Charlie’s Official Chief Envoy mask slips a little, and it hits me how miserable he looks. Like, I know I don’t call as often as I should, but the lines on his face are definitely deeper than the last time I spoke to him.
“Don’t leave us hanging here,” I say. “What’s up?”
“Atar is sick.”
I frown. Not really what I was expecting to come out of his mouth. “Is that all? Seriously, Charlie, you’ve been married to him longer than I’ve been alive. You know what a terrible patient he is. He’s mopey and whiny and depressed, but he’s not actually dying. Not for real.”
“I’m sorry, Alyssa,” Charlie says, “but this time he is. Dying. For real.”
Everything in my chest cavity plummets. Like someone scooped it all out and dropped it in a gravity well. “You’re not serious, Charlie. You can’t . . . It’s not . . .”
His eyebrows lift sky-high. Almost up to his retreating hairline. “Not what? Possible?”
I throw my arms wide, and H.M. barely misses getting a faceful of coffee sludge. “No! It’s not possible! He’s way too young, by several decades at least! I thought—”
I thought we had so much more time. But I don’t say that part out loud.
Charlie steps farther into the corridor and sinks down onto the floor, right across from us. Imperial sash and fancy medals and all. His shoulders sag. I wonder if he ever gets tired of carrying around that official persona. He wears it so well that it’s easy to forget it’s not all of him. Even for me. And he helped raise me.
“I know,” he says wistfully. “I did too. We all did.”
Hell Monkey presses his arm against mine, and I let him. I stare down at my hands, wrapped around the now-empty coffee cup in my lap.
“He’s the emperor, for god’s sake, Charlie.” My voice sounds smaller than usual. “They invent a new medical procedure every time he stubs a toe. Where the hell are his doctors?”
“Right where they’re supposed to be. All sixteen of them. It’s just”—Charlie’s face twists as the words hit his tongue—“not working.”
I can feel Hell Monkey watching me, and when I don’t say anything, he clears his throat. “I’m sorry, Charlie. That’s . . . a raw deal, man.”
Charlie actually kind of smiles at that. “Thank you, Hell Monkey. It is, indeed, a raw deal, as you put it. For all of us. Atar has been a good emperor, and now”—his eyes fall on me—“we have to think of succession.”
“Oh,” I say.
So that’s what this is about.
My uncle unified the quadrant after the Twenty-Five-Year War and brought all the prime families to peace under the banner of Emperor Atar Faroshti. (That’s the family name—Faroshti. It got mistyped as Farshot when I registered at the Explorers’ Society, and I never bothered to correct them.) But in all the years since then, he’s never named an heir. Most emperors just pick their oldest kid and call it good, but Atar and Charlie never got around to having any kids, either. I guess he could pick a successor from one of the other prime families, but if he wanted to choose a Faroshti, he would really only have . . .
My head jerks up. “Oh. Oh shit. Hell no, Charlie. No. Whatever you and Atar are thinking, it’s not happening.”
“Alyssa—”
“Look at me. Look around. This strike you as regal? Nuh-uh. Done with all that.”
“Alyssa,” Charlie says evenly. “I’m not here to name you Atar’s successor.”
I take a deep breath, trying to calm down. There’s no way Atar would make me his heir. If he was gonna do that, he would’ve done it years ago instead of buying me a ship and letting me run off into the stars. Atar is a smart guy. Too smart to hand the throne over to someone like me.
I tell myself that. I almost believe it, even.
“So what, then, Charlie? Why all the cloak-and-dagger?”
Everything is quiet for a moment, save the hum of the ship. There’s still something hanging over Charlie, and I’ve got the sinking feeling it’s hanging over me now too.
“He would like to see you. Today.”
“Today?”
“Immediately.”
I glance at Hell Monkey. He’s finally taken off those goggles so I can see his eyes. Big hazel eyes that tell me he’s got my back, no matter what.
Run, a little voice in my head calls. Run far. Run fast. Run until you find new stars.
I could just turn tail and let the government sort itself out—governments are good at that, right? I don’t need to get involved. We were planning a trip to Drago VIII to hunt down some onyxium samples. Nothing has to change.
