Zodiac (7 page)

“You worked hard in your classes, and your only difficulty was using the Astralator. What you didn’t realize was that after putting so much work into your Centering technique and spending so much time reading the Ephemeris, you’d become a natural. Like us, you don’t need an Astralator.”

Admiral Crius jumps in before Agatha’s words can sink in, gesturing at the holographic data crowding the air above us. “These files belong to the candidates we’ve selected as Advisors. They will be beamed to your Wave, as well as the surviving members of the Royal Guard. You’ll see one of your comrades on that list, Lodestar Mathias Thais.”

I inhale sharply and turn around, only now remembering that Mathias is here. Even before seeing him, I already feel a rush of relief to have a familiar face nearby.

Except when I look, Mathias isn’t looking back. He’s staring ahead, eyes forward, like he’s determined not to listen to our conversation. His demeanor is completely different from before, when he was drinking in every word, as if the exile in question was his and not mine. I don’t understand what’s changed.

“Lodestar Thais would make a much better Advisor than me, if that’s what you’re thinking,” I blurt.

“Excuse me?” Admiral Crius leans forward, and his expression makes me tremble. “Are you under the impression we want you to be an Advisor?”

“Oh . . . no. Of course not.” Suddenly the thing I want most in the world is to melt into my seat cushion.

Crius stands, and so does Agatha. Dr. Eusta floats over, and all three of them look down at me. “Rhoma Grace,” Crius starts, his tone making me wonder if we’re back on the subject of exile. “Please forgive our cruel methods.”

Then—to my extreme shock—he and the others give me a deep bow.

“The stars revealed a portent that some of us found implausible, but it seems we must accept it. As of today, we honor you as Guardian of the Fourth House, our beloved Cancer.”

BEFORE I CAN EVEN REACT,
the black opal is thrust into my hands, and I’m ushered out of the room and into the arms of two women waiting outside the door.

I’m half led, half carried along the dim passageways, flanked by the group of officers that met us at the hub when we first landed. I notice Mathias doesn’t come with me this time.

Oceon 6 is a maze of corridors and sealed doors, and by the time we arrive at our destination, I have no idea how we got here. While the women deposit me in a spacious and cold room, the officers stay outside, probably standing guard.

“I’m Lola, your Lady of Robes,” says the taller of the two. She’s wearing a Cancrian-style draped dress in periwinkle blue. It reminds me painfully of home, where wardrobes and architecture cascade and have a watery flow. “And this is Leyla . . . m-my little sister.”

The humanity in her voice is what makes me look up. Lola seems to be about twenty, with a head of thick red curls hiding her small face. Beside her, Leyla smiles shyly, and with a jolt, I realize she’s younger than me. She can’t be more than fourteen.

“I was apprenticed to Mother Origene’s Lady of Robes,” continues Lola, “and I was in the middle of my training when she . . .” Her face pulls together, and she casts her gaze to the floor. When she’s calm, she makes a small bow. “We are green, but we will do our hardest to serve you, Holy Mother.”

I want to speak, but there’s something monstrous in my throat, and I’m afraid of releasing it.

Unlike her older sister, Leyla’s red curls are pulled away from her face, exposing a pair of round sapphire eyes. She seems to understand what I need and says, “Lola, let’s let Holy Mother rest.”

They bow to me, and as their dresses swoosh past, I smell a hint of the Cancer Sea in the folds of their fabric. “Can I see my friends?” I whisper, my voice a hoarse rasp.

Lola’s already in the hallway, but Leyla’s on the threshold, so she hears me. She turns her sapphire eyes to mine and says, “I’m so sorry, Holy Mother. We are under directions to keep you isolated and protected until the threat is identified.”

She’s just confirming what I already know.

I’m alone.

When the door shuts, I look around the room. I must be in the sleeping quarters of the top-ranking Lodestar posted on Oceon 6. There’s a bed in one corner, a private bathroom, and a desk that’s been converted into a makeshift vanity for me. I should use this time to shower, find clean clothes. I should be trying to unlock the stars’ secrets in the black opal, to figure out how to keep our people safe.

But this room is too empty.

It doesn’t have my toothbrush or my drumsticks or the exotic seashells Dad used to bring me back from his dives to the seafloor.

I’m
empty.

I’m being asked to give everything, when I have nothing left.

I curl into a ball on the bed. Then I bury my face in a pillow, and I let the monster out.

• • •

By the time I’m done crying, my eyes are mere slits. I’m still in my compression suit because it’s so tight-fitting that I couldn’t squeeze a shirt and shorts underneath.

I undo my messy ponytail and pull my hair up into a large puff that sits on my head, like a rat’s nest. I don’t care how I look. I don’t care if I’m proving I’m not Guardian material. I didn’t ask for any of this.

There’s a knock on my door. “Come in!” I call eagerly, shooting up from bed. If anyone can work her way around rules, it’s Nishi.

