The Kinship of Stars

by Julie Ishaya

  Kieriell shrugged modestly. He continued to advance until he completed the third point on a triangular formation in the gathering. "The wonders of instinct. Mine has served me well."

  "Indeed." The kai tilted his head.

  Adam took one step toward his son, eyes glazing. "Kieriell, I—"

  "Stop!" the kai commanded him. "Not one more move or I will signal for my men to kill every student here."

  Adam froze while Kieriell looked with concern at the cluster of Shiv guards, students, and the mavens. Jarren was managing to sit up, though he still pressed a hand to the side of his head. At least, Kieriell thought, it was some sign of recovery.

  "You vertically teleported?" Adam asked hoarsely. "Is that how you got here?"

  "It is," the kai answered for Kieriell. "Your son is a true paragon, Adam Asmirrius. That inhibitor should have kept his skills completely in check."

  "Well, there's where you're wrong," Kieriell replied, holding up a finger as if to scold the kai. "You see, I've realized after these last few experiences that teleportation is not a psionic ability. It was always accepted as psionic, which was probably why your inhibitor had any power over me to begin with, but psionics are a skill purely of the mind that can be developed despite one's genetics. But it is one's genetics that open them up to the gridcode. They are two completely separate things."

  "Interesting." The kai walked over beside Kieriell, his gaze biting with speculation, and he continued to circle behind the youth until he paused, saying nothing.

  Kieriell listened to the shallow breath coming through the mask, to the grass rustling under the kai's feet.

  Adam stood frozen, equally as helpless.

  "You know of my plan to secure your mother and take her back," the kai said softly, leaning close to Kieriell's ear. He followed Kieriell's gaze as it rolled again toward the student hostages. "You have friends among them. Friends who will suffer if you do not cooperate."

  Kieriell wondered if he had come so far only to fail now. With the students' lives at stake, and his mother no more than another specimen to the kai, he found no solution. "Siri is not with you, is she?" he asked, eyes still trained on the group near the far wall, he checked each face until he saw Jarren look back at him.

  "No. She would never have any part in something like this," the kai whispered. "I left her, as I left the rest of my people, in pathetic ignorance."

  Kieriell noted the wondering frown on Adam's face, but he persisted with the kai. "You might be surprised how much she knows." Almost mechanically he rolled his eyes shut, then he opened them to focus on Jarren again.

  Jarren wiped a hand beneath his nose and glanced at it to see a smear of blood. His eyes darkened as he held one hand to his temple. He had experienced a mindsting, if just a mild one compared to those which subdued the school guards, and Jarren would likely find himself altered by it. Being Valtaerian, he wasn't born with the heightened recovery of a Nexian, and one more psi-attack like that first would probably render him bereft of any psionics at all, particularly the manifestation of his shadow blade. Raw hostility reached out from him, touched Kieriell with insistence and refusal to surrender. Jarren's head bobbed slightly, while he drew the hand smeared with blood across his throat, one pointed finger tracing a line across his skin from ear to ear. Then he dropped his hand to his side, and nodded quickly, indicating the kai.

  In the meantime, Adam and Kieriell did not dare send to each other, not with the kai so close that he might reach out and pluck the telepathic exchanges out of the air with his bare hand.

  "We could," Kieriell said, stalling, "work something out."

  "I'm sure," the kai said. "You're much more willing now, when other lives besides your own are endangered. Once more, I have you legally, for you display weakness when you care for these lesser beings."

  Still not moving, Adam spoke up. "On the contrary. Kieriell, a proven transcendant now, has every right to act as he wishes. If those young people over there are a weakness for him, then so be it."

  "What are you babbling about?" the kai snapped.

  Kieriell admitted that he was also confused. "Huh?"

  Adam adjusted his stance, tossing his head back with confidence. "Remember the document Asmodéus mentioned when we contacted you?"

  "You were lying," the kai snorted.

