Prime- The Summons

by Maeve Sleibhin

  Aditya panted.

  “Do it,” Xai snarled, tightening her grip on the knife.

  “I surrender,” Aditya gasped.

  Xai let him go. Aditya moaned and fell to the floor. The vid drones swooped wildly around them, a pack of maddened insects. Xai stepped away. Panting, she looked up at the ranks of people spinning around her—staring, silent. The thrumming noise had stopped.

  She found him finally, his hands gripping the balustrade, a face so like what Joaquim’s would some day become. She pointed her finger and the drones caught every moment of it—her face still wild from the battle and hard in judgement looking straight through the Salak and into Ricardo’s eyes, watching with something akin to pleasure as the shock faded and the truth became obvious, and with it, its implications.

  “The challenge is successful,” the voice boomed. “Ricardo Syng is stripped of Syng leadership and banished from the Salak. Joaquim Salazar Syng, as represented by his daughter, Joaana Kumar Syng, is confirmed as Syng leader. Xai Syng is confirmed as a member of the Syng. Records de-activated.”

  The murmurs rose in the hall. A booth filled with medical staff swirled in, emptying men and women in white who rushed over to Aditya’s recumbent form. Joaana’s booth came to the level of the circle. Xai walked over to meet her.

  Joaana’s eyes were wide and shocked. “Sister,” she said, opening the door to the booth, “remind me not to get on your bad side.”

  Xai nodded and got in. As they floated up to the Syng position, Aditya’s aunts leapt out of their booth and ran across the circle to their nephew.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  MIKA met them at the entrance. There was a tightness to her face, around the eyes and mouth. Both Xai and Joaana knew immediately that something was wrong. “Is he dead?” Joaana asked. Her words struck Xai like a physical blow.

  “A coma,” Mika replied, unexpectedly, alarmingly succinct. “The doctor is here.” Joaana shouldered past her mother without another word.

  Xai sat down abruptly in the hallway, staring at the blank wall. Joaquim was the closest thing she had ever had to family, and now he might be dying. She felt overwhelmed with fear and the great emptiness of loss.

  Mika stopped beside Xai and put her hand on Xai’s shoulder. “Different people have different talents,” she said, her voice very kind. Xai looked up into the older woman’s eyes. There was worry there, but also a profound certainty. “Joaquim has a gift for life,” Mika explained, “and the ancestors love him for it. I do not think they would take him from us for thirty-five years, only to return him and then steal him once again. He will come back to us, daughter.”

  Xai blinked, unable to find words, startled that she had been called daughter and yet pleased by it as well. Mika smiled gently and went back further into the house.

  Xai retreated, finally, to the Tellorian, walking down the short umbilical from the back of Hanuman Kumar’s house. It was mercifully quiet. Joaquim had muted the ship and Xai was thankful for it. She sat down in the pilot’s seat and stared out at the stars.

  She had fought and beaten Aditya. She had been instrumental in Ricardo’s banishment. She had been named a member of the Syng—both Joaana and Mika had called her family. She was free now. For the first time in her life, she was free. Xai clung with desperate hope to the Mika’s words. Comas passed. Perhaps this one would. Joaquim had survived thirty-five years in stasis. The stars gleamed, brilliant and beautiful in the distance. Xai let out a long, ragged breath.

  “I seek leave to speak with the head of the Tal’ei,” a man said in Messinian.

  Xai turned, startled. It was Joaana’s friend, the Messinian. He stood with one hand on the hatch of the Tellorian, waiting for her leave to enter—a small, broad man with a great barrel of a chest and huge, muscular arms.

  Xai rose to her feet, feeling a strange mixture of emotions. On the one hand, there was something like pleasure at the sound of her mother tongue. But the words themselves were a reminder of her grandfather and the world to which she knew she no longer belonged.

  “I am not the head of the Tal’ei,” she told him.

  The man looked at her curiously. “You are the last Tal’ei. There are no others. You are therefore the Tal’eke. If you do not admit that, the House will die and the will of Kesta will be thwarted.”

