Heavenbreaker

57. Aculeus

aculeus ~ī, m.

1. (in plants) a sharp point, thorn

2. a sting

The descent comes.

Helmann’s yellow plasma jets, my blue plasma jets, and between us the light blends green—the green of a corpse-fed garden, the green of Esther as she looks on, eternally waiting, eternally there until the cold dragon eats her, too.

Helmann comes in narrow—narrower than a Dreadnought ever should. Heavenbreaker bleeds silver from her torn right leg, the splatter streaming behind us. I’m not fast enough without all my leg jets. We have to compensate. burn brighter. I hold my elbow firm. He will not have me. extend. I won’t die here.

i will live to fight. rax. mirelle. all of them.

Brace softly.

The cry wails between the steeds, and I can feel the meaning in the sound this time like an eldritch bell, like greeting and regret, like saying hello and goodbye and forever all in the same second. Helmann’s lance moves like lightning, and my body moves like the thunder coming after—an echo. don’t fight it. He knows we’ll fight against him, but he doesn’t know we’ll go along with him—I drop into the space he leaves, tight against Wingpiercer’s body. Our silver lance slides home into the right side of his tasset. Red, 1. Blue, 1. We hit him!

Retribution is instant.

Before we can part into the rise, his fingers jab into our breastplate—five puckered steel rifts screaming open and rupturing my vision with all the force a Dreadnought brings to bear. The simulated pain is five points of fire in my chest digging deep, and a split-second panic buries in the agony: he’s going to rip us open.

“—another highly illegal move, Bero, but the riders aren’t parting! It looks like extended close contact on blue side! The ref is on his way to break it up—”

One of Helmann’s fingers goes in too far, and I cough wet, red blood, and suddenly Heavenbreaker is on her own with me only riding faintly—she reverses the jets, trying desperately to pull us away, but Helmann follows, piercing farther and farther in. The ref’s siren-like whistle is shrill as he approaches, a black-and-white-striped steed heavily armored and blasting white jets toward us.

Helmann retracts his fingers. Sudden relief…and then I watch him pull his arm back. Wingpiercer throws its lance with all its Dreadnought might. Neon yellow shoots across space like a ray of sunlight and buries mercilessly square in the referee’s breastplate—right where the saddle is. The metal of its cockpit crumples like paper, the lance sticking clear through.

“—oh! O-Oh dear, is this—it seems…it seems House Axton has struck the referee! I’m, yes, we’re getting the report now that he’s fine, just fine, but the final tilt must go on—”

“What a…what a strange decision on Brann’s part, Bero—surely the king will have much to say on House Axton’s decorum after the match! It seems the auxiliary referees are giving House Lithroi a five-second advantage for this!”

The referee’s steed hangs limp, unmoving, sparks showering around the lance stuck in its striped breastplate. Wingpiercer jets over, pulling its lance out and turning slowly in space. The neon-yellow tip tints orange with a red mist. The referee is not fine.

The comms flip on. Helmann’s chest heaves under his suit.

“There. No more distractions between us, rabbit.” He’s just another noble throwing away life in front of my eyes. He’s not an unbeatable monster at all—just noble. My laugh bubbles with the blood on my lips, and his voice tilts to suspicion. “What’s so entertaining?”

I reset like the rules say. Get to the tilt, quick—I can feel him following me, the heat of his jets nipping at my only intact heel. The magnets pull us down and taut against the massive hexagon, trapping us just in time for Wingpiercer to slam into us, grinding against Heavenbreaker edge to edge, tasset to tasset, horned helmet to crescent helmet—a sea of sparks and screeching metal.

“What is so entertaining?” he repeats, thorns and danger.

“You…” I laugh, lick blood away. “I thought you were different, but you’re just like the rest of them. Exactly like them. They all destroy like you. Kill like you.”

I brace for violence, but his fingers caress the marks in our breastplate instead, possessively, the feeling featherlight on my human chest. A touch I know. A touch that comes before the pain. His hand pulls away smeared with silver.

“Do not put on some sickening act, rabbit; we are the same. You want to kill. I’ve seen its dark desire in your eyes.”

His weight crushes me and throws the tilt under massive strain, the creak of springs in a mattress. There’s nothing left but the tiger and me. He could kill me easily at this range—reach into Heavenbreaker’s chest and pull my saddle out and flatten me in his hands. It’d be so easy to give in. No more worry. No more pain. No more struggle.

Heavenbreaker spins voices out of our memory.

i am sorry—about what i’ve done to it. it’s to keep you safe.

Dravik.

when they’re dead, what will you do?

Sevrith.

i refuse to see you die before i show you the true meaning of defeat.

Mirelle.

—you’re not gonna die. i won’t let you.

