Last of Her Name

by Jessica Khoury

  I turn to see Riyan standing there, eyes amused. “For the last time, please stop sneaking up on me like that!”

  His lips quirk, a grin he’s trying to suppress. “Sorry. Is there trouble here?”

  “She locked me out!”

  He nods knowingly. “You’ve met Damai.”

  “Who does she think she is, not letting me see Pol? Who knows what’s going on in there! She could be hurting him or poisoning him or … or worse.”

  Riyan’s eyebrows arch up. “Worse?”

  “Nothing. Forget it.” I shake my head, looking at him closer. “I thought you’d be locked up or something. Aren’t you a criminal here?”

  “They know I won’t run. I’ll face my trial with honor, or what honor I have left.”

  “You only went to search for your sister. Anyone would’ve done the same for their sibling.”

  “Not anyone. Damai didn’t.”

  “Damai …” I blink. “She’s your sister too?”

  He sighs again, looking suddenly weary. “I have eight of them.”

  “Eight!”

  “Come,” he says. “I’ll talk to Damai later about letting you in. Meanwhile, we’re wanted below. The Lord Tensor wishes to meet you.”

  “The Lord Tensor? As in, your people’s leader?”

  Riyan nods.

  My stomach sinks to the floor. “Sounds fun.”

  We walk through passages that remind me a bit of the Loyalist asteroid base, but back there the walls had been rough-cut and raw, while the tensors’ structure is so smooth I can see my reflection in the dark stone. When we walk through an open atrium that looks out to the snowy forest, I come to a stop and look out. The trees look dusted with flour, while the mountains to the side are harsh angles of stone and ice. For all its forbidding climate, Diamin is undeniably beautiful.

  “Such a strange and lonely place,” I say softly. “Why here? Why settle so far away from the rest of the Belt? Aren’t the tensors originally from Alexandrine?”

  “We didn’t have a choice. Our abilities made us pariahs on Alexandrine, so we fled here and the people of Diamin gave us asylum.” He stares out at the white landscape, his eyes distant. “Some of the native Diaminicans assimilated into our culture, but the full-blooded ones died out long ago. Radiation hampered their fertility rates. Our tradition of granting unconditional asylum to outcasts is done in their memory.”

  “Really? I never knew much about the tensors,” I admit. “And I think most of what I did know was … um, a bit untrue.”

  He laughs. “At least the stories keep away the tourists.” Sobering, he adds, “Most people also have no idea that our order was founded by Zorica Leonova.”

  I raise my eyebrows. “As in … the Leonovs?” I still can’t say the words my family.

  He nods. “The Leonovs were originally scientists, you know, before they were rulers. They created the tensor gene, a cybernetic code grafted onto our DNA. But the Alexandrine government of their day had outlawed such biological tinkering, and my ancestors became outcasts, imprisoned or even killed for our abilities. Later, after the Leonovs discovered the Prisms and pioneered warp travel, we would leave that world behind and settle here, where we could be left in peace.” He gives me a sidelong look. “I have no love for your family, but there’s no doubt they left their mark on history, in more ways than one. And here you are, the very last of them.”

  “I’m not so sure about that. I may have their blood, but the rest of it?” I shake my head. “I don’t feel like one of them. And I don’t think I want to. You said it yourself, before we ever even found Zhar and the Loyalists—the Leonovs were just as awful as Volkov and the Union are now. The galaxy needs to move forward, not backward.”

  He tilts his head, studying me. “And I suppose you’ll be the one to lead us forward, from your mighty Alexandrine throne?”

  “Stars, no!” A short, acidic laugh bursts from my lips. “What would I know about leading anyone? Back home, my dad barely let me fly a dory unsupervised.” I look at him. “Who says we need a throne? Who says we need a Committee? There has to be another option. One that lets the planets rule themselves and gives everyone an equal chance, no matter where they’re from or what they want to be. Peace and freedom.”

  “Careful,” Riyan says. “You’re almost starting to sound wise.”

  I throw a soft elbow into his side. “What do you care, anyway? I thought you wanted nothing to do with the outside worlds.”

