by K. B. Wagers
The memory of Aiz’s words floated back to the forefront of my brain. “At this point would you believe any answer I gave you besides yes?”
“There wasn’t—” I cleared my throat. “There wasn’t an answer they could give me that I would have believed. I already knew you were all dead.”
Fasé held a hand out. “Let me show you otherwise.”
I reached for her hand before I let my brain come up with a thousand reasons not to.
“Move, move, move.” Fasé’s breath was high in her throat as she pushed the others toward the exit. Sybil was at the front of the pack, just behind the Marines as they hit the door. Gunfire echoed in the night air and Fasé felt Stasia’s hand tighten in hers.
No one had argued about her sudden order to evacuate the building. It was still going to be close.
“Move!” she shouted, releasing Stasia’s hand to gesture for the only other cover in the compound, a low-slung aircar garage ten meters away.
She spotted Emmory and the others, gave Stasia a shove toward Sybil, and sprinted across the yard, tackling the BodyGuard as the embassy exploded behind them.
I jerked away, pressing my hands to my eyes, but it didn’t block out the image I’d just seen. “You’re lying,” I said.
“Hail—”
“No! Six months!” I pushed her off my bed with a foot and not-Emmory came away from the wall as she fell to the floor. “If any of this were true, why did it take you six Shiva-damned months to find me?”
“Because you were so damned set on us being dead you wouldn’t fucking cooperate with me!” she shouted back. “I tried, Hail! I tried to find you. I tried to get you to tell me where you were.”
All the questions I thought had been from Fasé’s ghost suddenly flashed through my head, and my breath lodged in my throat. “No,” I whispered. “You were too far away. I—my smati was off a good chunk of the time.”
“I know.” Fasé’s anger seemed to dissipate. “It is not something we normally do with outsiders, Hail, but it was the only way to reach you.”
It’s a trick. I froze at the voice in my head.
“Get. Out. Of. Here.”
Not-Fasé put a hand on not-Emmory’s chest before he could respond. “I told you it might not work,” she said to him. “We need to leave her be for a while.”
He backed for the door, not taking his eyes off me even though I hadn’t budged from the bed. There was sorrow and frustration twisted among the silver threads of his eyes. “Majesty, please come back to us,” he said, dipping his head at me as the door slid open and they went through.
I held his gaze until it was gone and then buried my face in my hands and wept.
21
My captors didn’t leave me alone for long. Not-Emmory probably figured that would lead to trouble from me.
He wasn’t wrong.
So the steady stream of familiar dead faces kept me company—Emmory and Zin, Iza and Indula, even Gita and Hao. Which was an odd pairing given they were supposed to be mad at each other. I noted the absent faces more than the present ones. Johar and Alba, Fasé and Sybil. Though those pairs weren’t a surprise given that my companions were supposed to be guarding me. Johar was the only one of the four who could possibly keep up with me in a fight.
Though I doubted it.
I glanced toward the open doorway. Not-Hao and not-Gita stood too close together, their murmured conversation only reaching my ears in bits and pieces.
“No, I get it. I’m not happy about why you didn’t tell me. It would have been easier than hearing her say it, though.” Not-Hao’s sigh was tinged with curious violence.
“What I hate is the idea that we might have to work with them, even after all this.” Not-Gita shifted against the door frame and I felt, rather than saw, her gaze shift to me. Her voice dropped, despite my indifferent posture stretched out on my bed. “… trust the Farians.”
“You know my feelings on that,” not-Hao replied.
“All too well.”
I watched out of the corner of my eye as not-Gita reached out, tangling her fingers briefly with not-Hao’s.
“You know,” I said, sitting up and swinging my legs to the floor, watching as the pair tensed at my movement. “I hate to keep giving you pointers on how to impersonate dead people, but you two are supposed to be mad at each other?”
Not-Hao looked at me, his lips fighting off a grin. “You know there’s this thing called apologizing and forgiveness, little sister?”
