She moved her hands out to encompass the people crowded together, and a few did turn their heads from side to side, but Zellendine stared forward.
“These are the people who will be the first to step foot on our new planet.”
A small murmur of excitement went up from the crowd, Zellendine and Troylus squeezed each other hands.
“You will be given your assignments regarding your specific spindles in the coming days, the computer will be making the decision regarding who will be assigned to which region.”
“Region?” Troylus asked, the same thing she wanted to know.
“On this planet, like the last, we will have all seven spindles touch down at roughly the same time. Burghs will be set up around the spindles before some of those spindles return to the ship to bring more citizens down to colonize.”
Alara still hadn’t answered the question, everything was standard, as far as the little information shared with everyone when they were young.
“What will be different on this planet, is that it is larger, much more land to settle, and therefore the burghs will be much more spread out.”
“No.” The word came out of Zellendine in a rush of air as if she had been punched.
Troylus reached across himself to grab her hand with both of his.
“It will be unlikely that there will be much travel between the burghs for many years. The computer is taking all of that into consideration as it assigns each of you to your spindle. Obviously, we will ensure that all partners and all families share an assignment.”
People around them were shifting and shuffling, everyone seemed to be as unnerved by the plan as she and Troylus were, but one word kept repeating in her head. Partner.
“Some of the regions we will be settling will require terraforming, in those places the spindle will return to the ship much later, or possibly not at all, and the other spindles will be put to use to transfer those citizens.”
Which region was Zellendine going to be assigned to? Which was Troylus going to be assigned to? She wanted to march up to Alara and force her to tell everyone the most important piece of information. The rest of it was drivel. The important part was the assignments, and it was up to a shit computer that fucked everything up and was murderous? Zellendine inched closer to Troylus’s side and ground her teeth to keep her mouth shut.
“Now, I want to congratulate you all for being part of the initial wave of citizens on our new planet.” Alara clapped her hands and slowly the clapping spread, a few people cheered, and at least one whistled.
But Zellendine kept her hands in Troylus’s, they didn’t move an inch.
The second Alara was done, Zellendine squeezed his hand and let go, darting through the crowd to get to her before she left.
“Alara,” she called, just as the older woman reached the threshold of the door.
But Alara must have heard her, because she stopped and turned to look back at all the people.
Zellendine popped out from between others and Alara’s smile fell from her face.
“How are you?” she asked, no preamble and no small talk, just straight to the point about her tragedy.
“I would be better if I knew anything about a search for who did this to my dad,” she said, which wasn’t the way she wanted to start the conversation at all.
“Yes, well, I can’t tell you the details, but we are doing what we need to. As for you, your focus should be to keep moving forward.”
“Of course, but there is more.”
Alara paused, her face betraying none of the annoyance Zellendine thought she would be feeling if the situation was reversed, but she also wasn’t sure if she could trust Alara’s calm exterior.
“Troylus and Rullon have been very important to my efforts to look forward. I would like to make a request to be assigned to the same spindle as they are.” She held herself perfectly still, trying not to betray how much it meant to her for Alara to agree, while Alara tilted her head to the side.
“I would have thought you would wish to be assigned to the same spindle as Briar and his family.”
“No. Briar and I will not be partners. In fact, I think he would appreciate if we were not assigned to the same region.” Trying to keep her voice neutral, as if it was the same as any other falling out with someone, was more difficult than she thought it was going to be. Chances were high she was unsuccessful and Alara heard the anger in Zellendine’s voice.
“Ah, I see. Well, I have little say in where the assignments are made but I will input the information into the computer to help it make its final decision.”
She turned and walked away, leaving Zellendine to wonder why in the hell it seemed like Alara was lying.
34
Troylus
Zellendine was deep in her own head. All night and the next day, she was almost beyond his reach. More than willing to respond to his touch and go through the motions of conversations, she seemed to be star walking alone in the dark of her own mind the rest of the time. It was as if the meeting in the gathering room had sent her back too far into her own memories.
He tried to ask her about it, to find out what the conversation with Alara had been about, but Zellendine said she asked about her dad and had learned nothing. That wouldn’t explain the amount of time they spoke or the way in which it was seeming to drive Zellendine to distraction.
After he was done for the day, he returned to his quarters, opening to the door to the smell of something crisp and sweet.
Inside, there was a branch from the orchard on the table, Zellendine perched on the edge of the chair next to it and some berries in some kind of creamy soup in a bowl on the table next to her.
“What is this?” he asked, dropping to crouch in front of her, taking her shaking hands in his and kissing her.
Her answering kiss was hungry and yearning.
“Zellendine,” he said, trying hard to keep the frustrated growl out of his voice, “I was stuck inside trying to patch part of the floor today with loads of others to help.”
“Ah, so maybe I should wait for the rest of this.” She squinched her face, almost grimacing in what looked like an apology.