  He turns to gaze out the window, leaning on his staff. “Sixteen years ago, during the war, the Leonovs called on my people for aid, and we did nothing. They had wronged us. They killed my mother and countless others. Like the rest of the Belt, my people were appalled to see how far the Leonovs would go to rout an enemy.” Riyan pauses, taking in the view. “But now we’re prisoners on our own planet, and the galaxy hates us even more than they used to. They think we’re arrogant because we’re reclusive, and evil because we’re powerful. Maybe if we were allowed back into society, we could show them that we’re more alike than we are different.” Riyan sighs and taps his staff on the floor. “We should keep going. The Lord Tensor despises tardiness.”

  We walk deeper into the pyramid, leaving behind the bright windows for dark, narrow corridors, until at last we come to the heart of Tyrrha. Or what feels like the heart of Tyrrha, anyway. The walls around us seem a mile thick, the air so thin I have to take every other breath through the mask. A triangular door is before us, smooth stone carved with geometric patterns like the ones tattooed onto Riyan’s skin. Two wide basins of fire burn on either side, the heat choking the air.

  “You sure he wanted to see me?” I ask uneasily.

  Riyan only nods before raising a hand, and the air begins to crack in response.

  The great door depresses and sinks with a sound like thunder and screeching slate, rock crushing against rock, sending a chill down my back. I wince and shift from foot to foot, wishing I’d gone with Mara for that nap.

  The door finally vanishes into the floor, and we step through the opening. Riyan is a pace ahead, his hands working around his staff.

  The floor of the chamber within is round, enclosed by sloping walls that come to a very high point, so the space creates a sort of hollow cone. Around the perimeter of the floor, candles burn in waxy puddles. The Lord Tensor is at the center, three feet in the air, hovering in perfect silence and stillness on a shimmering stress field. He wears gray robes that hang nearly to the floor, while his legs are drawn up and crossed beneath him and his hands rest on his knees.

  Riyan and I come a stop halfway to the levitating tensor.

  “Father,” he says softly.

  Oh.

  Looking up at the man, I see it at once.

  His eyes are closed, but there’s no mistaking the resemblance. The Lord Tensor has the same dark brown skin as Riyan, the same lean build and brooding brow. But his face is more lined and he has a short, graying beard that creeps up to his temples. He does not look like a man who smiles much.

  I glance between father and son, wishing I were anywhere else. The air in the chamber is stretched tight. I raise my oxygen mask, sucking down a long breath. The sound of the gas releasing from the tank on my hip breaks the silence, and Riyan’s father finally opens his eyes.

  “You’ve come back,” he says, in a deep, rumbling voice. His eyes settle on Riyan.

  Riyan says, “I told you that I would.”

  The Lord Tensor slowly descends, as if lowered on an invisible rope. His slippered feet touch the ground, and his robes slowly settle around him, in a motion so seamless it’s like he’s underwater. He makes me feel clumsy just standing here.

  “So,” he says, his voice filling the smoky chamber, “what hedonistic pleasures did the universe hold for you, boy?”

  Riyan stares hard at the ground. “You know I was searching for Natalya. Your daughter.”

  “I have no such daughter.”

  Riyan’s hands clench into fists. I try t
o make myself as small as possible, silently cursing the incessant hissing and wheezing of my oxygen tank.

  “I expected rebellion from Natalya. Maybe even from some of the others—Damai or Elsid. But you?” The Lord Tensor’s lips twist. “You were born to lead our people, and instead, you forsook them.”

  “Father—”

  “You have lost the right to call me that.”

  Riyan’s eyes widen. “I’m your son.”

  “I have no son.”

  “Hey!” The word bursts from me before I can stop it. My face heats, but I can’t keep quiet. “He only went looking for his sister because you didn’t have the guts to do it yourself! I’d say you’re the one abandoning people, not him.”

  Riyan lets out a thin breath, his eyes closing. The Lord Tensor turns to me slowly.

  “So. You’re the one who claims to be the lost Leonova princess.”

  “I haven’t claimed to be anything.”

  “The Leonovs were nothing but trouble for us.”

  Riyan lifts his chin. “Stacia saved my life, and I call her sister.”