  Whatever she had been before, Xai was T’lasian now. She knew that as she knew nothing else. Xai shook her head slightly. “I am Xai Syng now,” she told him.

  The man blinked, surprised, before bowing beautifully to the fourth. “I am Derr Xe Xiang,” he replied. Messinian names were entirely formulaic. The first gave the cycle and position in which the person was born, the second the name and cycle of his higher ranked parent. The last name was the family name. The only exception to this rule were illegitimate children of the Noble Houses, who were technically nameless—for all the varied syllables, Xai’s name had actually meant that she was a rankless child of out of X’zeindra, sixth child of the fourth cycle of Ke-i’dzei, out of Tal’ei. Derr, in turn, was a compound of ‘D’—meaning fourth child—and ‘err’, the third cycle; ‘X’ sixth child, of the ‘e’ or second cycle of the Xiang House. Derr Xe Xiang was therefore the fourth child out of the third cycle of the sixth child of the second cycle of the Xiang house—a minor son of a minor son.

  “Tal’eke,” Derr Xe continued, “do I have your leave to enter?”

  Xai sighed slightly. Derr Xe was apparently a stickler for protocol. But he was also Joaana’s friend, and therefore deserving of respect. “Come in,” she said finally.

  Derr Xe bowed again, and stepped into the Tellorian, moving carefully into the passenger’s seat. Xai sat down gingerly beside him.

  “I beg your pardon for following you as I did,” Derr Xe told her. “There are few Messinians in this region of space. And you have a face…” Derr Xe paused for a moment. “You reminded me of someone,” he said finally.

  “Without you we might have been killed,” Xai replied. Derr Xe nodded slightly, his mind obviously on another subject.

  “You have changed my life forever,” Derr Xe said finally, thoughtfully. “And without even knowing it. I was in trade with Joaana—but now that is gone forever. You have changed Joaana’s life, her mother’s… You have changed the entire political balance of the T’lasians, and you have not been here for more than a week. You truly are xia’torr.”

  Xai looked down at her hands and flushed.

  “I am surprised,” Derr Xe said deferentially, “that Terro De let a prize like you slip so easily from his grasp.”

  Xai glanced back at him, oddly taken aback to hear her grandfather called by his first name. “It was a mistake,” she said finally. “I had a friend, a Primer. He built this ship,” she added, waving her hand around the Tellorian. “I was in it when Fleet attacked.”

  Derr Xe nodded slowly. “What are your plans now?” he asked. Once again, Xai was struck by the respectful tone of his voice. No one had ever used that tone with her before, and she found it startling. “Will you return to him?” he asked. “Will you stay with your adopted family? Or will you try and undo what he has done?”

  “Fleet has garrisons on the planet,” Derr Xe continued. “Invited in by the Ke-i’dzei after they were asked back. The people do not seem unwilling. The newscasts I have seen are filled with people loudly cheering their return. Certainly, the Ke-i’dzei have always been much respected. And their retainers had prepared for this moment for many years. There have been murmurs of trouble on Letao, but nothing has been confirmed. The Oracle remains silent. Unless it speaks, most of Messim will probably remain quiet.”

  Xai remembered the voice of the young soldier who had summoned her. The thought had an odd wistfulness to it.

  “They say Terro De is breeding a new ruling family to run the planet,” Derr Xe continued neutrally. “In two generations, he may have enough. If that is the case, the murmurs will die down, and the Commoner Wars and the twenty-year experiment they created will
be left to the past.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Derr Xe looked at her for a moment. “I knew your father,” he said abruptly. “Not well. I had left Messim. My mother wanted me to have the implants—my father, well, my father was Messinian to the core. But I—I wanted nothing more than to see. And then, after having learned to see, to give that up? No,” Derr Xe said, shaking his head. “I could not do that. So I forsook Messim and took to the stars.

  “I met him when he was on his way to our home planet,” he said, folding his arms over his chest. “He was…Charismatic. Empowered by his perfect belief. A strange man. He died for a people whose language he could never even properly speak.”

