“She’d have deposed your father?”
Carlotta smiled, and the expression reminded me of Griffin at his worst. “No, she wouldn’t have deposed him, but Father would undoubtedly have fallen ill and remained confined to his quarters… for a very long time.”
Like her mother, Carlotta was not a woman to cross. I was grateful to have her on my side.
“I remember seeing you at the betrothal dinner. But your hair was black then.”
“It changed a bit, didn’t it?” The words were sarcastic, but the tone wasn’t. She sounded sad.
“Why?”
Not content to drag myself through the hellfire of memory, I had to force her along for the ride.
“I imagine it changed that final night in the palace.”
“When your family was killed?”
She nodded. “The Landaun raped me within inches of my mother’s body. They raped me, and all I could see were her dead eyes.” Her voice was dispassionate. Numb.
I started speaking without thought. “The first time I was raped, they tied me and threw me over a bench. All I could see was the pool of blood on the floor from my broken nose.”
She looked at my face a bit more closely. “It doesn’t look bad. Not at all.”
I grinned and found the energy to push myself up to a sit. “I was prime meat. They brought in the best Vash healers to fix me every time they broke me. They had a stable of Vash slaves, all broken and beat.” I remembered how gray they seemed. How sad. “I wonder how much they sold me for?”
“I doubt it was even close to the amount Tomas paid for those crystals of candar.”
“Hmm. Now that doesn’t seem right, does it? That a royal whore would be of less value than a rock?”
She shook her head and laughed at my comment. But then something less funny came to mind.
“Carlotta, you’re my sister-in-law. You’re my family.”
“Yes, I am. That’s why I recognized you when your raiders rescued us from the Landaun.”
“You’re also the aunt of my son.”
She went very quiet, her face sober. “I admit that’s part of my reason for coming with you. He’s the only blood family I have left, Helios.”
That meant Alexander was the heir to the rightful queen of the Talisians. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. But I looked at her and saw nothing but the same loneliness I’d seen in my own eyes, when I was U’shma’s slave.
I scooted back on my ass and leaned against the wall. The more we talked, the clearer my thoughts became.
“I don’t know what exactly we’re walking into, but it could be very bad. When I return, someone will wonder about my eye tattoos and figure out where I’ve been all these years.”
“So don’t hide it.” She looked at me unflinchingly. “You’ve done nothing to bring shame to your people.”
“Honor in slavery, eh?” I chuckled. “And the long-absent king brings his sister-in-law as his chief bodyguard. That’ll ruffle some feathers.”
“No doubt,” she agreed.
“Not to mention that I have no intention of being bullied into giving up Griffin this time.”
“He is a very inappropriate choice for a queen, Helios. I can’t see him in a tiara.”
That image made me laugh, and the laughter felt good. It brought life back to my nerves and muscles, and clarity returned to my mind. Just then, Griffin entered carrying a covered plate. My stomach growled.
“Your timing is impeccable.”
“My timing has always been perfect.” His smile was dangerously close to a leer, and a thrill of arousal skittered through me. It faded as Griffin’s face turned sober.
“My timing had better be perfect.” He slid to the floor and sat facing me. “We have to do something. The three of us. And it’s not going to be easy.”
Carlotta and I looked at each other, then back at Griffin. He had his hands resting on his knees, his fingers linked. He looked deceptively casual.
“We have to go home,” he said. “To Arash.”
Chapter Fifteen
THOUGH CARLOTTA readjusted our course, it took a day and a half to travel to our former home. A day and a half in which I alternately worked before multiple monitors, studied the intricacies of navigation, and took my turn at the helm. We slept in shifts, spoke little, and yet our silence was poignant. It was precious.
I was lying in our bunk studying holographic images of people… some I recognized, some I did not. I felt like a student studying for an exam, but my test wouldn’t be in a lecture hall—it would be my life. Frustration began to mount, and every minute that passed weighed on me like a small, foreboding weight. I felt… dread. I didn’t want this. I wanted—I wanted a quiet life. I wanted time with Griffin, to learn who we were together. I wanted time with my son. My sister.
