Unconquerable Sun

by Elliott, Kate

  Enough. Time for contemplation later.

  She piggybacked on the ring network to look through Alika’s eyes. He was halfway through a tour de force rendition of a dramatic narrative song describing the last voyage of a courier ship caught in the great beacon collapse of eight hundred years ago, how the ship had tried to outrace the failing beacons as they shut down one by one like lights switching off, and how in the end it had become caught in the Gap, never to be seen again.

  The epic would keep the crowd busy for long enough.

  She limped down the length of the nave to Persephone and Zizou. The altar cloth had been tossed aside in favor of a leather blindfold binding his eyes. Zizou was lying facedown on the floor. Persephone knelt beside him, stroking his short black hair as if unaware she was doing so.

  “He’s awake,” said Sun, reading the twitch of his feet and the hitch in his breathing.

  Persephone pulled her hand away but let it settle on her knee, near his head.

  “I’m sorry about the ring, Your Highness,” said Zizou. “The Rider took it from me. Is it true what she said?”

  “What did the Rider say?”

  “That the Phene buy soldiers from the banner fleets. That we’re nothing more than tools to be bought and sold. That we’re the excess baggage the wheelships don’t have resources to support. That’s why none of us return. Not because we die with honor but because we’re made to fight until we die whether we chose that path or not.”

  “You aren’t any of those things,” said Persephone. Her fingers brushed his mouth as if to peel away words she wished he hadn’t felt he had to say.

  “Where did you find that handy blindfold for his eyes?” Sun asked.

  Persephone gave a one-shoulder shrug, as if to brush off the comment. More to the point, she blushed, which was interesting since Sun had not taken her for the blushing kind, although she definitely struck Sun as the kind who would become dramatically infatuated with a handsome enemy who’d tried to kill her.

  Voices sounded from the portico. James ducked in through the hole in the door.

  He swept his cap off his head as a form of respect as he looked around the nave with a spritely gaze. “I miss all the fun!”

  “There’s more fun to be had. You’re on Alika duty until I say otherwise.”

  “Sun!”

  “Do it.”

  He twisted his cap askew to make sure she fully grasped the intensity of his distaste for the assignment, and slouched out. After he left her father ducked in and, taking a noble stance, surveyed the situation with his usual critical eye.

  “How many survived?” he asked without greeting or preamble.

  “Two of the consoles—”

  “What do I care for the consoles? Lives cannot be replaced.”

  “Three of fourteen were green when I left. Hetty stayed back with two medics. It happened so fast so I don’t know the extent of the damage, but she might have been able to revive some of the others.”

  “Well, I’ll soon know the full toll.” He looked at Persephone, frowned, then indicated the banner soldier on the floor. “Is this Zizou? It’s an honorable name among the people. Elegance with precision. Why was he not confined in a lifepod?”

  “He’s the anomaly,” said Sun. “There’s a whole other layer of engineering on him. I’m turning him over to you with the surviving subjects to continue your study.”

  “If Zizou agrees,” said Persephone sharply. Definitely infatuated.

  “He’ll agree, because I’m a Royal telling him to agree,” said Sun in her best attempt at a patient voice. “Prince João will find a securer venue in which to do research, will you not, Father? A venue that even Queen-Marshal Eirene doesn’t know about and thus can’t betray through careless pillow talk.”

  Her father said, “Eirene has to know. I need funding, and I need her to owe me. You need her to owe me too, a reminder of how valuable we are to her.”

  “We,” murmured Sun.

  “You can be supplanted by another heir, Sun. Or have you forgotten your tantrum at the wedding banquet?”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “How do you think I know about it? I know how to survive. I wonder about you when you give way to your anger in such an undisciplined manner.”

  “You’re the one who taught me we can’t just let them insult us and do nothing. Honor and respect is stripped from the one who makes no protest.”