  Xai put her hand up and touched the pendant resting against her chest. Derr Xe noted the gesture.

  “Do you know why they hate him so much?” he asked her. “Still, now, after all that time? Because of that,” he explained, pointing at her fingers, resting on the pendant. “Because of that very chip.”

  “Xella…” Derr Xe voice trailed off for a moment, before returning with a start. “Xella was…innocent as a child, trusting as a child. He could spend hours, tinkering with a gadget. He was more a Primer than a Messinian—he was fostered to a Primer family as a child and never lost their ways. He understood their technology. He believed in it. And he grasped the simple truth—Prime had the ability to master Messim’s atmosphere.”

  “What’s so terrible about that?” Xai asked.

  Derr Xe opened his hands, palms up. “A planet is a living thing. It breathes, it moves with its own motion. Messim is a great sea, a wide ocean where storms come into being, swell, and die on the few shores that exist. Its kubrix field is a palpable thing—like electricity, or a scent that never leaves you, a feeling of life. It is real, and anyone with sensitivity to the fields can feel it. M’kel was telling of storms to come from the age of five. They say my grandfather knew when it was raining in any part of Xiang territory.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The weather web he was proposing,” Derr Xe explained, “it functions just as that pendant of yours does. It imposes a purely artificial control. For anyone with any sensitivity to kubrix fields, it would be… as if they were torturing it. They would feel the lines of the grid as they crossed it, feel the planet surging against its constraint.”

  “But those storms could kill hundreds of thousands of people,” Xai pointed out.

  Derr Xe shrugged. “That was before the Xan’ta’lei, When M’aat taught M’kel how to manipulate the kubrix field…The te-idze is a natural power. The storms still exist. They have the Abandoned Continent, and all of the great oceans on which to live. That Primer weather web—it was a perversion.” Derr Xe shook his head. Xai felt a sinking feeling in her heart.

  “Do you think my father was wrong?” she asked.

  Derr Xe shrugged. “I think…” he began. His voice trailed off. When he began speaking again, it was with great sadness. “I think the old ways died the moment Pea Korr murdered the Machou, the Xiet and the Xeing. From that point the te-idze became fundamentally imbalanced in a way none of us will understand. There were no longer enough—” Derr Xe stopped suddenly, his voice choking on the words, his eyes widening with surprise.

  “What is it?” Xai asked.

  “But that is it,” Derr Xe murmured, his voice thick with suppressed excitement and understanding.

  “What do you mean?” Xai asked.

  Derr Xe turned to her, his eyes gleaming. “How are they doing it?”

  “Doing what?”

  “How are they controlling the planet’s weather?”

  Xai shook her head. “With the te-idze.” It seemed obvious.

  “That’s not possible. There are not enough of them. They—” He stopped again. “They must have Primers,” he said finally, his eyes wide with shock. “They must have Primers to run the weather web until they have enough people with the te-idze to master the planet.”

  “But—” Xai began. She stopped then, as the horror of what her kin had done seeped into her. They had enslaved the people that had captured them and were forcing them to maintain the weather on their planet. Marcus—Marcus might still be alive. He might be on Messim.

  “But why?” Derr Xe asked. He shook his head with incomprehension. “I cannot understand why Fleet would be willing to take such risks. They must have some gain in it. But what?” He fell into silence, his forehead furrowed with concentration.

  Xai looked out at the great gleaming wheels of the Salak. “I was summoned,” she said abruptly.

  Derr Xe looked over at her, confused. “I’m sorry?”

  “The day before the attack I was summoned by the Oracle.”

  All the blood drained out of Derr Xe’s bluff face. Xai watched those opaque eyes scan her face, the movements so natural. She wondered what he saw. “What did they say?” he asked.

  Xai thought for a moment, remembering. “That I had to take the Long Walk before the meeting of the three moons,” she said finally.

  Derr Xe closed his eyes for a moment, calculating. Suddenly they snapped open. “You must leave at once,” he said urgently.

  “What?”

