by Claire Luana
“Do you think you could spare a constellation to guard the palace here? In case the soul-eaters try to make another push?”
“Of course, Ko,” she said. “I was planning on it. Any requests? I was thinking I could summon the great tortoise…”
Koji rolled his eyes. “The tortoise! What’s it going to do, sit on them? Summon me something dangerous. Like the blue dragon.”
“Consider it done,” Rika said with a grin before it faltered. “It suits you, you know. The crown. King.”
“I’m holding it temporarily until you return,” Koji said.
A cloud passed across Rika’s face. “I don’t know. The queen is required by law to be a moonburner. I’m not one.” And a part of her realized that she didn’t feel entirely tied to Kitina anymore. This was her home, yes, but part of her heart was tugging her to the south. To the lush forests of Nua, with its pink sand and aquamarine waters. She banished the thought. She couldn’t return there. Not if they killed the queen. But she didn’t know where that left her, here in Kitina.
“Nonsense,” Koji said. “Laws can be changed. No one will dispute that you have the power to rule, or that you deserve it. Especially after you save the country.”
“After we save the country,” Rika corrected.
Koji nodded before hesitating, examining the stitching of his armor. “I’m sorry I left you,” he finally said, the words tumbling out in a rush. “I never should have left you. I thought you had died as well as Father, and it was all my fault.”
“We can’t both be to blame for Father’s death, can we?” Rika said. “I’m starting to realize. It’s the soul-eaters who are to blame. It’s them we have to make pay.” She unbuckled her father’s sword, which had hung heavily around her waist for so long. She traced her fingers down the engraved length of the scabbard before offering it to Koji. “He would want you to have it. It’s a sunburner weapon.”
“I couldn’t!” Koji said, though the longing on his face was as clear as day. He had played with that sword every chance he’d gotten as a boy, despite their father doing everything in his power to keep it from his son.
“I want you to have it. And though there’s nothing to forgive, I want you to know I forgive you.”
Koji took the sword silently, and then sprang at Rika with an embrace of surprising ferocity.
She softened, patting his back. “I love you, brother.”
“I love you too, sister. Now go end this.”
Koji’s words echoed in Rika’s mind as Yoshai’s defenders climbed into the night sky, borne aloft by silent wings. Daarco looked demon-like in the soul-eater armor, though his constant complaining about the smell took away some of the drama. They selected a ship near the back of the anchored armada, directing their koumori to land gracefully on the deck. With whispered footsteps, they swept through the vessel, finding it empty. They hoisted the sails, heading towards the queen.
The queen’s vessel was larger than anything Rika had ever seen. The side of the galleon, armored in dark metal, rose above them, seeming to drown out the sky. No words passed between them as they tied off to the stern of the vessel, where angled stairs stretched up above them.
Daarco went first, his spine as straight as an arrow, the dark armor glittering in the moonlight. The two extra arms hung limply at his side. They had stuffed them with cloth and hay, but they wouldn’t pass even a glancing scrutiny from a real soul-eater. Rika came next, Kai after and Emi bringing up the rear, half-marching, half-climbing up the steep metal staircase. Rika kept one hand on the rail and the other on her totem, worrying the stitching of its leather handle with her fingertips. One blow. One blow to the queen was all it would take. All she needed to do was get close enough.
The summit of the stairs was a few steps above them, and with her heart hammering in her throat, Rika crested the stairway, making her way onto the black deck of the galleon. Daarco stumbled to a stop before her, and she narrowly avoided crashing into the back of him. “What is it?” she hissed, but then she saw what had halted him. Saw what he had seen.
“Gods almighty,” Kai whispered.
Emi offered a muffled curse.
They stood on a balcony at the stern of the ship, high above the long, broad deck. Below them, standing in neat squares, were a thousand dark bodies, a thousand pairs of glowing green eyes—their malevolence directed at the four interlopers.
Across the deck was a raised dais, topped by an elaborate black throne. On the throne, flanked by two soul-eaters, was a creature as strange as any Rika had ever seen. Six arms, four green glowing eyes, and a gaping maw that leaked green light. Larger than any of the other soul-eaters. Larger by far. “Welcome, starburner.” The queen’s rasping voice carried across the silent distance. “Welcome to your end.”