  “Pah!” The Lord Tensor storms out of the room, and Riyan hurries after him. With a sigh, I trail behind, sucking down another draft of oxygen.

  “Asylum was granted to you, Princess,” Riyan’s father says, his voice echoing through the smooth stone corridor, “and it will be honored. But I want you off this moon the moment your horned companion is cleared from medical.”

  Well, I think sourly, if Damai has any say in that, looks like we’ll be here awhile.

  A lacy snowflake, fine and glittering, lands on my open palm. It survives my body heat just long enough for me to study its intricate pattern, the minuscule rods and swirls of ice frozen in perfect symmetry. I’ve never seen anything so beautiful, but in a moment, it is gone, turned into a drop of water in the cradle of my hand.

  My head starts to feel light.

  I raise my oxygen mask, taking a long inhale. The rush of air steadies me, and I hold it in place for a few more breaths.

  The frozen forest glitters all around, trees encased in ice over deep banks of snow. Diamin’s pale sun plays in the glassy branches, splitting into fractals of blue and silver that shine on the snow’s clean surface. The air smells fresh and sharp, tinged with smoke from the diamantglass glazieries a short distance away. The dark domes huddle on patches of bare earth, where the heat from the kilns has melted away the snow. But here, the cold is absolute, and I stand knee-deep in the drifts.

  Riyan picks up a handful of snow and rolls it into a ball. “When I was a boy, we used to hurl these at one another from dawn to dusk.”

  “So, for two hours,” I point out. Diamin’s daylight is brief and weak; the sun seems to barely rise before it’s already setting again.

  He gives me rueful grin and lets the snowball fall to the ground, where it breaks apart at his feet. “Speaking of which, we can’t stay out here much longer.”

  The sun is already setting, burnishing the rounded hip of the great planet in the sky. The tensors call the planet Rumiha, which means elder brother. But to me, it seems more like a jailor, allowing only a small window of sunlight before rolling across the sky and blanketing the snowy moon in darkness.

  I sigh, watching the shadows creep closer. I could spend a whole day out here—an Amethyne day, with sixteen hours of light—exploring the wintry landscape of Diamin. It took some political maneuvering on Riyan’s part to buy these two short hours for me. Mara elected to stay inside, unenthused by the prospect of tramping around in the cold. Pol wanted to come, but he’s still under Damai’s ruthless control, and she was convinced if he so much as set foot in the snow, he’d drop dead. We’ve been on Diamin four days now, but Pol carries on like it’s been a month.

  “She’s driving me insane,” he moaned this morning. It had been our first chance to talk since Riyan made his sister admit me into the infirmary. “She keeps taking pictures of my skeleton. It’s creepy!”

  But even Riyan couldn’t convince the resolute medic to release Pol to us. He’s probably pacing the infirmary now, steaming.

  I watch Riyan as he wanders on, his shoulders bent beneath the heavy fringe of a frost bison’s mantle. Our cloaks are lined with a synthetic material that makes the cold seem almost nonexistent, but the fur is so warm I’m starting to sweat a little.

  “Hey!” I shout.

  Riyan starts to turn—just in time to get hit smack in the face by the snowball I hurl.

  I burst out laughing at his shocked expression. Then he bends to scoop up snow, and I yelp and sprint away. It’s slow going through the knee-deep drifts, and his shot hits me squarely on the back of my head. Melted snow trickles down my neck and makes me shiver, but it’s an exhilarating sensation. I duck behind a tree and form another ball, but before I can throw it, Riyan sneaks up behind me and steals it right out of my palm.

  I put up my hands to shield my face, bracing for the impact—but it doesn’t come. Riyan just laughs softly and tosses the snowball aside.

  “I couldn’t hit an unarmed warrior,” he says.

  “Do you ever stop being so blazing noble?”

  He cocks his head. “Well, there was this time I kidnapped the last of the Leonovs and tried to hand her over to her enemies.”

  “Right.” I wince. “There was that.”

  We start heading back to Tyrrha. Though the inverted pyramid looms over us, it’s going to take a half hour to reach the lift into the city, but I don’t mind the walking. The snow is deep, and I love the way it crunches underfoot.

