Hathan was there, finishing breakfast with Ziral. To my surprise, he waved me to a seat. Quickly I summarized my message to the Echelon.
“Excellent,” he said. “I’ll inform the crew. This will be good for morale.”
Ziral favored me with a smile almost as rare as Hathan’s.
The others, too, seemed touchingly pleased that I had chosen to stay on the Pinion. The only one of my crewmates to express any misgivings about my decision was Saresh. Tactfully, he waited until we were alone to voice them. It was evening, and I had found my way, as I usually did, to the lounge. I had traded Daskar a mystery novel for a series of Vardeshi poems in the vernacular—another sign, if any were needed, that the Pinion was becoming a place for genuine cultural interchange—and I had curled up in an empty alcove to puzzle out the first one.
I hadn’t made much progress, though, because I kept getting distracted by the noise from the bar. Hathan was sitting there with Zey, Ahnir, and Vethna. The four of them were absorbed in a fast-paced game I hadn’t seen before. It seemed to involve rolling three many-sided dice, not the ones I’d played with, and threading colorful glass discs onto an assortment of metal rods of different heights. The game was punctuated by curses and bursts of masculine laughter. As I watched, Ahnir refilled all the participants’ glasses from a tall carafe of frothy gray beer. I couldn’t hear their talk at all, but during a lull in the background noise, I caught enough of it to realize that it wasn’t standard Vardeshi. Of course, I thought with grim humor, as soon as I started to gain some facility with their language, an impenetrable new dialect would have to appear.
I had just settled myself down to work again when I heard a light step outside my alcove. I glanced up to see Saresh looking in through the curtain. “Room for another?” he asked.
“Of course.” I pulled my feet up to make space for him.
He leaned his cane against the frame of the canopy, ducked under the curtain, and sat down beside me, settling his injured leg carefully on the cushions. There came another shout of laughter from the bar. We both looked toward it.
“What are they speaking?” I asked.
“That’s the north continent dialect. Ahnir’s family is from the north. The others picked it up at the Institute.”
“And so did you,” I guessed.
“Of course.”
“It sounds completely different from standard Vardeshi,” I said. “Is it difficult?”
“Not if you happen to find yourself living in Khezendri for a few years. Otherwise, yes, I expect it’s very difficult.” I wrinkled my nose. Saresh laughed. “Don’t worry. You chose right. The climate is better on the south continent, so most of our aristocratic families made their way there. The southern dialect is the refined one.”
My gaze had drifted again to the bar. I watched as Hathan took his turn with the dice. He studied the columns of glass discs. Then he and Zey seemed to see something at the same instant. They both lunged for the top disc on one of the metal rods. Zey was a split second faster. He snatched the disc triumphantly out of Hathan’s reach. The entire group erupted in laughter. I couldn’t help smiling a little myself, for reasons that had nothing to do with Zey’s incomprehensible victory and everything to do with the savage delight on his face.
“Speaking of difficult things,” Saresh said, and something in his tone pulled my eyes back to him. “I’m glad you’ve decided to stay. I hope you know that. However—and I may be overstepping the boundaries of our friendship by saying this—I hope you’re staying for the right reasons.”
I felt a tiny spark of warmth inside at the words our friendship. “Don’t worry. I’m—let’s just say I’m aware of the realities of my situation.”
“I know you are. But understanding the facts is one thing. Living with them is another. Are you sure you wouldn’t be happier in another posting?”
“I’m sure. I like the Pinion. I’ve made friends here. I don’t want to start over on a ship full of strangers. I like the changes Ha—the khavi’s been making. No more language policy. No more isolation. And maybe I’m imagining it, but the Pinion just feels like a safer place without Vekesh.”
“You’re not imagining it,” Saresh said. “I feel the same way. And the crew? Everyone is treating you with respect?”
“Pretty much. I’m never going to be Vethna’s favorite person, but then, he’s never going to be mine.”
“Has he apologized?”
“Yes. Reluctantly.”
Saresh nodded. “Good. It’s important for things to move forward.” He hesitated. “How are things with Zey?”
“They’re . . .” I bit my lip. “Moving forward. They’re not perfect.”
“I don’t see how they could be. And I don’t see any other way things could have gone. Hathan would never have believed you without the Listening. It was necessary.”
