Heavenbreaker by Sara Wolf (PDF)

OceanofPDF.com OceanofPDF.com Table of Contents Copyright Page Content Warnings Dedication 0. Ignesco 1. Acies 2. Aureus 3. Bellicus 4. Caecus –10. Aranea 5. Abyssus 6. Clarus 7. Vulpes 8. Novicius –9. Vermis 9. Feritas 10. Humo 11. Falcifer 12. Ovum 13. Oceanus 14. Purgo 15. Fulmen 16. Indico –8. Exosso 17. Gravo 18. Quies 19. Occipio 20. Lacero 21. Ambages 22. Nihil 23. Flos 24. Omnis –7. Metus 25. Paciscor 26. Adustio 27. Lux 28. Quassatio 29. Relictus 30. Continuo 31. Argentum 32. Capsus 33. Consummo –6. Votum 34. Sepulcrum 35. Tempestas 36. Ulciscor 37. Vacuus 38. Praetexo 39. Spira 40. Trigeminus –5. Adsum 41. Saxum 42. Runco 43. Bellus 44. Clementia 45. Viridis 46. Decipio 47. Cicatrix 48. Eminus 49. Chorda 50. Glacio –4. Agna 51. Gesto 52. Hospes 53. Cursor 54. Incorruptus 55. Finis 56. Jugiter –3. Luctus 57. Aculeus 58. Mortifer 59. Hiems 60. Nescio 61. Omnino 62. Fortitudo –2. Invenio 63. Perlustro 64. Quia 65. Servo 66. Sanitas –1. Litatio 67. Trucido 68. Proelium 0. Caeruleus 69. Confractus 70. Stilla 71. Universus 72. Vorago 73. Aes 74. Animus 75. Apricus 76. Gladiator 77. Propago Acknowledgments About the Author Also by Sara Wolf… Love Me Never Forget Me Always Remember Me Forever Bring Me Their Hearts Find Me Their Bones Send Me Their Souls OceanofPDF.com This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Copyright © 2024 by Sara Wolf. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher. Entangled Publishing, LLC 644 Shrewsbury Commons Ave., STE 181 Shrewsbury, PA 17361 [email protected] Red Tower Books is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC. Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com. Edited by Stacy Abrams Cover design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes Deluxe Endpaper Design by Elizabeth Turner Stokes Stock art by aksol/Shutterstock, Warm_Tail/Shutterstock, and OnlyFlags/Shutterstock Interior design by Heather Howland Interior formatting by Britt Marczak Hardcover ISBN 978-1-64937-710-4 Deluxe Edition ISBN 978-1-64937-570-4 Ebook ISBN 978-1-64937-546-9 Printed in the United States First Edition May 2024 OceanofPDF.com Heavenbreaker is a fast-paced sci-fantasy story set in the brutal and competitive world of mechsuit combat, which includes elements regarding grief, violence, murder, suicidal ideation and acts, hospitalization, drug use, poisoning, loss of autonomy, depictions of religious trauma, classism, depictions of sex work, and drowning that are shown on page. Domestic violence and sexual abuse are mentioned off page. Readers who may be sensitive to these elements, please take note. If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please know you are not alone. Visit befrienders.org or bethe1to.com and help save a life. OceanofPDF.com For Ruth. I am the one left missing you. OceanofPDF.com PART I the rabbit OceanofPDF.com 0. Ignesco ignescō ~ere, intr. 1. to start to burn; catch fire in the same year, on the same space Station orbiting the green gas giant Esther, three children turn five years old. One of them is a girl, black-haired and skipping barefoot along a steel pipe belching sulfur fumes. Weathered crosses suspended by barbed wire and half-broken holoscreens watch her journey from above, coffee and air- purifier ads winking down at her like fond parents. In one hand she holds a basket of scavenged treats for her mother—burned bread and the parts of fruits no one wants. She has never met her father, but she dreams of him. One of the children is a boy, platinum-haired and much smaller than his peers. His coat is embroidered silver and his shoes are shiny and new, but his face is smeared with his own days-old blood and excrement. He cries and cries as his mother leads him by the elbow through the marble halls of their mansion and into the cockpit of a red metal beast. The cockpit door slides shut behind him, and he slams his fists against it, begging to be let out. He dreams of freedom, but he has never had it. The last child is a girl with eyes as deep and blue as a shadowed lake. She’s snuggled under a white-feather blanket, squealing with glee when her father pokes his head in before bedtime. By the light of a holocandle, he reads her the tale of the Knight’s War on old Earth—four hundred years gone and with five billion dead in its wake—and outside the girl’s window, there is only black space and silver stars and a great green planet with a white silica storm rotating slowly across its face. She dreams of great honor, and she will have it. But then she will lose it all. OceanofPDF.com FIFTEEN YEARS LATER OceanofPDF.com 1. Acies aciēs ~ēī, f. 1. a sharp edge 2. a battle line When I met my father for the first time, we talked about roses, the theoretical feel of rain, and the lilac perfume that used to waft from Mother as she brushed my hair. Oh, and the dagger in my father’s back. We talked about that, too. But only briefly. Now he’s dead. And I probably will be soon, too. I inhale and turn the gold-plated handles of his sink. Under the gentle water, I scrub my hands and watch his blood circle the drain. Bit by bit, I scrape him out from under my nails. The lights of his office bathroom are soft, steady. Nothing like the constantly flickering fluorescents of my apartment in Low Ward. In the bright light, I can see every unraveling seam in my patched tunic beneath my janitor coat disguise, every old tear Mother fixed with plastic fibers as thread. I shiver at the face staring back at me in the mirror. It looks like Father’s. Same black hair, although his was salt-and-pepper. Same cheeks set at a sharp angle. And we both have the same thin blue eyes that look dead inside. No. Not “have.” Had. A knock at the office door jumps me out of my skin, then a silken voice on the other side calls out, “Duke Hauteclare?” My heart catches in its own beat. Father’s attendant. For a moment, my insides twist in anticipation, my breathing shallow. Is it now? Do I die now, when he comes in and sees the blood pooling on the rug and draws a hard-light pistol? Do I die when he calls the guards and they airlock me into space to join Father’s corpse? Or do I get to wait in a cell before receiving their so-called justice—an excruciating death burning beneath a plasma vent? I, Synali Emilia Woster, have killed my father, a duke of the glimmering court of Nova-King Ressinimus the Third. After so many months of planning, waiting, watching…I’ve done it. All that’s left now is to escape back into the alleys of Low Ward. The attendant’s voice is guileless. “Your steed awaits in hangar six, Your Grace. They’ve issued the twenty-minute warning, so please send your chosen rider out shortly.” Footsteps in the marble hall outside signal the attendant leaving—small miracles—and yet still my guts writhe. He’s not the only one out there waiting for me. The guards, the cameras… I planned my entrance route into the tourney hall down to the minute, but with revenge burning in my blood, my exit route was only ever a vague idea. Only now do I realize it with cold finality—there is no exit. I glance at the sleek white riding helmet on the marble counter, a gold lion with wings gracing the visor. The flying lion is the emblem of the noble House Hauteclare—my House, a House I didn’t know I was a part of until six months ago. My father, Duke Hauteclare, ruled it like a despot, like all noble Houses are ruled—underhanded deals and drug rings and protecting weapons dealers. I grew up watching the noble Houses pillage and destroy Low Ward: slowly, insidiously, and then all at once when the honorable duke sent an assassin to murder Mother and me. I survived. She did not. My gaze falls onto the bloodstains on his office carpet, viscous and dark. Footsteps in red, drag marks in red. I turn away, my shoulders shaking. Space lingers outside the office window, even darker. Our Station is one of the seven made during the Knight’s War—a giant ark protecting the remnants of humanity after the enemy razed Earth’s surface with their laserfire. The knights eventually won, but in their last attack, the enemy flung the seven Stations across the universe with some mysterious power— and so we remain here, alone, orbiting the green gas giant Esther and trying desperately to terraform it and make contact with the other Stations. I stare at Esther until my eyes water. I don’t know what to do now. My life since Mother died has been clear-cut: eating, sleeping, preparing—a list of steps I followed to the end. I touch my right wrist, the rectangle of implanted blue light blooming beneath my skin and projecting my vis into the air in a perfect hovering holograph. I tap the timer and set it for sixty seconds. One minute of weakness. That’s all I will allow myself. I clutch Mother’s cross pendant around my neck until I feel it biting into my palm. “It’s all right to cry, dearheart.” I let my tears wash his blood splatter off my face. His blood ruined everything. He killed her, and he tried to kill me. My father, my family, the man I never met, the man I dreamed about as a child, the strong and good man Mother always said he was… Why? No—I know why. I traded my body and soul these last six months to find out why. Muffled sobs impact in my chest like half-swallowed pain, like fury, like despair. It all rises up again like a terrible wave as the blue vis digits count down starkly in the air: Five. Four. Three. Two. One. My tears slow and then stop. It’s not over. I killed Father, but he isn’t really gone. I’ve destroyed his body but not his world. My world was Mother, but his world was his reputation, his credits, his power and pride. He killed her for power. For his House. So long as House Hauteclare stands, he yet lives on. I can’t dissolve a noble House; no one save for the king himself can do that. But I can disgrace one. There is no escape, but I can still die on my own terms. Suddenly, a dim roar pierces the office walls: the arena crowd. They wait outside for the greatest show of all—a riding tourney. Only pureblooded nobles are allowed to ride in such tourneys, but I will ignore this. I am the shame they whisper of in the Nova-King’s court, half Father’s noble blood and half Mother’s commoner blood—his bastard daughter. And if I’m the reason Mother died, then I will be the reason House Hauteclare meets the same fate. I have never ridden. Steeds—the giant mechsuits the nobility rides in tournaments—are not for commoners; they were killing machines designed for knights in the War. Nobles must train from childhood to ride a steed, or they’ll die in its saddle. I swallow down a stab of fear. Like most everyone in Low Ward, I’ve spent my childhood watching noble tourneys on my vis. I know what they look like from the outside and only the outside. Nobles participate, and nobles spectate. Bastards do not ride. It would be an unforgivable disgrace on whichever House let a bastard like me ride. The extra rider’s suit in my father’s cabinet gleams, white tipped with gold. He used to ride for House Hauteclare before his age caught up with him, and the irony isn’t lost on me; now his old suit will allow me to disgrace his House once and for all. I will not die quietly. My death will be a blaze of revenge. The massive sheaf is made of a patent leather–like material and double my size, but when I drape it over my head and press on the golden wrist cuffs, it conforms to my body with a single hiss as it snaps tight against my half-starved flesh. I slide the pompous helmet onto my head, and