Alliance ch 27: If We Do Not Know They are Lies

Impossible. Rogii ordered his hand to move, and it refused. Movement was impossible, and so was the refusal. So was how heavy the world had grown. Where was he, the surface of a star? That would explain the burning and maybe the headache.

After a hundred commands and pleas, his fingers twitched. Movement was possible, if sparing. Those fingers reported a surface nearly as soft and smooth as liquid.

The last place he remembered was the decagonal hall within the Truths’ portion of Moshee Spire. An Aylata Messenger had taunted and threatened him, then watched as Rogii fought off Absolutes. Rogii had collapsed on the glass floor, those secret-grabbing villains dead, his battoo smeared, a fraud for all to see.

Glass still surrounded him, echoic and overwhelming. Still in the Spire.

Sterile and metallic scents registered, followed by delicate beeping and low murmurs. Machines everywhere.

A med-center.

His eyes snapped open. The intense lights blinked off at his command. At least that worked. A modicum of relief soothed the tight sting in his core. How was his battoo?

His ’netics reported fresh paint, lines crisp in a way that no mere brush could attain. Someone with ’netics had reapplied it, someone so familiar with the pattern, they had done it almost perfectly.

As he adjusted the few thorns that were a cell short, long, or narrow, slender fingers entwined with his, accompanied by Sarana’s life-signature. The tightest coils in his chest loosened, and a sigh escaped.

Lyten sat somewhere beyond the foot of the med-bed, in the most ’netically convoluted spot in the room, per usual. “What happened?”

Rogii sat up just enough to see him cradled by a hovering lounge chair, feet propped on a panicking monitor and arms crossed. Haggard edges showed through his typical sly nonchalance. Why did he wear the brown, red, and gold armor of the Cinosal royal guard? If not for that, Rogii might not have seen him in the dimness.

“Relax,” Lyten said. He remained oddly still, as if it hurt to sit properly or move. “I fixed your battoo before I called the meds. Per’nyé changed you into the med-clothes so they wouldn’t see your real battoo.”

Acknowledging this with a slow blink, Rogii looked at his left hand—bandage-wrapped and numb. The stretchy gauze concealed both the battoo and the wound from the Absolute’s broken needle. A similar strap enveloped his right elbow.

He pictured Per’nyé hurriedly swathing his hand, deft fingers keeping the shadowed blob between his thumb and forefinger hidden from the wrong eyes. She was good under pressure, but he doubted she had barred all panic from her movements. Rogii’s death was her most acute and chronic fear.

“She is unharmed.” Not a question. Never a question. Of course she was unharmed, despite the last he had heard of her match. Even if he doubted, he would never voice it.

Lyten shrugged. “Still undefeated. She took over all the pawns when they got too close and won like usual. Narkom’s badly hurt, though, and will take time to recover.” He huffed. “If she’s to continue in the tournament, she needs a new teammate. The audience voted.”

Predictable. For years, blood-lusting spectators had clamored to see Rogii in the shymgo sphere alongside his amaraq.

“My father overruled them.”

“He’s undecided.” Lyten’s grin lacked any mirth. “Per’nyé’s with him now.”

Rogii scowled. She knew he hated the sport. She also wanted him in the sphere—a power trip, he’d chided her, with him blinded and relying completely on her. He would have to let her into his mind on a level that he did not want.

Lyten gave another shrug. “Look on the bright side: If you die in that sphere, your father might ban shymgo.”

“That bright side is grim.”

“Says the black-battooed heir who killed two Truths and mortally wounded a third. I don’t see a bright side in that one.”

Rogii didn’t either, breath catching. Two Truths dead. The other would testify against him. Why wasn’t he surrounded by waiting executioners?

Lyten chuckled, but darkness lurked in the sound. “They don’t know what happened. I was the first to stumble across you.”

“Those Absolutes would have killed us, Rogii,” Sarana said, standing at his side, voice as soft as quicksand. A bruise sullied her cheek, indigo against her russet skin and crimson battoo. Had she acquired that when he dropped her? As he held her? Sarana belonged on a pedestal, no one but Rogii allowed to touch her. “After it was over, the Aylata knelt alongside you, wiped at the paint on your face, and laughed.”