But this is Uncle Atar we’re talking about. The guy who raised me. The guy who first set my eyes on the stars.
I can’t turn my back on him. Can’t leave without saying goodbye. Maybe his last wish isn’t what I think. Maybe it won’t take me too far off course.
“Sure, Charlie,” I say. “Sure. Just . . . let me take a shower first.”
“That,” Charlie says stiffly, “would be advisable.”
Godsdamned snobby royals.
Three
HELL MONKEY AND I ONCE FACED DOWN A FLAME tsunami, which is exactly what it sounds like. A wall of fire a mile high, rushing at you faster than the orbits of some planets, burning so hot it’ll turn your ship to plasma before you see the flash. We rode the solar winds for a dozen parsecs, knowing the whole time that one false move on the controls, one twitch, and we were doomed. And know what I remember most? How we laughed the whole time. We hollered like it was the greatest transcoaster at the largest amusement complex in the galaxy.
I wasn’t afraid at all.
But now, sitting in Charlie’s cushy liftship as it descends toward Apex, I’m sweating through my suit.
Charlie notices my nails digging into the armrests and raises an eyebrow. I fold my hands in my lap and avoid his look. Get ahold of yourself, Farshot.
Exploring the unknown? That’s easy. Going back to what you know? Harder.
“Your suit is . . . very nice,” Charlie says, just looking for something to say.
I roll my eyes, even though the compliment puts me at ease. I can still look the part when I need to. Back on the Vagabond Quick, I’d engaged in a prolonged wardrobe-audition montage, and Hell Monkey had picked out the winner for me. Dark gray and tough, epaulets and gold trim, double-breasted with rows of embellished buttons going down the chest.
Hell Monkey stayed behind on the Vagabond, to hold her in orbit and keep the engines warm. I want to be ready to hit a hyperlight lane as soon as everything down here is tied up. It’s weird to not have him with me, though. Makes the space feel a little too big. Or maybe I feel too small in it.
Charlie’s liftship rumbles as it passes through the upper atmosphere of Apex. The subatmosphere wings unfold with a whir, and then we burst through the cloud line and it’s nothing but ocean below. The blue-black Eastern Sea. From this altitude I can just make out breakers large enough to smash a fuel tanker to bits.
Anything looks harmless and pretty if you’re far enough away.
I’m struck by a memory that I’m not primed to deal with. Me, barely out of diapers. Uncle Atar, grinning and regal. He holds me up as we look out one of the kingship’s towering windows down at the roiling sea. My eyes go wide as I take it all in.
“Amazing, isn’t it?” Uncle Atar had asked me back then. “Imagine what’s hiding beneath those waves. Would you like to see that, Alyssa?”
Is that when it started? Did the wanderlust creep in right then and there?
It isn’t long before the kingship appears on the horizon. It’s something to see, and that’s coming from someone who’s seen a lot. A giant geodesic sphere floats above the ocean, like it’s made of air instead of glass, steel, and gold. And trapped inside it is an honest-to-gods fairy-tale castle. The whole thing. I don’t know how old it is exactly, but it’s ancient. The castle used to be on the ground millennia ago, but no one remembers where. Big sections of the stone facade are still the s
ame as when the castle was built, back when the quadrant was just a bunch of dots on some astronomer’s hand-drawn map. They’ve had to reinforce the structure with new materials here and there. (It’s not like there were docking bays for airships on a lot of ancient castle schematics.) And the castle’s guts have changed too—state-of-the-art technology, always being upgraded, power of a sun harnessed inside, etc., etc. Hell Monkey is nuts for the kingship. He’s got a collection of old blueprints stored on his personal hard drive. Dork.
Charlie’s liftship dives for the underbelly of the sphere, and soon we’re swinging around one of the three great cables that anchor it to Apex’s surface. The kingship can travel interstellar, but Uncle Atar’s always preferred to dock on Apex. The anchor cables double as power cords, drawing energy from Apex’s enormous waves.
I grew up on the kingship. It was home once, until my uncles gifted me the Vagabond Quick. I haven’t been back since.
