Last of Her Name

by Jessica Khoury

  Though he addresses the elderly judge, Riyan’s gaze fixes on his father, as if they were the only two in the room.

  “My sister Natalya and I have always been close. I knew she was thinking of running away, and I should have done more to stop her. Her disappearance is my fault, and I had to make it right. She is my sister. My actions were taken out of love, and given the chance, I would do them again.”

  Damai groans, her face falling into her hands.

  But Riyan keeps his head high. He stares at his father, unafraid.

  As I watch him, I can’t help but think of Clio, and the things I’ve done in the name of saving her. Risking Pol’s life, exposing the Loyalists to their enemies, getting Mara’s father killed, even landing Riyan in this trial. The list seems to be getting longer with each move I make, the collateral damage piling up.

  And yet I know, given the chance to start over, I too would do it all again. Saving her doesn’t justify any of the terrible things I’ve done, but if the price for her life is my soul, it’s one I’ll pay a thousand times over.

  It’s seems Lilyan Zhar was right.

  Maybe this is me becoming the monster.

  “Your words have been heard,” says the judge to Riyan. “Now we will cast our Stones.”

  She looks to the judge on the end of the line, and he raises the object in his hand. Legacy Stones, Damai called them. As the judge focuses on the metal pod, its petals begin to unfurl, revealing a light in the center that glows white.

  “A vote for clemency,” Damai whispers excitedly.

  But the next judge’s Stone shines red, and Riyan’s sister sucks in a sharp breath.

  One by one the judges share their verdicts, and not all of them are in Riyan’s favor. I look around the room, gauging the reaction of the other tensors; they seem divided, some nodding when a vote is cast for clemency for Riyan, others when one is cast for condemnation. The lights of all the Legacy Stones seem to swell brighter as each one is opened, soft beams of red and white blending and tinting the faces of the onlookers.

  I narrow my eyes.

  Then sit up straighter.

  The light emitted from the flower isn’t just light—it’s some sort of hologram that plays over the crowd. I raise a hand to run it through one of the beams and see symbols dance over my skin.

  “It’s a code,” I whisper.

  Pol shake his head. “What are you talking about?”

  “The Stones are projecting data all over the room—don’t you see it?”

  “I don’t see anything.” He gives me a worried frown. “Are you sure—”

  “You can read it?” asks Damai, pushing Pol back so she can stare at me.

  I nod, eyes scanning the streams of data playing over her face.

  Damai’s eyes widen. “But you’re not a tensor. You shouldn’t be able to read the sacred words. They’re ours, the record of our genetic code, not to be shared with any outsiders!”

  This must be the cybernetic code Riyan told me of, the one Zorica Leonova created. I’m looking at the pattern of symbols that comprise the tensor gene, only it reads as garbled text that makes no sense to me—all except for one word, which I see repeated over and over, rippling over the faces and bodies of the gathered tensors, flashing over Damai’s cheeks. I blink rapidly, to be sure I’m reading it right, as my skin seems to tighten on my bones.

  “Pol,” I whisper, my heart beginning to pound faster, “Pol, there’s a word I know.”

  “What is it?”

  I lower my hands and meet his eyes. “Firebird.”

  His eyes widen. I sit back in my seat, feeling like I’m sinking into the floor.

  “Stace, what does that mean?”

  What does it mean? It could mean nothing. It could be a coincidence. The Firebird was the seal of the Leonovs, the great red bird on the imperial crest. Maybe it’s just a stamp they left behind when they created the code. Or maybe …

  Maybe it means everything.

  “I—”

  “No!” shouts Damai, half rising from her seat, her eyes wide with horror as she stares at Riyan.

  I look from her to the trial below, where the Legacy Stones have all been opened.

  Six red, six white. The judges are at an impasse. Damai pulls one of her sisters close, and they—and everyone else in the chamber—now stare at the Lord Tensor.

  “Given the divided verdict,” he says, “I will cast the final Stone.”

