by Rhonda Mason
Holy frutt.
A white, diamond-bright star glinted in empty space a kilometer off the Yari’s side. Only it wasn’t star—was it? It couldn’t possibly be. It looked like someone had slit reality and pulled the edges apart. Beyond, the essence of everything shimmered and glowed and beckoned. It was the twinkle of a star seen from a planet’s surface. It was blinding and impossible and he couldn’t look away.
Never could he have hoped to find something more amazing than the Yari, and yet…
Ariel’s shuttle hovered in place, halfway between the ship and the… the… “What the void is that?” he asked Ida, without looking away. Beside him, Corinth had a hand pressed flat to the viewport as if trying to touch the miracle.
“We are calling ‘the Tear.’”
“Has it always been there?” Was the Tear somehow responsible for the destruction within the Mine Field?
“Not,” was Ida’s only answer.
A shimmer rippled across the Tear, white light fracturing and coalescing. Something was happening. Vayne imagined a million possibilities—blinding bolts of plasma arcing out like solar flares, a shockwave issuing forth as the Tear was ripped wider, the Yari being sucked in… Anything. Everything.
Ariel’s shuttle nudged closer as something emerged from the Tear. Initially indistinguishable against the brilliant glare, he couldn’t identify the object until it was fully through.
A loaded hover cart.
The most miraculous discovery in the history of his race pulsed before them, and it produced a handcart for transporting goods.
He had definitely gone mad.
A gloved hand appeared next, gripping the hover cart’s control, followed by the rest of someone—something?—in a spacesuit. The person pulled a second loaded hover cart through the Tear and angled for Ariel’s ship.
“Whoop!” Ida clapped. “Cinni this time, our favorite. Come. We unload and bring dinner sooner. Fresh food!”
Vayne took a last look at who must be Cinni inside the spacesuit maneuvering the carts into the loading bay of Ariel’s ship, and, with a sigh, followed blindly in Ida’s wake once more.
Tia’tan’s voice sounded in his head. ::I can’t tell if she’s demented or just ridiculously cheerful.::
::Or high, or brain damaged:: Vayne offered. ::Or all of the above. She has been alive for five hundred years.::
Tia’tan’s lavender eyes looked dazed, as if things moved too quickly and she couldn’t absorb it all.
Welcome to his world.
::The Tear:: her voice sounded in his head, soft, lilting. ::Have you ever seen… I mean, it’s…:: She shook her head. ::Not even possible. I knew about the Tear, the rebels on Ordoch had passed that knowledge along to my superiors. Hearing about it and seeing it are two completely different realities.::
He couldn’t wrap his mind around the Tear’s existence yet, so he focused on her other words. ::Ordochian rebels are communicating with Ilmena?:: They entered the ship’s corridor and Ida’s chatter floated back to them.
Tia’tan nodded. ::We’re Ordoch’s only hope, despite your people’s isolationist ways for the last century.::
Isolationist ways meant to mask the unraveling of their society, to hide from the other Wyrd Worlds the devolution into which Ordoch sank.
::Are they from the mainland?:: he asked. The central landmass in Ordoch, and the seat of his family.
::I’m not certain, I haven’t had direct contact with any of them. We all have our missions. Mine was to be sacrificed to the Empress Game and live in exile, tearing the empire apart from within their Council of Seven.::
Bitterness? From the intensely controlled and driven Tia’tan?
::You lost.::
She cut him with a glance. ::I abdicated to your sister because she swore she could be more effective. Her loyalties seem to be in question, though. She had better not betray us.::
Vayne twisted a rope of psi force around her upper arm and jerked her to a stop. “Don’t you ever question my ro’haar again.” His low voice was harsh.
“I—”
“You know nothing of Kayla. Nothing.” He let the psi force dissipate and left her staring uncertainly at his back as he walked away.
The rage had been instantaneous, along with the urge to lash out, to defend Kayla from mere words with brute psi force. Uncontrollable rage, and white-hot.
Kayla had come for him.
