Stars didn’t fall quite like that, cutting through the night like a beacon.
“Do you…” Sonara pointed. “Do you see it?”
Soahm followed her gaze through the sky, the light reflecting upon the black sea. It drew ever closer, the brightness intensifying until she saw that it was not a star.
Rather, it was a shape, a blazing trail of fire beyond it. A shape that looked like the head of an arrow, slicing through the sky; metallic. Not of this world.
The wind kicked up, gusting towards her as a rumble sounded from the object, shooting across the sky like a war drum.
Sonara’s blood felt cold, her heartbeat rising to her throat. Danger. She felt it, a sickness spreading through her gut. Behind her, Duran and the mare cried out, then galloped over the hills, out of sight.
“Run,” Sonara whispered. She gripped Soahm’s hand, her nails digging into his skin as fear overcame her. “Soahm, run!”
She turned, tugging him along with her. The beach was a wide expanse of sand spreading into the dunes beyond. Nowhere to hide, nowhere to bury themselves in the shadows, except…
The cave on the edge of the Devil’s Dunes.
A burial ground for the dead, a sacred space that was not to be disturbed, and yet Sonara found herself tugging Soahm towards the yawning black mouth of it, the safety of darkness calling them home.
“Slow down!” Soahm yelled. He stumbled, but Sonara tugged his hand harder, her fear a living thing inside of her now.
Run, it beckoned. Run, and do not slow down.
She had always been smaller than most, lithe and used to working long hours in the stables. She pushed herself, legs burning as she trudged through the deep sand.
Behind her, the object closed in, screaming from the sky as the winds kicked up. She looked overhead as light flared. She saw only metal, like a great beast in the sky, a crimson bird painted upon its belly.
At some point her sweaty hand slipped from Soahm’s. She reached the mouth of the cave, darkness swallowing her up, safety wrapping its arms around her as she disturbed the domain of the dead.
She turned in time to see Soahm hit the sand. For a moment, her panic cleared at the sight of him, his crutch discarded, his hand reaching for her.
But fear snapped its angry jaws, freezing Sonara in place as her entire body shook. Soahm sruggled to his feet, then cried out in pain again.
He was crawling now, his leg splayed at an awkward angle behind her.
“Sonara!”
She saw his lips move, forming her name. But she could not hear him over the screeching of the metal beast in the sky.
She took a step forward, her whole body so seized in fear that her legs felt leaden.
Another step. She could do this. She could save Soahm. She reached out her hand, leaving the shadows just as a beam of blue light erupted from the belly of the beast. It surrounded Soahm, lifting him from the sand. He screamed and thrashed, trying to escape, but he was powerless to the beam’s hold, as if it were some dark, powerful magic. His arms stretched, his amulet dangling from his tunic, shining in the beam as the beast’s great metal belly yawned wide, pulling him inside before slamming back shut.
Soahm was gone.
The floor beneath the Queen’s dais was bathed in blood.
It was a cool night, steam still rising from the rivers of crimson that had pooled between the pearlescent green tiles. They came to a stop at the edge of the throne room, where rows of soldiers stood guard, swords and spears in hand. Behind them, a thick crowd stood watching the public trial.
All had been called to file in, to boo and jeer and stomp their feet as Queen Iridis charged the Bastard Girl of Soreia with the murder of the crown prince.
“You will never shed your filth on this kingdom again,” Iridis said. She lifted a hand in command. Another lash of the whip followed. The sharpened prongs tore Sonara’s skin away in bleeding chunks, dragging through muscle down to bone. “You will spend the rest of your days wandering the planet alone like the bastard you were born as.”
“I didn’t kill the prince!” Sonara screamed. She hardly recognized her own voice, as if her vocal cords had been ripped to shreds with each scream following the lash of the whip.
The crowd began to boo, spitting as they stared at Sonara with disgust in their eyes. The skin on her back was torn to ribbons; the blood that was half-Soahm’s pooling around her body. Gone. Soahm was gone.
