A War of Swallowed Stars

by Sangu Mandanna

  “Esmae, pull back!” Max yells.

  “No!” I shout back. “Just keep them away from me. Titania and I can do this.”

  So they fly out across the water. A ship bursts into flames, and I don’t dare to look to see whose side it belonged to. This may be the only chance we ever get to stop Sorsha. I can’t waste it.

  “Keep talking to me,” I order them all. “I need to know you’re all still alive!”

  Their voices, a hundred and one of them, sound like a song in my ear as Titania soars away from the water, across the snow, and slams hard into Sorsha’s flank.

  She’s even bigger than I remember up close, her wingspan so huge it blocks out the sun as Titania swoops below her. Sorsha roars and twists in the air, snapping her jaws at me, but Titania dodges away.

  “Try to get me close to her throat,” I call to Titania, jaw clenched so tight I’m amazed I haven’t broken any teeth. If I have to commit the unforgivable crime of killing the last great beast left in the universe, I’m going to make sure it’s as quick and painless as possible.

  Boots, balance, brace is the only thing that keeps me attached to Titania as she spins, diving back over Sorsha’s wings to get near her throat.

  As the edge of Titania’s wing approaches Sorsha’s throat, I adjust my grip on the starsword and wait for my moment.

  There!

  I spring out of my crouch and strike, but I misjudge how far I need to thrust with my left hand and the sword barely glances off Sorsha’s scales.

  Sorsha pivots, astonishingly fast for her size, and lashes out with her tail. I dive flat and her scales skim my back. I roll over and swing the starsword, but, again, I miss.

  “I know you can do better than that,” Titania remarks. “Your heart’s not in it, but it needs to be or she’ll kill you.”

  I scowl, but I don’t reply because she’s not wrong. Instead, I concentrate on keeping my balance as she surges upward, slamming into Sorsha’s underbelly, giving me another opportunity to thrust my sword into the slender, vulnerable gap between the scales at Sorsha’s throat.

  I miss.

  No, that’s not true. I don’t even try.

  What is wrong with me? I, and everyone else in this galaxy, will die if I don’t do what’s necessary.

  It’s in that moment, as I try to knock some sense into myself, that the wrongness of all of this overwhelms me. It’s not just the memory of the pain in Amba’s voice, or Sorsha’s innocence, or even the battle between the Hundred and One and Leila Saka’s troops out over the sea. It’s not just the fact that I hate having to do this.

  It’s Sorsha.

  It’s the fact that she’s still here.

  Our plan was for the Hundred and One to keep her attention on them while Titania and I slipped past them and took Sorsha by surprise. We assumed there was absolutely no other way to keep Sorsha from taking off into outer space the moment she realized she’d been lured into an ambush.

  But the Hundred and One aren’t here to distract her. She knows this is an ambush.

  Why, then, is she still here?

  “Stop,” I say to Titania. “Slow down and hover near her head.”

  “That is a terrible—”

  “Just do it!”

  Grumbling, she does as she’s told. The sounds of Max, Sybilla, and the Hundred and One are still in my ear, but they sound muted and far, far away. Titania and I slow down, engines rumbling, coming to a stop in the air in front of Sorsha’s surprised face. I march down Titania’s wing, all the way to the tip of her nose, where Sorsha’s golden eyes, long snout, and nostrils tower above me. She could open her mouth and swallow me whole, but she doesn’t.

  “Why aren’t you trying to win?” she growls. Her voice doesn’t come out of her mouth, but, rather, seems to reverberate inside my head. It’s the strangest and most extraordinary sensation.

  “Why aren’t you?” I retort. I should be terrified, standing nose to nose with a creature a hundred times my size, but I feel only wonder.

  We stare at each other, eyes narrowed, golden and gray.

  And just like that, I know.

  “You want me to win,” I breathe.

  “She told me her future was death,” says Titania, quiet and unhappy. “Hers, or everyone else’s. I guess she doesn’t want it to be everyone else’s.”

  “Someone must end it, sooner or later,” Sorsha says. “It might as well be you. You, who have earned my sister’s love. It seems right that it be you.”

