by Jess Granger
She wanted to believe it. She needed to believe that the man she had surrendered herself to was noble. The crates of the projectiles stood like silent prison guards, shackling her to the truth.
The ship shuddered as they came out of macrospace. Yara’s heart pounded as her adrenaline made her limbs feel weak.
A light cracked the shadows as Yara looked up at Cyn’s silhouette. A shadow himself, he exuded raw power, grace, and the chilling resolve of a soldier.
“Put these on,” he commanded as he slid a set of arm shackles and a lock belt through the shield. The transparent barrier sparked with shots of yellow discharge, then returned to normal.
“Why should I?” She didn’t bother to look at him. She couldn’t.
“If you do as I say, I’ll take you with me. If you refuse, I’ll leave you here.” His voice sounded as calm and sure as she’d ever heard it.
Damn him to the filth. He could have threatened her with death, come in with some sort of weapon aimed at her, he could have promised to beat or torture her, but no. He knew the one thing that would get her.
“Bastard,” she whispered as she picked up the cuffs, secured them to her wrists, and tied on the belt. Her wrists came together then, magnetically locked to the plate on the belt, rendering her arms useless.
“Now, give the voice commands for Tuz’s collar exactly as I give them to you.” He slowly stated a string of commands. The first set forced Tuz to remain within close range of her, the second shut down his ability to record intelligence, and the third was a locking password so she couldn’t change the commands. The password he had created was at least seventy characters long. There was no way she could remember it to unlock the collar. Shakt. No one could remember a code like that except a filthy catgar.
Once satisfied that they were secure, he let down the shield. Yara stepped through. She fought the surge of emotion as she walked directly toward him and looked him in the eye.
“How do you live with yourself?” Her heart raced as his gaze slowly wandered over her face. He blinked once, a slow, sad motion that almost seemed tired.
“I manage.”
The cargo ramp opened with the deafening squeal of metal grinding on metal. Hard light poured into the bay with a gust of damp, salty air. Yara had expected to see the green of the jungles of Azra. Instead, she looked out at a vast and endless ocean. The wind whipped distant frothy crests of water as the occasional sea bird circled overhead.
This was one of the landing platforms for the Nudari miners. They came to Azra seeking refuge from a plague of oxygenleeching bacteria that had destroyed the oceans of their home world. For over a thousand years, they’d lived beneath the waves, mining ores that the Azralen traded on the intergalactic market. Their mutually beneficial relationship had always been peaceful. The Nudari knew their place and never stepped out of it.
The miners couldn’t be a part of the revolt. It would ruin their livelihood. It would take a truly vile act of corruption to turn the Nudari against the Elite. Yara’s unease twisted through her gut as she stepped out on the bleak platform. A hexagonal panel split into triangular sections and disappeared into the platform as a lift emerged from beneath the deck.
Cyn took her arm and pulled her forward. His hand was gentle and firm, but his expression was unreadable. At least twenty of Xan’s crew efficiently unloaded the stacks of crates, turning into a surge of coordinated motion, as pile upon pile of boxed weaponry formed a long wall on the barren platform.
A Nudari man with smooth skin, shining blue black hair, and hooded eyes stepped out of the lift and greeted Cyn.
“Welcome, Cobra.” He noticed Yara for the first time and his eyes narrowed. “What is this?”
“A witness. Don’t mind her. Have your people found a way around the communications barrier?”
The Nudari’s grim expression remained fixed on her. “Was she a witness to the poisoning?”
“What?” Yara turned to Cyn, hating that he was her only source of any information.
He grasped her arm tighter and pulled her back behind him, just enough to put himself between her and the Nudari. “I told you, very few of the Elite were involved in that,” he stated. “Only the Grand Sister and two others.”
“What poisoning?” She leaned to the side so she could make eye contact with the Nudari man. Some of the Elite negotiators believed the Nudari had mind powers, but she knew it was nothing more than a culture-wide attention to the most miniscule facial expressions. She wasn’t lying about her shock, and he’d know it.