Some, watching from the sides, held hands to their faces, horrified as the Queen’s guard slung the whip again. Blood and bits of flesh rained upon the floor.
But they hadn’t uttered a word in her defense. Nothing to lay claim to the fact that they might have seen the great metal beast falling from the sky, lighting up the night like a beacon before it took Soahm.
Sonara hadn’t known true pain, hadn’t known agony, until this moment. She became only the rush of hot blood running down her back, knew only the wicked kiss of the whip as it feasted on her skin.
How many times would her mother order her flayed? How many strokes of that whip would she endure, before death stole her away?
It was a mercy she would have begged for, had she the strength to utter the words.
She’d come to the castle last night to save him. She’d ridden from that hellish beach as fast as Duran could carry them both. She’d burst through the gates, his hooves pounding across the cobbles like a war drum, not caring about the citizens diving out of the way, or the soldiers standing guard, the weapons they’d pointed as they’d commanded her to halt.
Nothing else mattered, for the crown prince was gone.
Up, and away, into the silent skies, as if he’d never existed at all.
Beneath the moon, Sonara had pleaded with the guards to wake her mother, and by the grace of the goddesses, the queen had come, wrapped in robes, her face gaunt as she listened to Sonara sob the truth of Soahm’s taking.
Iridis hadn’t believed her.
She’d placed the blame of Soahm’s disappearance upon Sonara, refusing to believe her tall tale of a great metal beast soaring down from the night skies.
Now, Sonara lay dying,
“He was my firstborn. The heir to the Soreian throne,” the queen said. She stood atop the dais, her voice ringing out across the throne room, sickeningly calm. “You killed him. For that, you will die.”
The whip came down again.
“Bastard!” the crowd shouted. “The Bastard Girl of Soreia!”
Another lash.
“You have no name,” the queen said.
Skin, torn away from Sonara’s muscles.
“You have no kingdom.”
Muscles, torn away from her bones.
And then the sentence came.
“Tonight,” the queen said, as silence swept across the throne room, “you will die.”
In her mind, Sonara escaped to thoughts of the girl Soahm had once spoken of: the She-Devil, the dream she should have grabbed ahold of when they’d thought it up together in the stables. She should have run far, far away.
Her other half-siblings, the princes and princesses of Soreia, stood with their arms crossed on the dais, the fringes of their robes flecked with her blood. They watched, unwavering as their mother beat Sonara to the end of breathing.
They left just enough life in her to perform the Leaping.
At dusk, Sonara was placed on an open wagon and carted to the edge of the kingdom in full view, so that the watching crowd could gaze upon the fate of a kingdom’s traitor.
They gathered and grew and followed to the edge of Cradle’s Cliff. It towered so high the clouds kissed it, moistened the earth like it had been covered in a blanket of winter’s breath. The ocean raged against the rocks below, sea-spray erupting in the air where it was picked up by the wind.
The salt air stung as it landed on Sonara’s open back. Her vision flitted from dark to light as the cart wheels groaned to a stop, and strong hands lifted her ruined body.
She could scarcely
hold open her eyes as the crowd chanted.
But one sound broke above it all.
A cry. A mighty, beastly screech that forced her eyes open.
Duran.
Her heart sank. There he was, the beast that had become hers, fighting for freedom at the edge of the cliff. Two trainers held a rope, their feet scrambling for purchase against the moist earth as Duran reared and threw his mighty head about, trying in vain to escape.
They made her watch as they bound him, man by man, ropes on his legs, ropes slung around his strong neck. His red eyes were ablaze, sides heaving as he stood there, a captive.
He was hers.
And that made him as good as dead.
Fight, Sonara wanted to tell him, as she was lifted from the cart by strong soldier hands. She hung between two men as they dragged her towards Duran, feet scraping the earth. Oh, goddesses, just keep fighting.