  “Well, I’m not doing it,” I reply, suddenly surer of this than I have been of anything in a long time. “There’s another way.”

  “There is no other way. The curse cannot be broken.”

  “You could go back to Anga.”

  A soft puff of air slips out of Sorsha’s nostrils, almost knocking me over. It’s the saddest laugh I’ve ever heard.

  “I cannot go back,” she says. “Amba is mortal now. If I went back, I would be alone.”

  “Ships can travel to Anga,” I insist. “Amba loves you. It would break her heart to lose you here. If you went back to Anga, she would visit you. I would visit you. And yes, we’re mortal, but after we’re gone, Amba’s brothers and sister would keep you company until you die old and happy, just the way it should be.”

  She’s quiet for a moment, as if, in spite of herself, she’s letting the possibility of that future unfold inside her mind. “That is a beautiful dream, little lion,” she says at last. “But it is just a dream.”

  I was hopeful once. Maybe Max was right. Maybe that girl isn’t gone. Because this feeling, right now, feels an awful lot like hope.

  I raise the starsword, so that its blade sparkles in the sun. Deliberately, I let it fall, clattering off the edge of Titania’s nose, dropping to the snow fifty feet below.

  “I’m not going to kill you,” I say, crossing my arms over my chest, “so if you really want to spare the lives of everyone who will die if you keep devouring the stars, then you’d better think about that dream. We can save you and save the world, Sorsha.”

  I don’t think I’m imagining the longing in her voice as she says, “It is a long way to Anga. A long, long time to resist this terrible, insatiable hunger. I do not think I’m strong enough to resist. I think I would give in to my hunger, abandon this dream, and your world will end.”

  “And I think you are strong enough.”

  “You don’t understand,” she says, anguished. “You cannot imagine how much it hurts. I am nothing but rage and hunger. They will overpower me, as they always do.”

  There’s a lump in my throat, but I force myself to speak. “You’re wrong,” I tell her. “I do understand. I know how it feels to be cursed, to pay for something you didn’t do. I know how it feels to want something you can never have. And more than anything, I know how it feels to hurt so much that all you want to do is make everything else hurt the same way. You’re not the only one putting the stars out, Sorsha.”

  “Let us help you,” Titania begs as Sorsha stares at me in shock. “Let us help you find your way home.”

  I clench my hands at my sides, so full of hope it hurts more than I can bear. “Please,” I whisper. “Please.”

  Tired, anguished golden eyes look into mine, uncertain.

  And out of the corner of my eye, I see something. A ship. A boy on its wing. A sword.

  Alex raises the starsword.

  “No!” I scream.

  The sword comes down.

  Sorsha, Titania, and I fall out of the sky.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Esmae

  Titania protects me from the worst of the fall, so I’m mostly just bruised when we crash into the snow. I stagger to my feet, coughing up ice, my head spinning. At first, I think the dull, distant hum of sound is just an effect of the fall, but then I put my head to my head and feel that my earpiece has fallen out. I can’t hear Titania, or Max, or anyone.

  And I can’t hear Sorsha.

  I stumble across pebbles and ice to wher
e Sorsha has fallen, her bright scales gleaming in the pale sunlight, her wings folded over her like a blanket. Her blood is the same gold of her eyes. It stains the snow, gilding it like an obscene painting, as if the sparkling beauty of the color can somehow make up for the fact that she’s dead.

  I suppose I should be happy that she’s finally at peace, her curse ended, but I’m not. I’m raging.

  I kneel beside her head and pull the starsword out of the gap between her scales. Tears slide down my face and I feel like I could snap the sword in two.

  “I’m sorry,” I sob. “I’m so sorry.”

  I stroke her nose, the smooth, gleaming scales like cold, hard jewels beneath my hand. I’m glad I got to tell her that Amba loved her. And I’m glad that the last thing she was thinking of when she died was a beautiful dream.

  A small movement out of the corner of my eye makes me look up. Kirrin stands on the other side of Sorsha’s head, his face contorted with remorse. Behind him, shimmering faintly in the light like ghosts, are Tyre and Thea, and a woman with black hair and dark purple skin, and a man with horns, and scores of others, stretching out across the snow. A host of gods to bear witness to the passing of the last great beast in the universe.

