River’s End ch 63: Curiosity is Glue

Rescuing Rosa from that planet would have been easy, but Valon doesn’t want to. He wants to accomplish multiple tasks at once. It’s more efficient that way.

It’s riskier, too. He wants to confront the River’s End. Rosa is back on that ship now. Her confusion comes to me like a scent on the breeze. My brother is there, so I stay downwind, far enough they can’t see me.

I can’t see them either, not with any clarity. It’s okay. In a few hours, I’ll see them in person. If things go according to plan.

When have things ever gone according to plan? I don’t even know what the whole plan is. Valon won’t tell me. He says I’ll know when I need to, but not before in case it leaks to my brother.

It’s punishment for reaching out to Rosa when he warned me not to. He claims it’s not, it’s simply a precaution. In the meantime, I have to trust him, and I’m trying, but how many days has it been? It’s hard to tell without a sun.

I wouldn’t be able to see its light anyway.

Each moment, I am ready. Time continues to drip, and with every falling droplet, I’m even more ready. I sharpen my knives. Adjust my armor. I don’t dare eat, but hunger doesn’t visit me either. I stretch and practice moving in this gravity.

When I’m sure no one is looking, I let the Lorsknu show me what they will. I don’t understand a tenth of it, and they react too fast for me to say I have any real control over them. It’s like putting a leash on something big like an Earth-na elephant or a Shlykrii-na norahn.

They drift through the walls, toward Nalquii sitting in the control room alongside Valon.

‘No, stop!’

They don’t listen. This is like when Rosa would sneak us into forbidden halls. She would keep going further than I knew we should. I always saw the patrols first. Sometimes, she was close enough I could snatch her back. On other occasions, I couldn’t alert her without giving us away. Still other times, she deliberately ignored my warning. This last usually happened when Kunai was there, and especially if Dollii wasn’t.

This is worse than that. When Kunai kept walking, I kept hiding. Even if he told, and he usually did, they never found me. I snuck from one refuge to the next until I reached safety, but leaving the Lorsknu to take the fall for their own actions now won’t work. There’s no separating their presence from mine. If they’re caught, so am I, and I can’t pull them back.

“You planted evidence that a force from Surra would attack Grenswa. How do you plead?”

I stop trying to retreat. The Apex Court within Seallaii’s capitol looms around me—peach marble columns and huge, arched windows ringing hundreds of tiered rows. I impend over it all on the high dais, focused on the center of the room, same as everyone else.

“The statement is true,” Brikla of the Bukuu says. By design, she appears tiny in a spacious, glowing circle of white. The acoustics steal the power of her voice.

At an extensive wooden desk in the front row, a councilor reads another charge. “Allying with a nomadic nation of elitists native to Surra, you placed a transmitter on the person or baggage of Sarquant Rose of the royal house Mellecallii and Menyaza to ensure said attackers found the hidden capital island of Grenswa.”

A grin pulls at the wrinkles on the elderly woman’s cheeks, though her hands shake. “This statement is also true.”

My mouth opens, and the voice that emerges is a thousand times more powerful than hers. Even the walls tremble at it. “Since you do not care to deny these actions, do you intend to defend them?”

Curiosity is glue. This is Silvika. Nalquii watches these proceedings through her, and I watch through Nalquii. I absolutely should not be here, but even if I could get the Lorsknu to disconnect us, to let me go back to my room and be a quiet Sojourner child waiting for Valon’s instructions, I want to see this.

Rosa and I went to Grenswa because of the evidence this old woman planted. It seemed like coincidence that we ran into Honored Elder Brikla at the village of Vefii. I would never have suspected her of hiding something on us. I should have seen her do it.

If I had, we could have stopped the attack. Rosa wouldn’t have been abducted. So many would still be alive, including the King of Grenswa. He would have been able to meet his grandchild.

The guilt is acid in my throat. It burns all the way to my fingers. How will this honored elder justify all that she caused?

She looks directly at me—at Silvika—fire in her periwinkle eyes. She is a frail crone, back bent and knees feeble. I should fear nothing from her, but this gaze promises danger yet unseen.

One of the four stoic guards at the edge of her circle tightens his grip on his glaive.

Silvika’s voice reverberates in every cell. ‘Wait. I will hear her words.’

The honored elder can’t have heard this inner instruction, but as if she does, she lifts her chin. “The princess plays at being queen when she’s not old enough to remember anything of significance.”