But in her presence, at her touch, the mighty steed calmed. He allowed Sonara to be placed upon him, those very ropes used to bind them both together as the guards slung her on his back.
She knew this death: the Leaping.
A death reserved for a traitor. A coward. A deserter, tied to the back of their own steed, forced to ride over the edge of the abyss.
The crowd cheered, as Sonara slumped forward on Duran. They made a path, two sides that closed in, the nearer they got to the edge.
“Over the edge,” the queen said. “To a death that has no peace. No silence. No end.”
The trainers released the ropes, cracking the whip over Duran’s back as they commanded him forward.
His nostrils flared. But he steeled himself and did not move.
“Again,” the queen commanded. The tips of her blue braids danced in the wind, mirroring her cold blue eyes. Soahm’s eyes.
The whip cracked again, doubly as hard. Duran screamed as his skin split open. But still, he held his ground.
Tears streamed down Sonara’s cheeks. She had only enough strength to utter a plea. “Just me.”
But the queen only lifted her hand again, and the guards brought down the whip once more.
Duran finally took a step forward.
“Fight against them,” Sonara thought to him. With everything in her, she wished he could hear her words, could take comfort in her presence. “Don’t let it end like this.”
Another step. This one a lurch as Duran sidestepped, another lash open on his side. The motion sent pain rocketing into Sonara’s body, the wind howling, the cold salt spray like a knife reopening her wounds.
Part One
Blood
Chapter 1
TEN YEARS LATER
On board the Starfall
Outskirts of the Milky Way Galaxy
Karr
It took less than twenty-four hours for outer space to claim Karr Kingston as its own. Seventeen hours and forty-three minutes, to be exact.
The problem wasn’t the warp speed at which the Starfall, the fastest ship in Jeb Montforth’s black-market legion of Graters and Streakers, traveled through light-years of space and stars.
It wasn’t even the two MREs Karr had downed right after he woke up on the ship, which could be more or less explained as eating freeze-dried cat, and may not have been one of his prouder moments.
It was the metal walls.
It was the feeling—the reality—of being so damn trapped. Again.
“Not for long,” Karr said, as he fumbled with a stubborn screw on a ruined escape pod in the belly of the Starfall. The pod was an ugly thing, battered and bruised and long since forgotten for flight.
Instead, it had been used all these years as one of hundreds of hiding places on board the massive ship.
The seats inside the pod had been torn open, the stuffing removed and replaced with sealed packages of smuggled drugs. They’d been sewn back together with an unsteady hand, as if a drunken surgeon had been given the job.
Karr sighed as he stared at the mess that would be his escape.
The cosmetics of the pod didn’t bother him. And besides, he wouldn’t have time to worry about the stitching on the seats when he was trying not to crash-land. All Karr cared about was the mechanics, those vital, running bits of the pod’s insides that would hold his life in balance when he strapped himself in and ejected himself from the belly of the Starfall.
Tomorrow, Karr thought. Tomorrow, I’ll get the hell away from here.
That is, if he could keep himself hidden until then. He’d shared plenty of false stories with the crew about his whereabouts, knowing that with their loose lips and watching eyes, he wouldn’t be able to hold the truth off for long. He’d even rigged the locks on the storage bay’s door so that when he was found, they’d have a hell of a time getting through.
The newly formed lump on his forehead throbbed as he thought of the Captain’s wrath. If he was discovered… he’d never make it back to Beta Earth.
Heaven, Karr thought.
Or, at the very least, it had felt like it for the short time he and the rest of the crew had been docked there. Karr had traveled all his life, bounding around from one end of the Milky Way to the other, never staying on any one of its 8.8 billion planets for more than a few weeks at a time.
But Beta Earth?
They had stayed for five blessed months, while his captain was investigated by the Interstellar Trade Corporation for allegedly smuggling and selling illegal goods to black-market collectors across the shadier parts of the galaxy. They had no idea who turned them in for the crime.
