Phoebe North: Starbreak

Beneath the glass of his helmet I saw Silvan go a shade paler. I don’t think he’d ever been called out like that before, not by someone like Mara Stone. After a moment of visible discomfort—eyebrows knitted up, jaw tight—he relaxed and let out a burst of laughter.

“Fine! Though you’re one to talk about niceties, Mara Stone. ‘As hard as a rock,’ that’s what Abba always said about you. I can see that he was right. You do your job, and you do it well. We’ll be sad to lose a good specialist like yourself. A fine worker. And a fine citizen.”

There was a gleam in his eye. And hers. She pursed her lips, but I couldn’t say she didn’t look at least a little flattered.

“Oh, come off it,” she said.

The workers had brought their boats in for the winter. The pier itself was blanketed in gray. If, once, the edge of their cloistered world had seemed open to me—ocean and sky, stretching on forever—that had been lost to the season. The world’s curving lip had disappeared behind a thicket of fog. Though it wasn’t snowing now, it might as well have been. That’s how dense the air seemed as we stepped out of the shuttle.

I couldn’t help but think that this was how it should have been from the beginning. Careful. Planned. Not the insane quest of a half-drunk girl, her heart full of fear and her mind running wild. Beneath my flight suit I wore the robes I’d borrowed from Vadix, their downy-soft fabric hugging my body tight. I may not have been dressed like a senator, but I hoped I looked like someone worthy of entering the senate chamber. My hair was combed, my eyes bright, even after eight hours of voyage through the silence of space. I’d put on makeup, returning to the ritual that I’d adopted during the era of my romance with Silvan Rafferty. It had been a comfort to me then; it was one now, too. And I needed everything I could get to calm my nerves that day. After all, I was about to see Vadix.

I knew he was there waiting for me. I could see the world through his gaze—the end of the long pier as he hustled down it through a rolling fog. In the murky distance he spotted a flash of light. Was it faint yellow sunlight against the water, or the gleam of a white hull, long preserved within the belly of our ship? I waved away Silvan’s hand, pulling myself out of the shuttle alone.

I’m here, I said. It’s me!

Vadix headed a pack of lesser senators, each one garbed in a silver shade that seemed to disappear into the cold of the world beyond. But he wore blue, vibrant and bright. It matched his skin, his hands, his lips, which parted at the sight of me.

“Who’s that ?” Silvan asked. Mordecai gazed at him sternly.

“Our ally. Our friend,” my old teacher said.

Vadix ran toward me. I knew it hurt, in this cold, to make his limbs move this fast, to push himself closer and closer to me across the length of the foggy pier. I could feel it, splintering the cells in his arms and legs. But Vadix didn’t care. I was here, and I brought with me hope—hope for the future he never believed would come to fruition. Hope for a new city on Zehava.

“Terra,” he said when he finally reached me, “you have painted your face. You are a clever hunter.”

Before I could answer, he swept me up in his long arms. His body may not have been warm, but it shielded me from the world beyond. I pressed my face to the soft, sweet plane of his neck, leaving a trail of kisses along his earslit. His arms enveloped my lower back, as tight as a vine as he lifted my feet straight off the pier. I thought my heart would burst through my chest. I thought I might cry at the way that his body fit mine, like we had been made for this. I thought I had never felt such joy in my life as seeing him again.

“Her lover,” Mara Stone added at last, her tone teasing as Vadix bent me in a kiss. There was no reply at first, only the whistle of the wind and the sound of the waves breaking against the pier. Then, as Vadix’s mouth met mine, as I tasted the sweet truth of him, the wild smell faint in the impending winter, came Silvan’s grunted answer.

“Oh,” he said. “I see.”

We gathered in the senate antechamber that afternoon to plan our approach. While the senators milled about below, Vadix sat at the head of the round stone table, explaining our situation:

“Tomorrow morning they are convening on several matters of local import. Terra must come forward to speak to them before their interest begins to wane. Each representative will be eager to have his or her voice heard on problems pertaining to his or her constituency. We must be fast. We must be direct.”

“What are these local matters?” Mordecai asked, his hand flat on the stone table. They’d piled it high with food for us—burned beast legs, as thick as tree trunks and sliced into blackened disks. But no one had touched it.

“Zoning,” Vadix replied without hesitation. “Water treatment. Funding for new crèches. The usual politics.”

Beside me Silvan flinched. My bashert turned to him, looking more like a curious bird than a plant. “What is the problem, Mar Rafferty?”

“We have a ship full of waiting citizens,” he said as he leaned forward in his seat. “People who traveled five hundred years to reach this planet. And you’re telling me that your government is more concerned about issues of water treatment?”

I felt my stomach clench at the anger that underscored his voice. But Vadix was patient. He lifted up his fingers, pointing them toward the sky.

“I tried to dissuade the senate from disregarding your problems so hastily. But to them what remains is only a technicality. They believe they have already dispensed with ‘the human problem’—that soon you will be only a memory, consigned to the darkness of space. We must understand that this is just a small disruption of their normal daily lives. And they have little room in them for . . .” He trailed off. His brow furrowed with worry.

“Aliens,” he concluded at last.

“Aliens.” Silvan’s lip curled. “We’re not aliens. We’re people . You can’t just throw us away.”

Vadix looked at me. His black eyes were calm as he considered. “I agree. I don’t intend to throw you away. Tell us what your ship would need, Mar Rafferty, so that if my mate settles here, she can live in peace.”

My cheeks warmed under his gaze. Silvan, watching, lifted his lips in a slow smirk.

“We can split the library,” he said. “Rachel has plans to curate a collection of religious texts. And as for the hatchery—” He hesitated. That’s when I realized how well the Council’s secrets had been kept.

“They don’t need it,” I said, feeling the blood drain from my cheeks. “Or at least, not all of it. The Council boys haven’t been sterilized.”

When Mordecai drew in a breath, Silvan only pressed his lips together. Nodded. “Not the last dozen clutches. And those older than that have already had their children. Only those common-born citizens who join us will need the eggs, and even then, not many. If we stop sterilizing our boys, we should be able to survive without the hatchery within a generation. We’ll need to be fruitful to have the ship back up to working capacity, but we can do it. Rachel says—”

Before we could find out what Rachel said, Mara Stone threw her hands up into the air. “Of course. Rachel says. I’m sure you boys are fertile enough, eh?”

Silvan didn’t blush. He only angled his chin up in proud assuredness.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m sure we are.”

Mara rolled her eyes, then turned the conversation back to more pressing matters. “We’ll need land enough for a small hatchery of our own, then. And space to build a library as well. Labs. A school. Living quarters. Fields for our crops.”