“He looked directly at the recorder and claimed your skirmish was entertaining.” Lyten spoke through his teeth. “He said you’ve got audacity, and they’ll work with you if you can prove yourself. They want you to give them a planet.”

“A planet?” Gravity abandoned Rogii. Or, since he didn’t move, perhaps it was just his senses. “A desolate space rock or one with citizens?”

“I’d give them a star and throw them in its depths.”

Though stiff and sluggish, Rogii pushed himself into a full sit. His vision swam, breaths too heavy. “Show me the footage.”

“I deleted it.”

Rogii’s scowl deepened. “Way to encourage the curious.”

“Not if you spin the right tale.”

Sarana’s fingers tightened around Rogii’s. “So, what do I say happened?”

Rogii forced another sigh as if that could clear the fog within him. Fragments of ideas lay scattered like a broken mirror, sharp edges winking, calling to their lost mates. He fit them together anew—a facsimile of truth.

“Which of the Absolutes survived?”

“The Tala,” Lyten answered.

The one who knew the most. The one who had violated his mind.

Sarana added, “They rushed her into surgery. She has yet to awaken.”

“She never will.” Rogii looked pointedly at Lyten, whose knife-like grin grew.

“Gives me a chance to try something.” Lyten’s feet found the floor, and he stood, lithe as a whip.

“Nothing stupid,” Rogii called to his back.

Lyten turned in the doorway, head tilted. “If I pull off a death suggestion, no one will dare call it stupid.”

No, but the chances of him succeeding were next to nil. So few Tala had ever accomplished this horrid trick that if Per’nyé had not proven she could kill with a thought—with side effects—Rogii would have believed the other accounts were overrated myth. Lyten was Cinosal—a mongrel whose Mind Talents came from a little Tala ancestry.

Reading Rogii’s disapproval, Lyten sneered. “I’ll master it, and I’ll turn it into a shout suggestion so when I track down the Aylata who killed Azin, they won’t stand a chance.”

“A shout suggestion is liable to kill the user.”

“Like I care.” A glare, fierce and heavy. Though Lyten’s Mind Talents were slight compared to Per’nyé’s, they were not to be discounted or underestimated. “I’m alive. My amaraq isn’t.”

“Why the costume? It’s torn and bloodied. Where were you?”

For a long moment, it seemed Lyten would not answer. Then, his gaze dropped, and he leaned like a broken crutch against the doorframe, staring into the middle distance. “The Adjuvants had Azin’s body. I recovered him.” Bitterness carried the words, a stone-faced pallbearer.

Silent strength stood as an answer from Rogii—not indifferent, but confident, as if all one’s hopes could be poured in and a panacea would pour out.

“He’s what saved you.” Lyten’s jaw worked, his fists clenching. “The Aylata used the same poison on Azin in a larger quantity. From that purer sample, our doctors formulated an antidote for you.”

Echoes of every cell’s isolation shivered through Rogii. How much worse had it been for Azin?

“That fails to explain your need to resemble a Cinosal royal guard.”

“When I set out, I didn’t know of the Aylata’s involvement. While Len and Rrosh led an attack on the main Adjuvant base, I suggested a Cinosal rep lure the Adjuvant leaders out and hid myself in the entourage. I was captured. I escaped, retrieved Azin, and rescued Len and Rrosh, who are still unconscious. When I learned Per’nyé was in another tournament, I came here.”

Only to find his hrausq leader nearly dead at the center of a most egregious scene.

Rogii rubbed a hand down the lower half of his face. “Do what you must, Lyten, but live.”

With a grunt, Lyten shoved off the doorframe and disappeared.

Sarana tugged on Rogii’s hand. “And me?”

“Come here.” He pulled her palm to his heart, and she followed willingly, legs folding over the side of the mattress. The kiss began before she landed, delicate as it was hungry, his other hand brushing her collarbone, neck, tangling in the pouf of curls on the back of her head.

“Kisses before lies,” she murmured against his lips as her arms wrapped over his shoulders, sleeves red like Tala blood. “You’re trembling, Rogii.”