  He holds his metal flower up but doesn’t immediately open it. His eyes slip to Riyan. His expression is inscrutable, a face carved from rock.

  Riyan seems to sway on his feet.

  “Father, please.” The words burst from him in a rush. At once he lowers his eyes, his hands clenching. Around his shaking fists, the air begins to crackle.

  I hold my breath, sitting on the edge of my seat and squeezing Pol’s hand. I don’t even remember grabbing it.

  The Lord Tensor merely gazes at his son, expressionless. “Control yourself, boy.”

  Riyan nods once, his eyes boring into the glass floor. Gradually, the trembling air around him falls still. He lets out a breath, forcing his hands to relax. Everyone in the chamber is silent and transfixed.

  The Lord Tensor waits a moment more before finally opening his Legacy Stone.

  A gasp ripples across the room.

  Damai lets out a wail.

  I grip Pol’s hand so hard he sucks in a breath.

  Somehow Riyan remains standing, though he visibly sways when he sees that his father has voted against him. His chest begins to heave.

  “Of the charges brought against you, Riyan Ayedi,” the Lord Tensor says, “you have been found guilty. According to our laws, your tensor gene will be locked and you will serve the remainder of your life in the Rumihan sand mines.”

  The only sign the man gives that he has any emotion in his body is the small shake of his head as he turns away. The Legacy Stone closes in his palm, and the other judges follow him out of the room.

  Beside me, Damai and the other sisters break down, the littlest ones sobbing as the older ones pull them into their laps. I watch, stunned, as Jorian and the other escorts close in on Riyan. They rip away his cloak and staff; they force him to his knees. Before our eyes, they begin to tattoo a new symbol onto his forehead: a red stripe that runs from his brow, over his scalp, to the nape of his neck. It must be painful, but Riyan only shuts his eyes and clenches his fists.

  “What does that mean?” I ask. “What are they doing to him?”

  “He’ll undergo a painful genetic rewiring,” says Damai, looking at me as if this were my fault. My skin heats with guilt. “They’ll lock the tensor gene, and he’ll never be able to tessellate again. Then they’ll ship him to Rumiha to shovel sand for the glazieries until he drops dead of exhaustion.”

  I think of Riyan’s face yesterday, when I asked him about the sand, and how his whole demeanor had changed. He’d either suspected or known what his fate would be. My heart sinks.

  “This is insane!” Pol shouts, rising to his feet. “How could his own father do that?”

  Damai shakes her head at him, her eyes shadowed. “Because he has always been Lord Tensor first and our father second.”

  “You can’t agree with this!” I say.

  “Of course I don’t! But there’s nothing we can do. Riyan will be sent to the mines tomorrow.” Her face pinches, eyes fierce but flooded with tears. She turns to her sisters.

  Below, the tensors finish branding Riyan, then leave him hunched on the floor, trembling and holding his hands to his scalp. His sisters push through the crowd to get to him, and I start to follow. I don’t know what I can do to help him, but I know I didn’t save his life at the Loyalist base just to see him get sentenced to death by hard labor. This may be tensor law, and maybe I swore not to interfere, but Riyan is my friend. I have to do something.

  But that’s when the tabletka in my pocket beeps.

  I pull it out, hiding it in the cup of my hand, as my h
eart begins to pound. I’d almost forgotten it was there, in the drama of Riyan’s trial and the startling revelation hidden in the judges’ Stones. But now all of that fades away, a hundred light-years distant, as my full attention narrows to the little screen in my hand.

  My message did get out, I realize, because now a single line of text flashes across the screen: You have a deal, Princess.

  The tensors are slow to leave the chamber; everyone wants to whisper about what just happened. The Lord Tensor voting to condemn his own son, sending him to a prison camp—they all seem shaken. Riyan is still kneeling below. Jorian and a few other tensors aren’t letting anyone close to him, even his sisters.

