When the shower cuts off, I flee from the cabin, easing the door closed behind me. I hate keeping things from Mathias, but I don’t want to give him any more reasons to dislike Hysan. We’re going to need to work together on Aries, and that can’t happen if the guys are at each other’s throats.
I’ve never felt so far from home.
• • •
Night is falling when we reach Phaetonis. Sunset gives the domed capital city of Marson an amber sheen.
Equinox circles low over the spaceport just outside the city dome. The place is a fortress, bristling with laser canons, hover-drones, and radar surveillance. It’s also enclosed in a high mesh fence. “I don’t like this, but we need fuel,” says Hysan. “We won’t make it much farther.”
“Is there another depot?” asks Mathias.
“Not near the city.” Hysan circles again, watching the enhanced optical view on his screens. “I’ll put us down as close as I can get to the fuel pumps at the edge of the port.”
A vibrocopter sits on the pad beside the pumps, and two armed soldiers patrol around it, wearing dusty helmets and air masks. We watch them through Equinox’s glass nose while we alight on the field adjacent to the pad, as soundless and invisible as a sigh.
The soldiers whip around and point their guns at us. “Come out, and put down your weapons,” they command.
I cover my mouth to imprison my scream. How can they see our ship if we’re invisible?
Mathias and I look at Hysan in alarm, but he doesn’t seem bothered by the guns pointed at our heads. “Sleep,” he whispers, and a halo of gaseous white mist spurts out from Equinox’s hull, showering the soldiers. Instantly, they fall like rag dolls.
I gasp, but Hysan chuckles. “They’re only napping. The heat of our engines must have given us away.”
When he offers us our veil collars, Mathias says, “Enough deceit.”
“You’re insane,” says Hysan. “You don’t know this world. You told Rho yourself, it’s brimming with criminals and spies.”
“We’ll do it Mathias’s way,” I say, the guilt of keeping Hysan’s secret still burning through me.
Hysan stows the veil collars.
Before leaving the ship, we all put on lightweight air masks. While I stand lookout, Hysan and Mathias hustle to the pumps, grab the hoses, and feed Equinox’s empty belly with ultracold fluid plasma. It’s funny how the guys get along like dance partners when they’re doing physical work.
Hysan drops some galactic gold coins by the pumps, then steals gate keys from one of the unconscious soldiers. We then set off at a flat-out run, dodging under passenger ships, hiding behind beastly ground vehicles with tires the size of small moons, and sneaking around ranks of soldiers wielding grenade launchers and rifles.
It’s deep twilight now, and we’re making fast time in the weaker gravity, but this spaceport looks as if it’s under siege. Laser burns riddle some of the hangar walls, and the sooty blooms of recent fires stain the launch pad. Searchlights rove over the tarmac, and the high mesh fence is topped by concertina wire.
Mathias stays close beside me, Taser in hand, pivoting constantly and scanning the area with his field glasses. Hysan uses the stolen keys to exit the fenced-in spaceport through a maintenance gate, and we can’t leave fast enough—until I see what lies beyond the fence.
The historic capital city of House Aries is ringed by a gargantuan slum. I’d seen pictures of the slum in our Acolyte studies, but the holographic images didn’t convey the decomposing feel of death that pervades the air.
Shacks lean and tilt on mountains of rotting garbage, and the valleys in between are open sewers. Even with the air mask, the stench makes me dizzy.
Through the open doors of the shacks, we see older people silhouetted in pools of lantern light, and they’re sewing, hammering, assembling electronic devices, sharpening knives. Overhead, modern pulse-trains rocket from the spaceport into the city center, skipping over the slum.
“We have to catch a train,” says Hysan. “It’ll take too long to cross on foot in the dark.”
Mathias points to one of the massive columns supporting the elevated train track. “Maybe we can climb it.”
Hysan nods, and we sprint toward the column, splashing through muck. My yellow trousers get speckled and stained. The column has a ladder bolted to its northern face, and the rungs are slimy with blue-green algae. Hysan goes first, then me, followed by Mathias. My boot soles are still warped from the heat on Tethys, and they slip and slide as I climb.
