Three Seeking Stars

by Avi Silver

  He woke to the sound of shouting.

  Ahn opened his eyes with some difficulty, his skull sore from the previous night’s crying. He wanted to rub away the salty grit that had gathered in his eyelashes, but he found his arms occupied, wrapped around his companions. He didn’t even remember falling asleep.

  Sohmeng was curled up between him and Hei, groaning groggily at all the noise. Hei was quicker to pull themself up, squinting at the canopy. Dawn was just breaking, the warmth of the sun slowly steaming the air.

  The sãoni that had hidden from the chill of the rain had inched closer overnight, snuggled in heaps. A few of them were growling unhappily at having been disturbed from their slumber. Ahn wiggled his trapped arm from beneath Sohmeng, let go of the hold he’d had on Hei’s waist with a flush in his cheeks. They did not seem overly bothered by the intimacy, focused instead on the commotion above.

  The voices grew louder, and Ahn caught sight of scouts running across the extended arms of the banyan trees. They had moved far from Nona Fahang; he hadn’t realized the upper branches were so sprawling.

  “Weren’t we done with screaming?” groaned Sohmeng. Nearby, Mama rumbled along in what sounded like agreement.

  Hei clicked, low and cautious, standing to get a better look. Their makeup was smeared, tear-streaked, and Ahn felt a sense of vertigo from all that had happened since last night. He wondered if Hei and Sohmeng’s throats felt as raw as his own.

  The scouts were shouting in Fahangpa, beyond his understanding. One word sounded familiar though. Ahn frowned, trying to feel out the differences on his tongue. “Bas... Basong...?”

  Sohmeng grasped it before he could. She jumped up so suddenly that Hei squawked in alarm. “We need to get back to the hmun.”

  “Why?” Ahn asked. The sãoni that had stirred were echoing Hei’s sound, nudging their snoozing neighbours with their noses. “What are the scouts saying?”

  “Batsongkar,” Sohmeng said. “Ba. ‘More than one.’ It’s not you, Ahn. It’s Qiao Sidh. They’re here.”

  Once the word was given form, Ahn could hear nothing else. Batsongkar, batsongkar! It came down from the scouts like a hailstorm, chilling Ahn despite the jungle’s heat. A curse escaped him in Qiao Sidhur, panic gripping his heart in a vice.

  Share the joke, would you?

  A sharp sound from Hei drew his attention out of the uncanny and back to the present. He shook off the unease that had claimed him. The knucklebone pulsed persistently in his ear. “Let’s go. There might still be time to stop whatever’s about to happen.”

  The three of them took off toward Nona Fahang, trailed by two of the sãoni that had been curious enough to follow along. Ahn wasn’t sure when he had become so accustomed to their presence, when they had stopped looking at him like he was a meal. One of the sãoni squawked something at him as it trotted along; a marking on its head identified it as one of the adolescents that had hissed at him during the first battle with Green Bites. It had grown so much in the past weeks.

  When they made it to the walls, scouts were waiting for them on the ground. One of them grabbed Ahn roughly by the arm. The man’s cheeks still had paint left over from last night’s festival.

  “Tsongkar!” he barked in Dulpongpa. “Where did you go last night? Did you do this?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous!” Sohmeng snapped back, trying to step in. “He was with us all night, we don’t even know what’s going on.”

  “And he didn’t sneak off?” the scout demanded. Ahn kept his mouth shut even as the man’s fingers dug into his arm. Despite the aggression, he could feel the way that hand was shaking. “Didn’t call his friends here while you were asleep?”

  What if we didn’t do it?

  Behind them came a warning growl from Hei, echoed by the two sãoni. The scouts stepped back, raising their spears, but the animals made no move to attack. Whether it was their weeks of exposure to humans or Hei’s clicking that kept them back, Ahn couldn’t say. Perhaps both.

  “How many are there?” Ahn asked, forcing his voice to remain even. “And how close are they?”

  “The sãoni—”

  “Won’t hurt you, just answer the question!” Sohmeng’s voice was bold as ever, but Ahn could hear the fear beneath. It stirred an unfamiliar anger in him, to learn how it sounded when she was afraid.

