by Roxie Ray
Every single one.
22
Coplan
We stormed the cathedral in the palace like any other battlefield: blasters raised, swords drawn, hearts true and minds clear. Haelian led the southern rush. Kloran took the north. They burst through the windows by the light of the setting sun while Leonix guided her band of warriors—myself and Healer Adskow among them—through the cathedral’s main door.
The guests were stunned, nobility and specters alike. They were supposed to be. We did not claim the element of surprise just for dramatic effect, though I had to admit we had managed the theatrics handily. Through the bright lights and broken glass, our efforts were focused on suppressing the specters in the crowd before they could act against us first. With no warning, the benefits of their highly developed system of secrets and subterfuge meant nothing. For as long as we had the jump on them, they could not retaliate fast enough to stop us.
One by one, the black-clad specters in the crowd were dropped by the Avant Lupinia’s forces. The heads of the noble houses in support of Idria had to be targeted as well, though not in such violent ways. At least, not yet. Kloran held the High Lord of House Paroket at the tip of his blaster. Leonix had Lord Nardok’s throat caught by the edge of her sword. And at the front of the congregation, Haelian wrestled with King Volta himself, which seemed to be no easy matter. Queen Talina, apparently furious at the intrusion, was doing her best to beat Haelian away with her hand fan.
But none of these things were my concerns. As I moved through the crowd with purpose, my eyes were on the altar—at least, until I found a crumpled form dressed in rich black silks in the middle of the aisle.
Savii. She had made it. She was all right. Thankfully, my warning and the mass of the other bodies in the cathedral had protected her from the broken glass. When I laid a hand on her pale back, her skin was chilled, and her body shuddered.
But then, she looked up and saw my face leaning over hers, and a look of surprised joy appeared in her eyes.
“Coplan,” she breathed. “You came for me. But—”
“Do not worry, Savii. All will be right—at least, it will be soon.”
Gently, I helped her to her feet. Immediately, she clung tight to my side. I looped my arm around her in turn with great care, my blaster scanning before us, my sword at ready in case we were in danger of a close-quarters attack.
But thankfully, as I looked around, I did not see any threats. Lord Brixta, Savii’s betrothed, had moved himself behind the altar for protection. He cowered there in fear. Lady Idria was absent— gone to visit her new king, I had no doubt. No specter rose up within the ranks of the guests to challenge us. No lord or lady drew weapons against us.
None seemed to have the courage to approach us at all—except for one.
“Coplan Majari.” My father spat my name as he shoved his way through the terrified crowd, coming out into the aisle and standing between myself and the altar that Lord Brixta was hiding behind. “What do you think you are doing?”
I stood tall as he glared at me, his eyes red.
I did not fear him.
My eyes were red as well.
“When I completed my time in the fighting pits, I took an oath.” I raised my voice so that all might hear it. What I had to say to them all, they desperately needed to know. “I swore to defend Lunaria from all who might seek to bring it harm. I am here today to uphold that oath.”
Behind my father, I saw my mother giving me a matching glare of spite. Even my younger brother, his face still marred from his own time in the fighting pits, had nothing but fury with which to look upon me.
It did not matter, though.
My family was my blood, but Savii was my heart and Lunaria was my home. If they wished to stand against us, they would not be able to do so without a fight.
“Coplan, what are you doing?” Savii whispered from beneath my arm.
I pressed a kiss to her forehead and shushed her. She did not understand this intrusion yet, but she would soon.
They all would.
“My lords and ladies. My king. My queen.” I addressed the congregation with a forceful bellow. My voice rang out, powerful and clear. “We come to you today with news of treason in your midst.”
“Yes, Coplan,” my father shouted back at me. “There is a traitor among us—you.” Just as I addressed the crowd, my father raised his voice as well. “My son has bedded Lord Brixta’s bride, my good people. He has sought to steal the wife of another. He is a menace and a fool, with his heart turned by lust for the beautiful human creature who has pledged herself to House Brixta’s Lord. I would beg you to forgive him for his transgressions, but…” My father’s eyes narrowed sharply, and he shook his head. “This offense is too great. I disown him—and all others who seek to upheave our social order as well.”