On the far left of the first-row desk, a familiar figure shoots to his feet so fast, his councilor’s apprentice bun nearly unravels. It shines platinum touched by the sun’s gold. Kunai. “Silvika of the royal house Mellecallii is now of age, and her coronation was completed three days ago. She is a full, ruling dayota with all the power accompanying and respect due that title.”

Honored Elder Brikla does not look at him. “I didn’t expect the spore to be able to speak in such long sentences. Send my congratulations to the Lokmas.”

Amusement wells in me. Kunai is definitely a fungus spore.

Silvika sighs. “Sit, Accessory Councilor. I am not the one on trial.”

“Are you not?” Brikla cackles. “Your finest credentials have everything to do with my righteous actions.”

Silvika sits forward. “Then the court listens, Elder. Impart your wisdom.”

“In an era even before my own, power belonged to the clan. A clan supported its members, and those with the strength or wisdom to best other clans stood at the top. Then, someone realized a child of two powerful clans would have twice the strength. They added a third and fourth. Meldzan. Lekatorh. Calarat. Lii Brin. Shortened to Mellecallii, the royal house.

“Yet, simply being the strongest was not enough. All must recognize the superiority of one and stop squabbling over their own power. This was when a genius offered a cornered young prince the means to make his father’s dreams of a united world come true.”

Silvika’s chin sits upon her fist. “Will you try to invoke the carte blanche my ancestor should never have given River? Or do you claim my authority invalid because of River’s means of obtaining it, for that is a very old argument your side has lost many times.”

“The winning side concedes that River’s method of crushing enemies and pawns alike was wrong. Yet, even after his condemnation, he continued without restraint. You perpetuate the last of his crimes.”

Silvika allows herself a private tsk, ignored by the mic that turns the rest of her words to thunder. “Now you would deny my entourage their right to exist?”

“These mykta surrounding me and those vedia at your back are captives within your mind, doomed to protect you or die with you, charged with always agreeing lest you hear their traitorous thoughts.”

“You know nothing of the bond.”

Still, this counter-charge has made her uncomfortable. Hidden within her flowing skirt, Silvika’s ankles cross.

The honored elder scoffs. “Don’t I? When vedia were yet a dream, my people were taken. I watched siblings and cousins devolve into dribbling insanity, failed experiments. Then others became successful experiments, prisoners forevermore, and I swore revenge. Not on River, who never understood right from wrong as many geniuses cannot. But there were those who protected him, those who allowed him to be, and those who continue to use him, even in death.”

“The matter is a magma flow within you.” Silvika waves. “Yet again, these are old arguments, ever lost.”

“I am old myself, and I have never had the vast resources of a powerful clan. It has taken me this long to find the blade that can impale the tyranny of River.”

The words echo with a different voice, a coarser accent.

The tyranny of River will end.

You will destroy Seallaii.

At the base of my skull, there’s a prick, then itch, like an insect bite.

Silvika’s lips twitch. “I will grant that there are still mistakes from that era we must cull.”

A second scene imposes over the first, as clear and immediate. The two are wholly separate as if my left and right eyes see different worlds. In one, I am Silvika, a judge upon the court dais. I rise from my chair. My dress has the weight of a small moon.

“Yet, you disappoint me, Elder. Surely, your reasons are wiser than pithy revenge against those already gone.”

In the second, I face the new ruler of my world. She wears the scales of a black scyuen, and chains stream from her back like wings, disappearing in long, sterile hallways. She is fire, a pulsing quasar.

My flesh is formed of star specks. I stumble back.

Outside, our honored elder speaks on. “When one innocent vedia, a mother with a child swaddled on her back, lay dying in my arms because her royal had perished, I begged spies of the River’s End to save her. And they did. More than this world has ever bothered to do for countless generations of vedia.”

Inside, I retreat another pace, but my calf hits a low wall. A fence rattles at my back.

Silvika looks past me. ‘Care to explain, Nalquii?’

Her vedia approaches the twisted, barbed wire at my back. ‘The boy has a revolutionary knack for not dying.’

‘Apparently.’ Silvika releases something I would call a grunt if it were any less authoritative or delicate. Somewhere unseen, a massive door squeaks open. ‘Kietyn.’

I dash left, but a chain wraps my arm, then both arms, pulling them in opposite directions. I strain against them, losing starry skin.

This is Silvika’s mindscape, a world of cages drawn by clean, perfect lines. This is how she can cope with having dozens in her entourage—strict order and boundaries. I am a kernel of dirt on her polished floor. I won’t best her here.

Outside, the councilor calls for a verdict, and Silvika gives it. “Brikla of the Bukuu, you will be executed via a quell per tradition of Grenswa, whose king your actions have killed.”

