Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  She shades her own eyes to follow my gaze. “Wow.”

  Wind feathers the waves. Now and again the gold-frilled spine of one of the huge leviathans we call a wave-swallowing charybdis pokes above the surface. Generator towers stand in clusters, water churning around them. We are speeding toward one of the seven atolls dropped like spores into a half circle across the vast bay: the islands owned by the Core Houses who provide the ministers for the ruler’s council, the marshals for the Fleet and the Guard, and the Royal Companions for the rulers themselves. It’s an old tradition borrowed from the lost Celestial Empire: eight noble houses rule the lives and destinies of everything in the heavens.

  Especially that of a wayward, rebellious child.

  My bravado is starting to wear thin. Words die in my throat as Lee House’s island compound comes into view and the aircar banks toward the landing field. The island forms an irregular oval encircled by a wide reef. Its buildings and gardens in their turn encircle a large central lagoon—public pavilions like the audience hall, the banquet hall, the receiving halls, and the tribunal cluster at the southern, narrower end of the island, built three meters above sea level along a boardwalk that looks over the lagoon. Extensive residences and service buildings crowd the broader, rockier northern end. Everything faces inward. For all its wealth and glamour, Lee House is a fortress ringed with a cliff-like exterior wall, glowering spotlights, and stun cannons. Once you’ve walked in and the gates have closed behind you, they won’t let you out.

  “Wow, that’s imposing. You nervous too?” The sympathy in the twist of Ti’s lips chokes me up.

  “Yeah. I’m nervous.”

  As we skim low I notice both the visitor and family hangars are full. We put down at the service entrance amid tight ranks of delivery aircars and a double column of armored military vans marked with the sunburst of the royal house.

  The presence of royal vehicles worries me so much I don’t at first respond when the door whirs open. “Please allow me to inform you that we have successfully arrived at our destination.”

  Ti grabs her duffel and heads out ahead of me. Protocol dictates I go first, as an honorable of the house, but of course she thinks I’m a newly hired bodyguard. As citizens in the republic we are equal under the law, while within the umbra of the royal administration a cee-cee outranks a bodyguard.

  I grab my duffel and hurry down the steps to the pristine ceramic pavement. Out of sight, around the curve of the car, a familiar voice speaks.

  “Peace be upon you. I am Abdul-Lee Kadmos Rèn Aljiu, your chatelaine and supervisor—that is, if you are Citizen Tiana Yáo Alaksu?”

  “And upon you peace, Citizen. I am she. I am reporting to fulfill the terms of my contract.”

  “Very good. I thought … but never mind. If you will come this way…”

  I step into view. His politely bland expression cracks into a grin. As quickly as I see it, the smile vanishes and he becomes the outwardly solemn teacher who was my tutor for nine years. He raises a hand, fore- and middle finger pointed toward the heavens, our old signal for silence.

  “Citizen Tiana, I see you have met the Honorable Persephone Lee. You both will come with me. The schedule has been moved up, and there isn’t much time.”

  As Kadmos heads toward the hexagonal gate that leads into the service wing, Ti’s gaze fixes on me with narrow-eyed accusation. Her lips pinch together as she gives me a wrinkled-up scrunchy face. Then she recalls herself as she truly takes in who I am.

  “Honored Persephone, please allow me to apologize for any discourtesy I showed you in the depths of my ignorance,” she murmurs, sarcasm a layer of sickly sweet syrup coating her tone.

  “It’s Perse. Please. I meant what I said.” I start after Kadmos.

  Ti lengthens her stride to catch up. “You’re the girl in Anders’s story, aren’t you?”

  “His complaint is fair. After my sister died my family made it clear I wouldn’t be allowed to join the military and would have to take my place in the business of Lee House. Let’s just say I’m not interested in being groomed to join a family tradition of spying, torture, and extrajudicial murder. The blind admissions process for CeDCA was my way out.”

  “Yet here you are.” She gives me a side-eye glance worthy of a master, and it makes me smile because in a funny way it feels like a peace offering.

  “Yeah. Here I am. And here you are. One girl’s disaster is another girl’s delight.”