The fate of the kingdom felt like a weight around my neck, inescapable and inevitable. Surely there were others more qualified than me. Surely there were others who wanted to rule. Yet that very thought sent a shock of alarm through me. The burden of this sort of power should never be one sought out. The absolute power I would claim was frightening. Absolute power should never rest in the hands of any person.
I looked again at the array of men and women before me, their faces ranging from pale like my family, to brown as Griffin, and darker still. Young and old, professional and skilled laborers. They represented the people of our kingdom more fully than I ever could. They were the voices of the people.
So what was I? The head? The heart? The conscience or the soul?
My uncle had been the king, his power absolute. I was not my uncle. I’d been raised with awareness of my status as a Dayspring, but not with the expectation of ever becoming king. I blew out a breath in frustration.
“Lio?”
Griffin stood in the doorway, studying me uncertainly. It was an expression I rarely saw on his face. He glanced at the images hovering before me. “The council.” His mouth had a wry twist as he said the words. He wasn’t overly fond of those men and women.
“They haven’t done a stellar job, have they?” Our people were still living in barely habitable dwellings. They relied on selling gems on the black market to feed thousands. By now, a city should be growing, crops should be in the fields.
“They’ve kept most everyone alive,” he said slowly. “But they’ve functioned out of fear. Fear of who might be in the sky, fear of enemies within. Fear of the very planet.” His jaw clenched and released. “They needed leadership yet rejected those who could have offered it.”
My sister. They’d rejected the woman who should have been their leader. Anger heated within my gut, and instinctively, I let it roll through me, automatically clearing my mind and relaxing my body. Some of my slave training might come in handy after all.
“We’re on the approach to Arash,” he said softly.
There was no station; there never had been. Our people had opted to remain planetbound. Both Talis and Arash had been somewhat xenophobic, looking at outsiders with suspicion. That’s how the Talisians had taken us by surprise. It never occurred to my uncle that they might have had help from an alien source.
“Do you want to ride it out in here or up in the cockpit?”
“Up front.” I gave the order to power down and secure the information systems, then followed Griffin up to the front of the Aida. Carlotta was in the pilot’s seat, and Griffin took Nav. A landing like this would rely more on vision than instruments.
I settled into a third seat, one used for observation and copiloting. After securing my rigging, I activated the monitors. The black, blank expanse filled my vision.
“How close will we be when we drop out of ID space?”
“Very close,” Carlotta replied. “A whisker out of orbit.”
My stomach lurched. If her calculations were off, even by a fraction, we could drop right in the middle of the planet.
“I’ve done this before, Helios,” she said quietly.
So she’d been bac
k to Arash. Had Griffin? Probably. This trip was for my edification. I needed to see what had happened after I’d been taken. I needed to go to my people with full knowledge of their fate as well as the fate of our planet.
“We’ll orbit just long enough to get oriented, then drop down into the atmosphere and do a flyover. Once we know it’s secure, I’ll take us down close. Land if it’s necessary.”
“Are the Landaun still there?”
Griffin looked up, avoiding my gaze. “They did what they came to do, then left. They mined the planet for about three years.”
Warlan was a mining planet. It still supported life, and I suspected the red dirt of the planet looked very much the same as it had been before the miners had come. It wasn’t lovely, but it sustained life. Surely—
The ship jolted as it came out of ID, jerking my attention forward. Stars manifested before us, and too close for comfort, a planet loomed.
It was familiar. I recognized the outline of the continents and oceans. I knew the mountain ranges like the back of my own hand. For a moment, my heart leapt to see my home, my planet! It was there and it was whole and beautiful. But as we drew closer, I saw subtle changes. It had been a blue planet, rich in oxygen, with a healthy atmosphere. Now, the blue was joined by other colors. Green, yellow, and brown.
