Out Past the Stars Read online

“Your Majesty?”

  “Did I stutter?” I waved a hand and crossed to them. “Get these guards out of here, get the rest of the Pedalion. We need to talk.”

  I folded my arms over my chest, watching his gaze flick to Thyra before he scrambled to his feet and started issuing orders.

  “When’s the last time they saw you?” I murmured to Thyra.

  “Not since the early days, Your Majesty, and for many they have never looked upon us.”

  “Shit, I ruined a moment there, didn’t I?” It was an unrepentant apology and I watched an expression I was willing to bet was disapproval flicker across Priam’s face.

  I heard Hao unsuccessfully muffle a laugh behind me. Thankfully it was lost to the rush of the guards as they left with Sou following behind. Rotem pressed his hands to his heart as he approached.

  “Anemi.” He bowed low.

  “Rotem.” Thyra reached a limb out and put it on the back of his head. “It is so good to see you.”

  I felt a little pinch of guilt. I was about to change their lives. The Farians would be irreversibly altered by the knowledge that their gods were not gods after all. The fallout would be huge.

  However, it was the right thing to do. I knew that without a doubt.

  “Your Majesty.” Rotem’s eyes were shining with unshed tears as he straightened. “I don’t know how to thank—”

  “You’re not going to want to,” I said as gently as I could, and he frowned in confusion.

  “I don’t understand.”

  A second commotion echoed through the chamber as Sou returned, dragging a protesting and cuffed Adora, Yadira, and Delphine. The Council of Eyes trailed behind, all of them in jet-black veils and spiked silver headpieces.

  Of course they knew what was coming.

  “That’s interesting. I am a bit surprised to see Adora in cuffs; do you think it was her threatening to kill me that finally did it?” I said to Aiz as Thyra and the others moved forward to meet the Pedalion.

  Adora had thought she’d bested us and turned Sybil to her cause before we’d all been thrown into the well of souls. It appeared that her behavior just prior to that moment hadn’t gone over well with the rest of the Pedalion.

  “Maybe,” he replied, shaking his head. “You’re going to let them make fools of themselves before you tell them the truth?”

  “It costs nothing to give them this.”

  “I hope you are right.”

  “They’re about to lose the foundation of everything they believed in, Aiz. You made your peace with what the gods were a very long time ago; give them this moment.”

  “It’s a curious thing where you find compassion in a world so intent on beating it out of you.”

  “Practice,” I replied, with a slight smile that faded with my next words. “Though the truth is, this is less about compassion and more that I recognize that the Farian leadership will remember how I chose to destroy their faith.” I gave him a steady look. “I need their support. You need their willingness for peace. Fasé needs them to listen. And none of that will happen if this moment goes poorly.”

  “That’s incredibly mercenary of you. I don’t know why I continue to underestimate you, Hail.”

  “Me either.” This time my smile lasted. “Though to be honest, thinking strategically is a skill set I had long before we met.”

  “That’s the truth,” Hao muttered from behind us, and I swallowed back the laugh that threatened.

  “I made your life easier, Hao, and you know it.” I lifted a shoulder, watching as the members of the Pedalion clustered around their surviving gods.

  I had a sudden memory of my sisters and me greeting my father after he’d returned from a tour off-planet. The grief that followed was muted somewhat from the razor-sharp pain that I was used to feeling. Unlike Hao and the others, my family was truly dead and gone, though their ghosts had haunted me on Sparkos along with the others.

  But the universe had given me back my brother and my Trackers along with everyone else I’d feared dead from the embassy explosion.

  “No!” Adora’s cry dragged me back to the present. I felt Aiz stiffen at my side as we looked to the group of Farians and Hiervet.

  My BodyGuards formed up around me, hands tight on their still-drawn weapons. Aiz cursed softly and I knew that everyone could now see the Hiervet for what they truly were.

  Adora was attempting to scramble backward, her efforts hampered by her bound hands and Sou’s grip on her shoulder. The others stared at the Hiervet with expressions on their faces that ranged from confusion to outright horror. Sybil merely looked resigned and met my eyes with a shake of her head.