  “Wah! I am just here for work, no delight intended.” She glances around, then grabs my wrist and pulls me to a stop, leans close, whispers, “Extrajudicial murder? Is that really true?”

  In that instant I know in the depths of my stony, untrusting heart that I hope we can become friends, and I couldn’t even tell you why. So I kiss her on the cheek like kinfolk greeting.

  “Cameras and listening ears everywhere,” I murmur into her ear.

  She releases my wrist and steps back with a nudge against my hip to alert me.

  Over to our right, the hatch of a military van pops open. A file of guards push out a display cage with glass walls as if they’re transporting a valuable piece of art. Equipped with a hoverboard base, the cage glides a handbreadth above the ground.

  A young man stands in the cage, arms akimbo, elbows brushing either side and face a handbreadth from the glass because there’s no room for him to turn around. He’s wearing dark green trousers and nothing else except a metal sheen of circuitry drawing patterns like elaborate tattoos over his honed chest and arms and his tawny, beardless face. He looks like energy held on a leash. Heat on legs. Let’s be real. If he were a cadet in one of the other fifth-year cohorts, I’d have been hanging out at his playing field every night.

  But he isn’t a cadet. He isn’t even Chaonian. I can’t help but hiss a little, as an audience in a theater will do when a villain walks onto the stage.

  Ti slaps a hand to her chest. “Is that a banner soldier? I thought they couldn’t be captured alive. You must never look them in the eye because they are programmed to be predators and will imprint on you as prey.”

  He sees us. Sees me. His whole body shudders like he’s trying to break out of a thousand ropes binding him taut. He slams a shoulder so hard to the right that the hover platform rocks. Immediately one of the guards jabs a prod through a small hole in the cage and presses it into the prisoner’s back. Both Ti and I flinch and then swallow as a cascading pressure change disturbs our ears. The prisoner sags, although he doesn’t drop. Percussion echo is the only known counter to a Gatoi soldier in full flood—it’s a means of disrupting the neural flow—but it has a low rate of success in battle because it has to be applied to bare flesh.

  Now rendered unable to move or gesture he nevertheless keeps his gaze fixed on me as the cage hovers toward the security hangar with its escort of eight guards. His eyes gleam; they actually gleam a sullen, oily amber like they are conducting energy. His stare challenges me, and of course I don’t back down or look away. I couldn’t even if I wanted to, and I don’t want to.

  Only when the cage, and the man, vanish can I tear my eyes away. My heart is pounding and my cheeks are flushed. “You have bad taste in crushes, Perse,” Solomon would mock, and then I’d have to punch his arm and hurt my hand as I’d feebly retort that looking isn’t crushing.

  Ti interrupts my scattered thoughts in a voice rough with anger. “My father fought in the campaign at Kanesh. He came back with an arm missing. Said a Gatoi fighter tore it off. Literally tore it off.”

  “I’m sorry.” I swallow, shaking off the intensity of the moment as I recover my voice. “That’s rough. I adored my sister Resh. I used to follow her around when she was home on leave. She was the best thing in my life when I was a kid.”

  “The eight-times-worthy hero Captain the Honorable Ereshkigal Lee, savior of the Second Fleet,” Ti murmurs. “When I was younger and played War Against the Phene we all used to fight over who got to be her.”

  She squeezes my hand, and I squee
ze back in solidarity and in thanks.

  “Girls! Hurry!”

  Ahead of us Kadmos uses his retinal signature to key open a hexagonal gate. It’s a relief to leave behind the courtyard with its unexpected glimpse of a captured Gatoi berserker. We follow my old tutor down a lane flanked by carpentry and repair shops and warehouses. He halts in front of a round gate and waits for us to catch up.

  Addressing Ti, he says, “Round gates indicate egress into the private residential areas. Hexagonal gates are present in all the service areas. Square gates are for Lee House security only. The audience hall and temple have octagonal gates. That’s your first lesson. Now come along. We have only one hour before we have to be in the main hall.”

  “Kadmos, we saw a Gatoi prisoner. Is he here to be interrogated? How was he captured?”

