Inherit the Stars

by Tessa Elwood

  “I am a Daughter of Fane. You can’t sell me off!”

  “Who do you think ‘Fane’ is?” Dad says in a tone normally reserved for me.

  I set the digislate on the low table and creep across the furry rugs. Emmie has a thing about closed doors—even her bedroom’s—so this one’s open, too.

  But not enough to see.

  “What?” Emmie bites. “Am I supposed to reenact you and Mom all over again? So which of us sells the other out to Galton, me or him?”

  “Emmaline.”

  I rock back, even though I’m unseen and barricaded.

  Emmie probably doesn’t flinch.

  “The whole point of an alliance is for protection against Galton. With Westlet’s backing, we might survive an invasion. Possibly,” Dad says.

  “You think Galton will invade?”

  “If they learn of the Blight?” He sighs and I can almost hear him rubbing his head. “We’re the perfect target. They’ll gut us for uleum like the independents.”

  The independents are planets within the Triplicate but outside House borders—with no protection except their own single-planet militaries, which was how Galton was able to gut them.

  Dad flew us to a strip-mined planet once, after all the uleum had been extracted. A dried husk with a gaping wound we could see from space. Even after the Blight—even at the height of it—Urnath wasn’t half as broken.

  “But we’re in lockdown!” Emmie says. “No communication in or out. They can’t know. And besides, it’s over. The factories work, the Blight’s gone, so who cares if they know or not?”

  “Urnath is wasted. Do you have any idea how much of our population that single planet fed? Over half, maybe three-quarters. I have finally built an open energy source for our people, only to turn around and instill rations on food. Not fuel, food.”

  “And you think Westlet’s going to feed us in exchange for me?” Emmie is shrill, but Dad doesn’t waver.

  “Yes. They are.”

  A treaty. He means a marriage treaty with Westlet.

  No. He can’t. He absolutely can’t. Emmie is ours.

  My hand flattens on the door.

  “Why can’t Asa do it?” she asks. “Ship Wren off with her, and neither of them would even notice the difference.”

  I jerk back, fist my hand tight against my chest.

  “She can’t.” Sighed and tired. Like he wishes I could.

  “Why the hell not? She’s—”

  “Not firstborn,” he finishes.

  “Neither am I!”

  “No. Not yet.”

  Wren. Birthrights transfer. If the oldest dies, the next oldest becomes Heir. It’s the only way to become Heir.

  “You’re unplugging Wren,” says Emmie, almost as flat as Dad.

  “Westlet won’t accept an alliance without the proxy power of an Heir. I don’t have a choice.”

  No.

  No, no. “No.”

  Three heavy steps and the door flies open. Dad fills the frame, nostrils flaring. He seems to sway with the tilting room.

  Or maybe it’s me.

  “Asa.”

  “Mountains,” I say with thick lips that won’t move. “Dad, the mountains, you can’t—”

  “Can’t what?” Emmie appears at his shoulder. “Sell me off? Or just unplug your precious Wren?”

  “Emmaline,” Dad says.

  “Don’t you mean Lady Westlet?”

  His hand fists on the door.

  “Please.” I glance between them and lock onto Emmie—backlit and shiny in her stark white dress. “Wren’s monitor spiked today, I have the readout, Aston—”

  “Oh no,” Emmie fires back. “You do not get to make this about her. She won’t be paraded down the aisle to a total stranger or—”

  “Then I’ll do it!” My words, my voice. My brain didn’t even know.

  But I don’t take them back.

  Emmie’s eyebrows almost soar off her head. “What?”

  I don’t stop or think because this is Wren, so thinking doesn’t matter. “I’ll be the treaty. Leave Wren alone and I’ll marry whoever you want.”

  His eyes flash and Emmie’s mouth opens, but the silence stays.

  “It doesn’t work like that,” Dad says.

  Careful. I have to be careful and calm. I know a lot about alliances after researching medichips. There are different kinds and different levels, but none require an Heir.

  “A bond treaty just needs a Son or Daughter. Any Son or Daughter. It doesn’t have to be Emmie.”

  “Asa.”

  “I’ll be a good wife. I won’t complain or argue or anything.”