I paused, at a loss for how to respond, and instead raised my eyebrow in acknowledgment. “Just like that? My Gita was rather adamant about not accepting an apology.”
“You mean when she almost shot me?”
Shiva, for just a second I wanted to believe it was my brother replying to me. The amusement in his golden eyes, the tone of his voice. Everything was fucking spot-on.
“Hao.” Not-Gita said his name like a warning, and my longing vanished.
“I know what you’re doing,” I said.
“If you mean not walking around you like you’re made of glass, then yes,” not-Hao replied, shoving his hands into the pockets of the black jacket he was wearing. I knew that coat, had been there when we pulled the real one out of a pile of laundry on a frantic race through the streets of Paritz Vala to cover Hao’s tattoos up.
Tattoos he’d removed. For me.
I swallowed and stood. I’d seen the edge of the Bristol crest on his hand before he covered it. Their attention to detail had gotten better. “I’m fine,” I said.
“Well, yes and no.” Hao shook his head. “Really wish you’d pull your head out of your ass so we can get on with this.”
“Go fuck yourself.”
“That’s enough,” not-Gita said, giving not-Hao a shove out of the door and holding out a hand. “Sit back down, Majesty, please.”
I calculated the distance between us, decided I didn’t want to get stunned today, and sat back down. “Can I get a few minutes alone?”
Not-Gita studied me for a moment and then nodded. “Don’t make me regret it?”
“I’m too tired to try to escape right now.” I offered up a smile that wasn’t returned. The door closed and I lay back down with a sigh and stared at my hand. I wasn’t lying; a bone-deep exhaustion from always being on guard had settled in. I couldn’t sleep for more than a few hours at a time, and couldn’t do anything but restlessly prowl this prison.
The ghosts had abandoned me, except for Hao, who kept vigil from the corner in the rare moments I was alone. I lifted my head, spotted him sitting there, and laughed. He was dressed in the same clothes as not-Hao and I wasn’t sure if the morphing physical presence was my own brain messing with me or something else. There were times when I was sure he wasn’t a ghost but the man wearing my dead brother’s face.
I didn’t think they would pull something that risky, especially after deliberately challenging me, and part of me really didn’t want the confirmation so I was content to let the charade go.
“He’s a bit of an asshole, isn’t he?”
“Almost as much of one as you were,” I replied, rolling onto my side. “I do wish you’d gotten a chance to apologize to Gita, gege, and that she could have accepted it. It doesn’t seem fair.”
“Life’s not fair,” he said with a shrug.
“Isn’t that the fucking truth?” I replied, and went back to focusing on my hand.
I’d spent some of my downtime constructing a program on my smati to mask my bios from my captors, and I flipped it on so I could make another attempt at trying to break through the wall barring me from drawing on the energy outside of me.
If this was about control, as Mia had said, I had to give up what little control I still had in order to do it. The question was—was it worth it? Was the loss of the one thing still left to me worth this ability?
I didn’t know. I rolled from my bed to pace while my brother’s ghost watched me with his golden eyes. The ship shuddered under my feet and I gla
nced across the room, but Hao seemed unconcerned. I dropped onto my bed and stuck my hand out, palm up.
Think of lightning, Hail.
I thought of Mia. The way my breath stuttered and my skin lit up whenever she touched me.
I could feel the difference between the energy in my hand and the air around it—heat versus cold—and blew out a breath.
Let go of it.
The space around my hand rippled and I felt an energy I’d never touched before seep beneath my skin. It slid like silk over raw nerves and my wounded heart before it settled, as content as Mother’s cats in my chest.
Swallowing down the crow of triumph, I grabbed my pinky and bent it back; the crack of the bone breaking was loud in the silence.
Hao didn’t blink, didn’t even shift from where he was sprawled in the corner. “You do that again and not-Emmory’s going to come into the room.”
“Maybe.” I shrugged. Ghost or not, I wasn’t about to tell him about the program. “It’s not just for fun, though.”
