by Zara Quentin
Another gust of wind tossed her about in the air. Jade was momentarily overcome—her aching body wanted to give in and let the wind take her where it would. Then she bent her head into the wind, fixed her eyes on Zorman ahead of her, and kept struggling. Her thoughts ran circles.
She struggled to accept Axel was guilty of Papa’s murder, as Zorman believed. Papa had always trusted him and Axel had never done anything to break that trust. Unless, of course, he had planned all along to kill Papa, and had been waiting for the perfect opportunity.
Doubts crept in.
The last time Jade had seen Axel— that day in Vertin Gorge—he’d been wrestling with something when he’d talked about his work. He’d evaded her questions about where he’d been and what he’d brought back. Despite the chill on the wind, her cheeks warmed as she remembered how he’d snapped at her. Even then, she’d wondered what he’d been hiding. Of course, it might be nothing. But…
Jade cursed herself for not demanding answers that day. If she’d insisted, she might not be speculating about his guilt now.
If she had pursued her questions, Papa might still be alive. Jade gulped down air as guilt squeezed her chest.
Could Axel have done it? Jade didn’t want to believe it but Zorman said he was a master of manipulation. Could he have been playing her all this time, pretending to be her friend, just to weasel closer to Papa? How often had she confided in Axel as a friend, even telling him about Papa’s whereabouts? Perhaps he’d been waiting for the perfect moment; when Papa was alone, with no witnesses around. Jade remembered with a start that she had given him the information he needed to find Papa that very day.
Bile surged in the back of Jade’s throat and she gagged. As she strained against the headwind, she reached for the pikorua Axel had given her. A symbol of friendship, he’d told her.
Friendship.
Axel’s words echoed in her mind. She blinked away hot tears.
Frantically, she reached behind her neck, fumbling with the clasp. She wanted to hurl the pendant into the sea. But the clasp wouldn’t open and the distraction cost her momentum. Jade screamed into the wind, but it whistled in her ears and carried her scream away to where no one heard it.
Up ahead, she fixed her eyes on the Temple. Above it, the Portal clouds churned and rumbled. Kyssa had told her about Axel leaving through the Portal that day, even though Axel hadn’t said anything about it when they’d been together in the gorge.
Jade’s hand was still clenched around the pikorua, though she barely noticed it. Was it possible Zorman was wrong? Maybe Kyssa made a mistake about the day she saw Axel leave?
It was possible, right?
Jade’s head snapped up as the thought hit her. There was a way she could check, on Kyssa’s information at least. If Axel had gone off-world, the Portal Records in the Temple would show it. All she had to do was look it up.
A kernel of hope took root in her stomach. There would be something definite in the Portal Records to clear Axel’s name. Jade’s idea gave her a burst of energy to overcome her flailing momentum. She squeezed the pikorua tightly, suddenly glad she hadn’t hurled it into the sea.
Jade wanted to find Papa’s killer. She just didn’t want it to be Axel.
* * *
Jade stepped up to the heavy wooden door of the Office of Portal Records and glanced over her shoulder. She had signalled to Zorman that she was going to the Temple and would return to Force HQ later.
Jade pressed her weight against the door and stepped inside. Torches lit the cavernous room. Two Travellers-on-duty stood behind a table, which held a large book open at the middle. One of the most important documents in Taraqa, a record of who and what passed in and out of the Portal. The Portal Record was how the Temple calculated taxes; it was an offence to pass through the Portal without signing the Portal Record or declaring goods. Travellers guarded the Portal Record around the clock.
Jade hovered in the doorway, and a guard looked at her. She berated herself for not preparing an excuse. In her exhaustion, she wasn’t thinking clearly. In a moment, she knew, they would start asking questions.
There was a hand on her arm and Kyssa stepped in front of her with a strange look. She pulled her out of the doorway.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, her voice low so as to not be heard by the other guards.
“I can’t explain right now,” Jade said, remembering Kyssa was the supervising officer for the Office of Portal Records. “Actually, you could help me. I need to check the Portal Record.”
