Last of Her Name

by Jessica Khoury

  Riyan startles me when he sets a cup down on the board.

  “Riyan!” I groan. “Warning.”

  “Sorry. I brought coffee.”

  I take the cup, holding it with both hands and letting the heat sink into my palms. Riyan sits in the next chair and runs a brief system check.

  “I haven’t been home in six months,” he murmurs, sitting back to sip his own coffee, watching the streams of data flow.

  “Your family will be glad to see you.”

  “Hm.” He raises a hand to massage his neck. “Maybe not. I didn’t leave in the best … circumstances.”

  I look up. “Don’t tell me we’re flying into more trouble.”

  “You’ll be fine.” He stares into his cup, grimacing a little. “It’s just that I sort of … stole this ship, when I left.”

  My eyebrows inch upward. “So there’s some rebel in you after all.”

  He sighs. “Defying tensor law and leaving Diamin was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. You wouldn’t have found a more devoted, obedient citizen than me. Meanwhile, Natalya would have cut off her own finger just to irritate our father.”

  “What happened to your sister?”

  He sighs. “She said she was going to find Zemlya.”

  “Zemlya? The Motherworld? Why?”

  “She’d heard stories about it, of treasure hunters who went there and returned with priceless artifacts—she obsessed over the rumors. But she never made it. Vityazes picked her up on Emerault. The last transmission I got from her, I could hear their guns going off in the background.”

  “So you took off after her.”

  He nods. “Against my father’s wishes. Under Union law, of course, we are not allowed to leave Diamin, but we have our own rules against it as well.” The air over his cup begins to snap and warp, and the liquid rises into a mosaic of dark triangles. His eyes harden, silver glinting in his irises. “It is feared that the Committee is trying to steal our abilities.”

  “Steal them? How?”

  He opens his hands, releasing the liquid, and it splashes back into the cup, not a single drop spilled. “Our ability is genetic. If the Committee figures out how to isolate the tensor gene, they could replicate it in their own soldiers.”

  Stars, tensor vityazes. That’s not something I want to think about.

  “Surely your people can’t be too angry with you,” I say. “You were only trying to save your sister.”

  He lifts a brow, his mouth pressed into a sardonic line. “My people are … complicated. We have strict codes by which we must abide, and with good reason. I know the stories you must have heard about us, how we threaten the fabric of existence with our tessellating, how we’re unnatural and dangerous.”

  “I know better now. It all seemed more like a myth, anyway.”

  “There is truth to it.” He looks at me, his eyes dark. “When I attacked Pol, you saw how close I was to losing control. Tensors value self-control above all else. Imper su, imper fata.”

  “I heard you say that phrase before. What does it mean?”

  “It means if you control your self, you control your fate. It’s sort of our motto.” He gives a grim smile. “When you manipulate gravity as we do, you pull on threads that connect to every part of existence. Lose control of that, and the consequences are devastating.”

  “What,” I joke, because his tone is making me deeply uneasy, “are you worried you’ll create a black hole or something?”

  He just looks at me.

  My teasing smile slides away. “Oh. Oh.”

  “It’s only happened a few times in our history.” His eyes turn up, toward the fuzzy glow of the cosmos, the light tingeing his cheekbones silver. “But you can see why it’s doubly important we never let the Committee steal our secrets.”

  “No kidding,” I mutter. So maybe not all the stories I’ve heard were lies—at least, not the ones about tensors ripping apart the fabric of reality. Stars, imagine being capable of producing something as terrible and powerful as a black hole? No wonder Riyan’s so uptight all the time. If he lost control, he could not only bend space-time—he could tear it open altogether.

  I hear a groan from below and whirl to see Pol shifting on the stretcher, pushing against the straps. Setting down my coffee, I hurry to the lower deck and kneel by him. He looks terrible, worse than he did yesterday. His skin is sickly gray and his lips are cracked; when I touch his face, it’s hot with fever.

  “Stace?” he groans.

  “Whoa.” I gently hold him down. “You’re not going anywhere fast. In case you don’t remember, Zhar shot you. You’ve been out for days. I thought you were dead.”

