Soul of Stars Read online

  He made himself stand there, and he listened, trying to hold on to the words Jax had given him in the medical ward. That he was good.

  He wished he was good.

  He wondered, quietly, if he ever would be again.

  “He ordered his Messiers to open fire on my ships!” one of the video callers added.

  He had.

  “He dragged my crew away to the dreadnought! I haven’t seen them since.”

  No, because they were Metals now.

  Mokuba added, “I spent the better half of six months in a constant state of panic trying to hide our sanctuaries!”

  And oh, he’d been so close to finding them and HIVE’ing all those Metals.

  “So why,” said Wynn coldly, “is this monster here?”

  Monster.

  He stiffened his shoulders against the word, clenched his fists to bear it.

  And still he stayed silent.

  “And what of—”

  “QUIET!” Ana slammed her fists down on the table, spilling her drink. The room plunged into silence. The ale slowly spread across the table. She glared at the people at the table. “The HIVE did that—Mellifare did that. Not Di.”

  Then she turned her golden gaze to him. He had forgotten what that was like, the trust in her eyes.

  “He’s here to help us,” she went on, “and Goddess knows we need it. I need it.” Then she sat down. The table was quiet, even if the people in the videos murmured to themselves. It was quite clear that no one agreed with Ana.

  Why should they?

  He had done so many terrible things—

  Mokuba’s eyebrows furrowed. “. . . Did you just call him Di?”

  The name of Ana’s Metal. Everyone in the room knew D09. They thought they knew what he looked like—Metal, like Xu. He had memories of almost everyone at this table. Redbeard, who gave him oil one year to grease his joints. Cullen, who gave him the sage coat he loved so much. Mokuba, who he knew from the incident at the Iron Shrine, and the leader of the Red Dawn, and almost every face across the walls. He knew them, their names, their debts to Siege, and the ones who simply came to help.

  They did not know him—but they should.

  “Yes,” he replied for Ana, and turned to Mokuba. He felt the color of his eyes change, like shrugging off a coat, to something much lighter. Coal dark to moonlight white. “I am.”

  The guests who were not standing jerked to their feet in shock. Murmurs of “D09” passed across the video feeds, and across the lips of the people at the table, wondering how he looked so human. A few wondered whether he was a monster.

  He was.

  That was not up for debate.

  “Di . . . ,” Wynn murmured, and then her eyes widened. “Oh! Ana—that Di? The one you . . .” Her voice trailed off, and Ana nodded sheepishly.

  Di was not sure whether he wanted Wynn to finish that sentence. The one Ana what? Whatever it meant, Wynn’s demeanor toward him softened instantly, and she pressed a white-gloved hand against her mouth in surprise.

  He bowed low to all of them. “I am sorry that I hurt you.”

  “Siege had said you were HIVE’d.” It was Redbeard who spoke. He had not taken his eyes off Di. “But I hadn’t thought that meant you were . . . I’m sorry.”

  Surprised, Di looked back up to him. “For what?”

  “For what happened,” filled in Xu, and turned their white gaze to him. “For what we went through.”

  He had avoided the Metal, partly because he was afraid he would miss being like them—unable to feel shame or guilt—but when he finally looked at Xu, he found that the same memories he had while in the HIVE reflected on their face. They were more alike than not, both having done terrible things, and unable ever to rectify them. They had to live with it—no, not live.

  Exist.

  That was a better word for it.

  He was neither Metal nor human anymore. He existed somewhere in between.

  “So we’re just going to believe him?” one of the Elder Court scoffed.

  Siege pressed something on a small control panel on her end of the table and cut their video feed. “Di, let’s get to it.”

  “Yes, Captain.” He threw his hand out toward the center of the table, hijacking the holo-screen. He summoned up a grid of the HIVE as he last remembered it, its tethers spread across the kingdom like kite strings. The map was almost entirely red. It reminded him of the synapses of a human brain, the way it lit up and traveled information.

