Starbreak (16 page)

Vadix dropped the fruit. Where it settled in the rich black earth, a dozen seedlings sprouted and grew, all while we watched.

How does your dreaming work?
he asked.

I don’t know,
I said. I felt myself blush at my own ignorance.
Electricity and synapses, I guess.

For us, it is the same. Electricity and synapses. One guesses
. He smiled then, the toothiest of possible grins. A joke. He’d told a joke. But he didn’t give me time to get over the shock of the strange sight of sunshine in his endlessly dark eyes.
When the Xollu still clung to caves, we had no words. We spoke with our minds. Chemical connections, hormonal.
But we are limited. We speak only to our mates. From the first moment we are sprouted, we walk together, aware of another’s thoughts as we are our own. This is why we walk the dreamforests. First as sprouts, going hand in hand. Friends. Doing all things together, until we are grown. Living and breathing and mating and thinking. Electricity and synapses. Chemical. Eternal. Shared.

Vadix told me all of this, standing before me, blue and bare. He wasn’t like the other Xollu, nor the plants that swirled around us. The fruit that moldered on the forest floor was ruby red. The vines that wrapped my arm? Red too. But he was blue. Different.

You’re alone,
I said. And just like that, the smile was gone, vanished as if it had never really been there at all.

Yes,
he said.
I am alone. And you are not supposed to be here.

Just like that, the forests were gone, and I was pulled into the ocean of blackest sleep.

•  •  •

I woke to raucous shouts, the sound of rough voices lifting up through the muggy air. Pulling myself from my sleeping roll, I parted the dingy flap to step into the bright light of day. Before the fire, silhouetted against the camp’s white walls, Aleksandra’s small army of recruits practiced. I stood watching as they thrust their spears into the air over and over again. Even Ettie, who made clumsy movements with a weapon ill-balanced for her small body, jabbed that whittled-down stick and let out a shout: “Yah!”

But Aleksandra wasn’t among them. She leaned her weight on her spear, listening as Rebbe Davison screamed until his ears turned red.

“She’s only a child! You will
not
endanger her!”

The captain’s daughter remained calm in the face of his anger. “We can’t leave her here, Mordecai.”

“She doesn’t know what she’s doing!”

Aleksandra walked toward Ettie, setting a hand on the child’s small shoulder. “We all deserve a chance to protect ourselves.”

Rebbe Davison let out a sound of frustration, throwing both hands into their air. Stomping hard, he came toward me, and collapsed on a log in front of the fire. I sat beside him.

“Don’t you need to train?” I asked.

“I don’t fight unless I have to,” he said. Then he added, with a wince: “Aleksandra never had to be here. She should have been up there on that ship. All those years, watching and waiting. Just because we rushed down to the surface didn’t mean she needed to follow. And now she’s going to get a little girl killed just to get back to it. Maybe we’ll all die. It makes no difference to her.”

I didn’t know what to say. There was no sign of Vadix yet, and none of Mara Stone. I had no assurance that the translator would do as I asked, and if he didn’t, I’d be as vulnerable to Aleksandra’s decisions as anyone else.

Maybe more,
I thought, watching as she thrust the spear through the air.

“Did you think about what I said?” asked Mordecai, casting his gaze sidelong at me. He didn’t look at me, not directly. His words were merely a low murmur. “I’ll support you if you want to take up the mantle.”

“Why me?” I whispered swiftly in response. “Why not you?”

My teacher let out a low laugh. “I decided a long time ago that I’m a scholar, not a leader.”

“And you want
me
to lead?” I asked, dry laughter seeping into my own voice. “Of course I want to get us out of here safely. I want to find a way for us to settle here too. But I’m no leader, Rebbe Davison. I’m clumsy, awkward. I’m always late. Can hardly keep a secret. I mean, look at Aleksandra. She was born to lead.”

We watched her pause in her thrusts to show Ettie the proper way to hold her spear. The way she gripped it suggested deftness that went beyond competency. I wondered, for a moment, how many men and women Aleksandra had taught to kill. She’d been a leader for the guard once, after all. But my old teacher only let out a snort of laughter.

“She does look like she knows what she’s doing, doesn’t she? That’s always been her trick. Her mother’s, too. Don’t show any fears or doubts and the people will follow. You could learn that too, Terra. I’ve known you since you were a toddler. You’re bright. You learn
easily. But more important, you’re a good person. I know dozens of rebels. But none I trust more to put the peoples’ needs first.”

