Soul of Stars Read online

  She had a feeling that her captain had the same fear.

  “Who else are we meeting?” she began to ask. “Any other Ironbloods? How do we know that we can trust them if—”

  Her captain slid her a knowing look.

  “I’m the Empress of the Iron Kingdom,” Ana argued, using Siege’s own words against her. “Shouldn’t I know who we’re going to be dealing with?”

  “Aye, so you want to rule a kingdom now?” her captain asked.

  Ana glanced away, the tips of her ears burning. “I didn’t say that.”

  Siege belted a laugh. “Go change, and meet us in the waystation, darling.”

  Realizing she had lost that argument, she ducked out of the cockpit and took a quick shower, gently scrubbing the dust and grime from the tomb off her skin; but washing the dirt away wouldn’t rid her of the memories of Mellifare raging about her lost heart. She had been terrifying. The sound of the tomb caving in still rang in her ears, and no matter how much she scrubbed or how loud she hummed a song, she couldn’t seem to escape it.

  Even though her captain had joked, how could Ana think of ruling a kingdom when she’d failed so often, and so terribly?

  In the crew’s quarters, she slipped into her undergarments, pulled on the only nice pair of trousers she had, and rummaged through her trunk for something at least somewhat formal to wear. She picked through her clothes, old shirts and worn cotton smocks, until she found a gold blouse and pulled it out and held it at arm’s length.

  Was it too wrinkled?

  She heard something clatter to the ground and gave a shriek, spinning around with her blouse clutched tight to her chest.

  In the doorway stood a wide-eyed Di, having dropped his holo-pad. “Sorry—I am sorry. I did not realize—you were in the middle of—your shirt is off,” he finished awkwardly.

  They stood stalemate for a moment.

  His gaze dropped to the scar on her belly where his lightsword had pierced her through. Then he promptly grabbed his holo-pad from the ground, turned on his heel, and—

  “Wait,” she called.

  He froze in the doorway, his back still turned to her. “You are undressed. I will not wait—”

  “You’ve seen me practically naked,” she deadpanned, “and I’m wearing underclothes.”

  His shoulders stiffened. He didn’t have an answer for that.

  “Di . . .”

  “Your wound healed nicely,” he said, and closed the door as he left.

  Her fingers came to rest on the rippled scar tissue just beside her navel. Then she fisted her hand and darted across the quarters and slammed open the door. “Because of you!”

  He was almost to the stairs when he turned around and quickly winced, closing his eyes. “Clothes, please.”

  She marched up to him. He was a little taller than she remembered, a little more angular. For six months she had seen him on the newsfeeds, a golden god of the kingdom. He had seemed so much larger than life—and it struck her suddenly how very small he really was, someone she knew she would tear apart a galaxy to save. When she didn’t move, he slowly peeked open one eye, then the other. The black lenses of his pupils, ringed in moonlight white, slowly dilated, refocusing on her, and then her nose, and then her lips—and something in her chest kicked.

  Something massive, and monumental, and terrifying, in the way gas giants and twin suns were terrifying. Awe-striking.

  Then he turned abruptly on his heel and marched down the stairs.

  With a growl she shoved her head into her golden blouse and followed. “Why do you keep running away?”

  At the bottom of the steps, he paused. “I almost killed you. Is that not a good enough reason?”

  She scoffed. “Almost only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

  “You’re so childish!” he said bitingly in reply, and left for the other end of the hull.

  She gritted her teeth, anger vibrating through her, and grabbed for the nearest thing she could—the carcass of E0S on the workbench—and threw it at him as hard as she could. It clipped the side of his head, and he whirled around. E0S clattered to the floor. He looked down to it, then to her. “Did you just throw the can opener at me?”

  “Childish enough for you,” she snarked.

  A dangerous glint sparked in his coal eyes. “Do not test me, Ana.”

  “You’re so infuriating!” She grabbed a wrench and hurled it at him. He dodged. She picked up an omnitool and chucked that, too, and now he was walking back to her with that same patience he had used in the tomb. But she was not scared this time.

