Zodiac (29 page)

My heels are making my ankles sting, so I lean against Mathias’s bicep, linking our arms. He, Lacey, and Mallie are alternating between watching the sights above and the fight below, but I’m gazing at the crowd, a rainbow of colors that’s no longer segregated but blended. Then a familiar voice floats from nearby, and at last my eyes find the ones they’ve been looking for.

Hysan is twenty feet away, talking to a gaggle of university students from various Houses, most of them holding pink drinks. The group looks spellbound by him, and I try to hear what he’s telling them. But I can’t make out the words.

After a minute, there’s an outburst of laughter from the students, and one of the girls—a Libran—slaps his arm playfully. Hysan says something else and flashes his centaur smile. Even from this distance, it tickles my skin.

The holographic wrestlers take a break, and now that people have stopped shouting, I can hear Hysan’s voice. It sounds like he’s telling a joke.

“After creating the first human,” says Hysan, his green gaze dancing with every person in the group, “Helios gave the Guardians a chance to make an adjustment to man—one wish, effective the moment it’s made. Aries was up first. He gave us super strength.” An Aerian girl in a skintight red dress whistles. “Taurus removed our need to sleep. Gemini imbued us with magical powers. Cancer made sure love would always guide us.” He pauses and casts his gaze around for a quick moment, and I wonder if he could be searching for me.

When he starts again, he speeds through his list, and the students cheer him on as he goes: “Leo got rid of our inhibitions”—two Leos slap hands—“Virgo made us flawless, Scorpio gave us mental control over technology, Sagittarius gave humans the power to teleport, Capricorn made our brains bigger, Aquarius lengthened our lifespans, and Pisces gifted everyone with a pure soul.”

When Hysan finally takes a breath, the group applauds. The hungry look on some of the girls’ faces makes my stomach sear with jealousy. I’ve been watching the Libran girl, and she’s brushed her arm against his too many times not to be intentional.

“Only Libra’s Guardian was left, and for his wish, he asked that human lives be
fair
.” Laughter erupts from half the group. “And that’s why instead of being gods, you’re listening to me tell this joke.” The rest of them are now laughing, too. It’s the first time I’m seeing Hysan on his own.

I longingly watched Mathias for years before we ever spoke, but Hysan I’ve only known as mine. I don’t know him when he’s not with me.

The Libran girl, who looks to be about twenty and has silky blonde hair, invites the others back to the embassy. “We can get room service,” I hear her say, and even though she’s addressing everyone, she’s only looking at Hysan.

The group welcomes her proposal with drunken excitement, and every organ within me seems to crumble, until all that’s left is my shell. She’s beautiful, older than me, and doubtlessly more experienced—of course Hysan is interested.

When he leans into her ear to whisper something, my insides wring with despair. I just accepted the charge to lead our universe in a war against an eternal star, and I can’t even compete with this mortal girl.

But then Hysan pulls away, and the girl’s smile is gone.

As I’m watching, he casts his gaze around again, and I realize that his manner is so courteous, I didn’t notice it before—but he’s actually been searching the crowd often. And this time when he looks, he sees me.

He excuses himself from the group and cuts over to where I’m standing. The Libran girl’s gaze lingers after him, her expression sulky.

Mathias looks down from the images of Guardians Origene and Caaseum in the sky. He spies Hysan’s approach, and his arm muscle tightens under my hand.

When he’s only a couple feet away, I feel Hysan taking in every part of me, even though his eyes never pull away from mine. He reaches for my free hand, and my blood bubbles where his lips touch my skin. “I missed you,” he says, holding my fingers a moment too long.

“This is Mallie and Lacey,” says Mathias loudly, forcing Hysan to turn away from me.

After they introduce themselves, Mallie says, “We should resume our drink service.” Her glassy eyes reflect my coronet again. “Good fortune, Guardian,” she says, bowing. “May you lead us to victory against Thirteen.”

“It was wonderful meeting all of you,” says Lacey, also bowing. She seems about to speak to Mathias before leaving, but Mallie pulls her by the elbow and says,
“That’s Rho’s boyfriend.”
Then she looks back at the three of us and waves, dragging a mortified Lacey with her.

Hysan, Mathias, and I stand around in silence, and too late, I realize I should have corrected her.

“Can I get you anything, Rho?” asks Mathias, his mood suddenly improved.

Hysan won’t meet my gaze, and it hits me I’m still holding onto Mathias—that I’ve been holding onto him since Hysan arrived.

“I think I should go, as well,” says Hysan, his tone still amiable but his sunny glow dimming. “Since we’re taking off tomorrow morning, and there’s much to—”

“No, don’t,” I say, afraid to lose him again in this crowd. I hate all these secrets and mixed messages, but my window for a heart-to-heart with Mathias is gone, so I’ll need to find another moment. But I have to explain myself to Hysan now. “I think I could use a glass of water.”

