Shadow Call

by Michael Miller

  But it was Qole who led them. Walking with straight, sure strides, she kept her gaze level. She wasn’t relaxed like Basra, or possessed of any bravado like her brother. She was contained within herself, and her purpose.

  She was the person, the thought, that would keep me honest. My father had had my mother, but they had been too alike, too focused on the greatness of the family. Qole didn’t lie to herself, or to anyone else. And to her, an excuse was tantamount to a lie. As long as I held Qole close to my heart, I felt I could always work at turning my responsibilities toward something good.

  But keeping the thought of Qole close was not keeping Qole herself close. And as they flanked me on either side, as we formed a wall to the rest of the world, as the seals of friendship were placed around their necks, her glance connected briefly with mine. I couldn’t read what was there, and a knot in my chest grew tighter.

  * * *

  After the ceremony, I kept peering over heads to spy on the crew of the Kaitan, sticking together like a small island in a choppy sea of royal revelers. As king, it turned out to be no faster for me to move across a crowded ballroom than it had been as a prince. Some of the distractions were welcome, like talking with Marsius about how he was enjoying Valtai in Rava’s company—immensely—and exchanging handshakes and even back-pounding embraces with both Gavros and Talia. Still, half my attention was elsewhere.

  Many excuse-laden minutes later, I arrived at the Alaxan party where they had, again, assembled a collection of furniture they deemed comfortable in a large swath of sunlight slanting in from a wall of ceiling-high windows. But instead of greeting me, they stared over my shoulder, each with their own distinct variation of a carefully neutral face.

  “Your Majesty,” a voice said behind me, approaching as I did. “Congratulations on your coronation and your victory.”

  I turned and cursed inwardly. This was not the ideal pairing of social groups; in fact, it was the worst. Daiyen, the Xiaolan princess I had promised to court, was part of the complicated knot writhing inside me. Two narrow straps ran down from her shoulders to the dress that started in a straight cut just above her chest. The green dress fit without a wrinkle to her knees, where it relaxed into an asymmetrical tail. Glimmers of Dracorte blue traced their way in a spiral design along one hip, a subtle tribute to my family.

  “Allow me to introduce Her Royal Highness, Princess Daiyen, of the Xiaolan family,” I managed to say with the brightest voice I could muster. “Daiyen, I’m honored to introduce you to Captain Qole Uvgamut and her crew: Arjan, copilot and engineering; Eton, weapons master; Basra, accounting and trading—also known as Hersius Kartolus the Thirteenth,” I added, with an attempt at dryness, “though we like to keep that quiet—and last but not least, Telu, hacker. As you know, I would have never survived if it weren’t for them.”

  Everyone stood, and you could have cut the air with a Disruption Blade. If I’d had one with me, I would have tried, just to relieve the tension. They all must have known about Daiyen.

  But then Daiyen smiled warmly and dipped down in respect. “I’m honored. And congratulations on your victory, as well. I understand you led the Alaxan forces with distinction. Nevarian is a friend, and I thank you for any part you had in keeping his hot head on his shoulders.”

  Qole, her expression grave, bowed in return. “Your Highness, a pleasure. To meet you, that is. Trying to keep a prince alive despite himself is one experience I’ll be avoiding in the future.”

  Daiyen stared for a moment, then burst out laughing. With a basso rumble, Eton followed suit. Then everyone else, except for me. I scowled.

  “I see how it is. I’m worth keeping alive unless it’s inconvenient. See if I invite anyone to my next coronation.” I hadn’t known how this was going to go, but out of all possible scenarios, this was the least expected, but the most welcome. The tension inside me didn’t go away, but for a brief moment, I allowed myself to imagine a future where being at court didn’t mean I had to worry that my Alaxan friends were shunned or feared.

  “May we not have need for any more coronations for a very long time,” Daiyen said, growing more serious. “And may drones stop going rogue. Speaking of which, will they?”

  The question didn’t surprise me. Daiyen was the closest thing I had to a friend in royal circles, but we were still royals. And the drones were a problem worth worrying about.

  Qole caught my gaze, and I gave her the faintest of nods. If sharing some of what we knew predisposed Daiyen toward Qole, and therefore Alaxak, that would only be valuable. I left it up to Qole how much to tell her. There was the little we had actually proven, and then there were Qole’s claims with impossibly huge ramifications, for which we just had to take her word.

  But there would be many who wouldn’t listen. Who would call her mad.

  Qole shrugged lightly. “The short answer is that we don’t know.” My shoulders relaxed imperceptibly. “Telu may be in a better position to explain.”

  “Hmm?” Telu, who had sat back down, tried to nervously fold her legs under herself before she remembered where she was and straightened out with an exasperated sigh. “For the amount of money in these places, you sure would think someone would want to buy comfortable furniture,” she complained. “There’s not much I can explain. I’ve been hacking around inside those damn drones most of my life, and in the past week I’ve been comparing notes with the Dracorte hackers. Every accessible log we pull doesn’t show Solara tampering with them in any way other than trying to get them to stop attacking. Whatever happened to them was happening at a higher level, one no one has access to.”