“Your ideas of fun were always a bit skewed, sha zhu, but this is pushing it.”
I tossed a pillow in his direction with my uninjured hand, smiling when he caught it.
“I’d wondered if you’d start to question it.” He was smiling and still as relaxed as he had been a moment ago.
“I’ve been questioning it for a while, or at least I suspected. You are quite good at being Hao, but not a replacement.”
“That hurts a little,” not-Hao replied. “But given the circumstances I’m letting it slide.”
“How did you get in?”
“Masking program,” he said with a smile. “I never left the room and you were too busy watching Gita to notice.”
I smiled again, returning my focus to my throbbing pinky. Just like the real Hao, not-Hao seemed to understand that I needed the silence and he didn’t speak, though he did tilt his head and raise a curious eyebrow.
The silken feeling unfurled and flooded my finger, wrapping around it and extinguishing the fire burning within the broken bone. I took a breath and smiled. “There, all better,” I said, wiggling my now-healed finger at not-Hao.
Not-Hao was impressed, but it was quickly overtaken by something else. Concern? Disapproval? “Hail, what have they done to you?”
“Why does everyone keep asking that? Nothing,” I said. “They’ve done nothing. I did it myself. I made the choice.”
“You made the choice to let Aiz beat you to death?”
“You don’t get to care about that.”
“The fuck I don’t.” He still hadn’t moved, and I couldn’t bring myself to cross the space between us and shut him up.
Suddenly restless and angry at myself for wanting approval from a dead man, I slipped off the bed and walked to the far wall. I pressed my hand to the cool metal surface instead of punching it before I turned around to look at him. “I don’t expect you to understand; even if you were Hao, I feel like he’d be just as disappointed in me.”
“Is that so?”
I shrugged. “I failed you all and then I stopped caring about anything but the pain. That’s interesting.”
“What is?”
“That flicker of violence in your eyes.” I smiled, leaning a shoulder against the wall. “What are you angry about?”
“What a question.” Hao moved slowly, sitting up and bracing his forearms on his knees as he answered me. “The thought of you fighting and dying over and over, alone and grief-stricken, thinking you were the last woman standing while that butcher beat you to death, makes me very angry, little sister. There are people in this universe who deserve that; you are not one of them.”
I studied him. There was no lie there, no hesitation in his answer. Not-Hao was very angry, but it couldn’t possibly be about me.
Unless it is Hao, in which case he’d have every right to be furious.
I brushed away the thought. “It’s not impressive, though. The healing thing.” I waved my hand in the air. “It’s not nearly enough for what I need.”
“What do you need it for?”
“To fight gods.” I smiled again, as this time the disbelief was clear in his arched eyebrow. “Or something powerful enough that it’s convinced the Farians of its godhood. That seems to be a matter of contention.”
The ship shook again and the door slid open; not-Emmory came through with a grim look on his face. “They’re here. Fasé says we’re out of time. It has to be now, or it’s never going to happen.”
“Well, fuck,” Hao muttered, getting to his feet and watching me closely. “Hail, we’re at a crossroads here and there’s no going back—if your Farian fortune-teller is to be believed. This is it, little sister. Time for you to make a choice. You come back to us or stay gone forever.”
“I’m not your sister.” I mirrored his movement, my triumph over healing myself vanishing in a haze of adrenaline as I recognized the beginning of a fight and put my back to a wall.
Both men were tense, not-Emmory’s hand on his gun, and not-Hao was taking those loose, rolling steps that he’d always done just before jobs.
What if it is them, Hail? What then? What if Alba was right and they survived? What if Fasé showed you the truth of it?
I shook my head at the unknown voice. I couldn’t take the heartbreak if I hoped and was wrong again. I couldn’t believe, and yet I was so tired of fighting.
“I wish with all my heart that you were real.” I slid down the wall, all the strength leaching out of my body. “But you’re not. None of you are because I couldn’t keep you safe.”