Kyssa frowned. “I can’t—it’s against the law.”
Jade pressed her palms together in front of her chest, making a pleading expression. She glanced at the two guards behind the desk. Kyssa studied Jade’s face, then relented.
“Since you’re doing me a favour…” Kyssa said, under her breath, then stepped around Jade and addressed the guards in a commanding voice. “Do a sweep of Our Lady’s Court and the Inner Ring. Make sure no one’s taking detours.”
“Both of us?” The guards looked at each other.
“It’s slow this evening. I can handle it here.” Kyssa winked. “Go on, get some fresh air.” The guards relaxed, pleased for a break from the tedium of standing watch in an empty room for several hours straight. When they disappeared, Kyssa pulled Jade over to the beautifully carved table that held the Portal Record.
It was a thick book, ornately bound, opened to the middle with rows and rows of spaces for names, dates and cargo. Each of the handwritten entries was in different scrawl.
“What are you looking for?” Kyssa whispered, shooting a glance at the door. “Quick, before anyone comes.”
“The night Papa died,” Jade said as she flicked the pages, skimming over the dates. She was surprised at the number of entries made over the last eight days. She hadn’t realised how much traffic went in and out of the Portal every day. Then she came to the date Papa died.
Jade ran her finger down the list of entries. Her heart sank.
There, in his clearly identifiable print, was Axel’s name.
He did go off-world, Jade said to herself. She ran her eye along the entry to see the details: early evening, an hour after sunset. She made a timeline in her head. Axel would easily have had time to kill her father and make it to the Portal by the time he’d written here.
Jade ground her teeth. It didn’t mean Axel did it though, she told herself, but her hope dimmed.
She ran her eyes over the rest of the information held for his departure. Axel had been carrying a package but declared it personal effects. The box for the name of the company was left empty. He wasn’t travelling on business. She looked to the end of the row and saw the last entry, his intended destination. The room spun.
“What’s going on in here?”
Leuven stood in the doorway. Jade’s heart thumped in her chest and her mouth fell open.
“Airwoman Gariq? What in the Dragonverse are you doing here?” Leuven’s eyes narrowed. “You don’t have permission to leave Force HQ. You certainly don’t have orders to go off-world.”
Jade reeled from what she’d seen in the Portal Record. “No, sir,” she whispered. Her mind raced.
“What are you doing here?”
Jade opened her mouth and shut it again. She edged away from the Portal Record. Her mind emptied. She couldn’t come up with an excuse.
“Well?”
Jade’s mouth went dry.
“She came to give me a message,” Kyssa cut in.
Leuven turned his hard stare on Kyssa. “Flying Officer…?”
Kyssa cleared her throat. “Harris, sir.”
“Well, Flying Officer Harris, could this message not wait until the end of your shift?”
“It was from my mother, sir. She is unwell.”
Leuven paused, staring from Kyssa to Jade and back again. “That is no excuse, Harris,” Leuven turned his attention back to Jade. “How did you have a message for Flying Officer Harris when you have been confined to
training?” Leuven pressed his mouth into a line. “You were absent this afternoon when you should have been with your unit. Now you are here when you’re supposed to be at Force HQ. It seems you have trouble following orders, Gariq. Perhaps coming from one of Taraqa’s most prestigious families has led you to believe you are above my orders?”
Jade shook her head, but Leuven wouldn’t let her speak.
“I don’t want to hear excuses, Gariq. Let me tell you something, and you’d better listen up because you won’t make anything of yourself until you learn this. Forget who you were. That person is gone. Now you’re a Traveller. Now you’re one of us. In the Traveller Force, you don’t get by on who you know or who your daddy was. You get by on who you are and what you can do. Got it?”
Jade swallowed, frozen in place. Leuven seemed to take that as a yes.
“Get back to Force HQ.”
Jade flushed. As she turned to leave, Leuven addressed Kyssa in a cold voice.