  “This is the HIVE. As of last count, there were twenty-seven thousand, five hundred and two Metals inside. The Great Dark created it to harness people’s life force. That is how it survives. It is fueled by the light in people, and with it the Great Dark will be able to take life directly. No need for Metals or the HIVE, and everyone inside will die. Conversely”—he dropped the hologram and looked out to the table—“if we kill the Great Dark—Mellifare—then we will also murder all twenty-seven thousand, five hundred and two people who have been assimilated into the HIVE.”

  “Then we can do nothing.” It was the first time Jax’s mother, Avena Taizu, had spoken, her face relaying nothing but cold emotion on her video screen. “If the D’thverek wins, we lose the Metals in the HIVE, but if we win, we still lose the Metals.”

  “Then let’s find some way to save the Metals and defeat the Great Dark,” said Cullen as they reclined back in their chair, propping their polished boots up on the table. “I mean, if Rasovant found a way to put a soul in a robot, then there’s gotta be a way for us to get a dark goddess out of a supercomputer.”

  Mokuba barked a laugh. “Yeah, like we got that technology.” But then he tilted his head. “But I can put my ear to the ground to see if any of my contacts know anything about the heart.”

  “And in the meantime, Zenteli can harbor the rogue Metals left—the sanctuaries can’t be safe for much longer,” Avena Taizu added, and the Elder Court grumbled in agreement. “We aren’t under any kingdom jurisdiction, so any attacks the Messiers might make will be in direct violation of our treaties.”

  Jax gave his mother a wary look. “Are you sure?”

  “Solani do not cower” was his mother’s reply, to which Jax held his hands up in surrender.

  Cullen and Redbeard, their heads bent together, nodded in agreement before Redbeard said, “We’ll keep flying interferrence for those eyesore dreadnoughts. Give you some time to find the heart.”

  “I can outfit weapons for anyone who needs them,” a shop owner added.

  “I can lend a few ships.”

  “Some men,” the Red Dawn leader added, nodding seriously toward Talle.

  Not a single one of them again brought up Di or any grudges against him. Voices chimed in from across the video feeds, offering food and shelter and warm beds and help. They were the voices of a resistance. He glanced to the head of the table, where Siege sat quietly, a hand propping her head up, her fingers masking the edges of a grin curling across her lips. Her hair flickered blue at the scalp, trailing to bright golden ends. As if she had expected no less. Her eyes lifted to his, and then to the door at the far end of the meeting space.

  The doors kicked open.

  “These are all very fine ideas—or,” drawled a distinctly Erosian voice above the idle chatter, “we could just go get the heart.”

  Di knew that voice, but Jax was the first to turn to their uninvited guest.

  Robb

  The hardest part of walking into this meeting wasn’t kidnapping his brother and hauling him to the ass end of nowhere, or seeing all the debts Siege had called in and realizing that this was either the beginning of the end or the beginning of something new. No, the hardest part was was facing Jax. Well, that and getting past Lenda, who stood quite helpless in the doorway behind him.

  “I tried,” Lenda told Siege, who waved her hand, and Lenda closed the doors behind him again.

  He didn’t know whether he could—should—look at Jax. He didn’t know the correct protocol. Should he b
ow? Curtsy? All he seemed to be doing was standing there after his bravado had faded, at a loss for what to say.

  If anything was right enough to say.

  Jax looked so achingly elegant, while he had flounced in here in a dirty travel cloak that still smelled like sweat and snow, his hair in wild curls. He opened his mouth to say something—anything—

  “Hello, friends,” his brother greeted them instead in his smooth, oily drawl. He tried to shift away from Robb, but he held firm to the cords. “I see you started the party without us.”

  Jax pushed himself to his feet, his violet-eyed gaze looking from Robb to his brother and back again. Erik really did look the worse for wear. The black eye Robb had given him was purple and swollen, and his black evening coat was crumpled and disheveled, ascot untied.

  But instead of asking about the state of Erik Valerio, Jax asked, “How do you know where the heart is?”

  No Nice to see you. No I’m glad you’re okay.

  Not that Robb had really expected that, but there was a small part of him that was still disappointed. Did Jax even look like he missed him? Robb couldn’t tell.