I looked down at the toes of my flight boots. They were scuffed from our long journey, my feet inside blistered and dirty. Rebbe Davison didn’t know what I had done, the violence I’d wrought on that night in the Rafferty’s quarters. I was a vengeful killer, blood on my hands. No better than Aleksandra, certainly. And probably much worse.

“I don’t think so,” I began. “I’m not like her, not in the ways that matter.”

As if to underscore that point, Aleksandra spun toward us, thrusting her spear through the air. There was a flash of brown, a high-pitched whistle, and then an echoing thud. The spear missed us, but narrowly, or perhaps it had fallen precisely where she intended. It jutted out of the log between our hips, swaying between us from the force of impact.

When we finally turned our wide eyes forward, it was to the sight of Aleksandra walking square-shouldered toward us. Behind her the others paused in their lesson. They couldn’t hide the shock that left their mouths open and gaping.

“Aren’t you two going to join us?” she asked, false sweetness lacing her voice. But I knew better. Aleksandra wasn’t sweet. She was anything but. For a moment I tasted my heart in my mouth; I worried she might
walk straight through the fire to reach us. But she only stopped at the circle’s edge, resting her boot against one of the taller stones.

“I think I’m going to sit this one out,” Rebbe Davison said, holding up both hands. Funny, I’d never noticed before how my teacher’s palms were calloused, knotty with scars. I’d known him all these years, but I knew so little about his life.

“We’re in this together, Mordecai.” She didn’t even bother looking me in the eye. This wasn’t about me; it was about her and her old friend. But Rebbe Davison only shrugged.

“I wasn’t—” he began, but his words were cut short. The camp gates swung open, and there stood Vadix, broad shouldered and swaying in the wake of those metal links.

“Damn!” Aleksandra said. She had no spear now, no weapon to flash at him. She looked toward to her newly gathered army, but they all hesitated, every single one, clutching their spears to their chests. Finally, with a cry of impatience, Aleksandra’s hand reached into the open flap of her flight suit. I saw a glint of light catch on metal. Her knife. The Ahadizhi must have missed it when they frisked us at the city’s gates, wrenching our guns from our hands.

“No!” I cried, rushing to my feet. “He’s here to help! Stop her!”

My steps forward were clumsy, slow—too slow.

But Rebbe Davison was faster.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him pull the spear from the log’s
damp wood. He didn’t
throw
it at Aleksandra. He was too unschooled for that. But he ran toward her and took a mighty swing, striking her square in the back.

There was a great burst of dust as she fell forward. She didn’t cry out. None of us did. There was only silence as her knife went spinning on the ground and landed at Vadix’s feet.

“You!” Aleksandra roared as she pulled her body up. Rebbe Davison was frozen, the spear still pointed toward her. Weaponless now, Aleksandra wasn’t going to test him. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t wound him, not at all. “You idiot! You do what
she
says?”

“He hasn’t harmed you.” Rebbe Davison spoke through gritted teeth. The translator only stood frozen, as calm as still water, at the camp’s open gate. “There’s no need to strike him down in cold blood.”

“Cold blood,” Aleksandra said. She wiped the back of her hand against her mouth, where a trickle of red had appeared. “I’ll tell you about cold blood. That girl?”

My hands went icy; my eyes went wide. I’d carried the burden of Mazdin Rafferty’s death with me across the Zehavan wilderness, but I’d never spoken of it aloud. Did the rebels already know what I’d done, or had Aleksandra kept her knowledge to herself? What would my teacher think of the news? Laurel? Ettie?

What would Vadix? He still stood in the open gate, watching Aleksandra with keen eyes.

“
She
murdered Doctor Rafferty. In
cold blood
. Poisoned him. For nothing so petty as revenge. And she’s the one whose command you follow? Good luck with that.”

Aleksandra’s feet hit the ground hard as she walked. It was the only sound as silence stretched on and on and on.

“Terra,” Rebbe Davison said, his voice going soft as he lowered his spear. “Is it true?”

He knew now what I really was. They all did. His plans for my leadership melted away right before his eyes—in a wash of poison and wine.

