Thirteen Rising

by Romina Russell

  I watch them struggle, but Blaze easily overpowers her, pinning her beneath him. Nishi knees him between the legs, and he cries out in pain and falls off her as she stumbles to her feet and starts racing out the hall.

  But Blaze springs up too fast and aims the Murmur.

  He fires.

  She falls.

  34

  IT’S BEEN FIVE GALACTIC HOURS and three galactic minutes since we left House Leo. Since Aquarius activated the portal. Since Nishi—

  I’m still in the escape pod, even though it’s docked on ’Nox. When the metal door to the ship slid open, I let the others remove Ophiuchus, and I told them the portal was triggered and will be active in seven days unless we can shut it down—and that the Thirteenth Guardian is the only one who can tell us how. “Hysan can figure out a plan,” was the last thing I said.

  Then I shut the pod’s glass door and stayed inside.

  Hysan deactivated all the controls so I can’t shoot myself away—not that I have anywhere to go. I’ve been watching the holographic numbers of the flight time ever since we left. My leg has a cramp, and I’ve had to pee for two hours and eighteen minutes, but I’m dreading going inside that ship.

  I don’t want to lead anyone.

  I don’t want to do anything.

  At five hours and thirty-three minutes, the pain in my bladder becomes unbearable, and I finally follow the instructions Hysan gave me to open the door. I slip into the nearest lavatory, and when I’m back in the hallway, I hear Ophiuchus’s deep voice coming from the front of the ship.

  “Without my Talisman, it will take more time to locate where I first crashed as a star, and Aquarius’s army will be waiting to stop you. They know they just have to hold us off until the seventh day.” I walk into the nose and find Ophiuchus sitting on the floor, facing an audience made up of Hysan, Mathias, Pandora, Skarlet, Gamba, and my mother.

  Everyone turns to me at once, but I survey the Thirteenth Guardian. There’s something different about him. He’s still the same stature, but he seems diminished somehow.

  “What’s happened to Ezra and Gyzer?” I ask, anticipating the worst.

  “They took one of the Tomorrow Party’s ships and regrouped with the rest of our fleet,” says Hysan, rising from his pilot’s chair and offering it to me.

  I don’t take it. “What’s the plan?”

  “We’re meeting all the Guardians and our full Zodai army on Libra, where we’ll refuel before flying to the Thirteenth House,” he reports. “With all the travel time taken into account, we’ll have exactly two galactic days to close the portal once we land. Ophiuchus knows what to do, but first we need to find the place where he first landed as a star. Without his House’s Talisman, we’ll need to track the trail of Psynergy.”

  I study Ophiuchus again, trying to pinpoint what’s different.

  “The division of Psynergy between my Talisman and my soul is what made me unstable, giving me superstrength and superspeed part of the time, and weakening me the rest of the time,” he says, answering my unasked question. “Now I am . . . normal.”

  It sounds like a joke, since there’s nothing normal about him, but I nod. “Sounds like you have everything covered. I’m going to sleep.”

  No one objects as I turn and tunnel deeper into the ship, but after a few steps I realize I don’t know where to go. I can’t bear to return to the main cabin where Nishi and I spent her last night alive.

  “You’re in the room to your right.”

  I don’t turn around at the sound of my mother’s voice. I just open the door she referenced, and the first thing I see is my traveling bag on the floor. When I go to shut the door, she sticks her boot in the threshold and forces it open.

  Reacting would be giving her what she wants, so I just cocoon myself inside the bed and stare up at the ceiling. In my periphery I see her pull down on the seat that hinges from the wall.

  “I’m sorry, Rho,” she says, not sounding sorry at all.

  I’m not sure I’m going to answer, but then I hear myself ask, “For abandoning me? Replacing me? Slapping me? You’ll have to be more specific.”

  In a voice almost too low to hear, she says, “For everything.”

  I roll my head to the side to see if the emotion in her words is real or fabricated, but her bottomless blue eyes look like they’ve hit bottom at last. She seems to have shed all her layers, and I’m staring at what’s left of her.