  Dad’s jaw tightens, his lips press thin.

  “Unless I’m supposed to, then I will. I’ll argue all the time.”

  His hand slides off the door to rub the graying roots of his hair. “You are not a power, Asa. Westlet cannot rule this House through you. He’s offering his Heir and wants mine. No Heir, no alliance.”

  Emmie balls her hands. “And that will be the end of the universe, will it?”

  “Yes,” says Dad. “We’ll starve.”

  “WE ARE NOT STARVING,” I SAY. “DAD DOESN’T KNOW what he’s talking about. I went and bought icelees for the medics today. And puffcakes. And three sticky rolls this morning. And I know what starving looks like and this is not it.”

  Emmie sits cross-legged on her big four-poster bed, back to the wall, arms pulled close over her dress. A pale knot amid black blankets and pillows. “He’s going to do it. He’s really going to do it.”

  “If the Blight had hit everywhere and everyone was starving, then maybe—but it didn’t and they’re not.” I slap both hands on the window, press my nose to the pane. The night glimmers haze, deep purples and blues. Skytowers sing toward the horizon, multilevel monoliths threaded with tiny white windows. And through one of them, Wren dreams of mountains and monitors and one day waking up.

  “Not again. Not again, not again.”

  I’m not killing her again.

  “They won’t let me meet him. I don’t even get to see him,” Emmie runs both hands back and forth over her head, until her hair frizzes a halo.

  “What?”

  She grabs the digislate by her feet and tosses it to the end of the bed. “Some stupid Westlet thing. This traditional ‘blood bond’ ceremony that’s supposed to make it all irrevocable.”

  I spin, shoot across the room to clamber on the bed. “They want to cut you open?”

  “No.” Emmie pushes me away hard enough I fall on my elbows, and scoots back along the bed. “God, Asa, how do you even dream this stuff up?”

  “You said blood, I just thought—what’s it mean then?”

  “It means I can’t get out. Ever. It ‘fuses’ our bloodlines to make the treaty unbreakable. No divorce, no separation, even if he dies I’m still married to his damn ghost.”

  I sit up. “But they can’t—”

  “Yes, they can.” She jerks her head at the tossed digislate. “Look.”

  The slate is off somehow, odd. Different, thinner, its standby screen dim and gray. No color. I tap the screen, but nothing happens.

  “You have to use the buttons,” Emmie says. “It’s one of theirs.”

  “From Westlet?” I twist the slate toward the light and there they are. Buttons. Marked with circles and arrows and running down both sides. I hit three before the screen changes. Black text on a flat background, long words and formal phrases with no give, no recourse. No out.

  “Dad’s signing this?”

  Emmie’s grin could kill. “Did you see my dress?”

  “Your dress?”

  She crawls over and reaches across me, pressing buttons until the screen scrolls to the end. “Isn’t it pretty? I hear suffocation is in this year.”

  The dress covers every inch of skin—eyes, mouth, hands—as if anyone could even walk under all that.

  “Well?” asks Emmie. “What do you think?”

  I trace the anonymous f
abric outline. “Make you a deal.”

  Emmie rolls her eyes and asks the ceiling, “What?”

  “Keep Dad from killing Wren.”

  She falls backward, bounces on the pillows. “Of course, of course.”

  “Please, just until after the wedding. Tell him—tell him you can’t walk down the aisle with her dead.”

  Emmie rises, snatches the slate from my hand to thrust it in my face. “Look. This will be me. Can’t you focus for five damn seconds on anything not her?” She throws the digislate at the bed’s edge, and it skitters off the coverlet to the floor. “What if he’s a bastard? What if they’ve only pulled out this whole blood bond thing because no one would have him otherwise? What if he’s vicious, Asa? What if he’s like Mom?”

  No, Dad wouldn’t marry us to someone vicious. Not vicious. He wouldn’t, not even to save our House.

  I don’t think he would.

  “Please, Emmie. I’ll make it worth it. I’ll stick close and do whatever you need before the wedding, and when it’s time to get ready I’ll lock everyone out and help you get dressed.”

  “Oh!” Her fingers flutter in the moonlight, silver rings and shiny nails. “You’ll dress me! I can hardly wait!”

