He was joking. She was always this bossy, whether they were competing in archery, stealing moonplums, or playing pranks on the staff who tended to Rhee day and night. But that word—empress—was like a thick black smoke filling her lungs. An entire valley of Kalusian flowers would be cut down to decorate the capital city on her sixteenth birthday, the day of her coronation. In just one week’s time, she’d come face-to-face with Seotra. Then, she’d finally have her revenge.
She took a breath, stopped, and turned to him. “Listen. I came to tell you . . .” I don’t deserve this. “I don’t want this,” she said instead. Rhee held up the telescope that Julian must have slipped in her bag before they said goodbye. She guessed it had cost months of his wages from working in the greenhouses. It was made of silver—a metal so rare that it could be mined only in the Outer Belt, and it came at a steep price.
“That was your birthday gift,” Julian said softly. “You weren’t supposed to find it ’til you were on your way.” Rhee shook her head. He was hurt; she could tell. But it was too generous. “You hate it,” he said flatly.
“Don’t be stupid,” Rhee said as she shoved the telescope into his hand. There was dirt from the greenhouse under his nails. “I don’t hate it.” As if anyone could hate something so beautiful. “It’s just . . .”
She didn’t know how to explain it in a way he’d understand. In truth, she loved it. She’d loved everything he’d ever given her—found things, mostly. A tiny sun-bleached skull of a bat, or a jagged crystal that reflected the light in a rainbow if she held it just so. Rhee would be leaving those behind too. It felt wrong to accept anything from him. It felt like by taking something so special from Julian, she’d have to have a heart as pure as his.
Julian slid the telescope open. Each compartment was smaller than the last, tapering toward the eyepiece. At full extension, it was the whole length of his arm.
Just then a kid tore past them, the sparkler in his hand illuminating Julian’s face briefly in the darkness. From this angle, she could see the scar from where he’d split his chin open years ago, scaling the south wall of the palace to see her. He’d just returned from the old ruins, looking for moonsnakes—and that night he’d brought the castoffs of their milk-white skin to show her.
“Look up there.” Julian pointed to the constellation of Terecot. Up in the sky, the maiden’s hair unraveled into a spiral that ended with a tiny orange light. He handed her back the telescope. “Don’t lose that spot.”
But Rhee struggled to find the light when she brought it to her eye. There was only a blue-black sky in the viewfinder, and as she searched left and right she grew anxious. She levered onto the balls of her feet, as if an extra two inches would bring her closer.
Julian guided the telescope higher. She could feel his calloused palm cupping her hand. Her hood fell back as she tilted her head up, and she felt his breath on her neck. A memory surfaced without her calling for it, surfacing organically, making her skin prickle: the moment just a week ago when he’d pinned her in the dojo. If she’d turned her head just a fraction of an inch . . .
She gasped when Kalu came into sight. Swirls of orange and white cascaded across the planet’s surface. It looked just like the birthday sweet Julian’s mom had made Rhee when she’d turned twelve—whipped cream smeared on a warm piece of tenkang—simple and delicate and almost too beautiful to eat. She’d loved it more than the elaborate cake imported from Kalu. “Oh, holy ancestors. That. Is. Awesome.”
“You know the atmosphere on Kalu is so thick that they don’t get yellows in their sunsets?”
“I didn’t know that,” she said absently, still looking up at the brilliant planet. She remembered the sky and sunrise and sunset, though, especially her last dawn on Kalu—blues and purples peeking over the horizon and scattering across the sky.
The moment she learned of her family’s deaths, she’d fumbled through all the memories on her cube, searching to recall their last moment together—only to wish she hadn’t. Her mother’s hair, gray and frizzy; the dark circles under her father’s eyes; her sister purposefully ignoring her. All of them angry, disappointed, colder-looking in recall somehow than they had seemed in the flesh. As if they’d already been dead for years.
