Alliance ch 25: Beautiful Monsters

With two whacks of a wooden spoon, a swarm of flying insects became a puddle dripping down the cloth wall of a soup booth. The stall keeper, an elderly Zalerit woman, stirred in the gelatinous remains, ladled out four steaming bowls, and placed them before her guests.

She peeked sideways at Xlack. “No charge, even for the added protein.”

He scooped up his bowl and tiny spoon in silence, not looking at her directly either. Recognition fizzled around the Zalerit, narrowing her four eyes. In sunlight, Adapt material had a leaden appearance, and whether she knew exactly who he was or not, she associated this group with the only ones allowed to wear it. She wouldn’t expect Aylata to pay. They dealt in law, not money, and the law said to compensate these guardians with whatever they needed.

Rifo dropped a few small silver nuggets on the counter. In lieu of official currency, the Adjuvants had brought precious material to trade. “We can’t just take yer food.”

After a brief hesitation and another glance at Xlack, she swept the silver into her apron pocket and busied herself stirring.

Rifo leaned forward on his tall stool. “Understand, we’re buying yer silence with that, too.”

She stilled, then spoke slowly. “How likely is it someone will ask me if I met a young man with hair so red, I first thought he was on fire?”

Rifo pulled his cowl further forward. Hooded ponchos were popular fashion in Tsira and a lot less conspicuous than this foursome.

Challenge prowled in Twi’s grin. “It seems like the kind of thing to gossip about unprompted.”

“Could be,” she crooned. “Yes, a boy with eyes the hue of a muddy lake and a girl with golden-silver hair. Not Aylata but wearing a colorful version of their garb.”

Xlack’s spoon paused. Twi had passed for his kind in Lakol six months ago. It hadn’t occurred to him that Zalerits here would notice his party’s colors.

The woman’s curiosity sparked like a dry summer storm too wild to be held back by her caution. “I wouldn’t have to speculate in gossip if you plied my wonder.”

With a nod at Rifo and Lanox, Twi inclined over the counter and spoke softer than the breeze. “We are followers of Vozin.”

Xlack choked on his soup.

As the woman whirled, Twi rushed on. “He fled beyond the Zakernii nebula, to our homeworlds. There are many of us.”

“You are Magni,” the woman breathed. “The chrysolite in you says so.”

To see that unique color when most Zalerits couldn’t, she must have had a generous amount of Magni heritage herself. Unease coiled in Xlack’s toes as he studied her wiry arms, the wrinkles under her chin, her feathery brow line—anywhere a shadow might fight with her glow. Lightcurvers could not produce light of their own.

It was sunny, though, with a stifling warmth for so late in autumn. The trees had already begun to curl in upon themselves and burrow into the ground to escape the coming winter, offering less shade. If she could glow, there wasn’t much reason for her to.

“Have you come to liberate Zalerit?” She waved her spoon in a wild gesture, filling the air with the oddly mixed scents of sugar and toe jam.

Xlack lost his appetite.

Twi folded her hands. “You see the need for your silence.”

“Are you the girl that Ravi Ekymé stole from Aylata Tower?” The woman glanced at Xlack again, and triumph and concern peeled a coy smile. “Missing for six months, then turns up at my stand with legends from across the nebula. What beautiful monsters you turned out to be.” Clearing her throat, she adjusted her grip on her spoon and pointed it at them. “Why are none of you eating your soup?”

Lanox scrunched her nose, her slit nostrils flaring wide. “Ya don’t know where those bugs have been.”

“Who has time to track them? Some kooky scientist? They’d tell you the same thing I would: Their good protein will put meat on your bones and muscles in your…well, they give you good muscles.” She poked Lanox’s arm with the end of her ladle.

Rifo guffawed. “Meat on our bones? It sounds like ya are prepping us to be sliced up and cooked.”

The woman set a filled, pungent cup alongside his bowl. “Either you’re the eater or you’re the eaten. Are you going to eat the soup?”

Rifo warily lifted his bowl and took a cautious slurp. A swallow led to a smile, then a bigger gulp and a bigger grin. Then the spice set in. Eyes wide, Rifo panted and scrambled for the cup.

“Wait!” Xlack warned, but his amaraq had already downed the drink and choked. Before he could grab the new cup in front of Lanox, Xlack caught his arm. “Strong alcohol. Little sips.”