It had taken five years but she found him. Tia’tan and her people had helped, but it had been Kayla in that chair across from him in Dolan’s lab, Kayla fighting with everything she had to connect to her psi powers to save him, Kayla who had offered to give herself to Dolan willingly if only he’d set Vayne free.
His ro’haar had fought for him, and in those moments he remembered what it meant to be an il’haar, the stronger psionic half of a bonded pair. He was meant to protect her with his mind as much as she was meant to protect him with her body.
She had killed Dolan, and she had brought her il’haar back to life.
And he, in his fear of recapture, had betrayed her and left her behind in the empire, even as she begged him not to.
The darkness closed in again, the rage and shame and violent illness that found him after every one of Dolan’s “experiments.” Only this time, he’d brought it on himself.
Perhaps you are not so unlike me after all, are you, my dear Vayne? Dolan’s voice whispered along his spine and teased its way into his head.
“No,” Vayne said on a breath, the word without sound. It wasn’t the first time he’d heard Dolan’s voice since he’d been freed. It was the first time it happened while he was awake.
“Vayne?” Tia’tan asked. She’d caught up to him and now looked… was it concerned? Wary?
He shook his head and kept walking.
15
ISONDE’S TOWNHOUSE, FALANAR
Kayla’s feet impacted the treadmill’s surface in a short, rhythmic pattern. She had the exercise room in Isonde’s townhouse all to herself. Considering it was oh-two-hundred, that wasn’t exactly surprising. Her breath passed in and out, in and out, steady and even as she started the next kilometer.
Treadmill running was the absolute worst.
Nights like this, when anxiety and doubt and sheer frustration kept sleep at bay, she used to run in Fontana’s Park, a woodland on the grounds of her family’s palace on Ordoch. The winding trails, with their sculpted beauty, kept the run interesting, even soothing.
The imperial image database lacked any images from Ordoch, so instead she ran kilometer after kilometer with footage from Fengar Swamp on the vidscreen in front of her. The gloomy locale from Altair Tri evoked an odd combination of dislike, familiarity and nostalgia. She and Corinth had spent most of their five years in exile hiding in a shack in Fengar Swamp. It had been as much their prison as their place of safety.
Life had been predictable there. Simple.
And meaningless?
She denied it, but the thought persisted.
“Useless thought.” Kayla jabbed the power control to halt the treadmill. She sprang off it, itching for more activity despite the run, itching for a fight.
Bredard had disappeared from their lives the second Malkor had handed over the data incriminating the corrupt IDC agents. She couldn’t trust the silence. She wanted to. The info exchange should have been the end of it. Instead she hung in this tense space, suspended in expectation, waiting for his next move.
It didn’t come. Day after day.
And now here she was, rushing from council meeting to secret meeting to diplomatic meeting to who-knows-what-meetings, insanely busy and yet still waiting, waiting.
Bredard and his pet biocybe, Siño, had beaten her twice already, and that was two times too many. She wouldn’t be caught off-guard again.
Kayla checked the chronometer—02:35. Plenty of time for drills before trying to sleep.
She focused on footwork, evasive sequences, techniques that would keep her out of Siño’s reach
until she found the perfect opening.
Faster.
Faster.
The movements needed to be automatic, instinctual—so natural to her body that she reacted before her conscious mind even prompted her to move. Once he was in range, his augmented strength could make short work of her if she didn’t have a weapon at hand.
Faster.
She needed to be better. Stronger. Tougher.
She worked the drills over and over. Then over again. Worked them until she had nothing left to give. She leaned back against the wall for support, then sank down to rest, chest heaving, tunic slicked to her body by sweat.
Kayla rested her forehead on her knees as her heartbeat slowed. The exhaustion in her limbs weighed down on her like a heavy blanket. It was comforting, a hallmark of her life as a ro’haar, that exquisite expenditure of every last gram of energy.
The chronometer pinged oh-three-thirty and Kayla pushed to her feet. Still a few hours of darkness left, and she could certainly sleep, now.
As she climbed the steps to Isonde’s room, her earlier discussion with the princess came back to her. This was Kayla’s last night as Isonde. The last night of sleeping in her room, the last night of wearing her face.