  “It had to be done.”

  Alex’s voice electrifies me into standing. I shove the sword into its sheath and spin around to face my brother. He looks as sorry as Kirrin does, but I have no time for it.

  Furious, my voice choked with tears, I push him hard in the chest. He lets me. “You arrogant, interfering bastard! You didn’t have to kill her!”

  “You came here to kill her. Why are you angry with me for doing what you came to do?”

  “Because she was going to go home!” I shout. “She was going to let us help her. We could have put this right!”

  Alex looks bewildered. “You dropped the sword, Esmae. She looked like she was about to bite your head off! I did what I had to do!”

  “Oh, please,” I scoff. “You saw me drop the sword and decided it was the perfect opportunity for you! You didn’t kill her because you thought I was in danger. You killed her so that the rest of the world would like you again!”

  “Is that really what you think of me?” Alex demands, looking furious and hurt. “Seriously?”

  “It looks like we’ll always think the worst of each other,” I spit, pushing past him. “Get out of my way. I need to find out what your general’s done to Max and the others.”

  “I called my ships off,” he says. “I didn’t . . .”

  He stops. I choke a sound that could have been a laugh. “No, go on, finish. I can probably guess, though. You didn’t mean for that to happen?”

  He’s silent, his ears red.

  Sure enough, I can see that our ships have started to land on the beach. Other than a few fiery wreckages in the sea, getting gradually doused by the waves, there’s no sign of any of Alex’s ships anymore.

  I find a spare earpiece in the pocket of my tunic and turn it on. My voice is a croak as I ask, “Is everyone still there? Max? Sybilla? Jemsy?”

  “We’re okay,” a chorus of voices reply. Familiar heads start to pop out of the starships. Radha’s throwing up on the beach while Sybilla holds her hair back, just like on the Empty Moon, and it’s a small jolt of familiarity in the chaos. I look for Max, and my chest feels a little less tight when I see him. His ship is damaged and his forehead is bleeding, but he’s alive.

  And Sorsha isn’t.

  Just as I wonder how I could have felt anything like hope just a few minutes ago, a high, unearthly wail breaks through my rage.

  Startled, Alex and I both turn toward the sound. “That sounded like—”

  Before he can finish, we hear the wail again, and it’s so raw and broken, it sends a chill down my spine.

  Blanching, Alex takes off at a dead run. I follow, even though I don’t want to, even though a part of me tells me that I don’t want to see.

  Our mother is the one wailing. She stands at the edge of the water, struggling with one of Alex’s generals, an elderly man who is doing his best to keep her from plunging into the sea.

  Alex skids to a halt beside them, surf spraying into his face as he grabs our mother’s arm and helps the general pull her away from the waves. “Mother, what are you. . .”

  Then he sees. We all see. Leila Saka stumbles out of the waves, soaking wet, her hard, sharp face drained of all color. She’s dragging something with her, a grayish, boy-shaped something, and I can’t even fathom how much strength it must have taken to pull him through the water just to bring him back to shore.

  My mother collapses to her knees beside him. Leila hangs her head. “I’m sorry, Kyra,” she says hoarsely. “I couldn’t save him.”

  A strangled sound comes out of Alex. He kneels and reaches roughly for the boy-shaped thing on the beach, turning it over. He reels back at the face that he sees, and our mother lets out one last, raw, shattered cry, and I force myself to understand what I’m seeing.

  The boy-shaped thing is Bear. But my sunny, gruff giant of a brother is bloody, burned, and drowned, his brown skin turned gray, his armor torn and blackened. He and Leila must have been in one of the ships that went down in flames.

  My brother, who liked to make honey cakes and chose me once.

  The sound that lodges in my throat is somewhere between a sob and a cry, but it stays there, trapped inside me, because I have no right. Bear was the sweetest and best of us, and I loved him, but he wasn’t mine. He was theirs.

  I watch my mother and brother on their knees. I’ve raged at what they have done to me, to Rama, to Sorsha, to my father. I’ve waged this war to make them pay.