  “That,” Daiyen said slowly, “is probably the last thing I wanted to hear.”

  “You and everyone else,” I said. “But…” I looked at Qole again.

  “I can stop them,” she finished for me. “But I might be the only one, and there are thousands of drones in the systems. I’ll do what I can to help friends and allies, but that’s all I can do.”

  The word allies didn’t escape Daiyen’s notice, and her focus on Qole grew keener.

  “The fact is, I’m determined to get to the bottom of what has been causing drone malfunctions,” I continued, “even though the bulk of the drone hubs now lie in Solara’s domain. Because it’s a problem that concerns all of us now. This is the first time they’ve turned on vessels and settlements in such numbers, without any evidence of provocation.”

  Never mind that they might be running on a substance that even Shadow feared. And that Shadow was sentient enough to be able to fear it. Merely considering it made my head hurt.

  Daiyen nodded thoughtfully. “Thank you for sharing this much with me. Let me know if we can be of assistance. In the meantime, if you’ll excuse me, I might let Mother know we should steer well clear of any drones.” She paused, looking at all of us. “Incidentally, I don’t know if we can consider each other allies, at least not yet, but I, for one, will never be able to repay you for beating that monster.”

  Her words made me blink in surprise. Her mouth formed a smile, but her eyes showed something else. They burned with anger and hatred for Solara, and she wanted me—us—to know it. She curtsied again, and was gone.

  Even though the animosity between my sister and me was clear, in the world of royals everyone was supposed to stay neutral, unless they were an officially declared ally of one side or another. Daiyen’s words, even if spoken in confidence, didn’t exhibit the neutrality that a Xiaolan usually adopted. Her passion was unexpected; it felt personal, whatever was between her and Solara.

  At least I didn’t think it was because of whatever was between her and me.

  Basra sipped his drink speculatively as he watched her go. “She’s formidable.”

  Qole sat down and propped her boots up on another chair, eyes on me, her own voice decidedly neutral. “She’s nice.”

  I suppressed a wince.


  “Very nice, for a royal,” agreed Arjan blithely, also settling himself back down. “Then again, the last time I met a nice royal I got chopped up.”

  “Right now, all you’re doing is chopping up my furniture,” I replied irritably. “Is that your plan every time? Hey, we’re visiting Nev, let’s build a fort from priceless antiques?”

  “We’re honorary family now,” Arjan replied loftily.

  “That’s right!” Telu nodded. “So really, this is my chair.”

  Standing in the last rays of the setting sun, all I wanted was to join them. Make fun of them, find out how they felt, or what they were planning. To simply sit next to Qole as though we belonged together, and spend time with people I wanted as friends.

  But while they were finally experiencing the Dracorte hospitality I had promised them at our first meeting, a rapidly approaching gaggle of officials made it clear that it wasn’t my job to share it with them.

  * * *

  The next time I saw Qole was on Alaxak. After the coronation, the number of details in organizing a new government bureaucracy was overwhelming in itself, and Qole and the other Alaxans could most certainly relate.

  “We have come to a decision.” Hiat stood at the top of a hill where a new meeting hall stood half-constructed, a short way outside of the wreckage that was Chorda. Only the smooth girders of the new structure arched above us, leaving the sky open. Here, along the equator, the sweep of the land crept out from under a glacier, turned to rolling grassland hemmed by trees, and then leveled off into an endless ice-scattered ocean. Flecks of white flowers bobbed in the grass from a steady breeze, mimicking the waves crawling toward shore in the distance. The chill of the glacier made everyone in the Dracorte delegation shiver.

  Everyone but me. The only shiver I had to suppress was from dealing with Hiat, chosen by the newly formed Alaxan System Relations Council as their spokesman, because of his breadth of experience in hogging the spotlight. Telu shifted uncomfortably out of the corner of my eye, and I felt bad that she had to witness this. I took some solace in the fact that Jerra had been elected as the head chairperson of the council, after Qole had refused it. Qole, herself, had assumed a lesser seat as the regional representative of Gamut.

  “King Nevarian Dracorte.” Hiat extended his hand to me. “The people have decided to cease being part of the Dracorte family system, establish our independence, and conduct our own inter-system diplomatic relations. As a person who once claimed to make decisions for the people of Alaxak, you have been invited here to respond.”

  I stepped forward, squaring my shoulders. The assembled crowd was even larger than the one in Chorda, where all this had begun. Some were dressed in festive clothing, others in fresh new uniforms, still others in their standard fishing gear. The crowd surrounded us, a few seated in whatever chairs could be gathered in the unfinished structure, most standing, an endless array of variety.

  I felt I was entering a palace grander than any I had been in. The clouds had broken, and the sun lit the whitecaps of the waves. The crowd was silent, but their energy rolled over me. I took a deep breath, a strange joy fighting to flower inside me. For the first time, I felt I was being given an honor that had nothing to do with my station, that wouldn’t even be seen as an honor by many, but it was one I had earned with blood, sweat, and tears.

  “Thank you for the opportunity to speak.” I pitched my voice to carry, and stopped. Many of my new advisors had urged me to find some way to strike a compromise; make them a protectorate, insist that independence was a path to self-destruction.

