by Essa Hansen
Proxy— One of the hybrid organic-inorganic mechanical bodies designed by Abriss Cetre specifically for each of the Graves. The Proxies remotely contain and are driven by the Graves’ consciousnesses, allowing their real bodies to remain safe within the Dynast hold.
rind— An interstitial space between universes, like an energy membrane, dividing universes from one another. Rinds can be passed through without resistance, but not all physiologies or technology can cross over without damage. The alterations in physics that rinds impress on objects passing through are individual to each rind.
RM28— A mostly desert planet with the right environmental conditions to sustain nophek. The Casthen established nophek packs here, and sustained them with periodic feed shipments.
saavee— Roughly humanoid in shape, but with unusual skull structure and facial features. Saavee are common across the multiverse and take up a variety of jobs, especially prevalent in mechanical technology disciplines. From a curious and gregarious culture, they are generally considered friendly and helpful to all species.
saisn— Tall, lean humanoid xenids known for their fine muscular control and sensitive nervous systems. All saisn develop a specialized sensory organ in the brain that is visible as a transparent, faceted core in their forehead. They are immersed in a “sense-sea”— a broad frequency range of sensory detail. Saisn culture is philosophical and refined, politically complex, and quite secretive to outsiders. Within the Cartographers, saisn often serve on the culture council and as ambassadors to newly discovered worlds and first-contact missions.
scalar gravity— Artificial gravity generated in a patterned matrix of nodes and antinodes within a short range. These scalar gravity fields pattern force in space to levitate objects or to anchor them against a surface such as a floor. This gravity system is used for starships and stations, and on a small scale for maneuvering objects or creating force fields.
scour— A tubular chamber of adjustable size that can cleanse and restore xenids of all biological type. It cleans skin and clothing, heals minor wounds, kills parasites, and eliminates internal waste. Scour technology is common throughout the multiverse.
stellar egress— Instantaneous spacetime shortcuts from one specific location in the multiverse to another specific location. All egresses are both entrance and exit points. They not only cut down on travel time but allow entrance into universes while bypassing the need to cross through their rind. This can open up exploration in universes otherwise too dangerous to cross over into. Egresses are remnant Graven technology.
tal— With vaguely humanoid skeletal structure, these xenids have morphic flesh, a ruffled, smokelike solid matter that flows between shapes: solid and limblike, or fanned out like broad cloth. Tal are fairly uncommon in the multiverse.
twitch drive— A ship flight-control system that uses the pilot’s muscular control, rather than conventional neural control. It is considered more reliable and comprehensive. Twitch drives usually consist of two or more pliable panels to encase fingers or comparable appendages, but may also involve— via the seat— the full musculoskeletal system of the body. The theory behind this flight method emerged from the technical riding of creatures, where the flow of energy and pressure links the two neural and musculoskeletal systems together in a feedback circuit.
Unity— Once the sole universe, Unity is the largest and central world of the multiverse. It is slowly inflating and absorbing planets and other celestial bodies at its expanding border. The Dynast faction governs Unity, and has immigration programs for affected border planets. The physical and metaphysical laws within Unity are so well understood, nearly all disease and ailment is preventable, life spans can be lengthened, education is free, one language is standard, technology has perfected resource generation and waste management, and citizens understand how to align with reality to manifest their desires and needs. For many, Unity is considered the paragon of safety and comfort.
vishkant— Rare, mostly incorporeal xenids with vaporous bodies that congeal into solid form in response to an observer’s consciousness— thoughts or memories— and assume the form of a familiar person. The vishkant’s appearance and solidity is partially real and partially observer hallucination elicited by pheromone. When the impression of external consciousness is removed, the vishkant’s molecules return to a neutral, vaporous state. Older vishkant can maintain a form of their choosing and resist exterior influence. Due to their shapeshifting ability, vishkant are often employed in espionage as manipulators, or in pleasure trades as manipulated.
whipkin— A short-furred, egg-laying mammal around one-half meter long from nose to tail. They are omnivores adapted to a saline woodland environment, with long-fingered paws for climbing, and patagia between forelimbs and hind limbs for gliding and swimming. They are extremely intelligent, but shy and reclusive in the wild.
xenid— Generic term for an individual of an alien species, usually applied to nonhumans.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Huge gratitude to my agent, Naomi Davis, who grasped the heart of this book immediately and helped me run with it. Thank you for your keen editorial eye, unwavering support, and showers of digital glitter. Much love to the BookEnds Literary Agency for all their encouragement.
