Soul of Stars

by Ashley Poston

  “And how do you think you can help?” a voice in his head snarled, and he jumped in surprise. It was old and gravelly, and familiar.

  “I don’t know, but I have to try, Father,” he replied, but it was not him.

  In his head he saw the scene: a Royal Guard who looked like him, agitatedly twirling Eros, while a man with a braided beard and chains around his neck—the Iron Adviser—sat at the desk. The man from the memory of his lab.

  “I can’t let innocent people die,” he said, and he felt the anger in his words. “If the Plague is a pathogen, or some sort of nano-tech, I want to help. What if it’s the Great Dark?”

  The man scoffed. “The Great Dark—it doesn’t exist. It’s an old fool’s tale. If you leave, I can’t protect you. No, you’re staying here and that’s final.”

  He stopped the spinning planet, shaking his head. “You can’t protect me from everything. I’m sorry, Father.”

  And left.

  Blinking out of the memory, he stopped the globe. His hands shook. The smell of moonlilies and rosemary filled his nose, the feel of that old man’s neck under his grip, how easily it snapped. He clutched at his chest, fingers curling into the satin of his blouse, that burning, aching feeling returning.

  But he recognized the source now—

  His memory core.

  The room spun, and he leaned against the desk to brace himself.

  “This room belonged to Lord Rasovant,” Mellifare said. Startled, he looked to the doorway where she stood, braiding her hair down her shoulder, with all the airs of a cat waiting outside a mouse hole, her face expressionless except for the slight tug of her lips into a smile. “Father, I guess he was.”

  “Why . . . did you call him Father?” he asked. Why did I?

  She cocked her head. “Because, in a way, he made me. He made me strong, and he made me many.” As she said that, her voice echoed in the hallway outside, from the Messiers standing guard. Then he felt his own lips move, too, and her voice come out of them—“He made me unstoppable.”

  He quickly pressed his hands over his mouth.

  She smiled in delight at his discomfort, and he felt her control leave him again. “Now, I know you were spying on our Empress. Do you know where she is going?”

  “. . . Calavan,” he said slowly, not trusting his voice, but thankfully it was his.

  “And pray tell, why would she go there?”

  “I . . . do not know.”

  It was not a lie, but he did not tell her he thought she was going to find the Goddess’s tomb, either. It was only a hunch, and he was only 83.76 percent sure. He did not want Mellifare going on a wild-goose chase, or so he convinced himself.

  The Great Dark, humming its soft song in his head, did not seem to notice his lie—

  Until Mellifare flicked her black-eyed gaze to him. “But I did notice, brother.”

  And then her voice rang in his ears, I am in your head.

  Between his code, pulsing with a red anger, was the song—

  “I am the Great Dark,” a memory purred in his ear. He was in a room tied to a chair, and Mellifare had whispered into his ear. He had been different then. He had been—he had . . .

  He had forgotten.

  His body went rigid.

  She came to stand so close to him they almost touched, and she looked up into his eyes. “She has gone to find the tomb with my heart, and she knows exactly where it is.”

  “Y-yes, sister,” he whispered.

  Suddenly, the song changed. It grew heavy and dark and erratic. He did not have to listen to the commands to know what it said.

  He hesitated. “Sister?”

  “And why did you not tell me?”

  “I felt that—”

  “I am tired of your feelings and ideas,” she said, and flicked her hand at him. The HIVE clawed into his head. An explosion of pain rocked through his wires, like molten lava under his skin, and he dropped to his knees. He swayed, unsteady. She came up to him and pressed two fingers against his forehead before he could stop her. “Remember that you are nothing.”

  The red code pierced through his pain and betrayal like an arrow—between the memories of the study, of her whispers, of the Great Dark—and left him hollow yet again, filled with only the song.

  She took him by the chin and made him look into her red eyes. “Now, I think it is high time we met Ananke Armorov again and let you make good on your promise, Dmitri—and give me my heart.”