  “Stars, it feels like I was kicked by a mantibu.” He groans, shoulders curling as he tries to double over, but the straps have him pinned.

  “Stay still. Let me see the wound.” I look up at Riyan. “You got a med kit?”

  He nods and opens a compartment to rummage inside.

  “Your hair isn’t purple anymore,” Pol notes. His voice is a thick whisper. I have to lean in to hear him.

  “What, do you miss it?”

  “Yes.”

  I snort and shake my head. “Well, just try to stay alive, and maybe we’ll dye yours next.”

  “You don’t have to look at me like that,” Pol grunts.

  “Like what?”

  “Like you were right about the Loyalists.”

  “Well, Pol, I sort of was right. Look, I don’t need you or anyone else to die for me, got it? Enough with the heroics. Save them for Clio, because we are going to get her, after you’re better.”

  “Where are we going now?”

  “Diamin.”

  “Tensor Town?” He tries again to push himself up. “Stars, no! Those people—”

  “Riyan says it’s safe.”

  He grimaces. “Oh. Well, if Riyan says so.”

  “I do,” says Riyan, approaching with the med kit.

  Pol attempts a weak smile. “Hey, buddy.”

  Riyan kneels and places a hand on Pol’s shoulder. “They would have killed me if you’d sided with them. I thank you for my life, and from now on, we are as brothers.”

  “We … are?”

  Rolling my eyes, I take the med kit from Riyan. The tensor then leaves to search for cloths to cool Pol’s face.

  “Brothers?” Pol whispers to me. “What’s that mean?”

  “I guess it means you’re an honorary tensor.” I grin and carefully open his shirt.

  There are pain patches inside the kit. I press one to his chest, and take the opportunity to inspect his wound, peeling back the bandage Dr. Luka applied. The hole isn’t large, no bigger than the tip of my finger. The gun Zhar used was an efficient little machine, compressing Prismic energy into a narrow but powerful bolt. The skin around the entry wound is red and ugly, purpling over his ribs in large bruises. But the real danger is internal, and I have no idea what to do about that beyond basic first aid. I hope it’s not infected. Just in case, I find an antibiotic patch and stick that on him as well. Pol watches silently, but I can tell he’s hiding the extent of his pain. Sweat beads his face, and his breathing is jagged. My own chest hurts just listening to him inhale.

  “So,” Pol says, in a softer tone. “Did you have a funeral for me?”

  “What?”

  “When you thought I was dead.”

  “I barely thought of you at all.” Stars, he better never find out how much I sobbed, or he’ll never let me live it down. “I had my hands full with Zhar. She’s worse than you know.”

  I tell him about the days he missed, about the hologram palace and the missing Firebird and that Zhar is married to the direktor Eminent. His eyes widen at that.

  “Do you think our parents knew?”

  “They must have. They all served together under the old empire. They were like friends or something—her and Volkov, your parents and mine.”

  “And this Prismata is the key to winning the war?”

  “She sure s
eemed to think so. She was willing to torture Riyan to get me to find it. I think she’d have tortured me too if she thought it would help.”

  He shakes his head. “I just can’t believe our parents would rally behind someone like that.”

  “Maybe that’s not how it started. Maybe Zhar sort of took over, and they had no way of knowing. She did say they hadn’t communicated with our families for years.”

  He nods. “So. Forget her. We can find this Firebird thing on our own and end this war.”

  “What?”

  “If the Prismata is what Zhar says it is, and if we find the Firebird to lead us to it, we could use it to overthrow the Committee. You’re sure you have no idea what it might be? Your parents never mentioned it before?” He blinks hard, as if suppressing a wave of pain.

  “Pol …” I stand up and walk a few paces away, looking up at the Prism spinning on the control deck.

  “The Firebird is the imperial crest, the sign of House Leonov. I don’t remember anything at home with the crest on it, but maybe you do? What if it’s still on Amethyne? We could go back.”

