Spinning Starlight (19 page)

They might not like it, but those are the words I’m going to listen to. Because they can’t possibly be as scared for my safety as I am for theirs.

I can’t sleep—again—so I go back up to the roof. My gut tells me I won’t see my brothers, but they’re not what I’m looking for. What
I’m looking for is nearly as hard to find, it turns out. Some stars show themselves, but it’s not that much better than Sampati. Just too much ambient light. Still, I study the ones I
can see, looking for familiar patterns. I know I won’t find any, but I look anyway, and make new patterns.

“I didn’t realize there were stargazers on Sampati.”

Tiav’s voice startles me as much as his statement irks me. It’s true, though. I got my stargazing from Mom and never met anyone else with the habit.

“Then again, I don’t know much at all about Sampati,” he continues. “So that was probably rude. Sorry. Have something to say?”

He offers me his com-tablet, and my posture slumps. I’m too tired, and writing takes too long. Every time I think I remember one of the primary symbols, I realize I’ve mixed up five
of them. They’re all so similar.

I need to talk. Each day, silence adds another weight to my heart.

“Okay, we’ll try without,” Tiav says, replacing the device in his pocket. “The view here is awful. Want to see a better one?”

After looking down at myself and at him, I pinch the material of the loose shirt and shorts I’m wearing to sleep in and raise an eyebrow.

“It’s fine—no need to dress up for this. It means taking a streamer, though, which you hate. Right?” I shudder, which makes him smile. “See? I guess pretty well.
So, do you want to?”

I do. Streamer or no streamer, a better view of the stars sounds like what I need.

As usual, I close my eyes for the length of the streamer ride, and it’s definitely lengthier than usual. Wherever Tiav is taking me, it’s farther from Podra than I’ve been
since I arrived on the planet.

“We’re here,” he says, signaling me to open my eyes.

I’m not sure where “here” is. We’re in front of a circular building with a rounded dome. Nothing else is around for miles as far as I can tell. The sky is punctuated with
several times more stars than I saw from the roof, far more than could be seen from anywhere on Sampati. Much better. But Tiav leads me to the door of the building. He runs his hand over some kind
of lock-panel off to the side, and the door opens. I tap his arm and point to the lock.

“Being an Aelo has advantages, including access to observatories anytime. Come on.”

The interior is simple—beautiful stonework on the walls in swirling, organic patterns, and a staircase spiraling up toward the dome I saw outside. Tiav opens another door at the top, leads
me up a set of stairs through the floor above, and shows me what he brought us here for.

All the stars surround me, more of them than I’ve ever seen, even on Erkir where there are hardly any cities. I don’t know if the dome is some kind of special glass accentuating the
night sky or if the whole thing’s a computer projection. Whichever it is doesn’t matter to me, because it’s perfect and it’s beautiful and it’s right there. Reclined
chairs in the center of the room are arranged carefully to allow the best viewing, but they’re not all the same. Some are designed to accommodate the odd Agnac physiology, some are reinforced
to support a Haleian’s mass, and some are smaller for a Crimna’s stature. Like everywhere else on Ferinne, there’s a place for everyone.

Tiav leads me to an adjacent pair of normal-people-shaped chairs and we sit down. At first I’m happy to just stare at the whole sky, but then I get the feeling I should be looking for
something in particular.

“Here, I think you’ll want to see this,” Tiav says. He taps on his com-tablet, and a ring appears on the inside of the dome, highlighting a single star. “There’s
your home. That’s Sampati’s star. You can see the others, too. Pramadam, Erkir, Yishu, Neta, Tarix, and Banak.”

I stare. These stars belong to the Seven Points. In all the time I’ve spent looking at stars, even in some silliness of looking for Ferri as a child, it never occurred to me to wonder
where the other Points were in the larger sky. Shiin was right. We stopped looking beyond our own borders ages ago. “Other worlds” meant the other Points, places just steps away through
a conduit.

With all of them highlighted, I see something else. The way they’re arranged in a large ring, spaced almost perfectly. Kind of like in the Seven Points’ icon.

“Over there is Agnac, and Halei’s not far from it,” Tiav continues. “Crimna’s closer to us, and then there’s Izima—you can just barely see
it.”

After that, he starts pointing out constellations. The farmer. The swan. The three ships. I imagine the people who first named these pictures in the sky, wonder what made them see that shape in
the stars instead of another. Then I start making up stories about each one. The farmer made a bargain with a sorcerer to save his crops, but the price was being frozen where he stood, watching
over the Seven—the
Eight
Points. The three ships were the only ones left of a convoy that passed through a devastating storm. One called the frog met an unfortunate end thanks to the
swan.

“See how close the frog is to the swan’s beak?” Tiav says. “When I was little, I always said the swan was going to eat the frog someday.”

The way he says the exact same thing I was thinking makes me laugh.

Out loud.

I clap a hand to my mouth, but I can’t force the sound back in. It was a tiny one, so brief, but it might have been enough.

Tiav sits up, startled by the sound. “So you
do
have a voice?” Incredulity weaves through every word.

He may be startled, but he has no idea that eight people might be dead because of that laugh. I don’t have time to make him figure it out.

“Hey, where are you going?”

Where I’m going is outside. I get to the spiraling stairway before Tiav catches up, but I don’t let him stop me.

“Liddi, wait. You have a voice but don’t talk because you don’t want to? Or something else? Just slow down and help me understand.”