  “I’m sorry about your friend.”

  My insides harden, and I face the ceiling again.

  My friend. She can’t even bring herself to use Nishi’s name. She never even met my best friend, I realize. My sister. She has no idea who I am. She may be my biological parent, but Aquarius knew me better and had more compassion toward me than she’s ever been able to show.

  “I know you’re hurting, but you can’t fall apart.” Her voice grows familiarly businesslike. “You need to pull yourself together, because now is when the Zodiac needs you most—”

  “Screw the Zodiac,” I say tonelessly, turning to look at her again. “And screw you.”

  Her face becomes a military mask, only I realize now it’s not a mask—this is her real face. It takes more effort for her to show emotion than to conceal it. She really isn’t Cancrian at all. She never belonged on our House, just like she never belonged in our home. Our family was just one of her masks.

  “Rho, this person you’re becoming,” she says, attempting a softer tone that doesn’t suit her, “she isn’t you.”

  “How the hell would you know?”

  “I know I’ve failed as your mother, but blaming me isn’t going to do anything for you.” An old darkness infects her words, the same iciness she would use to frighten me into cooperating when I was just a small child.

  I unzip the cocoon because my body feels too hot, and I sit up and finally say the words I’ve always dreamt of saying to her.

  “You’re a bitch.”

  Without missing a beat, she retorts, “I guess that’s where you get it from.”

  I’m relieved she’s fighting back. Because now I can tell her everything I think.

  “You ruin everyone you touch,” I say, the blackness within me rising to my surface, like it’s eager to come up and breathe fresh air. “You think I had the worst of it? I lived—I moved to the moon, I made best friends, I became Holy Mother of a House I’ve always loved and belonged to. But what about Dad and Stan?”

  Her face looks like it did the first time I brought up Gamba. Like I’ve found another of her weaknesses.

  “You ruined their lives. Neither one of them ever got over your abandonment. You forced Stan to grow up too soon by making him head of the house, and you left Dad in a stunted state he never shook off. And now they’re both dead, and they never even got to live for themselves, and that’s on you.”

  I missed this anger. It swirls in my chest like a tonic to numb my pain, and it hardens every part of me until I don’t have to feel anything else. I’ll do whatever I have to do to keep it in place. I’ll stay angry forever if that’s what it takes.

  “You’re right,” she says, her face pale and blue eyes overly bright. “I have a lot to answer for, but those are my sins to carry—not yours.”

  She reminds me of Hysan. No one can ever get to know either of them because they’re ensconced in secrets, and they refuse to see how the things they keep hidden affect those around them.

  “I know our relationship is beyond repair,” she says, standing up. “Even if you forgive me—and whatever your feelings on the matter at this moment, I know your heart, and I know you won’t hold on to this anger forever—I still doubt you would like me. We’re very different people, you and I. That indestructible heart of yours will beat again, and it will lead you to true happiness, something I myself will probably never experience.”

  If this were a holo-s
how, she and I would probably be crying and forgiving each other by now, like we started to do on Pisces. But real life isn’t scripted by writers—it’s written by us. And our own conclusions are far less satisfying.

  Stan died before he got to live for himself.

  Deke and Nishi died before they got to live for each other.

  And in seven days, when the first ship goes through the portal, the whole Zodiac is going to die—unless we can find the exact spot where Ophiuchus crashed to mortality more than three millennia ago, on a planet no one has ever seen and that might be completely uninhabitable.

  “I’m so grateful you’re nothing like me,” she says, coming closer, “because even if you don’t believe me, I will always care for you and want what’s best for you.”

  She stops when she’s standing over me. “This blessing is overdue, as you outgrew your childhood long ago. But despite all my failings, I am still your mother, and you are still Cancrian, so I owe you at least this much.”

  She closes her eyes and touches my forehead, just as Agatha did the day of my swearing-in ceremony as Holy Mother.

  “May you remember the worlds of yesterday, may you transform the worlds of tomorrow, and may you unite our worlds today.”