in the cabinet’s reflection, the opaque visor consumes who I was and turns me into what I must be. I will hide our family’s bloodstains as Father did—with white and gold all over. OceanofPDF.com 2. Aureus aureus ~a ~um, a. 1. covered with gold, gilded I redouble my strides as I head down the tourney hall toward hangar six. I have to move fast—I lost precious minutes shoving Father’s body out of the airlock. The cavernous walkway looms in cold marble and steel. The Station is large enough to house three wards—Low Ward, Mid Ward, and the Noble Ward—but the tourney hall is grander than any building on the Station save for the king’s palace. As riding is the only sport approved by both the king and the church, the tourney hall is a beacon of entertainment and leisure—one of the few places commoners are welcome to spend their credits and fill the stands. I pick up my speed as I take a left down to hangar six, following the orange lights carved in the shape of angels. How easy the nobles must have it if they can waste time making lights this beautiful. They have food aplenty and medicine enough to heal whatever sniffle they may catch, while the red pox ravages the rest of us with no end in sight. The pockmarks on my own cheeks burn—I caught it long ago and barely survived. My father’s face, on the other hand, was terrifyingly smooth. Nobles never have to survive. They decide who survives. A duke is the highest position within a House. He oversees a handful of lords, and the handful of lords then oversees the many barons who keep the rest of us impoverished, at the mercy of the aristocracy and their myriad friends in all places. They decide who lives, who gets protein rations, and who dies. But this time, I’ve decided. From now on, I’m the only one who gets to decide when and where I die. And it will be inside a steed. I glare up at the stately banners of the noble Houses lining the tourney hall: the purple-gold dragon of the king’s House—House Ressinimus— hangs more prominently than any other. Fans aren’t allowed near the hangars, but a group has snuck in anyway, waiting with hothouse flowers and autograph books—real, precious paper; real, unprecious fanaticism— for their favorite riders to pass by. “Who’s that?” a girl whispers, eyes on me. “Hauteclare’s rider,” a man next to her asserts. “The only House who wears a white that bright is Hauteclare.” “But…she’s a girl. I thought Duke Hauteclare rode their steed?” The man shakes his head. “Lady Mirelle Ashadi-Hauteclare rides for them now. The duke retired three years ago. His head injury in the last Supernova Cup—” I tune them out as easily as turning the dial down on a vis. I used the vis on his dying wrist to ping this “Lady Mirelle” and told her the tourney match was delayed by thirty minutes. She will be the least of my problems. Riding is a pure noble’s profession with an entire academy dedicated to it. Steeds themselves are highly tuned, highly complex machines—and one wrong move spells the end. Despite watching the sport, I will surely make many wrong moves that end in my own death today. Still, the court won’t know I’m a bastard until they crack open the steed’s cockpit and take the helmet off my dead body. The pockmarks on my cheeks will prove me a commoner without the credits to fix them, and the DNA test will prove me worse—House Hauteclare’s bastard. They will be the first and only House in history to taint the hallowed world of riding. A shiver races down my spine. This death will hurt more than the judiciary plasma-vent burning, but it will hurt them more than me. A tall rider with broad shoulders draws my attention as he walks toward me. He’s in a red rider’s suit so crimson it hurts to look at. Blood in Father’s carpet; blood on Mother’s throat. A brown hawk sigil screeches over the rider’s crested helmet, but I’m ignorant of the House it belongs to —there are fifty-one Houses in the king’s court, and only nobles bother with memorizing the sigils of dozens of their fellow assholes. I lift my chin. Once, I might’ve felt fear at this rider’s sheer height looming over mine, the way their tight crimson suit highlights every hard- won muscle on their impressive body. I might’ve felt unease at how seamlessly they move over the marble floor—like liquid fire. Something that big shouldn’t move that gracefully. But all I feel now is the end, pulling me in as inexorably as a gravity generator. We draw even, and Red Rider’s shoulder collides with mine. On purpose. I stagger, but they don’t so much as raise their visor to apologize. A deep voice comes out flanged by the in-helmet speakers. “Tipsy, Mirelle? Interesting way to start your season. Should I send you a bottle of nice old Earth whiskey? Let’s toast after I beat you in a single round.” I keep silent. He circles me like a hungry dog. “Huh—you look thinner. Been skimping on your veggies?” My voice will give me away, but if I don’t react at all, it’ll draw even more suspicion. Red Rider reaches for me, and I shoot my hand out to intercept him instantly. Our palms freeze flat against each other’s, and adrenaline surges hot in my stomach. He cocks his helmet, the hawk sigil’s eye watching me beadily. “Feisty today, aren’t we? We’ve still got fifteen minutes till launch. Should we take this to the showers, just you and me?” He tries to lace his fingers between mine, and he might be taller and stronger, but my time at the brothel digging for information on my father taught me the art of the armlock very well. I crank his elbow back, his grunt of pain resounding as I kick forward with the momentum and slam him to the ground, pinning him beneath me. My chest heaves as I look down into his soulless black visor, my gold-white helmet reflected back at me. The only hint of human in Red Rider is the way his broad chest caves with every shallow breath. My wrists are nothing but bones compared to his. He’s so ridiculously massive that breaking this pin should be child’s play, but for some inscrutable reason, he stays beneath me far longer than he needs to. A breath. Three. The heat of his torso burns the insides of my thighs. A heat moves on the small of my back…his fingers, trying to get the upper hand. I grab and twist, slamming his arm to the ground above his head. Our helmets are suddenly too close, black visor on black visor. The feeling of a band stretching too far tightens in my chest. He breaks first. He raises his visor just enough, the shiny black hard-light dissolving to reveal brown eyes the color of redwood—like Mother’s pendant, warm and auburn and rich, with dark eyelashes. “If you wanted me like this”—he laughs softly—“all you had to do was ask.” He’s a noble through and through—pleasure-seeking, arrogant, ignorant. The sports cup does little to hide his excitement, but that excitement does a terrific job of distracting him from the impostor who sits atop him. My disgusted sneer behind my visor is the first expression I’ve made at another human in…weeks? Months? The tourney fans close in around us to record everything on their vis, wrists flashing with the blue glow of a dozen projected holoscreens. “A bodily altercation between riders before a match is a foul!” someone cries out. “Should we call a ref?” another asks. Ref. It’s less a word and more a stab into my brain, a warning—authority is the only thing that can stop you now. I stand up and move off him quickly. “No,” Red Rider blurts as he hefts himself to his feet. “Don’t call the ref —it’s my fault. I was pretty much asking for an ass-kicking.” “But she twisted your—” “You all saw,” he interrupts the shrilling fan, his gaze holding mine. Assessing me. He continues without looking away. “I tried to get touchy- feely without asking for the lady’s permission first. I’d consider her reaction justified.” He presses the button on the side of his visor and hides his eyes behind the darkness again, but like every noble who swears fealty to King Ressinimus, he’s painted a blacklight halo on his forehead. With its dim blue glow, I catch the bare outline of his lips quirking into an affectionate smile—affection meant for Hauteclare’s real rider, Mirelle. I press onward down the hall, leaving Red Rider to drown in his own fans, his deep laugh scraping against my ears. Finally, hangar six comes into view. The Hauteclare winged-lion banner undulates above in white and gold. A row of Hauteclare pit crew in bright- white uniforms bows as I walk up. The crewhead takes his goggles off, face smooth. He should be heavily scarred by constant laser-torch exposure, but I suppose the nobles pay for even their pit crews to be kept “beautiful.” “Just in time.” He grins. “Ghostwinder’s in fine form today, milady. Decon is ready and waiting for you.” I nod, hands trembling as I push past the crewhead. I need to get into this Ghostwinder steed as fast as possible—the ping I sent from Father’s wrist won’t keep Mirelle away for long. Thankfully, she must have a similar figure to mine; otherwise, I would’ve been discovered by now. My eyes find the white door of the steed’s hangar. Something is carved in it, embossed gently and grandly—a story, but not of the church’s usual angels and demons. This is a man riding a horse, his projection spear aimed at what looks like a thousand undulating snakes. I squint—not snakes at all but tendrils, joined at a labyrinthine central mass, each with a row of fangs on its underbelly. The enemy. There are no true pictures left of them—the king’s ministers insist the War razed all the databanks, and the priests echo them by saying evil’s work is often difficult to see. The twisted enemy whom Saint Jorj rides against depicted on the hangar door has no real shape, fewer defining features than the typical overblown church metaphor. I’ve always had doubts that’s the enemy’s true form; history is rarely accurate and written only by the victors. “Saint Jorj looks well today, does he not, milady?” the crewhead asks. When I’m silent, he presses. “Always comforted by him. Reminds me of the War—all those steeds and brave knights lost against the enemy. Reminds me there’s a great sacrifice what came from riding and…well. I’m just honored to be a part of it all, milady.” Of course you are. The nobles gladly hand out their table scraps to keep us grateful. I give a nod, and the crewhead presses a button on the synth-marble wall. The hangar door slides up slowly, and I walk into the bright light alone, embossed tendrils weaving shut behind me. There is no war anymore. The enemy is gone. We won. We fight against ourselves now. I am no knight. But I will die like one today. OceanofPDF.com 3. Bellicus bellicus ~a ~um, a. 1. of or pertaining to war 2. warlike Hangar six is very cold. The Station as a whole never runs out of cold. Space is everywhere around us—cold is in great supply. It’s heat that matters. Heat is survival. Once a year, the nobles cut heating to Low Ward to “reserve Station energy.” They even have the gall to call it a holiday—Winterfolly. Fog gathers in the streets, and the sulfuric acid leaking from the vents crystallizes to neon spears. People freeze to death in their beds, and yet the nobles insist we should celebrate it. All the hate in my heart has become a single blade stabbing me forward. The fog of hangar six is thicker than even Winterfolly. I can barely see. How am I supposed to find my way to the steed’s saddle like this? “Decontamination beginning in five, four, three, two…” A calm mechanical voice resounds, and I wince away from the blue laser that