  I glance at the slightly open door, lower my voice. “I’ll give you Mom’s sparkle bracelet.”

  Emmie’s hand stops, midflight.

  Dad boxed up everything of Mom’s after she left. Wren said he shipped it to her in Galton, Emmie thinks he destroyed it. Either way, Emmie has nothing of hers and neither do I.

  The bracelet is Wren’s.

  “I thought she threw it away,” Emmie says.

  I shrug. “She told Dad so.”

  She’d just taken on some of her bigger responsibilities as Heir and thought it’d make him happy.

  Emmie sucks on her lip. “Where is it?”

  Wren’s closet, lowest shelf, inside her favorite fuzzy socks.

  My feet get cold sometimes.

  “The deal first. You’ll protect Wren?” I hold out my hand.

  Emmie sighs, but takes it anyway. “Fine, deal. Now, where’s the bracelet?”

  BONDS

  EMMIE SITS BEFORE THE MIRROR AND TRIES TO make up for all the sleep she didn’t get. Layer after layer of cream and eye shadow, the white dresser strewn with half-empty tubes. She’s in her sleep bra and pants so that nothing gets on the airy lace dress she brought from home—made special to fit under the ceremonial dress. Her clothes cases take up the entire corner of the guest bedroom. We flew into the Westlet House complex late last night.

  Emmie leans into her reflection, draws a tight black line along her lid. “Is the dress ready?”

  My throat’s so dry it cracks. “On the door.”

  “No, the other one.”

  “On the bed.” The heavy Westlet overdress swallows the mattress, draped sleeves hanging off the sides. A brown satin cone with white lace overlays to match the opaque headdress propped on the pillow.

  Emmie straightens before the silver winged mirror. Bare shoulders pulled back, red lips stark above her lifted chin. Elegance and sovereignty despite the still frizzed mess of hair. “Get my curler, would you?”

  I nod. Scramble to open the clothes case near the bed. Grab the worn gray handle of her favorite hair curler. Then my toe catches on the bed’s edge and it clatters to the floor.

  Emmie jumps. “God, Asa! Can’t you keep hold of anything? Just this once?”

  I retrieve the curler. “I’m sorry, I’m—”

  “Do I need to get one of those Westlet people in here? Have them dress me?”

  “No! I’ve got it, I swear—”

  “Then prove it.”

  I blink hard, harder, and can’t stop.

  Then Emmie’s blinking, too. “You can’t cry. You promised Dad you wouldn’t cry.”

  “I’m not.” And maybe the words are watery, but my cheeks aren’t. They can’t be, not yet.

  “Yes, you are.” Emmie sinks into the dresser, elbows buried in lip gloss and compacts. I can’t see her eyes in the mirror.

  Which means she can’t see me.

  Now. It has to be now.

  I set the curler on the bed and inch closer. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “This isn’t one of your stories, Asa. Words don’t make things real.”

  “They can if you back them up.”

  “God, you and Wren.” She snorts, then shakes her head. “Do me a favor?”

  “Anything.” Another step.

  “Don’t spend your life in the medicenter. Travel or study or find some love-struck idiot and have a bus-full of babies. Just do something. One of us should.”

  “It’s okay, promise.” I brush the cascade of hair away from the side of her neck. Wait for her to flinch.

  She doesn’t. Her shoulders shake with the harsh rhythm of her breath. “Sure it is.”

  She’s not crying. We don’t cry.

  And when we do, we fix it.

  I reach into my pocket. “I love you. Don’t forget.”

  She chokes, half laughs. “I’m not Wren, in case you haven’t noticed.”

  “Of course not, you’re you,” I say and press the injector pen against her neck.

  EVEN WITHOUT SHOES, I’M TALLER THAN EMMIE. DAD hasn’t noticed, though his steps clack with his shiny ceremony boots and mine don’t. We walk and walk and still the marble hall stretches forever—its intense white walls arching at least three stories high. Painted. Not with colorbot paint, no shimmery circuits, but with something rich and dead.

  Ahead the white floors and walls converge on two massive orange doors, silver-edged and flanked by men in silver uniforms. A special kind of silver caught between ice and snow. House colors. Westlet colors.

