Rebellion

by Rachel White

  There was no sign of anyone around. The guards were on another part of their patrol, probably on the other side of the crash site. Glowing lamps illuminated the area but left deep shadows in the places where the lamplight didn't touch. Rallis passed the tents and went deeper into the wasteland, picking his way around the rocks and glass and metal.

  In the depths of the wasteland, the only light came from the pale stars hanging overhead. Jevite technology had a tendency to fail too far into the waste, and the searchlights the legionnaires had carefully planted around the area were hardly shining at all. Rallis ignored them, as he ignored the twisted, half-melted structures around him and the acrid, lingering smell of smoke. None of that mattered. He might as well have been walking through water or an empty room, for all that he cared about his surroundings. The desire to search was growing stronger with each step that he took. It pressed against the inside of his breastbone as though it wanted to burst from his chest. He needed to look for—for something. There was something there that he had to find. He didn't know what it was. He only knew that he would recognize it when he saw it.

  There was a chunk of citadel in front of him. Behind it, Rallis knew, was the source of the light. It was nearly blinding now, so bright that Rallis had to cover his eyes with his hand and peer through his fingers to keep going forward. His head felt near to bursting and his ears and nose and throat were all stuffed up, as though he had come down with a bad illness. The pressure seemed to be growing enormously with each step forward, but he couldn't bring himself to stop. The desire to find was so intense, it was close to consuming him. He needed to find something. There was nothing more important than that.

  Half-conscious, staggering, his head roaring and his eyes streaming with tears, he rounded the edge of the citadel and came face-to-face with the source of the light.

  *~*~*

  "—Allis? Rallis."

  The voice—a familiar, welcome voice—sank into the depths of his mind, hooking itself in his thoughts and pulling him upward to the surface of consciousness. When he opened his eyes, Amun was staring down at him, his face furrowed with worry. It took Rallis a few moments to understand what he was worried about, for at first he didn't remember where he was or what he was doing. It felt as though he was coming out of a very long, deep sleep, though judging by the night sky above him, he couldn't have been unconscious for more than a few hours.

  "What…happened?" Rallis asked, trying to push himself up.

  "Don't do that." Amun's hand landed on his shoulder, holding him firmly down. "You shouldn't move. I had legionnaires fetch a physician, but they need to go to Kavck. Can you tell me your name?"

  "Rallis Yy. I'm not hurt."

  Beyond Amun, a few of his legionnaires were giving one another worried glances. For some reason, they all had pulses drawn. Amun looked equally unconvinced. "You shouldn't move," he said again. "You were attacked." That explained the pulses. "Do you know who did it?"

  "Attacked?"

  "Someone knocked you unconscious."

  And that explained the ache between his temples. Except…that wasn't right. Though his head hurt ferociously, it didn't hurt as though he had been hit. It felt as though someone had cut his skull opened and filled it with three times as much matter as was normally inside.

  "I wasn't…attacked," he managed, hardly able to whisper. His fingers and toes were tingling. "That wasn't…it wasn't like that." In fact, the headache was already going away, pouring out of him with the beating of his heart and the rush of blood through his veins. With each moment that passed, he felt more like himself, and less like…whatever he had been, that seeking, searching creature.

  "Rallis—"

  This time, he shrugged off Amun's hand and sat up. "I'm all right. No one attacked me. What happened?"

  "I woke up and found that you had disappeared. I thought at first you would be back, but when you didn't return, I went to look for you. I found you lying out here." Amun rubbed the side of his face. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought you out here. I didn't expect there to be any scavengers."

  "This is the first reported incident, sir," said one of his legionnaires helpfully.

  The words transformed Amun from concerned lover to competent legion officer. He rose and turned to them, tall and proud and commanding. "Once Citizen Yy has been looked at by a physician, take him back to his motherhouse in Kavck. I'll send a message to Captain Durranqen. We'll need to get reinforcements out here as soon as possible. Scavengers are one thing, but if these scavengers are willing to attack people—"

  "It wasn't scavengers."

  Where had that come from? Rallis hadn't really intended to talk, but his mouth had opened and his tongue formed words. In the startled silence that followed, Rallis said, "I already told you, I wasn't attacked. It wasn't scavengers."

  Amun crouched beside Rallis again, resting a hand on his shoulder. Not to push him down, but to send a message. I'm here. You have me. "Do you remember what happened?"

  Yes and no. Rallis could recall the journey toward the light, though now, with time and space between him and that all-consuming need to search, he found that it seemed as alien to him as someone else's thoughts. He could recall the moment he had stepped around the citadel piece into the brightness.

  And he could recall what he had seen. Some part of him, walking toward the light, had still believed it was thieves, though that made no sense. What thieves would be glowing so brightly? And why would Rallis just walk toward them like that, so unconcerned with danger? He should have been crouching and hiding, or alerting Amun and the rest of the legion, not striding out to meet the source of the glow. The source—he was sure of it—of that drive to seek and find.

  "I saw—" Rallis began, but a shrill humming interrupted him before he could finish. In the distance, a flier was descending. More legionnaires were arriving, along with an Adesi physician and some men in officer's uniforms. Ten people, maybe more, and all of them heading straight toward Rallis and Amun.

  Amun squeezed his shoulder. "You saw?" he prompted, but Rallis couldn't continue. It wasn't that he didn't know what he needed to say—it was that he couldn't. The words were deranged to his own ears. If he spoke them aloud, they wouldn't believe him. They would assume he had hit his head more seriously than they had realized and treat him accordingly. Anything he claimed would be written off as delusions, the product of a bad blow.

  No. He needed to talk to Amun alone. In the meantime… "I don't actually recall," Rallis mumbled. "I thought I did, but it disappeared."

  It was a lie. He knew what he had seen, framed by that strange silver glow. A single momentary look, stepping out from behind the safety of the rubble, had been enough to show him that it wasn't thieves. No one on Lyr moved like that, as though they had skeletons of molten metal instead of bone. Their stooped-back postures hadn't been enough to hide the length of their limbs or their abnormal height. Their skin, too, had shone uncannily, as if lit from the inside, and their eyes had pinpointed him in the darkness.

  He knew. Deep down, with a conviction at once baseless and absolute, Rallis knew what he had seen. It made no sense. Anyone he told would think he was insane—and it was insane. It was nonsensical. And yet…he was as sure of it as he had ever been of anything in his life.

  They hadn't been scavengers or mercenaries or raiders. They hadn't been humans at all. Rallis had seen the Exalted.

  FIN

  About the Author

  When Rallis's country, Adesa, is invaded by the technologically-advanced sky nation of Jev, all he wants is to keep his head down, avoid attention, and survive. That would be easier if Rallis wasn't half-Jevite, and his cousin weren't muttering about rebellion.

  Then Rallis is approached by Amun, a soldier in the Jevite legion, who is seeking an opponent in the game kha. Though Rallis would prefer not to be anywhere near him, he reluctantly agrees—and discovers Amun to be friendly, kind, and intelligent. As they continue to play khas, the two grow steadily closer, and Ra
llis finds his allegiances torn.

  Then his cousin is arrested for resistance, and Rallis's world completely falls apart.