by Tessa Elwood
And that weren’t true.
He’s going to figure it out, I said.
No, he won’t. Wren folded her arms on her desk and dropped her head there. Not if the story’s good enough.
And he didn’t.
I just need a story.
“I—” Come on, Asa, think. “I wanted to see Urnath, so Eagle took me. I told him I had Dad’s permission, so Eagle thought he knew. Don’t tell Dad, okay? We didn’t land or anything, just flew by.”
“Eagle?” asks Casser.
Eagle’s eyes narrow, the shiny ridges of his cheek catching in the light.
“We went through Decontamination together,” I say.
Casser’s gruffness turns woolly soft. “I know they dusted the planet, m’lady, but that’s no place to be wasting fuel flying by.”
“I know, but the sun doesn’t rise the same way anywhere else. Not all purple-orange gray.”
“That was just the city haze. Lucky we weren’t all sick even before the Blight.”
“Yeah, but don’t you miss it?”
“Every damn day.” He sighs. “Get on home with you then. My Lord won’t hear it from me.”
RYSSEL ISN’T THE BIGGEST CITY IN FANE OR EVEN ON Malsa, but it glows. Ad-screens wink from skytowers as we fly through the clouds. I plug the medicenter’s coordinates into the console, and Eagle weaves through the scattered traffic like he was born here. There isn’t much, a few transit flight-buses between the bright neon of the new ecoflux wings. No one has rations enough to fly on uleum anymore, and Dad had to stop new wing production during the Blight.
It’s been forever since the skies were full.
In ten minutes or so, I’ll get to see Wren.
The medicenter’s docking bay could house the Westlet complex’s main tower and then some—airy gray with multi-tiered platforms. I direct Eagle to one near the coma ward’s floor. He sets down, powers off. The engine’s low hum slowly dies, until it’s just us and the viewshield and the long steel wall staring in.
“You were—”
“I didn’t—”
The quiet crawls.
I should probably go first. I don’t want to. He must not, either.
“It’s only been a week,” I say. “I’m sure Dad’s going to tell everyone once everything’s settled and stable, but with lockdown he’s probably worried that people would want to leave for Westlet.”
And they’d have a right to. Because we’re allies and blood bonded and everyone else in the Triplicate can go and come as they like.
All week the Lady has paraded us everywhere for pictures Eagle hates because his fingers flinch every time he sees a camera.
Dad hasn’t even told my House that Eagle exists.
“Together,” he says.
I look up. “What?”
His arms are taut, hands on the steershift. “You said we went through Decontamination together.”
“Casser was Wren’s second on base. I couldn’t say I knew you in quarantine because Casser knew everybody I knew in quarantine. And, well, everyone else. But during Decontaimination it was just me and Wren, so he wouldn’t know you weren’t there.”
“You were in the Blight that destroyed your planet?”
“Well, yes?”
Everyone knows that.
I thought everyone knew that.
Nothing in Eagle’s searching eyes says he knew that.
“I’m not contaminated anymore,” I say. “They made sure.” Double sure, keeping us an extra week while Wren’s scans deteriorated and her heart almost stopped. Twice.
Eagle starts to say something but we’re here, home, wasting time in a stupid flightwing talking about stupid things when Wren’s within walking distance and wondering where I am.
I get up, grab my daypack from under the chair, and press open the cockpit door. “Wren’s waiting.”
I SHOULD HAVE STOLEN EAGLE’S HOOD. WE’RE stopped three times in four minutes. Nara, Gregor, Kelie—all the coma ward medics who have seen me almost every day, and for a week haven’t seen me at all.
“I’m so glad you’re well, m’lady.” Nara squeezes my hand, scalp glistening under the short blonde fuzz of her hair, laugh lines deep and sunny even post-quarantine. She smiles up at Eagle’s hood as if she can penetrate its shadow. “We normally set our clocks by her.”
The hood zeros in on me, but I ignore him. “How is Wren?”
“Good, good, though they’re rerunning all the probability tests on her again. A multilevel diagnostic.”