  Jax

  When he finally came to, he was in the Spire’s medical ward again—alone. He plucked the IV out of his arm and sat up in bed, trying to parse together what happened between the ark and returning to the Spire. He still had the C’zar’s voice in his head.

  Van ma’alor, she had said when she raised her hand, prompting him to do the same. Take my light.

  And he had. He stared down at his bare fingers for a long moment, watching it shift underneath his skin like a living thing. He had never felt something so . . . visceral before. It was like his entire body thrummed with light.

  He rubbed at the place where they’d stuck the IV, but he couldn’t find the mark anymore. The wound was gone. Was this how powerful his ancestors’ light was—even watered down after a thousand years? It was almost frightening.

  He concentrated for a moment on the strange power—and then outward, sensing the two guards standing outside his medical ward, their own light bright like bonfires. Then the hundreds of people in the Spire below him, his captain, and Talle, in the prisons underneath. He could feel all their lights, too.

  But Robb’s was different. It didn’t burn like a bonfire but swirled and danced and beckoned, almost like—

  He jerked his gaze toward the doors to the ward just as a boomerang clipped one guard in the head and slammed into the next one. They both slumped to the ground. Their assailer, another Solgard, picked up the boomerang, put it back on their waistband, and opened the door.

  Jax blinked at his visitor. “. . . Elara?”

  She stopped in the doorway, not even trying to disguise her surprise. “Goddess, are you glowing?”

  He quickly crossed his arms over his chest, hiding his hands, although he couldn’t hide the rest of his skin, which did . . . glow. It let off a soft yellow-white light.

  “Never mind, we don’t have time. You glow, that’s fine.” She shook her head and bent down to the longer Solgard, grabbing him by the arm to drag him into the ward. “Help me get this armor off him.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because—”

  “Ana’s gone,” he interrupted, the light inside him flickering, whispering her words to him a moment before she said them, like he could see brief shadows of the future a moment before it happened. His throat tightened in panic. “She’s gone to the ruins.”

  “Um . . . yes. She has. You can’t read minds or anything, can you?”

  “No. I just knew what you were going to say—and she is gone? She left?”

  “Yeah, Sparkles. She’s gone to the ruins.”

  “Ak’va!” he cursed, and snapped at her in the Old Language, “Why did you let her go?”

  “Let her? She said she’d go either way! Don’t blame this on me.”

  “Oh, I’m blaming you,” he replied, and helped Elara quickly undress the guard. The guard’s armor was a little tight on him as he laced up the breastplate and fit on the pauldrons and greaves. He finally stood and began looking through the drawers for a pair of gloves. He couldn’t go anywhere without them—what would happen if he touched someone?

  Last time, he almost died.

  He didn’t want to die again. At least not in the same way.

  “Sparkles, hurry up,” Elara urged. “Someone could come by any minute.”

  “I can’t go anywhere without gloves,” he singsonged, and noticed that the more anxious he grew, the brighter the light under his skin seemed to flicker.

  “You would make a good flashlight.”

  “Shut up.”


  “Is that what our light used to look like? In the old kingdom?” she asked seriously, and he thought as he shuffled through the final drawer and pushed it in.

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  “It is indeed beautiful.”

  That was not Elara’s voice, and his heart stilled at the sound.

  Slowly, he glanced over his shoulder. It was his mother, her hands clasped together in front of her, silver hair short and eyes like raw amethyst.

  Ten years had barely changed her. She looked almost exactly the way she had the night he left—her chin high, her eyebrows arched, her lips pursed into a thin and often-disapproving line. His memories didn’t do her justice. He had forgotten how she stood like an unbent tree, and how her hair was whiter than silver and shimmered like spun glass. How she commanded the attention of every eye in the taverns down by the docks, and now he was sure she caught the eye of every person in the Elder Court. While the years flying with Siege had been kind to him, the years in the Spire had whittled her down to a point. She was nothing but edges now.

  “Mother . . . ,” he whispered.

  Her steely gaze lingered on him. “Nan c’zar.”