suddenly shoots toward me. It spiders out over my body, a net of beams parsing every angle—some kind of ID system. I must pass, because the winged helmet and white suit abruptly seal together under my chin. There’s a searing hiss as my ears pop and adjust, and in one helmet-muted rush, the thick mist in the hangar gets sucked somewhere else, leaving only clean, white-gold marble walls behind. “Decontamination complete. Please proceed to the saddle.” The voice is as cool as I am burning with suppressed fear. Space is not forgiving, even inside a steed. Riders die riding, but they are few and far between. During tourney season, the news reports more on riders’ broken limbs and loss of brain function—but I must die in this steed. Not just an injury—real, final death. There is no other option; my death must hurt House Hauteclare as my life could not. Out of the corner of my visor, I spot slick movement—a door sliding open in the marble wall. The only exit. I have learned that when fear bites, you must bite back, or it will eat you whole. I walk forward, ignoring my thumping heart. The next room is nearly identical; the only difference is the circle on the ground big enough to hold three people comfortably and made entirely of black glass, bordered at the base with a glowing emerald ring. Every steed has a saddle—the seat from which the rider can control the steed. That must be it. I step in and wait, trembling. After a moment, the ring of green rises with a rumble, thin and translucent and painting the world emerald as it closes up around me into a hard-light tube. Something suddenly splats onto the black glass next to my foot—a pale periwinkle glob—and then another and another. I catch one in my hand; it feels like the cheap med-gel one can find in any first-aid kit. At first, I think it’s oil-based because of the rainbow shine, but…the shine is from thousands of strange, shimmering silver whorls moving slowly inside. I lean down to sniff it. It’s bitter, with hints of citrus. What the hell is — A click echoes above my head. I look up just in time to see the ceiling open and slop a wave of gel on me. I scrabble against the hard-light wall, but there’s nowhere to run—the gel just keeps pouring in, filling the tube to my waist, my shoulders. If it reaches my helmet’s air vents, I’ll suffocate. But no—if every rider suffocated in the saddle, there’d be no tourneys. The shimmering silver whorls writhe in the gel. They look like worms or tadpoles or cells, small and struggling to survive. Are they nanomachines? It’s possible; nobles tend to keep the best technology for themselves, and steeds are only for nobles. Even as the strange gel fills the tube up to my neck, I feel no pressure from it; in fact, I feel lighter, as if my body is being supported rather than weighed down. The gel reaches my visor, and in a blink I’m submerged. Bravery is not something you do, it’s something you endure, and I endure until the gel seeps into the air vents in my helmet. It feels as cool as velvet on my nose and eyes. I hold my breath, but there’s no air left, and I gasp open, sucking the gel deep into my lungs as I flail my arms against the tube’s walls. It floods my mouth with a bitter citrus taste and dissolves instantly on my tongue, and then I swallow oxygen like air. As soon as I realize I can breathe in this stuff, the chest-deep panic in me subsides, and I go still. Still alive. Still, I will get my revenge. A muffled jolt runs through the ground then. The silvery gel blocks out everything, but the bone-shaking vibrations tell me I’m moving lower, until there’s a resounding click into place. Down comes the lightning. Electricity blazes through my body, burning away my calm with pain— can’t move—my lips pulling back from my teeth, my eyelids frozen open. Through my spasming vision, I see the silver whorls in the gel glow brighter and start to writhe faster than ever before, pinwheels, whirlpools— and when the pain abruptly fades, it’s replaced by a feeling of knowing. I know I’m not alone. Something’s here, right next to me, hovering all around me. It’s the certainty of someone standing behind you in a dream. It’s the hot prickle of eyes watching the back of your head, of someone’s invisible body heat looming close. Someone huge, bigger even than Red Rider. Someone not- me. And then it moves. Before terror can take hold, it reaches out for me gently; a featherlight, cautious touch, something I can feel in my mind but can’t see—a reverse headache, a finger pressing against the inside of my skull. It feels like curiosity, but not my own; the inquisitive head tilt of a dog. It’s like an invitation, an unseeable hand reaching out to me. This is the line. This is the hairpin turn of fate I cannot see around. This is death. “You must wait for God to punish them, Synali.” No, Mother. I will not. I reach back. In an instant, my body goes fever-hot and ice-cold, sweating then clammy, and I grow. I feel bigger, expanded, like my limbs have been stretched far longer than they actually are. My chest is the only thing that still feels normal, filled with my heavy heartbeat. I don’t know what the hell is going on; all I know is that this is the saddle. All I know is that the thing in here with me is huge, and I’m small. We’re different, but the pressureless gel and the electricity have…linked us somehow. Put us in each other’s thoughts. “Handshake complete.” The cool mechanical voice reverberates in my helmet. “Prepare for immediate deployment in seven, six, five, four, three —” Is this feeling…the steed? It feels like a person. My mind instantly pivots to true AI, the sort banned a hundred years ago after it rebelled. False AI is used for everything on the Station, from cleaning sub-routines to surgical machines, but true AI is illegal. Not even nobles are misguided enough to put true AI in their steeds—they want things they can control, and the true AI our ancestors made cannot be controlled anymore. That’s why the king before King Ressinimus ordered it destroyed. “Whatever you are,” I murmur, “I ask only that you kill me.” “—two, one.” The floor beneath our feet clicks open, and we fall. My organs crush up into my throat, a fist punching me from inside, but weightlessness quickly takes over, everything catching on nothing, and then we free-float in zero gravity. Either the entire Station’s gravity generators have failed or we’re in… The silver whorls in the gel slowly dissolve from my visor, allowing me sight again: the sight of a glass-clear darkness scattered with trillions upon trillions of cold, sharp, pinprick stars. …Space. Soundless, airless, lifeless—space opens to me like a horrific black flower, the center of its petals the glaring white sun in the distance. Accidents flash before my eyes—hull breaches in Low Ward; bodies sucked out into space coming back freezer-burned, mummified, and with every cavity imploded; Father’s dead-warm skin peeling with frost the very moment I vented him. No frost on my skin. Still breathing. I must be inside Father’s steed. The big feeling, the longer limbs but hot chest core… It makes sense in a twisted, fumbling way. I’ve seen it on the vis—nobles riding massive steeds as tall as buildings into space for their self-important tourneys. The stories are clear: four hundred years ago, the knights of the War went into space on their gigantic steeds to defend Earth against the enemy. But seeing and reading are not doing. Doing is lung-crushing. Doing is terrifying. I am riding. Well, floating, at least. I look down to see sleek, pure-white metal limbs below me—legs—and hands the same color tipped with gold on the fingers. It’s like looking at my own body but made huge and too shiny. They say God made man in his image, but so, too, did man make the steeds in theirs. A steed is a gigantic artificial human, armored. It stands upright on thick legs and feet, with a waspish torso flaring out to a broad chest and arms and finally a helmeted head, usually with no visible eye, ear, or mouth holes— holes are structural weaknesses in space. Plasma vents dot the feet, the ankles, the torso, and the back. Every metal edge of a steed is sanded smooth, stylishly yet uselessly, considering aerodynamics are nigh pointless in a vacuum; when nobles want something beautiful, they make it so at all costs. I slowly move farther into space as a holographic screen springs to life in front of me and hangs there among the stars in high definition, displaying two men in decadent breast coats and headsets. They sit before stands filled to bursting with a seething audience. I recognize them: the court-appointed tourney commentators. “Welcome, one and all, to the 148th annual Cassiopeia Cup Semifinals!” The thunderous roar of the crowd nearly drowns them out completely, but it all goes dull in my ears when my eyes find the Station. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen my home from the outside. I know the shape of it—a metal ring lined with honeycomb projection shields the hue of rainbow oil-slick, a spire running through it like a pierced halo, and the many hard-light highways connecting the two like bright-orange spokes in a wheel, trams zipping to and fro on their underbellies. The gas giant the Station orbits—Esther—hangs swollen and green behind it. Dozens of substations circle her massive bulk—some attached to her many moons, some free-floating, but all of them smaller, all of them slowly terraforming her surface, as they have been since the War’s end four hundred years ago, when the seven Stations were flung from Earth’s orbit and into distant solar systems by the enemy’s final attack. He’s out there somewhere. Father. My eyes dart around the Station, the spindle where the nobles live in its center, the thousands of solar panels facing both into Esther—terrene—and out toward the stars—sidereal. There’s no sign of his corpse, no graying hair, no ruffled cuffs, no white cape. I can’t see Father’s body at all, but I slammed the airlock button, watched the evidence of my murder drift into nothing…so where is he? Esther’s gravity wouldn’t pull him down that fast. Another holoscreen interrupts my view—the commentator’s face is too happy. “We have a fantastic clash for you today, folks! The storied House Hauteclare gears up at last against the indomitable House Velrayd—two families known for their pride and prowess on the tilt! Who will overcome? Who will fall? Only heaven knows!” I try to wave the holoscreen away, but it doesn’t fade like a vis screen. Another voice patches into my helmet with a smoky rumble—Red Rider. “Forgive my figure of speech, but what the flying fuck are you doing, Mirelle? This isn’t amateur hour—get to your tilt.” A crimson dot cuts through space, coming toward me. I’ve seen steeds on the vis, on posters, and in the hands of children as figurines, but not like this: huge and framed against the cold blanket of space and the green glow of Esther and all too big, all too real, coming close all too fast. Nothing that big should move that gracefully. Red Rider’s steed is painted like drying blood—crimson diffused by deep brown—and it’s roughly the length of an entire tram. Its helmet has a beaklike protrusion on the mouth that sweeps up the forehead and over the skull as if it’s the crest of a bird, and its heels have the same feather shape. For a second, I wonder where his saddle is: in the chest or the head? Where are we positioned as riders in these gargantuan puppets? I look down to my steed’s titanic white chest. I