  I turn to him. “Back? You mean, away from Clio? You think we should abandon her to the Committee?”

  He grimaces, teeth bared, and I don’t know how much of his expression is due to pain and how much is frustration with me. “Once you control the Prismata, you can save Clio. You can save anyone.”

  I clench my fists. “You’re starting to sound like Lilyan Zhar.”

  “Stacia, you have to accept who you are. You can’t push it away forever.”

  “And when do I get a choice?”

  “When do any of us? We are who we are, Stace. You can’t hide from that, no matter what disguises you put on. I could cut the horns off my head but I’d still be aeyla. You can run to the ends of the galaxy, but you’ll still be a Leonov. You’ll still be the rightful heir. You have the power to change things—doesn’t that mean you have a responsibility to see it through?”

  Turning back to him, I spread my hands. “Let’s not talk about it, please. Let’s just get to Diamin.”

  Riyan returns, and helps me move Pol into the medical bay, where we transfer him to a proper bed. The med patches are making him sleepy, and soon he passes out with one arm hanging to the floor. I pack cool damp cloths around his head, trying to bring down his fever, hoping we make it to Diamin soon.

  Pol gets worse.

  He complains of pain in his head, and we run out of med patches. By day four, he’s writhing, curled up, hands gripping his horns.

  “I don’t know what to do!” I shout, kneeling over him. Riyan and Mara are no help. Whatever’s wrong with Pol seems to go beyond his gun wound. He was shot in the chest, not his head. I have no idea what’s wrong with him.

  “If you’d stopped my father from going back out there,” Mara intones, “he’d be here now. He’d know what to do.”

  “Riyan, can we go any faster? The Committee ships jumped to Granitas System in minutes! Why can’t we?”

  He scowls. We’re all tense from listening to Pol howl for hours on end. “Even if we burned through all the Prism’s energy, we’d only shorten the trip by a few days, and we’d have no power left to actually land once we got there.”

  “Could we change course? Go somewhere closer, where there are doctors?”

  “We’ve already passed the last planet before Diamin. Going back now would just take longer. If the wound is infected, there’s nothing we can—”

  “It’s not the wound,” Pol groans.

  We both turn to stare at him. He looks exhausted, eyes clouded with pain. Slowly, his gaze shifts to me.

  “It’s my Trying.”

  My eyes open wide. “You’re only eighteen, Pol. It’s too early.”

  “I’ve heard of it happening, when an aeyla is almost old enough. Stress, injury, they jump-start the process.”

  “What’s he talking about?” asks Riyan.

  I turn to the tensor. “It’s a sort of coming-of-age thing with the aeyla. We all go through puberty, but aeyla have a second maturation event called a Trying. Basically, it’s when their horns grow in all the way.”

  “It’s more than that,” growls Pol, curling up again.

  I let out a puff of breath. “Yes, there’s a ritual about honor and pride and becoming a voting member of the tribe and a bunch of other stuff, but, Pol …”

  My voice trails off. I stare at him, knowing he’s seized with pain I can’t even imagine, as the bones of his horns grow at an accelerated rate.

  “His body attempting to heal has triggered the growth,” I explain. “The aeyla usually take a strong drug to numb the pain, but we don’t have anything left.”

  “What do we do?” asks Riyan, looking alarmed. “Will he … die?”

  “Not from the Trying. But if the ordeal affects his wound, he might. I don’t know. I’m not a blazing doctor!”

  “I can … handle it …” Pol lets out a roar, a sound like I’ve never heard from him before. It’s a primal sound, bone-rattling. His entire body clenches.

  “All right, this is happening,” I say. I pull up a chair and lean over him, gripping his hands in mine. “And I’m not going anywhere.”

  I sit by him for the next ten hours. He grips my hand so tightly I can feel my bones crunching together. He doesn’t know he’s hurting me. He’s conscious but totally absorbed by pain. His horns are growing before my eyes, a half-inch per hour from my best estimate. He curses, he howls, he asks me to put a gun to his head and pull the trigger. I only squeeze his hand and make him drink more water. In his delirium, he rambles insensibly.

