Phoebe North - Starbreak

My breathing once again returned to normal. But in the wake of my fear and worry, I still felt a tenderness inside. I would have to leave him, sooner than I’d thought. I drew close to him, pressing my face against his bare chest.

“What happened?” I asked as he slid his arms around me, holding me tight.

“The quarantine camp,” he said. “That woman. That Aleksandra. After her attack on me, I ordered more guards to watch over them, to gather their weapons away. But she was ready this time. She attacked them. Your people broke through the walls with spears and stones. Two Xollu pairs were lost to the fields—may the god and goddess honor them with many seedlings.”

“Oy gevalt ,” I said, pulling away from him. I don’t know if he understood the meaning of my words, but from the way that he thinned his lips, I think he caught my drift.

“I am to bring you to the senate chamber, where the terms of your expulsion will be discussed.”

He held my hands in his, gently rubbing his smooth finger pads over my knuckles. I held on tight. In truth I wanted nothing more than to turn away from this room, so full with the light of day, and bury myself in his covers again. In his bedroom we could kiss and touch and ignore the world beyond. No one would be able to reach us. We would be strong together, hidden.

But I knew it was just a stupid, childish dream. I had to face the future—the blinding morning, and the darkness overhead.

“I don’t want to go,” I whispered. His smile was wistful, full of understanding.

I know, he said. And then again, out loud, punctuating the thought. “I know.”

Another crowded train. This time we both stood, our hands hanging from the same metal vine. Maybe I imagined it, but I think the Ahadizhi watched us even more closely now. Certainly when they called out to us—“ Lousk, lousk, huu-maaan”—their hissed words had grown fierce. And no wonder. My people had once again brought violence to this city.

Vadix kept his shoulder pressed against mine. We must have looked like a strange couple, a human girl and a Xollu widower, dressed in Xollu robes. But in mind we were one and the same. I could feel his tempestuous thoughts, how they pulled his body in too many directions at once. There was the constant, ever present desire to flee this world for the silence of the funerary fields below, but now that was joined by something new. Now, if he had to live, he wanted me beside him to chase away the dark. Of course I wanted that too. Wanted it more than anything else. As the train paused at a station, I put my warm hand over his. He smiled at me—a thin, distracted smile.

What are you thinking? I asked wordlessly. I think it surprised him how quickly I’d taken to speaking this way, but I didn’t want the others to listen in. They were strangers; their mouths were full of a thousand glinting teeth.

I am thinking of what will happen to your people when you return.

I considered it, unconsciously angling my face up toward the train car’s copper ceiling, searching for the silver blot of light in the sky high above. I’d left in the middle of the riots, but already so many stores had been looted, so many windows turned to glinting dust. The place I’d fled hadn’t been so much like a city as a ruin.

I don’t know. We might try to settle without your help.

Vadix’s mouth pulled down in disgust.

Impossible! The southern beasts are massive and bloodthirsty, not to mention the Ahadizhi there. What hubris, to believe you can do what generations of Xollu have never managed.

I didn’t want to mention Vadix’s own hubris, that once he’d believed he could do the same. He’d already paid for his pride, after all.

Well, there’s always Silvan’s plan. Rumor has it, he wants to launch us back toward our home planet. Earth.

He leaned forward, his robes mingling with mine as the train car streamed along.

This is a possibility?

I wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t really funny.

No.

Why?

I stared out the bubbled glass, thinking about it. Beyond, purple trees streamed by, shifting in the wind. No matter how fallow Raza Ait became in winter—no matter how many meters of snow piled up all around the walls of the city—this was a vital, living place, one where the seasons turned and life, new life, poked its head out beneath the detritus of what had come before.

We left because our planet died. It’s funny. I have this book written by one of my ancestors, and she talks all about how polluted and overcrowded the cities were there. But we didn’t kill our planet. It was chance. Hit by an asteroid. We left because we would have died if we stayed. I don’t know why Silvan thinks we can go back there now. It’s crazy.

Vadix watched me, his gaze piercing even in the train car’s colorful light.

So you have options. But all of them bad.

I didn’t know what to say. I only nodded. In our silence the train car stopped, and the doors shivered open. Gently he took my hand in his and led me toward the senate building, where my people, and my future, waited.

We weren’t allowed to hear the deliberations about our fate. Vadix led me instead to the senate antechamber, where just the day before, Mara had tried to argue for our settlement. Now the room seemed to me to be little more than a holding cell, packed full of restrained Asherati. As Vadix and I approached the open door, he gave my hand a squeeze—then was cleaved from me, gone, and without a word of farewell. I tumbled through the doorway. Tired faces lifted tired eyes. Their wrists were bound by rope and dripped with blood. Only Mara Stone walked freely, watching the proceedings through plate glass. She was the one to greet me.

“Talmid,” she said. “Nice of you to join us.”

I gazed at the others, crowded around the table, watched over by Ahadizhi guards who brandished prods. Hannah was hunched at the table, her face drained of all color. Rebbe Davison sat beside her, watching over Ettie. The child’s face was stained, with blood, or dirt, I couldn’t tell which. And she avoided my eyes, robbing me of any answer. My stomach twisted at the sight of her. I’d failed her—failed all of them.

Some of them had been injured. One of Jachin’s ears was marked with a black burn; Aben Hirsch’s already injured arm now hung at an odd angle. He clutched it to his body, rocking in pain. But they were alive at least—mostly unharmed. Except . . . My gaze roamed around the table, searching, counting. Someone was missing. Not Aleksandra. She sat back in her seat like a queen surveying her kingdom. But someone . . .

Laurel.

“Where is she?” I asked, stumbling forward. Two of the guards drew near. They didn’t restrain me, but one let his prod spark—a warning. I stopped several meters from the table.

Are you all right? came Vadix’s thoughts, but I could tell that he was distracted down there in the senate room, waving his hands, trying to cut in. They didn’t want to listen to him; he wasn’t one of them. They’d only ever wanted him to translate, not to speak for himself. I sent a comforting flood of feeling back to him, false though it was. In truth my mind was frantic, swarmed with miserable, buzzing thoughts. Laurel. She hadn’t been a friend, not quite. But she’d grown up beside me, become a woman, an ally. What had happened to her?

“Laurel!” I said, her name bursting desperately from my lips. “Where is she?”

One by one they all turned to look at Aleksandra. But she only stared back at me, her expression as hard as the winter’s frozen soil. When her silence stretched on, I heard Rebbe Davison lift his voice.