He assessed her. She didn’t have to struggle to see the pain in his face. “It was your leader’s generous way of renegotiating our contracts. She contaminated the air supply to the fourth sector of the Skeal complex.” He swallowed, as if he found it hard to speak, while his hands clenched into tight fists. “It was our residential sector. Two hundred thirty-seven. Dead.” His voice shook, even as Yara tried to think through her shock and horror. It couldn’t be true. The Grand Sister wouldn’t do such a thing. “We will be paid back in the blood of those responsible.”
“Dalan,” Cyn warned. “I promised that those responsible would be delivered to you to face the justice of your people. A thousand years of peace and prosperity remains between our two cultures. Let’s not abandon it for revenge.”
The Nudari straightened and glared at her. “Change will come,” he promised with bitter sincerity. “We are ready to rise. We follow you, Cobra.”
Cyn nodded as Xan’s crew unloaded the last of the projectiles. A small black canopy cruiser glided swiftly over the horizon, its triangular body cutting through the powerful wind. It hovered with the grace of a sea bird before perching on the far side of the platform. The overhead shield dissolved and an Enforcer with a scarred cheek stepped off the low open platform behind one of the short wings.
An Enforcer is a part of this? Yara’s feeling left her hands as she felt her shock steal through her body, leaving behind a terrifying numbness.
How deep did this revolution go? If those tasked with keeping order in the mid cities were on Cyn’s side, the Elite were in real danger. Without the Enforcers on their side, they didn’t have the numbers to quell an uprising.
Yara’s fear gripped her. This was much bigger, much more organized than she ever could have imagined. It wasn’t just criminals on the ground. All of Azra was about to take up arms. Why hadn’t anyone seen this coming?
Cyn stashed Bug in his belt and led Yara toward the canopy cruiser. “We need a way around the Elite communications array. The Nudari have developed angrav tech and have modified ships ready to rise. But they can’t enter the high cities until we disable the com system, or the cannons will take them out.”
Why was he telling her this? He just gave away their greatest weakness, communication.
“Cobra,” the Enforcer greeted. “You brought a guest, I see. Welcome back, Yara.”
Cyn looked at the woman as if he had known her for years, another of his trusted soldiers. “Just take us down. I need to meet with Ceer.”
Cyn helped Yara up onto the step of the cruiser and seated her on one of the bank seats along the side. They lifted off without another word. Yara watched the turbulent waters of the ocean fly beneath them. Occasionally, the form of a large felam beast stalking schools of fish would darken the clear waters.
As they reached the sea cliffs of her home, instead of rising to the canopy of the dense forest, they cut through it. Yara had to hold on as the cruiser darted with precise agility through the thick foliage of the outer forests. As they came under the shadow of the canopy, the smell of rot and decay choked her. She fought the urge to vomit as the putrid air stung her eyes.
Daylight faded into shadow, lit only by fires burning in pockets of darkness. A city formed beneath them, bits of light Yara could barely make out through her stinging eyes. City was a generous term. It was as if people had desperately tied together decades of refuse to create shelter, resulting in a tangled maze of jagged garbage a
nd dreck.
Nothing could shelter her from the smell of sickness and death. Black mud clung to everything, painting it in sludge and stealing what little light remained in this depraved darkness.
Mercy of the Matriarchs, it was worse than anything Yara had ever imagined. There were children here?
She looked over at Cyn; his expression seemed as hard and calculating as the moniker he had adopted, Cobra, the snake of Cyrila, but in his eyes she caught something else, a lingering sadness.
He had been a child here. This sickness was his home. This was his Azra.
The ship slowed, and the air seemed to thicken around her. She fought the urge to cough as she inhaled slowly through her mouth. She could taste the filth. How would she ever get the smell off her skin? This was a place of disease.
Did the Grand Sister know what she was sentencing people to?