  • • •

  When we enter the atmosphere of Libra’s lemon-yellow planet, Kythera, we land on the smallest of the floating silver bubbles, the one that houses the International Village.

  We dock on the rooftop landing pad of the Libran embassy. I don’t see Hysan again until we disembark, and then I do a double take.

  He’s shaved his face and brushed his hair back, and there’s a bitter determination on his face that reminds me of when he stood up to Aquarius in the Cathedral.

  We follow him down an elevator to the hotel’s black-and-white lobby. The place is startlingly empty, and the few Librans who are here all glare at Hysan, their expressions ranging from distrusting to disdainful. Yet Hysan holds his head high and meets their eyes. I wonder how soon before they strip him of his Guardianship.

  The next person the Librans’ eyes jump to is Ophiuchus, whose height eclipses every human in sight. He might be less powerful now, but he’ll always be undoubtedly supernatural.

  Hysan guides us to the exit, and as soon as we step outside, I stop moving.

  There must be at least ten thousand Zodai gathered here, donning their House uniforms. There’s no weather inside Libra’s flying cities, so the Plenum meets outside, on an elevated stage, in the center of the round village—and atop the elevated platform are all the House Guardians and Plenum Ambassadors.

  I finally force myself forward on the cushiony, plexifoam ground, and this time Hysan falls back, along with the rest of my friends, leaving me in the lead.

  The clouds above look woolly green through the city’s transparent skin. A path parts for us in the crowd, and hands reach out to touch me as I go; I think we could all use the tactile reassurance that this moment is really happening.

  The scene around me isn’t color coded: Zodai aren’t standing in front of their own embassies, among their own people—they’re intermixed, like a tapestry woven with rainbow threads.

  Once we’re closer to the stage, I spot Ezra and Gyzer standing by the steps, awaiting us. I’m relieved to see they look unharmed and resolute. Gyzer steadies me as I climb up the stairs, and it’s only when I feel his firm grip on my elbow that I realize I’m trembling.

  He lets go when I get to the stage because Brynda and Rubi engulf me in their arms, and I’m grateful for their armor. When they pull back to look at me, Brynda’s amber eyes and cinnamon skin remind me so much of Nishi that I can’t catch my breath.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, and tears skate down her face. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Me, too,” says Rubi, and when I turn to look at her, I’m stunned to see how much more she’s aged since I last saw her. She still has a prepubescent figure, but her features have grown lined and heavy, reflecting the truth: She’s an elderly woman in a child’s body.

  Time seems to be speeding up for her, probably because she’s no longer undergoing the cell regeneration procedures. And I recognize the look in her deep, tunnel-like eyes: After over three centuries here, she’s ready to join her brother in Empyrean.

  “I know it feels like you’ve lost him,” she says, squeezing my hand, “but he’s part of you. And when it gets so loud here that you can’t hear his voice, just do what I do . . . visit the stars. He’s up there, you know.”

  Even her voice and demeanor seem to have matured, and I nod in acknowledgment because it’s the most I’m capable of doing right now.

  Next to greet me is Sage Ferez. His hundred years of life make him look as frail as he is wise, and I can’t help hoping that he isn’t planning on coming with us.

  “Some fights are worth fighting at any age,” he says to me, his inky-black eyes bright as we trade the hand touch.

  Hysan is behind me, and the three Guardians I just greeted greet him just as warmly as they did me. Yet as we continue down the line, the rest of our worlds’ leaders don’t seem as ready to acknowledge his place in their ranks. Chieftain Skiff won’t even look at him; but as he bumps fists with me, the red-eyed Guardian dips his head a fraction and says, “If we’re still here tomorrow, you’re welcome on Scorpio any time.”

  From Ferez’s awed expression, I think it must be the highest compliment the Scorp has ever given.

  The Guardian of Taurus shakes my hand next, and she flashes me a rare smile. “I see I’m not alone with my Riser parentage,” says Fernanda in a conspiratorial tone. “I knew there was something I liked about you.”