Closer still, and I realized those colors weren’t the planet. They were the air. The sickness I felt as we entered the planet’s atmosphere wasn’t from the rough ride, but from the growing awareness of what I was seeing.
The planet was dead. Or very nearly dead.
With trembling hands, I did atmospheric readings, stunned at the results. The air was toxic, as was the water and soil. Closer still, and the lush green forests I’d expected were revealed as barren brown plains and toppled snags of waste. The rivers were sluggish, the lakes and reservoirs brown and muddy. The view didn’t change for miles and miles, and many miles more.
“Oh Sun,” I whispered. “No.”
I couldn’t see Carlotta’s face, and briefly, my fury found a target. Her family had done this to us. But as I saw the rigid set of her shoulders, the tension in her hands, my anger faded.
Her family had done this to themselves as well.
I watched the unfolding view in confusion. I should recognize something, but it was as alien as the rock on which Randall Scott lived.
“Have you searched for survivors?” I couldn’t bear to look anymore, so I fixed my gaze on Griffin.
“At first, we found bands of people who’d somehow survived the Landaun presence. We removed animals. Eventually, there was simply nothing alive for us to find.” He glanced at me and smiled slightly. “We found Fury. He was one of the last to come in.”
“Fury?” I frowned at the name, unable to make a connection.
“He was with a herd. We’d let the horses loose so they wouldn’t be slaughtered. Some managed to live down there.” He nodded down at the devastation. “They looked pretty rough but were still alive.”
An image formed in my mind… a swift powerful stallion. The son of Pax. He was black as night, with an attitude to match his name. But he’d been trainable and smart.
“He was too nasty a bastard to let himself be killed,” I said. I still barely remembered the horse, but the tattered memory caused a welling of emotion to rise up within me. And with it came guilt. I still couldn’t call my son to mind without his image before me. But I remembered a horse.
Griffin laughed. “I imagine he still is. No one wanted to mess with him. He was corralled for a few days at the settlement, then broke loose. Took some of his herd with him. No one bothered to try and get him back.”
“Is he all right?” I felt worried, which was odd since I could barely recall the beast.
“Alexander occasionally goes out to try and capture him. Diedre said they hadn’t seen him for a while.” He turned back to the view screen. “He bonded to you. No one else. He went wild without you.”
I picked at a loose thread on the leg of my trousers. Markus’s trousers. I’d purchased new clothing, but they were still packed away. These were similar to the clothing Griffin wore, basic and utilitarian. Once we went to our new home, I’d have to become Helios Dayspring. And he wouldn’t wear work clothing. However, he wouldn’t wear velvets and silk either. Our world had changed and luxury of that sort was a thing of the past.
I’d be a working king.
That thought rang through my mind. I’d been a warrior priest and would carry that training to my new role. I’d been a slave, and sometimes a whore. I was fairly sure there were lessons from that life I could apply to my leadership. Patience. Charm. Resilience. And a truly superb skill with grain dishes.
But the horse. And my son. Two key elements of my former life that had nearly slipped from my memory. How could that be?
“Look,” Carlotta said, interrupting the repeating cycle of my thoughts. “Ahead, to the east.”
I saw only mounds. Huge mounds. I squinted, trying to make out the shapes in the distance. Since we were flying in lower elevations, Griffin had switched from the viewer to transparency, so we looked outside the clear window-like panels. I unfastened my restraints and walked to the front of the craft, scanning the horizon. The view was familiar. Vaguely and sickeningly familiar.
A grid expanded before us, like cross-hatching in the surface of the planet. Wide, broad swathes led to those mounds. At the center of each grid, heaps of gray and white debris spread like—
“Oh… oh mercy,” I whispered. “Astrum. It’s Astrum. No. No.”
Frantically, I looked from side to side, seeing a repetition of the same pattern. They formed a gargantuan circle, oriented around a center… like the spokes of an old wagon wheel—or the rays of the Sun. My legs went weak and I braced my hands on the window before me, fighting to stay upright.