  She was furious.

  “Stop throwing things!” he cried.

  “Do you honestly think”—she threw a screwdriver; he dodged—“that I’d blame you? When it was my fault?”

  She had almost run out of things to throw, but there was a soldering iron on the hood of the skysailer, and she turned to grab for that. But when she went to throw it, Di was closer than she’d realized. He caught her wrist.

  “It is not your fault,” he replied, his hands tightening around her wrist. “It was mine. From the very beginning.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense.”

  “My name is Dmitri Rasovant.”

  Her rebuttal caught in her throat.

  The son of the man who’d murdered her family and tried to kill her. His grip on her wrist loosened.

  “But my friends called me Di,” he added quietly.

  Di—like the graffiti on the wall of the ruins.

  The name she called him, too.

  She studied his face, searching for any sign that this was a joke—a lie. Something that told her that she could laugh this off, because he couldn’t be . . .

  But his lips were pressed into a thin, wobbling line. “When I was dying of the Plague, Mellifare came to me promising that she would make me well again. I just had to introduce her to my father. So you see, Ana, I sold the fate of this kingdom to her for my useless life—”

  “It’s not useless.”

  His shoulders slumped, and he looked away again. His mouth worked, trying to find the right words to tell her that yes, he was useless, that she should have left him, that he was dead and unworthy, but in truth he was just stubborn and noble, and she hated that so much about him. She hated it because that was what she loved the most, no matter who he was.

  Dmitri, D09—

  Di.

  “So you see,” he said quietly, stepping away from her, “all of this is because of me. If it were not for me, you would still have your family. The kingdom would not be on the verge of ruin. The Great Dark would be nothing.”

  She caught the front of his shirt before he could walk away. “Your father could have said no—my father could have stopped him. And who’s to say Mellifare wouldn’t have tricked someone else? Someone I met said this was the only future, where we defeated the Great Dark. So I’m glad you’re here, Dmitri.”

  He leaned forward and pressed a kiss to her forehead. His lips were cold, but soft.

  “Thank you,” he whispered, and departed the ship for the waystation.

  Once she dried her eyes and straightened her blouse, she set off into the waystation. It was cold, and the air tasted stale—like it had on the Tsarina. Not many people traversed this area of the kingdom. It was in no-man’s-land. She wondered who kept up the place. It definitely didn’t look homey, and she doubted they received many provisions in the ass end of space. The station was well kept, though, with barely a drift of dust. Where there would be a market for trading, the stalls sat empty, curtains closed over most of the cubicles. There was a bar with a neon light flickering at the entrance, and a few crew members from Siege’s fleetships sat around drinking something that smelled stronger than bourbon. Just like the Dossier, Siege’s other ships collected the lost and the forgotten—Cercians, Solani, Erosians, and once-Ironbloods and a few Metals. The last time the fleetships had all come together, it had been to mourn the passing of the Prospero’s late captain. She
wished there was a more joyous occasion to call everyone together, but it seemed like even the end of the world wasn’t stopping them from drinking.

  “Lookin’ for something, lass?” a gruff, ginger-bearded man called. He had kind eyes and a wide smile, and Ana recognized him instantly—the captain of the Illumine. And the ex-con pickpocket who’d tried to steal from Siege.

  “Redbeard!” Ana cried, and ran to the burly man.

  With a laugh he scooped her up in his thick arms and swung her around. “It’s so good to see you, lass! Heard you’ve been getting into trouble.” He set her down again. He smelled like motor oil and leather, and he looked like he hadn’t aged a day.

  “None at all,” she replied with a smile. “I heard you’d been tussling with the dreadnought out near Cerces.”

  “Ha! Tryin’ to. It’s almost impenetrable!”

  “Almost,” she reminded him, tapping the side of her nose, and his compatriots howled with laughter.

  Redbeard leaned to one of his crewmembers, a fresh-faced young woman with dark blue hair, and said, “This’s Captain Siege’s daughter. Finest troublemaker in the kingdom.”

