Empress of a Thousand Skies(32)

In the distance, Rhee could see Seotra standing at the edge of the crystal formation, his face turned down as if he were deep in thought. Rhee could kill him just for the false grief on his face.

She was also, unexpectedly, overcome by a desperate wish to see Tai Reyanna. She was convinced that if she could just look the woman in the eyes, Rhee would know once and for all if her caretaker had betrayed her. But the crowd had begun to snake up the hill, and her view of Tai Reyanna was blocked. Before the vigil started, people had forced their way up to the crystal formation so Tai Reyanna could lay her hands on their heads, touching them for a brief moment as she mumbled a prayer.

Closer, closer, closer Rhee moved. Step by step. Person by person.

Fear began to beat a rhythm in her chest, and she kept wiping her hands on her tunic, terrified that when she grabbed for her knife, her palms would be too slick to hold it. As she approached, the crowd became less generous despite her mark and shoved back, though the look of disgust was plain on their faces. Rhee knew that even if it had been manufactured, she’d been marked in her own way: the last Ta’an, a bad omen of sorts, as if the family history of tragedy were contagious. She’d never felt more anonymous, or more alone. Instinctively she sought Dahlen out in the crowd. It was telling, the way he killed with confidence. It meant he’d had practice, and had done it many times before.

A wave of momentum traveled through the crowd and pushed her forward, knocking her to her knees. Something was wrong. Rhee had never been superstitious, but she knew immediately—the thought of one bad omen had triggered another. Suddenly she had to break free, to kill Seotra now—before it was too late.

Rhee plunged through the crowd, ignoring the children’s moans and complaints. The harder she pushed, the more ashamed she felt.

“Think you’re special?” someone growled in her ear as she passed.

Did she think she was special?

You think you have all the answers? Veyron had said.

Someone grabbed the back of her hood, another one her arm. She wrenched away from a boy with a shock of red hair, his face covered with plague scars.

“Wait your turn,” a little girl cried, but she couldn’t wait. Seotra had to die, now, before she lost her chance.

She was close now, a short sprint. She could see Seotra and the Tasinn guards behind him, hands ostentatiously resting on their holsters. He was smiling. That smile—it was the same smile that had moved across his face as he watched her parents’ craft embark.

It was a smile, wasn’t it? A smile of knowing, of triumph?

Not simply a look of relief because they were escaping? Now that she couldn’t call up the memory on her cube, she couldn’t be sure.

Time slowed. It was the final stretch. She pushed and shoved her way forward. Blood thundered in her ears, and it almost drowned out the children behind her, jeering, calling her names. So close now that she could almost, almost reach out a hand to touch him . . .

She froze.

At that second, Tai Reyanna, bending over a toddler to murmur a blessing to him, looked up and saw her. And Rhiannon nearly died. She nearly turned to liquid and melted into the ground, because she knew—she knew—that Tai Reyanna had seen right past the mark on her face, had seen and known exactly who she was.

Tai Reyanna’s mouth dropped open in surprise. Seotra, puzzled, began to turn in Rhee’s direction.

Now.

And then, just as she reached for her knife, a hood fell over her face, and two arms encircled her so tightly the air left her body in a rush. Rhee inhaled the raw fiber of wool as she opened her mouth to scream and found that there was no air in her lungs.





TEN


    ALYOSHA



DERKATZ, Aly decided, was the armpit of the universe.

And after three days on the run from the UniForce and staying offline, hopscotching with Vin between the shadiest of intergalactic safe houses, he could say he was the definitive expert on the topic. Kalu had just declared martial law across all their planets and airspace—which meant that border restrictions were tighter than Regent Seotra’s you-know-what. Just getting out of the core territories had taken balls of steel.

When stopping to refuel, they’d stuck to sad little asteroids that didn’t bother scanning anyone coming or going.

Here on the Outer Belt, they could move more freely. In theory. And Aly knew why: Nobody wanted to come this far to patrol a pile of sand-dust settlements, and the patrols that did come left as soon as possible.

A dwarf planet, Derkatz was a distant planetary oxygen pit stop infamous for its black market. So far, however, Aly and Vincent hadn’t had any luck finding oxygen. Or to get technical, they hadn’t had any luck buying it in any form. They’d just been chucked out of their third greenhouse by an enraged Derkatzian merchant who vowed to bite off Alyosha’s mouth and eat it, the kind of threat that would be common only in the Outer Belt.

As soon as they were outside, Aly pulled his goggles back onto his forehead and pawed his face mask off. He squinted toward the darkening horizon. Grains of sand whipped into his eyes.

“Pretty slick back there,” he said.

“Don’t even start.” Vin shook the sand out of his hair.

“No, for real. I’m impressed.” Aly slipped into his Kalusian accent and made a show of straightening out the front of his jumpsuit. It was the same as Vin’s and the same as every other humanoid on this rock, since it was the only thing that did a halfway decent job of keeping the sand out of your junk. It had a utility loop on the hip, where Vin had hung Aly’s hammer just to taunt him. “Tell me, Vincent, what’s your secret negotiation technique? To piss off literally every carbon-based life-form in the known universe?”