Skyhunter

by Marie Lu

  “Aramin will never say a thing about it,” Adena says softly, and I turn my attention back to her. She nods down at the Firstblade. “But he always looks around for Jeran after a battle. To make sure he survived. Sometimes I think he would have been a better Shield for Jeran. He certainly cares enough for him.”

  “You and Jeran are a perfect match,” I tell her.

  She finishes working on the blade and switches to signing with me. “I let Jeran cut down Pietra because I couldn’t bear to.” Her furrowed brows cast a dark shadow over her eyes. “He knows I’m terrified of doing it. So he did it for me. What kind of Striker always makes her Shield carry that burden?”

  I lean against my knees and take in the brightening horizon. “We all help each other in different ways.”

  “I’m a coward,” she says, this time aloud.

  “You’re not,” I insist.

  “You were able to do what you had to do for Corian,” she signs. “I’m afraid that if the time comes, I won’t have the courage to do it for Jeran.”

  “You will.” I pause, suddenly haunted by the memory of Corian’s final sigh. “But Jeran’s the best of us. Maybe you’ll never have to.”

  “Maybe.” She glances at me. “Just another day in the life, eh?” She taps on her swords. “The new hilts I designed for my blades? I put them on Jeran’s too, and he said they worked like a dream. Let him cut down some of the Ghosts faster than he could have otherwise, and probably saved his life a few times.” She forces a smile at me. “I took some notes on a few things I could improve. Remind me to add it to your swords too, Talin, and to your Shield’s.”

  This is Adena sinking into her meticulous habits after a battle. But I don’t mention it. I just nod wearily in return while she stares out at the landscape, silently contemplating.

  “You know how Marans tend to use the ruins as places to meditate?” she signs after a while. “Like the Seven Sisters? The Morning Rose?”

  “You always thought it was a waste of time,” I reply.

  “I do.” Adena rubs her neck. “But sometimes you cope by wasting time, yes? I went anyway, right before we left for the warfront, to meditate in front of the Morning Rose. And the whole time, all I could think about was how meditation or prayer at these sites did absolutely nothing, because all that really matters is being able to steal as much of the Early Ones’ technology as possible. That the only way for us to keep pace with the wicked is to do what they do, but better.”

  “We’re not fighting the Federation only to become them, Adena.”

  “Said every nation before they fell to the Federation,” Adena answers bitterly. “I’m going to beat them, Talin. They think they can take what they’ve learned from the ruins to build their own monsters? I can do it too. I have to invent better weapons, faster. I have to learn how to create like them. I am going to beat them at what they do best. Mara has to, or our dawns like this are numbered.”

  I stare out at where the first hints of gold have begun outlining the low-lying clouds along the warfront. When I was small, I would wake before my parents, climb out of my bedroom window, and sneak up to the roof of our house in Basea, where I could peek above the tree line and get a glimpse of the lightening morning sky. My father had caught me doing it one dawn. I remember starting an apology, only to see him crawl over to sit next to me on the roof.

  What are you doing up here, pup? he’d said to me.

  I gave him a sheepish look. Just watching the clouds light up, I answered.

  He smiled and stared toward the horizon. Did you know? he said after a while. There are a billion, billion, billion suns in the sky.

  The number was too large for me to comprehend. What do you mean? I asked.

  Every star out there. The Early Ones discovered that. And do you know what that means? He threw a blanket around my shoulders as I shivered in the cool morning air. There might be another you out there, another me and your ma, staring back at us and wondering the same thing.

  I snuggled closer to him and tried to imagine such a thing. If there was another me, what was her life like? Did she also live in a country fighting a war against a massive enemy? What if there’s no one out there at all? I asked.

  He shrugged and only said, The world is too big a place for that, don’t you think?

  A cold wind whips through my coat, sweeping the memory from my thoughts. After a few minutes, Tomm and Pira arrive to sit up on the ramparts. Others come too, until a smattering of sapphire coats sit along the ledge, here to watch the sun rise over a blood-soaked field.

