I thought I’d break through to him.”

  “We don’t need his help.”

  Twisting to elbow him, I growl, “If you’d been nicer to him, maybe—”

  “Nicer! He nearly crushed us alive! And you want me to be nicer?”

  “All I’m saying is that we could use an ally right about now, not more enemies!” Removing my multicuff, I pick at the harness lock with the nail file, jamming the narrow point into various grooves and screws, trying to find a way to cut the power to the override mechanism Riyan activated. “Wherever he’s taking us, Volkov’s going to be waiting with a hundred Red Knights.”

  Pol lays his head back and shuts his eyes. “We’re not going to Volkov. We’re going to the Loyalist stronghold, as planned.”

  “Um, Pol. I’m all for optimism, but let’s be realistic. This guy could squash us into the size of a pea with his mind.”

  He shrugs. “Maybe. But he’s not handing us over to Volkov. I already took care of that.” He opens his coat and pulls out a familiar clear stick. “I switched his data core and overrode the navigation system with the Loyalist coordinates, all encased in a shell program. The computer will display his destination but set course for ours.”

  I look up from my tinkering. “When did you do all that?”

  He closes his jacket again. “While you two were wasting time holding hands on the docks.”

  “He was helping me up the stairs!”

  “Since when do you need help walking?”

  “Ugh!” My face goes hot aga
in. I clip the multicuff back onto my wrist; my prying revealed no weak points in the lock. “You’re just mad he got the better of you.”

  “It was your idea to follow him. This is just like that time you bought that tabletka from the seedy guy in Afka. Only it turned out to be stolen, and I was the one who nearly got arrested for it. You never think before you do things.”

  “Well, you think too much.” Scowling, I twist away from him, as much as the harness will allow. “Anyway, as I recall, our descriptions of the thief led to his arrest. So as I see it, I was sort of a hero.”

  Pol groans.

  Seven hours later, I awake to my stomach floating out of my body and dragging the rest of my insides with it.

  Or at least, that’s what dropping out of warp feels like. The cabin lights, which must have dimmed after I fell asleep, swell brighter.

  I don’t remember nodding off, but stars, did I need the rest. My muscles feel tight and creaky, my head thick, like I’ve been passed out for hours. And I have a serious need to pee.

  The deck is quiet. There’s no sign of Riyan.

  Beside me, Pol jolts awake. “Stacia?”

  “Shh. We’re here.” I wonder where “here” is exactly. What if Pol was wrong about overriding Riyan’s coordinates? What if I’m hours away from being taken by Volkov and shot?

  “Can you tell what system this is?” I ask.

  Pol and I stare through the diamantglass roof to an unfamiliar pattern of stars, but there are no planets that we can make out. I tug in vain at my locked harness. My mouth feels like sandpaper, and I wish Riyan would show up and give us some more to drink. Thinking about that only exacerbates the pressure in my bladder. He better show up quick, or he’s going to have to gravity-magic more than just water off the floor.

  As if hearing my thoughts, the tensor comes stumbling from his rear cabin, eyes red-rimmed and groggy.

  “Hey!” I call. “I could really use a trip to your lavatory!”

  He blinks at me, then looks up at the stars. “We stopped.” He leaps up the steps to the control deck and lets out a startled shout as he bends over the navigation system.

  Pol grins. “What’s wrong?”

  Riyan whirls, hands gripping the rail above us. “What did you do, aeyla?”

  “Tweaked our course. Now release us, and we might ask our friends to go easy on you for laying a finger on Anya Leonova.”

  “Allegedly Anya,” I amend. “I still haven’t seen any proof.”

  Riyan works the controls, frantically entering commands that Pol’s data core must be overriding. He hasn’t yet realized that Pol switched them, and the only way to stop the ship would be to yank out the stick.

  “I have to make this work!” Riyan says. There’s a catch in his voice, an edge of desperation. “What did you do? Tell me!”

  His hand rises, and the air around Pol begins to crack. That horrible sound fills the cabin—crunching, grinding, shrieking, reality warping in ways it was never meant to bend, all at the tensor’s command. He’s gone off his head. Before, he looked in control when he used his power. But now he looks deranged, that black mask spreading until it reaches his temples.

  Pol bends over, hands clasping his head. He cries out, and blood trickles from his ear. The air twists around him, space-time warping into a mosaic of glimmering shards.

  “Riyan!” I buck against the harness. “Riyan, stop it! Stop it, you’re killing him! Please!”

  But he doesn’t seem to hear me. His eyes flash silver, his jaw rigid.

  I unsnap my multicuff and hurl it. It flies true and strikes Riyan squarely in the forehead.

  With a shout, Riyan releases Pol. His eyes clear and he stumbles backward, panting.

  Pol sags, whimpering and cradling his head. His entire frame shakes like paper. When I touch him, he recoils.

  I look up at the tensor. “Let. Me. Go.”

  Riyan stares at me, eyes wide, then he turns and punches a button. The harnesses retract.

  Freed at last, I burst up and kneel in front of Pol, my hands on his knees.

  “Look at me, Pol. Are you all right? Say something.”

  “I’ll be fine,” he croaks, barely raising his head. “Once I’ve killed the witch.”

  “No.” I push him back. “No more fighting. I’ve had enough! From both of you!”

  Turning, I glare up at Riyan. “Get down here, now!”