My deepest thanks to Brit Hvide for being this story’s steadfast champion and for her powerful edits; the book has transformed in ways I couldn’t imagine, and I leveled up immensely in the process.
Thank you Bryn A. McDonald for ushering this book so smoothly, along with production coordinator Xian Lee, and my copy editor, Rachelle Mandik, for such detailed polish and for getting my eye on even more ways I can improve. Angeline Rodriguez, for being so thorough and patient with my newbie author questions. Thanks to my proofreaders, Amy Schneider and Janine Barlow for their eagle eyes. The amazing and dedicated team at Orbit has made me feel so warmly welcomed— Francesca Begos, Paola Crespo, Laura Fitzgerald, Angela Man, and the many people behind the scenes who I have yet to meet! And immense thanks to Anna Jackson for acquiring this book for the UK!
It is incredible to see the Azura rendered so beautifully by Mike Heath on this sleek dark cover by Lauren Panepinto— I can’t thank you both and the Orbit cover coven enough.
The interior design and typesetting team Six Red Marbles & Jouve India have done magic— when I saw my words laid out, the reality finally struck me that this was going to be a real book I could hold in my hands one day.
I am indebted to all my very first readers who trudged through the early drafts, for their sensitivity, fresh eyes, and craft expertise— and special thanks to my Alliance crew for the laughter, commiseration, and brainstorming that kept me afloat these past couple of years. My growth is all due to your encouragement: Alia Hess, Cassie Greutman, Darby Harn, Jennifer Lane, Nick Lilic, Shelly Campbell, and Sunyi Dean, who hauled me to dry land in those early days and helped me weather a lot of “soon.”
Finally, a warm thank-you to Philip Athans for giving me the first big push out the door on this publishing journey. I think I’d be somewhere else without it.
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meet the author
Photo Credit: Shawn Hansen
ESSA HANSEN is an author, swordswoman, and falconer. She is a sound designer for science fiction and fantasy films at Skywalker Sound, with credits in movies such as Doctor Strange and Avengers: Endgame.
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if you enjoyed
NOPHEK GLOSS
look out for
AZURA GHOST
Book Two of the Graven
by
Essa Hansen
Caiden “Winn” has been on the run for a decade, deserting family to keep the Azura out of enemy hands. His pursuers finally craft the perfect t
rap: a new bounty hunter possesses the memories of Caiden’s dead childhood friend Leta, whom he’d abandoned to slaughter after promising he’d return. This hunter claims to be that same girl, her real body captive on the Dynast faction’s homeworld.
Even if she’s an impostor infused with memories to lure him, Caiden can’t forget his shattered promise. If there’s any chance it’s really Leta, he must atone. If it’s not, he’ll deliver retribution on whoever would violate her memory. But in order to have a fighting chance against the Dynast’s Graven descendants— the most powerful pair in the multiverse— he’ll need to confront his own genetic origin and uncover the Azura’s true form.
CHAPTER 1
REUNION
No weapons, no masks— the rule of seedy places like this.
Caiden kept his hooded face tilted down as he leaned his elbows on the bar and scratched his morphcoat sleeve. The material transformed from thermal fur to leather and back again.
His face was plastered on bounty posts in every venue across the multiverse except here, in Unity. It was a trap— and so far, a little more creative than most of the traps he’d evaded before.