must be in the torso somewhere—that feels central. Red Rider jets over to me, and I watch, momentarily mesmerized, as the crimson plasma the steed produces lingers behind it like hot twin ribbons, and then the cold of space dissolves them. Eats them. Heat is survival, but only now have I realized it’s beautiful, too. Too late. His gravelly voice on the comms is insistent. “Did your initial thrust screw up or something? Here, lemme help.” I don’t need your goddamn help, noble. No buttons in the saddle, no levers to pull—only my own body floating in gel that’s now turned clear as glass. Whatever switches Red Rider uses to move his steed, I can’t see them. My steed is unresponsive—I can’t even twitch away as he laces our metal arms together. The sensation of him touching my elbow makes me jump—skin-on-skin pressure on get the fuck away from me. The feedback is exactly like touching in real life. I mentally flip him off, and surprise sizzles through me when the golden fingers of my steed’s free hand mimic my thoughts perfectly. The same middle finger— the same exact wrist tilt. Red Rider chuckles. “You wanna give me the silent treatment that badly? Go right ahead. It’s not gonna stop me from helping a fellow rider out. You know, chivalry? That thing you love so much?” I only hear him faintly—too busy closing my fist experimentally. I go wide-eyed as the fist of the white-gold steed closes, too. The delay is nonexistent—like watching my reflection move in a mirror. I’m not just inside the steed—I am the steed. Slowly, Red Rider tows me to the tilt: a span of what would look like empty space if not for the floating hexagonal plates on opposite sides bookending it. I can only estimate the distance between the two plates— fifty parses apart, maybe more. In the direct middle of the tilt is the unmistakable blue glow of a gravity generator, hanging like an azure star in the stretch of black, but this one is much brighter than the ones in the Station’s walls. It must be a short-range grav-gen, the sort used in the War to launch battleships and steeds alike with its slingshot effect. When we reach one of the plates, Red Rider presses my floating body against it—his fingertips on my chest trigger instant venomous thoughts— don’t try to control me, you entitled piece of shit. With a vicious jolt, magnetics kick in and rivet my spine to the tilt. I glare straight ahead, refusing to look at him. “Well,” he starts jovially, “I’m off. Best of luck and for the glory of the king and all that.” His steed makes a little salute—red fingers to red forehead—and then he pivots, the jets on his back and feet blazing crimson as he propels past the halfway point of the grav-gen to the hexagonal plate on the other end of the tilt. He moves easily—obviously academy trained. He chose academy. Noble children like him get to decide their own cushy fates while the rest of us scrape at dangerous, back-breaking jobs: servitude, welding, mining on the substations…things that break, kill, maim. Commoners are disposable, after all—the brothel taught me that. Father taught me that. He treated Mother like something to be used and then thrown away. My anger simmers high, a fire that cannot be stopped, a fire I will not stop, and it burns and burns and burns, and strangely, I feel the thing in here with me start to burn, too, anger coursing molten all around me. My mother is dead, and I killed my father. I’m alone in this life. I know that. But for the first time in six months, there’s the barest venting of pressure, a release in knowing something else in this universe—anything else—burns the same way I do. I will go down in fire, and the flames will scar every Hauteclare on this godforsaken Station. OceanofPDF.com 4. Caecus caecus ~a ~um, a. 1. (literally and figuratively) blind 2. devoid of light One does not bow in space to show respect after a match. One takes off their helmet. If I somehow survive this match against Red Rider, I will take my helmet off in the saddle. I will be arrested and questioned, and then I will be executed. The guards will eventually find Duke Hauteclare’s body orbiting the Station. House Hauteclare will cry false, but the results of my corpse’s DNA test will come back true—Duke Farris von Hauteclare sired a bastard out of wedlock, and she killed him, then rode his steed in a tourney. Not a skirmish, not a qualifier, but a tourney—the most hallowed proving ground, the one place nobles can go to show the entire Station that they are beyond reproach in their honor, strength, and morals. That they rule for a reason. It’s the tourneys where nobles believe nobility is the most sacred, second only to the bedrooms where their purebloods are sired. The only thing nobles value more than their riding competitions is their blood. This is why Father hired an assassin to kill Mother and me. It took me months to dig and bribe and fuck my way to this truth, but it eventually rose to the surface like all scum does. Duke Hauteclare killed us because he was planning to run for the open seat on the king’s advisory board. A bastard is the one true disgrace—if his rivals found out about my existence, they’d have used me to politically ruin his grand aspirations. Mother and I were sacrificial lambs on the altar of Father’s lust for power. I feel like a sacrificial lamb magnetically lashed against this tilt, a hexagonal altar holding me still for the final blow. It rotates slowly in space, and I rotate with it, stars turning upside-down and back again. Red Rider waves to me from the tilt opposite—with any luck, he’ll be punished for crossing lances with a filthy bastard like me. All I can do is wait. Space truly does go on forever, naked and black, but I won’t let the yawning fear of it in. The saddle’s silver-whorled gel smells vaguely like citrus. It reminds me of Mother’s baking—artificial lemon and synth-vanilla, things so rare we could only afford them once a year for my birthday. She loved to bake—no matter how poorly she was feeling. If I brought a parcel of mealy flour home from the scavenge pits, she’d always find the energy to get up and make something. Our oven would hum and shudder, and the fresh-baked scent would cloud our little apartment, momentarily driving out the sulfur fumes and the scream of the tram. I swallow the hard lump in my throat. I’d forgotten. Among all the blood and death and plotting…I’d forgotten that today is my birthday. A commentator’s voice pierces my thoughts. “In the red corner stands the illustrious House Hauteclare and their magnificent steed, Ghostwinder! Let’s give a warm round of applause for Ghostwinder’s endlessly bold and effortlessly graceful rider—Mirelle Ashadi-Hauteclare!” The crowd’s applause shudders through my helmet. “Lady Mirelle has too many wins under her belt to count, Gress,” the second commentator adds. “That she does, Bero,” the first commentator agrees. “We’ll see if she can notch one more today. If you’ll turn your attention to the blue corner, we have the relentless House Velrayd and their steed, Sunscreamer! Sunscreamer’s rider is none other than the one, the only, the former child prodigy with the highest scores in academy history—Rax Istra-Velrayd!” The applause is ten times louder for Red Rider. Rax. It’s a terrible name —like a dry protein bar on the tongue. “Rax specializes in decisive timing,” the second commentator muses. “But Mirelle’s more of a power striker. Things could get messy, Gress.” “Absolutely, Bero, but in the world of riding, ‘messy’ is just another word for ‘exciting.’ Riders, prepare your tilts!” The tilt suddenly spins me upright and locks into place. I blink away dizziness—it’s a clear shot from me to the grav-gen, from me to Rax on the opposite side; his tilt is locked upright, too. Something hard begins to materialize in my hand, crawling piece by piece out of the metal of the steed’s palm—white, long, ending in a needle-sharp golden point. I know what it is even before it fully takes shape: a lance. The enormous weapon every steed has within them—a lance made to kill the enemy so long ago, but now used only for sport. “Let the countdown to round one begin—in the name of God, King, and Station!” a commentator shouts. “In the name of God, King, and Station!” the audience echoes titanically. Reality seeps in with their booming voices—I know the two steeds are pulled into each other by the grav-gen, and I know it’s a straight line at blistering parses per minute, the two of us passing each other barely parallel. In that moment of passing, we attempt to strike each other with our lances: helmet, breastplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, greaves, tasset…six places to hit, but only the helmet is considered an automatic win. Everywhere else is one point. How do I know all that? I don’t. I’ve never cared about how this game is scored. It just spilled out. Who…? The thing in here with me knows. It eagerly tells me everything in wordless streams of certainty; it knows we hit. It knows the two gigantic humanoid steeds then separate out into space. It knows the grav-gen pulls us around and in again like a loop, an infinity symbol, for two more rounds. Whoever has the most points at the end of round three wins. If a rider is flung from their saddle, they lose. If anyone hits their opponent’s helmet, they win. The only thing allowed to touch the opponent is the lance—all else is considered a foul. It knows all this because it’s been trapped here for ages. Trapped? It’s a machine…but I have no time to ponder this as the tilt suddenly disengages the magnetics and thrusts me into open space toward the grav-gen, which is spinning its core ever faster. The blue glow brightens—not enough to hinder sight but enough to guide me to the end. I should be terrified, but with the end so close, with Mother so close… It’s been six months since I’ve seen her. It won’t be much longer now. I don’t know how to ride. I don’t know how to win. But I know well how to grip the weapon. The lance isn’t a dagger—it’s bigger. Heavier. I struggle to hold it steady, arm straining under the weight even though my human hand in the saddle cups emptiness. I feel it; just like Rax and his elbow touch, the lance’s handle is real and hard in my palm even when it only exists outside me in space. Swallow. Push down the fear. Faster, I think. I want to ruin him faster. I want to see her faster. Gold plasma suddenly bursts hot from my back vents, my leg vents, pushing me out from the tilt as the generator pulls me in. The speed lurches my guts, my heart into my throat, and the stars start to blur to ribbons; the Station melts to gray-rainbow sludge, Esther’s stormy green surface blends together, and all I can see is the red steed as it nears horrifyingly fast, my white-gold lance biting forward like a gilded fang into the darkness. Rax’s red lance narrows to a point in my vision too close, his steed moving in slight shifts, changing, he’s somehow bracing against the massive g-forces crushing the life out of me— We impact. Too fast to breathe. Too fast to move. A millisecond of everything sears across my mind all at once: metal, light, fire, pain. And then black. The next thing I sense is darkness. Death, maybe. The end is soft and shrouded in rhythmic beeping. Can’t move. My body—if I still have one—feels heavy, head heavier. Faint voices echo in my ears. “—recovery time?” “—months, at most. The nanomachine treatment was very—” “What of— DNA results for the—” “—as you asked, sir.” Something soft lands on my