  The scout hesitated, eyes on Hei and the sãoni. “...a small party. Ten or so, coming from the northwest. We sent our own to try and hold them back, but it isn’t—” Another shout from above. The man shook his head. “I’m sorry. The Grand Ones said you need to get inside right now. You first, tsongkar.”

  “Would you stop calling him that?” Sohmeng snapped. “He’s trying to help you!”

  “He can help by following orders and resisting the urge to crawl back to his own.”

  What if we didn’t do it?

  The sound of their arguing dissolved around him, melting into a near-meditative silence. Meditation had been a key component of his Conquest training: survival was simply a matter of the speed and confidence with which one made choices, and a sense of inner calm was needed to choose correctly. It had never been Ahn’s strong suit. A day ago, he wouldn’t have been able to slow his panic long enough to think clearly, but something had broken in him last night, opened him to a part of himself he could not access before. A part of him that had broken earth every summer in Haojost. That had lived and died in a series of confident choices. That tried so hard to reach him through the bilateral realm, if only Ahn could find the courage to listen.

  Ahn took a slow, deep breath. With the world around him at a peaceful distance, he weighed his options. Ahead of him was a guarantee that he could return home: all he had to do was wait for his soldiers to enter Nona Fahang. With centuries of warfare behind them, he knew it wouldn’t take much for even a small force to destroy the walls. Once they found Ahn, he’d be saved and returned to his sister. He would push the conversation toward peaceful negotiations, then head home without ever having to sit through a trial. Get back to school and put this behind him. But also—

  What if we didn’t do it, Ahnschen?

  —that wasn’t enough, was it? That wasn’t right. There was no such thing as peaceful conquest, there never had been, and going home with his tail between his legs did nothing but perpetuate the lie. It was easy to bemoan his powerlessness against the culture he’d been raised in, but it was also untrue.

  Ahn had power. Despite the fact that he had done nothing to earn it, he had been born with power over others—instead of denying it, it was his responsibility to use it for good. He needed to stop the encounter before it happened. Which meant giving up his own comfort for the sake of other peoples’ survival.

  “Who’s in charge, here?” Sohmeng was yelling now, standing between Ahn and the scout. Cautiously, Ahn took a single step back.

  “I need your help, Hei,” he said quietly.

  They clicked uncertainly.

  “I can stop this. But I need a sãoni.”

  They snarled in response, and Ahn made his own sharp noise back, challenging them. Sohmeng was still fighting with the scout, but that distraction wouldn’t last forever.

  “I want to be good, Hei,” Ahn said. “I want to make this right, and I know I can do it.” The pulsing in his ear grew with every word. Good. He needed Schenn now more than ever. “I need to go stop this, but I cannot get there fast enough on foot. Leave me there alone if you want, but please. Help me. Help me be good. For you, for Sohmeng. For Eiji.”

  Ahn turned to face them, holding out his hands in supplication. Hei stared him down, their black-rimmed eyes hard in judgment, the green piercing straight through him and weighing the sum of his heart.

  Almost imperceptibly, they nodded. They reached for the sãoni to their left, clicking low.

  “Fine!” Sohmeng shouted at the scout. “Fine, we’re coming, you don’t have to be such a—”

  “Sohmeng,” Ahn called. She turned to him, cheeks still red from shoutin
g, and he smiled in spite of himself. “I’m very sorry about this.”

  “What?” She yanked at her bangs, aggravated. “What are you talking about?”

  “Go inside,” he said, taking another step toward Hei. “And trust me, if you can.”

  “Trust you?” Sohmeng stopped, looking at him suspiciously. “Ahn. Whatever you’re about to do, please—”

  One of the scouts copped on that something was wrong. They made a move to grab Ahn, alarmed, but Ahn was too fast. He raised his hand, shouting his command in Qiao Sidhur: “UP.”

  The sãoni jumped up on its hind legs, the full height of it sending the scouts barreling back in alarm. With a loud snarl from Hei, it dropped back down, and Hei leapt on its back, offering an arm to Ahn. He took it gladly, swinging up behind them, and they barreled off into the jungle, Sohmeng’s screaming fading behind them.