  I slip away before Pol or Mara can notice. Weaving through the crowd, I duck out a side door and then hesitate a moment. Looking back at Pol, I can just make out his face. He’s looking around, probably for me. I press his profile into my memory—the angle of his cheekbones, the line of his jaw, the sweep of his hair around his curving horns—and then turn away, a knot forming in my throat.

  I have to hurry.

  The pyramid is silent as a tomb. I climb stair after stair; the tensors who operate the lifts must still be below with everyone else. My oxygenator hisses and wheezes at my side, the mask digging into my face.

  Up and up, my heart beating faster with every step. But my body drags, as if trying to pull me back, resisting my decision. I press onward until finally, halfway up the pyramid, I stop and sag against a window, partly to catch my breath, partly to harden my nerve. This is the same spot where Riyan and I stood the day he told me about his people’s connection to the Leonovs. Where he told me their tessellating was due to a cybernetic code fused to their DNA.

  What are you running away from? whispers a voice in my head, a voice terribly like Clio’s.

  “I’m not,” I whisper.

  You’re afraid of him. You’re afraid of yourself around him.

  “This has nothing to do with Pol.”

  It’s a lie. This is for Clio and Pol. They are the most important people to me in the galaxy. If this one act can save them both, how in the stars could I walk away from it?

  Snow falls outside in dusty white clouds. Flakes land on the glass and melt, running in thin rivulets that mingle and branch like crystalline veins. While I catch my breath, I watch the clouds forming over the mountains, nebulous, brooding, and full of secrets. Bringing yet more snow and ice to this frozen world.

  The more I stand here, the more I lose my nerve.

  I push myself into motion, turning from the window and toward the stairway. But I don’t make it three steps before I hear the horn from the Chamber of Judgment again, only this time, the sound comes from every direction, flooding the whole of the pyramid. It washes over me with almost tactile force, vibrating in my rib cage. The sound is too loud and urgent to be the dinner horn, or even the peal that signaled the start of Riyan’s trial.

  It’s an alarm. And I think I know what tripped it.

  I hurry back to the window and press my hands against the glass, eyes widening at the dark ships that lower from the sky. They’re miles distant and indistinct through the haze of snow, but I don’t need a close-up to know what they are. Dread turns my limbs to stone. I stand locked in place as the ships approach, all my courage melting like the snowflakes on the glass beneath my fingers.

  Can I really go through with this?

  Because once I do it, there will be no turning back.

  I hesitate too long and hear hasty footsteps behind me. Before I can move, he calls out.

  “Stacia! There you are!”

  I shut my eyes, let out a breath.

  Pol’s breathing hard, one hand on the wall. He must have stopped at his room on the way up, because he’s got his coat on and his gun tucked into his belt. “Stace, they’re here. It’s the astronika, and a dozen other Union ships.” He curses. “I’ll bet the Loyalists told them about Riyan. They’d have guessed we’d go to Diamin.”

  “They got through the gravity wall,” I murmur, watching the ships as they hover over the ice forest. That wasn’t part of the plan. How did they get through into Diamin’s atmosphere?

  “No one knows how they did it, but the tensors are preparing to fight.”

  The Committee isn’t here for the tensors.

  “We have to talk,” Pol says. “We …” His voice falters; his eyes narrow on me. “What are you doing all the way up here? Is something wrong?”

  “I’m fine.”

  “Fine? The Committee is right there!” He points through the window. “We have to decide what to do.”

  “I’ve already decided,” I whisper.

  Pol stares, and I see realization dawn in him as the color drains from his cheeks. His eyes drive into me, unblinking. Unbelieving.

  “Stacia.”

  I back toward the stairs and shake my head. “Go back. Please.”

  “What are you doing up here?” His voice is soft, the way he would talk to a spooked mantibu. “Where are you going?”

  But he knows. I can see that he knows, and just doesn’t want to admit it.

  I run my hand over my face, feeling weary to the bone. When he takes a step toward me, I raise my hand to stop him.

  “I can’t spend the rest of my life running, Pol. And I can’t ask you to do that, either.”

