Kessa
The star appears in daylight.
That should be impossible. Daylight belongs to the suns, to heat, to glare so bright it scrapes thought out of your skull.
Stars are for night. For old navigation stories.
For things the generation ship used to chase before it broke us against Tajss and left us learning how to survive under two red eyes.
This is not a star. It’s too steady. Too deliberate.
A pale point above the eastern sky, visible for three breaths before the glare swallows it. Long enough for all seven of us to understand the same thing. The receiver sent something. And something answered.
None of us speak. Even Maro manages silence, which is how I know the world has become deeply unreasonable.
I stare at the reddish sky with its single cloud drifting carelessly along as if nothing disruptive just happened. Nausea comes in waves, but I don’t have time for it. I lower my eyes and they land on Rhazek. He’s staring up too. Worse, he’s afraid.
There’s no mistaking it for anything else. It’s not something specific that I can point to and certainly nothing I’m going to call out. I just know it and that’s enough. No, it’s too much.
He’s standing beside the crushed receiver with blood in his palm and green fading under his throat.
“You should bind that,” I say.
“You should not look at the sky.”
“I can do two stupid things at once.”
“I have noticed.”
The answer is too close to teasing. I hate that it helps.
I wrap his hand because leaving it open is worse than touching him. That’s the sort of logic that gets people killed in songs, but in real life it gets salt cloth tied properly and blood kept off alien devices. The glow at his neck flickers when my fingers brush his palm.
I stop. He stops breathing. I tie the knot harder than necessary.
“Pain?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Good.”
He looks amused.
Nope. Not going to forgive you. Good try there, but no.
Except I am extremely glad he’s alive. Which I don’t want to admit. Not even to myself.
“We return,” Syin says. Renn crouches beside the crushed receiver and pries one cracked black sliver from the housing. He wraps it in salt cloth before we leave.
I don’t argue. I don’t have the energy to even if I had a good one to give, or even a half-assed one. I look up at the visible star in the sky, down at the shattered remnants, and that same sick feeling settles into my stomach. At this point the only option left is to report we failed.
The eyes of dozens of hungry children haunt my thoughts. A feeling of absolute helplessness swamps over me. There is only one option when you can’t do anything. Find something you can do. Anything is better than nothing. The one steady rule of my life.
We don’t run straight home. That would hand any watching eye a line from the receiver to the City.
We leave false trails first. Orek and Renn drag torn pack cloth south.
Lio and Maro scatter mineral dust toward the dead canyon road.
Syin climbs a ridge and cuts wing marks into a shelf that points nowhere useful.
I mark three routes on my slate and take none of them.
We return by a route I would never choose unless I wanted to annoy myself.
Too much glare. Too many broken steps. A narrow cut that forces the Zmaj to fold their wings tight and makes Rhazek’s bad wing drag twice.
I choose it because it’s ugly and inefficient and nothing about it feels like one of mine.
The City doesn’t appear all at once. Tajss hides her like an old wound hides under cloth. First the broken cistern markers. Then the ridge shadow. Then the stone color changes by a shade only runners and desperate people notice.
Lio spots the gate signal first.
“East watch,” he says. “No alarm flag.”
“No alarm doesn’t mean no disaster,” Maro mutters.
“No,” I say. “It means the disaster is waiting for a better entrance.”
Syin gives me a look and I ignore it.
At the outer marker, Penr waits with two guards and a face full of questions. He starts toward us, sees Rhazek’s bandages, Orek’s arm, and the blood darkening my sleeve.
He starts to speak and I stop him before he can ask.
“No public alarm,” I say. “Find Rosalind, Virn, Merra, and Adran. East council room. Not the central chamber. No crowd routes. No bells. Tell Ila to keep ration lines normal and move children out of lower east quietly.”
Penr blinks. “What happened?”
“The sky answered.”
His face loses color.
“Run,” I say.
He runs.
There. City involvement, properly earned. A message carried by legs through gates because that is how information moves when the world is not allowed to panic. Rhazek watches Penr vanish.
“That answer may not have gone only to Krix,” he says.
“I figured.”
“Krix may be the nearest hand. Not the only one.”
“Wonderful.”
His voice roughens. “Kessa.”
The glow under his throat gives one faint pulse. I lift a hand, signaling for him to stop, and he does. So does the pulse.
It’s a tiny victory. Pathetic, really. Barely enough to feed a mouse, but I’ll take it.
We enter the City through the east watch door, not the main gate. The heat drops by a fraction as we enter the stone corridors. The smell changes from salt and blood to dust, oil, and too many people pretending not to be afraid.
Home, not necessarily safety, but home.
Rosalind is waiting in the east council room with Virn, Visidion, Merra, Adran, Sera, and Kavor. Penr may be limping, but terror gives him pro speed. Adran looks from Rhazek’s throat to the blood on my sleeve.
“Where is the tracker?”
“Broken,” I say. His expression eases by a fraction before I ruin it. “The receiver sent a partial proof packet before we killed it.”
Every person in the room tenses in their own way, making the tension so thick that it’s suddenly hard to breathe. Sera’s hand finds Kavor’s. Visidion’s wings shift behind Rosalind. Virn lowers his chin. Merra swears so softly it almost sounds like prayer.
Adran’s face hardens. “Partial proof of what?”
Rhazek answers before I can.
“Enough.”
The one word is worse than a speech. No one says anything, but their eyes dart from him to me, then back to him. I don’t know what to say or do myself, so I set the wrapped broken tracker on the table. No flourish or drama. Drama can wait outside with the other unnecessary guests.
“We have to decide what we do before whoever hears it comes looking,” I say.