  “I expect nothing less from her,” added a familiar voice near the back of the bar. Ana spun around to the owner of the voice, a tall androgynous person with long black hair that reached well below their waist, and warm brown skin, decked in gold jewelry and a coat the color of a nebula. They grinned at her, and the neon implants in their cheeks glowed a brilliant teal.

  “Cullen!” she greeted. “Your hair’s longer!”

  “So is yours,” they replied. “What’s Siege’s girl doing in a bar like this?”

  Siege’s girl.

  Even though Ana remembered her parents now, and the rest of her family, the thought of being Siege’s daughter still swelled her heart. It was a moniker she had always wanted to be worthy of.

  She still sometimes felt like she wasn’t.

  “Looking for the meeting room, actually. I’m a little lost,” she admitted.

  Redbeard pointed out of the bar and gave her the directions. “I’ll be along in a jiff and leave this crew to drink without me, aye?”

  “Aye!” his crew agreed.

  Ana laughed. “Don’t have too much fun, now. I remember what happened last time you were all together—don’t burn the bar the down this time,” she added, waving good-bye, and followed the directions he gave her. Down the hallway to the fork at the end, and then left—

  And found Viera instead.

  She gave a start. “Oh! You scared me!” She put her hand over her heart and gave a wry laugh. “You lost, too?”

  Viera gave her a brief look and nodded. She had combed her hair back against her head, but even in the dim waystation light it shone like plantium. She had borrowed some of Lenda’s clothes—a dark shirt that was a little too big for her and trousers cinched in at the waist. She had a gunsling strapped to her hip, and she tapped her finger on the grip of her pistol apprehensively.

  “This place reminds me of the dreadnought,” she said after a moment. “I do not like it. We could be ambushed from anywhere. Why am I not invited to this meeting?”

  “It’s just for Siege’s trusted—”

  “Am I not trustworthy?”

  “No, you are! It’s just . . .”

  Viera studied her for a moment before she said, “Siege is wary, because the heart was not in the tomb, and we have a traitor in our midst.”

  Ana pursed her lips. “Di’s not a traitor—”

  “I do not mean him,” the ex–guard captain replied, and gave Ana a meaningful look. “Someone must have told the HIVE where you were, or else how would the Emperor have known?”

  She opened her mouth to reply and then closed it again as the realization slowly curled down the back of her spine. There was no way the Emperor or Mellifare would have known where she had gone, unless they had intercepted her somewhere between Zenteli and Calavan, but she had gone under forged travel papers and never slipped her hood. “Maybe . . . I hadn’t been careful enough, and a Messier saw me at a port and they followed me.”

  “Or,” Viera replied, and leaned in close to Ana, so close her skin prickled, “perhaps you do not know your crew as well as you should.”

  Then she retreated back down the hall, toward the Dossier. Ana stood there for a long moment, reeling in the possibility Viera had presented. No, Ana knew the crew. They wouldn’t rat on her—not even Elara or Xu. They were good people. Everyone on the Dossier was. But she couldn’t deny the thought that someone had sold her out.

  Redbeard and Cullen passed her on their way to the meeting, and Redbeard tipped his invisible hat to her. She nodded absently, trying to compose herself.

  Who could have told Mellifare?

  There was another clip of boots.

  “Oh, no, I know that look,” said Jax.

  She glanced over her shoulder. He had freshened up as well, dressed in an embroidered lavender coat. His hair was braided down his shoulder, secured with golden toggles that glimmered in the flickering halogens. His kohl eyeliner was fresh, and his smile set her nerves at ease. “You look handsome, as always.”

  “I do enjoy cleaning up for a good party,” he replied, and offered his arm. “Shall we, Your Grace?”

  She took it. “Aye, nan c’zar. This is giving me flashbacks to the Iron Council all over again. What if I say something wrong? What if I mess up? I wasn’t good at this the first time around.”

  “Except this time, you aren’t alone.”

  Relieved, she squeezed his arm. “No, I’m not.”

  Together, the Empress of the Iron Kingdom and the C’zar of the Solani stepped into the meeting room.