When we near the top, I feel a stitch in my side. Above me, Hysan’s Scan shoots out a golden beam, and the locked access panel instantly pops open.
We climb up into the webbed steel truss that supports the train track. The build-up of static electricity here practically makes my curls stand on end.
“The closest station’s that way.” Hysan points. “It’s an ordinary pulse-train. It runs on a current of oscillating magnetism. We’ll have to crawl through this truss to reach it.”
Mathias gives me water from his canteen, and I tug down my air mask to drink. “How far?” I ask.
Hysan wipes sweat from his eyes. “A kilometer or two.”
There’s not enough room to stand inside the truss, so we crawl along the riveted beams on all fours. Every few minutes, a train blasts over us with a deafening rumble. By the time we reach the station, our water canteens are almost empty, my eardrums feel lacerated from the train noise, and my hands are bruised from the rivets. We’re all covered in slime.
Hysan unsheathes his dagger and uses its blade as a mirror to peek over the edge of the dimly lit station platform. When he gives the all clear, we scramble up, onto the platform, where it’s a relief to stand upright.
Hysan surveys his grimy suit. “They’ll never let us on the train looking like this.”
Mathias scrapes his boot soles clean with his knife, but we’re all so mud-splattered, the effort’s futile. Hysan draws something from his pocket: our veil collars.
“It’s your decision, Rho. Do you want to reach the Plenum or not?”
Mathias and I share a questioning glance, and without a word, we each take ours. No one seems to notice when we waver out of sight.
We slip into the first train that stops, then huddle in the aisle, trying not to bump anyone. The train has an air supply, so we stow our masks, which are now gray and damp. I can only hope the veils cover up our odor, too.
Some of the Ariean passengers around us are hooded and concealing what are obviously weapons. They look like muggers, though they’re too clean to be from the slum. Their complexions range from tones of dark pink to wine, and they’re all built like soldiers. Arieans are the most physically fit people in our galaxy.
No one on the train talks aloud or makes eye contact. Most people are listing to the right, enthralled by their Earpiece—a small device Arieans get pierced into their right ear when they turn seventeen, an age when every Ariean commits to two years in the army.
The Earpiece functions like a Wave, only its images aren’t projected as holograms: They’re screened inside the person’s mind, where no one else can see them. Arieans are masters in the art of war, and troops need to communicate with each other discreetly in the field.
Mathias hands me a tiny squeeze-tube, then passes another one to Hysan. “Antiviral,” he says. Holding his own gingerly by one corner, he bites off the tip between his teeth, then sucks the contents into his mouth. Hysan and I do the same. The syrup tastes like sea cherries.
It’s late at night when we reach the city center, but I don’t feel sleepy. My internal clock must be out of order. The enormous central train station is crowded with passengers and soldiers, all heavily armed. So far, I haven’t seen any wallscreens where we might get news from home.
As we wind through the labyrinthine station, Hysan says, “We’ll find sanctuary at th
e International Village. Every House has an embassy there.”
“Let’s go to Cancer’s,” I say, the thought of seeing my people giving me new strength.
Marson’s city center is sheltered under a high-tension fabric dome, held aloft by air pressure, like a giant inflated beach ball. Buildings squat like bunkers, especially the hulking hippodrome where the Plenum meets. Soldiers in armored vehicles barrel along the dark narrow streets, billowing fumes. They stop and hassle people at random, like they’re looking to pick fights. Hysan was right—I’m glad we’re veiled.
When we get closer to the hippodrome, the crowd of Arieans surrounding us begins to thin. People from all over the Zodiac are here to observe the Plenum in session. I see mystics from Pisces veiled in woven silver. Dark-haired Sagittarians in levlan suits that remind me of Nishi. Olive-skinned Virgos, too, as well as blond Librans and petite pairs of Geminin. On every street corner, red-suited Ariean soldiers stand guard.
The hippodrome’s been blockaded. Around us, people are talking about a bomb threat. The ambassadors and their aides have been taken to an underground shelter while bomb squads scan the building for explosives.