  "No," Adam replied calmly then went on to explain. "After you took my son and revealed his skills to the rest of Nex, my father and I had hopes of still creating political reforms, which might give us some means of reviving the negotiations with the Shiv that we could bargain with you to return Kieriell. We went through the old files of past Nexian reforms to seek advice for our procedure."

  The kai remained close behind Kieriell, looking directly over the young Nexian's shoulder. Kieriell heard a small growl rise in the kai's throat, felt the disbelief and how it began to melt down into more profound desperation, feeding the spiral.

  A mild satisfaction with himself gleamed in Adam's eyes. "But in the process, my father found a document from the reign of Asmodéus II, which entered into an agreement with the adversaries that transcendant children should be excluded from the laws of will power that run Nexian government. The document had been filed away and forgotten over time, but it was still legal. Transcendants have the right to choose an advocate to act in their stead in the Nexian regime. Kieriell never knew this and therefore he never chose an advocate. Until an advocate is in play, a transcendant is considered exempt from the system. So you see, no matter how you captured Kieriell, he was never forfeited to you because you successfully manipulated the chamberlain. Nor can you legally exploit his friends as a weakness to obtain him again."

  The kai stepped halfway out from behind Kieriell and for a long time only insects whirring and buzzing in the night air kept the quadrangle alive.

  In this moment of disappointment for the kai, Adam dared one step forward and then straightened, shook his head mockingly and smiled in such a way as to bare slightly lengthened canines. "You had no idea what was in store for your people after your claim that Kieriell had killed himself." The voice dropped considerably. "I suppose that when Kieriell teleported free of you, it sent out a shock wave of some kind since he was breaching dimensional barriers. Asmodéus and I felt it, and we were convinced that he was dead. Then you, in your arrogance, confirmed it. With that document to support our purposes, we had the right to vengeance. Nex was prepared to launch a full attack on the Shiv world."

  "Father!" Kieriell gasped. The implications of the statement were vastly horrible to one who had seen the Shiv people and known them to be far different from their representatives. He wondered what would have happened to Siri.

  "But you launched first," Adam finished. "In many ways, you are lucky to have made such a brave if stupid move, for you see it has given Kieriell time to find me, otherwise your world would have been annihilated."

  "Stop it," Kieriell said. "If I had not needed time to recover from my first vertical teleportation, and had I known you thought me dead, I would have come to you sooner." He shook his head. "I never meant for this to go so far. I never would have thought that the Shiv would try to take Mother." Then he made the mistake of turning his head toward the kai.

  His head spun as he was pulled back by the arms and pinned at the wrists by the unmovable grasp of the kai's cy-netic hand. The cold chrome stung his skin, and he tried to wrench his hands free.

  Adam started forward but halted as the kai brought his other hand up to Kieriell's throat and pinched two fingers around his windpipe. The result was a burning, almost paralyzing sensation that caused Kieriell to toss his neck back and grit his teeth.

  "No," the kai said. "He's still ours. You only talk of this document. You show me no proof of its existence."

  Adam controlled the shift but not the vicious weight on his words. "All of Nex knows about it and approves of its validity. Your only chances for survival now are to return with me to Nex and face the charges against you. The negotiation
s may still be reinstated for the rest of your race if you give up your position as ruler."

  "I'll do no such thing!" the kai raged, the mask filtering his shout. "The Shiv will not be pacified under Nexian rule!"

  Concentrating, Kieriell rolled his eyes, tried to breathe in enough air to speak, feeling as though he had swallowed sand. He husked up a chuckle in spite of the pain. "Kai," he managed to spit out, "you forgot. . . s-something. . ." He sensed that his audience was listening. Straining, he tilted his head a little sideways to glimpse the group across the quad, the guards on edge, the students making fists in anticipation. He gulped in another breath and released it. "You can't—" He had to swallow and pull in one more breath. "—hold on to me."

  As these words registered with the kai, his captive's body glowed with white light then burst apart in swirling sparks that rose into the night and disappeared.

  Kieriell manifested amid the group of hostages. A quick glance across the quad showed him that the kai was stumbling backward, briefly blinded by the closeness of shifting light, and Adam had taken that instant to signal the guards waiting in the shuttle's opening.