  The second sãoni stayed close, following Hei’s lead as the first charged along. Ahn held tightly onto Hei, ignoring the yelling of the scouts, the inevitable panic at his seeming desertion. “Northwest,” he said. “Do you know how to—”

  Hei scoffed, tugging on the sãoni’s head spines with a trill. The creature adjusted its course smooth as any steed, and Ahn smiled. His work with Lilin didn’t even compare.

  “What you do now, Ahnschen?” they asked with a sniff. Vaguely, Ahn caught the scent of smoke pushing through the sweet decay of the jungle. They were close now.

  “I’m going to end this,” he said, and believed it.

  “What, with smart Ahn words?”

  Leave it to Hei to make that seem implausible. A fair enough assessment, given the past few weeks. “Or a sword.”

  “Your sword in Nona Fahang.” Hei pulled on the sãoni’s spines with another sound, urging it on toward the smoke.

  “I’m sure I’ll find another,” he murmured. The Empire had no small supply. “When we find them, keep the sãoni back. They don’t need to get involved with this battle, and neither do—”

  The battle found them first. One moment an expanse of jungle—the next, a patch of scorched trees, broken up by the clamour of war. Ahn shouted in alarm and Hei yanked back, pulling the sãoni to a halt. Energy surged once more through his earpiece, forceful and familiar as the hours he’d spent sparring with Schenn. He leapt from the sãoni and into the fray.

  The Fahangpa were sorely out of their depth, but holding their own nonetheless. Their experience with the banyan trees put them at a height advantage, but Qiao Sidhur silver and steel cut deep. Bracing himself, Ahnschen charged forward, surprising an armoured soldier with a kick to the back. They stumbled fast enough for him to disarm them with a strike to their arm that made his bones howl. He grabbed their sword, knocking its owner to the ground.

  “Enough of this!” he yelled, but no one heard him over the fighting and the roars of the sãoni. Hei was keeping the animals back, but he couldn’t risk the Qiao Sidhur turning on them.

  Ahead of him, a Fahangpa fighter collapsed, bleeding from the thigh. Ahnschen would recognize that face anywhere—the furious sneer, the twisted scar.

  “No!” he shouted, jumping in to block the soldier who lifted their blade to Lita Soon. Ahnschen caught the killing blow, throwing it back with a series of brutal parries. Years of training returned to him in a flurry of muscle memory, and he quickly morphed defense into offense.

  “Stop!” he barked in Qiao Sidhur, sending the soldier to the ground. The man pulled off his helmet to get a better look, eyes widening in recognition. “I order you to stop.”

  The next soldier that charged Ahnschen was given the same treatment, a series of easy strikes that pushed them back. This time, their realization came sooner.

  “The prince!” the soldier cried. “Éongrir Ahnschen! The prince!”

  The words rose in Qiao Sidhur until they rose above the cacophony of violence. His name, his title, echoing until the battle came to an abrupt, bewildering halt. Éongrir Ahnschen-Eløndham Qøngemzhir, over and over again.

  “Tsongkar...?” murmured Lita Soon, looking up at him in disbelief. The wound in his leg looked vicious, pulsing blood onto the jungle floor. This was twice now that the Empire had marked him.

  Éongrir Ahnschen would have no more of it. With the eyes of his soldiers on him, he straightened his back, held out his blade. “Enough of this,” he demanded, the words smooth on his tongue as elderflower wine. “It is done. You are done. This land is not yours to claim.”

  One of the soldiers stumbled to him, removing her helmet and taking a respectful knee. The carvings on her chestplate marked her as their captain. “We are here on the orders of Éongrir Ólawen-Eløndhol Qøngemding. My prince, we thought you were dead.”

  The rest of the Qiao Sidhur party followed their captain in kneeling. The Fahangpa took the opportunity to gather their own, falling back from the battle. Ahnschen could hear scouts retreating through the branches to report what they had seen.

  “You were mistaken,” he said simply. “I am very much alive, and I order you to leave this place, and these people, unharmed. Put out your fires and go.”

  The captain hesitated, not meeting his eye. “We would be glad to escort you back to the General. But her orders for the Untilled were—”

  Ahnschen thrust his blade into the dirt, hearing a voice that sounded not like his at all. Schenn had always been the brasher of the two of them. “Am I not your prince?” he asked. “Or has Ólawen become Empress in the weeks I’ve been gone? Last I remember, our authority was quite equal.”