He nodded, and Xlack released him. It was amusing to see them out of their element as he had been for the past half year, a nice change of pace. It would have been nicer had he not worried this would all come crashing down around him any moment.

This worry kept his laugh shallow. It kept him alert, kept his senses scouring their surroundings. When a Messenger approached the gate of the orchard behind them, eyes scanning the crowds, Xlack stood with a gesture for his teammates to stay put.

He crossed the street and approached a crinkled tree. “Lady Aliara.”

A tall girl ducked out of the tree’s sparse shadow, brows drawn over crescent eyes, high cheekbones, and lips glossed in obsidian. “Ravi Ekymé? Can you sense the magnitude of my relief? You didn’t sign your cryptic message telling me to come here.”

He shrugged. “You can’t resist a mystery, Cousin.”

“Great Uncle will be—”

“You can’t tell my father.”

She fixed him with a narrowed stare. “Can’t? Or shouldn’t?”

“Please don’t, Aliara.”

Her fog-like eyes ran over him, cataloging his differences. His attire was the most obvious: long, gray jacket concealing the absence of a clan pattern on his thigh. “You have not returned to us.”

“I need information.”

Thrill boiled within her, and the air swirled at her change in temperature. Her incredibly fine tresses were ever ready to dance at the slightest suggestion of a draft. “I don’t give away secrets. I exchange them.”

“An answer for an answer? Seems fair.” Some part of him had hoped she would blurt out all he needed, but that was unrealistic. He knew Aliara Yayin better than that.

She looped an arm through his. “Walk with me through the orchard. We’re a conspicuous pair standing here.”

Nodding, he allowed her to lead him along the cobblestone path between the trees as he formulated his question. Her Messenger escort fell into step behind them, as demure as she was a spectacle. Clear beads hung from her waist-scarf, sleeves, and hair, chiming with her every movement.

He decided to make his question as broad as possible. “What is Revel K’alaqk up to?”

“You must think me omniscient.”

He stretched out a grin. “You’ve collected more pieces of the mystery than anyone.”

“You flatter me, Great Cousin.” Heat flashed in her eyes, and she spoke through a tight sigh. “He has moved the capital from Kobolast to Reiceilako, where he builds a new Aylata Tower.”

Xlack’s forced smile fell. Reiceilako had been Drin Nar’s capital. As the only two emperors with Aylata heritage, it was already too easy to draw comparisons between that tyrant and Revel K’alaqk.

The pavers gave way to fine gravel, crunching beneath their slow steps as Aliara continued, “He has turned his wife into an icon and the Refraction Leaders into villains.”

“Dangerous propaganda.” Nothing remained of Xlack’s smile. Aylata were meant to be heroes. They protected the empire from outside threats like the Tradafin and unscrupulous miscreants that would destroy it from within. If people started believing they were the bad guys, it would make a Protector’s job that much harder. Cooperation would die. Rebellion would grow like a wildfire.

Why would K’alaqk want that?

“I’m sure you have a theory that fits it all together.”

She tsked, beads ringing as she shook her head. “My incomplete speculations aren’t for trade, especially as I know you would treat them as fact and rush off into a trap.”

“We’re not twelve anymore.”

“No, we aren’t. My turn to ask a question.” Her voice was the winter wind, her gaze just as cutting, and he looked away as a Mind Aylata should, eyes on his boots and Aliara’s sandals. Her feet stopped, and so did his. “Where have you been?”

“Tala mostly.” He shrugged, peeking at her. “Knalz. Have you heard what’s happening there? About Messengers killing off the native Magni hybrids? Abducting children?”

About Ject, he wanted to say, but the sentence wouldn’t form. Instead, he saw Ject leaping off the gala balcony. He heard Mystis saying Ject had nearly succeeded in killing Twi, Izeko saying Ject had been injured. The troopers had left him behind.

They wouldn’t have.

“This is the first I’ve heard of it. You’ve been involved in that?”

“I want to stop it.”

“So badly that you came here secretly.” Heat swirled around her again, and the tiniest of flames danced across her lashes, their reflections flickering in her eyes. “So badly that you’ll throw the cause away even after abandoning Rell for it.”

Smoke coiled up from her sleeves. The air reeked of the brine of her Talent, but it couldn’t penetrate the empty, howling cold that filled him. Rell would have just turned a year old. How big was he now?