  To my surprise, he obeys. He looks almost as shaken as Pol. When he reaches the lower deck, he sinks into a chair, hands pressed to his temples. He murmurs something to himself over and over in another language. It sounds like “Imper su, imper fata, imper su, imper fata.” Then he says in a choked whisper, “I’ve lost her.”

  “Lost who?” I demand.

  He shakes his head, staring wide-eyed at the floor. “Natalya. My sister.”

  Staring at the top of his smooth head, I feel a shift inside me as understanding settles in. “That’s what Volkov took. Your sister.”

  He shuts his eyes, a shudder passing through him. The metallic tattoos on his scalp glint, their precise geometry reminding me of the pattern on a Triangulum board—or the way the air factures into hard shapes when he manipulates gravity.

  Pol rises and goes to a cabinet, taking out a canteen of water and draining it. His back is turned to us, muscles taut and angry, and I can’t blame him—the tensor nearly crushed his skull. But I find I can’t quite blame Riyan, either.

  I sit by the tensor, which seems to surprise him. He raises his head a little but doesn’t look at me. I can feel his desperation like a fever’s heat. This cool, polite exterior he projects is a thin shell; I wonder how close he is to splitting open. What happens when a tensor loses control? Again, the darker stories I’ve heard bubble in the back of my mind, but I shake them away.

  In these skies, everyone’s trying to save someone.

  “When did he take her?” I ask softly.

  His reply is flat. “It’s been one hundred and eighty-three days.”

  I swallow. “And you’ve been looking for her all that time?”

  “Every minute of it. Even in my sleep, I …” He releases a shaky breath, his eyes boring into the open palms of his hands. “It’s no use. The Union is too strong, too well defended. Even if I knew where she was being held, I couldn’t get to her. And now I know I’m too weak to play their games.”

  Meaning he won’t trade us for Natalya, I suppose. But it’s hard to feel relief when I know what he’s experienced, the pain of seeing your loved ones ripped away and knowing you’re powerless to help them. The grief and anger I’m feeling now, he’s been living with for more than six months.

  He’s a tensor. I’ve seen his incredible power. If he can’t rescue a prisoner from the Union, what hope do I have?

  I push back against the despair snaking around my lungs. “Maybe the Loyalists can help us both.” I have to grind out the words, the taste of them bitter on my tongue. “I don’t trust them. But they have to be better than the Union, right?”

  Pol is watching us now, from across the deck, but thank the stars he’s keeping quiet.

  “I met a Loyalist spy once,” says Riyan. “We were both trying to infiltrate a gulag on Emerault. She was looking for someone too, and I told her if I saw her man, I’d find a way to help him. All I wanted was for her to agree to the same, to help Natalya if she could.”

  He sits up, and though he doesn’t look at Pol, I can feel the air simmering between them. His words are directed at the aeyla more than me. While I don’t think he’ll try attacking Pol again, I still can’t help but tense.

  “She told me to crawl back to whatever black hole had spawned me,” Riyan says through his teeth. “She said if the Union had my sister, then they were welcome to her. She said she hoped they’d already shot her and rid the galaxy of one more freak. That is what the Loyalists think of my people.”

  A painful silence seizes the deck. I glance at Pol, and see him gazing at Riyan with a queasy expression.

/>   “Look, mate,” he says, his voice rough. “I’m sorry for the whole witch thing. I should know better. I … do know better.”

  I know he’s thinking of the vityazes in Afka, and the vile slurs they hurled.

  “But we’re not all like that spy you met,” he adds.

  “No?” Riyan’s gaze turns dangerously cool. He rises to his feet, and I rise with him, electrified with alarm. But he doesn’t attack Pol. Instead, he presses a series of buttons on the arm of the sofa, and a hologram activates, a wide cone of light beaming down from a projector in the ceiling. It fills the empty floor between him and the aeyla. The threads of light twist and coalesce into a shape that makes my heart twinge.

  Emerault’s moon.

  The moon the Leonov emperor destroyed, sparking the war that split the galaxy apart.

  I let out a long, thin breath, knowing this won’t end well. And judging by Pol’s expression, he knows it too. He’s already shaking his head, preparing a defense, but Riyan doesn’t give him time to speak.

  “Forty-eight of my people died the day Emperor Pyotr Leonov destroyed this moon. I knew the name and face of each one. They were there to attend a mathematics conference. Half of them were schoolchildren.” His tone is clad in ice. “One of them was my mother. Then, when the war began, the Empire had the audacity to ask us for aid. When we did not come, they branded us traitors and oathbreakers. Is this the cause to which you’ve sworn yourself? Is this your good to the Union’s evil?”

  Pol looks at me, perhaps expecting me to step in and defend the empire he thinks I should inherit. But I can’t.

  I can only watch him and wait to hear his answer, because Riyan has found the words for the question I’ve been too afraid to voice: Is Pol’s faith in the Loyalists as blind as I fear it is? Has he given himself wholly to their cause?

  Who is Appollo Androsthenes? A Loyalist soldier, or my friend?

  But he doesn’t give an answer. He just stares at the shining hologram moon, his face pale but impassive.

  Riyan shuts down the hologram. “I can’t trust your people, but I won’t keep you from them. As soon as we reach your base, let’s agree to part ways and forget we ever met.”