  And now they are paying. My mother, especially, will pay every single moment of the rest of her life. Everything she ever did was to keep her sons alive and now one of them is gone. Nothing I or anyone else could possibly do to her will ever be worse than this.

  I swear I will break you before the end.

  It’s not the end, but she is broken.

  I got what I wanted.

  And it cost me my brother.

  My knees buckle, but someone keeps me from falling. Someone hard and warm behind me. Max. A hand closes around mine. Sybilla. They don’t speak, but I know they’re there.

  I take one shaky step forward, though I’m not sure what I plan to do, and the movement makes my mother look up. Her eyes land on me.

  “I knew this would happen sooner or later,” she says in a hollow voice. She knows what I know. That they are destroyed. “Why didn’t anyone believe me?”

  “That’s enough, Kyra,” Max cuts in, stepping around to stand in front of me. His face is hard and severe. “This wasn’t Esmae’s fault. She wasn’t even part of the battle.”

  “She made me a promise,” my mother says. She doesn’t sound angry or upset. It’s worse than that: she sounds like she’s dead, too. “She told me that because I wanted only two children, by the end, that was what I would have. And now look. I have only two children.”

  But the one she lost wasn’t supposed to be Bear. It was supposed to be Alex or me.

  Alex looks at me then, and there is a storm in his eyes, a horror and disbelief, that makes me stagger a step back.

  My mouth is dry, but I try to speak. “I didn’t—I didn’t mean for—”

  Alex’s face twists. “Sooner or later,” he says bitterly, “You have to mean things, Esmae.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Titania

  On Kali, I wait, in a quiet stone courtyard open to the skies, until a golden god arrives.

  As soon as I see him, the sun god with that pleased, smug look on his face, I lose my temper. “Why didn’t you tell me?” I rage. “Why didn’t you tell me that Sorsha wasn’t the only one who would die?”

  He frowns. “I could not possibly have foreseen how it would all play out.”

  “I think you could have,” I retort. “In fact, I think you did. Maybe you didn’t know what would happen to Bear, but I
think you knew Esmae would try to save Sorsha, and you couldn’t have that, not when Sorsha wanted to avenge her mother and her very existence threatened yours. You’re too much like your father.”

  Suya’s eyes flash. “You have no idea what you speak of.”

  “I’ve seen a thousand of Amba and Kirrin’s memories,” I say coldly. “I think you’ll find I have a very good idea. You didn’t go to Alexi because you thought Esmae was dead. You went to him, and told him he could be the hero of the star system again, because you wanted to make sure someone would kill Sorsha. You needed someone there in case Esmae chose to be kind.” Electricity dances furiously along my wings. “And you got what you wanted, didn’t you? She’s dead. Your sister is grieving. But you don’t care about hurting Amba, the goddess who saved your life and raised you, just so long as Sorsha is gone.”

  For a moment, Suya says nothing. He looks into the distance, his jaw clenched, with streaks of red across his bronze cheeks. I would call this shame, but I doubt he’s capable of feeling such a thing.

  “We had a bargain, you and I,” he says at last, curtly. “I came to honor it.”

  “Our bargain was for Esmae to kill Sorsha. She didn’t.”

  “She made it possible for Alexi to kill her. I’m not going to withdraw what I offered you over a technicality.”

  That seems generous. Too generous.

  I study him, analyzing the minute movements of his jaw and the way he won’t look directly at me in spite of the fact that I am a spaceship taking up almost his entire field of vision.

  “Was this part of what you dangled in front of Alexi?” I ask him in what I hope is a dangerously quiet voice. “Did you tell him that if he killed Sorsha, he’d redeem himself and he would get rid of his twin sister’s unbeatable ship in one fell swoop?”

  “Why does what I told him matter?” Suya counters, which I can only assume is a yes. “You knew the consequences of becoming human.”

  “I want the war to end first,” I snap. “I don’t want to be become human until after all this is over.”

  “That wasn’t what we agreed,” he replies. A little bit of the smugness has crept back. “I will transform you now, or never. Do you still want this?”