by K. B. Wagers
“You ready?” Aiz asked.
“Sure.” I dipped my head in agreement.
Aiz echoed the gesture, and as he came up, I pulled Emmory’s Hessian from his holster and fired. The building noise of the crowd silenced abruptly as Aiz dropped to a knee, a look of surprise on his face.
He slumped sideways and for a moment nobody moved.
“Everyone, hold.” Mia ordered in Shen, and her people froze in the act of reaching for their weapons.
I had my own empty hand up and didn’t look to see if my people were obeying the silent command. I knew they would. “You probably want to bring him back,” I said to Mia, handing the Hessian back to Emmory.
“He is going to be so pissed at you,” she managed to say through her laughter as she knelt at his side. I joined her and helped roll him over, hearing Emmory’s muttered appreciation for my single shot through Aiz’s heart. Mia gave Emmory a heated look and then pressed her hands to her brother’s chest.
Aiz came back to life with a gasping inhale. “Really?”
“You didn’t specify how first death needed to occur, only that we were fighting.” I spread my hands wide and grinned. “You should have been prepared. Gunrunner, remember?”
“Well played, Star of Indrana.” Aiz chuckled as Mia helped him to his feet and stuck his hand out. “You won that one.”
I clasped his forearm. “Welcome to my crew, Aiz Cevalla.”
29
I leaned on the railing of the upper level of the hangar, a booted foot propped up on the rail, and watched as humans, Shen, and Farians moved around below unloading gear and supplies. We’d survived the first few hours of this tentative—did I dare call it an alliance—without bloodshed and I was feeling the most settled I had in months.
“Ekam.”
I didn’t turn at Aiz’s greeting to Emmory, trusting that my BodyGuard would either shoot the Shen and get it out of his system or let Aiz pass.
“Evening,” I said without looking away from the sun setting on the far horizon. The rays were streaking in through the open door of the hangar, dust motes dancing in the still air.
“I’m still waiting for one of your people to shoot me in the back,” Aiz said, leaning on the railing next to me.
“Consequences of your choices,” I replied with a small smile. “To be fair, most of them would look you in the eye when they did it.”
“That is the kind of people you surround yourself with, isn’t it? Not only loyal to a fault but honorable.”
“I like knowing who I can trust.” I saw his grin flash out of the corner of my eye and turned to look at him.
“Is this the point where I’m supposed to ask you if you trust me?”
“I trust you to think of your sister first and everything else second,” I replied, and the surprise flickered across his face before he could stop it. “I trust you to tell me the truth when it suits you and lie to me just as easily in the same manner.” I rubbed a hand over my arm, smoothing out the matte black of the BodyGuard uniform Stasia had modified for me. “And I trust you enough to fight with you at my back should the occasion arise.”
“Well,” Aiz said, his amusement fading into something I’d only seen once or twice on his face. The Shen’s respect wasn’t something he gave easily, but I was seeing it now.
“The better question, Aiz Cevalla, is do you trust me?” I gestured at the people below us. “There are a lot of lives at stake here. Do you trust that I can find a solution that will keep all of them safe—not just my people—but yours and Fasé’s and all the rest of this galaxy? If your sister and Sybil are right about what’s coming for us and we can’t stop it, I need to know you’re on my side for that fight.” I pushed upright and took a step closer. “Are you capable of that?”
He stared at me for a long moment, then leaned forward so that his forehead touched mine. A smile curved his mouth just before he spoke. “I am, Star of Indrana. I will stay at your side through fire and blood. You have my word.”
“Good. Though.” I stepped back, shook my head. “Everyone keeps talking about fire and blood to me; can we do peace and a decent glass of whiskey instead? It sounds so much more appealing.”
Aiz’s laugh rang through the hangar, and I knew more than a few pairs of eyes turned toward us. “Perhaps after, Hail.”
“I hope so.” I leaned on the railing again. “I’m told the fight with these so-called gods is going to happen no matter what I do, but you understand I have to make the attempt?”