Everyone seems to view this with more cynicism than shock, as if these kinds of attacks happen often at the Plenum. Suddenly I remember Mom telling me something about these sessions. She said the Plenum meetings were a waste of time because the ambassadors don’t work well together. She claimed the system had been corrupted. Turf grabs. Partisan squabbling. Bribes not paid.
Apparently things have gotten worse in the decade since our lessons ended.
“I see a lot of soldiers, but where’s the local Zodai Guard?” I ask Hysan.
“The Ariean Zodai were marginalized when the junta seized power. Even General Eurek is little more than a figurehead, living under house arrest. The military employs its own astrologers, and so do the warring militias.”
“Can we visit Guardian Eurek?”
Hysan whispers to his Scan, and a small hologram floats before his eyes. It’s a miniature figure of a plump man wearing extravagant robes trimmed in sheepskin. He looks like he was once a bodybuilder whose muscles have since melted into folds of skin from lack of use. Hysan spins the hologram so I can see the man’s face.
“This is Albor Echus, the Ariean ambassador. He’s more a mouthpiece for the generals. You can meet him, but General Eurek receives no one.”
On Stanton’s tenth birthday, the same year she left, Mom gave me a necklace. It was the only gift she ever gave me that wasn’t from Dad, too. On a strand of silver seahorse hair, she had strung together twelve nar-clam pearls, each one bearing the sacred symbol of a House of the Zodiac.
“We share the same universe, but we live in different worlds,” she used to often remind me.
Yet despite her insistence on the Houses’ differences, I never saw the Zodiac as a collection of multicolored pearls caught in the same necklace’s orbit—I saw us as one necklace. Each pearl has its purpose, but no one is more important than another, and every pearl is integral to the beauty of the whole, and to our calling ourselves a necklace at all.
I’m embarrassed that it’s taken this trip to show me how naive that sounds. Mom was right: Every House I’ve visited functions as its own, separate world; even Cancer operates that way, only I never thought of it like that before. We don’t generally go around thinking of ourselves as one piece of a larger whole.
But now I have to address all the Houses and find a way to convince them we are one necklace. Every pearl matters. What happens to one star in our universe can and does affect every other.
That’s the advantage Ophiuchus holds over us: As long we keep on distrusting each other, we’re easier to pick off, one pearl at a time.
26
WHEN WE GET TO THE VILLAGE, we have to remove our collars. The community is enclosed within a solid black fence, and guards barricade the only entrance, so we can’t sneak past without alerting them.
We’re immediately asked for proof of identification. An Aerian soldier holds out a small screen for our thumbprints. His colleagues scowl at the grime on our clothes.
As soon as Hysan’s thumb hovers over the screen, a hologram pops up of his face, and beneath it the words Hysan Dax, House Libra, Diplomatic Envoy. Plus a bunch of facts like his astrological fingerprint, birthdate, schooling, and other information I can’t see. Mathias goes next. Lodestar Mathias Thais, House Cancer, Royal Advisor. Then me. Mother Rhoma Grace, House Cancer, Guardian.
The soldiers look at me curiously.
“Thank you,” says Hysan, reaching out to bump fists with each of them. I spy glints of gold in the soldiers’ hands when they pull away, and each slips what look like galactic gold coins in their pockets. Then Hysan takes my hand and hurriedly pulls me through the entrance, Mathias following close behind.
On the other side of the wall, the International Village looks like a smaller version of our solar system. The village is round, like a clock, and divided into twelve embassies. At its center is an inter-House market with food and amenities from across the Zodiac.
The look, style, and operation of each House is so diverse that the effect is dizzying. The only thing I can compare this place to is an amusement park, where every section has a different theme. The embassies are considered sovereign territory, so they don’t fall under Ariean rule.
We pop in on the Libran side. Their building is a sleek-walled, armed fortress, surrounded by surveillance cameras and Zodai from their Royal Guard. To our other side is Virgo. The round, golden embassy looks like a beehive, and its recessed entrance gives way to a colorful fruit-and-vegetable garden on its front lawn.