  I wait for Tomm to head over to us and stir trouble, but he doesn’t. The two just cast glances in our direction without saying anything. Tomorrow, they will return to their sneers in my direction. Today, though, we sit in a row together and look out at the strengthening morning light, all of us searching for that little bit of peace. I don’t know whether we’ll have the chance to gather around a campfire and tell one another stories … but we, the only thing standing between Mara and the Federation, have survived another night. We’ve earned another morning where we can line up along the ramparts to watch the sunrise.

  Why do I sit out here with them after every battle? Why do I risk my life over and over again for this country that is not my birth country, that still keeps my mother outside its walls, where some of my fellow Strikers call me a rat? My homeland’s already gone. Why does this war matter so much to me? The question swirls in my mind, as it always does after a bad night on the warfront, and I spend the quiet moment trying to answer it.

  Because Mara, for all its faults, had still taken me in. Because the alternative is the Karensa Federation, swallowing everything and everyone in its path. Because I have witnessed the deepest horrors their soldiers could inflict on other humans, and I’ve survived, and the reason I’ve survived is because of this last free nation, one that might soon also collapse. Because right now, we are all just young souls in identical sapphire coats, fighting to hold back the darkness. It has bound me together with them, whether they—or I—like it or not. It has to be the reason I stay.

  But how many more sieges can we withstand before Mara falls? Every time, the Federation pushes a little farther into our territory. Someday, they will push past our walls.

  Ahead of us, Jeran looks back our way and notices me for the first time. We exchange a wordless nod.

  “May there be future dawns,” I sign to him.

  In this moment, Jeran’s expression looks a century old rather than the twenty years he is. But he manages to give me a weary smile. “May there be future dawns,” he signs back.

  Adena does the same beside me. As she signs, I ponder on her words. Then I think of the link between Red and me, beating steadily between us.

  “You say you want to learn how to create like the Federation,” I finally tell her. “Well, I think you’re about to get your chance.”

  She casts me a sideways glance. “Why’s that?”

  “It’s about Red. I think we’re going to have a problem, and the problem is that everyone is going to want a piece of him when we get back to Newage.”

  We both stare out at where Jeran sits. Adena doesn’t disagree with my statement. After a silence, she signs, “Is the Skyhunter awake yet?”

  Not Red. The Skyhunter, the monster she’d witnessed on the battlefield. “He was, briefly,” I decide to tell her.

  “Did you ask him what the hell happened in that battle?”

  I hesitate, wondering how much to admit to Adena. “I did,” I sign. “I still don’t understand it all, except that he is the next iteration of the Federation’s experiments. Red is a weapon of war. He says the Federation is developing others, but he is the first.”

  “Ah. That’s why their Premier came here looking for him.”

  “The Speaker is going to want to use him immediately to fight in the war.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?”

  I hesitate. “Because as deadly as he was on the battlefield, that’s not the part of h
im that will win this war for us.”

  For the first time, Adena turns her whole body to face me. She’s caught something in my gestures. “You’ve discovered something else about him?” she signs.

  I nod. “I don’t think Red is just a weapon. I think he’s our key to destroying the Ghosts.”

  12

  The National Hall in Newage is festive tonight. News of our victory at the warfront has cheered everyone, even though every Striker knows that it wasn’t really a victory at all. The Federation has pushed farther into our territory. We’d lost dozens of Strikers and soldiers in the fight.

  Still, barely a week after we returned from the warfront, the National Plaza is crowded with Marans dressed in their finest silks, laughing and drinking as if death weren’t perched right outside our walls. Where an entire Outer City lies open and vulnerable. Where my mother lives.

  “Of course they’re celebrating,” my mother had told me when I visited her after our return. “You’re still alive, and Mara still stands.”

  I leaned my cheek against my hand and watched her crush eggshells into her plants’ soil as fertilizer. “Is it standing,” I signed at her, “or is it just falling slowly?”