She didn’t know what was worse, the slow fall to the ground for those sentenced to live in this cesspool or the quick one for those condemned to death.
She managed to breathe without choking, but her eyes still streamed.
Tuz sneezed and vigorously rubbed his face with his paw.
The weight of gravity pressed down on her as the glider slowed to a stop on a crooked platform, spliced together from two different pieces of cracked metal.
Yara blinked through her burning eyes long enough to gaze out on a towering pile of garbage. That is what it looked like, anyway. Bits of old ships, great fallen limbs, and jutting pieces of discarded metal and wood formed a maze of leaning shacks covered with a thick black mud.
The humid air buzzed with insects, but Yara couldn’t see them in the dim light of small fires burning here and there throughout the maze of debris. The entire slum seemed abandoned. The heavy choking air didn’t move at all.
“Welcome to Ahul. It’s relatively safe here,” Cyn stated as he leapt down off the platform onto a street of packed mud. “This section of the city is protected by the Cyri.”
As if on cue, two young women carrying torches marched toward them. The younger girl, no more than sixteen, wore flimsy scraps of rags tied over her young breasts and around her too-thin waist. The older of the two wore what remained of a low-cut smock, its sleeves and skirt hacked back to reveal long, jagged, and rusted blades tied to her arms, legs, and shoulders. Each one brandished a staff with a rough-cut metal spike protruding from the end.
Yara found herself staring at the starlike scars arching across the chest of the younger girl. Were they brands? Had she done that to herself? Somehow, she didn’t think so, and the thought made her sick. The other guard bore the telltale puckering on the skin of her abdomen. She had borne a child here.
Yet in their eyes, she saw strength and resolve. Yara felt like she was looking into the faces of any of the Elite. There was power here in the shadows.
Cyn helped her down, and the two guards watched her with suspicious eyes. Suddenly she felt ashamed. She’d never thought of the people down here as people. In all honesty, she hadn’t given them much thought at all. They’d been an abstraction.
This was too real, and her guilt ate at her.
“Come with me,” Cyn murmured in her ear.
They passed down narrow alleys of packed dirt.
“Outside of the gates of Ahul, the mud is looser, filled with insects that will strip your flesh if you step in the wrong place,” Cyn stated. Yara immediately picked up her feet, treading gingerly on the ground.
Cyn watched her awkward hop but didn’t acknowledge it as he continued. “The whore-masters build houses up some of the larger trunks where they hold the girls prisoner. Higher up the trunks, out of the stench, they build clean and decent houses just below the mid-cities. They take their enslaved whores and bring them up to the higher brothels to work so the high-hawks don’t have to get dirty.”
He kept his hand on her, but his eyes remained wary, and he held one of his knives in his hand. Yara barely had time to process the systematic exploitation of the women before he stilled, listening to the sounds around him like a stealthy beast of the forest.
“I thought you said it was safe here.” She stared into the shadows, suddenly aware of the feeling of being watched.
“No place is really safe down here. My mother did her best to create law and security out of the chaos, but sometimes the mad ones get in.” He looked back over his shoulder, then continued at the same careful and steady pace. “The Cyri are in a constant battle with the whore-masters. The attacks never stop.” He brought her to a hollow trunk of a long dead eldar tree. The center had been carved out by rot, and the interior bustled with activity.
In front of the strange dwelling, a woman with shaved hair, a heavily scarred face, and a missing eye crossed her arms and glared at them.
“You bring pretty presents, boy.” The woman scowled, then spared a glance to Tuz, who had a similar expression on his face.
Suddenly a little boy wearing no more than a rotting sack for clothing ran out of the tavern and threw himself on Cyn’s leg. The boy bore the same scars across his neck and arms that the younger guard had.
Cyn smoothed his hand over the boy’s hair and gently pushed him toward one of the guards.
“The Nudari are ready. Have you heard from the other islands?” Cyn asked the one-eyed woman.