“No. What is this? It’s fine.” He tucked a piece of her hair back behind her ear and cupped one of her cheeks.
She closed her eyes, her face cleared, and she smiled.
“In a perfect world, I would be able to do this on the planet, or at least in the orchard in our clearing, but I want to make sure that this is just between us. So…”
Zellendine shifted in her seat and bit her lip, looking deep into his eyes.
“Troylus, I love you. I want us to be together on the planet.”
“Me too,” he said and she laughed while she put her hand on his mouth and shut him up.
“We talked about waiting, but I don’t want to if it means we will be apart for years because we’re assigned to different spindles.”
He couldn’t entirely track where she was going with this. It sounded like she was going to suggest they become partners before they left the ship, but that didn’t make any sense. It had never been her plan, perfect world or not.
“Do you want to partner with me?” she asked, her bottom lip returning to between her teeth as his mouth fell open.
“You mean right away?”
She nodded and he put both hands on her face, searching it for any sign that she was doing this for any reason other than the threat of distance from leadership.
“Zellendine. I love you. I want to partner with you. But I want you to be happy. Don’t do this because of them. I will find a way to get to you long before a few years. Trust me. Only do this if you want to.”
Before he was even done talking, she was shaking her head and setting her jaw, her eyes turning hard and angry.
“Damn it, Troylus. I’m trying to do what needs to be done. If you don’t want to ensure that they lose, then this is what we should do.” She stood up from the table and stomped back and forth across the room.
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“Is that why you want to partner with me? Because someone like me means they lose? What does that mean?” he asked, standing from his crouch on the floor and crossing his arms over his chest.
“That is not what I said,” she yelled.
“Eventually, you’ll see, they’re trying to keep us apart. I just hope they didn’t already succeed.” She slammed the door to the hall behind her as she stormed out.
None of it made sense. How were they trying to keep them apart? And why would they care?
He sat down at the table, leaning against it with his head in one hand while he dipped a finger into the soupish berry mixture.
Putting his finger in his mouth, the sweet taste was the best thing he could have imagined for the moment he and Zellendine became partners.
Looking at the branch on the table, one that clearly came directly from the orchard, he spotted a little feather stuck among the leaves.
She had tried to make it perfect. She had tried to create a wonderful moment even though their entire ship was overrun with bodies. She had tried.
And he had fucked it up.
“I’m an idiot,” he said to the empty room, jumping up from the chair so fast that it toppled over with a clamor.
Grabbing the door and flinging it open, he had to pull up short because Grandpa Kason and two of leadership’s goons were on the otherside, the old man had a hand raised to knock on the door.
“Troylus, where are you off to?” Grandpa Kason asked, his eyes narrowed.
“I forgot something for Rullon. What’s going on?” he asked, lying automatically although he couldn’t imagine why they were there or why their presence raised chillbumps on his arms. It had to be about Stephen.
“Are you looking for Zellendine? Is there news? She’s not here right now.”
“Yes, there is news, and she doesn’t need to be here for this. But you need to come with us.”
35
Zellendine
He was being an idiot. Fuck, why did he have to do this? Why couldn’t he just say yes? Why did it have to be so damn hard?
Troylus wanted to partner with her, she wanted to partner with him, and she felt it in her gut that if they didn’t do it soon, the Chapter was going to try and make sure they never got the chance to be that for each other.
She stormed through the halls, avoiding all the places that made her think positive thoughts of him, because she needed to keep hold of her anger or she would cry.
Under no circumstances could she go to the orchard, the damn cryo bay was out too. Even the clinic made her think of her dad too much.
It was strange that leadership would assign her as a medic to one of the spindles when she was doing her best to stay as far away from the clinic as possible.
Of course, if she thought about it, she realized it made perfect sense. She had no connections, no partner and no family. She was the perfect person to risk on the first landings. If something was going to go tragically wrong, it would have been much less a problem for the rest of the population to keep moving forward if it happened to someone like her. She was expendable.
Fuck.
She stopped in the middle of the hall and leaned against a wall.
After a moment, she realized where she was, outside the terraforming office.
The orchard would have been better than there. At least in the orchard she was more likely safe than not, here it was the opposite.
She turned to dive into the crowd and head far away from there, but she ran into Briar, slamming against him and reeling back.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” He leaned into her face, his voice low and his mouth in a sneer.
Briar’s silver eyes were exactly the same color as Troylus’s, but his were cold, empty, and cruel, where Troylus’s were soft, refreshing, and beautiful. Looking at Briar made her heart shrivel in her chest, the opposite of what looking at Troylus did. She didn’t know how she had ever seen anything else in him.
“I’m allowed to walk through the halls. Get out of my way.” Her voice was harder than she expected, none of the tremors threatening to show in her hands made their way out of her mouth.