“Hail.” Not-Hao crossed to me, crouching by my side. His fingers were trembling when he reached for me. It was fear that made them shake, but not of me.
For me?
“How do I make you believe that this is me? Tell me what to do and I’ll do it. Anything you ask.”
“You can’t.” I didn’t resist when he took my face in his hands, hoping it was a Shen and they could just stop my heart. But he didn’t and the tears spilled from my eyes. “You’re gone. I have been dead for so long, and like a collapsing star in the black, there won’t be anything left of me soon.”
“No,” he whispered, pressing his forehead to mine. “I won’t let you go. Not like this. You can’t leave me here al—” Not-Hao broke off. “Emmory, give me your gun.”
“Hao—”
Hao released me with his left hand, keeping the right and his forehead pressed to me, his eyes never leaving mine. “Just do it. We’re out of options and out of time.”
I tracked not-Emmory as he crossed the room and put the Hessian 45 into Hao’s hand.
“Little sister, look at me,” he said, his voice low.
“You. Are. Not. My. Brother.” I gritted the words out, hating that even as I said them I wished they were wrong, that it really was Hao in front of me, that the last six months had been a lie.
He smiled, a sad curving of his lips. “Do you remember, sha zhu, what I said to you, while you were lying in that piss-poor excuse for a hospital on Candless, all shot to shit? We were all alone. There was no one else to hear it.”
“I remember. I remember everything we ever said to each other,” I whispered back. “I won’t tell you any of it.”
Not-Hao smiled and put the gun in my hand. It was cold and not nearly the comfort I’d expected it to be. “You don’t have to. I never told another soul what passed between us there. No one knows but me and you. You know the Shen and the Farians can only look like other people. They can’t become them. They don’t have their memories.”
“Hao, she’ll kill you.”
I glanced down at the gun, then back up at those shimmering metallic eyes, which were filled with a kindness he’d only ever shown to me. How they could duplicate such emotion I didn’t know. I hated them for it.
“I’ll tell you what I said and if I’m wrong, I want you to pull that trigger. But if I tell you what I said and it’s right, you need to believe that I’m real. There are no other
options.”
“You aren’t Hao.” I was begging at this point, pressed so hard against the wall with no escape.
“It’s all right, little sister,” not-Hao whispered. “Do you remember?”
22
I was swimming in a sea of pain, but the cool brush of lips on my burning skin anchored me to the shore. “You can’t leave me here alone, little sister.”
“And why is that, Cheng Hao?” I whispered the question past my cracked lips and felt him start in surprise.
“Because I will be inconsolable at the loss of the brightest star in the black.”
“I guess I shouldn’t die, then, huh?”
I felt his lips curve against my forehead and his fingers tighten around mine. “I guess not.”
Hao let go of the gun, cupping my face in both hands and looking straight into my eyes. “You can’t leave me here alone, little sister.”
“And why is that, Cheng Hao?” The question slipped out automatically and his fingers tightened on my head in response. An ember, long thought dead, glowed in the darkness.
“Because I will be inconsolable at the loss of the brightest star in the black,” he replied, and I suddenly wasn’t sure if the tears were in my eyes or his.
That struggling spark of hope caught flame in my chest, painfully bright, and I fought the sob trying to claw its way free as the wall around me cracked.
There was no way, no possible way that anyone in all the universe but Hao could know those words. Everything crashed down around me, drowning me like waves tossed against the shore. Fasé’s vision of what had truly happened at the embassy flashed in front of my eyes and I dragged in a breath, the exhalation releasing my pain as I cried his name.
“Hao?”
“I am here,” Hao murmured, pressing his cheek to mine. “I am not dead. We are not dead. Believe me when I say that I am real. Please, little sister, don’t leave me here alone in the black.”
My sob burst out, raking through the air. I collapsed against Hao, the gun falling to the floor; he caught me in his arms, holding me close against his chest as I wept.