No one told you that about the way recall worked: how easily you could ruin the things you loved. Rhee chose to rely on her organic memory to remember only the good moments: Joss sneaking dried myrah candies to her in bed when she was sick; insisting the tailor make them both a set of pants like their father’s; and flinging aside her parasol to cartwheel in the sun, over and over, in the buckwheat fields outside the palace. Her father, a tall man, lifting Rhee easily onto his shoulders for a daily walk along the palace perimeter. And her mother, undoing Rhee’s tight braids every evening—something a servant could’ve easily done—and rubbing her aching head with lavendula oil. “Be a good girl” was the last thing she’d said to Rhee. And Rhee remembered nodding, as if she’d been saying I will.
But she’d lied.
Their father had given the sisters special coins once, souvenirs from a trip he’d taken in the Bazorl Quadrant—one for Joss and one for her. When her father ushered her family on the craft the night of the accident, Joss and Rhee had been fighting about whose turn it was to press the thruster deploy.
“Stars you’re stupid. Soil you’re still stupid,” Joss had told Rhee, flipping her coin to show Rhee it didn’t matter which side landed first. Rhee had been six years old, and furious. She’d snuck off while her parents were distracted. She’d wanted to go get her own coin—and prove Joss was even stupider. Acting like a baby, just like Joss always said.
She’d been gravity-bound when the craft launched, when it tore off into the atmosphere and disappeared. She hadn’t known, of course, that it would never return, that exactly four minutes after takeoff it would burn up in the outer rings of Rylier and crash, killing everyone on board, instantly.
All because her father had wanted peace. In signing the Urnew Treaty that ended the Great War between the planets, he’d signed his own life away. Seotra had warned him. Half the beings in the galaxy will want you dead, he’d practically snarled. His hands clutching onto the collar of her father’s shirt. Your own people will make you pay. Rhee had burst in at that moment, interrupting their standoff. No one had ever spoken to her father that way, or handled him so roughly. Rhee clenched her fists as she remembered the threat laced in the Crown Regent’s words, the menace she felt when she went through her cube playback, searching for all the memories she had of her father just before he died.
Your own people will make you pay.
As in, Seotra would make him pay. He’d made her father believe that he had to take their family and flee from some imminent danger on Kalu. But the only danger was Seotra himself.
Once her family boarded the ship, isolated from all of their friends and allies out of a need for secrecy, it would have been easy enough for Seotra to orchestrate the explosion that ended their lives. He’d had connections from the war. And there was no doubt in Rhee’s mind he’d killed plenty of men before he’d killed her family that day.
She’d never shared the memory with anyone. No one would’ve believed a child. And now that she was grown, mere hours from becoming empress, there was no need to tell anyone, ever. She’d have her revenge on her own terms.
“Just take it,” Julian said now, motioning to the telescope in her hand. “Pretend it isn’t a birthday gift. Let’s say I’m just letting you borrow it ’til I see you next.”
’Til I see you next, she repeated in her head. By then, everything would be different.
She’d learned that there was no guarantee of anything, or anyone, ever.
Streaks of orange and red cut across the black sky. Shining, burning, bubbling. Edges chipped away as the meteors moved at impossible speeds. Cheers erupted all around them as everyone burst into applause. Rhee couldn’t r
ecord it; she’d just have to remember how she felt at this moment, looking up into the void, every joy and fear inside her boiling, as if she were the same temperature as the supercharged rocks hurtling across the sky. With each flare the question she’d asked herself for years burned brighter and brighter inside of her: Why her? Why did she survive?
“Do you think I’m good?” she asked him suddenly. There was a prickling sensation in her throat.
“Rhiannon . . .” He trailed off. After all these years, she wasn’t sure if she’d ever heard him say her whole name, and she didn’t like it—didn’t like the formality of it, the way it made her feel as though she’d already floated far away from him, and from this life. But wasn’t that what she wanted? Wasn’t that better for everyone? He seemed as if he was going to say something serious, but finally he shook his head and took her hand. “No. I think you’re weird.”
They’d held hands a million times before. To help each other over the crest of the sand dunes, or to pull the other up off the dojo mat. But now, he laced his fingers through hers and squeezed. She held her breath, wondering if she should squeeze back, if it even meant anything, if she was overthinking it completely.