He hated Truths, hated that their red touched her and was between them. He drew her closer so he couldn’t see it. “You’ll say we were attacked by Napix invaders right here in the Spire. Not even my father can ignore that.”

Aberrant had to keep up with the march of change or be trampled, and they couldn’t do that without acknowledging the Aylata were real and they were here.

Sarana withdrew, slender brows drawn over periwinkle eyes that glittered with what little light this small room possessed. “It will paint you as a hero, clever and merciful, attacked but setting aside resentment for the greater good.”

“A proper Knalcal, right?” He allowed a smirk, and she wiped it away with another kiss.

She still looked troubled. “How much does being high boss mean to you?”

He buried his face in the crook of her neck. “It’s priceless, being change’s agent.” His hands slid up those horribly stained sleeves. This wasn’t the first time he had considered ripping them. Sometimes he acted on that consideration. “There are so many reasons I should be dead, but I’m not, and I’d like to believe that’s for a reason, too.”

She cupped his jaw, long fingers curling behind his ears as she pushed him back and looked him in the eye. “Do you believe what the Aylata said about there being another heir?”

“He said there were two, Sarana. A specific number.”

“What changes if it’s truth?” She leaned her forehead against his. “Do we alert the heir hunter?”

Rogii closed his eyes, but that didn’t stop the flash of images—firsthand accounts collected by Tala Truths, stolen by Per’nyé, and given to him in pursuit of understanding. Heirs were rivals, but his siblings, nieces, and nephews had been massacred, twenty-eight of them and their hrausqs lured to one location and ambushed by Adjuvants. He had been eleven, too young to venture beyond the Spire’s walls without his mother’s approval.

Afterward, a survivor systematically slew the high boss’ remaining descendants in age order. Rogii, the youngest, had assumed himself the final target for years now.

He drew in a shaky breath. “The hunter knows. The other must be older than me. Likely well-guarded.”

Or at least more cautious than Rogii. Some stupid but loud part of him wanted an encounter with the heir hunter, to prove he could beat the man his siblings could not.

A familiar unease trickled from his core to the tips of his fingers, and he gripped Sarana tighter. She had described him once in this state as a fabric of plans and ambition, a castle of sand and salt built at the very edge of the tide. An heir could not ascend to high boss if others remained to challenge their claim. Tracking down someone who did not exist was an impossible feat, and Rogii would not have his future depend on its completion.

“We’ll tell no one. I want to know who and where this other heir is and how he survived before I release rumors that will devour me.”

“The curse of being so delicious.” She laughed, and he allowed her to push him down against the mattress as he stole another kiss. Her arms caged his ribs as she leaned over him. “Do you think your father knows? Perhaps his favorite survived.”

“Saká died before the massacre.” The only other child of his mother, his only full sibling.

Sarana’s eyes narrowed. “She disappeared before the massacre.”

“Three years old and eaten by pooffs, her emblem in one of the creatures’ bellies, her blood on their fur. Her amaraq, also very dead, was only partially consumed and easily identified.”

“You saw none of this evidence yourself. You weren’t born yet.”

He traced a thumb over Sarana’s platinum birthmarks, following the swirls entwined with her red battoo. “The database is curated by Truths.”

“Lies are not poison if we do not know they are lies.”

“I wish that were true.” He rolled, lips tracing a line up the side of her neck, but nothing else touched, a hairsbreadth hovering between them. The nearness, the desire, and the control filled him with an icy breed of heat, the kind that whispered of power. “If it is Saká, not even she can compete with the paradigm of her in Father’s mind.” He aligned his face with Sarana’s, drinking in the contrast of her skin against the pale sheets.

A line formed between her brows. “What if the Aylata deny the attack?”

“Too many questions, Sarana. Let them say whatever they want.” His forehead dropped to the hollow of her throat. “That’s why I have you.”

Her fingers slid through his hair, and she drew him back to her. There was no more talk of grand schemes.

* * *

Schemes were exhausting, Sažka concluded, whether a person was tangled in the plans of others or trying to come up with their own. She didn’t know how long she slept on the floor of the cavern, cocooned in humid warmth while snow blanketed the landscape outside. Light filtered through thick clouds at an evening angle as if bending down to peer into her refuge.