“I THINK WE were expected,” Daarco muttered.
“No shit,” Emi retorted. “My love,” she amended.
“Keep to the plan,” Kai said, drawing her sword. “Rika? A little backup?”
The thralls nearest them marched up the stairs towards their platform, urged on by their masters. Daarco took a swing at the first two men, knocking them backwards into the crowd of their brethren.
Star-threads sprang into sharp relief as Rika opened her third eye. The constellations called to her, aching to lend their aid to the fight. She summoned the fiercest among them—the great bear, the fiery phoenix, the wasp, the clever fox. One by one they took form, answering her call and sliding down from their heavenly homes to land on the deck before them with concussive force that rocked even the huge ship. The thralls shied back at the sight of the massive glowing creatures but were spurred forward by their masters.
Rika drew her blade from her black sash. “Each of us sticks with a constellation. We kill the thralls; the constellations take care of the soul-eaters. Rendezvous at the queen,” Rika said.
The others nodded. Rika took aim and hurdled her blade with all her strength directly across the deck at the queen’s bulbous eyes. The blade winked in the moonlight, spinning directly towards its target…only to be deflected at the last moment by a wooden staff. Rika grunted and pulled the thread of the blade back to her. Worth a try. The blade sang as it spun back at her; she caught it in the air next to her head. Her gaze was fixed ahead at the soul-eater that had blocked her strike. The soul-eater holding a wooden staff carved with the leaves and palms of Nua. The soul-eater with three fingers.
“That’s the one that killed Father,” Rika said, her voice stiff. “With the staff.”
It was all Kai needed. She sprang into the crowd of men, her sword clearing a path, fire jetting from her outstretched free hand. Moonburning may not be able to kill the soul-eaters, but it could certainly damage their minions. “Mother!” Rika called, exasperated. “Stay with her,” she directed the phoenix, and the constellation launched into the air, soaring after her mother.
“She can’t have all the fun,” Emi said. With a whoop, she tore down the stairs after her, the great celestial bear in tow.
Daarco was busy removing pieces of the heavy armor, throwing them down at the men who made their way towards them. “What’s our move, princess?”
“Kill some leeches,” Rika said, wrapping the threads of the wasp around her fingers. She spun them out like throwing a spiderweb, and the constellation darted towards the queen in answer, stinger at the ready. The queen moved in a blur of black and green, narrowly avoiding the wasp’s glittering barbed stinger.
“She’s not just an ugly face,” Daarco said.
“No.” Rika frowned, searching frantically for the queen. There! Escorted by three leeches, including the three-fingered one. A handful of thralls hurried behind them, including one with golden hair. Anger flared in Rika. Master Tato. The traitorous librarian. She yanked a handful of threads, pulling starlight down in a fiery rain upon the retreating soul-eaters, taking special care to send one towards Tato. The world spun as the starlight flashed and shimmered.
“Are you all right?” Daar
co put a steadying hand under her arm. “It won’t do us any good if you burn yourself out.”
“I’m not a burner,” Rika panted.
“Doesn’t mean you can’t burn yourself out,” Daarco commented. “Look out!” He bore her to the ground just in time to miss a quivering spear that impaled itself in the boards behind her.
Rika looked up in shock and saw one of the queen’s guard making his way towards her. And the three-fingered soul-eater. The shooting star had killed the third, but other soul-eaters had filled in around the queen, protecting her. Daarco snarled and leaped at the nearest one, who raised its armored arm to meet his powerful sword strike in a shower of sparks. “Help him.” Rika motioned to the giant fox, who sprang at the soul-eater who was wrapping one of its fists around Daarco’s throat.
The three-fingered soul-eater took an impossible leap from the deck of the ship and with a thunderous crash, landed before her, Vikal’s staff in hand. Rika reached and yanked desperately at the threads of the wasp, all the while throwing her blade at its face with all the force she could muster.