The crowd to the left began to murmur. People parted like water cleaved by the prow of a boat, revealing a tall, white-haired man. He was too old to be a Tasinn. He had a slightly uneven gait and a funny rhythm to his walk, as if one leg was longer than the other. Veyron. She and Julian wrenched their hands apart.
His expression was illuminated in the light of a nearby torch: sad, knowing, stern. He barely looked at his son. Instead, Veyron touched the back of his neck and spoke something into his cube. She could read his mouth: I found her.
• • •
With every step Rhiannon took, the long, white corridor of the Eliedio seemed to narrow—as if the royal ship were slowly closing in on her.
It was done. They’d left Nau Fruma, and it would be years before she’d see Julian again. There was no sadness to draw from, only a static numbness. She’d opted to keep her cube off; she didn’t want to remember any of this.
Rhee focused on Veyron’s coat, which trailed behind him like a flag at half-mast. Because she was meant to be empress, the rules of decorum stated that no one should walk in front of her. Yet Veyron did, evidently still angry with her for running off. She could tell Tai Reyanna was irritated by this transgression; she made a point of standing behind Rhee, though they’d often walked side by side.
“There are a variety of festivities planned upon your arrival,” Tai Reyanna said, delivering the words in the breathy, high-society accent she’d urged Rhee to adopt. She walked slowly and deliberately, just as she did everything—and Rhee could hear the many fine layers of her formal silk robes swishing as she moved.
“How exciting,” Rhee responded. She hadn’t meant it to sound so sarcastic. Her footfalls were heavy, and though she knew it was the craft’s artificial gravity, there was a heavy feeling in her chest, too, as if her heart were pumping liquid metal to every part of her body. Her hair had been rebraided so tightly that her head ached. She looked down at her hands. Her palm still tingled where Julian had touched her.
“It is,” Tai Reyanna agreed, and Rhee could hear the chastisement in her voice. She was native Kalusian, like Rhee, and they shared the same broad cheekbones and tan skin. “Our Empress, coming home at last. Have you seen the holos today?”
When Rhee shook her head, the Tai took a handheld device and projected a three-dimensional image into the air as they walked. A Countdown to the Coronation logo appeared, the swirly script curling around an image of Rhee taken last year—digitally enhanced to bring out the green specks in her one hazel eye. She wasn’t smiling in the image, which Kalusian focus groups reported made her look older and more determined. There’d been a big media push as of late to convince the public that a teenage girl could rule the galaxy.
“We’re less than twelve hours away from making history, when Princess Rhiannon Ta’an will take the blood oath and swear her fealty to the people of Kalu,” Nero Cimna announced. Appearing as a holo that seemingly walked alongside Rhee in the corridor, the Countdown host wore a black short-sleeved shirt with a high, rounded collar, as was custom in diplomacy positions. As ambassador to the office of the regent, he’d interviewed Rhee several times in the past few months. Asking her a series of frivolous questions about her upcoming coronation, he’d smiled in a way that showed off his perfectly square jaw and made Rhee flush. He had that effect on millions of viewers.
“Last-minute preparations are still under way,” Nero continued. Rhee had seen in the studio how the cameras filmed him from every angle; the holo feed adjusted to suit and integrate the viewer best. The footage cut to a live feed of Lenys Valley on Kalu, just outside the capital. The sloping hills of the valley, green and lush, created a natural amphitheater where the coronation ceremony would take place. Rhee would be front and center as she went through the ritual of slicing open her palm to symbolically spill her blood for Kalu. A crowd of thousands had already collected and would wait there through the night. Flower arrangements were still arriving, and a small army of people seemed to be moving things back and forth for no apparent reason other than to fuss. The whole event looked extravagant, cloyingly beautiful, and like yet another careful orchestration from Seotra.
“We’ll see it in person soon enough,” Rhee said, gently lowering Tai Reyanna’s hand. Her Tai turned off the feed so that the hologram zipped closed and disappeared. “I’m eager to speak with Regent Seotra. Will he be available when we arrive?” His name in Rhee’s mouth tasted bitter, acidic, but she needed to keep track of his every move.