At some point, Ateki had curled up at her feet, and she gently extracted her calf from his embrace.

Ject Sirvette still sat in the entrance, rigid spine against the uneven wall and legs folded in front of him. If not for how his chin slumped against his chest, she might have thought him a statue, posture perfect even in sleep.

She stood, caution swathing every muscle.

No one else moved.

She trod softly across the slick slope of the cave floor.

Still no response besides her own accelerating pulse. It seemed too convenient, and she hesitated, chewing her lip as she contemplated the narrow path between Sirvette’s knees and the wall.

After a large breath for courage, she tiptoed past him, wincing with every footfall, sure its echo would be the sound of an Ier snapping open. He did not awaken, and she stepped safely into the fresh, frigid air of Kaitaetha Valley.

Now what?

To fly home, she would need a transport and the skills to pilot it. Unfortunately, she lacked the former and possessed only a paltry excuse for the latter. She was stuck on this planet, unless...

She hurried down the rocky hillside. The stupid snow—thigh high in some spots—would make her trail easy to follow, but Sirvette expected the traitor Aylata and Twi’s team to show up at Kaitaetha’s capitol building. Sažka would have to find them first.

She had plenty of ground to cover and panicked over every noise from behind as she trudged through a shriveled forest. Eight times out of ten, it was just a bird curious of her presence. Once, it was still a bird but one large enough to have carried her off. Fortunately, dinner already hung in its talons. The other time, it was nothing, and she second-guessed herself in an endless cycle. Too sensitive. Not observant enough. There really was nothing. But what if there was?

The only thoughts weighty enough to stop that spiral weren’t much better. Sažka had spent much of her young life in the Library at Mumir, and she preferred her inner landscape be as orderly. Everything had its proper filing: Aylata were evil villains. They killed Zalerit/Magni. They represented the opposite of freedom.

Ject Sirvette had kidnapped—not killed—her. He wasn’t good, but he didn’t fit on the shelf she had prepared for him. He interacted with Ateki almost like they were friends or siblings. He protected this preteen para-lightcurver, chided, teased, and listened to him, though she doubted he would ever call Ateki a friend aloud. His friends were people like Xlack Ekymé, and he would do anything for them.

He was a reflection of Izeko in that regard—a twisted, still mostly evil reflection. She hated to admit that this shade of loyalty was even a little endearing.

She concentrated on the icy mud instead, then on the river winding along the valley’s nadir and the speckling of city lights that straddled it. They danced in an odd, distorted way. Had Sirvette not confiscated her schema-specs, they would have shown her the dome forcefield encasing the settlement. Without them, she smacked into it like a bird flying into a clean window.

It sealed out unwanted weather, she supposed with a sigh, watching melted snow trickle in nearly invisible cascades down the overgrown bubble. It did the same for unwanted guests.

As she schlepped through the slush along the border, she pictured herself on the other side of that clear wall, where the path was clean and the temperature and humidity bowed to the whims of a button. She sealed her Adapt as much as she could, but without a helmet, her nose and ears fell victim to the wind’s bite.

When she finally found an entrance, it was guarded. Vehicles flowed through a checkpoint, and even had she been brave enough to leap onto one of them, surely the field allowing them to pass also served as a scanner, or worse, was selective. Running into the dome at walking pace had hurt enough. At this speed, it would be lethal.

Before, they had ridden in an autopiloted, spherical transport bejeweled with a thousand mirrors, as Sirvette claimed all taxies were. If she found another of those, would they still stop her? Could she say she had returned on Ravi Sirvette’s business?

She located one in a raised holding area to the side of the entrance. She lacked the credentials to activate the elevator, but the nearby ladder didn’t require any authorization.

Luck and Tragedy had collaborated to paint the scene atop the platform. Aside from the taxies in their berths, a scattering of other vehicles underwent inspection in a row of booths. Two barges took up half these stalls, spilling lines of Zalerits in plain uniforms. Some wore scowls or smiles of excitement, but the majority touted indifference, compliant with the directions of patrolling wardens.