But before I could answer, a familiar figure stepped out behind Vadix. Diminutive, hook-nosed. Her lab coat was clean, well-scrubbed, white among all this dingy, mud-stained fabric. Mara Stone. She bent over and picked up Aleksandra’s knife. Tucked it into her belt.

“Hello,
Talmid
,” she said. She tilted her head toward the gate. “Come along. I’ve been asked to speak to the senate, and I believe I need your help.”

My eyes flashed to Rebbe Davison.

“Please, stop them from doing anything rash. I’ll be back soon. I’ll fix this,” I said. He didn’t answer. I could only hope against hope that he still found me worthy of regard—someone worth listening to after all he’d learned. Holding my head high, I turned away from him, and went to meet Mara.

I
t was the first time I traveled through the city as a guest, not a prisoner, but I didn’t feel like one. As we were escorted to the train by an Ahadizhi guard, I trailed behind Mara and Vadix, looking down at the toes of my flight boots. They were conversing in polite, officious tones—as if I hadn’t just been revealed to be a murderer.

Of course, it was nothing to Mara. She’d known Momma, and Mazdin Rafferty, too—she’d been the one to supply me with poison, after all, that pretty purple foxglove she’d ground down into a
powder with her own gloved hands, a deadly concoction meant to kill the doctor’s son. She knew the rage in my heart, how deeply I’d been scarred by the loss of my mother. And she knew that Mazdin was the one who had done it to me. So perhaps she could be excused for proceeding at a brisk pace beside Vadix, taking in the wonders of the sprawling alien city that was laid out before us like an overgrown summer garden.

But Vadix hardly knew me. He hadn’t known Momma. Hadn’t known Mazdin Rafferty, either. And unlike the Ahadizhi who jostled us as we passed through the city’s thoroughfares, he’d never even known the taste of flesh—much less brought about another creature’s demise. I knew this instinctively, saw it in the cool, serious set of his lips. Though I’d known his passions to flame brightly as we slept, I knew that at his core he had no taste for killing. That was for other creatures: the Ahadizhi, the beasts in the wilds beyond.

And me.

We made our way through underpasses and over cobbled bridges—the roads looping according to some logic that I couldn’t quite grasp—and I glimpsed Xollu pairs hugging the buildings wherever we went. They reminded me a bit of climbing ivy, desperately clinging to each other, afraid, or perhaps simply unable to venture out on their own. Their eyes were huge at the sight of Mara and me—animals, and gravely threatening to them, our bodies musky
and fragrant, and our bellies hungry for flesh like theirs. But despite their fear, they carried no prods; unlike the Ahadizhi, there were no twin-bladed daggers strapped to their ropey belts. They were helpless, defenseless. Not predators; prey.

Yet the line of Vadix’s broad shoulders was square. Unafraid. What made him so bold? What let him walk alone, unique among his people?

What made him dream of me at night—of a bloodthirsty animal, a killer?

As we drifted up a narrow stairwell, that question weighed heavily on my mind. We were nothing alike, not in biology, not in nature. He led us to a train platform that dripped with vegetation. The lacy moss had more in common with him than I did. A single copper rail furled out in either direction. As if to confirm how little he thought of me, Vadix turned away from us, tracing the line of the single hanging train track. I bit the inside of my cheek. Mara noticed; her gray eyes sparked.

“Cat got your tongue?”

“No,” I said. Then, studying the frown that had etched itself into Mara’s wrinkled face, I shrugged. “Yes. I don’t know.”

She flashed an arthritic hand through the air. “Oh,” she intoned, “don’t worry about what that hellion said about you. She might have held their hearts up
there
for a moment”—she gestured toward the
glass ceiling, to where the ship waited somewhere above—“but they’ve been scrambling like children in her absence. Why, a hundred of them have reaffirmed their loyalty to that Council-fat brat of yours.”

“Who?” I asked.

“Silvan Rafferty, of course. Or did you change your intentions before you jacked one of the Council’s shuttles?”

“Yes,” I said, my eyes traveling the broad plane of Vadix’s back. I could have sworn his earslits opened as he listened in on our conversation. But maybe I was mistaken. Maybe it was nothing. “We . . . I decided against marrying him.”

“Just using him for his body’s pleasures, then? Not my style, girl, though I guess he
is
handsome enough.”