Isonde had been recovering at a remarkable pace that could only be achieved by sheer force of will. Despite being still weak and tiring easily, Isonde was ready to resume her life. Kayla would move into what had been Isonde’s sick room and re-emerge in society tomorrow as Lady Evelyn, having “recovered from her near-fatal bout with the Virian flu.”
Kayla wasn’t off the hook yet, though. She would also attend all of Isonde’s meetings—in the role of assistant—in order to offer her opinions afterward. Considering she had been the one interacting with everyone during Isonde’s coma, it was necessary until Isonde got back up to speed. The only place Kayla wouldn’t go was Sovereign Council sessions. Isonde was determined to attend tomorrow’s session herself, and the princess would succeed or die trying.
Kayla entered Isonde’s room, stripped off her boots, tossed them by the door and headed for the shower. Surprisingly, she felt anxious about missing the council session. Archon Raorin would speak tomorrow, then two delegates from Inja who would harp on the fiction of the Ilmenans being terrorists. Most importantly, the lead councilor from Falanar itself would close out the day, and his words carried enough weight to sway a large section of the council. Even though Kayla had been unwillingly forced into the role of one of Piran’s councilors, she was thoroughly engaged by this point. Every moment, every speech, every shift in power was too important to the future of her people and the spread of the TNV to be missed. And now she’d been sidelined.
For which she was thankful.
Truly.
Right?
Isonde will do what’s necessary. Kayla had to trust in that.
She peeled off the rest of her clothes, uncomfortable with her unexpected frustration. She flipped the shower setting from sonic to water, and let a cool stream wash over her.
The Sovereign and Protectorate Councils had come to a crucial point where they had to decide on a course of action for dealing with the TNV and present their recommendation to the Council of Seven. The Council of Seven would then make the final ruling, a ruling that would determine how the empire would handle the TNV plague and the Ordochian occupation.
Isonde had to be seated on the Council of Seven before that vote happened. And she would be, if the wedding—scheduled for three days hence—went as planned.
Everything Kayla had done, every chance she’d taken since leaving the Blood Pit, came down to that one moment. And finally it was here. Some days she’d thought it would never come. Some days she wore the illusion of Princess Isonde so well she believed she and Isonde had become one and the same.
A chill that had nothing to do with the cool water temperature hit her when she realized that walking away from Falanar and leaving the fate of her people in someone else’s hands, even Isonde’s hands, would be much, much harder than she’d anticipated.
It shouldn’t be. She was a ro’haar, not a politician. And yet…
The comm unit buzzed with an incoming message, saving her from her thoughts. Kayla toweled off and then slipped on a robe before answering the comm.
Isonde. Awake and scheming, even at this early hour. “Are you up? I want to go over the details of your last meeting with Councilor Gi.”
And back to politicking it was.
16
THE YARI, MINE FIELD
Cinni popped the helmet of her spacesuit off and secured it in a gear locker at the back of Ariel’s ship’s cargo bay, along with the rest of her suit. Her hands trembled, despite her best efforts to control them, adrenaline pumping through her system.
I survived. I survived.
One more successful trip through the Tear. She’d made it; the Tear hadn’t closed on her, hadn’t crushed her into oblivion.
I made it.
She took a deep breath. Held it. Reached for a sense of relief that eluded her. Tremors. More tremors.
Pull yourself together, Cinni, you have shit to do.
The air escaped her lungs in a whoosh. She pulled a blister pack from her pocket and forced a dreamer through the foil backing. She swallowed it dry, resting her forehead against the locker while the sedative took effect.
Better.
Ariel buzzed the ship’s internal comm. “All is well?”
Cinni took a last deep breath, then double-timed it to the ancient shuttle’s cockpit. “Thanks for the ride,” she said to Ariel, once she’d arrived. She grinned at the usually dour woman.
Ariel snorted. “As if I’d be food wasting when you have brought fresh.” She maneuvered the ship to dock with the Yari. “Ida is not to forgive that.”