For a moment, I was taken aback. I had always known that my father sought to control me, but I had not realized to the extent he had been radicalized. Lady Idria had been clever in her meddlings. She had taken the seed of wrath planted within my father when I chose to become a healer instead of a general, and she had watered it well, sowing it in my own mother and brother as she went.
“What did Lady Idria promise you, father?” I asked. “It must have been something grand.”
“The same thing she promised us all,” he replied. “Salvation for our people. You are misguided, Coplan, but you are not as brainless as you appear. This marriage must commence, so that we may bring about the treaty with the planet Earth and engage in trade with them. You may have ruined your own life, Coplan, but I will not allow you to ruin your brother’s—and I will certainly not allow you to ruin mine.”
“Ruin your life—the way that Lady Idria intends to ruin Lunaria as a whole?” A murmur of interest moved through the crowd like a wave. Just like that, I knew I had them. “A new Rutharian king has been crowned. Lady Idria has promised herself to him, seeking to make herself a queen.” Now, the crowd gasped. This was news to them all—news I imagined Idria had kept quiet for a reason. One that only benefited her. “I wonder, my lords and ladies—my king, my queen—what she will do to our planet and people when she goes through with this match. Already, she has promised the Rutharians their own treaty with Earth, so they may claim breeding slaves for themselves. And when they tire of that—as Rutharians always do—are you all so naive to think that they will not lash out at us next?”
“Lady Idria has intentionally allowed Rutharian and Jeorkanian war parties access to Lunarian airspace,” Kloran roared from where he stood, still holding Lord Paroket at bay. “Her allowances to the Jeorkanians assisted in the near-kidnapping of my wife at the hands of the traitorous Queen Lieja and paved the way for a Rutharian dreadnought to make land here, in the gardens of our own royal palace.”
“She has acted in spite, in malice, and above all else, in her own interest, time and time again,” Haelian added. “She uses her specters to sow dissent amongst the High Houses and to manipulate our interests throughout the galaxies.”
“She has passed information to the Rutharians through her agents, resulting in the deaths of countless Lunarian warriors,” Leonix cried out. “Her movements have been calculated, cruel and unjust.”
“Even now, she holds the sister of this human female captive on a prison planet, to ensure the successful marriage of her cowardly brother to an unwilling party.” I looked down at Savii, who seemed as horrified by all of this news as the others in the crowd. “Do you truly wish to marry Lord Brixta, Savii? Or were you manipulated into it, lied to, deceived?”
“I…I do not,” Savii said. Even in her shock and fear, her voice rang out like bells pealing on a holy day. “I’ve been lied to. I’ve been tricked, and pushed around, and…and forced to agree to this marriage. I don’t love Lord Brixta, and I’ve never wanted to be his bride. But Lady Idria…she told me that if I didn’t marry her brother, she would hurt my sister and deny protection to my planet. I…I didn’t feel like I had a choice.�
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This time, when noise passed through the crowd, there were not just gasps and whispers. There were sounds of pure fury. Unadulterated rage. Kloran’s father looked ready to kill, and even Haelian’s father stepped before Haelian’s mother and sister with his blaster drawn. To force an unwilling female into a mating that she did not wish to accept was a terrible thing amongst our people. Consent was what separated us from the Rutharians. Even young females like Haelian’s sister and Kloran’s former betrothed had the final say in whether they would be married, and to whom, no matter the political gain. Had they not, Leonix herself would not have been allowed to train in the fighting pits and comb the galaxies among the other warriors. We were not a perfect people, no. Most females among us agreed to the marriages that were proposed to them, if not for love, then for political or financial gain. But we would never force a female as Idria had done to Savii, who was not even of our culture, our kind.
If Savii said she did not wish to marry Lord Brixta, then no true Lunarian could say that she must.