  She frowned at me. “How did I raise such a pessimistic daughter?” she signed back.

  “You raised one who doesn’t like cheering when her mother’s still stuck outside the gates.”

  “Go,” she scolded me in Basean. “Celebrate. If Karensa really is going to march here, you might as well get your food and wine while you can.”

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you want me to be drunk.”

  “Remember me as a supportive mother.”

  Now I keep my head down as I head in through the National Hall’s front doors. I’ve been in here before, of course, during banquets and ceremonies where Strikers have been invited, but all my senses are still alert, as if navigating among the wealthy elite of Mara is the same as stalking Ghosts in the narrow passes. The differences are minute.

  My hands tug incessantly at the folds of my dress—one of Adena’s that she’d lent me from her closets—as I search the crowds for the others. It’s pretty, I’ll admit, long-sleeved and a lush silky yellow, belted with a wide gold waistband that elongates my figure, and my dark hair is tied up in an elaborate series of braids, dotted throughout with bejeweled combs and dangling jewels. My skin is covered with a thin layer of oils that give it a subtle glow, and my eyes are lined with black powder, emphasizing the green of my irises and the darkness of my lashes. A choker of solid gold rings my throat.

  The disguise of a rich Maran. The only element of me that remains true to myself is the Ghost bones studding my ears.

  My lips move in a string of silent curses. Why can’t Strikers just wear their coats to events like this? Without the weight of my guns and blades, I feel like I’ve been stripped of everything anchoring me to the ground. The unfamiliar swish of light fabric around my legs makes me scowl.

  “I don’t understand,” I’d told Adena when she made me try on the dress in her room. “I’m sure everyone will take me seriously in my Striker uniform.”

  “No. You need to look like us,” Adena had replied. “Like a rich Maran, not a soldier with enough physical strength to stand up to them. Your uniform will just remind everyone that you somehow managed to defy the Speaker’s laws and become a Striker.”

  “A fancy dress can’t hide my face,” I signed awkwardly, my arms stuck in the air as Adena yanked the dress down my body.

  “I mean, it would help.” Adena gestured for me to close my eyes, then brushed my lids with an elegant line of black. “Look—the only people anyone will listen to tonight are other Senators and the wealthy. Make them take you as seriously as possible. Wear the damn dress.”

  I shake my head, smiling a little at the memory of her determination. Adena had refused to believe Red’s connection to me—until, that is, I demonstrated I could understand Red’s Karenese, repeating his words in Maran to Jeran’s astonishment. Afterward, she paced back and forth across the floor of her Grid shop, while Jeran continued to quiz me. She’d stared so long at Red that he finally had to avert his eyes.

  “What do we do now?” Jeran had asked, to no one in particular.

  “We have to bring Red before the Speaker,” I answered.

  Adena whirled on us, the light in her eyes eager and impatient. “The bigger question is, how is this possible?” She pointed at me. “Red bonded with you. You bonded with him. He doesn’t control you—the Federation must not have gotten to that step. Yes.” She seemed like she was talking almost to herself, her words coming more rapidly as she thought. “If we can just figure those steps out, how this anomaly happened, we can stop the Federation. Hells! Can you imagine? Stopping the Federation with their own creation.”

  “I agree, but he’s not our science experiment,” I told her.

  “He is literally a science experiment.”

  “You know what I mean. He’s not ours.”

  I’m no one’s. Red’s voice had interrupted my thoughts, the tremor of it sending an unpleasant shiver through me.

  I frowned at him, unsettled by this new sensation. Of course not, I said to him through our link before I signed to everyone. “But the Senate will have their own ideas for what to do with Red, things that probably involve using him for battle as our war machine.” I point at Adena. “You and Jeran have to talk them out of it.”

  “Why do I have to do it?” Adena whined. “I hate talking to politicians.”

