Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(56)
As usual, Bea was right, because Nadim said, “Yes. I have translations if you’re interested.”
“Of course!” I couldn’t see her face under the mask, but the tone left no room for doubt that she had lit up like New Year’s Eve.
“Please understand, this is imprecise, as it has been shifted through many languages. ‘Here we sing to the stars. Deep in the dreaming, we have come and gone for many evers. Until the joining. Until journey’s end. Sing back to us when you come, so that we may know the silence is never eternal. Our sun, your stars, their gods, they have sailed in other skins, far beyond the dark and into the hollow, where all light sleeps.’”
As he spoke, I had an eerie kind of vision. I had no idea what this alien race had looked like, so my imagination put them in robes, all gathered in a circle while they chanted beneath strange and forlorn stars. Firstworld had a sky utterly unlike Earth’s, radiant with colors we got only at sunrise and sunset. A permanent aurora borealis streaking the sky, and a world full of life and color and desolation.
For some reason, a little shiver went through me, as if Nadim had incanted a magic spell. The superstitious kid in me expected a puff of purple smoke and a dragon or a demon to appear. But there was only the disquieting wind, whipping over me in greater gusts, so that the golden fronds in the distance bent nearly double as if performing reluctant obeisance. We stood for a moment in silence, and then Bea dropped to her knees. Normally, I wasn’t the reverent type, but it seemed wrong not to do likewise.
“I don’t know what that means, exactly,” she whispered. “But I feel it. Zara?”
“Me too.” I wasn’t sure what was happening here, and it made me both wary and entranced. But there was something still in this world. A memory, maybe.
She bowed her head first. I followed suit. Then she astonished me by lifting her voice, doing exactly as the writing said. I was no singer, but I tried to follow, offering lower tones to harmonize with her gorgeous soprano. And her voice echoed, swelling in the crystals that remained in the shattered columns. Flickers of light pinged back and forth, trying to send a signal, trying and failing, but dear God, it was exquisite, with streaks of light trembling in the heart of stone. Something in the air changed—charged—and it raised all the hair on the back of my neck, like being trapped in a lightning storm. Even the scent of the breeze changed, that smell of electricity burning up the air.
When our voices fell quiet and the glow died, the silence stretched and stretched, paper thin, then a filament of spider-silk, broken at last by Nadim, in a lovely, shattered tone. “I have never seen this. This has never happened before.”
“Really?” I got to my feet and dusted off my knees.
“There have been no lights on Firstworld since . . .” In his silence I sensed uncertainty, a span of time so long that it was impossible to estimate without carbon dating, maybe. “I’ve heard stories. . . . The whole world used to shine, sparking one stone to another. It was one reason why my people came here. For the songs.”
I nudged Bea. “You did this. How incredible are you?”
By her tone, I guessed she must be hot-cheeked beneath her mask. “I only did what they asked. Anybody could do it.”
But if the other Honors hadn’t brought Nadim along, they might not have had the translation. Even if they had read it, I had a hard time imagining hardcore science types singing to a bunch of ruined rock.
Their loss.
The light was dwindling by then, the violent colors fading to pastels that passed for night on Firstworld. Though we had climate control in our skinsuits, I had no desire to test out how good it was under extreme temperatures. Or to be out here in the dark. Now that the awe had faded, my paranoia was creeping back.
“We should wrap it up and get out of here,” I said.
There were no arguments; as gorgeous as that display had been, there’d been something eerie about it too. Like ghosts whispering across time. We didn’t speak on the way back to the Hopper. Beatriz seemed to be thinking about her impromptu performance while Nadim had to be trying to decide how to explain away what I’d seen in the fern meadow. I didn’t intend to give him a chance to bullshit me.
As Bea booted up the ship, I asked, “Do we have enough fuel for one last sweep?” The Hopper could hover like a beast, and I was curious enough to ask.
“Definitely. Cells at eighty-four percent,” she said after checking. “But what are you looking for?”
“Just checking out the view.”
And searching for aliens.
We skimmed over the ground, and I peered hard at the changing landscape. Just before the grassland yielded to what would be considered forest on Earth—though these were weird-ass, almost sentient-seeming trees that looked like mushrooms, fleshy and leafy at once—I saw it. Bea didn’t spot the dark patch hidden by waving fronds, but it was similar to the circle our thrusters had made. I didn’t mention it. But I felt a hot little burn of confirmation.
Native wildlife, my ass. Somebody else was here. If it was another Leviathan crew, I’d almost shot another Honor.
Shouldn’t have been sneaking up on us, then.
I said, “Okay, let’s go. I’m good.”
“Thank you for taking me with you to the surface,” Nadim said, gentle and uncertain. “I have much to consider.”
Like how to handle me.