“Beastlings die when you leave them like that,” she went on.

The cold grew into an ache, a blade of ice between his ribs. “I left him in Dr. Kitza’s care.”

“Doesn’t matter. His mother gave him to you. He won’t take food from anyone else unless you’re there to approve it.”

Xlack closed his eyes, jaw locked and twitching. He knew that. It was on every test required before one could approach a mother elitbeast to see if she would offer one of her children. Yet, he had hoped hunger would override that instinct or that Rell would follow the example of Kitza’s adult elitbeast.

“Is he…” Lips shaking, he couldn’t finish the question.

“A week after you disappeared, Dr. Kitza brought him to his mother here, but she shunned him.”

Xlack opened his eyes, but a sheen of tears turned everything to gray smudges. Though clouds choked the sky, it was too bright, too stifling, too still. “He starved? Or did your father…”

High Defender Yayin was a practical man who wasted nothing. He would have seen a quick end as kind and efficient.

“I taught Rell to hunt. Rodents at first, then small prey native to Zalerit like his ancestors would have taught him. He’s become a nuisance on the base, taking whatever he wants, even if that happens to be the troopers’ highly trained animals.”

Xlack barked out a laugh and rubbed a sleeve over his face. “Thank you. You’re amazing, Aliara.”

“You’re a mess.” She caught his arm and pressed a palm to his cheek, thumb swiping an escaped tear. “Six months. What have they asked of you, Ravi Ekymé? I know you stole a prisoner from Aylata Tower and brought her to Lakol. You were pursued.” She bit her lip. “Ravi Sirvette was killed.”

“Ject lives. I’ve seen him, briefly, on Knalz. He saved me.”

Her eyes widened, and her hand fell away. “Of course he did.” She put on a wan smile. “That’s not the question I asked, though.”

He breathed out slowly, weighing his answer. He had stayed with the Adjuvants because he believed home would announce his treason and condemn him, but apparently Aliara didn’t know he had betrayed the empire. She thought he rescued Twi under orders and that the same mandate sent him to the Alliance to murder Adjuvants.

People knew what he had done but not why he had done it. If authorities allowed the narrative to be spun that way, did it mean the door was still open for him to return? Or was it only to save face? The First Ravi’s defiance looked bad, especially with the Second now an illegal emperor, the Third killed, and the Fourth missing. Xlack should have been publicly punished to make a statement, but he had disappeared. Instead of allowing him to renege and get away, the Refraction Leaders wanted people to imagine he was still under their control.

Hiding in their lies wouldn’t get him the truth, though.

“I freed Navaria Twi because it was the right thing to do. No one told me to.”

K’alaqk had told him not to. Dr. Kitza had advised he forget her.

Hands behind his back, he resumed their trek, timing his words with the rhythmic crunch of gravel beneath his toes. “Her people took me in. Now they’re being murdered, and I don’t know if that’s my fault, but I have to stop it. I can’t let them kill her.”

“Can’t or won’t?”

“You know I hate that line, Aliara.”

Looping her arm through his again, she chuckled. “It’s ironic.”

He shot her a look, but her delight only swelled, cloying like the warmth of a late summer evening.

“You gave me a free answer, so I’ll give you one. Your mother was about to announce a lady of interest for you when you disappeared, and some think you took off because you didn’t like her choice. She’s been quite beside herself.”

“My mother or…”

“Your mother is always beside herself when it comes to you.” Aliara smiled, and her resemblance to the Ekymé family line—strong jaw, bold angles, and the faintest sheen of chrysolite in her hair—was never more apparent. Hard to believe her grandmother’s grandmother had been the last to bear the name.

He grunted in agreement.

Aliara’s eyes sparked. “Rumor also has it that this lady of interest went to Lakol in hopes of finding some trace of you and tracking you down.”

A twisted grin pulled onto his face. The rumor had to be exaggerated. No Sereh’s family would let her go to the place where two Ravi had disappeared. Still, the idea of it tugged at his curiosity. Who was she? Did Aliara know? Or was she saying all this to get him to spill that detail?

He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll return to Knalz once this is settled.”

“That’s precisely the irony. People say you left because you weren’t happy with your mother’s choice, and in the slimmest sense, it’s true. You left because you have another lady of interest.”