  But it was out of my hands, and I knew, come what may, that was as it should be. I had an entire speech prepared to tell them of their new glorious future, but what role, really, would I play in shaping that? It wasn’t for me to say, and it never had been. It was time for me to get out of the way.

  “I extend the hand of friendship,” I said simply. “Call on us if you are in need.” I reached my hand out and took Hiat’s.

  His was surprisingly warm in the cold air, the grip firm, if possessing the softness of someone who had avoided physical labor in recent years. Looking into his eyes, I could see resolve, experience, and the calculating look I had learned to associate with politicians. This time, Telu didn’t stir; she stared at him as if she would kill him if he made one false move.

  If the fate of a people was in Hiat’s hands, it was hard to know where it would go. But as I released him and stepped back to the cheers of everyone around me, I swept the crowd with my eyes. There was Qole, Arjan, Telu, Jerra. Their fate was in their own hands, not in any one person’s, and so they all stood a better chance than anyone I knew.

  The cheering swept through the crowd as Jerra wheeled out into the center of the human circle I had just been in. She was grinning ear to ear, and gave me a salute as she passed by.

  “Friends!” she shouted. “We are here because of Qole Uvgamut. She was the spark, the fuel, the Shadow fire that started this insane run. In addition to her role as regional representative, what do you say we name her our ambassador to the systems?”

  She turned, inclining her head to Qole. “Presuming you are willing, Qole. I know you’d rather fish in peace. We all would. But considering you’ve proven yourself unable to stay out of the thick of it, we might as well make it official.”

  Qole grimaced and shook her head, but the crowd was not to be denied. They began to chant her name, and with a helpless shrug to her crew, she walked out into the center of the circle.

  Only at times could I see how young Qole truly was. In many families, she would be a child, considered incapable of coping with the world on her own. Here, she had been nominated to represent a planet to empires.

  A silence fell over the crowd, and only the whisper of the wind sounded for several long moments. Qole stood quietly, thinking.

  “My dream was to simply live my way of life in peace,” she began. “It took watching other people sacrifice everything to make me realize there is more than that.” Her eyes flicked to me. “So many of us have died. Ships, friends, ways of life destroyed in battle. My brother, the last of my family, was almost taken from me.

  “But we have endured worse. We live where others won’t; we love a way of life others are too weak to survive. I used to think our survival was because of our traditions, and it is, but now I understand that one of our traditions has been to adapt. The roots of the plant exist only to bring new life.”

  She turned a circle, and her voice grew stronger with the wind. “It’s time for new life. We have lived through the winter, and now we are the spring. There is no room for fear in a Shadow run; there is only the goal. I call on you to not fear the future, only to focus on our goal: a better life on Alaxak, a free life, independent from our enemies and close to our friends.”

  A wild emotion hammered in my heart while Qole spoke, something that was almost out of my control, as though I were one with the crowd that pressed around us. I knew I had seen a movement born when Qole had spoken of fighting for Alaxak before. Now I had the strange sensation that I had seen Qole’s future. She would never again live the life of a simple Shadow fisherwoman and, along with Alaxak, her future was almost infinite in possibility.

  I didn’t know if that would make her happy, or end well for her. I didn’t know how it involved me, if at all. But as celebration spread, as great things continued to happen, her life was changing rapidly, and the urgency with which I needed to speak to her only grew.

  As night fell, the Alaxans lit a flare for each person who had died fighting for their independence. Thousands of flickering lights heated paper rockets that floated into the night air. The breeze caught them almost immediately, creating an ever-widening exodus of fire from the shore over the ocean.

  Driftwood had been dragged into place to construct giant bonfires. Their heat and noise warmed one half of me, while the other froze, exposed to the ele
ments. It was strangely comforting. Meat sizzled on makeshift grills, drinks were handed out with abandon, and the only sense of social strata existed in the groups that gathered and dispersed for food, dance, or conversation. I couldn’t help but smile as the discomfiture of the Dracorte delegation was slowly eroded, and they one by one joined the others around a bonfire, laughing and joking.

  Telu settled herself on a log next to me, looking subdued, if peaceful. She’d had to watch her uncle smile and politick alongside the ruins of Chorda, just as she’d watched him smile and chat with her father over her bruised and blackened eyes as a child.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her without preamble.

  She raised an eyebrow at me, as if to mock the suggestion that she wouldn’t be, and then she frowned, taking the question seriously. “I think so. Hiat is a piece of scrap, but I work for Qole, not him. He can hobnob or burn, for all I care.” She leaned forward to warm her hands by the fire. “Now this,” she said with a pleased sigh, “feels perfect.”

  She wanted to change the subject, so I helped her. “Oh, so a log is more comfortable than my furniture?” It was my turn to arch an eyebrow.

  “Nope,” Telu said. “So I appreciate any comfort it provides. I don’t appreciate your furniture, since it supposedly exists for comfort and yet it’s pretty much on par with this.” She patted the log.

  “What she’s saying,” said Basra, materializing behind me, “is that you have to adjust your expectations.”