  It’s just us and them and the brush of my dress on the marble. The heavy sleeves swallow my fingers, which is good because they shake. A lot. I barely got it on, and had to ask the woman stationed outside the dressing room to do up the clips in back. I put on my best Emmie voice and told her my sister was sleeping and should be left alone. The orderly’s face was fuzzy through my veil, but she nodded and didn’t try to come in.

  “Keep your head up,” whispers Dad. “Don’t slouch.”

  I straighten. Hot, thick air burns my nose and sticks in my throat.

  One step, three.

  We stop.

  The men bow. To me first, then to Dad next and more deeply, and then they pull open the doors. Sunlight floods the floor, Dad and me. Somewhere beyond, a woman sings. A delicate and almost touchable song of crystalized winters where the frost doesn’t burn.

  Emmie’s favorite lullaby. The one Wren would hum because she couldn’t remember the words.

  I stop dead.

  “You said it was your favorite,” Dad says.

  It was. Is. Both Emmie’s and Wren’s. The notes have claws, digging deep and dragging out all the things I can’t think about like travel and study and love-struck—

  “Emmaline?” Dad asks.

  What if he’s vicious? What if he’s like Mom?

  “Emmaline.”

  No, he’s not, he won’t be. If Emmie had to marry him, I can, too. I will step forward. Right now. This second.

  I will.

  My knee bends, my foot lifts, and I’m through the doors.

  Dad squeezes my arm. Acknowledgment, not directive.

  Flower petals trail over a sunbaked stone veranda and catch along my socks as I navigate the wide, shallow steps. The people lining the pathway are all in Westlet uniforms, straight-backed orderlies in staring silver rows. And past them, at the very end, he waits. The House Heir. Lord Eagle is dressed in as many layers as I am, though his overdress has a helmet instead of a veil. Probably easier to breathe through.

  We won’t see each other until after the ceremony, when we’re no longer the walking embodiment of the Fane and Westlet bloodlines, but simply Asa and Eagle.

  Not Eagle and Emmie.

  Walk, just walk.

  D
ad grips my arm, and we follow the petals until they stop.

  Eagle’s taller than me.

  Or it could be the helmet—orange-lined steel with thread-thin eye slits.

  We bow. To the white-robed Officiator, to my dad and Eagle’s parents stationed off to the left, to each other. Lady Westlet beams sunshine while the Lord scans us with bored, languid eyes.

  Dad has no expression at all.

  The Officiator steps forward. I face the boy in the helmet and hold out my hands. We can’t show any skin during the ceremony, but we can’t have any fabric between our palms, either. One’s against the rules, and the other’s bad luck. I bunch the bottom edge of my sleeve just inside the cuff like I helped Emmie practice, so Eagle can reach in.

  My hands shake, but not enough to notice.

  Except Eagle does.

  His left hand finds mine—his rough and mine hot—but his right fumbles. Twists through the fabric in all the wrong ways and I can’t feel his skin. Seconds slip into clusters. My sleeve has a mind of its own, dancing with my trembling arm and his unsteady fingers. A swear floats from behind the helmet. Everyone watches and pretends not to.

  We’re telling a story and it’s the wrong one.

  Marriage should be happy. Nobody shakes.

  I focus on the stone under my feet. Solid and impenetrable like I need to be. Like I am. A rock. A skytower.

  A Daughter of Fane.

  My fingers still and his finally lock on, skin to skin.

  I sag, but it doesn’t matter because the Officiator opens the ceremony.

  That’s it, the worst of it. Now we just stand until the bell sounds. Then we’ll be married, and after that it won’t matter.

  My knuckles are lost under Eagle’s wide palms. He squeezes my right hand tight, like he needs the leverage, but he grips my left with loose, oddly waxy fingers.

  Rather like Casser’s. He’d lost a hand when he was a kid and had a biotech replacement—one that merged digital parts with living cells. When it glitched, he had trouble gripping, too.

  I feel along Eagle’s wrist for the telltale seam between fake skin and real. It’s there, light as a scratch after the scab’s gone, easy to miss. Maybe Westlet had ration riots, too. Maybe he got caught in one.