  “Mmm. Well. You’re wounded and clearly running on fumes. I insist you sit down and have the injury looked at. If you don’t take care of yourself you’ll collapse one day and have only yourself to blame for it. Where is Hestia Hope?”

  “On a mission, fetching the other part of your new research mission, the one you absolutely must keep secret from my mother.”

  “That’s simple enough if she has the banner soldier project taking up the front of the stage, the one that will clearly benefit her war effort. What is this other project?”

  “Easier to see than to explain.” She pressed the ring into Zizou’s hand. “Zizou, I’m giving this back to you.”

  “If—” interposed Persephone in her annoying way.

  “If you want it,” said Sun.

  But she knew what Zizou would do. Obedient to tradition, to his banner, and to his upbringing, he slipped on the ring.

  “Zizou, you’ll be leaving with my father as soon as the others return. Stay here to guard the door. Allow only my Companions and those they escort inside. Father, accompany me, if you will.”

  He walked beside her down the nave toward the apse. Her leg was really starting to hurt. They both glanced back as Persephone rose and, quite unnecessarily, took hold of Zizou’s hand to help him to his feet. Their faces were so close, almost touching, rapt and anticipatory, as if proximity had come to them as a fresh language never known to any other individuals in the long history of humankind. It made her remember the first time she had kissed Hetty.

  Turning away, Sun said, “Give them some privacy. Did you see our Idol Faire rating?”

  “Why aren’t you in first place?”

  “We will be.” She pinged James. His feed gave her a view of the plaza, the crowd singing along with the proper responses, his cap being waved.

  THIS IS FUN FUN FUN, he pinged. I HOPE YOU HAVE MORE FUN IN STORE FOR ME.

  “Just you wait,” she answered, and her father said, “What?”

  “James being James.”

  “Don’t trust his brother Anas. He’s too ambitious. In fact, don’t trust Zàofù or any of that grasping Samtarras family. Did I mention Zàofù is almost certainly the one behind the plot to throw Eirene and Manea together? He probably put Moira Lee up to it, not that Moira can’t be ambitious on her own count, given her history—”

  “Could we just sit, Father?”

  His glance was narrow-eyed, chiding, but he sat on a bench beneath the eyes of the twins, and she sat next to him. For a mercy, he did not give his usual lecture about what she could have should have would have done, the endless litany she couldn’t imagine growing up without: her father’s scolding and pushing and her mother’s testing and competing. Yet his presence brought comfort, for she never doubted even in her darkest moment that he had her back.

  At last the others returned. Sun felt Hetty’s arrival in the lightening of her heart, in the smile that lifted her mouth unbidden.

  Prince João watched the group approach down the length of the nave. In a low voice he remarked, “Hestia Hope always manages to accomplish exactly what you ask of her with no fuss, no bother, and with a full comprehension of your aims. I had reservations when Hope House insisted she return as your Companion after her father died, but I am satisfied with the situation now.”

  Sun glanced sharply at him, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

  “But remember, part of a queen-marshal’s duty is marriage, which brings useful alliances and resources to the republic. You can’t marry one of your own Companions, much less one who is half Yele a
nd from a minor branch of the House.”

  “Father—!”

  “Not now.” To show he expected no reply and no argument, he crossed his legs and clasped his hands in his lap.

  In an odd way, the comment eased her. He’d guessed, or seen, and he was just warning her about what she already knew. Anyway, there was nothing she could do about it now. There were more urgent matters to deal with, specifically the family clustered around Tiana that had come to a halt before her and her father.

  The boy, Kaspar, was nervous because his parents were terrified, but he was also beside himself with exhilaration and curiosity to see a world so long denied. He kept staring around, fidgeting and twisting as he tried to take in every painted statue and handmade flower wreath laid as an offering. The parents stood stoic and frowning.

  Sun rose.

  “Corporal Vontae Yáo Alaksu, you are under my command now. You’ll be promoted to captain. You and your family will join my household and receive the benefits thereof. I know you’ll serve me well. Do you understand?”