I’m so thrilled to see her, I throw my arms around her neck the moment she comes through the door. “Nish, I knew you’d—oh!” I pull away quick, like I’ve touched something scalding.

In fact, what I touched was Lodestar Mathias Thais.

“I’m so sorry,” I say, every part of me burning with Helios’s heat. “I just—I mean, excuse me.” I spin around and press my hands to my cheeks, trying to cool down and hide my mortification. It’s not helping that my mind keeps replaying the moment on a loop. Or that my skin still tingles from our close contact.

“Don’t apologize,” he says softly. When I turn back around, his face is as scarlet as mine.

“I’ve been sent to deliver a message. Admiral Crius has transmitted the candidates for your Council of Advisors to your Wave.”

My Wave
.

I frantically dig my fingers into the pocket of my suit and pull out my gloves, my Wave, and—“Your Astralator!”

I give the mother-of-pearl device to Mathias, who cups it in his hands like it’s a small bird. “Thank you.”

I open my Wave and try hailing Dad and Stanton. There’s still no connection. I try Nishi’s Tracker next, but the signal seems to be scrambled so that it’s impossible to communicate with anyone. I have a feeling Crius is behind this—and I’m betting his justification is my protection.

“Once you’ve selected your twelve Advisors,” says Mathias, as though there’d been no interruption, “you must designate one as your—”

“
Guide
, I know,” I say, shutting off my Wave. Mom’s lessons were thorough, at least. “When a Guardian younger than twenty-two is selected, she must have a Guide who can train her in the ways of the Zodai.”

He falls silent.

Then I say, “I want you.”

His face flushes all over again, and—realizing how that sounded—I quickly add, “
To be my Guide!
”

I’ve never seen a face go from red to white so fast. Something flares in Mathias’s eyes, like shock—or worse,
refusal
. He looks straight ahead, not meeting my gaze, and says, “One of the more experienced Advisors would be a better choice. I’m new to the Royal Guard, unqualified to teach you.”

“Then we’ll make a perfect pair, since I’m unqualified to lead.”

“I still have a lot to learn about being an Advisor. It would be best if we each found our own mentors.”

“Mathias.” At the sound of his name, his eyes travel down to mine. For a moment I can almost kid myself that we’re bickering about an afterschool group and not the leadership of our House.

I take an uncertain step toward him. “We’re running out of familiar faces. I’m only asking for your help. And . . . if you can spare it, your friendship.”

He bows. “As you wish, Holy M—”

“What I wish,” I say loudly, before he can finish, “is that you use my name. Rho.” If Mathias ever calls me
Mother
, I will die.

“
Rho?
” he repeats, like it’s a dirty word.

“I’m sorry you don’t like it,” I say, crossing my arms. “But I called you Mathias and not Lodestar when you asked me to.”

Another stare-off.

Then, “As you wish.”

“Thank you.”

“In one week,” he says, picking up the old thread again, “there will be a ceremony and dinner in your honor, where you will be sworn in as our House’s new Guardian . . .
Rho
. It’s important you select the rest of your Advisors before then. During this week, I will also be training you.”

“What about my friends?”

“They have been given lodging on the base. They will be trained as Zodai, along with every surviving Acolyte.”

The word
surviving
is a punch to my gut. “I want to see them,” I say, my breathing shallow.

“I will try to arrange it.” He looks at me like he might say more, but instead he bows abruptly and strides to the door.

“Mathias?”

He stops and turns. “Yes?”

“I can’t do this.”

Speaking the words out loud, something hard and heavy shifts in my chest, allowing more air to reach my lungs. Like I’ve just removed an obstacle clogging my airways. I’m still as inadequate as I was seconds ago, but admitting it makes me feel like less of a fraud.

“The stars don’t lie,” he says, his soft baritone lacking its gentleness. “You’ve been chosen for a reason. Search your heart, and you’ll find it.”

His words of encouragement are as Cancrian as it gets, but they only make me feel worse.

I heard it in his tone, saw it in his eyes, sensed it in his demeanor.

Mathias doesn’t trust in me either.

• • •

The next day, I return to the room where I was made Guardian, and I sit with Crius, Agatha, Dr. Eusta, and Mathias, while they introduce me to eight people—the rest of my Advisors. They fill me in on procedure, traditions, expectations. . . . Thanks to Mom, I already have a basic understanding, but it’s still a lot to process.

In the afternoon, I join Mathias for our first Zodai lesson. We meet in a room filled with plushy mats, towels, and refreshments. Lola found me stretchy pants and an oversized shirt to wear for my training sessions.

Mathias is lying on his back on one of the mats, a strip of abs visible below the hemline of his shirt. Lola walks me to the threshold, and I catch her gaze straying to his bare skin before she leaves.

“First we’ll focus on refining your Centering technique,” says Mathias, once we’re alone. He sits upright. “I think the best way will be using Yarrot.”