  He steps through the gate without answering me. His back is stiff, the way he would stand when his teaching was being observed by my father or aunt. His posture gives me a message, but it’s the unexpected appearance of his schoolroom avatar that surprises me: a shiny gold blinking in my field of vision. Lee House students are given a private comm-link to their tutors to keep study chatter out of the main Lee network. I’d thought my family would have closed mine down, but evidently my departure four years and nine months ago was so abrupt they didn’t bother, or else they knew they would drag me back eventually.

  On the comm-link a three-finger signal for silence appears in a flash of alarm red before winking out. Kadmos doesn’t look back, but I’ve gotten the message. Instead of impatiently repeating my questions I follow in silence.

  As we walk down the old familiar lane with two-story residential buildings on each side I notice the usual décor of red lanterns and potted dwarf elm and pine trees has been embellished with troughs of white carnations and wreaths of white irises on every door. White streamers hang from all the upstairs balconies.

  I exchange a worried glance with Ti. The crowded hangars, the Gatoi prisoner, and the mourning embellishments all point to a blend of victory and disaster, news my family hasn’t bothered to let me know beforehand and has, in fact, taken some pains to conceal from me.

  Kadmos takes us not to the children’s wing but to an apartment door along the lane given over to living quarters of the unmarried adults of the family, anyone twenty or older. He ushers us into a small reception room so precisely furnished with three chairs, a couch, and a side table for refreshments that it feels like a stage set. The back sitting room looks over an interior garden. We don’t have time to glimpse more than magnolia in bloom before we are herded up a flight of stairs to a bedroom suite. A white-haired woman wearing the high-collared uniform of my father’s interrogation division awaits us. She’s accompanied by two racks of clothing in various styles, the fabrics in shades from white to ivory to pearl.

  White is the color of death.

  A sick fear boils up in my belly, burning at the back of my throat.

  “Who’s dead, Kadmos?” I demand.

  The woman taps her ear as a signal to someone who isn’t here, someone she is communicating with.

  Kadmos presses his palms together, gives a curt bow, and withdraws.

  “Who died?” I ask again, shaking because I realize the woman is not going to tell me. Maybe her tongue is frozen so she can’t talk, or maybe everyone is under orders not to converse with me like the way my mother got tired of me beating her at chess so she made me play blindfolded while claiming she was doing it to help me improve.

  All the torqued-up anger and resentment uncoils in a burst.

  “Tell me who died!”

  The agent blinks. That’s all.

  Ti glides forward like a doll brought to life, her movements fluid and graceful as she flips through the rack of clothing, assaying each outfit and then assaying me.

  “Honored Persephone, give me a moment … Let’s find a decent outfit. No, too busy, whoever thought of you in bows and ribbons? Zut! No one wears scalloped sleeves! Oh, dear, this has a sallow tinge that will look awful on any complexion—what were they thinking? Here, this classic uniform jacket style will suit you best.”

  “Bland like me,” I mutter.

  Her eyelids flicker with a suppressed emotion, but instead of replying she indicates double doors that lead into a spacious dressing room. “Citizen, I will assist the Honorable Persephone into her garments in the privacy of the other room.”

  The agent raises a hand, and the doors into the dressing room slide closed and click shut so we can’t leave. Footfalls scuff the stairs, a tread like the ascent of doom. My hands clench. With the outfit draped over her arm, Ti turns to face the entry. A twitch of apprehension flattens her lips before she controls it and fixes an unobjectionable smile on her beautiful face.

  The man who walks in wears a formal mourning robe, the splendor of his dress matched only by its elegance. Each accessory is a subtly gradated shade of white: his belt, the braided trim at the hem and sleeves, even his tassels. The fabric shines like light, so blinding that Ti flinches, averting her eyes. I deploy the nictating membrane built into my eyes to cut the glare.

  Of course I bow. He’s my father.

  But as I straighten up, anger takes hold of my tongue.

  “Who is dead?” I demand.

  “No greeting, beloved daughter? No affectionate words for your father after our long separation?”