  A long oval table sat in the center of the room. Ana and Jax took one head of it, while Siege and Talle sat at the other. There were maybe half a dozen people gathered at the table, and her heart sank by the moment. Had so few answered Siege’s call? Wynn sat beside Mokuba and Redbeard and Xu. There was the captain of the Prospero, Cullen, and the mercenary leader of the Red Dawn.

  The only person she did not see was Di.

  Pitchers of ale were passed around, and when everyone’s cups were filled Siege threw a document into the holographic window in the middle of the table. “All right, Lenda, thank you,” she said, and Lenda closed the doors behind her.

  She’s standing guard outside, Ana realized with a bolt of surprise.

  Viera was right—and Siege knew it. There was a spy on the Dossier. But why hadn’t Siege mentioned it? And why wasn’t Di here?

  “What I am about to say can’t—and will not—leave this room,” Siege began. “Are we clear?”

  The sparse room murmured.

  “And everyone else, are you on a secure line?” she asked, raising her head.

  Everyone else?

  She glanced around to make sure she hadn’t missed anyone—and then, to her surpise, faces burst up on the walls. The mercenary bandit Cavorn; Machivalle—who she honestly thought was dead; Jax’s mother, along with the rest of the Elder Council; and countless other faces she half remembered from the years spent with Siege, and some she didn’t know at all. They were mercenaries and smugglers and info brokers, starship captains and shopkeepers and waystation officers and Ironbloods from myriad points in the kingdom, and for a dumbstruck moment she wondered how Siege had gathered them all.

  Siege’s girl, Redbeard’s crew called her. She had lived with her captain for seven years, but she’d never really understood what that meant until now. There were dozens of the most powerful people in the kingdom.

  When all the people videoing in nodded in agreement, Siege leaned forward on the table, her hair shifting from a prickly orange to yellow, and she told them everything—about how the HIVE was the Great Dark, like in the prophecy, and how it was now looking for its heart. She told them what had transpired with Ana in the palace, and what they had learned in the Solani ark, about how Rasovant had created Metals, and how the Great Dark stole the light from Metals t
o fuel itself, and how it was growing stronger.

  “If we don’t stop it soon, then it will be too powerful to stop, and once it has its heart, it will kill us all,” she finished. “We need to get the heart first, and we need to stop the Great Dark.”

  For a tense moment, no one said anything, until Mokuba shifted in his chair and finally leaned forward. “So you’re saying, Siege, that we need to defeat what amounts to a god.”

  “Sounds like a job for the Goddess,” someone said through the video feed—one of the Ironbloods.

  Ana fisted her hands under the table, because she wasn’t the Goddess. Under the table, Jax put his hand over hers comfortingly.

  “The fate of the kingdom should not fall on one person,” said another voice from the doorway, “but on all of us.”

  Oh.

  Everyone in the room turned toward the Metal Emperor as he stepped into the room.

  Di

  They did not want him here.

  Wynn Wysteria saw him first, and jumped to her feet as though she had seen a ghost—or perhaps worse. Probably worse. They had been in the palace together just a few days ago. He had seen her down a hallway, mourning dress and curls of hair retreating, having eavesdropped during his argument with Erik Valerio.

  She had seen his eyes turn red, the lanterns above his head swirl.

  “You,” she hissed, and jabbed a finger at him. “What is he doing here?”

  Her voice was so sharp, he winced.

  Her shock rippled across the table as the other guests lurched away from him, as if he himself was the Plague.

  The captain made a calming motion with her hands. Her hair was the color of agitated coals. “Let him speak—”

  “Speak?” the captain of the Prospero, Cullen, snarled. “What would the Iron Kingdom’s heartless Emperor know?”

  “He ordered the assimilation of Metals,” Mokuba added. “He ordered my friends who protected them to be killed—butchered like animals!”

  He did.

  He remembered every word of those orders, because his memory was as perfect as his deeds were dark. There was nothing he could say to change them. He wanted to explain and tell them the truth. That he had been HIVE’d. That he could not control what he said or did. It had still been he who did those terrible things.