I swallow, hard. “Yarrot doesn’t work for me.” He freezes, and we do that thing where we shut up and stare. After watching for so many years, we’re each still a complete mystery to the other—but we don’t ask those questions yet.

Looking into his eyes, I wonder what he sees. Sometimes the blue grows so soft when he’s watching me that I think he might care. Other times, like now, the indigo darkens, and I feel like all he sees is a little girl in grown-up shoes.

He rises to his feet. “I used to practice every day on Elara.”

“I remember.”

This time the stare is more familiar. As if beyond being Guardian and Guide, we could also be those two people who watched each other grow from afar—only now brought together, forced to grow up even faster.

“Maybe we could try one or two poses,” I cede, shrugging as if each movement won’t be a knife slicing my chest. Then I sit on the other mat and slip off my shoes.

I don’t get back to my room until late, every muscle in my body sore and aching. At first I could barely pull off the easiest positions and kept losing my balance, but by the end it was as though I’d never stopped practicing. Every arc, stretch, and sweep of movement was etched inside my mind, like the dancing of my drumsticks, or the swirling of Cancer in the Ephemeris—everything felt connected, like it’s all part of a grand choreography designed by our stars.

We cycled through all twelve poses until I could hold each one for fifteen minutes without breaking a sweat.

When I get to my room, I’m supposed to open the black opal and Center myself, to see what effect the Yarrot has—but I collapse in bed, exhausted, and I don’t wake up until morning.

• • •

Three days have passed, and it’s nighttime, I think. Oceon 6 has no windows, and its alternating periods of artificial light confuse my sense of chronology.

Everything’s confused. I’m still in shock.

Yesterday, I awoke in a frenzy, thinking I was late for class. Then I remembered. The Academy is gone. So are my instructors and friends. Maybe even my family. My old life is a sand castle that’s been washed away in the Cancer Sea’s new tide.

This other life feels surreal. I’m beginning to think the Advisors only chose me as Guardian because I’m young and easy to control, since they spend our morning meetings debating strategy among themselves and ignoring my suggestions. The way Mathias eyes me only strengthens my doubts. He keeps saying it’s my duty to play the part—but he doesn’t say it’s my rightful place.

Everyone else on this base looks at me like I’m their savior. I just wish they would tell me what I’m supposed to do.

This morning, Crius told us he found the real cause of the explosion on Thebe—a critical overload in a quantum fusion reactor. What he and Dr. Eusta want to know is how it happened. I keep telling them we already know how—Dark Matter was the trigger. But Agatha is the only one who believes me.

The question isn’t how—it’s
who
.

Crius wants more answers, and he made me read the Ephemeris for most of the meeting. Mathias made me read it again this afternoon. But both times, I couldn’t see.

We’ve lost twenty million people, a fifth of our population. It’s a number too large for me to understand.

What I do understand is that Deke’s sisters drowned. Kai lost his parents. Dad and Stanton haven’t been found. I’m too full of the past to see the future.

Tonight is the first time I get to be with my friends since we arrived. Wave communications finally started working again, so I spoke to Nishi for hours yesterday, filling her in on everything that’s happened since we parted. She was breathless for most of the conversation. It felt strange to share a laugh with someone again—the past three days, it’s been all bows and
Holy Mother
s from Lola, Leyla, and the Lodestars, and then a bunch of barking and bossing around from Mathias and my Advisors.

Sagittarians don’t bow to their Guardian—they say doing so implies every soul is not equal—so thank Helios Nishi isn’t fazed by this stuff. For her part, Nishi told me that she, Deke, and Kai have been grouped together with the other Acolytes who survived . . . the Acolytes who didn’t come out to our show.

After she said it, guilt choked both our vocal cords for a while. If we hadn’t organized the concert that night. If I’d heeded the warning signs in the Ephemeris. If we’d just stayed indoors . . .

They might have died anyway
, a small voice reminds me. The pieces of wreckage that struck the compound killed just as many people as the electric pulse did outdoors.

Nishi said she and the guys have been in Zodai training all day, every day. A Lodestar Garrison trains them in the mornings—while I’m in with the Council of Advisors—and Agatha trains them in the afternoons.

They had to take Abyssthe yesterday, and Kai panicked and refused. Deke was the only one who could convince him that it would be fine, that he wouldn’t pass out and wake up to the destruction of our world.

I Waved Deke a few times, but he didn’t answer. When I asked Nishi about him, she grew cagey and said he’s dealing with loss his own way. I just wish I could help.

This morning, Mathias told me he arranged for the three of them to eat dinner with me in my room tonight. The excitement of seeing my friends is so massive, it doesn’t leave room for anything else. I’ve been distracted all day, and I could tell Mathias and the rest of my Advisors are starting to lose their patience. I’ll need to manage something impressive tomorrow.