  His heart clenched. Nan c’zar. Not son. Because first and foremost, even to his own mother, he was a weapon. He stuffed those feelings down into that deep, frigid part of him that had decided not to tell Robb he was the C’zar, the part of him that was glad he found out only after he had almost died, and said, “Ma c’zar. . . .”

  “It seems I found you just in time,” she said, indicating his Solgard wardrobe.

  He glanced down at it and swallowed. “I can explain—”

  She held up her hand, and his words lodged in his throat. “The Elder Court has asked me to . . . propose an agreement with you. Stay and take your oaths as the C’zar and lead our people, and if you do, the Elder Court will drop all charges against your friends and, under the promise that they never return to Zenteli, release them.”

  Then Siege would be able to go after Ana.

  He didn’t like the sound of the bargain. It was too clean. For an Elder Court that couldn’t read the stars, they had made a very precise bargain. Unless . . . “They were never going to let me leave, were they? If I tried, they would’ve arrested the captain and everyone else for—for Goddess knows what.”

  His mother nodded. “Your captain has a very prolific record.”

  Then . . . he was trapped. He could either walk himself and leave his crew—his family—in prison, or he could take an oath to become the C’zar and let the captain go without him. If he had more time, he could orchestrate some sort of escape, but the light itched nervously under his skin, telling him that time wasn’t something that he had.

  And he was inclined to believe it.

  Elara hesitated. “Sparkles, you’re not actually considering it, are you?”

  “What other choice do I have? I don’t want to be the C’zar, but if my power can help save people, then I can’t be afraid of it anymore. Ana’s in danger. I can feel it.”

  “But Sparkles . . .” Elara wilted, because it was predictable which option he would choose—the only one he could. While he loved his life as a pilot—he loved the Dossier and his captain and his family, and oh how he would miss the terribly cramped crew’s quarters, and the smell of exhaust in the engine room, mingled with Siege’s cigar smoke—he couldn’t bring himself to sacrifice that for his own freedom.

  No, he refused to.

  “Tell the Elder Court I will be down in a moment,” he said, beginning to undo the clasps of the uniform, when his mother put a hand on his arm to still it.

  “There is one other choice,” she said, and finally opened her fist. In it sat a small electronic key—a master key. “This will open any of the cells down in the prison. The guard shift is about to change, and you can leave through the service door in the rear of the prison. It will lead you out to the market square. From there, the Dossier has clearance to leave. You are my C’zar whether you sit on a throne of crystal or a filthy leather seat on a decrepit ship.”

  He hesitantly took the key out of her hand. He twirled it between his fingers. “You planned all this? To let me leave?”

  The smallest of a smile graced her lips. “Let you? Nan jour”—my son—“I wasn’t ever planning for the possibility that you would stay. The Elder Court does not deserve you,” she added, motioning below her, down floors and floors, to where the Elder Court held their session, in crystalline chairs. “Ever since your father died, I have been biding my time to show them exactly how I feel. They only care about preserving their own future, and that will not stand. Especially if they plan to destroy my own son in the process. Now go, you’re wasting time.”

  He pursed his lips and quickly drew her into a hug, and she was so much smaller than he remembered—or he was that much taller, but she still smelled the same. Like starlight and lavender, where all his childhood memories rested. “I’ve missed you.”

  “I missed you, too.” She returned the hug, and then pulled back and looked into his eyes. “You’ve grown up. I couldn’t have wanted better. Siege did so well.”

  “I’ll—I’ll send you a message once we’re clear of the harbor and figured out our next moves against the D’thverek.”

  “Please do, and if you need me—or our ships, our stars—don’t hesitate to ask. Al gat ha astri ke’eto, nan jour.”

  “Al gat ha astri ke’eto,” he echoed, and he found himself turning away from her, toward Elara, toward the elevators, and left.

  His mother was right—the guards were changing, and they thought he and Elara were the next to take their posts. They didn’t notice his glowing skin, but then again the guards left so fast they didn’t even trade names. Jax rotated the master key around his first finger nervously as he hurried down the cell blocks holding his friends, and with a swift twist of the key the door popped open.