We flew closer. Bile rose up my throat, but I didn’t look away. I couldn’t. It was my right and my responsibility to bear witness. I clenched my hands into fists so tight that my nails cut into my palms. Down below, ash and dust whirled in the wind, looking so much like the smoke that had spilled through the streets of what had once been a proud, beautiful city.
We moved forward, like an arrow on target. The mounds grew larger and taller, and I knew. I knew what they’d once looked like. I knew there’d been trees spilling upward toward the towers of the palace, in a joyous display of green, white, and gold. From the sky, the city appeared to be a huge celestial form, a star. The Sun we worshipped, and that I was named for.
“In the time before time,” I whispered, “our ancestors came from a blue planet, much like this one. They’d searched long and far for a new home and found it here, on Arash, a place of blue and green. Rich soil and pure water. They vowed to be stewards to the land, to do no harm to the gentle planet beneath our feet.” I swallowed. “The Sun God brought them. They consecrated this place to him. It was theirs, until the time when greed overcame generosity and stewardship became possession.”
“Prophecy, Helios?” Carlotta’s voice sounded strained. No doubt she’d suffered through the same experience, only at Talis. And no doubt, the burden had been heavier, with the knowledge of what her father had done in the name of power.
“No. It must have been something I learned at some point.” I had no clue where or when. “If it was prophecy, it’s a little late in the game.”
“Genetic memory,” Griffin said. “Crops up in the Daysprings now and then.”
So my bloodline was different. I knew we bred true; regardless of who a Dayspring produced a child with, the offspring had flame-colored hair… and the occasional flash of prophetic visions. Someday we’d have to look deeper into our genetics.
We flew closer to the ruins of the palace, and I overlaid the rubble with gardens and fields, wide roadways filled with residents. No vehicles had been allowed into the center of the city. We rode horses or walked, in the interest of security. Only the royals had access to the magnetic vehicles that transported peopl
e and cargo this close to the palace.
The stables had once stood to my right, clean and bright and massive. Not far beyond, the military complex had sprawled, covering acres with barracks and apartments, training grounds and the armory. Above it all, the palace rose, a light, golden confection of state buildings and royal apartments. I’d once lived in the barracks but had grown up in the palace. After… after Cloris, I’d lived—I scanned the rubble—I’d lived there. In the humble dwellings of the priests. They were set into the sides of the mountain, and tunnels ran under the entire complex, secret and rarely used. Large enough for three horses to travel abreast.
I’d ridden through those tunnels on a great, sorrel-colored stallion. Pax. Deeper inside, there were hidden chambers, places for priests to work in secret, where they stored documents and books. Files and data. Somewhere, deep in the rubble, the secret history of our people was buried, never to be recovered.
I doubled over, as though I’d taken a blow to the gut. Under that rubble, the remains of hundreds of Temple Priests lay rotting. They wouldn’t have fled the city or the planet. I’d done what I had because—because—
I’d been desperate. I’d been the only Dayspring who could lead.
I’d been the king. The others had fallen.
It was all too much, but I didn’t fall. I didn’t collapse. We flew around the palace, over the decimated fields and the empty parks and squares. I saw where I’d been tortured. The great plateau-like structure had towered over the city, allowing all to see the Dayspring when he addressed his people.
Those squares and parks had been empty when I’d last been up there, looking down on the burning city. Wind had driven the fires. I’d seen embers leap from roof to roof, burning with a ferocity that had set the very air ablaze. We’d burned as though the very sun above had set his hands upon the planet, conjuring the flames. Even the tough, massive Landaun had retreated from the city, sweeping away in their ships, leaving hell in their wake.
They’d taken me with them.
And then they’d come back.
We flew in silence, making the same journey over the ruins of Talis and other smaller cities scattered around the planet. The view was always the same. The wind blew the dirt and ash and the dust of the dead before it.
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