“I do.” His easy agreement was surprising and it must have shown on my face because Aiz chuckled and bumped his shoulder into mine when he rejoined me. “You are not the only one who has changed in the last six months, Hail. When I started this I was convinced the fight was all that mattered. I threw myself into training you because it was important, even though it drew the ire and concern of many of my people. There are those who feel the war against the Farians has taken a turn for the worse because of what Mia and I chose to do on Sparkos.”
“I wondered how you could spend so much time with me,” I replied. “Though from my possibly unreliable vantage point it seemed as though you both had things well in hand.” The memory of Talos’s conversation with Vais floated back into my head and I frowned. “Aiz, speaking of Sparkos, I heard a conversation—”
“Let me guess, about what a horrible influence you are?” he asked, glancing up at the ceiling with a smile.
“I suppose. Come to think of it I didn’t have a lot of context. It was concern for Hamah and something to do with me, but I don’t know for sure.” I laughed. “Beyond the fact that he doesn’t like me.”
“He doesn’t,” Aiz confirmed. “And I know about it. Mia and I had a conversation just before your people showed up and I need to confront Hamah, though I confess I am afraid it will not end well. Some of our people think your influence will cause us to back down from this fight we have been preparing for all these years.” He sighed. “What they don’t understand is only a fool ignores the changing of things and continues to barrel headlong into a conflict. I don’t deny I want vengeance, but only a madman turns away from a chance to end things without bloodshed.” He shot me a wink. “See, I am not so obsessed with revenge as you may think.”
“I have always liked this scene.”
I looked over my shoulder to find Sybil smiling at us. The Farian spread her hands briefly, then pressed them together and bowed. “Star of Indrana. Aiz Cevalla.”
Aiz crossed to her, folded his own hands together, and bowed. “I did not get to do this on Earth,” he said, and pulled Sybil into a hug. “You have grown so much.”
“It has been a very long time, but I’ve seen you in my mind; it was almost the same.” Sybil hugged him back with genuine warmth in her pale silver eyes.
It no longer surprised me, this feeling of having skipped an important page in a book and having no idea of what had suddenly shifted between one moment and the next.
“If you tell me you two have been working together this whole time I just might shoot the both of you,” I said, and Sybil laughed.
“No, Majesty. At least not in the way you might think.” She held a hand out to me, smiling when I took it, and I noticed she’d kept hold of Aiz’s left hand. “The thing about living forever is that you all know each other.”
“Whether you want to or not,” Aiz murmured.
“True,” she replied. “And I am in a unique position because of what I have seen. Faults aside, I like Aiz, and at least in some respect support what he is trying to do. I want our people whole again.”
“There is no whole, Sybil. There is Farian and Shen and there always will be.”
“Will you say that in a thousand years?” she asked Aiz.
He took a deep breath, then laughed, letting go of her hand and lifting both of his in surrender. “Do not argue with this one, Hail; she thinks she knows everything.”
“Maybe not everything.” Sybil winked. “But enough. Come, both of you, we n
eed to talk.”
We shared a look. Aiz shrugged. “I try not to argue with the future-seers.”
“I think Mia would call you a liar,” I replied, waving a hand to Emmory and following Sybil into the corridor.
The setup of this underground base was similar to the one on Sparkos, though the hallways were cut right from the rock, giving us smooth red walls instead of the grayish concrete.
The room Sybil led us to was a large area with a handful of consoles laid out in a row from one end to the other. A group of people were clustered around one side. Mia and Fasé had their heads bent close together in conversation. Fasé’s cousins sat nearby, trying to pretend like they weren’t watching Vais and Talos, who were in turn trying to pretend like they weren’t watching Hao and Gita.
Zin was there also and he smiled at me as I followed Emmory through the doorway. I reached out and Zin took my hand. The strength of his grip grounded me like Gita’s had, like Emmory’s did. I was discovering I could face down the panic in my chest with them to anchor me, but I didn’t want to cling and it was still so hard to ask for help.