Their Interplanetary Exploration license was put on hold, the Starfall was docked indefinitely, and even though it was true, and they were guilty as hell… the Captain had described the entire extended investigation as complete and total spacetrash.
Karr, on the other hand, had been given a gift by association.
“Five months,” he said aloud as he worked with the stubborn screw.
The extended stay on Beta Earth had been enough time for Karr to discover just how much he’d been missing by spending a lifetime in the skies.
It wasn’t entirely his fault. Earth was dying, and had been since 2052. The atmosphere had been torn to shreds, wild seas raged and continents drowned. Food sources had depleted, and people lived on bioengineered crops and pills meant to supplement their systems into survival. Something had gone wrong in the development of the crops along the way.
It had resulted in a disease called RP-53, more commonly dubbed the Reaper’s Disease, for once it came calling, none survived.
Karr’s parents had fled Earth, years ago, to escape the Reaper. Like countless other travelers, they spent their lives working for the ITC, searching other planets in hope of finding some sort of substance that would turn into the miracle cure. Karr was born in the skies, in the Starfall, during that endless search. He’d never had a chance to get to know a home planet.
But Beta Earth had given him that chance. It was new. Alive.
A terraformed wonder that was fresh on the market, only a few years open to residents, and the place where Karr wanted to spend the rest of his days.
The streets of the docking sector on the northern continent were packed with hundreds of thousands, both native and alien, every race and religion and language in the galaxy mixing together like a glorious nebula. The buildings towered on all sides of him as he walked, or took a taxi ship, soaring through rows of blinking traffic lights looming over the city like dying stars, the smoke-filled, drink-laden clubs…
Beta Earth was a place made of adventure.
A destination planet where people came and saw and lived. Where those who hailed from old Earth had a chance to start anew.
It was on Beta that Karr had also discovered freedom.
For once, he could get away from the Captain of the Starfall and decide for his own damned self what he wanted to do, when he wanted to do it.
The Captain ran his crew like a pocketful of straight-backed soldiers, and Karr was always first to feel the burn.
/> Stand taller, Karr.
Polish your boots, Karr.
Go back and do it right, before you spend the rest of your time in the brig.
His personal favorite?
Shut your rutting mouth, before I eject you out the crapper tube, Karr.
Perhaps it was his age. Perhaps it was his attitude.
But when the sudden announcement was made that the Starfall was miraculously cleared, not a single bit of the drugs that lined the interior walls of the ship discovered, their pilot’s license renewed to head back out into the depths of outer space… Karr did what every crew member wished they could do when they were sick of the rules and the grueling schedule.
He’d thrown a complete and total fit.
He might have burst into Jeb’s holo bar, a recent purchase in the shadiest borough of the north continent, where black-market smugglers, pirates and privateers drank until the day’s end. Karr had stumbled inside with whiskey on his breath and a hell of a hangover already on its way.
He’d gone right up to Jeb before anyone could stop him, shoved the drinks on the table aside, and planned to give him a piece of his mind.
I’m not going back on that damned ship, he’d started, though the words came out slurred and uneven.
The last thing he saw was Jeb’s wicked half-smile, before someone cracked him over the head with the butt of his own Hammer rifle.
He’d awoken in his own cabin on the Starfall, the doors jammed from the outside. A trick he’d learned how to bypass, though it had taken quite some time with the hangover muddling his thoughts. He’d snuck his way through the ship, down to the storage bay, where he now sat.
And the damned lump on his head wouldn’t stop throbbing.
All his life, Karr had done things without thinking of the consequences. It was what made good explorers, but even better thieves. Only this time, he wished he’d stopped for one second.
He wished he’d actually presented the Captain with something concrete before trying to make a stand against Jeb. Like, for instance, a completed application for the art school that he’d discovered during his stay, mere blocks away from the very bar where everything had gone to hell in a puke puddle.
Blood Metal Bone: An epic new fantasy novel, perfect for fans of Leigh Bardugo Page 3