He stopped, but she towed him onward. They had made a small loop within the orchard, and the gate waited ahead. Across the street, his teammates still sat at the soup stand, their backs turned in his direction as they bantered, and his sharp ears picked up the fringes of their conversation. Lanox teased Rifo about his muddy-lake colored eyes. He called her eyes the color of fungus. The Zalerit termed them dirty aqua, which sounded synonymous to ‘muddy lake’ in Xlack’s opinion. He would probably never understand how colors worked. Twi laughed, and it was his favorite sound in the universe.

Aliara tugged back his attention. “Navaria Twi, the girl with the silver marks, I want to meet her.”

He held in his surprise. Of course Aliara had seen that Twi was with him. Of course she would connect her with the girl who had been seen in Lakol after he rescued her. And of course she would jump at the opportunity to meet someone with fresh intel.

‘You three want to meet my relative?’ he broadcast.

His teammates straightened, gazes swiveling to him.

Twi nodded. ‘She’s a Sereh, like I was believed to be?’

‘Yes. She’s the great great granddaughter of my father’s older sister. Her father is a High Defender.’

‘Sounds fancy,’ Lanox said, in the lead as they passed the gate.

Rifo stuck close to Twi’s side. ‘Any kind of greeting we should know so we don’t offend her?’ he asked.

Aliara rushed past Lanox and grabbed Twi’s hands. “Such innate grace, despite that limp.”

Rocking back, Twi freed her hands. “Thank you?”

“Oh, Great Cousin, you didn’t mention that her eyes are raveshna.” Aliara glanced coyly at Xlack, voice deep and teasing.

His face warmed. Aliara’s liked to say that fire made everything better, but he doubted that would be true in this case.

Those shining silver eyes of Twi’s narrowed, perfectly balanced between light and dark. “How do you mean?”

Aliara’s smile stretched wider than a mykuro’s behind. “You know the meaning of raveshna?”

“In the ancient Magni sense, yes. They were promised to the heir apparent, but you use that heir’s title, Ravida, differently, so…”

Aliara’s head bobbed in a series of nods. “The Raveshna is the wife of the Ravida, but it’s also the shade of your eyes.” She looked meaningfully at Xlack. “It’s a good omen for the Ravida’s wife to have raveshna shaded eyes.”

“One of many silly Atetu superstitions,” he shot back, but he would be lying if he said he hadn’t noticed. Twi’s eyes were more than their shade, though. He liked to wander their depths, even when they were dizzying, defiant, challenging. Just one glance made his heart pound faster.

From behind him, the Messenger cut in, “Your teasing is likely the real reason Ravi Ekymé left, Lady Aliara. What are these?” He held the closed discs of three Aqkashi fanned in one hand and a fourth in front of his nose.

The Adjuvants checked their pockets. They were empty. Unease filled the air like sweet smoke.

Rattling sleeve covering a smirk, Aliara explained, “Messenger Vinva is skilled at collecting information from one’s pockets.”

The distance between Twi, Lanox, and Rifo shrunk in a defensive, back-to-back formation, but their movement was subtle. Fingers twitched over secondary weapons, jaws tightened, and eyes swept the scene, but they would make no move that could be interpreted as antagonistic. They were the foreigners here. They wouldn’t risk attacking and having the whole world attack back.

Twi’s gaze cut to Xlack with a silent question.

As he reached for the Messenger, the rebuke on his tongue gave way to a piercing scream.

***

Topeca gasped for breath, blinking into the night as panic’s tight fist suffocated her. Zalerit’s rings glittered high above, though the planet had already set, leaving little illumination to filter through the skylight above her bed.

With lumiflies fluttering in her stomach, she rolled to her right, where Revel should have been. His place was empty, sheets unruffled except where she had untucked a corner of the mattress. Had he been there at all, he would have fixed it.

What had awoken her? Why this terrible foreboding?

With as little movement as possible, she scanned the room again. The morphometal floor and walls pretended to be pale stone, their mural of a mountainous vista all but lost in this dimness. Her dressing screen stood sentinel alongside the darkened hollow of a door. No movement in that direction.

Beyond the foot of the bed, chairs flanked an empty fireplace, and beyond them stood the entrance to an unfinished indoor balcony. Nothing lurked there either.