  “What have you done?” Adora demanded. Her head swung wildly between me and the Hiervet. “What have you done to our gods?”

  “The Star is the one who can see through the light. The one who calls out the rot from its beautiful façade.” Sybil’s voice rose above the noise in the room like a chant, echoed by the other seers.

  “No!” Adora shouted. “I refuse to believe it. I warned you all this would happen! The Shen have corrupted your precious Star and she in turn has murdered our gods and replaced them with these things!”

  Fuck.

  Out of all the accusations I’d expected from Adora, that was not one of them. And it was a good one, just the right amount of doubt into an already tense situation. People believed what they wanted to, not necessarily what was true.

  I arched an eyebrow, keeping my protest to myself. At this point it wouldn’t do me any good if the other Farians decided to believe her accusation.

  “I want everyone to be ready to move if this goes sideways.” Emmory’s order over the com was a wash of cool wind in a heat wave. “Hao and Gita, you’ve got Hail. Johar, you’re on point. Everyone else will cover the retreat. Make for the ship.”

  The ease with which he tasked out me running for my life while they stayed to die was something I hoped I never got used to, but I didn’t interfere and instead kept my eyes locked on the drama playing out across the floor from us.

  Thyra made a tsking noise, reaching out and tapping a limb to the center of Adora’s forehead. The Farian went limp, nearly sliding to the floor before Sou got a better hold on her.

  “A crisis of faith is a difficult thing,” Thyra said, looking in my direction. “Your Majesty, do you mind if we deal with this?”

  “Not at all,” I replied. I felt a sudden need to be back on the Hailimi Bristol. I’d gotten Rotem to declare my ship as Indranan soil, and it was the only place of guaranteed safety on this entire planet. If this went badly there was nowhere else I wanted to be. “We’ll go back to our ship and discuss things while you handle this. Have someone contact me when you’re settled.”

  I shared a look with Emmory and headed for where I thought the door was without waiting for a reply from Thyra, but I could feel the eyes of Farian and Hiervet alike boring into my back.

  Emmory and Zin, as well as Aiz and Mia, were walking backward with their gazes locked on the group at the far side of the chamber.

  “Star of Indrana.”

  I stopped just short of the blank white wall at Sybil’s call and turned. “Yes?”

  She crossed to us, her pale silver eyes unreadable, and folded her hands together as she bowed to me. “I will come see you on your ship later?”

  “Yes, I think we need to have a conversation.”

  She nodded as she straightened, reaching past me and tapping twice on the wall. The door ground open and I didn’t look back as I left the Pedalion chamber and the Hiervet behind.

  The ready room of the Hailimi Bristol was filled with a cacophony of voices in a dizzying mixture of languages. I should have been more relaxed back in the safety of the ship, but it was taking more effort than I wanted to admit not to tell everyone to shut up.

  I stood in the wash of it; most of these languages I spoke to some degree or another, but it didn’t stop my auto-translation function on my smati doing what it could to sort the words ou
t in my head.

  Hao and Dailun were having a rapid-fire conversation in Cheng with Alba tossing in a comment here and there. That bit was easy for me to follow; the surprising part was that Alba also appeared to be speaking in Cheng, not in Indranan.

  Emmory and Gita were having a quick meeting in the back corner with the other BodyGuards. Mia, Aiz, and Talos were in the opposing corner from them and my ears kept picking bits of their Shen out of the mess.

  Fasé was in a discussion with three Farians who’d met us en route to the ship, and I couldn’t even begin to make out what was going on there beyond a solid guess that Fasé was telling them what the gods truly were. Their exclamations had been angry enough to make Emmory pause, but Fasé had waved him off before he could cross to her.

  The debrief had seemed like a good idea given the quickly shifting landscape, but now I was regretting my decision. I wanted to be in the quiet of my room, not trapped in this too-small space with far more people than was comfortable.

  Even if I did trust all of them with my life.

