Three Seeking Stars

by Avi Silver

  Also by Avi Silver

  Sãoni Cycle

  Two Dark Moons

  Three Seeking Stars (Coming Soon)

  Watch for more at Avi Silver’s site.

  Three Seeking Stars is a work of fiction. The characters, places, events, and dialogue portrayed in this book are drawn from the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Text Copyright © 2021 by Avi Silver

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without the prior written consent of the publisher, except in the case of a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review.

  Published by Molewhale Press

  www.molewhalepress.com

  First Edition

  eBook edition ISBN: 978-1-7752427-5-8

  Cover art and interior illustrations by Haley Rose Szereszewski

  haleyroseportfolio.com

  Map and book design by Sienna Tristen

  For everyone who does not yet know what family means to them.

  You are welcome in my hmun.

  CONTENTS

  Map

  Prologue

  Part One: Eiji, Northward

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Part Two: Nona Fahang

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Part Three: Ateng

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Acknowledgements

  Glossary

  Thank you to our Patrons!

  It was one of their last days apart, when the summer storms rolled in. The morning air had been sluggish with water before it relented, opening into the kind of downpour that nipped at the skin. All around, young warriors whooped and hollered, running along the beach. Wrestling, shouting, kicking up the pink sand in glittering waves. It was rare that Kørno Wan’s masters gave them a day off from training, and rarer still that the weather be so generous this time of year.

  Beneath the flowing skirts of their lilac tent, Ahn was lazily stretched out on a heap of plump pillows. Beside him, Schenn was watching their classmates’ roughhousing devolve into an impromptu sparring match. His mouth was twisted up a little on the right side, the way it went when he thought something was funny.

  “Share the joke, would you?” Ahn prodded at his side with a foot, reaching for a cluster of grapes.

  He laughed, shoving at Ahn’s calf. “Only if you keep your dirty toes off of me—”

  “You say like I haven’t had to deal with your stink every day for the past five years—”

  “Lucky I’m so good looking, then.” Schenn grinned, showing off his crooked front teeth. “Got that commoner’s touch.”

  “Is that what they call it?”

  A shout came from the beach—first blood. The fighters backed off, shaking hands while the next pair bounced in place, eager for their turn. Ahn reached his hand outside the tent, letting the rain prickle at his fingers.

  “It’s just...” Schenn hesitated, scrunching his nose and leaning back against the pillows. “They really can’t take a day off, can they?”

  Two more young warriors stalked each other, their classmates crouched around them in a makeshift arena. The winner of the previous round sat beside his defeated opponent, a fond hand rested on the boy’s shoulder. As their Six-ing came closer, these fights began to take a repetitive shape; no more swapping out opponents or settling childish grudges, no more fake warrior rankings or playful bets or complaining about the thick smell of the resin the masters burned during communal meals. All that remained of their class was the matches between paired warriors, and the many eyes that followed. Learning, studying. Taking whatever they could get.

  Ahn’s gaze fell on Schenn: his shoulders speckled from a childhood outdoors, his short dark hair, his careless smile. He thought of the way the boy kicked off all the blankets while he slept. The way he had given up speaking to Ahn formally within a month of their training. The way he breathed so slowly when he gripped the spear.

  “What if we didn’t do it?” Ahn asked, something plucking a low note in his chest.

  “What?” Schenn frowned.

  “Our Six-ing. What if we just...didn’t do it?” He pushed back his hair, trying to act casual as he reached for more grapes. “Tried something else.”

  Schenn snorted. “There’s an idea. I saunter back to the Haojost farmlands, let my family know that five ranks up the path of Conquest I decided hm, no, better brush up on my numbers and start fresh in Discernment. Run errands for the local spice shack for two years. Didn’t want to be a general anyway, Dad! Did you hear about today’s deal on capsicum?”

  Ahn laughed along half-heartedly, searching for his place in the joke. He could never find it quite like Schenn. “Probably better to pursue Health. You’re a task away from the third rank already. It wouldn’t take that long to reach, maybe a month or two.”

  “Unfortunately, I’ll need that time to forge a new identity to bury my shame at running from a fight with the heir to the Empire.”

  “I have ten older siblings, Schenn,” Ahn said, searching their basket for the bottle of elderflower wine they’d smuggled from the kitchens, “and I lack the ambition to kill any of them. So I don’t know if it’s really fair to call me the heir of anything.”

  “Fair enough. I mean, just look at the hair—” Before Ahn could jump away, Schenn had his hands in Ahn’s hair, running his fingers through the places where Imperial silver had been spoiled by stripes of black.

  Ahn groaned, pushing at his hand, embarrassed. “Schenn—”

  “Where’s the good breeding?” Schenn wailed, tugging at it triumphantly. “Where’s the pure lineage of Qiao Sidh?!”

  “Let go!” Ahn laughed, grabbing hold of the wine and pretending to use it as a club. Schenn wrestled it out of his hands, knocking Ahn back onto the pillows and leaping upon him with a theatrically scandalized look.