  “You don’t have to ask me anything. My mind was made up years ago. Where you go, I go, for as long as you’ll have me.”

  “Well, that’s just it, isn’t it?” I feel tears sting the corners of my eyes; I blink them away. “I won’t have you, not anymore. I release you from your vows and whatever lingering sense of duty you have toward me. Go back, Pol. Please.”

  He closes the distance between us in three steps, his hands locking around my elbows.

  “You called them,” he whispers. “You called the Committee.”

  “I’m not negotiating this with you.”

  “You would surrender to them, after everything we’ve been through to escape them?”

  “If I’d done it in the first place, Clio would be safe. Everyone would be safe. I was scared then. I thought they’d kill me. But now I know I’m more useful to them alive. I’ll be okay, Pol.” At least for now. At least until I give them what they want, and then I go from being a valuable asset to a viable threat. But I’ve already thought all of this through, and I still came to the same conclusion: This is the only right move I have left.

  He lowers his face a moment, a struggle playing out across his features. His pale horns glint as he shakes his head.

  “No.” His fingers tighten on my arms and he looks up, his gray eyes steely. “This isn’t how this ends. You’re staying here, and we’re going to figure out a plan.”

  “Maybe we do.” I raise my fingers to his shoulders, gripping his coat to keep my hands from shaking. “Maybe we slip away to some other system and try to start over, until the Committee catches up and we have to figure out another plan, and run away again. Maybe we do this over and over for the rest of our lives.”

  “At least it would be a life. If you go to them now, you’ll be a prisoner. I’ll never see you again.”

  “And you’ll be free. And if I play this right, so will Clio. You can find each other. You can be together.” His protests have banished the last of my hesitation. I’d almost hoped for the opposite—that he could talk me out of this. That he could offer some magical third solution to save us all and make everything go back to the way it was before.

  But there is no going back.

  There is only this moment, and this choice.

  He raises a fist to his forehead in frustration. “I can’t watch you run into their hands.”

  “Then don’t watch.”

  “Agh!” He turns away, raking his hands through his hair, the muscles of his neck taut.

  My window of time is closing. If Alexei Volkov thinks I’ve backed out, he will attack Tyrrha. That’s probably why they crossed the wall, instead of waiting beyond it like they
said they would—it’s a warning. I have to follow through, or they’ll destroy this city and everyone in it, just like they did Afka.

  I have to get out of here, and Pol’s the only thing in my way.

  “This doesn’t end well for anyone!” he says. “Even if it worked out the way you want, they’d still use you to get the Prismata. And if Zhar was telling the truth, that means they’d control everything. We’d all be prisoners, theirs to manipulate and destroy and exploit.”

  I shrug. “Aren’t we already?”

  “I’m not letting you go.”

  “What, so you’re going to imprison me? How are you any different than they are?”

  He flinches; I know the words aren’t fair, but what about any of this is?

  “We’ll be okay,” he says softly. “I swear. We will disappear. We will change our names and faces. There are places they won’t find us, if we’re smart. Stacia, I love you.”

  I swallow hard, gripping my oxygen mask at my side.

  “We’ll figure this out.” Pol attempts a half smile. “Please?”

  “Okay,” I whisper, my heart crumbling.

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  The relief on his face is so pure that it nearly breaks me.

  I take his hand and step into him, letting him fold his arms around me, tuck his chin atop my head. I lay my ear on his chest and listen to his heart pound; his pulse is racing. His arms tighten around me, warm and safe. Stars, will I ever look at him the same way again, as my overprotective big brother, my best friend’s crush?

  Clio is the one who deserves his arms around her and his whispers in her ear.

  And knowing that the two of them might find happiness together—that would be enough for me. That could sustain me through whatever comes next.

  “It could have been possible,” I whisper into his shoulder. “But it could never be right.”

  “What?” His arms slacken a bit.

  I step backward, drawing his gun with me. It slides out of his belt and tucks into my palm, my finger curling around the trigger.

  Pol goes still. His eyes lock on mine.