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Chapter 1 <figure>
Fen walked through the camp as the darkening sky bled fire, picking up after the man she was guarding. Newearth’s dusty rings arced above her in gleaming white lines, slicing the firmament apart.
“Oy, Fenyyang!” barked the nasal, now-familiar voice of Talaat Nagi. “Hurry it up. The faster we move, the sooner I can sleep in my own bed.”
If her parents’ lives had not depended on her deference, Fen would’ve stomped over and smacked Talaat across his wrinkled, bearded face.
“I’m going as quickly as I can, sir,” she replied, bending down to stab her trash picker into yet another food wrapper. “If I miss a single piece of refuse, it’s my back that’ll get beaten. The punishments for environmental defilement are severe—”
“I know that,” Talaat snapped.
Did he really? As an imperial messenger, he could get away with anything short of murder. In any case, she didn’t mention that if Talaat hadn’t littered in the first place, she wouldn’t have to do this at all. “Then let me finish. Sir.”
“Fine. I’m going to lie down.” Talaat cursed under his breath as he stalked back to his photovoltaic tent, his spindly arms crossed over his chest.
Fen had realized this mission would be horrendously boring less than two hours in. Though it wasn’t as if she would’ve been doing anything particularly exciting back at Onath’s estate otherwise. What precious little free time she possessed was primarily spent deciphering the mail of the magistrate of Talishminn—her lax captor, reluctant guardian, and not-so-gracious host. Even though the messenger she’d been ordered to guard was tasked with delivering a missive of utmost importance to a high-ranking official, she already knew—from decrypting the correspondence itself one hour in—that it held nothing of consequence to her. Unlike some of Onath’s letters, the missive had little to do with the only two things she cared about. Namely, the condition of her parents, and of herself.
And even if the letter Talaat carried had been interesting, the whole mission was to protect him while he delivered it. She’d never gotten the chance to use the fighting skills she’d honed to a sharp edge under Onath’s instruction. No one ever attacked imperial messengers like Talaat—or any of Onath’s clients. The dictates of Enkaiia stated that criminal tendencies were genetic, and typically three or more familial groups were executed for the treachery of one. Her presence was just a formality.
As the sun sank beneath the horizon, Fen tied up the biodegradable trash bag she’d been lugging around and threw it into the trunk of the messenger’s transport to dispose of later. The floatcar was a sleek matte-gray vehicle, as much a symbol of the empire’s might as its heraldry. She picked up her quarterstaff from where she’d reverently rested it on the grass. She spun it experimentally before moving through a few forms. The weapon whistled through the air, the weighted copper bands at the ends winking in the fast-fading light. She didn’t have a license to carry a blade or a stinger, but even if she did, she wouldn’t trade her quarterstaff for the world. It was a work of art: tensile graphene and resilient realwood, embedded with parallel strips of titanium to turn aside cuts.
“Sir?” she called. “I’m done now.”
“Finally.” Talaat emerged from his tent like an ursus that had just completed its hibernation cycle. He wore his professional mask now, plain gray with holes around the eyes, nose, and mouth. Once they hit the road, he’d technically be on official business again.
He pulled a small round commandisk from his coat pocket. At the press of a button, the solartiles atop the tent folded up. The structure deflated like a popped balloon and shrank into a fist-sized cube. A few burrowing eryxes chirped nervously at the sudden commotion. Talaat, unbothered, tucked the habitat under his arm and headed for the floatcar. Fen climbed in after the messenger, the levitating transport dipping momentarily as she added her weight.
Like most of Onath’s clients, Talaat had paid Fen little attention for most of the mission. In fact, he’d fully ignored her on their three-day trip to Hollmigorn, a city of spires and tall grass. But the successful delivery of his message to the ruling magistrate there had put him in high spirits, and now he wouldn’t shut up.
After inputting a destination and activating the floatcar’s autodriver, he reclined his seat and turned it to face her. “So how long have you been living with Onath?” he asked.
“Twenty years,” Fen said stiffly. Most clients began interrogating her less than an hour after meeting; she’d naively thought that Talaat’s former silence meant he wouldn’t ask the same obnoxious questions everyone else did. Now she hoped her sharp tone would dissuade further attempts at conversation.
Talaat whistled. “So much of your life, then. Though you look much older.”
Fen sighed through her nose. Her hair had prematurely grown gray when she was a teenager, due to a combination of stress and a genetic predisposition.
“How old were you when you... ah...”
“When my parents were placed under house arrest and I was handed off to Onath?”
When everything good in my life was wrenched from me? When I became a hostage? Fen gripped her quarterstaff a little tighter, bitterness seeping into her gut like poison as memories flooded over her. “I was six.”
Not old enough to remember her fathers in great detail, but just old enough to remember what happiness and safety felt like. To ensure she’d feel her family’s loss like a torn-out tooth every day.
Talaat’s narrow, lined face softened. “House arrest is the most merciful punishment they could’ve gotten for inciting rebellion.”
“They were ambassadors.” Fen swallowed down a mouthful of resentment and forced the words from between clenched teeth. “All they did,
sir, was unintentionally encourage a few people to raise their concerns to the late emperor.”
She couldn’t see his face under the mask, but she could imagine that Talaat was giving her a flat look. “You strike me as a clever young woman. You know very well that ‘concerns’ were not all that were raised to the Sovereign.” He laced his bony hands over his stomach. “Tell me, if your parents’ lives did not depend on the preservation of mine, would you kill me and run?”