But still, despite all that we had said here today, there were those who did not seem to agree to those tenants anymore.
My father was among them. He raised his blaster to me, shaking his head with a snarl of disgust on his lips.
“You do not know what you speak of, Coplan,” he said to me, his voice ice cold. “I think it would be best if you did not speak again.”
The shot was fired before I could send one off in return. Had Savii not been present, I would have let the blast fly and retaliated in turn. But I loved her. I had sworn to protect her. We were close enough that she could have been harmed. It was a risk I could not take.
Instead of firing back, I turned and covered her body with mine, bracing for impact. It would hurt, I knew, when the blast hit me. If I was lucky, it would not hit any vital organs. If I was unlucky…
I would die here, with my body folded over hers. It would be a good death, I knew. One I could be proud of. And someday, years and years from now, perhaps among the moons, Savii and I would meet again.
But when I heard the low, tortured grunt of a warrior who had been hit…to my amazement, it did not come from my lips.
“Go!” Haelian’s father was doubled over between my father and myself. He clutched his gut in one hand, red blood pouring out from beneath his fingers. In the other hand, he held his blaster, pointing it at my father even as his life force left him. “Take…take my family. Please. But go. It is no longer safe here. There are too many snakes among us.” He turned to my father and squeezed the trigger of the blaster. “But not for long.”
“Father! No!” From across the room, Haelian’s captive lord struggled. Haelian wounded him, then shoved him aside to rush to his dying father’s aid.
My heart clenched tight in my chest as I saw my own father fall, watched my own brother rush to my father’s side just the same. But Haelian’s father had been right. A quick glance around the room told me that there were more nobles against us than were with us. Our warriors were already busy fighting Idria’s specters. We had enough power to hold Idria’s agents, but to fight half the High Council and all their guards? We would have needed three times as many warriors on our side.
We were outnumbered, and in Haelian’s father’s dying wish, I was once again reminded of what we were fighting for. Haelian had his family to protect now.
And I had mine.
“Come, Savii. We must hurry—before they block the exits.” Behind us, Leonix and a few of our warriors still held the doors. If they fell, we would try for the windows next, but beneath her gown Savii only wore soft slippers. I did not want her to be trapped if our forces fell, but nor did I want her to have to stumble over broken glass. It would be a last resort—and I did not want it to come to that.
“But…but the alliance!” Savii struggled to keep up with me as I shielded her from the crossfire with my body. “Is everything you said true?”
“I would not lie,” I swore to her. I did not grudge her her questions, nor her lack of speed, but all around us, our allies were falling. I scooped her up into my arms and hunched my back to continue to give her cover as I quickened my pace. “Not to the Lunarian people, and certainly not to you.”
Just behind us, I could hear Haelian struggling to pull his mother and sister through the fray as well. His mother, from the sounds of things, was being difficult about it.
“No! My love! My love! No!” she sobbed, straining against Haelian so that she could go to her fallen husband. It made my heart ache to hear her cries. I knew that Haelian’s parents had never truly enjoyed each other’s company, but in Haelian’s father’s final moments before he bled out here in this cathedral, the last thing he would hear would be his wife professing her love for him. It was a painful thing, too bittersweet to bear.
“Mother, hurry,” Haelian growled. “We do not have time to mourn!”
Up ahead of us, Leonix looked panicked as she struggled to hold the doors. The two warriors at her side dropped simultaneously from blaster fire. She sent a shot off for each of them in return. Each hit its mark.
Behind us, I could hear Kloran bellowing an uncommon thing to our troops: “Retreat! Retreat!” This too was an awful thing to hear. Never had we been so outmatched in battle before. We had never been forced to back down so we might live to fight another day.
But with no guarantees of reinforcements, and no promise of the support of the other generals who were still stationed throughout the stars, each of our warriors that fell now was one that we could not afford to lose.