Two councilors jump like Kunai did, and the older one protests, “Milady, she is the second eldest remaining in the world. Is it not a waste to snuff out this wealth of experience?”

“Clearly, her wisdom has soured. Would you explain to the Grenswa-nas now watching why we would treasure rotten fruit?”

Inside, Silvika’s chains grow hooks and gauge into my sides. They’re not real. This body isn’t real. They can’t hurt it. But they do. Any thought of movement shimmies them deeper into my core. Warmth ekes out, and cold seeps in, biting at my vital organs.

Silvika leans in close. ‘You will remain absolutely still.’

Outside, someone explains that a quell is a place of chaotic gravity on Grenswa, where they throw the worst of criminals to be simultaneously torn and pulverized. We don’t have one on Seallaii, but we have a weapon that can recreate its effects.

The honored elder’s knees and palms hit the floor. Tears stream down her face. The councilor pleads for mercy. With a silent voice, so do I, but not for her. For me, slowly being ripped apart.

“I speak for billions,” Silvika decrees. “I cannot be lenient on one who would put those billions in peril.”

‘You’re to blame, too,’ I hiss. ‘She planted evidence, but it was true. Grenswa was attacked.’

A knife slips from its sheath, unseen in either view. The sound is from a third scene with no light. My real body. Footsteps draw near, but I can’t move.

More footsteps. A leap. A struggle.

Valon’s voice. “Nal, stop.”

“How dare you.” The words slip from Nalquii’s tongue, but I hear them louder within, synced with Silvika’s lips.

‘Do not worry about the Sojourner’s life, Kietyn. He is a traitor.’

The knife squelches into flesh. Valon screams, but he doesn’t let go.

‘Grenswa was attacked,’ I repeat. ‘You had evidence that it would be, and all you sent was your child sister.’

‘Our uncle succeeded in countless similar missions, but he may have betrayed our mother. I no longer trust him, and rightly so. You are evidence of that.’

In one version of outside, an aged voice screams on and on.

In another, Nalquii begs Valon to let go. The knife sounds again.

‘How old was Sjaealam on the first of those missions?’

‘The Grenswa-nas revere him. Regardless of Rose’s age, a sarquant had more chance of surviving than anyone else sent with so little fanfare. I would not send more and reveal my hand to Surra.’

Valon hits the floor. Fabric rips, his last attempt at holding back Nalquii—or Kietyn in Nalquii’s body.

I still can’t move. The knife rises directly over my heart and descends.

‘Please, Rosa. I don’t know what you can do, but do something.’

Within, her starry arms wrap around me, and she yanks on the chains. Our hearts beat in tandem, a drumroll, and with each staccato note, power pours into me.

Without, my hand moves on its own. It catches Nalquii’s wrist and wrenches it behind her back. The knife falls to her other hand, but I capture that one, too. A foot bends her knees. My own knee slams her lower spine with a sickening crack.

I’d never outmuscle Kietyn in his own body, but I am stronger than Nalquii. I uncurl her fingers. She launches sideways and rounds on me, but the knife transfers to my grip. They see that, and after one blocked kick, they hesitate.

Inside, Rosa’s touch slowly dissolves the chains. Another figure forms a wall between us and her sister. The pattern of his stars is as familiar as the sound of my own breath. He dodges but never gives ground, and Silvika’s chains barely miss him again and again. He grabs one and whips it back at her.

It falls limp, and she scowls. ‘Rodent. You are the last of the traitorous Abaeyoi.’

He glances back at me. ‘Not the last, apparently.’

Curiosity is still glue. I feel the simmer of his questions, and they slow him, distract him. The chains trap him, first a leg, then an arm. He twists to avoid others, but stretched as he is, he can’t evade the one aimed at his neck. He chokes out curses at her, vile words in a conglomeration of languages. I hope she understands them.

I’m free, but fear roots me in place. I’ll only make things worse.

Rosa glides to my brother’s side and presses her dissolving touch to the binding around his throat. ‘Sister, let go of my vedia.’

‘Your vedia?’ Her gaze cuts to me. ‘Your faux mykta. How did this happen?’

Fog seeps from between my Rosa and my brother. Its voice resembles an avalanche. ‘Not even the mightiest of rulers can dictate every detail of the universe.’ The cloud forms a woman with small, pointed features and a vedia’s chin-length bangs.

Silvika stiffens. ‘Mother’s favorite. Alaysq, how are you alive?’