Immediately, Mathias sets out to find me one, and as soon as I’m alone with Hysan, I say, “I’m sorry, I haven’t had a chance to tell him yet, and—”

Hysan shakes his head. “I don’t want to pressure you, Rho. It’s just sometimes I don’t know how you feel, and he can be so possessive of you—”

“Like the Libran girl with you?” When I hear how jealous I sound, I wish I hadn’t spoken, but now that I have, I can’t stop. “I just feel like there’s so much we don’t know about each other. I mean . . . how do I know that you don’t have a girlfriend on every House?”

He laughs, startling me. “You could brand me as yours if it pleases you.” He touches his forehead. “Perhaps a tattoo here. . . . What do you think of
Property of Rho Grace
? Too subtle?”

I laugh too, then I grow flustered, caught in the current of my emotions, and he interlocks his fingers with mine. “If you don’t already know how I feel about you, I’m failing as a communicator.”

I feel the warmth of his touch and blow out a hard breath, releasing my tension. “It’s not you . . . it’s
everything
.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Rho,” he says, his voice now completely serious. “As long as you want me here, I’m here. If you want to wait to tell Mathias until later, when this is over, I’ll understand.”

I wish I could kiss him, but Mathias is returning. I wish I knew there was a later, that we’ll still be around when this is over.

But for the first time in the Zodiac, no one knows what’s coming tomorrow.

THE FESTIVAL ENDS CLOSE TO
DAWN
, when a couple of rowdy Leos sneak the embassy’s lions into the wrestling ring and try turning them into holographic fighters.

A few hours later, the Zodiac goes to war.

Hysan, Mathias, and I are stationed on the cruiser
Firebird
, our flagship. The fleet is accelerating across the galaxy to the place where the vision used to appear to me in the Ephemeris. We’re taking a convoluted route known only to a few senior officers, and our whole armada is shielded, veiled, and running silent. Hopefully it’s enough to keep Ochus from finding us.

Even though the three of us are on the same ship, we barely have time to talk amid all the preparations. Mathias is on the hangar deck, teaching people how to pilot the skiffs; Hysan is one of his students. After four days of flying, we’re now only hours away from the thirteenth constellation.

Since we’re maintaining radio silence, we can’t get fresh news from home, and I’m anxious. The last thing we learned before setting off is that Gemini’s devastated planet just missed colliding with its neighbor, so our refugee camp is safe for now. But I have no idea if another world has been ravaged, or if the army hiding on Phobos has made a move yet.

“Have you ever seen a ship this majestic?” Admiral Horace Ignus of Leo spreads his arms wide. He and I just finished reviewing my part of the plan so that things can go smoothly when it’s time.

He’s a loud, expansive man, with a broad Leonine face and thick brown beard. When I first stepped aboard, he had his orchestra play a fanfare and greeted me with a kiss on each cheek. “Welcome, little lady,” he said. “Have no fears while you’re aboard the
Firebird
.” As if this were a pleasure cruise, not a battleship.

“Admiral, I was hoping to hear more about the battle strategy—”

“We’ve got that pretty much under control, darlin’. Trust me, we’ll nail that murderin’ sonofabitch.” He’s condescending, but like most Leos, he has a good sense of humor, so it’s hard not to like him. “You just keep your eye on the metaphysical stuff and leave the the physical work to us.”

All I know of our battle plan is that it’s what Ignus calls a
feint
. In sea sports, it’s when you pretend to go one way, and while your opponent’s distracted, your teammates go another. But since I don’t play sports, I don’t know how often it works. All I know is that without Hysan’s shields, we wouldn’t stand a chance.

The
Firebird
is a long black cylinder with fake gravity like
Equinox
. Behind us, more than two hundred other vessels trail through the sky, and unlike
Firebird
and
’Nox
, few of them were built for speed. Gawky freighters, leisurely yachts, sluggish galleons and arks—they string out like clumsy runners at a marathon.

All twelve Houses sent spacecraft to fight Ophiuchus. Even Cancer managed to supply a barge. Scorpio contributed a squadron of sloops, even though Charon is under investigation by the Plenum. House Virgo provided mirage veils to cloak every ship from view. Sirna is stationed on the Ariean destroyer
Xitium
,
which flies just off our starboard flank, and Lord Neith is piloting
’Nox
on our port side. Rubidum’s somewhere behind us, steering a neutron zeppelin.

On Phaetonis, the Ariean generals converted a chemical plant for mass production of Psy shields, and now every vessel in our fleet carries a full-size facsimile of Hysan’s veil. Since we’re flying silent, ship-to-ship communications are tricky. Sometimes we shuttle back and forth, but mostly we use blinking signal lamps. Our entire success rests on a surprise attack.