  “Majesty.” Admiral Hassan leaned against the wall next to me, her arms crossed over her chest and her brown eyes sweeping over the room with the same assessing gaze I knew I’d been using moments before.

  “Inana.”

  “So, not gods.”

  “Not gods,” I replied. “Just aliens with delusions of grandeur. If you can fucking believe it.” I blew out a breath as the noise continued to grate on my nerves and shifted. “Sybil basically told me that information and I just let it slide.”

  I knew that Emmory was watching me out of the corner of his eye. He shared a look with Zin and I found myself wishing the others would follow their example of a silent conversation.

  “Hail.” Emmory’s voice was suddenly in my head over our private com link. “Hands.”

  Bugger me.

  I uncurled my fingers from the butts of my guns, very deliberately not looking at my Ekam.

  “And breathe.” That order was more gentle.

  I dragged air into my lungs. It wasn’t a surprise I was on edge after the last twenty-three hours of one adrenaline-spiking moment after the other. I hadn’t truly been expecting the gods to be willing to talk. I’d been expecting a fight. A fight I’d spent months training for. The fact that it had been taken away from me had unsettled me completely.

  I really needed to hit something.

  “Everyone be quiet.”

  I didn’t raise my voice. I didn’t have to. The room fell silent at my order.

  “I’ll be honest, that whole thing didn’t quite play out the way we expected.” Laughter filled the room. It eased some of my tension, reminded me that whatever else, I trusted these people just as much as they trusted me. I rubbed my thumb against my lower lip, my mind flipping through the options and possible ways this could all go sideways on us in the blink of an eye. “I expect that the coming days will be equally chaotic; however, peace between the Farians and the Shen is still the priority.”

  The surprised look on Aiz’s face was predictable, but he didn’t interrupt.

  “I’ve leveraged at least part of that through the Hiervet Farian gods.” I frowned at the cumbersome description. “But you three are going to have to do the real work. Aiz.” I turned to the Shen. “Have you updated your people on what happened?”

  “We sent a message that we were safe but no details. I’d like to tell them the entirety of it face-to-face.”

  “Get with Admiral Hassan. I don’t want to risk sending you off-planet, but you can speak with the fleet over the coms. Will that work?”

  “It will.”

  “Fasé, you’ll spread the word with your people, but I need you to wait until I give you the go-ahead. I don’t want Adora’s faction to latch onto the fact that the news is coming from you.”

  “I agree. We will revisit our demands for peace from the meeting on Earth,” she replied with a look at Aiz, who nodded.

  “Can you give me rough numbers on your people?” I asked.

  “Here on Faria?” Fasé glanced at the others and then at the ceiling, pursing her lips in thought. “Half a million? There are probably twice that who support us but can’t necessarily be counted on to do so publicly unless they are assured the Pedalion will not retaliate.”

  “If I give them that assurance, will they stand with us?”

  “Yes.” She looked at Aiz and Mia, took a deep breath, and crossed the room, her bare hands extended. “We should be allies, Mia and Aiz Cevalla. I want the same for my Shen brethren as for my people. If we present a unified front it will be much harder for the Pedalion to deny us.”

  I held my breath as the siblings studied Fasé in silence.

  “While I admire your optimism, Fasé, peace is not so easy as us just deciding to be allies,” Aiz replied.

  “The first step of anything requires little more than a willingness to take it. I know the journey will be hard, but it is one that has needed people to step on that path for thousands of years. I acknowledge the wrongs done to you by my people. I would like for us to find a way to keep it from happening in the future.”

  “A future of peace,” Mia whispered. She looked at her brother. “If we can achieve our goals through peace rather than war, isn’t that a better option?”

  “I have been fighting for so long I thought I’d forgotten what the dream of peace felt like. Then someone reminded me.” Aiz glanced my way, then nodded to his sister. “It will start here, with us.”

  They took Fasé’s outstretched hands and the anxious violence in my chest relaxed a little.