“Her monitor spiked?”
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Nara says slowly. “You know how Aston is about patient information. Though maybe, it would make sense, it’s just with them rolling her off to diagnostics the first day you’re off-schedule—”
“Is she there now? Do we need to go?” I bounce, ready to bolt back down the hall.
If she’s in diagnostics, I’ll only see her through the window. She won’t even know I’m here.
If they’re retesting, Dad must have listened about the mountains.
“No, no, m’lady,” Nara says. “She’s in her room. She’s fine, everything’s fine.” To prove it, she launches into a full detail of Wren’s care as we walk the tiled hall.
The medicenter’s wards have themes, and this unit is Stormy Beaches. Speckled blue floor with painted waves, clinical gray walls crowded with doors and security panels, flecked yellow-gray ceiling. Stinging antiseptic mixes with the bright florals from puffpetals potted on the central reception desk.
We’ve almost reached Wren’s door when another voice calls, “Is that m’lady? Is she well?”
“Yes, very well it looks like,” Nara calls back over her shoulder. “She just got herself a boy.”
I sink into my hoodless, unhelpful jacket and press my palm to Wren’s security scanner.
“It was good to see you.” I smile at Nara, and all but push Eagle through the door. Only Wren’s dedicated specialists have room access. Everyone else needs permission from Dad or Emmie or me. The door clicks shut behind us.
Wren sleeps amid crisp sheets, backlit by sunset and birdsong.
I drop my bag and rush to the bed, grabbing the handrail before I run into it. I take her limp, cool hand between both of mine and hug it close. “Hey, Wren.”
Her baby-pink lips don’t twitch and her lashes don’t flutter and the monitor beep beep beeps its normal, steady rhythm. I lay my forehead against hers. “Hey.”
My voice only slips a little, and my eyes are barely even wet. She smells like the white onnil soap I asked the medics to special order because it was her favorite.
“Did you miss me?”
Low, steady breath.
“Well, that figures. You were probably having too much fun, right? And Aston’s been feeding the birds! I left all that seed so you should be set for a while. And this is—”
Except Eagle isn’t by the bed. He’s at the door, only a few steps inside. I wave him closer.
Hesitant, near silent footfalls. Eagle stops at the end of the bed, hands in pockets.
“This is Eagle,” I say. “Eagle, Wren.”
“Hello,” he says. Not baby sweet, but straightforward. As if Wren was awake as anybody.
Which ties so many knots inside it hurts.
“She can’t see you,” I tell him.
He pushes off his hood, but looks at me. A weird, steady look that pulls every which way and knocks the quiet out of sync.
I focus on Wren. Or rather her hand, which I’m squeezing tight. Too tight. I lay it on the bed. Except now my fingers have nothing to do.
“Your father really didn’t know,” Eagle says and the truth’s there. Touchable. The whole scope of it. Not just Dad knowing, but me choosing. And here we are, for one precious hour with my sister, and he just keeps watching me.
I slide back from the bed and him and reach for the bag I dropped. My digislate is tied to Fane’s seal with print-scan access for most things, which should work now that I�
�m at home. “I’ll find Orrin.”
“WHAT ARE THE TESTS FOR?” I ASK.
For all of Aston’s wild hair and his half-buttoned coat, he can turn into a human wall when he wants to. Rather like Eagle, who stands at the window with his hood back up.
“Standard procedure, m’lady,” Aston says. “Nothing to worry you.”
Aston is forever concerned about my anxiety level.
“I’m not worried,” I say. “I want to know what they’re for.”
“A routine check of her current cognizance levels.”
“And on whose authority? Emmie’s or Dad’s?”
My digislate beeps on the bed by Wren’s feet. I reach down, save the latest match, and reinitiate the scan one-handed. It has beeped three times thus far, and none of the pictures resembled the burly man Lord Westlet gave us. I have access to most of the upper-level civic House networks, but my slate doesn’t have the processing speed of Wren’s old one—especially when running simultaneous scans for name and facial match.