Rax.

Helmann wants to kill me. My family wants to kill me, and the court wants to help. My father wanted to kill me. The entire universe wants to see me dead…but there are people who want to see me live, too.

Heavenbreaker asks my spiraling thoughts gently, “what do you want?”

I release my visor with a pneumatic hiss and shaking hands.

“Look again,” I say to Helmann. His broken halo illuminates the sudden stillness in his face on the holoscreen, the fierce knit of his gold brows in pause. My words come heavy with intent. “What do I want, beast?”

Wingpiercer staggers off me, and there’s a lift in the pressure. A lift in my lance. My roar is blood and silver flying.

“WHAT DO I WANT, BEAST?”

Wingpiercer turns in a blink, wordless, yellow tail bright and jets brighter as he abruptly speeds out and rivets himself to his own tilt.

“It seems both riders have decided to adhere to protocol again, Gress! They’ve reset! Let’s keep our eyes on the countdown for the final tilt! Three—”

Five points of pain throb through my chest. My right hip throbs where I tore Heavenbreaker’s leg off, and darkness crawls on the edges of my vision, a dark I’ve learned better to resist now.

“Two—”

My whisper: “Tell me, beast. What is it I want?”

“One!”

His voice, reverent: “Death, milady.”

Zero.

The release. The descent. The comms cut off. He knows now. But he cannot stop me.

He knows that, too.

Gravity pulls us into each other—his lightning, my thunder. He is destruction. He is war. But I am the grim iron bell ringing in the aftermath—the unstoppable echo that forever follows the violence.

I am not the one who strikes first, but I will be the one who strikes last.

The cry between steeds creaks through the light. He dives. I see him dive, the lance on his backhand to catch the slowest part on my remaining leg. All his power concentrates in pinpoint velocity all too fast. Heavenbreaker’s thought rings bright.

“trust me.”

The truth: i do.

I let go. I let her have control of our body, and Heavenbreaker pivots her tasset in a sweltering hair-split, bone screaming brain flashing, breaking her spine and sending mine into spasms but twisting around so that his yellow lance catches nothing but splatters of silver blood where our missing leg is.

I hold my arm steady. Wait. The cascade of thought and the cascade as it all falls away into nothingness, into the very center of impact, into the furnace of spacetime, of existence, of me.

Silver sinks into a neon breastplate.

Red, 2. Blue, 1.

I take my helmet off to thunderous applause and the iron-leaded gaze of Nova-King Ressinimus staring down at me.

When I first started riding, I’d limp out of the hangar bay and through empty tourney halls, but now there are screams. Now, guards usher me through masses of warm bodies clawing for me. The shower room is a quiet relief, a ping interrupting it.

DRAVIK: Your opponent has been remaindered to his cell by the authorities. You will be safe until your return to Moonlight’s End. I’ve been informed Quilliam is making your favorite—roast duck.

A strange new feeling wells up: I’m looking forward to going home, to Luna, a soft bed, roast duck, and the methodical silence of cleaning with Quilliam. Impossible. Pointless. My fingers tremble while making a new message to two people.

SYNALI:I’ll see you two in the arena

The response ping is instant.

MIRELLE: Of course you will, murderer. If you’d lost to the likes of honorless Helmann, you wouldn’t be a Hauteclare.

A mirror catches my brittle smile. Another ping.

MIRELLE:Rax says to unblock him.

SYNALI:I never blocked him to begin with

MIRELLE: Well, someone’s blocking the two of you from communicating. Frankly, I think it’s for the best. He’s far too good for you.

She knows just where to stab, doesn’t she? But I suppose that runs in the family, too.

SYNALI: Always honest, aren’t you?

MIRELLE: Down to the last—that is the path of the knight. You might try it sometime, if it’s still within your bloodthirsty capacity.

MIRELLE ASHADI-HAUTECLARE HAS LEFT THE CONVERSATION.

I dress and leave the showers, walking through the silent post-crowd tourney hall. I stare at Rax’s address longer than I should before pinging him once, twice, but the messages don’t go through. It looks like he’s blocked me…but he wouldn’t, would he? I can only think of one person who’d want us to stop talking.

The sound of giggling makes me look up. Two people stand on the tourney hall’s observation deck: a girl and a boy, lingering at the polished railing. They’re younger than me, the girl dripping in holographic lace and the finest silks, her reddish hair tumbling behind her in an elaborate braid. The boy’s in a hoverchair, with a head of soft brown. I recognize him—it’s the boy from the hospital.

“I found you.”

He turns just then—as if he heard the memory—and smiles at me. Without the painkillers, I see his face better, a face like peace, a gentle chin and jaw. His eyes are green and downturned, his blacklight halo bright on his forehead. He turns the hoverchair with a muted whirr.