  “Oh deviant monarch! You’ll have the people thinking the Qiao Sidhur citizens are in fact a complex blending of peoples, not a collection of fancy, mean dolls in upwards of three very big houses—”

  Ahn made a weak lunge for the bottle, laughing too hard to make any real headway. Down on the beach, their classmates were shouting encouragements to their favoured fighter, but he didn’t bother looking to see who was winning. Instead, he watched Schenn uncork the wine with his teeth, taking a gulp before passing it over.

  “I mean it, though,” Ahn said, grasping the bottle’s rough jute wrapping.

  “Mm?”

  “You’d climb the Healer’s path well.” He squirmed beneath Schenn, trying to prop himself up. “You have the discipline, and the temperament. Your hands are steady, and if you had a good master you could even become a surgeon—”

  “Fine,” Schenn said abruptly. “I survive our Six-ing, and I’ll be a master Healer before the year’s out. Deal?”

  On the beaches, one warrior slammed her partner to the ground with a shout of effort. The
sound hit Ahn like a punch to the sternum, vibrating violently into his lungs until air was a painful thing to hold. The crowd gasped, murmuring among themselves in satisfaction as the winner fell to her knees beside her partner, trying to catch her own breath.

  He wished very suddenly that he hadn’t brought up the Paths, their Six-ing. Any of it. It wasn’t much longer now. The days were getting shorter.

  “Ahn?” Schenn’s voice popped in the air, jarring Ahn out of his unexpected queasiness.

  “Before the season’s out,” Ahn amended, a smile stretched awkwardly on his lips, “or I’ll never forgive you.” He could hear the strain in his voice, and was painfully aware of how unwieldy his humour was. But Schenn quirked his brow, playing along. Indulging him. Ahn took a swig of the wine and passed it over, thankful.

  “The season, then. It should be no trouble, with you chattering away in my ear.” He slipped off Ahn, flopping down beside him on the pillows. “Demanding I learn the harp. Or how to dance. Ugh.”

  “Make your life miserable,” Ahn said, rolling to face his companion.

  “Not so miserable. Prince Schenahn doesn’t sound so bad.” Schenn made it look so easy, navigating the topic which should not have been so tender, but was. He wore a cautious vulnerability on his face, the kind of look he got in the quiet hours of the early morning, when he and Ahn were the first or last ones awake. The secret-telling hours. “Better than you having to travel down from Hvallánzhou to visit my family for the local harvest festivals.”

  “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “You say that now.”

  “I wouldn’t mind,” Ahn insisted. “Really, it would be—it would be interesting. Different.”

  “Real different,” Schenn echoed.

  Silence filled the space between them. There was more to say, but Ahn’s tongue tangled on itself; his heart felt twisted and thorned as an acacia tree. Was it inside or outside of the tent that was warping around them? The crescent of students—no, warriors—was so small, but the sounds of fighting began to fill the space with unsettling force.

  When they entered Kørno Wan for their training, fighting had felt to Ahn like a dance, and Schenn was the perfect partner—aligned, in sync. Constantly challenging him. Making him better, leading and following with equal grace as they grew together and matched each others’ steps.

  Who would it be, Ahn wondered, that would step out of line first, when the time came for blood to spill in their sacred arena?

  Schenn reached forward with a peculiar look, and Ahn thought perhaps he was going to tease him about his hair again. But instead he touched Ahn’s right ear, pinching gently at the lobe where the bone would pierce through. Schenn’s bone. His first knuckle, if, if—Ahn reached up, grasping his wrist, but did not dare move him away. It was an ominous sort of introduction, too intimate to interrupt.

  After a moment, Schenn let go, resting his hand on Ahn’s shoulder with a fond squeeze. Was it his hand or Ahn’s body that was trembling? “Ahnschen doesn’t sound so bad either, you know.”

  “I could live with it,” Ahn said quietly. It nearly felt true.

  Hopelessly lost in a jungle and hundreds of miles from home, Ahnschen was once again longing for his harp. He yearned for the feel of the spruce warming in his palms, the friendly thrum of the strings—wanted it badly enough that he would consider even trading it for his sword. Which probably didn’t bode well for his chances of survival, even if it would make Master Hvu proud.

  Nearly five months without practice had undoubtedly set him back; he had only just begun getting comfortable with the instrument when he’d been called to the campaign in the lower continent. Ahn could only imagine the lecture he would get when he finally returned to his lessons. He adjusted his posture, imagining he was at a concert hall, breathing slowly as he readied himself for a performance.

  It was easy to reenact the stage fright, thanks to the dozens of enormous eyes currently sizing him up. What an audience.

  A week in the company of the sãoni had done little to build trust in either party. For the most part, Sohmeng had forced everyone into a reluctant stalemate. Reluctance on the side of the sãoni, that is—Ahn would have been happy never to fight another one of the beasts as long as he lived. It was one thing to face an armed human opponent, and another to hold his own against a creature the size of a carriage. No amount of training at Kørno Wan had prepared him for that.

  The creatures’ eyes were following Ahn’s hands as he polished his armour. The gilded silver was as bright as it could get, but he had already done the rest of the tasks that had been asked of him.

  “Easy,” he murmured in Qiao Sidhur. “Easy, now.”