“I know.” I took a breath and let it out carefully against a sudden ache, like a cramp, in my chest. “Can I ask you something? It’s not about the Listening.” Saresh nodded. I went on, “I asked this once before, and you promised to answer me at the end of the year. But I don’t know how much longer I’ll be here, and I want an answer now. Your people have starships. You have telepathy. Your lives are full of things we would call miracles, and you hardly even notice them. What can humanity give you that you don’t already have?”
“I thought you would know the answer to that, after what happened with Vekesh.”
I shook my head. “I don’t.”
“A reminder,” Saresh said quietly, “that the universe can still surprise us. Until you arrived on the Pinion, I thought I’d seen Zey truly happy. Until a week ago, I thought I knew who Reyjai Vekesh was. I was wrong on both counts. It isn’t a comfortable feeling, but it’s a necessary one. You challenge our complacency.” He paused, then added soberly, “That may be why so many of us hate you so much.”
The days passed quickly after that. On the afternoon before we were scheduled to dock, I packed my things. I felt an unexpected ache of loss as I stood looking around my quarters. My duffel bag sat beside a stack of orange crates next to the door. Denuded of my decorations and personal touches, the little room was startlingly bare. No matter what was decided in the tribunal, this would be my last night here. The repairs to the Pinion could take months, assuming the ship was even deemed salvageable by the mechanics on Arkhati. If my crewmates and I continued on toward Vardesh Prime together, we would do so on a different ship.
At evening briefing Ziral announced that there would be another music concert after dinner. “This may be the last time we’re all together as a crew,” she said. “Let’s not waste it. Tonight in the lounge, after senek. No uniforms.”
After the requisite half hour of agonizing in front of my closet, I put on jeans and a velvety top and went to grab beers from the mess hall. Khiva was there doing the same thing. “You singing tonight?” she asked.
I laughed. “Definitely not. I don’t want you all asking for new assignments tomorrow.”
She poured the cloudy liquid into a glass vessel, tilted her head to judge the level, and added a little more. “Are you sure? This could be your last chance.”
“I’m crossing my fingers that the Echelon sees things my way.”
Khiva looked perplexed at the expression. I explained, demonstrating with my right hand, as the left one was holding two beers and a bottle opener. Her expression cleared. “Ah. You’re raising your sigil toward the stars.” She lifted her own right hand, palm flat, as if to indicate the height of someone substantially taller than herself.
I nodded. “If I had a sigil, that’s exactly what I’d be doing with it.”
We walked to the lounge talking companionably about fashion—there were some good boutiques on Arkhati, Khiva said, and it was time to expand my Vardeshi wardrobe beyond the five uniforms of which it was currently comprised—and settled ourselves in one of the middle alcoves.
Within a few minutes the rest of the crew had arrived. Ahnir,
Saresh, and Daskar had produced their instruments and were tuning them when Hathan approached and said a few quiet words to them. Ahnir offered his string instrument to Hathan, who took it and made a few final adjustments as the other three went to stand against the bar.
“What’s he doing?” Khiva said in an undertone. “He doesn’t sing.”
“Never?”
She shrugged. “Not in the nine months I’ve known him.”
Ziral peered through the curtain, and Khiva waved her in. She sat down, folding her feet neatly under her, and held out her glass for Khiva to fill. “This should be interesting. The concert was his idea. But I didn’t know he was planning on singing.”
Hathan had finished tuning Ahnir’s mandolin. The rest of the crew must have been watching as closely as I was, because he silenced the room with a single look. Without further prelude, and with no evident apprehension or self-consciousness, he began to play.
I was instantly transfixed. His touch on the strings was deft, and the melody it produced was simple and plaintive. He played a few bars and then started to sing in a tenor voice that washed over me like light, it was so rich and clear. His singing was as minimal as his playing. It was like he was trying to vanish within the music, offering up nothing to the audience but the sound itself. The song he had chosen was whimsical and contemplative. I heard humor in it, and sorrow, and a sense of solitude as deep as an ocean. Without being able to understand any of the words, I knew intuitively that it described a search for something elusive.
Hathan’s eyes never left the strings of the mandolin as he played, and I was glad of it, because mine never left his face. He sang three or four verses in all, played a few more measures of the accompaniment, and stopped.