  The captain winced, lowering herself further to the ground. “I mean no disrespect, Eleventh Beloved.”

  “Then you will listen to me very clearly: you will lead your soldiers back to camp, and you will not touch another village in this land without my say. Is that understood?”

  A murmur of assent rippled through the clearing. Ahnschen felt a rush of relief bordering on nausea. They were listening to him. They would leave. It had been so long since his words had any power that it made him dizzy to exercise it now.

  “My prince,” the captain said, pressing her forehead to the earth. “I humble myself before you for my disrespect. When we return to the base camp, I will gladly submit myself to—”

  “I will not be returning with you.”

  There. He had said it. The words were out, and there was no taking them back. Much as the selfish part of him wanted to return to Ólawen, weep into her arms, and then figure out how to manage a retreat plan from Eiji, he had unfinished business with Nona Fahang. He had promised to stay for a trial. Breaking that promise, whatever the reason, would go no way toward establishing the mutual trust needed for a future alliance. Toward being good.

  He took another slow breath, feeling his earpiece positively vibrating with satisfaction. Feeling the ghost of Schenn’s fingers, playing with the bottom of his braid.

  “My prince,” the captain said once more, her voice strained. “The General—”

  “Will have to be patient.” Ahnschen pulled his sword from the ground, promptly bringing it through the bottom end of his braid. With the tie cut free, it fell loose past his shoulders, silver and black melded together. An Imperial failure, by this standard at least. He dropped the proof of his survival at the captain’s feet, hoping it would be enough. “For now, I am staying behind. Tell my sister that I’m coming for her. I will find her at the basecamp, when the moons next go dark.”

  The timing was tight, but not impossible. And if the moons’ fortune truly favoured the people of Gãepongwei, then perhaps Sohmeng’s namesake would serve them all well.

  Ahnschen swallowed, willing himself not to lose his nerve. “And pass along my orders to leave the villages untouched. If General Ólawen violates them, tell her I will bring my concerns to the Emperor and Empress.”

  It was the first genuine military decision he had ever made, the first time properly using his sixth ranking, and it was for an order to retreat.

  The captain didn’t look happy to be the messenger
of this news, but she agreed. With his severed braid in hand, she led her soldiers out from the clearing, dousing fires on their way.

  As the parties retreated, Ahn looked for Hei. They were at the edge of the clearing, soothing the sãoni with low murmurs and head strokes. To his relief, they all seemed unharmed—and not at all eager to eat any of the remaining humans. Perhaps his socialization strategies had worked better than he thought. When he met Hei’s eye, they offered him a grudging nod, and what might have been a hint of a smile.

  “Tsongkar,” came Lita Soon’s ragged voice. Ahn’s stomach dropped as he turned to face the Fahangpa scouts that had remained to treat their wounded. The people who looked at him were wary, wide-eyed, and Ahn realized then that no one could vouch for his integrity. The whole conversation had been in Qiao Sidhur. As far as they were concerned, he could have just told the soldiers to come back in larger numbers.

  This was the risk he had taken to do the right thing. Now he had to live with it. With a deep breath, he took up the posture of the captain he had sent away, dropping to one knee.

  “I know you do not have reason to trust me, but this is the truth—I have ordered the soldiers to leave Nona Fahang alone,” he said in Dulpongpa, the language clunky on his tongue after its brief return to Qiao Sidhur. “Instead of going with them, I will await my trial to answer for my crimes. I accept whatever punishment you see fit for my disobedience.”

  He offered his wrists to be bound once more, feeling the way they had begun to tremble as the adrenaline caught up with him. The scouts murmured something in Fahangpa before two of them pulled him gently to standing. Ahn looked at them with confusion.

  “Just get up, Ahn,” muttered Lita Soon, tying off a cloth around the wound on his thigh. Even with the amount of pain he must have been in, the man still managed to spare Ahn a half-hearted glare. “Before I bleed to death.”

  “—running back to his people!”

  “What do you mean with one of the sãoni?!”

  “And that other one, the strange one, probably a spy—”