“The scan order has the lead specialist’s signature,” Aston says. “As I explained, m’lady, this is all routine. No need for concern.”
“Then why did they start once she left?” asks Eagle from the window. I didn’t think he was listening.
Aston waves him away. “This is a House matter, sir.”
“Eagle is House,” I say.
“M’lady—”
“No.” I glance at the wall digiclock. We’re running out of time. Lord Westlet’s waiting, and even with Casser’s silence, the border station would have told Dad I’m in Fane. He might come looking. “I want Wren’s blood.”
Aston’s jaw drops. “M’lady?”
“For transport. Three vials at least, and all of her scans and diagnostics. Everything.”
Which should be enough for Westlet medics to run tests of their own, once I can track down some specialists.
The digislate beeps, and I tap tap tap.
“M’lady,” says Aston, baby sweet. “I don’t think that’s wise. Everything’s under control. There’s nothing to worry about.”
Just because I’m not Dad or Wren doesn’t mean I’m not me.
“This is a House matter,” I say, slow enough that the syllables march. “I want my sister’s records. Now.”
His shoulders drop and I almost take it back.
But it’s about Wren, so I don’t.
“As you say, my lady.” He nods once and disappears through the door.
And Wren can’t be getting any better, because if she was she would sit up and say, well, wasn’t that well done?
“I don’t want to hear it,” I say.
“I didn’t say anything,” says Eagle.
“I wasn’t talking to you.”
The hood swings back toward the city, and I wrap my hands behind my neck. Wrong, everything, all of it. And one hour with Wren is not enough.
“Blood?” Eagle asks.
“For your medi-specialists, so they can make her a new medichip. Her old one always kept her safe before.”
“Fane has medichips?”
I shake my head. “No, you gave it to us. I mean, your last Lord gave it to Dad. Lord Westlet’s older brother.” He died before I was born—a bad fever.
Eagle nods, hands deep in his pockets.
“You’re chipped, right?” I ask.
A half beat of stillness, then he marches toward the bed like we’re back in Westlet. “Did you get a match?”
“But you are. You have to be. You’re the Heir. It’s your biotech.”
He lifts my digislate, scans the search data speeding across the screen. “Where are the matches?”
“You didn’t take it out.” I snatch the slate and hug it to my chest. “Why would you take it out? Tell me you didn’t take it out.”
“What do you care?” He reaches for the slate but I back up.
“Are you chipped?”
“Yes.”
“Good.”
“Matches.” Eagle crosses his arms like good is what everything isn’t.
But it is, because if there are bombs and he gets caught in the crossfire, he’ll wake up.
I suspend the digislate’s current search to load the files saved so far. Swipe through this name and that face. Wrong age, wrong gender, wrong coloring.
Then there he is, Orrin Solis. Square jawed with small, smug eyes.
“Oh,” I say.
Eagle doesn’t move as much as deflates. “He’s dead.”
I shake my head. “He’s married.”
“I know.”
“No, I mean here.” I step close so he can see the screen with Orrin’s status ID coupled with connected newsfeed articles I had set up the search to include. Like the New Restaurant Opening feature from a small city two planets over, with a beaming family outside a skytower shop front. Orrin, his lithe pretty wife, and their freckled ten-year-old son.
“Oh,” says Eagle.
TRUTH
I WALK WITH MY EYES CLOSED. EAGLE MUST BE TIRED, too, because we don’t march through the dewy hedge garden. We flew in around dawn with maybe two hours of sleep, before Lord Westlet requested us.
The Lord took one look at my slate with its picture, and sent us on our walk.
“Wake up,” says Eagle.
“I am awake.”
His tone deepens. “Someone’s ahead.”
“If it’s the Lurker, I don’t care.” But I rub the sleep from my eyes.
Footsteps crunch ahead where the path twists, and a boy appears around the bend. Westlet-tall with a broad smile. “Why, if it isn’t my favorite brother!”