  Tiana’s father understood, although his partner, Nanea kin Kavan, struggled to hold back tears.

  Sun addressed her separately. “You have done well to rescue the child from the fate that awaits him in the Phene Empire. It’s in my interest to protect him and keep him alive.”

  “Yes, Your Highness. But this task you are wanting him to complete … this curtain … it will reveal his existence to them. We have managed for so long, since his very birth, to conceal him.”

  “In choosing to hide him for all these years you have already made him a hostage to fortune. Better you come under my protection because I will allow you to stay together. Prince João will escort you to a place of safety. The Phene can’t manage another raid into Chaonian territory anytime soon, not with their forces in such disarray.”

  The parents wanted to protest, and Sun respected them for that, but they looked to Tiana. She made a sign Sun could not read but that was known to them, and so they kept silent. Of course they did. The matter had been settled the moment Sun realized what the boy was. She escorted him to the shimmering curtain that shielded the apse. He pulled off the knit cap, which had a silk lining sewn inside.

  He had tufts of hair atop his head like a crest, but the back of the skull was as bare as his own face. The eyes of his riding face were closed, the lips sleepy, the expression lax, the whole face shriveled and sunken like an atrophied muscle.

  “Both sets of eyes must be open,” said Sun. “Is it always in this stupor?”

  “I hope so,” said Vontae sharply. “It’s an evil thing that the boy never deserved.”

  “Riders aren’t evil,” said Sun. “They are what they are. Kaspar, do you ever speak to it?”

  He shook his head, looking frightened now that he was exposed, that so many people were staring not at him but at the part of him his parents had caused him to hide for all these years, the shameful, dangerous part. “Sometimes it whispers, trying to get my attention,” he said softly. He grasped his mother’s hand. “But I never say anything back, and it can’t get into my mind. If it could, it would have found me.”

  “But you see what it sees, what the other Riders see, don’t you? That’s where your paintings come from. From their eyes.”

  Tiana kneels before her brother, grasping his other hand. “Do it, Kas. You have to, and it will be better later. The princess will take care of you and Ma and Dad. It will be better, I promise you.” As she finished she shot Sun a glare whose bitterness would wither the strength of any soul but Sun’s.

  “Wake it up and step into the curtain.” Sun clapped her hands, the resonant sound startling everyone.

  The sleepy eyes opened with a look of confusion.

  Kas grimaced as if in struggle. A tear slipped from one eye. With a forceful exhalation he released his mother’s hand and, still as if fighting for control of his own limbs, sidestepped into the shimmering curtain. The shimmer did not part so much as absorb his presence. The riding face seemed to gain form and sharpen as its gaze flicked from side to side, trying to absorb where and what it was. Who it was. Trying to fully wake up.

  “No,” said Kas, to himself. Beneath his loose, heavy tunic, his stout torso shifted, angling to either side like elbows sticking out. Of course his parents would conceal his second pair of arms by binding them against his torso.

  The shimmering curtain vanished as his paired faces unlocked the circuit.

  The floor clicked, and the cylindrical lifepod rose.

  Sun held out the knit cap. The boy snatched it. A struggle ensued, his hands jerking back and forth as he tried to raise the cap to his head while being stymied in a way that reminded her of Zizou struggling against the leash. Then he hissed with a spark of rage and snatched the cap down over his head, covering the riding face.

  At once he fell forward to hands and knees, weeping. His mother gathered him against her. The lifepod clunked into place and opened, revealing the stasis couch in which lay the wounded and unconscious Rider. Isis and Hetty moved at once to unmoor the lifepod. With the help of Tiana and her father, they carried it out of the apse. Prince João grabbed the wand just before the energy curtain re-formed.

  Victory.

  “Father, James has arranged transport for you. Wait until we’ve drawn off the crowd.”