  “I can’t tell you,” he whispers. “I can’t. I swore. I took a vow.”

  “Pol, Pol, I know about your vow. It’s all right.”

  He shakes his head, eyes shut. “Clio …”

  I wipe sweat from his brow. “I know all about you and Clio. She’s loved you since she was a kid, after all.”

  “No, no …” He falls to groaning again.

  There are moments of relief, when he lies still, eyes shut, limbs trembling. Still clutching my hand, anticipating the next wave of pain. I hate these periods almost more than the painful ones, because of the apprehension that builds up waiting for the next fit to seize him.

  “Remember Soro’s Trying?” I ask him, to distract us both.

  He nods, not opening his eyes, but a smile curls his lips. “He paraded around Afka like he owned the whole town, tossing his stupid new horns for anyone who’d watch.”

  “He got them tangled in a slinke tree.”

  “Stars, I forgot that part! Didn’t you set him loose?”

  “Yes. You and everyone else were laughing so hard, you couldn’t move.”

  He gives a short chuckle.

  “I miss home,” I sigh.

  Pol’s eyes open and find mine. They’ve turned red, some of the veins burst from the pressure in his head. I swallow hard but don’t let him know how bad he looks.

  “Remember the Vanishing Tent?” he whispers.

  I study him a moment, then stand. “Scoot.”

  He shifts, and I settle onto the bed beside him, still clutching his hand. We lie on our sides, facing each other, and I draw the sheet over our heads. It billows and then settles around us, sealing out the world.

  “See?” I say. “I remember.”

  “You were so terrified of lightning,” he reminds me.

  “And you said it couldn’t find us in the Vanishing Tent. That it was old aeyla magic.”

  “You believed in it till you were ten or something.”

  “Older than that,” I whisper. “I just didn’t tell you.”

  “Well, you never got hit by lightning, did you? Who’s to say it didn’t work?”

  I laugh, but my breath hitches with longing for the past, for when our problems were so simple that just pulling a sheet over our heads could make them disappear. I recall the nights when storms rocked the vineyard, thunder stampeding over the hills and lightning spli
tting the sky, glowing in the bellies of the great violet clouds. And Pol and I, and sometimes Clio too, huddled in the house under bedsheets, where the lightning couldn’t find us. We would play Triangulum and tell stories and dare each other to spill our darkest secrets. Always, we ended up falling asleep in a tangle, where our parents would leave us until morning.

  “I loved Afka after a storm,” I whisper. “It was like a new world. Everything washed clean, the colors brighter.”

  Pol nods, eyes shutting again. He shudders, and I hold my breath, thinking the pain is starting again. But after a moment he relaxes and says, “I remember we picked up the fallen slinke leaves and wove them into hats.”

  “You and me and Clio.”

  “You and me and Clio.”

  I stare into his eyes, seeing my own memories play out in them. But then he shuts them again, his face weary.

  “You could be back there now, both of you,” I whisper. “If you hadn’t gotten tangled up with me.”

  “Stop.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t play that game, blaming yourself for everything.”

  “You do.”

  “Yes, well, it’s my job to protect you, not the other way around.”

  “Then what do you call this?” I raise his hand, squeezing it.

  Now his eyes open, just barely. “It’s starting again.”

  “I’m right here,” I whisper, bracing myself as he seizes with pain.

  When we emerge from the cabin hours later, I’m more exhausted than I’ve ever been in my life. Pol looks a wreck, and I’m no better. At least he’s cleaned up, after showering and changing into spare tensor robes Riyan found for him. Mara and Riyan are sitting in the main deck, playing Triangulum, but they shut down the game when we stumble in.

  “Whoa,” Riyan says. “Nice horns, brother.”

  Pol’s horns are now ten inches long, starting just behind his hairline and arcing gracefully behind him, ivory white and ridged. In addition to his horns’ growth, his cheekbones and jaw have sharpened a little, making him look more aeyla than human.

  Stars, I’m staring too long. I pull my eyes away, looking instead at Riyan and Mara.