Keeping low, Sažka slinked behind the cement cones arrayed at the platform’s edge. Several were chipped, cracked, or crumbled, fallen pieces rattling as a vehicle took off too low overhead. Its exhaust left her with shriveled lungs and an overwhelming need to cough.

“Why did Nobleman Athikil say he wanted this large purchase shipped to his summer residence again?”

Sažka stilled, color draining in a familiar sensation, like water streaming down her skin. Her hand disappeared against the broken cone.

“Come on, they’re just Zalerits. Do you really have to peek at every one of them? The steward will have my hide if we’re late.”

“Then you should have come earlier.”

A purchase? Some noblemen had bought these people? Righteous fury climbed up Sažka’s throat, buoying her upright like a hot air balloon. She shouldn’t interfere. There was nothing she could do in the long run except get herself killed. She should just use this opportunity to slip into the city.

She closed her eyes and breathed. She would be the hero later, once they were inside, once she had found Twi’s team and figured out how to get off this world.

Still invisible, she darted between the cones, skirted the row of those waiting to be inspected, and ducked into the closer barge. Benches lined the narrow interior, so close, those sitting across from one another would inevitably knock knees. A small ledge above the door offered a safe place to wait and not get trampled while the travelers reloaded.

It was not an ideal seat. She almost fell when the engine started, then again when they lurched forward, and a third time as the barge turned, presumably to glide through the city entrance. The solid walls didn’t provide a view to confirm that.

Windows would have helped her anticipate changes in direction and speed, if nothing else. A sudden stop threw her off her ledge, and since the occupants of the benches were packed shoulder to shoulder, there was nowhere to land besides on someone.

She rolled off them quickly and scrambled behind a row of ankles, but a scream still cut above the road noise. Her hip throbbed. The boy it had struck—a child of not even a decade—held the back of his head and wailed.

“What’s his problem?” a gray man standing in front of the door bellowed.

Sažka was a scholar with a particular interest in ancient Zalerit languages, but she recognized none of the boy’s words.

“Speak Nayatilix,” the gray man ordered.

“He doesn’t know it,” a woman said, vowels so thick, Sažka barely understood her. The woman cradled the boy, and he sobbed into her shoulder.

“He’d better shut up and learn quick, then.” A whip danced in the gray man’s hand.

Sažka closed her eyes and covered her ears, but that didn’t filter out the whip’s crack or the boy’s shriek. When the strap came down a second time, she was on her feet, toes wedged between others on opposite benches.

She caught the third strike and yanked. The warden fell, mouth agape and face darkening. Others shied away from him as best they could.

“I’ve got a fully invisible one back here,” he said to his wrist as he rose. He dropped the whip and pulled a pistol from within his jacket. “Para-lightcurver most likely. I’ll have to put it down.” He aimed for the whip’s hovering tip. If she dropped it, he might fire into the cowering mass of people.

If only I had ’netic Talents at all, I could make it hover where no one was.

Instead, she charged, careful to keep lower than his aim. The whip looped over his wrist, and she pulled again. Bullets scorched a wavy line on the wall, ending at the door. He faced it, and she was behind him. Still tangled with his arm, the strap wrapped his throat. Sažka held its handle in a double-handed grip over her shoulder. The nape of her neck pressed against his, and her feet shoved off the wall.

With a wheezy bellow, he slammed into the door. She twisted, arms around him and hand sharing his grip on the pistol. Five shots, five holes in the door’s seal. Breath left her as he crushed her against the opposite wall. She dropped, rolled, and threw herself at the door.

It gave, and the wind took her, gifting her to the ground in a spray of gravel beneath luminous fog. She didn’t know if the barge would stop and return for her. She didn’t know what the warden would do to the others, where they were going, or how to help them, and the uncertainty was a dagger of ice in her core. She couldn’t stay here, though. At the very least, they would alert the authorities.

She crawled below the fog until she reached the side of the road. At some point, her lavender glow had returned, so she slid back into invisibility before she hauled herself over a hashed fence and hurried unseen down a wide sidewalk as fast as her complaining legs would carry her.

