Chapter 3
SERA
No one speaks for several breaths after Rosalind says the word.
Epis.
The chamber stills around it. The Zmaj go motionless in that unnerving way they have when every instinct narrows toward a single point. Virn’s wings shift once before settling tight again. Syin’s gold eyes sharpen.
Marut looks openly suspicious. I understand the reaction, if not the meaning. I don’t know the word, but the room reacts to it like someone opened a sealed chamber full of water in the middle of a drought. Rosalind braces both palms against the stone table.
No one explains the word. That’s how I know the word matters.
The people who understand it go still. The people who don’t look around, waiting for someone important to decide whether we’re allowed to ask.
“You had no right to say that here,” Syin says.
“Your people are starving in the same room as mine. Secrets don’t feed them,” Rosalind says.
“Some secrets keep armies away,” Syin says.
The words move through the chamber like a blade drawn slowly enough for everyone to see the edge. Virn doesn’t contradict him, which matters. Adran doesn’t either. That matters more.
The City Zmaj behind them lower their eyes. Not in submission. In discipline. Their wings stay close, claws still, every line of them held tight as carved stone. Whatever this is, it isn’t only information. It’s a rule. A silence they’ve all stood behind for so long they’ve mistaken it for shelter.
I curl my fingers against the edge of the table.
I’m tired of rooms where knowledge is treated like water. Measured. Hoarded. Handed out only when someone important decides thirst has become useful.
“Armies are already moving,” Rosalind says, lifting her chin.
The chamber tightens, but not with surprise. With recognition.
What? Armies? Who is moving?
Fear flutters in my stomach, sending cold chills over my skin. Syin’s wings flare, just a fraction, before he snaps them back tight against his body.
“You don’t know that,” Syin says.
“Kaelreth does,” Rosalind says. The name ripples differently than epis. Sharper. Colder. “He escaped from off-world captivity.”
Even not knowing the first word, captivity needs no translation. Off-world needs no explanation. Every survivor of the crash, or every child born after it, knows the sky can take things from you.
The Cavern Zmaj behind Rosalind goes very still, and my gaze catches on him.
He hasn’t moved much since I entered the council chamber.
That should make him easier to ignore, but it doesn’t.
He stands apart from both groups, duskier scales drinking the thin reflected light instead of giving it back.
His claws are darker than the City Zmaj’s, thicker, curved against the stone floor as if the ground itself taught them their shape.
He watches Rosalind, not me, which should be a relief, but it’s not. My heart speeds up, and my mouth goes drier than normal.
“Rosalind,” Adran says, speaking at last.
One word, but it lands with a weight that makes me remember there was a time before this City, before these walls, before I learned to measure survival in crumbs and shade.
Rosalind looks at him, and something passes between them. Recognition. History. An old argument that never died, only learned to wait. It’s clear that they know each other. Not the stiff, formal knowing of leaders forced into the same crisis. Something older. Maybe older than the crash.
“You should have warned me,” Adran says, frowning. “In private.”
“Would you have let me speak?”
No one answers, which is enough.
My eyes move between them despite myself. Adran is gaunt and gray with hunger, but somehow still carrying the shape of command. Rosalind is exhausted from the journey, but still with a regal command formed of will and old authority.
They call her Lady General. I thought it was respect. Now I wonder if it’s memory.
“This isn’t the ship,” Adran says, lowering his voice.
“No,” Rosalind says. “On the ship, when people needed protection, they knew what they were being protected from.”
A ripple moves through the room.
The generation ship. The thing some of us remember in pieces and some remember only through stories. I was small when it fell. Small enough that memory has turned the before into flashes instead of facts.
White light that came whenever someone wanted it. Water from walls. Food without tokens. Adults who argued because there was time for arguing.
Then the crash. Then heat. Then less. Always less.
Adran’s expression closes, but not fast enough. Rosalind’s words found a wound.
“You speak as if knowledge has no cost,” Syin says, stepping forward.
“I speak as if starvation has one,” Rosalind says.
“You speak as if this resource is yours to offer,” Syin says.
“I speak as if your people are dying while you guard a silence,” Rosalind counters.
The chamber goes too quiet. The only sound is Rosalind drumming her fingers on the stone table. No denial. No protests against her words. That would be easier. But there is only silence. Silence with a body inside it.
Virn finally moves. One step toward the table. Measured. Controlled. He doesn’t look angry, and somehow that makes him more dangerous than Syin.
“Careful,” Virn says quietly.
Everyone listens. Even Syin.
“I am being careful,” Rosalind says, holding his gaze.
“No,” Virn says. “You are being desperate.”
“That, too,” Rosalind says.
Something in my chest tightens, because I don’t want to like that answer, but I do. Desperation is honest. Ugly but honest. It doesn’t dress itself in duty and pretend the bones beneath its feet are furniture.