I was, at least, not injuring myself at the moment, so I figured that was progress.
“This is cheery,” I said with a wink at Talos. He tried and failed to keep his smile under control. “Nothing like a group of people who all want to kill each other trying to work together.”
Aiz stepped up to my side. “This is necessary,” he said, looking around the room. “If there are issues, I expect everyone to bring it to us—meaning me or Mia, Fasé, or Hail. It will be dealt with accordingly. Now is not the time for vendettas, not with the fate of all our people hanging in the balance.”
I nodded in agreement. “Sybil, what did you want to talk about?”
“Our gods.” Sybil reconsidered her words at Aiz’s snort and Mia’s raised eyebrow, then gestured at herself and Fasé. “Farian gods, I suppose. I know you have questions.”
“I do.” I rubbed a hand over my face and leaned against Zin’s chair. “I’m lacking in details about this whole situation, and frankly your gods seem to be at the center of it all. What can you tell us about them?”
I had a file crammed full of things about the gods already. Bits and pieces I’d picked up back on Sparkos. Things that Mia or Aiz had said. What little information from Indrana I could find in our archives. It was all a jumbled mess I hadn’t had a chance to sort through. I’d spent six months gearing up for the fight of my life, but now I was resistant in ways I couldn’t articulate.
I wanted to fight and I didn’t. I wondered if this was how Mia had felt, what she’d been referring to when she said she didn’t like what it had turned her into. If Aiz wrestled with the same thing, given his admission that he was willing to walk away from the revenge he’d been after his whole life for a chance at peace.
Sybil tapped a finger on her lips. “That’s an extremely general question. I could tell you quite a bit, but it’s easier if I know what you want to know.”
I didn’t know what I was looking for, that was the whole problem. I wanted to know how they connected to the light that was coming. How their deaths could possibly stop it, especially if that seemed like the one thing we were speeding toward with reckless abandon.
“Have you met them?”
“I was nine years old in my very first life when the gods arrived on Faria.” Sybil smiled. “We weren’t much further along than you humans are now, and behind in some ways. We hadn’t figured out faster-than-light travel and we were so isolated. This galaxy is so old and most moved on long before you or even I were born into existence.
“When the seven landed on our planet it was terrifying and exciting all at once. These amazing beings who towered over us and glowed with power but were filled with such peace. It was like looking at a better version of ourselves. We had no idea then how everything would change. Practically overnight. They told us they were travelers, voyagers seeking out knowledge. They told us they had knowledge of their own to share. They showed us how to manipulate the energy in our bodies to heal our wounds, to live longer, to be born again.”
“Could you see the future before they came?”
“Yes.” Sybil dipped her head. “But it was unreliable and hard to grasp. Some of us had always had the talent for it, but the gods showed us how to make the images clearer, how to separate ourselves from the visions.”
“Sybil, you call them gods in one breath, but in another you admit they just showed up on your planet. Aiz and the others have repeatedly said they’re not gods.” I gestured at him, and he nodded with a frown on his face. “We didn’t think you were gods when we first met you. Doesn’t the disconnect bother you?”
“It would, if it were a disconnect for us. The Farian word for them is evergieti, which means ‘benefactor.’ When we first met your people there was some difficulty getting the scope of that across, but ‘gods’ you seemed to understand and so that is the term that stuck.” She sighed. “You have to understand, Hail. They are not gods like yours. They are real. They gave us life—everlasting life—and if that’s not worthy of godhood I’m not sure what is. We’ve been worshipping at their feet for millennia. There is no other human term that covers the scope of that kind of devotion.”
I resisted the urge to debate with her on whether the Indranan gods were real, but oddly enough her casual dismissal rankled. “You’ve met them, can you tell me about the three who are still alive?”