At least the temperature was pleasant, though the air was unnaturally still and had an awkward processed scent. She studied the city and its denizens with a scholarly eye. The architecture almost fit with the meticulous illustrations she had seen in Mumir’s library. How often she had pictured herself in those sketches, fingers trailing along stone bricks cut in jigsaw designs and perfectly pieced together with no mortar.

Textbooks claimed Zalerit buildings were ‘meant to cast no shroud,’ walls porous, constructions squat and far apart, but the buildings here were tall and looming. Deep shadows lurked between them, and she feared to touch anything lest someone notice even an invisible hand.

After ten minutes at a brisk pace, she wondered if it would be better to let herself be seen. The warden had mistaken her for a para-lightcurver because of her invisibility. More specifically, because her clothes were invisible, too. Any Zalerit could be invisible if they stripped.

Streets and walkways ran at all levels, most of them narrow. In one of these alleys, she poured purple back into her skin. The outfit she had worn to see the Knalcal queen seemed too fancy compared to the simple tunics worn by Zalerits in the crowd here, despite the mud sullying her lacy hems. If anyone asked, her story would remain the same: She was here on Ravi Sirvette’s business. It wouldn’t be too odd for a high-ranking Aylata’s slave to be fancily dressed, would it?

The deeper she ventured into the city, the more the crowd thickened, until personal space vanished. Barricades funneled pedestrians into slender side passages, some narrower than a shoulder’s width. Beyond the barriers, wide streets ringed an important-looking building garnished with geometric masonry. That had to be the capitol. She had to get to it, no matter the parade that had commandeered the wide avenue.

She drained her color again and climbed over the barricade, calculating a route through the musicians and baton-spinning dancers, though her eyes kept returning to the enormous creature centered in the procession. Its shoulders rose level with the fifth-story windows. Each of its four legs were as thick as Sažka, Izeko, and two more standing back to back. Bark-like flakes covered its round, flat feet and equally thick tail.

A gray boy perched upon its withers, controlling the beast with musical whistles and taps of his bare toes. She wouldn’t have guessed the monster could feel anything so gentle through the paler flakes that lined its spine like overlapping armor plates or through the bubbling black hide protecting the rest of its bulk. Silvery lines marked the edges of its scales, as if liquid mercury might pour through its cracked skin.

Beneath boney ridges, its white eyes boasted black-diamond pupils. They focused on her.

The creature stopped and roared. It was a haunting, hollow sound like the yawn of an empty tomb.

It surged toward her. The boy on its hackles fell, and she lost sight of him. Official-looking people charged toward the monster, powering up tasers that were larger than they were. The crowd panicked, and Sažka joined them, but no matter how zagged her path and no matter her invisibility, its eyes remained fixed on her.

An official crashed into her, and she pulled into a backward somersault, now colored pastel blue.

After a shout of surprise, the official grabbed her. “So, it’s you that set the mykuro off. And after we went through the trouble of asking the local Protector to stay away.”

“I-I’m here on Ravi Sirvette’s business.”

“Lucky he didn’t come himself.” The official shoved her toward the mykuro. “These beasts love Magni. Love destroying them, anyway.”

She tried to circumvent him, but he blocked her with the taser’s length. A blue bolt connected with the ground, warning her not to get too close.

“Go on, then, placate him so we can move on.”

You mean go and die so I don’t ruin your day any more.

She faced the mykuro, the street’s radiant fog swirling around her boots. The monster’s black fangs gleamed as its maw reached for her. Toes sinking in gravel, she sprinted toward it, dove, slid, rolled.

Beneath its towering chest, she heard the snap of jaws before its rocket-like growl drowned out all other sound. It shuffled its feet, and she danced away from its tree-like appendages. If she could get on its back, leap through a window, and run to the top of the building, would she be safe then?

The beast spun, jaws crashing under its own side. Its tail lashed the capitol, and masonry rained as dust and shattered brick. Its mouth opened, following her further beneath its belly. It spun, and sunlight shone upon her in the gentlest caress before the tail plowed into her.

Everything cracked. She flew and landed on her back. The green dot of the sky—or maybe it was her shoulder—was the only constant. Everything else flipped and twirled like a kaleidoscope. Her own voice screamed as if from a distance. Black teeth filled her view, then darkness.

Continued in chapter 28

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