“I’ll inform your superiors of this infraction, Flying Officer.”
Kyssa scowled. Jade felt bad for dragging her friend her into this, but she couldn’t do anything about it now. Anyway, her head was still spinning from the information she’d gleaned from the Portal Record to worry about either Kyssa or Leuven.
In her mind, she could still see Axel’s scrawled entry into the Portal Register, as though it was permanently imprinted on her mind. Her chest constricted as she remembered his intended destination.
It was Premye.
11
Jade’s feet touched down on the smooth metal platform and folded her wings at her back. As she stepped into the hallway, the platform retracted flush with the wall of the air corridor with a faint click. Her feet dragged as she plodded in the direction of the Officer’s Mess. She hadn’t slept, tossing and turning in her bunk, thoughts of Papa’s murder whirring in her head. Every time she’d closed her eyes she saw Papa, half-obscured in fog, and his words reverberated in her mind: Release me.
All night, Jade had wrestled with her promise to avenge Papa’s murder and the knowledge that Axel might be guilty. She had to get to Premye before the trail went cold. The only way to get to Premye now was to be selected for Operation Grave Insult. The Portal would be closed to anyone else looking to Travel there. The problem was, as a trainee, she would never be selected.
In the depths of the night, Jade had tossed restlessly in her bunk, then stared at the ceiling. She could only think of one thing to do.
She approached the door to the Officers Mess, exhaled in a rush and pressed the buzzer next to the sliding doors.
The door slid open and a junior Flying Officer poked his head out. At her request, he ducked back inside to fetch Leuven. Jade fidgeted. She took several deep breaths to calm herself but was contemplating leaving when the doors slid open and Leuven stepped into the hallway.
“Airwoman Gariq,” Leuven greeted her without any hint of a smile. “You should be in training. What are you doing here?”
Jade’s mouth went dry.
Leuven lifted one eyebrow. “Permission to speak.”
Jade forced herself to respond. She’d spent most of the night preparing her speech, but it deserted her under Leuven’s stare. “I want to go to Premye, sir,” Jade blurted out. “I mean, I want to be selected for the operation.”
There was a long silence.
Then Leuven burst out laughing. “You want to be selected for Premye? With Operation Grave Insult?”
Jade swallowed. “Yes, sir… I think I should because…it would be good for my training.” She realised how lame it sounded as soon as the words came out of her mouth.
The laugh fell from Leuven’s face. He motioned for her to follow him farther down the hallway, avoiding the officers who were now leaving the breakfast shift. Leuven came to a halt, then turned and faced her. He was a head and shoulders taller than her and looked down on her with a hard stare. “What would be good for your training, Gariq, would be to get down to the training wing and actually train with the rest of your unit.”
“You don’t understand, sir, I need to—”
“I understand more than you know,” Leuven’s thin lips were pressed together. “I understand you are from a rich family and used to getting your own way.”
“No, sir, it’s not—”
“In the Traveller Force, we are judged for our actions, not our ancestry.”
“I just—”
“Do. Not. Interrupt. Me. You are too junior. You have not passed the training. You do not have the skills. From what I saw at the Temple last night, you cannot follow basic rules. Let me be perfectly clear. There is no way I can recommend you for selection.”
Jade clenched her teeth. Why had she thought this would work? Leuven didn’t like her to start with, and their confrontation last night hadn’t helped matters. Her Squadron Leader turned back towards the Officers Mess, dismissing her.
Jade clenched her fists until her fingernails dug into her skin and her hands shook. She thought of Papa’s sightless eyes and shook her head. She couldn’t let it go. “Please, sir. I need to go to Premye. I must go. I’ll do whatever is necessary. I’ll train really hard before—”
Leuven turned back to her, his eyes flashed. “This is not a sightseeing trip. The people selected for this operation will be the best of the best. Trained for exactly this type of mission. Do you really think, with your one week of training, that you belong with that group? Do you really think you could contribute to the operation?”