No, slowing down would mean taking longer to get outside, and outside is where it’s night, where the moonlight is.

Where I might have a chance of seeing my brothers if I haven’t just killed them all.

Nothing has changed outside the observatory. The streamer waits for us, and everything else is still and quiet. I move away from the building, searching the fields in every direction. All three
moons are out, which helps, but I don’t see anyone. I do see something else—a sparkle in the distance. One of the Khua, maybe.

My brothers have been at their strongest and easiest to see near portals. It’s worth a try, so I start running.

“No, Liddi!”

Tiav sees the Khua as well as I do—he probably knew it was there without seeing it. He’s fast enough to catch up, and he grabs my waist to stop me. Tries to, at least, as I keep
pulling.

“We talked about this—you can’t interfere with the Khua again. The Agnac won’t let it go anymore. You have to stop!”

I twist to look up at him. His eyes are stern, but they also hesitate. He doesn’t want to be angry with me again, but he will if I force it. I plead with him to read my eyes back. To see
that I don’t want to interfere with anything—not this time—that I just want to get closer.

The sternness melds with confusion. “Is it something else?”

I nod, encouraging him to follow the line of thought.

“Is it something that will get us both in trouble?”

No, not unless seeing a ghostlike version of one of my brothers is cause for trouble. Which it might be. Or it might be a good thing. If Tiav can see one of the boys, it would end my indecision
on whether to tell him. He’d start to understand what’s going on, and maybe if he
sees
them, maybe if he could even talk to one of them just for a moment, he wouldn’t see
them as defilers. He’d see they’re just trapped and need help.

If they’re not dead.

Tiav thinks it over for a solid minute, and I force myself to wait calmly, not struggling. That’s not easy, because I’m definitely not used to being this close to him, and I’m
not sure how I feel about it.

Finally he decides. “Don’t make me regret it.”

He lets go, and I continue toward the portal again, taking it a little slower and willing my brothers to show themselves. Just one of them. Just one glimpse. They can’t be dead. I
can’t have blown it like this, in such a small moment of distraction.

A boy succeeded in making Liddi Jantzen laugh, leading to the utter destruction of everyone who means anything to her—

Thinking like that isn’t helping, so I shut it down.

Less than halfway to the portal, a flash of movement draws my eye to a stand of trees off to the left. Durant is there, his posture uneasy, but he waves before fading away.

He’s alive.

I turn to Tiav, looking for his reaction. There isn’t one. He’s been keeping an eye on me and the portal the whole time. He didn’t see Durant at all.

It doesn’t matter. The important thing is that my momentary slip didn’t cost my brothers their lives. My laugh could’ve been deadly, but it wasn’t. The implant’s
listening for more than a laugh. A single word might still be enough.

I have to be more careful. I can’t slip again. Not once.

Not ever.

Liddi didn’t make it to the new club in Edgewick opening night, but when she live-commed Reb later, he said it was only a soft opening anyway. The real opening was in
a few days. Still annoyed with her brothers for making the decision for her, she told Reb she’d be there.

The boys weren’t happy, Emil especially. Luko even showed up to talk her out of it. When she reminded him that she had only a few years left to have any kind of fun before taking over
the largest, most important corporation in the Seven Points, his argument lost its fire.

She got her way. As usual.

And she lived to regret it.

The club had half the flair of Syncopy, and Syncopy wasn’t even her favorite. Tired music, lighting effects that the better clubs had tried and given up a year ago, and Liddi’s
only company was Reb Vester. Him and about a hundred other people who wanted an excuse to become her new best friend. She hated retreating to the Exclusive Zone on the upper level, but eventually
she had to have some breathing room.

“There you are,” Reb said, a drink in each hand. “Come on, let’s get down there and dance again.”

He was a good dancer, but it wasn’t any fun with people constantly sidling up to offer phony compliments or ask inane questions. It made Liddi want to feign clumsiness and accidentally
throw an elbow toward their noses.

“Sorry, I think I’d better get home,” she said. “My brothers were against me coming in the first place, so the least I can do is get back before
morning.”

Reb set his drinks down and took both her hands in his. They were still slick with condensation from the glasses. Less than pleasant. “Liddi, those brothers of yours want to keep you
locked up. They don’t want you to have a life, so who cares what they say?”

She pulled her hands back, wiping them slightly on her skirt. “I do. Yeah, they’re annoying and overprotective sometimes, but…they’re my brothers. They have their
reasons. And I want to go home now.”

“Okay, I get it. Let’s go.”

It took strategic maneuvering that’d do the military grunts on Banak proud, but they finally got out of the club. Leaving the music behind felt good, except it was replaced by a
buzzing swarm of vid-cams. Not a big deal, since once they were in the hovercar, they’d leave them behind, too.

“Hey, Liddi, hold up a second.”

She stopped and turned to Reb. He took her face in his hands and kissed her.

His lips were too wet, he held her head too tight, the buzz of the vid-cams turned into a roar as more swarmed to catch the action, and there was absolutely nothing romantic about it
at
all
.

Liddi pushed him away and glared at him for two seconds before deciding she couldn’t trust her voice, because even with her glare, he was grinning at her. Without a word, she strode to
a for-hire hovercar and got in. Her brothers definitely wouldn’t mind if she spent the credits, and there was no way she was spending two hours alone with Reb after that.