  “Peace is a noble pursuit, Majesty, but what of after?” Emmory’s question wasn’t quite the same as an explosion in the room, but I’d have been lying to myself if it didn’t make me tense up all over again.

  There was something much worse than a few aliens masquerading as gods headed our way.

  3

  The Hiervet were coming. I knew that all the way to my bones. The same crawling, awful feeling I’d get just before a job went to shit.

  This time, however, I was the one in charge. I’d made the call and pressed forward even though I knew that not fighting the Farian gods would result in this new dilemma. There wasn’t anything I could do now but deal with the consequences.

  And hope that my decision to let these three Hiervet live didn’t kill us all.

  “I’ll deal with it after we’ve gotten the Farians and the Shen to play nice,” I said to Emmory. “But you’re right. We have to get a clear picture of what we’re up against, including what we’re going to be fighting. I’ll speak to Thyra again and see if I can’t get a handle on their situation. Hao, I want you, Dailun, and Alba to put together a timeline for the Hiervet’s invasion of the Svatir. At the moment they’re the only reliable source of information we have.”

  “You don’t trust the Hiervet Farian gods?” Judging from the look on Hao’s face he liked that term about as much as I did.

  “I trust the people in this room.”

  If I hadn’t been looking at Hao when I said it, I’d have missed the way his eyes flicked to Aiz and then back to me. He didn’t comment, though, merely tapped Dailun on the arm and headed for the door. Alba left with them and I turned back to Aiz.

  “I’m going to leave the negotiations up to the three of you,” I said.

  “You’re not joining us?” Mia asked.

  I shook my head. “You’ve got more than enough people slotted to be in these talks already. I may pop my head in from time to time just to keep the Pedalion in line.” I grinned. “But you don’t need me. You’ll sort it out on your own.”

  “You’re expecting an awful lot from us,” Aiz replied.

  “I am. Make it work.”

  Aiz huffed a sigh at my implacable response and raked a hand through his hair. “Hail, you can’t believe we will sit down and just agree to peace after all these years.”

  “Adora has been removed from the equation and I’ve done everything possible to
give you a level field. I’m not an idiot. I know how hard this will be. What I expect is for you to act like the leaders I know you are and not the rabble the Pedalion has been treating you as.” I tapped him in the chest. “You win a negotiation by being ahead of the other side. They already underestimate you; use it to your advantage. All of you.”

  “All right, Hail. We will do this for peace and our people’s future,” Aiz agreed. “What do I tell our people about the Hiervet?”

  I stared at him, realizing too late he wasn’t joking. “It’s your fleet, Aiz.”

  “You’re in charge, Hail.”

  “Of you,” I replied, pointing a finger at him. I didn’t need this dance on top of everything else. “Not of the entire Shen.”

  “The Shen go where Mia and I tell them to go.” Aiz lifted a shoulder, his brown eyes boring into mine. “And for the moment we follow your orders. When peace is decided we will turn our attention to the Hiervet and you will be in charge of all the forces.”

  “No. That was not the agreement.” My brain was scrambling to remember what it had been, and it was coming up woefully short.

  “Aiz, stop needling her.” Mia held a hand out before her brother could say anything else. “It must be you, Hail. I could not rally the Farians to fight what is coming. Fasé could not rally the Shen. Only you have the ability to command us all.”

  Panic gripped me. Every time I thought I had a handle on what being the Star of Indrana meant, it seemed like the universe threw a new twist in.

  “I can’t,” I whispered. “This is too much.”

  Mia stepped forward but Emmory intercepted her. “That’s enough,” he said. “We’re all tired. It’s time to step back and reassess the situation. It’s time for us all to get some rest.”

  I sank back against a console and reached down to pull Johar’s knife from my boot, flipping it between my fingers as the others were ushered out of the ready room. The need for the kind of clarity only pain seemed to bring was a throbbing echo in my head. I fought against it as Emmory rested a hip on the nearest table.

  Zin took up a station out of arm’s reach, just far enough away from me that it would have been a stretch to get to him or Emmory before the other one shot me.