‘Little Sil.’ Alaysq wipes at the start of tears in Silvika’s eyes and smooths her hair. ‘Your mother is disappointed to see you fight with your sister.’

‘I do not fight with Rose. I battle the evil that has attached itself to her.’

Beneath Rosa’s touch, a chain snaps, and my brother kicks at both Alaysq and Silvika. He misses, hauled back by the bonds on his arm and leg. These snake over him and constrict in one efficient twitch. A cry tinged with a grunt escapes him, then he hangs contorted and listless.

The chains might as well encircle my own chest for all I can breathe.

Rosa yelps. ‘Sister, please!’

Alaysq holds up a hand. ‘If you better knew the way of your own mind, you could protect him and keep him from misbehaving so much.’

‘Don’t lecture me while he’s dying,’ she growls. She moves with the grace of a scyuen, so different from the girl who started this adventure by tripping over an old woman.

I suppose Honored Elder Brikla did that on purpose.

Rosa cradles my brother. He’s a vedia, and the path strength travels between them is one way. She can take from him, but she can’t return the favor.

Without his influence, my body falters. Nalquii pounces. She and Kietyn require my full attention. Alaysq’s fog fills the space within anyway, concealing Rosa and my brother. She pushes me out of Silvika’s mindscape.

Probably the nicest thing she’s ever done for me.

I twist away from Nalquii not a moment too soon. She bounces off the wall behind me and comes again. I let her shoulder hit my chest, not my throat, and dance with her. The knife remains just out of her reach.

“Help Valon. If you can hear me, Nalquii, you need to help him. I know you love him.”

She chops my elbow and forces it to bend, bringing the knife closer. Its blade is long, thin, and nearly weightless. It’s not made for throwing, but I fling it anyway. It ricochets off the doorframe and clatters somewhere in the corridor.

Her weight shifts to follow, but I spin us and trap her against the wall. Valon lies motionless on the floor five paces behind me.

“If he bleeds out, we’ll have no one to pilot the ship.”

She grabs my shoulder, fingers like claws. I know the move. My collarbone will snap beneath her thumb if she has the hand strength to follow through. Before we can find out, I jam my knee beneath her ribs, and she doubles over.

“Kietyn, if I were the evil you think I am, I wouldn’t have thrown the knife away. I wouldn’t have needed it in the first place.”

My Lorsknu tiptoe over her skin. They lap up her terror and agony. Nalquii wants to run to Valon’s side. Kietyn won’t let her, but he doesn’t strike me either. He’s listening.

“We are so close to rescuing Rosa, but we can’t do that without him and without me. I can’t tell you the details of the plan, but Nalquii can. Ask her. Trust her.”

Moments grow into seconds, perhaps a whole minute with no sound but heavy breaths and heartbeats.

With a cascade of tears, Nalquii twists free and tosses herself at Valon. She calls for her sister, and they take him from the room.

There’s a lot I need to think about, but I’m exhausted. I find the bed and let the yewn flowers take my worries away.

***

The smell of antiseptic heralds Valon’s return. He stops in the middle of the room. If it were a picture, I’d say the artist wanted to imply everything should revolve around him, but I don’t think that’s what he feels. Hesitancy coats him like drying sap.

Sitting up on the bed, I greet him with, “I see you lived.”

“I am glad that remains consistent despite our different methods of physically seeing.”

“It’s an expression.” I stretch, and like a dapkie let out for a morning run, my Lorsknu scamper off to explore beyond the walls.

Brightness speckles my inner view, a multitude of lives hurdling through space. Rosa and my brother are among them. She called him her vedia. I’m not sure how to feel about that.

I leap to my feet. “The River’s End is right outside.”

“I know.” The hesitancy remains, clipping each syllable.

Vambrace half buckled, I pause and explore without moving. Several important details stand out. “Our engines are off. And the lights. I don’t feel them or hear their hum.”

“We fired at the River’s End, and they fired back.”

“I slept through that?”

“It was a brief battle.” He sighs, and the Lorsknu nibble at his resignation. It is sweet icing over something much denser. “We’re pretending to be helpless.”

I lift my brows and try to make it appear as if I’m looking at him. “Before deciding on this plan, you were absolutely sure they wouldn’t just blow us up and move on, right?”

He limps a step, two steps, three, and fidgets with the abandoned buckles on my forearm. “I made it obvious we are a Sojourner vessel.”

“Except for the part where you fired at them.”

A laugh and a wince share equal space in his tone. “Traveling the stars often does not permit one to stick as closely to an ideal as you seem to think. They have started pulling us aboard, so be ready.”