  As the kai spun about, blinking away the glare and searching for the one whom he had lost again, the Shiv guards nearest the group were so surprised that they lost their reaction time. Kieriell's shadow blade slid out from his hand as he spun to attack the nearest of them.

  In the commotion, the students and mavens were virtually forgotten as the guards around them ranged toward Kieriell. These Shiv were surprised, however, when two of the older students rose from their knees and manifested shadow blades of their own.

  "Gehdren! Nalas!" Ahrden called to the two, but they had become embroiled, fending the guards off the younger students and Jarren who was stumbling to his feet, one hand still pressed to his head while his nose continued to bleed from the pressure of the kai's mindsting. Ahrden hurried to give Jarren support, and his fellows followed suit. Maven Hadrahn pulled one of Jarren's arms across his shoulder, while Maven Idu'hn gathered the remaining students and began to herd them toward the wall out of combat's range.

  From his point of engagement, Kieriell glimpsed that the Nexian troop had dispersed onto the quad from the shuttle. There might have been a dozen of them, but they were quickly detained by a surprise number of Shiv troops that had still been aboard the creature-ship. As he blocked a strike from his current opponent who used the length of the laser staff to fight, Kieriell noticed the two advanced students keeping some of the other guards at bay. Though he appreciated the effort, he feared for them.

  "No!" he shouted to them as he swept his opponent's legs. "Get out of here! This isn't your fight!" But before he could ensure that they were listening, he had to duck to avoid the staff as it came swinging toward his head. As the Shiv was following through, Kieriell took advantage of the opening and thrust his blade forward through the vulnerable arm pit. The point of the telekinetic field hummed loudly as it pierced flesh and rib, then it slid back out, clean of blood, and the guard slumped to the ground. Kieriell left him and engaged a new opponent who manifested a shadow blade as well.

  The sounds of shouting in Nexian and Shiv rose around the quad, accompanied by the thrum of laser fire and the clash of shadow weaponry. The younger students cooperated in following the mavens from the scene, the little group becoming silhouettes amid the trees near the west wall.

  Jarren looked back to watch Kieriell fight, his weight still supported for the most part by Maven Hadrahn. When Ahrden started to move back toward the combatants, Jarren reached his free arm out weakly. "Maven, wait."

  Ahrden's gaze turned back glazed with something between worry and fury. "Gehdren and Nalas must retreat," he said sternly. "Kieriell is right, this isn't our fight."

  "The Shiv made it our fight," Jarren replied hollowly. He began to slip free of Hadrahn's support and looked out into the chaos that had once been merely a training ground.

  Across the quad, Adam Asmirrius and the Shiv kai had engaged in shadow blade combat of their own. Circling and measuring each other's techniques carefully, they seemed forgotten, in a realm isolated from the rest of the conflict.

  Most of the Shiv fell quickly to the Nexian counter strike, and it seemed that several more Nexian operatives were emerging from somewhere near the north wall.

  Kieriell stayed engaged with the same opponent. Finding the right opening to strike, he swung his blade two-handed in a horizontal arc, but the Shiv blocked with his blade held vertically. Kieriell pressed forward, keeping the blades locked, so that the Shiv had to either retreat or remain in the lock. The opponent remained in the lock, and Kieriell began to slide his blade down the shaft toward the Shiv's hands. The field's edge tore easily through the gloves on the environmental armor and severed flesh from bone along the top of the fingers and hand. The guard cried out, and lost hold on his blade. The field flickered out, and though the Shiv made a useless swipe at Kieriell, he only threw himself off balance and fell on his face.

  Kieriell released his blade just long enough to drop to his knees and reach out to brace the head of white hair between his hands. The Shiv's arms flailed about over the grass, his breath mask boring into dirt. Gritting his teeth, Kieriell made a twisting motion and heard bone give way with a nauseating crunch. The body beneath him went slack.