We made it out of the cathedral just as the opposing forces began to crush in on us. Behind us, I could see that many of our men had not heard Kloran’s order—or had not been willing to give up. Not yet. They were warriors of the lower classes, warriors who, for all their lives, had been given no hope of finding mates or starting families of their own.
“Go,” one of them shouted at Kloran, forcing him through the doors only moments before being shot clean through the head himself.
Where that warrior fell, another was quick to take his place. Not one of ours, though.
This warrior was dressed in the finery of a High Lord and bore the sigil of Kloran’s own house on his chest.
“Go,” Kloran’s father echoed sternly. He pressed his wife, Kloran’s mother, into Kloran’s arms, and gave a final glance to those among us. Haelian and his family. Leonix. Savii and I, along with a small host of other warriors, most of them still too fresh from the fighting pits to understand how uncommon it was for us to retreat. “Go far away from here. Keep our people safe. This is not only your battle any longer. We will hold them back.”
Kloran’s father closed the doors with a snarl on his lips. We heard his war cry as we fled—
And a moment later, like an awful echo in empty mountains, a dying groan as he fell too.
23
Savannah
We fled the capital in the Avant Lupinia, heading for Haelian’s lands in the mountains.
We didn’t have any other choice.
Over the next few days, refugees began to trickle in. Kloran’s lands in the north were far enough away from the capital to be safe, but not everyone else was so lucky. Merchants, scholars and teachers fled the capital as soon as they heard the truth about the battle at the palace and Lady Idria’s betrayal. Nion arrived a few days after we did with a large group of farmers in tow, all of them angry, all of them armed with shovels and pitchforks, clubs and butcher’s knives. When House Brixta and their allies increased taxes and started demanding warriors to come fight for them, the farmers had told them no and paid the price.
“This is all my fault,” I whispered to Coplan from the balcony of our room. Below us, the mountain pass was full of Lunarians accompanied by wagons and many-legged beasts. Some seemed to have left their homes with all of their possessions. Some only had what they could carry on foot. “If it wasn’t for me…”
“Do not be ridiculous, my love.” Coplan wrapped
his arms around me from behind and bent to kiss the top of my head. “This is not your fault. It is Lady Idria’s, and that of all who support her. You asked for none of this. Never let anyone convince you otherwise.”
“But Haelian’s father… Kloran’s…” I sighed. The rumors were that even the king and queen had been killed in the crossfire. In the capital, Lord Brixta was now hailed as King Brixta—but we all knew that it was really only just a matter of time before Idria returned to name herself queen. “So many people died to stop my marriage. So many more died keeping me safe so we could get away.”
“And how many more would have become enslaved by the Rutharians if Idria’s deal with Earth had gone through? No, my love. You cannot be angry with yourself. None of this is because of you.”
“Before I went in to say my vows… Coplan, I think they wanted me to post something to my followers back on Earth. Something to encourage them to offer themselves up as breeding slaves.” I shuddered at the thought of it. “They wanted me to lie. Trick them into thinking they’d be living lives of luxury…that they’d be pampered and showered with gold and jewels…”
“On Lunaria, perhaps they would have been. But with Idria’s plan to unite with the Rutharians, we know now that not many would have been so lucky.” Coplan paused, considering something. “What did you say to your followers, in the end?”
“Nothing,” I admitted. “I pretended to post it. Idria wasn’t around, and she only had a servant watching me…I think she just expected that I’d obey any orders I was given.”
“Mm. She underestimated you, Savii.” I felt my muscles relax a little at the sound of my own name. I was still Savii to Coplan. I might have lost everything else, but at least I hadn’t lost myself all over again. “I am proud of you.”
“I wish I could say the same. Atlanta…” I turned to look up at Coplan. My lip trembled as I forced myself to say what I’d been trying to put out of my mind—but I couldn’t. Even though it hurt to admit it, this was a reality I couldn’t escape. “Idria is going to hurt her because of me. I’m so worried about her, Coplan. She’s alone, trapped on a prison planet and completely at Idria’s mercy…”