The other islands? Yara closed her burning eyes as she realized all of Azra was involved. The high cities would turn into a slaughterhouse. Forty Elite warriors, the guardians of the temple, and maybe a thousand Enforcers couldn’t take on ground dwellers and all of the Nudari, especially if the Enforcers were in on the conspiracy.
The one-eyed woman wiped her hands on a ragged bit of cloth. “We have a total force of over one thousand three hundred from the ground.”
Yara saw the unfolding disaster in her mind, and each time seemed more bloody and hopeless. There had to be a way to stop this.
Before she realized what she was doing, she glanced up at Cyn. What was she thinking? He was the one behind this. He wasn’t going to help stop it.
He met her gaze, the fires reflecting in his eyes.
“I need a place to interrogate the prisoner,” he said, without taking his eyes off her. There was no malice in his voice, no threat. But she still felt paralyzed by the horror around her.
The woman slapped the bit of cloth over her shoulder, as if they were discussing ordering a drink at some Scum bar. “Take her to the storehouse around back.”
Cyn took her away from the light of the doorway. In the near darkness, she had to depend on him to lead her. He moved slowly, keeping a hand on the rotting trunk of the dead eldar as they climbed over large coiling roots and ducked under haphazard and threadbare awnings with support poles thrust into the decaying tree.
They tucked themselves under a hanging bit of cloth that served as a door, and Yara froze as she found herself in pitch darkness.
Cyn moved with ease and lit a single taper that smelled pungent but offered the small shack a little light.
Cyn placed the tiny light on an overturned bucket between them. “It’s past time we had our talk.”
19
“SO TALK,” YARA STATED AS TUZ PERCHED ON A HALF-BROKEN CRATE AND sniffed at the mud on his paw. The flickering light from their small fire cast her face in a wavering light. Cyn didn’t know where to begin. He only knew he had to tell her everything. He had to somehow convince her to join his side.
It was now or never.
“I know you’re mad,” he began.
“Mad?” She half laughed.
“We’re going to argue here, now?” He didn’t want things to erupt between them the way they had in the brig. He needed her. He needed her to see all that he was and to understand.
Yara frowned but let him continue.
“I’m sorry I lied about my name, but what was I supposed to do? Shake your hand and introduce myself as Cyn? That would have gone over well.” He crossed his arms. If he had admitted his name from the start, he’d be in a cel
l in the high cities right now waiting for the Grand Sister to use him for her own sick schemes.
Yara looked down at a half-rotted casing for an old environmental control system. The tension fell out of her shoulders. “I know why you hid your name. I can’t blame you . . . for that.”
“If you need more to blame me for, I’ve got a running list.”
Yara sat back on a heap of junk and looked up at him from under an arched brow.
The blackness of the small room closed in until all he could see was her face. He couldn’t joke anymore. She had to understand. Time was running out for them. “My name is dangerous,” he admitted, feeling the truth of his words. Even here, his real identity could kill him. “You’re one of a handful of people who know it.” He tightened a buckle on his bracers. His identity had to remain secret. He couldn’t lead his people and fight off bloodhunters and the assassins of the whore-masters at the same time.
“Would these people still follow you if they knew who you were?” she asked.
To her, his name was synonymous with disgrace. Her Elite world was so small, could she see the pain of all of Azra? Azra needed a hero. The name didn’t matter.
“The Nudari would follow me no matter what my name. They would follow anyone willing to offer them justice for the deaths of their children.” He paused.
Yara could appease them. He knew it. Dalan had seen her face and knew the truth. All the Nudari wanted was retribution and security. If she offered them justice from the throne, his Pix could prevent this war. He lingered on that thought. She couldn’t prevent it alone. She needed the loyalty of all of Azra, and Azra was deeply divided in so many ways.
Yara let out a long, slow breath, making the flame of the candle dodge the shifting air. “The Nudari are patriarchal. What about the Canopy-Azralen? The women of the mid- and high cities aren’t going to follow a man into war,” she dismissed.