“Epis is not merely a plant,” Virn says, folding his wings with deliberate control.
The word plant sounds wrong. It’s too small. Too ordinary. We fight over roots. Meat. Water. Shade. We don’t build this kind of silence around plants.
“It extends life,” Virn says. “Strengthens the body. Helps flesh endure Tajss. In the old days, before the Devastation, worlds traded for it. Stole for it. Killed over it.”
No one moves. No one breathes loudly enough to be accused of needing air.
His gaze travels around the chamber, and for the first time I understand why he is one of the voices the City obeys. He doesn’t shout. He doesn’t have to. His restraint makes every word heavier.
“Civilizations burned for it,” he says. “Tajss burned because of it.”
The stone table presses into my fingertips. A plant that extends life? That helps bodies endure Tajss? But also one that brought armies. A plant they hid while Orin shakes with fever and Jessa’s baby mouths at nothing.
Heat blooms behind my eyes, ugly and bright. Not hope this time. Anger.
“You knew,” I say.
The words are out before I can catch them. Every face turns. I should lower my eyes. Apologize. Make myself useful again. I don’t. I can’t.
I look at Adran first because he’s human. Because he’s ours. Because betrayal always reaches for the nearest familiar throat.
“You knew there was something that could help us endure this planet,” I say. “And you let us starve.”
Adran doesn’t flinch, which almost makes it worse.
“I knew there was something that could draw a war to us.”
“Or save the fever row,” I counter.
“Or kill every child in it when armies come for the source,” he says.
I snap my mouth shut, not because I agree. Because the horror is too large to answer quickly.
“This is why it wasn’t spoken,” Syin says, his gaze cutting through me.
“No,” Rosalind says. “This is why it has to be.”
“Enough philosophy. If this thing is so dangerous, why name it now?” Ila’s voice cuts through the chamber, thin and sharp.
Rosalind looks at Virn, then Adran, then the Cavern Zmaj. The dusk-scaled warrior lifts his head.
Something in the room changes before he speaks. Maybe it’s the way the Zmaj notice him. Maybe it’s the way even Syin’s attention catches, unwilling but immediate. Maybe it’s only my own body, traitorous and hungry, and far too aware of bronze-gold eyes in a room full of hard choices.
His gaze moves over the table, over the slate, over the columns of starving people. Then to me. Only for a breath. But enough to steal one from me.
“It may be close enough to reach,” he says.
The room doesn’t fill with hope. It fills with fear.
Marut’s suspicion sharpens. Dannel straightens. Ila’s fingers curl against the stone. Virn’s wings go tight again, and Syin narrows his eyes and draws a breath so sharp it sounds like a hiss.
I don’t understand, but Rosalind does. Her shoulders shift as if she’s been waiting for those words and dreading them at the same time.
“How close?” Adran asks, his face turning grim.
The Cavern Zmaj answers without looking away from the table.
“There are zemlja signs beyond the eastern sinkline.”
My blood goes cold. Zemlja. That word, I know. Everyone in the City knows zemlja. Not by sight, if they’re lucky. By the rules.
Don’t cross new-sunk sand. Don’t sleep over hollow ground. Don’t follow a fresh ridge, unless you want to become part of what made it.
The massive worms move beneath Tajss like hunger given bodies. They tunnel through stone, sand, ruin, bone. They make the planet change its mind about where ground belongs. And this miracle plant grows near them? Of course it does. Tajss never gives without setting teeth around the gift.
“No,” Syin says, his voice dropping low.
The Cavern Zmaj doesn’t look at him.
“The trail is old enough that growth may follow,” he says, speaking more to Rosalind than the others.
“That doesn’t mean that the zemlja isn’t still near,” Virn says.
“Yes.”
One word. Flat. Terrible.
The chamber suddenly feels too full of bodies. Too much breath. Too much fear pretending to be strategy.
“If there’s a source close enough to reach...” Rosalind says, her fingers drumming faster on the table.
“There’s no reaching it with a team,” the Cavern Zmaj says. Every gaze moves to him, but he doesn’t seem to care. “A group creates vibration. Noise. Heat. Panic. The zemlja hears all of it.”
“Then no one goes,” Marut scoffs.
The Cavern Zmaj looks directly at him.
“No,” he says. “Then almost no one goes.”
The words sink into me before I understand why. Almost no one. A horrible little space opens beneath my ribs as his gaze shifts. To me.
For one impossible second, all I hear is the slow scrape of my breath.
No. Absolutely not.
I’m a route-runner. A ration pathfinder. A woman who knows which corridors hold night-cool air and which ruins lie about shade. I’m not someone who follows worms. But the look in his eyes says he has already measured something in me the way I measure portions.
Something useful. Something dangerous. Something I may not be allowed to refuse.