forehead, and then one of the voices moves close to my ear, calm as still water. “I’ll see you on the other side, brave one.” I’m not brave. I merely endure. My mouth doesn’t move, my throat doesn’t rattle—I’m a prisoner in my own body. There’s the shuffle of footsteps, a click of something closing, and then darkness claims me again. OceanofPDF.com –10. Aranea arānea ~ae, f. 1. a spider Fourteen years ago, on the same space Station, a fourth child turns five years old. He is a forgotten child, left on a doorstep in his early hours. His hair is spun gold. His eyes are the color of ice, and they focus on the burlap dummy in front of him, the heat of a projection dagger clutched in his small fist. The hard orange light gouts and sputters from the handle, ready to strike. His instructor—the only father-mother-family the boy has ever known—jerks his head at the dummy. “Kill.” Kill he does. Over and over again. Each time, he receives a “well done.” Each time, a smile. The boy dreams of family, and though he has one, in fourteen years he will kill a woman with black hair and kind eyes in front of her daughter, and it will be the end of this dream. And the beginning of a new one. OceanofPDF.com 5. Abyssus abyssus ~ī, f. 1. (Late) an abyss My skin wakes before I do—soft blankets, fluffed pillows, the air of a room gently circulating. I can feel. I can think. I can hear steady beeping. I’m alive. I bolt upright so fast, an IV jerks out of my wrist, and I stare blankly at the blood oozing over my skin. My hand juts to Mother’s redwood cross around my neck—relief first, terror second. “No,” I whisper. “No, no, no.” This is wrong. Why am I not dead? I rode a steed and impacted and— The beeping fluctuates wildly as I rip the sheets off my body. Everything’s white and smells sterile: a hospital, but not just any hospital—one of the fancy ones in the noble spire. They’ve wrapped me in a white gown and shoved me in this cocoon of a room to what? Recover? There’s nothing left to recover for. Did I ruin House Hauteclare? Did they DNA test me? I can’t remember, and not remembering is worse than even living. I fling my legs over the side of the bed, and they buckle—can’t walk far. The door is no doubt guarded, but my life is not theirs to decide. I have to die. There are no sharp objects, not even a mirror to smash. And then I see the window. I stagger to it, and my fingers freeze over the sill—I didn’t know sunlight could be this warm. In open space, it sears, and in Low Ward, it’s nonexistent, crowded out by smog and the massive shadows of competing churches and unsleeping holoscreens. But here, it’s gentle, like an embrace —like Mother again. “Oh, dearheart. I hope one day you’ll see the sun rise.” Real voices ring outside the room. “She’s awake!” I lunge my body up the sill, and the unfair brilliance of the noble spire hits me in its entirety—clean walkways, green bushes and blooms of all colors, sunlight captured and redirected and let free, evenly spaced buildings instead of crushed-together hovels. This is how people should live…this is how Mother and I should’ve lived. Shouts ricochet behind me. “Stop her!” “Get the tranq—now!” Hands yank me back from the sill, but I thrash, claw, tearing at anything I can reach: clean skin, clean cloth, let me go, let me see the sun rise, you don’t get to give me mercy, I won’t be kept like one of your pets— “Clear!” A puncture in my thigh, and then something like hot honey rushes through my veins. They lay my heavy body back in bed and leave. My fist tries to clench, but nothing happens—only blinking, only breathing. They can stop my body, but they can’t stop my mind; the last thing I remember is the red steed charging for me. Did I pass out? If I was unconscious and kept my helmet on… If the cameras didn’t see my face… If I’d ruined House Hauteclare, I’d be dead by now. Burned beneath a plasma vent. The world spins without moving, every inch of me darkening in free fall. Trapped in this hospital bed, I know only two things for certain: One—I have failed in ruining House Hauteclare. And two—I will not make the same mistake twice. 6. Clarus clārus ~a ~um, a. 1. clear, bright 2. renowned, famous Rax Istra-Velrayd stares into his teacup, the amber liquid shuddering with his mother’s every frantic step over the marble floor. “How could you not know she was an impostor?” She snarls, wringing her paper-thin hands around her own cup. “We’ve risked so much training you—for what? For you to throw it all away fighting some common rat who snuck in and stole a steed? You should’ve known. You should’ve stopped the match before it ever took place!” Before the fireplace, the projected hologram of her vis scrawls blue and translucent, screaming with headlines: COMMONER COMMANDEERS HOUSE HAUTECLARE’S GHOSTWINDER, RIDES AGAINST HOUSE VELRAYD. Rax shoots a look to his father standing motionless against the wall. The shelf of Rax’s many riding trophies glimmers ironically at his father’s side—gold and silver up to the ceiling. As per usual, Father doesn’t seem to want to say anything. Rax must clean up the pieces alone. “Nothing’s wrong, Mother. The SCC declared it a null match. We didn’t lose any—” “We could’ve.” She snaps her eyes to him, voice cold. “You don’t understand. You never do. You ride, but you don’t ever think—we came a hairbreadth away from losing every ounce of our family’s honor yesterday.” “She fooled everyone, Mother,” Rax says. “Mirelle had no idea—” The violence always comes in flashes. A white blur hurtles at his face, and then there’s the wicked sensation of porcelain cutting into his jaw as the cup breaks on him. The pain would hurt more if it were the first time. Rax can’t remember what time this is—the thousandth, perhaps. Ten-thousandth. He feels the blood drip gently down his chin and watches it drop onto the table. “This isn’t about the Hauteclares!” Mother hisses. “Duke Velrayd is asking questions. We cannot have him questioning us—we are reliable. We are a Velrayd barony, now, and we will remain such at all costs. You will not ruin this for us.” The embers in the fireplace flicker weakly over her face—shadowed, unrepentant. Her bodyguard in the corner shifts, waiting with expectant fingers on his baton. When Rax was younger, all it took was Mother to keep him in line, but as he grew, she started enlisting help—realizing it was perhaps unbecoming for a baroness to discipline her children herself. Rax knows his next words will mean pain. His body aches with the phantom bruises. Still, he can’t help the soft laugh rising from his lips. “I’d ride against a hundred commoners if it meant I could be free from you.” OceanofPDF.com 7. Vulpes vulpēs ~is, f. 1. a fox, vixen 2. (figuratively) cunning, craftiness Tally marks are the best way to remember time—gouged in your apartment wall if you must. One line for every day, when every day feels like the same eternity. A single line meant a time you wiped the blood off your split lip and got up again. A single line meant you ate to keep yourself alive. A single line meant you fucked a rich man three times your age for information about your mother’s killer no one else would give you. For each day in the hospital, I scratch one neon line into my brain. Three marks. Three days. Every six hours, the nurses check my restraints. Every four, they refill my IV—a lower-grade tranq than the hot honey but still strong enough to keep my heavy limbs in place. In my fevered tranquilizer sleep, the night Mother died plays like a recording corrupted by time, skipping and replaying and skipping back again—the empty hood of the assassin moves toward her like a hungry predator in all black, and she falls to her knees, face blurred and words garbled nonsense. She begged. I remember, but I don’t want to remember. I want to stop the assassin, but I never can. He is darkness, cold space, the devil, and as he looks at me with eyes a terrifying ice-blue, the scar he gave me in my collarbone begins to ache terribly. I’m crying before I’m awake. I cry without moving, until my pillow and my hair and my ears are full of salt, like the woman in God’s book who looked back. I was weak with Mother—too happy and naive and soft to do anything—and it killed her. I was weak. My softness killed her. Four tally marks. Five. On the sixth day, a man arrives. Not a nurse or a doctor but someone from outside. He smells like a moth—old fabric and dust and secret darkness. He walks measuredly across the tile, his tabard and breeches plain silk but his walking cane made of elaborate sapphire and silver. He could be anyone’s milquetoast uncle: middle-aged, middle height, with smooth skin and a mop of pale brown hair—a man with no hardship in him. Noble, then, but no blacklight halo is painted on his forehead. Strange…I thought they all wore that symbol of fealty to the king. He seats himself in a chair at my bedside, slender lips pulling into a smile. “Thank you for waiting for me, Synali.” His smooth voice is identical to the person who called me “brave one.” “It must’ve been terribly hard on you.” I sit up straighter; nothing good comes from the sort of person who knows your name without asking for it first. “Apologies,” he says. “I’ve been told your tranquilizer should wear off soon and you’ll be able to speak. Can you at least blink?” I do. His smile widens, teeth surgery white. “Let’s say one blink for yes and two for no. That way our conversation won’t be quite so one-sided. Agreed?” He interlaces his fingers on his knee. It’s the expensive rings on his fingers that beget realization: I have been kept alive so I could meet this man. He’s the reason the hospital didn’t hand me over to the vent. And that makes him my enemy. Though, whoever he is, he clearly has power—and power always proves useful. He repeats himself patiently. “Are we in agreement, Synali?” Blink once. “Wonderful. Allow me to be frank—you murdered Duke Farris von Hauteclare by stabbing him with his own ceremonial dagger. Do you regret this?” Blink twice. I expect anger or disgust, but his smile is gentle. “I see. That bodes well.” He inspects the silver head of his cane. “After your patricide, you vented the duke’s body out of his office airlock, stole his rider’s suit, and then rode House Hauteclare’s steed in a tourney against House Velrayd. And not just any tourney—the Cassiopeia Cup Semifinals. The nobles were absolutely furious.” A pleased twinkle moves through his thin gray eyes. I open my throat and croak something impossible to understand, but he interprets quickly. “Oh, you were decimated by House Velrayd’s rider. Untrained as you were to withstand the g-forces, you were thrown from the saddle on impact, and—as you were unable to deploy your helmet cushion—your skull fractured on the metal innards of the steed. The doctors say it’s a God-sent miracle you survived, even with the nanomachine treatment I ordered.” Miracles for me? Nanomachines for me? Why bother? I’m a murderer, a bastard—I am nothing anyone values. The man leans back in his leather chair. “All of what I just relayed to you occurred two months ago.” I choke. I’ve been in this bed for two months? No—no, it was six days! I counted. I kept a tally. “You regained consciousness a week ago.” He answers my spiraling thoughts coolly. “Two months ago, I ordered your nanomachine treatment done. I even managed to keep your murder of the duke a secret; to the rest of the Station, he died of natural causes—heart attack, I believe. I don’t remember precisely what I had the