When the last golden notes had faded into silence, Ahnir came forward to reclaim his instrument. I couldn’t make out his words, but the gesture he made was unequivocally one of invitation; he was entreating Hathan to sing again. Hathan, smiling a little himself, raised a hand in polite demurral and went over to stand next to Saresh at the bar.
“Well, that was unexpected,” Ziral murmured. “What do you think brought it on?”
“Eyvri, probably,” Khiva said so easily that she took my breath away. She went on, “Who knows what the Echelon will decide? Tonight could be his last chance to perform for a human. Yours too, by the way.”
“Good point.” Ziral swung herself out of the alcove and went with enviable confidence toward the musicians.
I leaned back against the wall, grateful for the partial shelter of the gauzy curtain. My heart was pounding so violently I was certain it must be audible to the Vardeshi, with their sharper hearing. Khiva’s offhand words had confirmed what I already suspected. Hathan’s song had been for me. I hadn’t forgotten his words at the last music concert: I prefer to wait for inspiration. He hadn’t decided to perform tonight on a whim. He was apologizing, in his own oblique way, for the way he had treated me under Vekesh’s tenure. There was nothing remotely romantic about the gesture, and I would have been beyond deluded to interpret it that way. But he had sung a song tonight, after nine months of silence; and he had sung it for me.
The concert went on. When, some time later, I found myself standing next to Hathan at the bar, I was able to tell him in a passably normal voice how beautiful his song had been.
“What did you hear in it?” he asked.
We were speaking English, so for once I was able to answer without fumbling for the right words. When I had finished my description, he said, “Are you sure you don’t speak archaic?” I flushed with pleasure at the compliment, a fact I prayed the dimness would conceal as he continued, “That was the 'Lament for Lost Travelers.' It’s about looking for the way home.”
“Ivri avanshekh,” I said.
“That’s right.”
With a rueful laugh I said, “Sometimes I think our people understand each other better without words.”
“A strange sentiment,” Hathan said, “since it was our words that drew you to us in the first place. But I know what you mean. The old songs are expressive. That’s why we’re still singing them. Then again”—his gray gaze flicked upward to meet mine, the same quick assessing look I had seen in the interview room all those months ago, with a glint of humor in it that I hadn’t known to look for then—“it’s been a thousand years. Maybe it’s time we learned some new ones.”
Glossary of Vardeshi and Translated Terms
azdreth: the Flare; a malady affecting deep-space travelers which causes temporary madness
Blank: one who lacks even latent telepathic abilities
Echelon: the governing body of Vardesh Prime
hadazi: ship’s mentor
ivri avanshekh: the longing for permanence; homesickness
ivri khedai: the longing for another sky; wanderlust
kevet: eating utensil
khadrath: alone
khavi: commander of a ship
Listening: a telepathic exchange
nivakh: a large, slow-witted bearlike animal
novi: the lowest rank in the Fleet hierarchy
pikvith: sexual plaything
rana: a drug that temporarily unlocks the abilities of latent telepaths
ranshai: a martial art
rhevi: lower rank analogous to lieutenant
senek: tea-like beverage with mild tranquilizing qualities
starhaven: space station
suvi: second-in-command
Vox: telepath whose abilities are under conscious command at all times
Acknowledgments
This book would not have come into being without the hard work of a number of people. I am indebted to Jessica Bell, my cover artist, and to Erin Walsh and Paul Witcover, my editors. To my earliest readers—Erin, Sara, Tina, Sarah, Meaghan, Alison, and my parents—thank you for your interest, your encouragement, and your sensitive handling of something so personal. Your positive feedback meant the world to me, and I saved every single one of your comments. To Dov, thank you for believing—or pretending to believe—that talking about telepathic alien brothers for two hours at a wine bar constitutes a date night. To the extent that this story is internally consistent, it is because of you. Above all, I am grateful to Heather Palmquist, who gives me breathing room in my life to be creative.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Meg Pechenick is a lifelong lover of fantasy and science fiction. Her experiences studying anthropology in college and linguistics in graduate school informed the writing of this book. She enjoys running, swimming, traveling, and eating food cooked by other people. She lives with her family in New Hampshire.
Want to keep reading? Great! BRIGHT SHARDS, the sequel to ASCENDING, is available for pre-order now on Amazon. Chapter One is already available as a free download from my website, www.megpechenick.com.
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