Her gaze tracked upward, where a shapeless shadow too faint to focus on loitered above the skylight. Despite the distracting morphometal, her Kinetic senses confirmed multiple life-signatures.

“Computer,” she whispered.

Thunder replied as a dark object dropped onto the skylight.

She shot to her feet, blankets flying, and she just managed to stop herself from flinging a forcefield. Breaking the window was the last thing she wanted to do. The slithering sensation across her skin said she wasn’t the only one who considered that a possibility, however.

When Topeca had first seen the skylight and gushed over its view, Attuacca had informed her that it was as strong as the hulls of their latest spacefaring ships. Yet, now at the mercy of someone’s Kinetics, it cracked, then shattered with the sound of a thousand crashing bells.

Shielding herself with a pillow twice her size, she hugged her night robes closer.

With a wet crunch, an object plopped on the soft rug at the foot of the bed. Noble guards spilled through both doors. Weapons at the ready, the six men bellowed orders and confirmations, scanning everything, but she couldn’t hear them over her own pulse.

“Messenger Xryit!” She shoved past the guards and fell alongside the motionless body they surrounded. She ignored their warnings, heedless of the glittering shards of clear metal and her bare feet. Xryit had been her escort throughout her childhood. He had transferred households when she married, mandated by her father to continue watching over her. Revel had tasked him with teaching her to use her Talent. Now he lay unmoving, facedown and covered in blood.

Her trembling hand alighted on his shoulder and gently shook him. No response. She tugged harder, trying to flip him onto his back.

He grabbed her wrist.

She squealed, and she was across the room, hidden behind Defender Lioden Nyoki. She tried to rush back to her Messenger, but Nyoki shifted to block her.

She shoved at him. “Out of my way!”

He remained an obstacle. “Attuacca, take the Messenger to the med-center.”

“I cannot.” The computer’s hologram appeared kneeling alongside Xryit. “Safety protocols do not permit one so near death to be teleported. He would not survive.”

“Then bring Dr. Zrisl.”

“Quickly,” Topeca added as all heat drained from her. Where was the threshold? How close to death did that mean he was?

A moment later, Dr. Zrisl appeared—a grizzled, angular man wrapped in a doctor’s back robe and platinum beads. Gripping his emergency satchel, he stooped next to his patient and hastened through a rote series of checks.

Topeca held her breath, overanalyzing every move the doctor made. He was a renowned physician. Surely, he could fix this. He could fix anything. Or perhaps this was only a nightmare, a manifestation of a guilty conscience for not following her ancestors’ superstitions strictly enough.

The doctor stuck an injector patch on Xryit’s neck. “Attuacca, get me a gurney.”

A hoverbed appeared, flat on the ground and awaiting a passenger.

“Help me get him on it.”

The guards looked at Nyoki, who nodded. “Approach the Messenger cautiously.”

They obeyed, three keeping their shooters trained on Xryit as two slunk forward and scooped him up. Topeca gasped. Bruises shaded every visible patch of skin, hashed with darker lines of blood as if someone had cut a trail between each of his freckles.

“I’ll go with him.”

Nyoki continued to block her way, midnight gaze jumping to her with a soundless response: No.

She stepped back, fists and jaw clenched. She was not a helpless buffoon to be shoved in a corner and excluded.

As Xryit had taught her, she widened her stand, hauled in a slow, deep breath, and sunk into a moment of stillness before exploding into motion. She threw herself in the air, legs lashing at her target, though he was beyond the range of her feet. Kicking him was not her goal. Her movements spun a mobile forcefield, its appearance like lightning trapped in fluidic gauze.

It slammed into Nyoki, and he stumbled, then turned to her, not quite glowering.

“Lady K’alaqk.”

She landed, a half twirl expending her momentum as she barely managed not to fall on her behind. Her gaze darted beyond Nyoki to the one who had spoken her name.

Cradled between the gurney’s rising rails, Xryit stared back. He wheezed, voice like stones scratching against one another. “You’re covered in shards.”

Pieces of the broken window had caught in the gossamer fabric of her nightdress and the silk-braided tresses piled atop her head, but they were nothing compared to how awful he sounded.

She put on an imperious tone to hide the worry worming through her heart. “Is there something wrong with the front entrance, or do you prefer scaring me to death?”