He finishes the buckles, but I catch his hand before he can pull away.

“Besides the obvious, what’s bothering you?”

“Something best not learned right before we board an enemy ship.” He sighs again, and the Lorsknu shy from the bitter exhaustion in it. Where exactly did Kietyn cut him? How bad is the wound, even now after medical treatment?

He has a hundred reasons not to trust me and a thousand he needs to.

I tighten my grip and hope it comes across as reassuring. “Ignorance is a blade. Give me its hilt before we go into battle.”

Still he lingers, mulling over how to begin.

I give him a starting point. “If it’s about what happened with Silvika, she’s already condemned me to death. How much worse could it be?”

He chuckles, but it’s parched, lacking any amusement. “She did not know of your brother’s existence. Aside from a select few, no one did.”

“So, she now wants to kill him, too?” Involuntarily, my grasp constricts even further.

With a snort, he yanks his hand free, but the sound is another façade. He’s trying to play the part of his normal, snide self, but it’s taking too much effort. “She called for an immediate trial with River Guardian elders, and they opted for a more immediate solution.”

Something more immediate but not worse than death. Why is my stomach tying in knots? I’ve handled everything that princess—queen now—has thrown at me so far. My brother seems to share that fighting spirit. When I cried for help, he came with Rosa. I’m not sure if he’s friend or foe. Probably a little of both. But he’s one hundred percent family, the only family I have left.

Slowly, Valon explains, “Children born between the stars are supposed to be brought to the homeworld to have their DNA stored in the database, but even under normal circumstances, that can take years. The River’s End, the Citadel of Menyaza, this ship, any piece of River Guardian tech, they don’t know you, but they recognize your parents and give you the same privileges. Ishiyae has access to more than any other denizen of the River’s End, and the elders fear what he can do with it.”

I see the barricade at the end of this track, and I don’t like it. “They can’t take away his rights in the database because he isn’t in it to begin with.”

He clears his throat. “Legally, revoking those rights involves banishment—a misnomer that equals death anyway.”

I nod. Banishment is a paradox. They’ll kill you if they catch you on Seallaii, but it’s not like you can leave. No devices listen to you. Ishiyae has always lived between the stars, though. He’s in a better position to survive than most.

“They cannot tell the system to banish someone who does not legally exist, so they banished Kel.” The hesitancy is back, eking through all façades like the most virulent acid. He doesn’t want to tell me this.

I reach toward him and find his shoulder. He flinches, starts to retreat, then forces himself to stay and tolerate my touch. I’m a River Guardian, too, and I need this human contact. To feel that he is real and these aren’t just voices in my head. I can guess what he means, but I need to hear him say it.

After the long gap, his answer flies too quick, words blurring into one another. “The banishment applies to all Kel’s descendants.”

The words he doesn’t say hover in the air between us. I can ever return to Seallaii, not as long as the River Guardians exist. After I rescue Rosa, I’ll have nowhere to go.

My voice is weak. “The Lokmas would adopt me.”

“The tech will read your true self. Could you manage not to touch anything lest it profiled and reported you?” As if to prove the point, he steps back, leaving my hand hovering in empty air.

“Ishiyae is working with Rosa. He might need River Guardian privileges to help her.” These words, too loud and high, are a front. Inside, they’re different: I might need River Guardian privileges to help her. Bit by bit, authorities chip at every part of me that makes me useful.

“Arguments are useless.” True steel returns to his tone, stiffer than I’ve yet heard it. “What is done is done, though so far from the homeworld, the ships might take a few days to apply the changes. Just keep moving forward.” He turns toward the door, silk robe swishing.

I catch the back of it. “You said get ready, but you still haven’t told me the plan.”

He doesn’t face me, doesn’t look at me. Of course he doesn’t. I am a shadow fading against dawn’s light. Who notices those?

“Nalquii and I will be captured by the boarding party. You, Sazlii, and my scyuen will sneak out, scout the ship, and report back to me to determine how our objective will best be accomplished.”

There’s no emotion. None. Not even to the Lorsknu. He’s hiding something.

“Our objective is still to rescue Rosa and the Grenswa-nas.” I don’t pitch it as a question, but it is. I have to make sure we’re on the same page.

He forces a smile into his answer. “Of course.”

There’s more to it than that, but instead I ask, “What if they kill you and Nalquii on the spot?”

“Then my scyuen will eat those idiots. Hurry and find a hiding spot.”

Continued in chapter 64: Asking Nothing in Return

Thank you for reading!