  Kieriell was about to extract his shadow blade and engage another oncoming attack, when a surge of laser energy ripped at his side. The blast, surprisingly, bore no pain, but the force of it threw him over, and in confusion he let the emerging field of his blade slip back into nothing. Laying belly down, he raised up on one elbow, shaking his head to clear the vertigo.

  Footsteps hushed over the grass around him. A pair of booted feet stopped in front of him, and he became instantly alert, flipping over onto his back. He looked up at the face of an angry Shiv officer who manifested a shadow blade and lowered the point right over his throat.

  "Don't move, Nexian," the Shiv snarled in his own language.

  Kieriell laid still, hands spreading over the grass to show that he would not try to resist. Early night dew seeped through his shirt and spread across his back. He glanced sideways and was relieved to see that the students and mavens were nowhere in sight, and neither was Jarren. Only those two advanced students were still nearby, fighting for all that their training was worth.

  He also saw his father and the kai still engaged, while the small but efficient Nexian forces had completely scattered to apprehend the last of the Shiv. Then he concentrated on some other area of the quad. The tip of the shadow blade dangling above his throat issued a sharp buzzing sound as it interacted with the molecules in the air, and another Shiv came to stand over him, but Kieriell relaxed.

  He wanted to say something snide, to remind them that they could not keep him in one place, but before he even began the teleportation, something came down on the officer's head with a loud crack against the skull. The officer stumbled away, and a blast of laser light speared toward the second Shiv, hitting him square in the belly and throwing him backward. The body spasmed once then laid still.

  Kieriell rolled over and pushed up to his knees just as Jarren dropped down beside him. The other youth supported himself against the shaft of a heisted laser staff, the barrel end shoved into the ground. Seeing how weakened his friend still was, Kieriell turned to the other and laid a hand on Jarren's shoulder.

  "This breaks up a quiet evening of study," Jarren rasped.

  "Are you all right?" Kieriell examined the nosebleed and the weakness in Jarren's eyes.

  "I'll survive. You though—" Jarren reached down toward the scorched hole in the side of Kieriell's shirt. "I saw you get hit."

  Kieriell looked down, pulling at the shirt to see beneath the material. There really was no pain, and then he saw why. His mouth fell open as he wondered how the blast had done such damage to his shirt but not to him. The flesh on his side was whole and healthy. "Uh, looks like it missed."

  "No." Ahrden's voice came
from above the two youths, and they looked up at the old maven. "It was light energy that struck you, Kieriell," he said. "Light energy will not hurt you."

  Kieriell stared, frowning as the chamberlain's lessons came back to him, all of the lectures on light beings and consciousness.

  He shook his head, convincing himself that the blast had just been a near miss. But there was no time for further denial. The din of the battle recaptured his attention, and he looked to Ahrden and Jarren. "The others?"

  "They're safe," Jarren replied, "except for Gehdren and Nalas. They're born fighters." He pointed along the western lay of the quad, where the other two boys had finally begun to withdraw as the Nexian troops stepped in.

  Kieriell looked back across the open ground and started to get to his feet to watch the solitary melee ahead.

  Adam and the kai tore at each other with their blades. They seemed to have lost all sense of combat technique as rage took over. Their steps advanced in strides that covered more ground than a duel should, arms taking larger swings than necessary. They were making their way toward the area of trees where Kieriell had been hiding earlier.

  Kieriell stumbled forward, scanning for an opening through which he might interfere with the combatants. The kai might be fighting with a shadow blade manifested from his natural hand, but Adam did not know about the retractable blade in the cy-netic arm. If he tried to send a warning, Kieriell might distract Adam too much, causing a fatal mistake to occur. The kai struck from the side, while Adam parried it and retreated before dashing forward again to come in with an overhead strike, which the kai blocked. In that instant, their blades locked and they pressed closer together.

  Then something went horribly wrong.

  Adam felt the shift growing more evident in his eyes as he tried to hold his temper. But as the kai forced him to parry, his blood rushed hot. Slowly, one at a time, the scales began to surface. He felt them beading up to line his eyes and create contouring patterns along his hairline following the shadows from his temples down along his cheekbones.