“I just think if I knew more,” I tell Ignus as we walk together, “maybe I could help, based on what I learned from my previous encounters with Ophiuchus.”

He gazes down at me with a look of grandfatherly patience. “Little Mother, you worry too much.”

While Ignus goes to the bridge, I head to the forward observatory, going over what I know of the plan in my mind. First, we’ll zigzag through the Kyros Belt, a broad band of ice in the Fish constellation of House Pisces. The Kyros Belt will conceal our stop at a Piscene space station orbiting planet Ichthys. That’s where we’ll load up on fuel. We’ll need a lot of fuel to reach the Thirteenth House.

Then, heavily veiled, we’ll pass through Ochus’s wall of Dark Matter. When we’re within visual range, we’ll lower our Psy shields, and every Zodai in our fleet will read the patterns of his constellation to find him. We’ll need to be incredibly fast, since shields down means he’ll be able to attack us. Once we find Ochus’s base, the feint comes in.

I’m
the feint.

Ignus has given me a Wasp gunship with a high-resolution Ephemeris onboard, and I’ll fly it far from the fleet. When we find him, I’ll lower my Psy shield and open an Ephemeris to attract Ochus’s attention.

The instant he attacks me, my Psy shield will switch on and keep me safe . . . I hope. And while Ochus is distracted, the fleet will move close enough to destroy his headquarters. Then, as Rubidum says, “We’ll incinerate the butcher.” But I also know I could be incinerated in the process.

I sent Nishi and Deke encrypted messages before leaving the embassy. In Nishi’s, after thanking her a million times for everything—above all, for being the best friend imaginable—I included a letter for Stanton. I asked her to track him down and deliver it if I don’t return.

Mathias finds me in the forward observatory. “The enemy knows we’re coming,” he says, storming over in a bad mood. “This armada’s too big to hide.”

I recite the facts Admiral Ignus used to ease my own worries. “We’re invisible, and we change our heading every few hours. He can’t possibly know our exact location.”

Mathias adjusts the telescope lens and looks through it. He stays glued to the eyepiece, and I can’t read his expression. His stretches of silence are more maddening than his outbursts.

“Our Zodai are already watching for ambushes,” I insist. “We’ll do lots of reconnaissance before we strike.”

Sirna’s still worried about the secret army on Phobos, but that’s not what troubles me most. I’m worried we’ve been at peace for so long that our Houses have forgotten the art of war.

Except for the five Ariean destroyers, none of our vessels were designed to carry weapons, and other than the Arieans, our crews have no experience in battle.
Combat
is just a word from the history files for most of us here. The older men like Ignus are almost giddy. They don’t seem to understand there’s a chance we won’t come back from this.

I plop onto a stool while Mathias recalibrates the lens array, and numbers fly across his control screen as the telescope refocuses. He’s working harder than anyone, training new skiff pilots en route and instructing the ship’s crew in martial arts. We all have to be ready for anything—no one knows what’s behind Ochus’s wall of Dark Matter.

I run fingers through my curls, wondering what critical factor I’ve missed. I can’t fight the bad feeling that keeps creeping up my neck, no matter how many times I try to shake it off. “Ophiuchus is just one House, and we’re twelve. We’ve got the numbers. Everyone believes we can do this.”

“Well then, if everyone believes, we’ll definitely win,” he says flatly.

I stare at him. “What is it?”

He finally faces me, and his eyes shine with more passion than his voice betrays. “They’re asking too much of you, Rho. They’re using you like bait.”

Now I’m the one to look away. “Mathias, I launched this voyage. These people trust me. You want to turn back?”

“Of course not. We’re committed now.” He rises from his scope and moves toward me. “I’m having your Wasp armor-plated.”

“Thank you,” I say, even though we both know physical armor won’t hold off a Psy attack.

“I’ll be with you every step,” he murmurs, looking like he wants to say more.

He thinks he’s going to pilot my Wasp, but I’ve already decided there’s no way. I’m not going to let him die with me. He already came aboard
Equinox
without knowing the full risk, and he could have died too many times. I have to return him to Amanta and Egon. Mathias has to get home.

I nod and try to smile. “The plan will work. It has to.”

He studies my forehead, my mouth, my chin. I can’t read his expression. “When was the last time you had a decent meal?”

“I ate some breakfast.” Actually, I had a tube of fortified energy paste, but it counts. “I’m going to get ready for my meeting with the Psy experts.”

Mathias and I agreed that I would consult the foremost Psy scholars in our fleet while we’re on our way to see whether they can help me defend myself in the Psy, if I’m forced to fight Ochus.

One of the three notables is Chronicler Yuu, a Capricorn. The second is a Piscene mystic, Disciple Psamathe, and the third is a Virgo I met during our visit. Moira’s gray-haired courtier, Talein.

“Eat a little more,” Mathias calls on my way out.