  “The meeting of the moons is in a less than two solaar years. The Long Walk takes four months but leaves only biannually. The journey between here and Messim can take anywhere from three months to three years. And how will you get onto the planet? Fleet holds most of the territory between us. They will not willingly let you pass. You will have to find some sort of passage.” He frowned, staring out at the gleaming Salak. “We will have to ask Joaana, perhaps she knows someone who—”

  “I’m not going,” Xai said, interrupting him.

  “But you must,” Derr Xe replied, his tone frankly disbelieving.

  “I’m not,” Xai repeated defensively. The little man looked at her, incredulous.

  “You were summoned by the Oracle,” he said. “You cannot simply refuse.”

  Xai shrugged, angry now. “I’m not going,” she said for the third time. “Why would I? The Ke-i’dzei hate me because of my father. The Commoners hate me because I was brought up by the Ke-i’dzei. My father’s bloodline is famous for—madmen run thick in it. Even if I hadn’t been raised by Ke-i’dzei House, most of the people there would mistrust me. How could I ever belong?” Derr Xe looked at her, obviously startled by the vehemence of her tone. Xai looked out at the stars glimmering in the distance. “There are so many places I could go,” she continued, calming. “So many worlds, so many stars. I have a ship. And these people have accepted me. When they see me, they see Xai, not the living embodiment of over a hundred years of painful history. Out there, I’ll be free. On Messim I will be nothing but a pawn.” Xai turned to look at Derr Xe, feeling the truth of the words she was about to speak deep in her heart. “I will die there,” she told him. “They will kill me—not because of me, but because of all the things I represent. What could possibly move me to go, especially now?” She shook her head, amazed. “These people want me,” she explained. “I never thought such a thing would be possible. But these people—I am special to them.”

  “You are special to Messim as well,” Derr Xe told her.

  Xai shook her head. “Not as me,” she said softly. “Not as me.”

  Derr Xe watched her for a moment. “Xai,” he said gently, “the Oracle summoned you by name. That is not something one can escape. Kesta calls the xia-torr to her side as her land is taken by usurpers. I am not certain this is something you will be able to avoid.”

  Xai looked him in the eye, miserable. “I have to try,” she said. “I just want a chance to be something else. That’s not wrong, is it?”

  Derr Xe was silent for a long moment, his expression sad and yet oddly understanding. He opened his mouth as if to speak, then shook his head. “No,” he said finally, rising to his feet. “It’s not wrong. I will be going. I wish you luck, young T’lasian.”

  Xai nodded and watched him walk out of the Tellorian. A
t that moment, she hoped never to see him or his kind again.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  HIS FACE made an odd, convulsive movement when he saw her—something between a smile and a snarl. Xai felt that shudder of fear again, that sense that she was dealing with someone who was not sane.

  She was on his ship, that great, opulent ship on which she had almost lost her life. It was docked at the Fifth Circle. She had felt a strange, creeping disgust walking up the umbilical toward it, and had had to force her steps forward, past the Ruus guards who watched her walk between them without a word, their rusty suits the color of dried blood.

  He sat before a wide spread of food lying on a long table in a great dark room filled with pools of light illuminating golden treasures. Two hulking men stood behind him. One of them, the one who had held her by her neck at the Ruus station, was grinning at her. His teeth gleamed in the focused light.

  Two pale teenagers, barely out of childhood, sat on either side of Vlad, helping him eat. He had just finished sucking the meat off the boy’s fingers when he saw her. He pushed the child’s hand away. The boy scowled at her, filled with petulance. Xai fought to keep the revulsion off her face.

  “I hear you found another of your kind,” Vlad said. The contempt was clear in his tone.

  “I need your help,” Xai said flatly.

  Vlad sniffed, ran the back of his hand across his mouth, and rose to his feet to come toward her. The two teenagers glared at Xai, jealous. Xai had to force herself to stay relaxed.

  Vlad posed before her, his hands on his hips, challenge in his face. “What do you need?” he prompted.

  “Information.”

  “What about?”

  “I had a friend. A Primer. His name is Marcus Delorian. He was on the Starbase with me. I need you to find out if he is on Messim.”