investigating officers write when they recovered his body.” My groan becomes a single stumbling word. “Wh-Why?” “I have a favor to ask in return.” “I won’t…sleep with you, y-you noble fuck. Just kill me.” The man’s face goes slack, and then he laughs. All his pale lines and thin folds crease into one sun-riddled moment of pure amusement—the most concentrated emotion I’ve heard from him yet. “Those sorts of favors don’t interest me.” He calms enough to speak. “Nor am I interested in killing you.” “I want to die—” “I know precisely what you want,” he interrupts. “One does not murder their father and then make an inexperienced tourney ride intending to trot on to a happy life. If one wished to survive, one would try to escape after their deed, yet you did no such thing. You were ready to die for it. You wanted to hurt House Hauteclare, even if it meant your death.” The way he talks…he’s unmistakably noble-born. His eyes meet mine without softness. Where there once was joviality, there’s now only steel. He knows who I am. What I was trying to do. It curdles my insides to be known so plainly. “Who are…you?” I manage, throat burning. “You may call me Dravik. I’d like for you and I to work together.” “Why should I?” “Because the ruination of House Hauteclare cannot be accomplished by you alone.” A snarl works over my limp mouth, but he continues. “Please don’t misunderstand me; a duke’s bastard daughter riding, and his murderer besides…the Nova-King’s court would’ve been furious at House Hauteclare. Your plan would’ve done the trick very neatly but not very thoroughly. A flash in the pan, perhaps two months of bastard rumors, and Hauteclare would pay off the proper people to bury it. I have a more permanent method in mind.” I lean off the pillows. “P-Permanent?” He knows he has me, because his smile this time is patient. “The Nova- King’s court consists of fifty-one Houses. They’ve merged and split over the centuries, but none of them has been dissolved. Ever. The king won’t allow it, you see—they are his sources of power. They orbit him like planets, providing to him as he provides to them.” “I know all this—” My voice gives out. “You’ve heard of the Supernova Cup, I assume?” His doesn’t. I blink once. The Supernova Cup is the tourney of all tourneys on the Station, coming around once every decade. As ignorant of riding as I am, I know whichever House wins the Supernova Cup earns great favor with the king, and his favor means power, money, influence—everything the nobles endlessly scheme and backstab one another for is handed on a silver platter to whomever wins the Supernova Cup. House Hauteclare—with my father as their rider—won last decade, and I grew up with their banner plastered in every ward and their barely disguised extortion and pillaging on every corner. The powerful Houses enter to cement their supremacy for the next ten years, the weaker Houses enter to reverse their fates, but everyone enters. This Dravik man can’t possibly— “I wish for you to ride for my House in the Supernova Cup, Synali. And in exchange, I will dissolve House Hauteclare.” My heart leaps into my throat. “F-Forever?” “They will be forgotten. Their deeds, their history, their honors—all of it will be erased.” He’s mad. A beginner cannot win a cup like that. No one can dissolve a House save for the king. Dravik’s eyes don’t waver as he offers me his hand. If he’s lying, it’s one spectacularly expensive lie—my hospital bills, covering Father’s murder for me. He’s taken a huge risk keeping me alive. If he’s telling the truth… “You can’t dissolve a House,” I insist. “A plan is in place.” He says it as if it’s an explanation in itself—a stalwart truth. “Don’t give me hope, Sir Dravik,” I croak. “I don’t want to hope—I want to die. I want to rest and to see my mother again.” His gaze crumples strangely, painfully, as if he’s seen someone he knows well. The ludicrous idea of House Hauteclare wiped off the Station forever hangs like golden fruit in my mind. I hesitate, glaring at his outstretched hand. For the last six months, the feel of another person’s skin has meant nothing but pain. I look up at him. “Can you promise me rest?” The beeping of the machine slows, my heart begging for the answer. “When it is done,” he begins. “I give you my word I will bring you rest.” A stalwart truth. I reach my hand out, callused palm gripping his soft one. OceanofPDF.com 8. Novicius novīcius ~a ~um, a. 1. new, fresh The noble spire spins slowly in the very center of the Station’s ring, growing closer outside the window of Dravik’s hovercarriage. The quiet hum of our engine insulates us from the bustle of a hundred more hovercarriages sluicing down the orange ribbon of the hard- light freeway, their driver’s seats empty as programming guides them. “I’ve never taken a hovercarriage before,” I say. “Always more of a public tram person.” “Your life from now on will feature many firsts, I imagine.” Dravik chuckles, tucked into the corner across from me with his cane over his lap. He wears no blacklight halo to mark him noble beneath his mouse-hue bangs, yet he has a private hovercarriage—a very expensive one, if the interior detail of powder-blue lilies on silver inlay is any indicator. The smoothness of the fine linen bliaut he gave me to wear out of the hospital slithers over my skin—too nice compared to my burlap tunics. The woolen shawl is broad, with no moth-eaten holes. The soft leather boots fit too well —far different from the plastic-woven sandals I’m used to. “I see one major flaw in this grand plan of yours,” I say. “I have no rider training.” “This will be remedied,” Dravik agrees offhandedly. “Going to send me to the rider academy and put me in class with the children?” “No need. I am a former rider. The Supernova Cup is in two months— more than enough time to teach you what I know.” My brows shoot up. So he is a noble. Or…was? “Is that where your injury came from? Riding?” “No.” He taps his fingers on his right knee. “This was more…personal. You, however, have no such injuries, and if we train you correctly, it will remain that way.” “You make me sound like some animal,” I snarl. His smile is perfectly calm. “Would you not become an animal to get your revenge?” I snort and lean back in the seat, arms over my chest. He makes rider training sound easy, but I’ve been asleep for two months—my body is weak. Even if I miraculously manage to grasp the intricacies of riding, going up against nobles who’ve been in this game for years—if not decades —is a losing battle. They have technique. Experience. I have nothing. Dravik could choose any skilled noble rider who graduated from the academy to ride for him, so… “Why me?” I ask. Dravik taps the side of his leg. “I cannot ride, and you cannot hope to destroy a House. We each have what the other wants.” “That’s not what I asked.” “Your mental handshake in Ghostwinder’s saddle went very well; you have a talent for it. Riders often experience nosebleeds and fainting their first time.” “You could go to any academy first-year for that. Is it because I’m desperate, easy to manipulate?” “No.” “Is it because I hate the nobles?” “No.” “Then why?” The quiet thrum of the engine. The tinkle of the sapphire-studded tassels swinging from the hovercarriage roof. Sunlight catches in the gemstones, refracting rainbow over the soft man as he gives me a softer smile, a no- answer sort of smile—an answer he can’t give or won’t give—and I realize then I’d be a fool to trust him. This whole thing reeks of manipulation and control. I stand up. Sensing my movement, the carriage slows to a crawl automatically. “Open the door,” I demand. “Synali—” Dravik starts. “I said open the goddamn door!” He doesn’t move for his wrist. The carriage controls might be linked to his vis and his vis only, but everything on this Station has an emergency redundancy—even noble transportation. I find the button tucked below the handle, and I reach a single finger for it— “Do you truly think your father killed your mother on his own?” Dravik’s voice freezes my hand in place. “Seven,” he says. “Seven other members of House Hauteclare voted to take her down. They each coerced your father or otherwise helped to find, track, and kill your mother. It was a group effort. Noble dealings always are.” My ears ring, my mouth thick with iron sand. The family helped him. The dagger across Mother’s throat touched more palms than just the assassin’s. I grip her cross pendant. Hard. Harder. The hovercarriages outside pass us in screaming lights. An eternity passes before I find my voice. “These seven… You’re certain they were involved?” “Without doubt,” Dravik asserts. “I verified each one carefully during the two months you were recovering. I will provide you with evidence of their guilt, should you so require.” For a moment I almost wish I could doubt this strange man. I wish he was wrong, but I know in my bones he isn’t—of course they’d all want Mother and me dead. They are a House. They are together. It was all of their honors on the line, not just Father’s. I collapse back in the seat, and the carriage lurches into motion. For once, Dravik wears no smile. “I had hoped to wait until we were at home to discuss the conditions of our contract, but…for every round in the Supernova Cup you win, I am offering to kill one of these seven nobles. Should you win the entire Supernova Cup, I’ll erase House Hauteclare itself.” Suddenly, the impossible golden fruit sprouts lesser, far closer fruits all around it. “How will you—” “Connections. People, places, things—none of which you need concern yourself with. Your only concern will be riding.” He sees the unsurety in me. “Do you think me not capable of disposing of them?” I glare at my palms. “I think you’re capable of your end, but mine…less so.” His face breaks into a smile again. “I never thought I’d see the day when one of Hauteclare’s blood would choose humility. Brave one—you drugged a janitor, snuck into a highly guarded tourney hall, deceived a rider, hijacked a steed, and stabbed a duke to death. I know crime lords in the Under-ring who have done less.” “Riding is different.” He looks wistfully out the window. “I suppose it is.” Our carriage dips into a black tunnel and emerges onto the silver wash of artificial moonlight bathing every gilded building and cobblestone road. I’ve always seen the noble spire from afar like a hateful miniature, a conceited dollhouse, but now fountains pour water in elaborate antigravity spirals over my head—up, across, and between buildings until the sky is braided with them. Nobles traipse the sidewalks in amber-studded corsets and holograph parasols and elaborate wooden masks. Twisted little creatures hang on their arms—monkeys, dogs, all of them bred beyond textbook recognition. Muffled music ricochets from quartets with real whitewood instruments on every other corner, and jesters in neon-lit caps and butterfly-incandescent suits flit and flip among the loose crowd. No beggars, no molerats or thin dogs feeding on trash, no ragged moths choking on neon lights. No blood on the roads. No filth, no vents belching yellow sulfur. Everything’s ventilated, perfumed, sheened in holograph and precious wood and the sound of music and water—clean water, the sort people die for in Low Ward, stab each other for—it’s here, and it’s made into art, made so their little pets can run through it and they can laugh at the sight. My fury blitzes past itself and crash-lands into nausea. “Fascinating, isn’t it?” Dravik asks, the lights