The soul-eater deflected her throw with the staff—metal ricocheting off wood—and her totem tumbled into the crowd of thralls below. Rika pulled its thread while dodging a lunge from the soul-eater. “That doesn’t belong to you,” she panted, coming into a crouch. The wasp was closing in…
“Its owner was unworthy,” the soul-eater said before ducking to the side at the last moment. The wasp overshot, missing him completely before spinning, buzzing in anger. “None of you are worthy. Of this world. Of living.”
“Funny,” Rika said, summoning the wasp again, gauging her attack. “I was thinking the same thing about you.” The wasp attacked the soul-eater again, and this time the leech wasn’t so fast. The constellation locked on to the creature’s torso, stinging him in quick succession. Rika darted into the creature’s reach and stabbed her totem through the neck joint in the creature’s armor. The soul-eater bellowed with pain, and with a blow of its iron gauntlet, tossed her into the air like a piece of chaff.
Pain exploded behind Rika’s eyes as she crashed to the deck in a tangle of limbs, tumbling to a stop. Her totem skidded over the rail, falling to the deck below. Her vision blurred as she tried to push herself to hands and knees—reeling from the strain and the trauma. She squinted and saw that the three-fingered soul-eater was grappling with the wasp constellation. It had the star in its four-handed grip—it was pulling, pulling, pulling, and with a sound like splintering armor, the wasp’s segmented body cracked. The constellation keened in anger and pain, scrambling away from the soul-eater, flopping onto the deck. The soul-eater had wounded a constellation. Rika hadn’t known that was possible.
“Rika!” Emi’s scream from the lower deck pulled her attention, and she saw that Kai and Emi were surrounded by half a dozen soul-eaters, black talons grasping, ready to suck their souls’ essence until they were no more.
In a panic, Rika yanked at threads of starlight, sending them to her mother and Emi’s aid like a deadly meteor show. The handful was too many, and while the devastating light rained down upon the soul-eaters, burning them through and causing others to scatter in fear, the power it required left her panting and weak. Pain snaked through her head and behind her eyes, and the threads blurred and swam. “Daarco!” she called, but she didn’t know where he was—couldn’t tell where her constellations were. She cried for them, but all around her the fighting was thick. The constellations and burners fought for their lives.
Black-booted feet swam into her vision, the wooden end of a staff thunking ominously on the deck. She had been an overeager fool running into this mess, thinking she could take on a thousand soul-eaters and thralls with only the heavens for backup.
The soul-eater knelt down and buried its fingers in her shirt, lifting her onto her feet, pressing her against the rail. The smell of sulfur overwhelmed her, and she spit the bile building in her mouth into the soul-eater’s face. It laughed. Laughed!
“I thought perhaps I had found a foe worthy of me. Of my queen. But I see now that you are deficient. Like all the rest. How disappointing.”
Rika’s third-eye vision flickered in and out, but she jerked at a nearby thread, summoning it to come to her. It whistled down towards the soul-eater, who dodged at the last moment. Rika used that distraction to pull her legs up and shove off the soul-eater’s armored chest with her feet, wrenching herself free of its grip. She scrambled across the deck towards the staircase at the far side of the balcony, her legs rebelling, her head swimming. Daarco and the fox constellation were on the lower deck, locked in brutal combat with a swarm of black. Rika was halfway down the stairs when another figure appeared at the bottom, blocking her exit. The queen.
Rika’s mouth went dry and she backtracked up the stairs—the queen matching her steps with alien grace. The creature was huge, even more monstrous up close. She wore no helmet to shadow her gruesome face; instead, her four green eyes burned above a maw filled with black teeth and flanked by two clicking mandibles. Long hair like black, slick ropes hung down her back. If this is what passes for beautiful in soul-eater territory, Rika thought, they have very different tastes indeed.
She found herself back on the upper balcony, the queen towering before her, the three-fingered soul-eater behind. This was her moment. Her chance to kill them both. To end this war, to save her people. And she was empty. Weak as a mewling lamb. She jerked on the thread of her totem and it spun up from below into her hand. That effort alone was enough to nearly undo her—it took all her effort to stay on her feet. Her vision flickered. She needed time to regain her strength.