“Of course.” Tai Reyanna raised her eyebrow, giving Rhee a questioning look. “He’s been preparing for your arrival for months.”
And I’ve been preparing for years, Rhee almost said.
Veyron didn’t even acknowledge their conversation. Tonight he seemed even quieter than usual—and she felt that familiar shame she’d often felt from her trainer: that she’d somehow disappointed him.
“We’ll need to discuss the logistics of your arrival,” Tai Reyanna continued as they reached a fork in the corridor. “Shall we head to the bridge? The captain is ready to meet with us.”
Rhee stood between two paths, her mind racing with invented excuses to avoid whatever Tai had planned. She’d have to pass the entire onboard staff en route, who were no doubt furious with her for running off earlier.
“Perhaps the girl needs to rest first,” Veyron said, his back still to them.
“I’d like that. Veyron could escort me to my chambers,” Rhee said quickly. He was not a man of many words, but he was perceptive. He’d given her an out. “It’s been a long day.”
Other than a slight thinning of her lips, Tai Reyanna concealed her displeasure well. Rhee knew she’d never admit how distasteful she found it that Veyron was half Wraetan. There were old wounds from the Great War that Rhee feared would never be healed.
“Yes, it has been a long day, hasn’t it?” Tai Reyanna said after a moment passed. There was blame threaded into her tone; it had been a long day because Rhee had delayed their flight. “We’ll be sure to reconvene after you’ve gotten some rest.”
The closer they got to the coronation, the more Rhee had dared to defy her Tai, though it didn’t change the mixture of terror and respect she had for the woman. She bowed her head before Tai Reyanna could change her mind, essentially dismissing her. The ceremonial Kalu headdress that sat upon Rhee’s head shifted slightly, and she had to steady it with her hand. It had a colorful plume that gathered at the top of her head. She’d been forced to wear it, just like she’d been forced to change into a red dress embroidered with gold thread. The grit had been scrubbed from her tan arms, which now prickled with goose bumps.
Veyron and Rhee continued on after Tai Reyanna excused herself. It felt strange to be walking in silence�
�especially after the long procession of Tasinn and security sweeps. Whenever Rhee had complained about the escort, since the time she was a child, Tai Reyanna always replied with the same answer: “They’re for your protection.” And Rhee had always bit back the same answer: All the security in the galaxy didn’t protect my family.
At the end of the corridor, Veyron tapped a code into a silver keypad. Just as Rhee caught up to him, the door slid up with a quiet hiss and opened to a large room with floor-to-ceiling windows. Her ancestors were projected via holo onto the only solid wall in the room. Clustered along a small ledge were offerings—grain, fruit, myrah candies. Not her quarters, but a room of worship. She nodded to Veyron in respect and thanks. He’d been raised on Wraeta; honoring the ancestors was not part of his religion, but he knew that the practice always calmed her.
Rhee walked toward the windows, bowing before every ancestor and lighting incense as she passed, until she reached the portraits of her own family: her father, her mother, and Joss. If their bodies had been discovered, their cubes intact, she might have been willed certain memories they’d put aside. But even those had disappeared the day they died.
Through the glass, Kamreial fire rained against the darkness of space. In the distance, Rhee saw a pulsing orange light.
Kalu no longer seemed like a fixed point in the enormous sky, but a future she knew would be hers. Another chill ran over her arms. She’d be meeting with various dignitaries, and she’d been prepped by Tai Reyanna in the customs of every planet, until she could curtsy, bow, and sign in her sleep. But there was still much to learn.
She touched her neck instinctively to recall the well-worn memory of a family breakfast, startled to forget she’d powered off. On the cube, her memories weren’t arranged chronologically but by how often she’d revisited them—and this particular memory was always stacked at the top of her queue. But now, without the cube, Rhee had to search for this memory, closing her eyes and climbing down her memories as if feeling along the roots of a tree.
Empress of a Thousand Skies Page 2