“No. You are spying on me, aren’t you?” He pinned one of her arms against the wall in a grip as tight as steel, it stole the breath from her lungs.
“The last thing I want to do is look after your sorry ass.” She tried to wrench her arm free of his grip, pain shot up her shoulder and she gritted her teeth.
“You leave me alone,” he said, his mouth next to her ear. “Just be happy all these people are around.”
His other hand shot out, fisted up, it slammed into her stomach, doubling her over, and he let go of her arm, slamming her into the wall with his entire body as he walked past her.
It took minutes that seemed like hours for her to be able to get to her feet and walk down the hall again.
Along the halls back to her quarters, she wondered if she should even go back yet, if Troylus had forgiven her enough for them to have a conversation again.
She laughed to herself, dark and humorless. Maybe he would be too upset to try and heal whatever damage Briar had done to her arm and shoulder that caused sharp pain to shoot through her with every step she took, and to her stomach that ached and throbbed.
Whatever the Chapter was going to do, whatever spindle they were assigned to, she had to make sure Briar wasn’t with them. She doubted she would survive if he was.
Opening the door to her quarters she was met with Rullon standing over a toppled chair, his arms crossed, and a shaking hand over his mouth.
“Rullon?” she asked, tears already welling up in her eyes although she didn’t know why. “Where’s Troylus?”
“He’s been accused of Stephen’s murder.”
36
Troylus
“You know I didn’t do this,” he said, his head back against the wall, his knees pulled up to his chest in the tiny closet that was his holding place.
“We have reason to believe you did. A witness has come forward,” Grandpa Kason said from the other side of the door.
“A liar has come forward.” Troylus took a deep breath and wished he had a way to tell Zellendine he was sorry.
Now he knew why they shouldn’t be partnered. He shouldn’t be partnered with anyone. The Chapter recognized something within him that they identified as a threat. He should have known. That show in the gathering room was just to make him think he was finally going to get something he wanted from them. But instead, he was locked up, and going to be put into stasis permanently.
There was a shuffle on the other side of the door, not that it mattered to him. Not unless they were bringing Zellendine and Rullon to say goodbye.
Fuck. Even that, he wasn’t sure he was capable of saying goodbye to them.
She was going to be so angry, so hurt. He rubbed his hands over his face and silently asked the universe to keep her from doing anything that was going to get her in trouble or wounded. At least she was going to the surface. At least she was going to be okay. Rullon and Parmita would look out for her on his behalf.
“If you need anything,” the honeyed voice of Alara floated through the door, it lacked any of the sharp edges of Grandpa Kason’s. She almost sounded concerned, but that had to be a play. She was just as much leadership as Grandpa Kason. She had to be as supportive of the punishment as everyone else was. “Someone will be out here for anything you need, including a trip to a wet room. We will be moving you to permanent stasis in a few days when we are able to clear out the halls and a cryo bay at the same time.”
Ah, so they were waiting until the launches of the spindles. That was the only time they could possibly expect everyone to be clear of where they wanted them to be. It would be real easy for leadership to funnel all the people who wanted to watch into certain places, and tell all the rest they weren’t allowed certain places for a short period of time. It made sense during the launch. Every other time, people would have questions.
&n
bsp; “What’s the matter, Alara? Aren’t you proud of this fucked up decision made by leadership? Shouldn’t you be showing off your prisoner?” He banged his head back against the wall. Even his taunting sounded tired and worn.
She sighed, a heavy and drawn out sound.
“Troylus, none of us want this to happen.”
“Yeah, sure.” He laughed, the sound devoid of humor.
“Maybe, if you tell us how you did the damage and why, maybe we can find a way to help you join back with the other citizens eventually.”
“If I was the one who had killed Stephen, I would tell you. But since I’m not…” He shrugged and shook his head at himself because no one could see him shrug.
“Just think about it, Troylus. It would be a way to get out of permanently being in stasis.” Her voice was heavy with meaning, but she may as well have been speaking in made up words, because what the hell was she instructing him to do?
“Are…” he stopped, and she coughed, letting him know she was still there, “Are you suggesting I lie?”
His voice was a whisper, hoping the slats in the door were enough for his voice to carry to her.
“I am suggesting, that answering the question could be very beneficial to you.” There was a shuffling and flurry of sound moving off into the room.
She was. Alara was suggesting he lie.
37
Zellendine
“Rullon, he didn’t do it,” she said, pacing back and forth in the small patch of floor between the table and the door in front of the bunks.
“I know he didn’t. But Zellendine, they think he did.” Rullon righted the chair and sunk down into it, his head in his hands.
“So, how do we prove he didn’t?”
“He doesn’t have anyone to vouch for his whereabouts. He was just wandering the halls. Unless someone noticed him. And how would we be able to find the people who did, among everyone, that would be willing to come forward?”
The Spindle Page 12