  One of the smaller sãoni crawled toward him slowly, circling him from a distance. It was about as large as one of his family’s hunting dogs, but quicker by far. It clicked at him, unblinking.

  “Sohmeng?” he called quietly, not wanting to startle the animal. The colony’s ceaseless snarling had finally settled into this new staring habit—he still wasn’t sure what to make of it. Half the time he was sure he was about to be eaten, the other he felt like they were waiting for him to perform a party trick.

  A low growl came from behind the little lizard, and Ahn tensed up as he recognized the vivid green stripes of the sãoni that had first attacked him. The smaller one squawked loudly, pressing its body to the ground and narrowing its eyes. Ahn went very still. Was the larger one egging it on?

  “Sohmeng?” he tried again.

  The sãoni slunk closer, ready to pounce.

  “Hei?” he attempted, however doubtful. The two of them had only been gone for a few minutes, how far could they have possibly—

  “Hey Ahn!”

  Old instinct sent him out of his skin, a hand on the hilt of his sword. All fantasies of the harp flew from his mind as he spun around to face the danger that—that obviously wasn’t any danger at all, it was Sohmeng. Sohmeng carrying an armful of eggs with Hei in tow, squinting at him suspiciously.

  “Sohmeng,” he said, releasing his weapon. “I am sorry, I did not mean—”

  “I know, I know. I’m sure it wasn’t you.” She yanked him in for another cheek rub, giving the large, aggressive sãoni a look. “Do you think I was born yesterday, Green Bites?” Its reply sounded smug.

  Sohmeng’s displays of affection were supposed to reassure the colony that Ahn was friendly, but between the issue of his hair colour and the poor circumstances of their first meeting, it didn’t seem to be terribly effective. Even now the little sãoni that had been stalking him continued to hiss, hopping around in the dirt.

  “I was—” He didn’t know the word for ‘polishing’, so he simply gestured to the armour. “Then the small one became...”

  “A doofus, yeah.” Ahn didn’t know this word either. Sohmeng passed the bundle of eggs to Hei and crouched down by the creature. It arched up to her, and she tapped it on the nose. “You should know better, dummy.”

  Ahn rubbed his forearm. It was still bruised from his first encounter with this colony of sãoni, but bruises weren’t much of a price to pay, having come out alive. His fingers tightened, the pain a reminder of his failure: he should have been able to keep Lilin alive, as well. Over three years, they’d ridden together—he’d even been there when she first hatched in the stables of the summer palace. Training with her had been a good way to keep up his martial work after his Six-ing was complete.

  He tugged at his earlobe, tried not to be frustrated when he was met with silence. Schenn could afford to say a little more, especially seeing as the only real guidance the boy had ever offered had gotten him into this mess in the first place: Run, Ahn. Get out of here.

  Of course he had listened. He was still listening, stuck awaiting further instruction and trying not to be afraid. Fear would not serve him right now; he had to stay alert, stay focused on the situation at hand, keep himself alive.

  Beside him, Sohmeng was stroking the little sãoni’s head like he would a rabbit’s. “I
finished the tasks,” he said after a moment. “Gathering stones, preparing for the camp’s fire. Collecting wood.” He gestured to the tidy ring he had set up, hoping it was adequate. Back in the battalion, this sort of work had been done for him while he planned with his sister in the command tent. Having reached the sixth rank in the path of Conquest before he was seventeen, Ahn had never experienced the duties of a foot soldier.

  “Whoa, really?” Sohmeng sat down beside him, pulling something from her pocket. It was a pair of dice, which she tossed between her hands. “That was fast.”

  Ahn wasn’t sure why she sounded surprised. “I can do more?”

  “No, no, it’s okay,” she said. “I just didn’t expect you to be done already. Usually Hei and I kind of take our time, unless we’re really hungry. Then we rush through it and argue the whole time. It’s a thing.”

  Ahn frowned, not sure he was understanding her completely. “Why would I take time...?”

  “To enjoy it? To be lazy? No point in chasing bugs off the jungle floor, y’know.” She grinned at him, and he returned a tentative smile of his own. “Besides, the sãoni set the pace.”

  Between his musical and martial education—not to mention his ongoing work on the Philosophy path—it was hard to imagine a world where idleness was not viewed as a personal shortcoming. Even poets were hard at work using their heads, no matter if they appeared to be doing very little. Life in Qiao Sidh centered around merit, the constant pressure to achieve fostered by a healthy sense of competition. Ahn was unsure how to engage with a culture that did not keep its people in a state of perpetual motion.

  It seemed to be going well enough for Hei and Sohmeng. Though apparently Sohmeng was only a recent arrival to the jungle. Eiji, she called it: the ground below. Different from the Empire’s current name for this land: the Untilled.

  Hei said something to Sohmeng in Atengpa that he couldn’t follow. Though he’d been actively working on the trade tongue since landing on the lower continent five months ago, he’d never bothered learning any individual dialect. There hadn’t seemed like much need for it, at the time. The plan had been to move through multiple hmun over the course of the year, establishing Qiao Sidhur presence.