  “Well, they can understand you,” I answered wryly. “And, somehow, I think the Speaker will be happier taking advice from other Marans than from a Basean.”

  “The Speaker will see him as a military weapon,” Jeran agreed. “He’ll want full control over Red and everything he does.”

  I nod. “Unless we want the Senate to use Red as their personal attack dog, we need to convince the Speaker that we know what best to do with him. That we can work best with Red to understand how his link works. This is a connection of our minds, not something we can physically see. We can’t let them ruin Red before he can help us.”

  “Well, I’m willing to try anything, because somewhere here,” Adena said, swinging a finger back and forth between Red and me, “is the secret to their control over their Ghosts.”

  As I now wander through the National Hall entrance and enter the courtyard, I hear Adena’s words ringing through my head. Somewhere here is the secret. This is why we’d come to the National Hall tonight, to seek an audience with the Speaker of the Senate. To tell him how we can still win this war.

  I can sense the stares from those passing me by, their eyes darting to the hue of my skin, the cut of my features. Some of the looks are hostile, from those offended by someone like me dressed in such a way. Other glances and smiles are ones of lust, their gazes running over me instead of meeting my eyes.

  I think of my mother as I keep my chin high and my walk steady, but I can still feel the burn of unease flushing my cheeks. Has Red arrived already? Should I be able to communicate with him through our link here or do we need to be physically closer to do it? I try sending him a greeting. No response. Maybe he’s too far away.

  Word about Red’s massacre on the battlefield has raced through the nation, and tonight everyone keeps turning their heads as restlessly as a line of birds on the Inner City’s walls, keen on catching a glimpse of the so-called Skyhunter. Who is this stranger from the Federation, this weapon of war? I should have arrived at the National Hall with him, but instead he had been held at the hospital, where they are checking every inch of him to ensure he can’t hurt the Speaker.

  The thought almost makes me laugh. If he wanted to, he could kill the entire Senate before anyone could blink an eye. They didn’t witness what I did. They didn’t see the light of murder in his eyes that I saw.

  Red. He had also been the young man who’d begged me to stay beside him, still weak enough on our return journey to Newage that he sway
ed heavily in his saddle. I’d finally hooked his steed’s harness to mine, then tethered him securely into his saddle and draped a long blanket over him. He’d slept collapsed against his horse until we saw the walls of Newage.

  I look down at my hands, now decked out in glittering rings, and flex my fingers, remembering the warmth of my palm tucked into his. Ever since the night after the battle, his face has lingered in my thoughts. I could feel the faint, steady rhythm of his heartbeat during our entire journey back—not from his body but through the strange new link formed between us. Even now, his pulse hums through me like the chirp of a distant cricket. It’s a strange sensation, like my mind can see outside of myself, like there is another soul as alive and emotional as me, tethered to my own. He’s in the crowds, somewhere. I try again to send him a thought.

  “Look. Here she is.”

  The voice jerks me out of my thoughts.

  Several elite Marans have paused in the arched corridor, blocking my path. My eyes dart quickly across their faces—there’s Tomm and Pira, the trauma of the warfront now hidden behind a layer of makeup and luxurious robes, their lips settled back into smug curves. A couple of Senators I’ve never met before. Finally, there’s Gabrien, Jeran’s older brother. I have to hold back an instinctive grimace. Gabrien gives me a polite smile as he introduces me to the other Senators with him.

  “The Basean Striker herself,” Gabrien says. He doesn’t bother mentioning my name.

  I force myself to return his smile with my own stiff one, but my gaze already darts around him, as it always does whenever I know I can’t defend myself, trying to find the best possible exit route. Gabrien sees me struggle. From the corner of my eye, I see his smile turn thin, menacing, then delighted as he realizes his opportunity to have some fun.

  “It’s not a rumor after all!” one of the other Senators exclaims, wagging a finger at me. The woman on his arm laughs, and behind him, his companions let out a chorus of chuckles. “She does exist.”