“Where do you come from?” Rika asked boldly, trying to stall. Her third eye was staying open, and she eyed a thread, a large and powerful star, fierce and unyielding.
“We come from the stars. Just as you do,” the queen hissed. “But we have been at this a thousand thousand years.”
“So have I,” Rika said, and with a twitch of her fingers, she summoned the star, willed it to send its fiery radiance into the soul-eater queen, to devour and consume her. The light streaked down above, strong and sure… And the queen sidestepped. One instant, the queen stood before Rika, the next, she was beside her, watching the light explode onto the deck in a maelstrom of sparks.
Pain exploded across Rika’s back as the three-fingered soul-eater struck her with Vikal’s totem. She sprawled forward onto the planks, hitting hard, her totem sliding across the deck. She tasted blood. The soul-eater’s booted foot connected with her ribs, sending a wave of agony through her torso. Through the railing, Rika could make out blurry forms of the constellations, snarling and clawing. There was no one to come to her aid. Emi and Daarco and her mother were fighting for their own lives, the constellations the only thing holding back the tide of thralls and soul-eaters. But if she died, the constellations would vanish. She needed them. She desperately grasped at the thread of the fox constellation, pulling it towards her. It slipped from her fingers as if she grasped at air. She wasn’t strong enough—couldn’t see it clearly.
The soul-eater queen knelt over her, filling Rika’s vision with green-eyed horror. “Your soul is a delicacy I won’t soon forget,” the queen rasped, her mandibles quivering, opening.
“Never,” Rika said, raising her hand to rake the queen’s eyes with her fingernails. She didn’t know what else to do.
The queen shied back, avoiding Rika’s labored effort. “So determined,” the queen said before pinning Rika ‘s shoulders to the deck, puncturing skin with her talons. A scream ripped from Rika’s throat, summoned by the pain, by the fear and hopelessness and sorrow. The scraping sound of the queen’s laughter filled Rika’s world as the nightmare curled over her like a lover, beginning to drink.
IT HAD BEEN the strangest ride of Vikal’s life. Sandwiched between Ajij and Kemala, his eyes squeezed closed as they slipped through time and space. Somehow, Rika had known, and she had sent Cygna to them—the tiny sparrow now a massive creature
with wings as broad as a temple roof. Cygna had climbed and climbed, past the point where the sky met the velvet stars, flying onto ethereal paths of light and energy that no human had tread before. Vikal felt Rika’s energy all around him, pure and clean and powerful. In this place of beauty, of light, Cygna cut through the universe, bearing them towards its mistress.
Vikal had expected the situation in Kitina to be dire, but when they descended down out of the heavens, his stomach dropped at the sight.
“That’s a lot of leeches,” Bahti said, his teeth clenched against the cold and the height.
A fight to the death played out across the yawning deck of a massive black galleon. The leeches appeared to be winning.
“Where’s Rika?” Vikal shouted, clutching Cygna’s feathers as the bird banked, soaring lower.
“God and goddess,” Kemala breathed. “At the stern. Vikal…”
His eyes desperately searched for where Kemala indicated, and when they locked on to Rika’s form, sanity left him. “Cygna, kill that leech!” he bellowed, and the night sparrow narrowed its wings, pulling into a dive. The sweet essence of Rika’s soul was vaporizing above her body, being sucked out by a horrific soul-eater. Were they too late?
“Hold on!” Vikal bellowed.
Cygna hit the feasting soul-eater and ripped it off Rika, grasping it with its talons. Or so Vikal imagined because when he looked back as Cygna flapped its immense wings, the leech was gone. Another leech stood over Rika’s body now, watching them with baleful eyes. It held a staff in its hand. His totem.
“Set us down!” Vikal cried. “By Rika!”
The great bird wheeled about, coming to a screeching stop on the upper deck of the ship, the power of its wings driving the soul-eater back. Vikal and the others leaped off the creature’s back, sandals hitting the deck. The strange soul-eater who had been feasting on Rika was writhing underneath the bird’s huge talons, pierced through.