True. The Yari’s crew were near-rabid for calorie packs for their food replicators. Bring actual food instead, though? Rapture.
“Gintoc is pleased the most. Liking Phan is not possible.” Ariel grimaced at the mention of Phan and Cinni couldn’t blame her. Phan might be a genius with engines, but while most of the Ordochian resistance considered the Yari’s crew amazing in and of themselves, Phan thought them outdated relics who couldn’t possibly understand his brilliance with machines. Without being too impressed by their own importance, the Yari’s crew had enough pride to find Phan’s superior air obnoxious.
The shuttle docked smoothly and Cinni started back toward the cargo bay. “I better open the bay doors before Ida busts in, looking for snacks.”
The captain of the Yari greeted Cinni with a huge smile and a “whoop!” of excitement. She hugged Cinni in a flurry, her thigh-length sea-green braid swinging around like a rope. Just as quickly, Ida bustled past to get to the hover cart full of foodstuffs. The real reason Cinni had come, bringing much-needed supplies to fix the Yari’s hyperstream drive, was ignored for the moment.
Larsa, Tanet and Benny rushed into the shuttle next, a gaggle of excitement, with “Welcome to you, Cinni!” on their lips and eyes only for the food crates. If it was up to them, she’d be hauling the engine parts out herself.
Not surprisingly, the taciturn Gintoc had stayed with his beloved drive. She didn’t take it personally—Gintoc slept in the engine room.
The flood of black flight suits and blue-green hair quickly emptied out into the landing bay with their prizes and merry shouts, leaving Cinni free to exit the ship. A group of about ten strangers waited in the bay, staring at her. Wyrds all, and a mix of modern-day Ordochians and Ilmenans, judging by the instances of blue-shaded and purple-shaded hair. She was three steps down the shuttle’s ramp when the full import of the Ordochian faces hit her.
“Highnesses,” Cinni breathed in disbelief. Not only was she on the fabled Yari, now she stood face to face with four people back from the dead. The discovery of the Yari had purged the word “impossible” from her vocabulary, but seeing members of Ordoch’s ruling family, alive, after five years…
She’d only had two dreamers.
Surely she wasn’t hallucinating this. Right?
She recognized Natali, the eldest of the heirs, and Vayne, the second in line, right away. It took another moment to place the child as Corinth, their youngest brother. He had only been eight at the time of their death—disappearance—and not much in the news feeds. Behind them stood their uncle, she didn’t remember his name.
Ordoch’s rightful rulers. Alive.
“Are there others?” she asked. Did the ruling ro’haar-il’haar pair still live?
The uncle said, “We’re all that’s left of the Reinumons.”
Then… Natali was the dethroned ruler of Ordoch. Typically no one ruled without their other half—in Natali’s case that would be her il’haar Erebus, apparently dead. Then again, these were desperate times.
Natali looked the part. She stood taller than the other three, shoulders back, her chin tilted at an angle that said, “You wouldn’t dare challenge me.” Her eyes were the first blue hint of a glacier, her demeanor remote. She had an ion pistol on her hip and a sheathed knife stuck through her belt—armed high-tech and low, like any good ro’haar.
::Where did you come from?:: The boy—Corinth—must have spoken, and Cinni blinked at the rudeness of not greeting her aloud first.
“Ordoch.” The silence between the heirs was at odds with the crew’s happy chatter. “Where did you come from?”
“A void beyond your imagining,” Vayne said, with no inflection at all. The uncle laughed as if Vayne had made a joke, and Vayne’s mouth tightened.
She struggled against staring at Vayne. In her youthful fantasies, when Ordoch had been free and the royal family of no more concern to her beyond their appearances on newsvids, she’d crushed on him—as no doubt half of the population of Ordoch had. She’d dreamed of having his striking cobalt hair. It was the vibrant pigment from which all other blues were diluted. The top half of his hair was pulled back from his face in a stubby ponytail and the rest fell to about jaw-length. His ro’haar had a similar, darker color, if Cinni recalled correctly. Vayne’s features were almost delicate, all long lines and perfect angles, with red-violet lips she’d spent hours sighing over.