Did they know I’d take off and never visit? Just keep following that starsong from planet to planet? They had to, right?
The eastern hangar hails us in, and we follow the track of landing drones through the bay doors.
“Welcome home,” Charlie says after we’ve touched down.
I grimace. “Not really my home anymore, Charlie.”
He sighs. “Are you ready?”
I want to come back with something clever and cavalier, but I’ve got nothing. So I shoot him a pair of finger guns. Charlie blinks.
Smooth, Farshot.
There’s a squad of otari crownsguards waiting at the bottom of the gangplank. Shoot these guys finger guns and they’ll probably take it as a threat and vaporize you. Some of the strongest and fastest humanoids in the quadrant. Their wounds heal into craggy scars with the texture and hardness of rocks and minerals found on their planet. Most otari—and the crownsguard in particular—purposely scar their fists and feet, all the better to bash in a head.
Standing out in front of them in bright yellow-and-orange robes, his fingers steepled piously together, is Enkindler Ilysium Wythe. He showed up on the kingship when I was about ten years old, an official ambassador for the Solari religion. I don’t know the details, just that the only thing they love more than worshipping their sun, Solarus, is trying to convince everyone else to worship their sun too. Whatever they’re doing must be working—Solari temples have been popping up all over the empire the past few years. Wythe here is an enkindler, one of the religion’s leadership caste, and we never got along particularly well. I wasn’t a big fan of him trying to convert me, and he wasn’t a fan of me in general. Too mouthy. Too wild. Not at all useful to him in achieving his political goals.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I blurt out, and Charlie hisses with disapproval just behind me.
Wythe bows, although the guy is like two and a half meters tall so I can still see right up all three of his nostrils. “I’m here to greet you as a representative for the Imperial Council. A pleasure to see you again, Ms. Faroshti.”
“Captain Farshot,” I correct him. “Since when are you on the council?”
“Since last year,” Charlie cuts in smoothly. “There was a push to add someone who might provide a voice for the people outside the prime families, and Enkindler Wythe’s name was put forward. All the heads of the prime families voted on it.”
I look back at Charlie, and he must see all the questions his explanation definitely didn’t answer on my face because he very subtly wraps a hand around my elbow and squeezes. Not hard. Not like I’m in trouble. More of a “we’ll talk about it later, Alyssa.”
Fine, then. I swing back around to Wythe and smack him on the arm. “Hey, belated congrats, Wythe. Small-town boy really coming up in the world lately, huh?”
He barely manages to turn his sneer into a smile and bows again. “You are as unchanged as ever, Ms. Faroshti. Follow me, please.”
What an ass.
We’re led across the hangar to a multiperson transport that will whisk us up through the body of the kingship to the emperor’s private quarters. Charlie and I sit on one plush bench, facing Enkindler Wythe. He and Charlie stare out the windows as we glide along corridors and up glass-encased lift tubes, climbing toward the upper levels.
“Nice ride,” I say, and they look at me.
What? I hate awkward silences.
“You all upgraded since I left. This the Class X model?”
Nothing.
I nod like someone’s actually answered. “Expensive. You get good mileage on these—?”
“Alyssa,” Charlie mumbles.
I shut up.
I want to go. I want to run. Not just away from this but to something. I want to see more of the quadrant. I want to see all of it. I am not like Charlie, polished and respectable. And I’m not like Enkindler Wythe, happily needling his way deeper and deeper into politics. I flew out of here once, trying to shake the weight of the kingship and the throne and everything that came with it.
But I didn’t fly far enough.
I sigh and lean back in my seat.
“So,” I say after a beat. “Either of you guys ever ridden a flame tsunami?”
Four
IT’S BEEN A LONG TIME SINCE I’VE BEEN IN MY uncle’s imperial chambers. Back when I lived on the kingship, he’d had family quarters set aside for him and me and Charlie—smaller, less ostentatious. So we could play at being normal, I guess. The few times I wound up in his imperial rooms, I remember them being stupidly beautiful, with vaulted ceilings and jeweled chandeliers and that delicate, gilded type of furniture you never felt you could sit on. The views from the floor-to-ceiling windows were spectacular, all sunlight and sea.