  We pass a glaziery, and there I pause to watch a team of tensors move a load of diamantglass sheets into a cargo ship. They seem almost to be dancing, the way they move their hands through the air, sliding the glass along a crackling stress field.

  Thoughtfully, I turn to Riyan. “So you are the only people in the galaxy who can make diamantglass, right?”

  He nods. “It’s our only source of trade, and we guard the process carefully. Of course, few could copy it, since it involves stress fields.”

  I look around at the landscape: snow, rock, ice. “Where does the sand come from?”

  “Hm?”

  “For the diamantglass. Where do you get the sand to make it?”

  He blinks; his eyes slide away, to the gas giant swelling on the horizon. “From Rumiha.”

  For some reason, my question seems to have unsettled him. The planes of his face harden, like a shell closing.

  I frown, confused, before carefully adding, “You must know a lot about Prisms, then, since you make the cases that hold them.”

  “I know as much as anyone else, I suppose.” He tilts his head. “You said Zhar is seeking control of the Prisms.”

  I nod. “She’s looking for something called the Prismata—the mother crystal, I guess, that creates all the others. Do you think that’s even possible?”

  His eyes follow the cargo ship as it lifts off the ground and turns toward a row of warehouses farther to the east. “It’s long been thought that the Prisms are connected. They seem to sense one another, and even react when a nearby crystal is stimulated. My father believes it’s similar to quantum entanglement, only we can’t really know, because we have no idea what element the Prisms are made of. Theirs is a unique energy, unlike the electricity generated from solar, wind, or water sources.” He pauses, his eyes returning to me. “We pluck these crystals from deep space, we sell them for a fortune, and we still have no idea what they are, or how they generate so much energy.” He gives a shy laugh, his breath a white cloud. “Forgive me. I tend to drone about Prismic science when given half the chance. It was my favorite area of study growing up.”

  I smile. “Trust me, you haven’t heard droning till I start in about engine mods.”

  We move on, trudging through the snow. Walking with my head down, I expose the back of my neck, and snowflakes tingle and melt on my bare skin.

  “So your trial thing is tomorrow,” I say. “What’s going to happen?�
�

  He winces. “Everyone will be there, but you might not want to come. Our customs might seem strange to you.”

  “They already do, but I still want to watch. What will they do to you?”

  “It depends, I suppose, on how the judges are feeling. I could be imprisoned for a few months, if they’re in a generous mood. If they aren’t, well, they may turn to more … corporal methods.”

  “Don’t tell me they’d whip you or something!”

  He says nothing.

  I slow to a stop, reaching out to touch his arm. He turns to meet my gaze.

  “We could leave,” I say softly. “You, me, Pol, Mara, tonight on the clipper.”

  “Stacia …”

  “It’s ridiculous, making you go through this when you were just trying to save your sister.”

  “I disgraced myself. I must face justice.”

  “But you did nothing wrong.”

  He shuts his eyes. “Without my people, I am nothing. We are all threads in a tapestry, Princess, and to deny our people is to tear a hole in that fabric. I have chosen to trust them, and whatever their decision, I will abide by it.”

  I nod, feeling the wisdom of his words, even if I’m not entirely sure that I agree with them.

  We step out of the lift still speckled with snow, into a common area where tensors are gathered to talk and drink their bitter iceroot tea. Even here on the far edge of the galaxy, Triangulum seems to be the most popular game, and several clusters of people are bent over hologram boards, speaking in hushed, intent whispers. In one corner, a girl is playing a stringed instrument, filling the chamber with soft, dreamy notes.

  I’m shivering from the snow, which has melted and slipped under my clothes. Riyan shakes his robes, then helps me out of my cloak.

  “Thank you,” I say. “Today was fun.”

  He smiles, and I realize how rare it is that he does that. It softens him, makes me remember he’s no older than I am. He only carries himself as if the galaxy weighed on his shoulders. “It was my pleasure, Princess. You made me remember how magical the snow seemed, when I was a child. It brought me joy when I needed it most. I think I should be thanking you.”