dancing in his eyes even as he holds out a plastic bag for me. I claw at it. Someone outside laughs. A band begins to play. The joyous music tries and fails to drown out the sound as I retch. In the time it takes for the nausea to subside, our hovercarriage turns onto a quieter road, away from the music and dancers and perfumed crowd. We wind up a rise lush with green grass and white trees (real trees, like there were on Earth), sleek marble noble manses peppering the hillside. The carriage stops before a great metal gate, and it swings forward as readily as a black iron maw. “We’re here,” Dravik announces rather perfunctorily. The hovercarriage glides up a hill-cut path through a garden. Unlike the other manses’ verdant greenery, this one is faded, unkempt, the grass yellowed and the whitewood trees starving thin. Still…it’s more empty space than I ever thought possible on the Station. Still, they’re real trees— leaves and roots curling much like the enemy’s tendrils on the hangar door. The glass-and-marble manse sitting atop the hill could easily fit fifty Low Ward families. I clutch my bagged vomit tighter—I knew noble Houses lived comfortably, but seeing it up close burns far hotter, realer. Finally, the manse envelops us in a manicured plaza of white gravel, lined with marble statues of saints and sinners. Saint Petyr hangs on his upside-down cross in utter humility, in utter reminder of how far I’ve fallen. I’ve allowed my life to fall into a noble’s hands again. “Welcome, Synali”—Dravik sweeps his cane around—“to my home. And your home, too, of course, for however long the duration of our alliance runs. Shall we?” He motions me in, and it takes me two steps through the front door to smell the dust—a thick layer of the stuff covering every plush sofa, every pre-War painting. It coats even the marble floor; paths cut through where traffic treads most. Shadows choke the rooms, only a few warm lights blinking out of the very bowels of the manse. This is Dravik’s smell— moths and time and that unquiet darkness. My eyes dart around, searching for waiting guards, but if he wanted to turn me in, I suppose he wouldn’t’ve bothered dragging me to the noble spire to do it. “I hope you’ll forgive the untidiness.” Dravik catches up to me. “I don’t spend much time here if I can help it.” “Why?” He pauses. And then: “Memories.” I don’t know why he wants me to ride in the Supernova Cup or why he chose me in particular. I don’t know if I can trust him, even. But memories and the pain that keeps you away from them—that’s something I know well. A sudden barking resounds, metallic and simulated, and I watch a shiny thing dart down the hall toward us—a robot in the approximate shape of a medium-size dog. It’s made of smooth gold, but one leg and sections of its torso have been replaced with rusting, mismatched parts—doodled on with long-faded holostickers and childish laser artwork. Its ears clank against its head as it comes to a stop before Dravik’s feet, wagging its rusted tail in a frenzy. “Ah.” Dravik looks down, his smile ever-so-slightly bitter. “So he’s kept you alive this long, has he?” The robot-dog barks and circles Dravik’s shoes. It’s strange but less intimidating than the inbred pets that haunt noble shoulders—and far less intimidating than the man at my side. I extend one slow hand to it, and it looks up at me with polished sapphire eyes, sniffing my palm warily. “Hello,” I whisper. “I’m Synali.” The dog growls, metal pulling back to reveal mother-of-pearl teeth. “Be quiet.” Dravik scoffs, then looks to me. “Pay it no mind. It’s a relic of a bygone era, nothing more.” “Master.” I startle as a white wraith emerges from the gloom: an old man, his face paler than vellum and his gray hair a cloudy shock flying in every direction. He’s so gaunt, it looks as if he’s been eaten away from the inside—only skin and bones left. In stark contrast to his chaotic hair, his breeches and tunic are painstakingly neat and his posture is immaculate. “You’ve returned, Master Dravik,” he croaks with a smile. I swear I see Dravik wince at the title. “That I have, Quilliam. Is the guest room ready?” “Yes.” Quilliam turns his papery smile on me. “Everything fit for a young miss is within. Oh, I am so thrilled to see Moonlight’s End receive guests once more—” “And the bunker?” Dravik asks. “I recalibrated the systems myself, master. There were quite a few cobwebs, and the visitor seemed rather hungrier than usual—” “Very good.” Dravik abruptly takes the vomit bag from my hand. “Please dispose of this, then prepare a light tea. Synali and I will take it in my office.” “As you wish.” He bows and trudges away into the dim maze of rooms, and Dravik wordlessly turns in the other direction, cane rapping as he motions for me to follow. The robot-dog trots fast on his heels—as much as he hates it, it seems rather loyal to him. “Do you usually have hungry visitors stay in your cobweb-filled bunker?” I ask, my eyes taking in every lush ancient painting we pass— Earth art. This “Moonlight’s End” place is so empty and dusty and still—it feels less a manse and more a tomb. “No.” Dravik chuckles. “I’m typically better mannered than that.” “Then why—” “You’ve had a very long day, Synali.” He cuts me off smoothly. “Or rather, a very long two months. Let us draw up a contract and then rest for the night—there’s much work to be done come morning.” He’s clearly avoiding the subject. I follow him into a room—a room made not of marble but wood. My mouth nearly falls open. Every metal is synthable depending on what elements the substations siphon off Esther, but you cannot synth trees—they take soil and space and time to grow. To the nobles, whitewood and the amber it gives is more precious than gold. Dravik’s office is made entirely of pre-War wood, old wood grown on Earth —rich, reddish stuff. It’s warmer than fire, more alive than metal, sleeker than marble, with spirals winding through the grain like coffee smoke in an ember sea. It’s the same wood as Mother’s pendant. She loved it, stroked it like the priests stroke their gem rosaries until it was worn smooth. My thumb works over the cross around my neck idly, tracing her imprints. “Please.” Dravik motions to an armchair just before a whitewood desk. “Sit.” I do—no dust on the armrests. This must be the room he uses most. A butterfly collection hangs on the wall like jeweled candies bunched in orderly rows, and real paper books cluster on the shelves in all their expensive, outdated glory. The robot-dog lays down on a fine carpet, sapphire eyes dimming in an approximation of rest. Before I have the chance to settle, Dravik speaks. “Your father had your mother killed.” The warmth of the room fades. I try to say something, but the words stick like swallowed ice. It’s a simple sentence. It should be simple to hear, to process and put aside—it’s truth—but the hounds of memory strain their leashes at it… Blood pooling on the tin floor, the hot salt smell of it, her black hair wet with it— “Your father killed your mother, did he not?” “Stop,” I say quietly, “saying it.” The dog lifts its head at my tone and growls again, but Dravik’s voice goes stern. “Enough, you silly thing. My apologies, Synali—I’d forgotten how long the wound lasts when fresh.” Forgotten. Implying he knows what it feels like to lose his mother? I stare at him—no tells, no lip-licks or flicker of the eyes. Lesser nobles frequented Madam Beldeaux’s brothel—merchant types barely related to the lowest of barons—but the higher they went in station, the harder they became to read. The Nova-King’s court trains them all whether they like it or not, and it’s trained Dravik very, very well; I can’t read him in the slightest. He pushes a blank piece of vellum across to me with his ring-drenched fingers. No vis signatures, no screens—real physical contracts, impossible to hack and harder to trace. “Name your terms,” he says. “We will each retain a copy signed by the other person. If either of us breaks the contract, we may take our copy to the police and implicate them in treason. Your treason would be killing a member of the nobility.” “And yours?” “Attempting to destroy a House—something only the king is permitted to do. ‘Assuming the responsibilities of the crown without leave of the throne,’ I believe it’s called.” I snort. “Contract or not, the police never arrest people like you. You have friends in high places.” “The ‘high places’ shunned me long ago.” Lies again. Or the truth? It’s maddening that I can’t tell with him—it’s like staring at a gray-eyed wall. I pick up a laser-quill from his inkwell, hovering the nib over the paper. “I might not win. Anything. I could go out there on the first match and die.” “You won’t.” “How can you be so sure of that?” “Before she died, my mother told me stories of the Knight’s War.” The quiet manse pulses silence. Dravik’s gaze goes past my shoulder to the doorway, and I look back, but there’s no one there. His face says someone is. “The knights of the War were the greatest riders to ever exist. Legendary. Even in their rudimentary steeds, they accomplished unmatched feats of ease and prowess on the battlefield. Their mastery cannot be rivaled today by any modern rider—or so they say. Do you know why?” I frown at the cold fireplace. “Because they were desperate to survive. To kill the enemy.” His mouth crinkles with a smile. “I thought so, too. But Mother says otherwise.” “‘Says’? You just told me your mother’s dead.” “She is. Fourteen years gone.” “You meant to use past tense, then.” He tears his gaze from the doorway. “No—I did not. My mother still says many things to me.” My sputter drains to a hiss. “You’re a lunatic.” “And you’re a murderer.” Dravik smiles brighter. “But that’s neither of our faults. Our fathers made us this way, did they not?” He’s mad, but he’s not wrong. Father is why I’m here. I’ve used cruel men to my advantage. I’ve used egotistical men to my advantage. But this will be my first time using a madman. My fist clenches around the quill. My hand makes each painful letter: SYNALI EMILIA WOSTER. It’s fitting that House Hauteclare’s death warrant is signed with Mother’s last name, but the gnawing feeling of having signed my life away to a noble lingers. Dravik signs his contract as Dravik vel Lithroi. The surname rings a faint bell…but as I’m thinking, I’m startled by the sudden clatter of a tea tray rolling into the room. The phantomlike Quilliam comes to my side with a plate, upon which a small cake slathered in frosting and sugared flowers rests. His watery old eyes glow in the single candle flame flickering atop it. I pivot to Dravik. “This—” “I had much time to read your file,” he says. “I was saddened to learn the day of your death would have also been the day of your birth.” I can’t move. I can’t do anything but breathe in the smell of baking, of wax, of memories. “I don’t need your pity.” “Not pity—tradition. In this house, birthdays are celebrated.” He looks up at a painting of two deer chasing each other. “They always were.” Quilliam nods enthusiastically for me to take a fork. “It’s two months late, but…happy birthday, Miss Synali. I hope the taste is to your liking.” I grip the silver tines tightly. After a moment of silence, Dravik stands. “I think Quilliam and I will retire for the night. You’ll find your room at the end of this hall, by the centaur statue. Your vis has been sent the bio- key. Breakfast is at seven. We will see you tomorrow, then.” Dravik nods and Quilliam bows before they