Fen sat frozen, her heart hammering against her rib cage. Was this a trap? She considered keeping her mouth shut, but Onath had taught her that silence was an answer, too. It didn’t seem like a particularly good one to Talaat’s inquiry. “You’re only the client of my captor. I’d probably just leave,” she said honestly. “I’ve never killed anyone.”
“When Onath sold me the protection of his supposedly best bodyguard, I assumed you’d be more... experienced.” Talaat took off his mask to get a better look at her. Curiosity and surprise had lifted his bushy eyebrows. “Onath has his fair share of enemies, even for a magistrate with, let’s say, unorthodox methods. I’m shocked you’ve never ended a life.”
Fen snorted. “Unorthodox methods” was putting it lightly. Most imperial officials had obtained their positions through some combination of nepotism and flattery. Onath’s path to his current administrative post, by contrast, was littered with bodies and bribes. But much like his brethren, his ambition was far from sated.
“I
am Onath’s best bodyguard,” Fen protested. “I’ve dueled his entire guard of lictors. And won, every time.”
Talaat waved a dismissive hand. “Defeating someone on the training mats and drawing blood on the battlefield are two very different things.”
“Battlefield?” echoed Fen, forcing a chuckle. “There is peace. And even if there were not, I doubt anyone would do battle over you. Sir.”
Talaat scoffed. “Peace?”
“The uprising died two decades ago, with Kira Moru.” Fen spoke slowly, as if to a very small child.
“And yet, people continue to fight and die over the matter of her demise alone.”
The only thing anyone in the empire of Enkaiia could agree on was how the bloodbath had begun and ended. Moru, great leader of the insurgent Broken Masks, and Yaryun Akitsuro, niece to the honored late Sovereign, had met to sign their marriage papers. Omiko Gatasan, daughter of the chief imperial advisor, had taken Moru’s head. No one knew—and would ever know—what happened in between.
Imperialists proclaimed that Omiko was only defending herself and the princess from an assassination attempt. The Broken Masks—those that remained, anyway—declared that the noblewomen had attacked first. Whatever the truth was, to argue either in certain lands was to invite death.
“The leaders of revolutions are like the heads of a noboa,” the messenger continued. “They always grow back. Moru was not the first great insurgent general, and she will certainly not be the last. And with this unending drought...”
Fen swallowed thickly. They were fast treading into dangerous waters. The drought did not exist. And if it did, it was just a turn of nature. A normal environmental phenomenon that would soon pass. Or the rebels were at fault for the drying riverbeds and the burning winds. Somehow. To insinuate anything else was tantamount to treason.
“The drought will pass,” she said carefully. “In the meantime, every city has a storehouse. We have more than enough water and food rations to last the empire a century.”
“Have you any idea how many of those storehouses are empty?” Talaat shook his head. “A thousand nations throughout the ages have fallen for lack of food.”
Fen’s stomach plummeted. This was sedition. She glanced out the window, the urge to flee swelling as a terrible itch between her shoulder blades. The land rolling by outside looked like a sweetcake that had been frying for too long: cracked and brittle and grayish brown.
“The Makers left the Accusers for a reason,” she said, her tone flat. “We’ll be fine.”
Talaat snorted. “What do you know of the Makers?”
“I know they saved us. I know they gave us a new world.”
“Yes, and then they watched as we made a ruin of that one, too.” Talaat snorted. “Their Accusers are half myth, made real only when we step out of line. What reason have they to aid us?” His voice rose. “Those...
creatures were sent to enforce the aliens’ will, nothing more and nothing less. They’re not even really sentient, you know. They say one once let a settler scientist take a sample—their cells look almost identical to our own, all bound by some sort of bioelectric network, but in culture they behave like viruses.”
Fen shook her head, trying to throw off the messenger’s rambling words as if they were drops of water. “They wouldn’t just let us starve. Not after their masters saved us.” She sounded as unconvinced as she felt. But if this man was a spy as well as a messenger, she wouldn’t risk her life by revealing what she knew to be the truth.
“Perhaps I was wrong about you,” Talaat said, frowning now. He donned his mask. “Perhaps you aren’t clever at all. Why do you think Moru started a revolution with your parents? For excitement? So a few particularly fearless singers would dedicate an album or two to her? The people have been starving for decades. Moru might have been an idealistic fool, but she carried on the rebellion so that she’d never have to see another child waste away while the emperor held feasts that lasted a fortnight—while the rich and titled destroyed what little living land is left to us.”
If Fen had been unsure that the man was a spy, she was certain now. He was far past mere insinuation. No true rebel would be bold or foolish enough to say such things aloud. Her heart beat faster at the thought of what Talaat might ask next.
“I suppose it’s unfair to expect you to know all this, though.” He crossed his arms. “You’re an Ataa prisoner a thousand leagues from home.”
It was a testament to the discipline of her training that Fen did not breathe out a sigh of relief. He believed her. Or at least he pretended to. Either way, she’d said nothing incriminating—and if his robes concealed a recorder of any kind, he’d have nothing to show the imperial spymaster.
“War is coming, Fenyyang,” Talaat continued, “and there is nothing you or I or even His Majesty can do to prevent it.”