The bar establishment was just a platform accommodating seats, with open visibility into the darkness. Creeper boughs laced overhead, dripping luminescent lichen and fungus, bright as lanterns. Up past them, on the trunk of one of the forest’s massive trees— kilometers tall and so dense they created constant night— there bobbed the rare, absurdly expensive flowers he’d traveled all this risky way for.
Not traveled. Driven. Caiden grimaced and sipped the purple fire of his drink. It tasted like fuel and anxiety, stinging across his tongue, vapor heavy in the lungs.
Casthen hunters had cleverly targeted the chemical packs on C’s collar, fight after fight, depleting the rare elements that kept the beast alive. The sayro Caiden needed to make more life-sustaining chems grew nowhere but this planet, only during the glessing season, when leaves filled the canopy and blotted light below so bizarre things could grow. Sayro’s short shelf life excluded it from distribution. So— Caiden crept into the trap of Unity.
He stared into his glass, peripheral vision broadening, brain parsing species-specific body vocabulary. Arguments and gossip fizzed. In ten years on the run, he hadn’t once stayed in a populated venue for this long.
It took, on average, twelve arcminutes before someone recognized him.
He’d already wasted three.
If the translator isn’t here in five …
Caiden side-eyed the security clustered past the back of the establishment, so dense he couldn’t see the sayro keeper—“merchant” for the right price— behind them. Not the first disreputable purchase he’d made alone. Unarmed. Languageless.
Four arcminutes.
Scents of ozone, mushroom, and resin steeped the air. Water drops pattered and far-off boughs moaned. Roosting birds crooned atop percussion insects, music enough for the Andalvian who danced hypnotically onstage. Beautiful chromatophoric patterns flowed across their skin. As Caiden had hoped, the patrons were engrossed, and even the bounty hunters lurking in the mix seemed distracted. Just two to worry about: the tall saisn, his eyes shut, tuned in to broad sensory landscapes. And a hunter in a split surcoat of Dynast colors. Her eyes glinted amber under the glow.
Caiden tucked a snarl of thick, pale hair behind his ear. Ten years had distanced him from the bounty photo: he wasn’t that crisp, twenty-year-old thing. A bit of scruff on his cheeks and jaw helped hide his freckles. Bruises, scrapes, cuts— all over— scars. A lot.
No more associating with fellow passagers in sparkling white Cartographer settings. Eternally on the run from Threi Cetre, the Casthen Prime, he now skimmed seamy systems and dark markets, associating with violence and deceit. Befriending no one, revisiting nowhere twice. Family— not since he was ambushed on the planet that was supposed to be a haven where he could rest. He never rendezvoused with his crew after. They’d just be made targets too.
Surely they watched him from afar. They knew the truth behind rumor and infamy.
The glass Graven star. Perhaps not a ship or a man at all but ethereal, like an invisible rogue astrological event. A lightseep creature: crystal one moment, light the next, then void.
Ghost of Azura.
The Butcher of Prixia.
The years had carved out more of that hollow the Casthen had made in Caiden, and monstrous things burrowed inside.
I can’t run forever.
That lonely thought rattled in a well-worn groove.
The Azura— Caiden’s home and heart— was the only key to Threi’s universal prison, able to bridge inside that impassable rind. But if Threi was released, he could easily take the ship, and its miraculous ability— to generate a new universe from nothing— was power that couldn’t fall into conspiring hands.
Five arcminutes— enough. Nerves danced under Caiden’s skin. He took a final drag of liquor, tucked his head down, and swiveled from his seat.
A woman stood in his way. “Can I have your drink, if you’re leaving?”
She fit the scholar archive photo. Human, twice his age. The least chance of being aggressive enough to get him what he needed, but also the lowest risk of general treachery. Smile wrinkles clashed with her scowl. Her thick hair was as white as the lichen and lit into a halo that contrasted her cool-toned black skin.
“Scholar Farame?” Caiden asked.
She tried to squint her large eyes at him, but it didn’t quite work with the delicate tech impeding on the sockets. White eyelashes quivered instead. “You’re Anixellan, then. Obviously, if you have to ask who I am. All these slods know me.”