“It wasn’t my idea to be thrown through the window.”

“Thrown?” She slid a small kanaber from a secret sheath in her sleeve as her eyes jumped to the skylight. Nyoki’s did the same, though the sixth guard was already there and Topeca’s senses assured her no one else was. “What happened?”

“I said too much. They made me say too much.” His words drowned in moist, rattling coughs.

“Who, Xryit? You’re not making any sense.”

Nyoki caught her sleeve, onyx gaze on the doctor. “Hurry to the med-center. Lady K’alaqk, you and I will follow, but please stay behind me and try to remember I’m on your side.”

“So is Xryit,” she huffed as they plodded into the hallway.

“He also just admitted to succumbing to suggestions, which often force ones to do things they would rather not.” Malice and sympathy wove the words, draping a fresh blanket of fear over Topeca.

“We should call Revel, then.”

“You think I haven’t already?”

Of course he had. Nyoki was very dependable and fiercely loyal to Revel.

“Defender, do you know who cast these alleged suggestions?”

Nyoki’s jaw tightened, and barely visible through his mane of dark hair, a vein on his temple pulsed. “He was sent to tell the Refraction Leaders we suspect foul play regarding the Ravida’s death. Ravi K’alaqk thought he was the best one to go since he had ties in your father’s household, but…”

No. No, her father could not have done this. Refraction Leader Donrul Quanko might have, but her father would not have consented to be in the same room as that evil man. That must have been what happened. Quanko captured Xryit first, tortured him, used suggestions on him.

Nyoki’s pace had subtly slowed so the distance between them and Xryit grew. Kicking herself for not noticing sooner, Topeca broke into a jog. Nyoki remained just ahead of her, too close at times, as if he could suddenly become a wall for her to crash into. As if he herded her.

Her lips twisted. She was not a lyoko to be tamed and guided about.

She doubled her pace and called loud to her Messenger. “What exactly did they make you say?”

His eyes found her, glassy and filled with guilt. “I told them about Attuacca.”

“Surely they already knew about her? She was in my broadcast yesterday.”

“They knew of her. Now they know about her, everything I knew about her,” he confessed, too weak to fully convey the fervor those words were meant to hold.

Dr. Zrisl’s rapid fingers flew against his datapad, preparing to print another injector patch.

Topeca reached for the Messenger, and Nyoki stopped. She crashed into his back with a vexed squeal.

After a moment, he strode on but maintained a considerable distance from Xryit. “Messenger, you believe they could use the information they wrung from you to invade the Tower and turn the computer against us?”

Xryit didn’t appear to see or hear anything aside from Topeca, as if his gaze were a solid line tethering them.

“It’ll be alright,” she soothed, imbuing her tone with a calm she did not feel. “We are not the children they think we are.”

Tears ran races down his lacerated cheeks. “They dove into my mind, rifled through every memory, every thought, held nothing sacred.”

“They’ll know this place, our schedules, habits, and weaknesses as well as you do,” Nyoki interpreted.

“Who?” she breathed, though she knew. Though each Refraction Leader had Mind Aylata under their command, only Quanko had the ability to personally delve into another’s mind, and none were as cunning, cruel, or proficient. She didn’t need Xryit to say it. She shouldn’t have wanted him to.

“They were united in their message.” His voice was less than a breath, and she could only hope it was just an effect of the sedative in one of the now many patches stuck to him. “The Refraction Leaders will not tolerate Revel K’alaqk continuing to play emperor. They will name a new Ravida, and they will decide what happens within these borders. If Revel K’alaqk values the lives of this empire, he will come to them at Enari Station.”

“They’d kill him.” Her stomach was a tangle of knots.

The gurney burst into the med-center, quickly buried in a frenzy of med-aides and medical code she barely heard and wouldn’t have understood regardless. In the chaos, she managed to draw close enough to brush her fingers along Xryit’s limp hand. His skin was so cold, his life-signature as faint as a distant star.

He still saw only her, soft chrysolite eyes gleaming with remorse. “Am I a traitor?”

They whisked him away before she could find the right words. She didn’t follow. They would heal him, and she would use the time to formulate a response. It would be a quote for the ages.

Beside her, Nyoki muttered, “Yes, Messenger, our weaknesses betray us all.”

Continued in chapter 26

Thank you for reading!