leave in cane-step and shuffle-step, the robot-dog trailing behind them. I stare at the melting candle alone. No one in their right mind would leave a stranger unsupervised in their private office. He either has surveillance or…he trusts me. Ridiculous. This gesture of kindness is a ploy. How many commoners have I seen fall to bribery, to displays without substance? Mother fell for Father’s promises to take care of her. I know all that, and yet still I reach for the cake as one might reach for the heart in someone’s chest, and I pull a chunk out. Another. Crush it between my fingers. It’s airy and delicate and refined—noble to the core. I tear it apart. Eat so fast I bite my tongue. A noise comes out of me that is neither sob nor laugh, and the taste is blood and buttercream and the realization I can’t see her until it’s over. Until all seven of Mother’s killers in House Hauteclare have paid, I will live. I will train as an animal does. I will devour them all. OceanofPDF.com –9. Vermis vermis ~is, m. 1. a worm On his thirteenth birthday, the discarded boy with spun-gold hair was given a name by his father—Rain. It was a word with a strange sound, and so the boy asked what rain was, and his father answered, “A thing that falls but never breaks.” It was their own private name—the children in the assassin guild called the Spider’s Hand went by colors and numbers or, if they were particularly close to one another, “sister” and “brother.” To his siblings and his instructors at the assassin’s guild, he was Violet-Five, but to his father—in the quiet moments they met for further training—he was Rain. It was strange that Rain was getting extra training at all; his brothers and sisters were allowed to sleep at ten. He asked his father about this one night, and the old man put down the dagger he was polishing. “The archons have high hopes for you.” The archons? The nine determiners of the Spider’s Hand’s every move? “Why? I’ve done nothing special. Green-Seven has completed far more contracts this year, and Red-Twelve took a baron last week—” A flash of old fingers, and the dagger slashed past Rain’s ear and into the center dot of the burlap target thirty feet behind him. His father looked to him, mouth wrinkled and dour. “An assassin’s worth is measured in neither quantity nor quality; it is measured in potential.” Rain only began to understand what his father meant two years later. What few contracts he had came sporadically and very…specifically. There seemed to be a particular noble House his killings were serving. Which House was not clear, but it had to be a powerful one—the sort that could keep an assassin of the Spider’s Hand on permanent retainer. He was jealous of his brothers and sisters at first—of their constant contracts and victories and stories of the hunt—until the funerals began. Green-Seven was riddled with holes by his prey’s hard-light pistol. Red- Twelve miscalculated maintenance routines and was vented into space as she hid in the walls of a debris compactor. Every month brought a new accident, a new death. Every month brought a younger spider to take their place, just as Rain and his siblings had taken another’s so long ago. He was seventeen when the youngest of them, Yellow-Eight, died. Blood streaked down the hall of the bunker, still wet from when the webmakers brought him in on the stretcher. It was strange to see—not the blood of prey but from one of their own. Rain stared at it for many long minutes, at his reflection in the wetness, until a webmaker shooed him away. His sister Violet-Two found Rain in the canteen, sitting alone at a table. She touched him on the shoulder, her gaze misty. Fearing he wouldn’t be able to control himself in front of her, he tried to get up, but she plunked down a glass of ale and a cup of their daily pills. Her eyes darted to the instructors eating and the webmakers posted along the walls, and he understood—as one spider understood another—that she wanted to tell him something, but the adults hated it when they speculated, and it didn’t help that everyone in the Web could lip-read. Slowly, he downed the pills and took a sip of ale, and Violet-Two didn’t speak until the last instructor in the canteen looked away from them. Then she muttered into her own ale, “Everything’s changed.” “Changed how?” She wiped foam off her lips. “Yellow-Eight died under a strange contract. It’s not just nobles killing one another anymore. It’s not even rival merchants or corporate interests. They’ve started taking out contracts against commoners—well-armed commoners.” “How well armed?” Violet-Two shook her head, and that meant very well. She took another slow sip. “You and the other House spiders are the only ones doing noble jobs anymore. The rest of us are being sent all over the substations to pick off…resistance. That’s the only way I can describe it.” “Who are the prey?” “Unionizers, philosophy parlors, Under-ring gangs, cults and atheists and black-market medics—anyone beyond the grip of the king and the church. Red-Ten and I compared notes; they all have ties to a group calling themselves ‘Polaris.’ Green-One thinks it won’t be long until we see them on the Station proper—Under-ring first, then Low Ward.” Rain gnawed on his lip. Green-One was the best of them—the oldest, the smartest. If he said it was so, it would be so. But confusion still tore at him. “Why now?” “I’m not sure. Green-One says they’re too well organized. That someone has to be helping them.” Someone with money, she meant. No, more than that—influence and schooling, too. Someone…noble. “Which House?” he asked. Violet-Two shook her head again, but this time it was slow and fearful and unknowing. OceanofPDF.com 9. Feritas feritās ~ātis, f. 1. (of animals) wildness 2. (of men) brutality I stare out the window from my new bed. An entire room to myself. The sunrise over Dravik’s manse is artificial—pink-gold-green projected on the noble spire’s shallow horizon—but it’s beautiful all the same. I understand now why Mother wanted me to see it. I open my vis and set the timer for one minute. I wrap my arms around myself, a phantom memory of a hug. Squeeze, then squeeze harder. She will never get to see this—Father made sure of that. He tried to make sure I’d never see this, either. Ten. Nine. Eight… Did he hate me that much? Seven. Six. Five… My collarbone scar throbs. No. Four. Three. Two… If he hated us, if he loved us…if he felt anything for us at all, he would’ve come and killed us himself. One. Tears wiped. Feet on cold marble floor. The manse halls are quiet and empty, dust swirling in the watery sun. Nothing moves but me. Nothing breathes, even as the grand family paintings and statues and gilded furniture shout about a gorgeous life. The stillness is rank and eerie as I stare up at a portrait of a green-eyed boy faintly smiling down at the nothingness around him, at nothing but bones. Moonlight’s End isn’t a tomb—it’s a carcass, long hollowed out by a much bigger beast. My footsteps freeze at a sudden scent drifting down the hall: the warm mull of an oven. The kitchens must be nearby. If I close my eyes, I can almost taste it—bread and laughter and softness. Not until it’s over. My contractual demands are as follows: One—within twenty-four hours of me winning a match, one of the seven will die, and Dravik will vis me the evidence of their involvement in Mother’s murder. Two—he will never require me to do anything but ride. And three—when the Supernova Cup ends, he will ensure my painless death. Dravik has only one demand: when I’m asked who I am by anyone, I must give my full name—Synali von Hauteclare. Because that is my name now. Dravik’s vis projects my birth certificate over the polished breakfast table. SYNALI EMILIA WOSTER has been replaced with SYNALI VON HAUTECLARE. My father’s name and mine—connected. Like an uncontrollable twitch, I chuck the nearest glass of water at the holograph, and it shorts out in a shower of blue pixels. Dravik doesn’t even look up from his eggs and toast, his sandy hair carefully combed over and his cravat a stark bleach white. The water pools in the center of the table as I take a seat opposite him. “How did you get the bloodline registrar to change it?” I ask. “How did you manage to kill your father?” Dravik retorts coolly, and the answer lingers on my lips: threats and blackmail, bleeding and bruising and drugs—anything. I shut up if I had to. I begged if I had to. I took the beatings and did the beatings and watched the beatings from outside my own body looking down on the bed, but I say none of that. Dravik smiles brightly over his teacup. “Mmm. I suppose we all have our own ways of getting results, don’t we?” Through the grand breakfast room windows, that dying garden lingers, yellow grasses and sickly white trees. The smell of fresh coffee in the air is dizzying. Quilliam steps in and wipes the water off the table slowly. Why bother changing my name to Hauteclare at all? The Lithroi name would be so much simpler, draw so much less attention. Unless… “You want the court to know a bastard is riding for you,” I say. Dravik summarily ignores my conjecture. “Judging by the cake’s appearance this morning, you destroyed more of it than you ate. You’ll need energy for training—do try to eat your breakfast.” “Will the nobles even let a bastard like me ride?” I press. “They won’t have a say in the matter. Did you like Rax?” “Like?” “I saw a little video of your pre-match confrontation two months ago. It’s fortunate you wore your helmet, or he would have become a problem. He still may.” I scoff. “I doubt that. He seemed about as clever as a bag of metal shavings.” “One does not need to be routinely intelligent to achieve victory, Synali —one merely needs to strike when their opponent blunders. And he certainly seemed to rile you.” I don’t like what he’s insinuating. “I can control myself.” Dravik hums lightly. The robot-dog sits at his feet. I aim a tentative grin at it, but it puts its head on its paws and ignores me. With the table dry again, Quilliam delivers my breakfast plate piled high with eggs and meat, though I’m less concerned with the contents and more with the constant sniffing he seems to make. “Is Quilliam sick?” I ask. “Allergies, I believe.” “All the dust, probably. It’s a lot for one old man to clean.” There’s a beat. Dravik didn’t bake that cake—Quilliam did. “I could help him.” Dravik smiles thinly. “If you have any energy left after your full day of training, feel free.” I frown and push my eggs around on my plate. The dog cocks its head at me. Oh, so now I have your attention? When Dravik gets up to refill his tea from the samovar, I drop a clump of egg to the floor. The dog instantly trots over, sniffing the dust around the bit before inhaling it whole. “Can you even taste that?” At my whisper, the dog starts to growl, but another dangled piece of egg and it’s back to cocking its head curiously. I snicker. “You’re so fickle.” Dravik returns, the dog skittering under his chair once more. “Quilliam will be in charge of your diet for the next two months. Our priority is to build the minimum amount of muscle required to operate a steed as quickly and safely as possible.” Rax comes to mind in all his marble-carved vainglory. The way his body waited beneath mine, tense and blistering hot… I curl my lip. “I’m sure riding isn’t entirely about bulging muscles.” “No,” Dravik a

Heavenbreaker by Sara Wolf (PDF)

Document Details

Tags

Related

Summary

Full Transcript

Upgrade to continue