Anixellan, worldwender. The moniker he’d provided her. Was a name still considered fake if someone gave it to you once? They called him worldwender on the outer fringes of the multiverse, as far from anywhere as you could get.
Caiden fidgeted at the attention. Most eyes still fixated on the dancer, but it was halfway to twelve arcminutes now.
He said, “You’ve already been paid, but you can have my drink too. After. One sayro.”
“Patience’d be good for you, young thing.”
He snorted a laugh. If ten years wasn’t patient, maybe he misunderstood the word.
The laugh died in his throat.
It wasn’t patience if you weren’t waiting for anything. He was just a man on the run.
The scholar rolled her eyes but Caiden wasn’t sure if it was reaction or activation: light swelled into her dilated pupils and shimmered over a morphing corneal membrane.
She snatched his drink and chugged the remainder before striding to the back of the bar and across a bridge to a platform of market stalls.
Caiden followed only to the bridge, pretending to observe the scenery while he sensed the rhythm of the air, the shape of the dark. His body tingled with anxious instinct, never relaxed long enough to enjoy more than a flicker of lovely. The planet’s soil was completely transparent. Vast root networks knotted below. Underground river systems roared, bright with schools of fish. Overhead, swarms of lightflies and bioluminescent rays cruised the dark.
Farame made it through the security phalanx to a counter with a gelese merchant, a photosensitive species native to the planet. They had a ropy body with long limbs, their dark skin clustered with luminescent pink blisters that matched their huge, glowing eyes. Farame studied their language, and her tech could approximate the multiple membrane blink combinations that made their eyeshine flash intensities of light and color filtration that Caiden’s unagumented human eyes couldn’t make out. But clearly, the deal wasn’t going well.
Sayro wasn’t advertised for sale. To gelese who weren’t shady merchants, it was sacred. This gelese seemed less shady than Caiden had hoped.
The security bristled. Farame spread her arms to calm them, but more than one fidgeted their hands around hidden glaves.
Cheers sighed from the crowd as the Andalvian finished their dance. The spectators unknit, attention roving.<
br />
“Out of time,” Caiden muttered. Should have done this the usual way. Blood and fangs and speed.
The darkness sharpened inward to this one point in time.
Caiden strode for the merchant, just as the ten bodies of the security folded in. Paralytic glaves raised to point at the scholar’s neck. He yanked her back while still striding forward, taking her place in the ring of weapons. Fingers half-squeezed triggers. Glave muzzles shoveled into Caiden’s neck.
“Leave, Farame,” he said. “You were never here.”
He drew down his hood. Lifted his chin, pinched his shoulders back, crammed a regal bearing into his frame. Soreness striped his muscles from other fights, stitches and bandages twinged, bloodstream pulsed around the hollow in him.
And a burst of rancid shame, but there wasn’t any choice. This was a last resort.
The security hesitated at the sight of his face.
Caiden gathered up and sharpened his Graven will, hot as a blade. Reality, soft as tallow. He cleared his mind of anything other than his desire and met each of their gazes, pouring his energy into their obedience, fostering whatever cursed resonance it was that bent their emotions, that ripened curiosity into awe and festered awe into love.
Caiden said gently, “No fighting, I’m here for the sayro, that’s all. Just one. You can do that for me.”
Squared shoulders rounded. The glaves eased off his neck. Eyes stared, fawning.
The gelese’s tight posture wilted, and their pupils brightened, reverent.
A sourness seeped across Caiden’s tongue. He swiped at the holosplay on the desk, inputting biosecurity and fund-transfer details. “Double payment, for the inconvenience.” He pointed up to where the sayro blossoms bobbed, then held out his palm, hoping his Graven intention communicated something too.
The gelese scurried off their stool and climbed the trunk behind them. Their weedy fingers were tipped in bulbous pads and claws, easily scaling the rippled bark.