Mathias runs ahead, and I break into a sprint after him. We both sense the Cancer Sea’s call.
We rush past Leo, an elevated theater house with live lions prowling the front—a couple of them are ripping into a hunk of raw meat—and then we see the Fourth House. The Cancrian embassy looks like an island villa: Instead of one building, we have four multilevel bungalows, each draped with airy curtains, the structures built from sand and seashells.
Like home on Kalymnos, I think with a rush of breath.
Weaving through the four bungalows, and forming a protective barrier around the whole embassy, is a wide stream of water, winding like a serpent made from the Cancer Sea. There’s a plank bridging the stream, but two members of our Royal Guard are removing it for the night. I recognize their faces from Oceon 6. I sent them here the night I took my Guardian’s oath.
“Westky! Bromston!” Mathias calls out to the two Lodestars, and they stop what they’re doing.
“Lodestar Thais!” one shouts back, recognizing Mathias. “Are you here with Holy Mother?”
“He is,” I say, running up behind Mathias, a little out of breath. A smile spreads across my face. Home, at last . . . kind of.
The Lodestars reset the plank, and the three of us cross over. The ground floor of the first bungalow is the only place with lights on, so we go inside—which is easy, since it has no doors. From a quick glance, none of the four bungalows seem to offer any privacy on the first floor. Doors and walls are only for the higher stories.
The lobby we step into is designed to be a waiting area. Half the room is decked with hammocks and rocking chairs, each equipped with an embassy Wave for checking news and sending messages. The second half is taken up by a saltwater pool for swimming.
The only person here is a man seated at an official-looking desk. When we get closer, I realize he’s a hologram.
“I’m Lodestar Mathias Thais,” says Mathias as we approach. “Holy Mother is with me. We are looking for Amanta and Egon Thais.”
The holographic man’s eyes widen. They linger on me. Then they turn to Hysan. “Who is the Libran?”
“He’s—”
“Diplomatic envoy Hysan Dax,” says Hysan, cutting Mathias off mid-answer.
> The explanation irritates Mathias because he clarifies, “He has been chauffeuring us on our journey. Do you know where my parents are?”
The hologram nods. “I was just shutting off for the night. I’m transmitting from bungalow three. Your parents are only one floor up. I’ll tell them you’re here.”
The hologram disappears. Just seconds later, two people run in toward us and fold Mathias up in their arms.
Hysan and I step away to give them privacy, the absence of my family suddenly hurting like real physical pain. This whole journey, I’ve tried to be strong, to focus on the mission, to put aside my own needs . . . but the truth is, I’ve never felt lonelier. Maybe I can try Waving Dad and Stanton from here. There might be a way to reach them by now.
Mathias brings his parents over to introduce me. Their eyes are rimmed red, but they smile and bow together. “Holy Mother.”
“Please, you needn’t bow,” I say, reaching out to them for the hand touch instead. “And please, call me Rho.”
It’s clear Mathias gets most of his features from Amanta, his mother, who’s tall, pale, and blonde. The wavy dark hair comes from his father, Egon. They seem happy beyond words to see their son . . . but there’s also a deep sadness that’s impossible to ignore. They’ve just lost their daughter in the attack.
When their eyes land on Hysan, he says, “I’m the chauffeur.”
I have to look to make sure it’s him speaking. There’s no attempt at magic in his voice, and sunlight is even missing from his features.
He meets my gaze and tries to muster some of his usual liveliness, but it seems forced. For the first time, charm fails him. “It’s late, and I should find lodging at the Libran embassy. I’ll see you tomorrow, my lady.”
“You can stay—”
“I shouldn’t.” The moment he leaves the lobby, he vanishes from sight. He must have slipped on his collar.
Mathias’s parents usher us toward their private quarters. As he fills them in on the highlights of our journey, my mind lingers on Hysan. I wonder who hugged him when he had nightmares as a child. Who waits for him when he comes home from his travels. Whose faces he sees when he thinks of his people.