But now the curtains are drawn. It’s dark, and the air is close despite the size of the room. The emperor is propped up in his massive bed. Charlie sent almost everyone away to allow us some privacy, so all that’s left are the medbots hovering in the shadows, silvery orbs carrying drugs and hypodermic needles. One monitors a respirator; the other massages my uncle’s legs with a pair of mitt-like appendages. They don’t really have eyes, exactly, but it still feels like they’re watching me as I approach his bedside.
Uncle Atar is barely recognizable. He’s a full-blooded hallüdraen—most of the Faroshti family are—and as a species, the hallüdrae are something to see. Tall, lithe, ridiculously angular, with hair in these deep jewel tones and the same color contouring their skin. Atar had been all of these things when I left, but now . . . His skin is papery and gray; his cheeks are hollow. He looks smaller somehow. Shriveled.
The only things unchanged are his eyes, as sharp and blue as ever, even under their hooded lids. Faroshti sapphires. I didn’t inherit those. I’ve got the high cheekbones and the Faroshti skin tone—fair with ombre blue shading along the angles and contours of my body. But my eyes are dark brown, and my hair is even darker, a short, choppy mess of layers that I usually keep pulled up off the back of my neck.
When Atar sees me, he smiles, and I feel my heart drop. All I’ve wanted to do is flee, but now that feeling vanishes. I take his hand and feel tears coming.
“Hey, Uncle Atar.”
“Birdie.” My chest squeezes at the sound of my old nickname. His little bird, he called me. Because I was always trying to fly away. His voice is thin and whispery, as if there’s barely any air in his lungs. “You came.”
Oof. That hurts. The way he says it all happy and surprised. Like I’m so bad of a niece that he really thought I might blow him off even on his deathbed.
“Hi,” I say again, stupidly. “Are you comfortable? Can I get you anything?”
He chuckles. “These medbots are taking good care of me. I call that one Pokey.” He nods to the far medbot, who’s preparing another syringe. “And this one giving me the massage is Helga.” He winces as the medbot rubs his legs. “She is indelicate.”
I laugh. A sense of humor is one thing my uncle and I have always shared.
I sense Charlie standing beside me, and suddenl
y we aren’t emperor, explorer, and envoy, but a weird little family. Charlie’s been Atar’s husband since before he sat on the throne, and I can’t believe how selfish I’ve been, forgetting how hard this must be for him. I can hear Charlie’s breathing, and it sounds feathery. He’s on the verge of tears too.
“It is so good to see you,” Atar says. “I was worried you wouldn’t make it.”
“How could I miss this? You know, the Society gives out rewards for observing rare phenomena. I’d say this qualifies.”
Beside me, Charlie sighs again. My jokes are a bit lost on him. But Atar laughs, then coughs into his shoulder.
I grip his fingers a little tighter. “I meant to come back sooner. I really did. I just—”
“Got lost up there.” His eyes drift up, like he can see the expanse of space through the ceiling. “I know. I remember what it was like. I followed the songs of the universe myself when I was young.”
I want to make another joke, tease him about being an old man, but I’m too aware of how young he really is. Especially for a hallüdraen.
It’s not fair. The words are right there on my tongue, but he speaks before I can say anything.
“Congratulations on your circumnavigation.” He squeezes my hand. “I want to hear all about it. Frankly, I could use a trip myself. I’m sick of this room.” He glances at Helga. “Not that you’re not great company.”
I laugh again. “Soon as you’re better, I’ll take you on a tour,” I say, even though we both know that’s never going to happen. “What is it?” I add, unable to keep myself from asking.
My uncle sighs. “Some kind of rare disorder affecting my blood. The physicians tried their best, but they’ve run out of ideas. All anyone can do now is make me comfortable.”
I lose it a little bit, and he reaches up with his free hand and pats my cheek.
“What’s this? Tears from a mighty explorer?”
I wipe at my eyes and my nose with the sleeve of my fancy coat. “Yeah, well, don’t tell anyone, okay?”
His eyes go serious. “Alyssa, I need you to listen to me.”
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