  He took the antique holo-pad from an inner pocket of his coat and slid it down the table to the other end. Siege caught it and turned it on. “Because,” he said, “my mother found it almost seven years ago. The night of the fire, when the royal family and my father found out the origins of the Metals, they must have also found out about the heart. Mellifare killed them for it. But my father must have sent her a communication after he stole away on the Tsarina. She found the heart, and she hid it—from everyone. Including Lord Rasovant and Mellifare.”

  “Well, well, Cynthia,” Siege murmured, her hair dimming to a burnt coal. She skimmed through the files and handed them off to Talle. “Surprising us even now.”

  Talle’s eyes widened at the coordinates of the heart. “Sunshine, this is . . .”

  “Astoria,” Robb filled in for her. “My family’s floating estate in Nevaeh.”

  A murmur swept across the table.

  “Well, great, we can just steal the heart and launch it into the sun and boom, we’re done here,” said Cullen, pushing back their chair to leave. “I expect you have it from here—”

  “No can do, Snarky. The HIVE will know where we’re going, and I’m sure the old clunker’ll figure it out.” A screen popped up in the middle of the table, and Elara’s face materialized. She looked like she was sitting, very comfortably, in Jax’s pilot chair. His eyebrow twitched. “Sorry, I didn’t really want to make a grand entrance into your little meeting, and I really had to take off my pants. I can cloak us into Nevaeh, but I can’t disable all the security cams on the garden and the space station.”

  Mumbling darkly, Cullen sat back down.

  Mokuba asked, “Then how’ll we get in?”

  “Well,” Robb began, but Erik beat him to it, which rather irritated him.

  “I’ve got a party tomorrow night in the garden, as luck would have it. Every Ironblood is invited to commemorate the occasion. The Emperor is supposed to be there. Though I didn’t expect him to be here, too,” he added. “Pleasant seeing you, Your Excellence.”

  The room turned to Di expectantly, and he shrugged helplessly. “Do not look at me—I hated him HIVE’d, too.”

  “Yeah, and good luck getting into my party. My guards are no fools and—”

  “And if you don’t help us,” Siege interrupted, her voice level and bored, “then I’ll personally break every bone in your right hand, and then your left. And then if you still won’t, I will personally break all one hundred and fifty-one—”

  “Fifty-two,” Talle politely corrected.

  “—Fifty-two bones in your body,” she finished.

  “It will be a pleasure to have you at the party,” Erik replied nervously.

  Robb resisted the urge to smirk. It wasn’t every day he got to watch his brother sweat. “So. I’ve got a plan. We sneak in during the party, get the heart where my mother hid it, and leave before Mellifare ever finds out. It’s a long shot, but luckily we excel at those.”

  The room was quiet for a moment, and he hoped it was because he had wowed everyone there, but the longer the silence stretched, the more he began to think he simply wasn’t welcome with this harebrained idea and—

  Di rubbed his bottom lip in thought and then conceded, “There is a seventy-four-point-seven-eight percent chance that might actually work.”

  “That’s a bit low,” Wynn remarked.

  “It’s pretty high considering,” said Ana.

  The captain was nodding, too. “It might just work—do we have the resources?”

  “Over two hundred Valerio militiamen,” Robb volunteered, “and if Wynn pledges her guards, there will be close to three hundred.”

  “Not to mention the fleetships,” said Talle, “and the others who’ve pledged themselves—I think it’s a start.”

  Siege nodded. “Then a start’s all we need.”

  They would still need to solidify the plan, and place people on the ground in Nevaeh in case things went south, and fortify the sanctuary there, and a myriad of other things, but for the moment it felt like this could actually work. That perhaps they could win where no one had before.

  Goddess bright, Robb prayed, I hope we get out of this alive.

  From across the table, the captain turned her warm gaze to him, and she looked proud in every way his mother never had. She raised her glass to him and mouthed, “You did good.”

  And for the first time in what felt like years, he smiled.

  Ana

  After the meeting adjourned and the room emptied, Ana stared down at her spilled ale and her reflection in it, the murky amber distorting her face in ripples. She didn’t look much like a hero—or the Goddess.