Eagle stops so fast I end up a step ahead of him. “You’re home,” Eagle says.
The boy—it has to be Reggie—raises a tapered brow above wide, clear eyes. “Disappointed?”
Eagle lets the word hang, so I jump in with, “Of course he isn’t.”
Reggie steps forward, sliding my fingers from Eagle’s to take both my hands. “And you must be the latest addition to our little family.” He pulls my arms up and out for inspection, then kisses my knuckles. “Quite charming.”
His mouth lingers and I want my hands back.
“It’s a pleasure,” he says, like he actually means it.
Eagle is a monolith, sucking out Reggie’s light.
Reggie lets go and offers a hand to his brother. His right hand, not his left. “Eagle.”
Dad once said the entire universe can be conveyed in the timing of a handshake. Eagle waits long enough to notice, then accepts Reggie’s hand before it falls.
They’re the same height, even the same build. But Reggie has Lord Westlet’s high cheeks without the symmetry, his mother’s skin without its near black depth.
Smooth skin, no scars.
“Regamund.” Eagle lets go, then reaches for me with his real hand. Not just reaches—slides all his fingers in the spaces between mine until our palms press tight. Fused skin and sure fingers generating warmth that echoes all the way up. I stare at our hands.
Eagle watches his brother.
Reggie steps aside and waves us down the path with an elegant flourish. “I see I’ve interrupted your walk. Mustn’t keep you.”
Eagle takes off, and I jog to keep up.
“Nice to meet you,” I call over my shoulder.
Reggie bows. “Just the first of many introductions, I’m afraid.”
Eagle stops dead. “What?”
But now Reggie is moving, walking backward down the path. “Why, the cousins, of course. They’ll be here for breakfast.”
“Which ones?” asks Eagle.
Reggie shrugs. “Oh, Elona, and Charles I expect, and perhaps even his effervescent mother. One can only hope.” He saunters away.
Eagle watches, hand still wrapping mine.
I shake his palm until he turns. “What’s wrong with the cousins?”
“Electorate. Charles is Mekenna’s son.”
Oh.
“CHILDREN!” LADY WESTLET FLOA
TS DOWN THE veranda steps, a bubble of long arms and pink white lace. She reaches up to kiss my cheek, then stands on tiptoe for Eagle. Adds in an undertone, “Your father wants you.”
“Did he invite them?” Eagle asks, but the Lady shakes her head.
“That would be your brother. Apparently after his snow-skidding adventure tour of Barhelna, he spent a few days with Mekenna, who suggested a visit.”
“And Reggie agreed.”
“Be nice. Mekenna is one supporter we cannot lose. He could hardly say no. And speaking of—” The Lady leans past Eagle’s shoulder and waves dancing fingers. “Reggie, darling! Come meet your new sister.”
“I’ve already had that honor,” Reggie calls from up the walk, hands in his pockets, lean elbows spread wide with his languid steps.
“Have you?” asks the Lady. “Then the question becomes, have you taken her riding?”
“No,” says Eagle.
The Lady sighs. “Interestingly enough, she is her own person. You do not get to dictate her movements.”
“You do,” I say.
She doesn’t miss a beat. “I’m your mother-in-law, that’s another thing entirely.” She pats Eagle’s cheek, deftly splits our hands, and pulls me down the path to Reggie. Greets him with the same kiss she gave Eagle.
“Reggie, do be a dear and look after Asa for me? It would be good for her to have a few practice flights before the cousins monopolize her time in the stables. Besides, your brother is on tirade.”
Reggie returns the kiss. “Is he ever off tirade?”
“Eagle doesn’t tirade,” I say, for which I get Looks.
“Well,” Reggie weaves my arm through his, pats my hand. “I guess they did circumvent a blood bond together. Daric was almost apoplectic when he heard, though I’m not sure if it was for that or the treaty itself.”
Daric is Lord Westlet’s first cousin, and even more Electorate than Mekenna, judging by the newsfeeds. He seems to have the closest blood tie to the Westlets, and the least goodwill.