  Siege glanced up from her perch on the bench; Talle’s head resting in her lap. Robb jerked to his feet.

  “Ana went to the ruins to find the heart by herself,” he told them, “and we need to go after her.”

  Robb’s eyebrows furrowed. “How did you . . .”

  He pulled off his Solgard helmet, his silver hair spilling over his shoulder, the glow of his skin so much more apparent now. “Trust me, ma’alor.”

  Elara added, “Yes, he’s glowing. Yes, I let Ana go. And yes, we should probably get out of here,” as the elevator at the front of the prison dinged, and the real guards for the shift change arrived. “Like, three seconds ago.”

  Everyone hurried out of the cell, slipping through the shadows that clung to the dark walls, and out of the door his mother had told him about. It was a passageway that led out to one of the twelve gardens in the Spire, and they slipped quietly through the streets of Zenteli. By the time the Solgard noticed them missing, they were already at the docks.

  “Are you sure you want to leave, darling?” Siege asked as Elara and Talle went ahead of them and up the ramp into the Dossier, where Xu and Lenda were putting the last fixes on the sails. “Once you do . . .”

  “My home’s here,” Jax replied, and his gaze drifted to Robb, who lingered on the docks, his gaze set on another ship—a freighter destined for Eros. “Ma’alor?”

  Robb hesitated, rubbing his mechanical arm. “I—I think I need to do something.”

  “Then I’ll come with you—”

  “No!” he said quickly, and then said again, softer, “No. I think I need to do this alone. Koren Vey said something, and I want to . . .” He frowned, unable to express the words, but the light in Jax whispered anyway.

  “Resonance,” he filled in for him.

  The Ironblood seemed surprised for a moment and then nodded. “And it’s almost guaranteed that the HIVE will track the Dossier. It’ll be better if I split off and go to Eros alone. I won’t be in any danger, but we all know Ana attracts it.”

  “Doesn’t she,” he agreed.

  “Then I’ll go with
you,” Elara said from the top of the ramp, and cast a nervous glance back at Xu. “Xu can run the cloaking while I’m gone.”

  Why not me? he thought, but in truth Robb hadn’t met his gaze once since he’d woken again, and a lump settled in his stomach. Because things were different now. He was the C’zar, and Robb knew he was the C’zar, and Robb knew he had lied to him for so long.

  “Be careful,” Xu said, and Elara kissed her cheek.

  “Never.” She hurried down the ramp to Robb, and Jax didn’t leave the ramp until they had disappeared into the crowd. He still felt their lights, pulsating, flickering, anxious and afraid, and so was he.

  Siege called from the hull doors. “Jaxander?”

  He tore his eyes away from the crowd and hurried into the Dossier.

  Ana

  Only she could go after the heart. It couldn’t be anyone else.

  She kept telling herself that as she drove from the outskirts of Calavan into the wilds of Eros, toward the coordinates on her holo-pad. In the distance, the Bavania Range rose up like spiked ridges on a monstrous backbone, white-capped with snow. The shrine was nestled at the foot of one of those mountains. So close, and yet so far.

  She would find the heart and destroy it before the Great Dark could get it. Somehow. The skysailer hummed quietly as she skimmed across the grassy road overgrown with weeds and brambles.

  She tried a few times to contact the Dossier—Lenda, at least—but every time she tried, her comm-link just gave a crackle—jammed. Or broken.

  When the trees began to swallow up the road, she banked the skysailer up and skimmed the tree line. The wind had a chill to it, but the sun was high and the air smelled fresh and clean, and her hands were clammy with sweat. The chill in the air—the smell of winter—reminded her of the time the Dossier escorted an ex-con from the city-state of Tavenktcha on Iliad to the northern quadrant to Neon City on Eros.

  He had been an imposing man, as thick as two men. He had a braided red beard that reached halfway down the front of his barrel chest, and it glowed with optics the way Siege’s did, although Ana much preferred the way they looped into her curls. Di had not trusted him from the start.