Jade opened her mouth, but Leuven cut her off before she could reply.
“I already know the answer to that question. You’re dismissed.”
* * *
Jade leaned on the doorframe, feeling so drained of energy that it was like her chest had been hollowed out and her body was collapsing in on itself. Zorman looked up from where he sat cross-legged at the low desk in his office.
Papa’s office.
Jade looked around, momentarily disoriented. The office was the same, but for a few details. The polished wooden desk had been cleared of the piles of papers Papa could never seem to get rid of. The wall hangings had been removed, new ones hung in their place. Electric bulbs lit up the corners of the room that had always been shadows under her father’s torchlight.
For a moment, Jade saw the room vividly the way it had been that evening. The flickering torchlight, the shadows, Papa’s body slumped and still. Her breath caught.
Then she blinked and the room became Zorman’s office again.
Zorman looked surprised to see her, but smiled and offered her a cushion on the floor across the low desk from him. “You look like you’ve had quite a day.”
Jade slumped, cross-legged onto the floor. She was tired and sore, both physically and emotionally, from a day of training. Leuven was determined to humiliate her, perhaps to reinforce the ludicrous nature of her request—just in case she hadn’t gotten the message.
Mostly though, Jade was distracted by her failure to get past the first hurdle. Without selection for Operation Grave Insult, how would she get to Premye? How would she find Axel?
After dinner, she’d excused herself from her unit with a story about fetching a salve from the Healing Wing to ease her aching muscles. Instead, she’d slipped out to Gariq Industries to find the only person she could talk to. Briefly she’d reflected on the trouble she’d be in if she was caught out of Force HQ two nights in a row, but was too tired and sore to care. Besides, that was insignificant compared to Papa’s murder.
Now, in front of Zorman, in the shadow of Papa’s memories, she felt useless. She’d vowed to avenge her father’s death, but she couldn’t even work out where to start.
“Nobody said it would be easy.” Zorman’s words broke into her thoughts and Jade realised she’d been sitting there in silence.
“What?”
“Your training,” Zorman said.
“Oh, right,” Jade said. “It’s not. Easy, I mean. But that’s not why I’m here.”
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Zorman waited for her to go on.
“I requested selection for Operation Grave Insult so that I could get to Premye and find Axel. But Leuven said no. I can’t work out how else to get there.”
“Squadron Leader Leuven said no? It’s not his call,” Zorman said, mulling over the information. “You are inexperienced, and not likely to be selected, but you’ve got a right to put your hand up.”
“Really?” Jade sat a little straighter.
Zorman nodded. “You’re determined to do this? It’ll be dangerous.”
Jade nodded without hesitation. “I have to go.” Jade looked up at Zorman. “Any ideas?”
Zorman ran a hand through his hair. Jade leaned forward, watching her uncle as he mulled over her question. She felt anticipation build in her chest as she watched his guarded expression.
“In that case,” Zorman said, after a long pause. “It’ll be no good speaking to Denger—he and Magnus never saw eye-to-eye. I’ll have a word with Scosse instead. Perhaps I can persuade him to do me a favour.”
Jade brightened, and Zorman must have seen it because he quickly held up his hands. “I can’t promise anything. But I will try.”
“That’s good enough for me, Uncle Z.” Jade beamed at him. She reached across to take Zorman’s hand, squeezing it. Tears welled and blurred her vision. “I don’t know what I’d do without you right now.”
* * *
The amphitheatre of Level 13 buzzed and there was standing room only. All on-world Travellers gathered to hear the announcement regarding Operation Grave Insult. Jade was pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with two others from her unit. Leuven stood slightly behind and to the left.
The general anticipation only heightened Jade’s own feelings. She curled her hand around the pendant tied to her wrist. She hadn’t found out whether Zorman had spoken to Scosse, and had tried not to think about it but knew this was her only chance. If she couldn’t get to Premye with Operation Grave Insult, she wasn’t sure how she would manage it.