  She didn’t look much like an Empress, either.

  Robb had asked her, the captain, Talle, Di, and Jax to stay. Xu left to start building codes with Elara to disable Nevaeh’s securities to get the Dossier into the harbor unnoticed. Not only because of the HIVE, but also the Dossier had quite a few docking tickets unpaid, and Siege really didn’t want to deal with that. Robb showed them the Resonance files and the map to where his mother had hidden the heart. It wasn’t on Astoria, and that confused her for a moment.

  “Didn’t you say it was—” she began to ask, but her captain put a finger to her own lips, and suddenly she understood. Even in a safe meeting room like this one, Siege didn’t trust the Great Dark not to be listening in.

  After they made a few quiet plans, they quickly dispersed so as not to draw attention. Ana put down her drink and began to leave when the captain drew her out of her thoughts. “Darling, can I speak with you?” Siege leaned against the table beside her. They were the last two in the meeting room, and the doors were closed. The captain spoke quietly. “When you left for the Goddess’s tomb, who did you tell?”

  Ana shook her head. “I didn’t tell anyone! No, wait, that’s not true,” she added, frustrated. “Robb and Elara knew, and maybe Jax? I told Viera and Lenda I was going to Eros, but not where. So the crew knew, mostly, but no one else.”

  “And no one saw you on the trip? No one recognzied you?”

  “I mean, someone could have. But they wouldn’t have known where I was going.”

  The captain gave a long sigh. “That’s what I feared.”

  “Is that why you didn’t allow the rest of the crew into the meeting? Because we have a spy?”

  “It is,” the captain admitted. “I wish you’d never gone to the ruins.”

  “I thought I could destroy the heart before the Great Dark ever got to it.” Ana looked away and chewed on the inside of her cheek. The ruins still haunted her. She had been helpless. If Robb’s mother hadn’t stolen the heart before she’d gotten there, the Great Dark would have it now, and if Siege hadn’t come to rescue her when she had, Ana was sure she’d be dead in a caved-in tomb. “I was stupid to think I could do it alone—or at all. I mean, I’m not th
e Goddess. I can’t defeat the Great Dark.”

  Her captain cast a bemused smile. “Oh?”

  “Koren Vey said I wasn’t, when we went to the ark. She said, ‘You are not the Goddess’—just like that, straight faced, soul crushing.” She sighed and sank down in her chair. “I’m no one, Captain. I’m just an orphan.”

  The sunny yellow tips of Siege’s hair bled up the rest until it was completely golden, shining like the sun. “You are Ana of the Dossier. You are my daughter,” she replied, kissing Ana’s forehead, “and wherever you go, you carry me with you—you carry all of us with you. Always.”

  But what happens if you die? she wanted to argue, through she didn’t want to imagine that kind of universe.

  She couldn’t.

  “Try to get some rest before tomorrow,” her captain said. “It’s going to be . . .”

  “I know,” Ana replied quietly.

  A wrinkle crinkled between Siege’s brows, as if she wanted to say something more. Something comforting, perhaps, something to soothe the rising fear in Ana’s bones, but that had never been the captain’s way, really. Her comm-link flickered, a private message only she heard, and she sighed. “Get some rest,” she repeated, pushing herself off the table, and left.

  Ana sat there for a moment longer, her hands curled into fists in her lap.

  Ana of the Dossier. The captain’s daughter. Siege’s girl.

  It was a mantle she felt too cowardly to be worthy of. Siege was brave and steadfast, and here she was afraid that tomorrow would be her last, and she didn’t want to die. She didn’t want anyone to—

  Stop it.

  A cleaning bot opened the door and gave a timid bleep.

  “All right, all right, I’m leaving,” she told it.

  She needed some quiet, but the only quiet place she could think of was the medical ward. She always felt most at home there. It might’ve been from when she was young and recovering in the ward—it was safe and familiar. Or it might’ve been because whenever she was in there, she could remember Di the best. The hum of his circuits and the sweet sound of his motion.