  My father is a seer of Iros. Born with eyes blind to the visible spectrum, he sees heat and lies.

  “Respected Sir.” I bow again, even though it’s not necessary. “I’m not glad to be home, or to see you, if that’s what you mean.”

  He nods gravely, acknowledging the truth of my words and not offended because unlike my mother he is no hypocrite. His seer’s gaze examines Ti. What he seeks I don’t know, except that her physical beauty can mean nothing to him.

  “You are Persephone’s new companion?”

  “I am, Your Honor.” She gives the exact forty-five degrees of bow proper to a citizen meeting a foreign dignitary who is also a high government official because of his marriage into a Chaonian Core House.

  I interrupt. “I thought she was for Perseus.”

  His attention returns to me. I take an involuntary step back.

  “Your brother is dead.”

  Dead. The word makes no sense. “Percy…”

  “Is dead,” he repeats.

  “But I just saw him ten days ago … he was on Channel Idol. He was just on Channel Idol swimming on Molossia Prime. The ocean looked really beautiful…” My voice fails.

  “That’s where it happened,” he says. “Ten days ago.”

  Ti stares at the tableau made by me and my father as at a speech being given in a language she doesn’t understand.

  “Did you know?” I ask her. “It would be all over the news.”

  She shakes her head, thrown off-balance for once. “No news of this tragic death has been announced on Channel Idol. No wonder my hiring and departure happened so fast.”

  “Why hasn’t it been on the news?” I say to my father. My hands have started to sweat. He doesn’t answer, which means he won’t answer or thinks I ought to already have figured it out. I add, “Duke was there too.”

  “Duke too,” he says without a flicker of emotion. “It was an unfortunate accident. Of course legally Perseus no longer belongs to our household. Thus we are not legally responsible for the mourning rites. But naturally we mourn. Your mother asked for you.”

  “For me?” I can think of few things that would please me less, nor do I have any reason to think my mother wants me except as a passive receptacle into which she can pour her manifold complaints.

  “She insists that she, I, and you observe the old Chaonian tradition of one hundred days of austerity. The altar room has been set up with a memorial for—”

  He blinks, breaking off, and steps to one side to listen to an incoming message. By the twist of his mouth the news displeases him. But he is a seer, trained in a rigorous discipline, an
d cools any spark of anger as he turns his attention back to me.

  I take another step back, reach out, and find Tiana’s hand. When her fingers close around mine it surprises me how much comfort I take from her grasp.

  “A change of plans,” he says. “As soon as you garb yourself in appropriate clothing you will be escorted to your new duty station in Scylla Hall.”

  14

  Rule of Sun, Rule One

  Sun lay on her back on a bench, hands linked behind her head, ankles crossed. Her body was resting, but her mind was ablaze as she stared at the blue sky through the transparent dome of Scylla Hall. Upon arrival at Lee House she and her Companions had not been escorted to the banquet hall as she had expected. Instead they had been shown into this hall furnished with a huge sculpture of a five-necked scylla wrapped around a large circular bench carved from staggeringly expensive cherrywood.

  There, for two hours, they waited.

  “Still locked,” announced Isis as she and Wing finished yet another circuit of the five entry passages, all sealed shut.

  “I was completely taken by surprise,” the princess murmured to Hetty, who sat cross-legged on the floor beside her. “That must never happen again.”

  “You must not mumble in these halls, dear Sun.” Hetty tapped the princess’s forearm, then let her fingers linger on skin, luxuriating in the contact. “Lee House will be listening. You know that.”

  “There’s plenty of covering noise.” She tipped her chin to indicate the others.

  Alika had seated himself on one of the wedge-shaped scylla heads, using the astonishing sculpture as a stage on which to play. He was working his way through chord progressions, scales, and arpeggios on the koa ukulele he used on Idol Faire. The clack and shush of bladed fans opening and closing traced Candace’s martial practice around the circular hall. With his cap perched precariously at the back of his head, James hunched over a tablet, his fingers tapping much more noisily than they needed to. Navah crouched over a portable burner preparing a fresh pot of tea. The gurgle of boiling water rose to a whistle.