  Agatha is beside her, and she eagerly wraps me in a warm embrace that’s more motherly than any hug I’ve had in my seventeen years.

  “I’ve never been prouder of anyone in my life,” she says in my ear, and when we pull away, her misty gray-green eyes have filled with water. Sirna stands at her side, and when I look into her sea-blue gaze, there’s so much I want to say. But we trade the hand touch silently because I can’t speak.

  House Aquarius has named a new Supreme Advisor, and when I turn to greet him, I recognize his face.

  “Revelough.” It’s the first word I’ve spoken since setting foot on Libra.

  His eyebrows rise to his hairline. “You do me the greatest honor by remembering my name, Wandering Star,” he says, bowing. He was the only Elder who stood up to Pollus when the latter gave permission for me to speak to Crompton as they were escorting him to the dungeons. Your lack of subtletly, Revelough, is what keeps you from moving up the ranks, Pollus said to him then.

  House Aquarius is changing. Politics are changing. If those who didn’t want to play the game, people who spoke up and spoke out—like Revelough and me—are becoming the new leaders, maybe Aquarius was wrong. Maybe we can do better. Maybe there is hope for the Zodiac.

  . . . If we survive.

  After I’ve greeted the remaining Guardians, General Eurek steps forward and addresses the crowd, a black volumizer floating around his head.

  “The end of the Zodiac is upon us.”

  The whole village goes deathly silent.

  “You are here today because you have chosen to fight for our very existence. You are also here because after we defeat our enemies once and for all, you are not ready to go back to the way things were before. But above all, you are here today because many months ago a girl raised her voice to call for unity, and you listened.”

  Clapping breaks out, and someone squeezes my arm, but I don’t even turn to see who. My gaze is unfocused, and all I can concentrate on are Eurek’s words.

  “Prophet Marinda is too ill to make this journey, but she is watching us from Pisces. There were very few Piscenes off-world when the plague hit their constellation, and we’ve been protecting them on our various Houses, as they are the last of their people. But I
want the whole solar system to know that every last one of those Piscenes chose to come here today. Even though their House rarely takes sides in times of war, they are here to make their final stand alongside us, for they know that sometimes neutrality is a side and cannot be endured.”

  The whole village breaks into applause again, and as my vision begins to focus on the crowd, I spy a small group of Piscenes in the front. Hexel and Jox from Centaurion are here, and I’m relieved to know they’re okay. My gaze drifts past them, and I see Mathias’s parents, and Strident Engle from Scorpio, and Arcadia from Taurus who took me to see Vecily’s house, and the Cancrian Candela who on Centaurion reminded me what we’re fighting for, and Qima of Virgo, and Numen of Libra, and others. I almost gasp when I notice the red-haired sisters, Lola and Leyla, sitting at the end of the row.

  All the faces from my travels have come. Every person I’m still fighting for is gathered here.

  “You’ll notice an unfamiliar presence on this stage,” Eurek goes on, once the clapping ends. “A Thirteenth Guardian.”

  I turn to see Ophiuchus, who stands at the far end of the platform like he’s just as uncomfortable as I am with the attention.

  “Ophiuchus is real,” Eurek says loudly, his voice echoing through the silence. “Tonight, we set off for that world. That House our ancestors betrayed and abandoned is where the Zodiac will make its final stand. And now I will turn things over to the commander of our army, the leader whose voice has brought us all together, whose courage is unmatched and whose spirit is unbreakable—our one and only Wandering Star Rhoma Grace.”

  The crowd breaks into rousing roars of applause, but it’s Agatha who steps forward instead of me, leaning heavily on her cane. They quiet down again.

  “I would like to add one more title to Eurek’s beautiful words.” She turns and bestows on me a loving smile as she pulls out the black opal Talisman and offers it to me. “Welcome home, Holy Mother.”

  All at once, every Guardian and Ambassador onstage bows—including Brynda, whose people bow to no one. My gaze pans over the crowd, and everyone else is bowing, too, even the Sagittarians.