“Synali.”

He says my name in a way that feels like coming back to a home I thought lost long ago, all warmth and ease. Something deep in me wants to be nearer to him no matter what; something about him feels like rest—a place to rest at last.

The girl whips around at my name, fire braid lashing the view of space as her face splits into a buoyant grin from ear to freckled ear.

“Oh wow, it’s you!”

She streaks down the stairs in silver anklets and bare feet, and for a moment I think she’s going to run into me, bowl me over, but she stops just short with a precocious little hop, her blacklight halo bold and clean on her forehead.

“He’s told me a lot about you.” The girl’s green eyes blink up at me. I flicker my gaze away and catch the dark corners of the observation deck; there are dozens of private guards hovering with projection swords, tasers, guns. They’re the same ones who surrounded the king’s platform at the pre-tourney banquet. The girl gives a little shimmy to get my attention again. “Oooh! Just ignore them, they’re no fun. I watched your last match—it was great! You’re really good at riding!”

My words come out warily. “Thank you…”

“Oh! I’m Leyda—nice to meet you. I mean, um, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance.” She looks up at the boy. “Does that sound better?”

He nods. “Much.”

Leyda sighs. “Too many words just makes things long and boring.”

“You have to talk to people if you want to know them,” the boy chides lightly, like a teacher reminding a student rather than a boy talking to a girl his own age.

“Yeah.” She gestures to me. “But she’s not most people. We can play together—me and her and all of us. That’d make it easy!”

Nothing about their conversation is complicated, but it feels as if half of it goes unspoken.

“I should get going,” I say.

Leyda pouts. “Oookay. If you want. But I’ll see you soon!”

She says it like statement, not question. Her confidence follows me through the halls and out the rider exit and into the Lithroi hovercarriage. It follows me all the way to Moonlight’s End, where Dravik waits in the armchair before a dying fire.

“You didn’t know my opponent was Helmann von Axton,” I say. He barely looks up from the hearth. I unfold the letter from inside the handkerchief, flashing the broken seal. “Rax did.”

Dravik finally clears his throat. “It’s as I feared, then—House Velrayd has aligned itself with House Hauteclare. Velrayd deals in trade tariffs—trade between Wards, between the Station and substations. The price of everything runs betwixt their fingers. Indeed, it’s the bald-faced price of trade Velrayd is most known for valuing.” His leather chair gives a creak as he leans back. “If the rumors are true, Rax Istra-Velrayd and Mirelle Ashadi-Hauteclare have recently become engaged. To be married.”

I go still. of course they have. It was there in the way they stood next to each other—tall, proud, beautiful, evenly matched in every way. The firelight burns on my face.

“They suit each other.”

“Suitability aside, through this alliance, Velrayd gains Hauteclare’s long-standing reputation, and the Hauteclares gain a valuable ally with their fingers in every monetary pie imaginable—which is something they quite need after our interference. Velrayd’s mercantile connections are nigh unmatched; including, apparently, within the royal prison.”

The prince slowly lifts a teacup from the table at his side and takes a long sip. Sudden exhaustion drags my every ligament into oblivion—no fight left in me.

“Still,” he mutters. “To attempt to blame your murder on an escaped convict…it’s rather tasteless. House Hauteclare must be quite shaken to resort to such tactics. I don’t think I need to elaborate on why you must not contact Rax any further.”

“You’re the onewho blocked him on my vis.”

“He is a dangerous outlier who could be convinced to harm you. Now that he’s engaged to Mirelle, that threat is magnified exponentially. Unbeknownst to you, your friend’s module made it quite easy to reverse engineer a way into your vis.” His expression goes soft. “You must be protected at all costs.”

“And your idea of protection is sticking your nose where it doesn’t belong?”

“I gather you knew that when you signed our contract, Synali.”

“The biometric scanner—the mic. Isn’t that fucking enough for you?”

“I told you he’s dangerous.”

My rage turns to laughter. “He’s a spoiled noble—”

“And he is nearly part of the Hauteclare family now. He has every incentive to hurt you.”

“You’re delusional. You’ve truly deluded yourself into thinking you’re my goddamn father.” I want him to deny it, but he just stands without another word, grasps his cane, and shuffles into the dim halls. I snatch up his teacup and smash it on the marble ground.“Do you hear me, Your Highness? You’re losing it! The nerve fluid’s eaten you! You’re losing your goddamn mind!”

He doesn’t come back. Fury blurs my eyes, and I shove everything on the table aside in a crash of porcelain splinters. Kick the table over, tear it apart, throw it in the fire until nothing’s left but ash, Astrix staring out at me from the corner of the room.

“Losing your mind just like…just like I am,” I whisper.