“They are the youngest of the seven. Adaran, Priam, and Thyra are the ones you know as the Tuesday, Thursday, and Sunday gods.” Her mouth twitched. “I never will get over your human need to label and categorize things into boxes.”
“Human nature,” I replied with a shrug. “Someone thought it was a good idea. You didn’t want to give us their names, and we couldn’t very well call them one through seven, could we?”
Sybil laughed. “No, I suppose not. Though that would have been equally amusing.”
“Sybil, what did the gods want with you?” I asked, and Mia unsuccessfully muffled a snort of laughter.
“Want?” Sybil shot Mia a flat look and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep my own laughter from joining hers. It was, I thought, the first time I’d seen the Farian the least bit ruffled.
“Did they ever tell you why they came?” I waved a hand. “Beyond that public relations line of being explorers and wanting to share their knowledge.” I didn’t say out loud how very close that was to what the Farians had told us when they first made contact.
“They didn’t, Hail.” Sybil seemed surprised by the question and frowned in thought. “All these years and we never thought to press that point.”
“Some did,” I replied, tipping my head toward Aiz and Fasé.
“True. Some have, I suppose. Especially the Cevallas. Javez never was very happy about the arrival of the seven. He protested it from the beginning. Aiz was just a teen, not much older than I was. Adora was among the first to greet them, and she broke from her family in her wholehearted acceptance of the gods.”
“That’s a nice way of saying she betrayed them for power.” Mia pushed out of her chair and paced toward the wall.
This time Sybil’s look in Mia’s direction was sharp, though it vanished so quickly I thought for a moment I’d imagined it. It appeared things were not quite as cohesive between the three of them as I’d been told.
Fasé hadn’t said a word and was still staring at the wall. She looked tired, the skin under her golden eyes bruised to the color of Indrana blackberries, just the lightest shade of purple under the surface.
I crossed the room, slipped my hand over Fasé’s shoulder as I leaned against the wall near her. “Are you all right?” I murmured.
“I didn’t sleep well.” She whispered the reply.
“I also welcomed them,” Sybil continued. “Because I had seen their arrival and the stability they brought.” She sighed. “Because I wasn’t old enough or wise enough to look beyond any of that.”
; “Sybil, the healing ability. We were always told that it was necessary for you to come heal humans. That you would burn up if you didn’t expel that gift, but that’s not true, is it?” Zin asked.
I swallowed with the realization that truly everything the Farians had told my people when they first arrived was at best a dodge of the truth and at worst a bald-faced lie.
“The Shen have no problem with holding it, even taking in more than I’ve seen regular Farians use. I’ve done it myself. So has Johar.” I held up a hand before Mia could comment. “Let Sybil answer, you can have a turn after.”
“It is a fabrication, of sorts, though to be fair every Farian who told you that believed it.” Sybil looked down at her hands for a long moment and I moved away from Zin, crossing the room and leaning against the wall next to Mia, letting Sybil collect her thoughts.
“When the gods gave us that gift, it was heavily controlled. The proscriptions and rules are many, the punishments for violation swift and harsh. Final death, the violators killed, and their souls given to the gods.”
I put my hand on Mia’s forearm, felt the muscle tense under my palm, and smiled when she finally relaxed.
Sybil sighed and rubbed a hand over her face. “But if I am being honest, it is a measure of control for reasons I do not yet know. This is why I helped Fasé escape, Hail, and why I help you now with information we were forbidden from ever sharing with not just humans but Indranans specifically.”
I was going to have to call cowshit on that, I thought, but not right now in front of this crowd. Everyone was more tense than they had been at the start of this conversation, and despite my and Aiz’s warning I didn’t think bloodshed could be avoided if things went sideways.
“It all comes back to that, doesn’t it?” I wasn’t the least bit surprised by my own frustrations. “My people, leading to me because of this future. We were dragged into some galactic conspiracy thousands of years ago. More than anything, Sybil, I want the answer to that question. Why me? Why my people? What do your damn gods want with us?”