  She pinged James and Alika. COMING NOW. I WANT EVERY PERSON AND WASP ON THE PLAZA AND EVERY EYE ON CHANNEL IDOL TO LOOK MY WAY WHEN I WALK OUT OF THE BASILICA WITH A CAPTURED RIDER IN MY CUSTODY. GIVE IT FLAIR.

  47

  The Space They Stand in Is So Vast

  Persephone Lee had offered a hand to help Zizou up, although he doesn’t need any aid even with a blindfold on. Once standing he cannot quite bring himself to release her hand. He isn’t sure why he leans toward her, not boldly but with a sigh of relief. It is all the invitation she needs. She puts her arms around him, and they stand like that, mostly alone except for a murmur of voices from the far end of the basilica. The scent of flowers and incense drifts on the air, reminding him of home.

  Was his grandmother proud of him when she signed off on his departure, when she declaimed the traditional poems in his honor at the leave-taking promenade? “Let those we leave behind remember us in the days to come.”

  Or was she just glad to get rid of him so she would have enough food to eat and air to breathe? Did she choose him specifically from among her grandchildren to trade away? Had she ever truly loved him? What does honor mean if it is just a word used as currency in trade?

  The whole universe could be a lie, a twist in the maze of Lady Chaos, a trap that’s devoured him. So he holds on to Persephone Lee, and he lets her hold on to him, because she’s warm and right and that at least is something he can embrace.

  “I don’t know what I am anymore,” he says.

  “What do you mean, Zizou?” Her pronunciation is off, but his battle name sounds sweet that way. It’s easier to speak because he can’t see her face, because he took everything at face value before, and now he has to find a way forward without the landmarks he’s always recognized.

  “I was so proud to be chosen. I worked so hard to be worthy. We were always told we were valued allies of the Phene, but it was never true. Our own families sell us off like trash they have no more room for. And the Phene use us up and throw us out.”

  Her chest rises and falls against his torso, the press of her body and her heat as ardent as her anger. “You haven’t changed. You’ve just discovered the truth.”

  “Is this the truth?” he asks bitterly. He thinks of his squad. Did they survive or were they easy to discard, being of no more use to anyone?

  “Do any of us know the truth? Probably not.” Her head rests against his shoulder. Her breath is a soft measure along the bare skin of his neck. “I guess the truth can change us, or maybe it just helps us understand where we stand.”

  “What if there is no truth? Just discord and confusion?”

  “As long as you have people
you can trust, you have ground to stand on.” She coughs. Her flinch of pain strikes him like a wound to the heart.

  “I hurt you, Persephone Lee.”

  “No.” She coughs again, squeezes a hand up between their bodies to rub at her throat. “No, you didn’t hurt me. They hurt me. They want you to think you are master of your own fate, because it gives you the illusion of control, and that feeds their purpose. But they controlled you. I won’t blame you for the attacks on me. That’s on them. Do you understand?”

  He sighs.

  “Zizou, you have a choice.”

  “What choice is that?” He tenses.

  “If you want to go home I’ll find a way to get you out of here.”

  “War is my home now.”

  “Is that what you want?”

  “It’s what I trained for. It’s my purpose.”

  “It’s the purpose they want you to have.” The space they stand in is vast, and no one stands near them, but she keeps her voice low, secretive, intimate. “Do you want to go with Prince João?”

  “I have to go with him. He is a Royal. So is Princess Sun. I will do as they command.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I mean, do you want to see if this leash can be taken off you? So the Phene can never again compel you to do anything against your will.”

  “What they do to the banner soldiers under their care is wrong,” he agrees. “I am not a puppet. I am an honorable man.”

  Cautiously he tips his head just enough to rest against the top of her hair. He could stand here forever, like this, but he’s also a little embarrassed because he’s starting to feel aroused by their closeness and by the way her hand strokes his back in a manner perhaps meant to be soothing or perhaps meant as a caress. She can certainly perceive the changing contours of his body—she’s pressed close enough, that’s for sure—but she doesn’t pull away.