“Isn’t it true the original plan was for Mathias to pilot your Wasp?” asks Charon, and I gasp. “Yet you went around his back to Admiral Ignus for an instructional program so you could fly it yourself. You’d been planning to abandon him all along.” His voice is no longer loud or impassioned, simply factual. He knows he’s won.
“Why . . . would I hurt Mathias?” I ask, my voice nearly gone.
“Because if he came with you, he would learn the truth—that there is no Ophiuchus. Admit your treason, child.”
“Objection.” Sirna’s on her feet. “This girl stands accused of cowardice, not treason.” Even though she’s defending me, she still won’t look at me.
“Fine,” says Charon. “We have heard enough. The defendant has admitted her guilt. Excellencies, what say you?”
“No, I haven’t—”
“We of Aries find the defendant guilty.”
Charon nods. “How says the Second House?”
“Guilty,” rumbles the Taurian.
“How says the Third House?”
The diminutive ambassador from Gemini hops up into her chair, reminding me of poor, lost Rubidum. “The Third House says guilty.”
Charon calls the Fourth House to vote, and now it’s Sirna’s turn. Sirna at least will stay loyal. She stands, and her voice rings low but clear. “House Cancer votes guilty.”
I freeze, stunned, while the rest of the Houses continue to vote. It’s unanimous. Albor Echus reads my sentence. “Rhoma Grace, you have been found guilty and are forever banned from this Plenum.”
None of this makes sense. They asked me to lead the armada—I wasn’t even allowed in on the strategy meetings—and now I’m the only one to blame?
I stare at the glass beneath me, and for a moment I wish it would break so I could just return to the Sea and be done with breathing. Then I think of Mathias, and I push that wish away.
Sirna rises and solemnly walks up to me. I think she’s finally going to explain what’s happening, but instead she removes the Cancrian coronet she herself placed on my head this morning. I watch her in bewildered confusion, and then my brain kicks in, and I understand what’s happening.
A Guardian can only be sworn in on her own House’s soil—that’s why we had the salt water at my ceremony—and the same goes for stripping a Guardian of her power. They couldn’t do it at the hippodrome. . . . It’d have to be done at the embassy.
Sirna clears her throat and speaks loud and clearly across the roofless room. “You are hereby stripped of your title as Guardian of the Fourth House.”
43
THE VERY LODESTARS I SENT here now hustle me out of the embassy, alone, and escort me across the plank. Then they turn me loose on the streets of the village.
I don’t know where to go. For the first time, I’m on my own. I have no faithful protector, no safe house, no embassy to run to. I don’t even know how I’m going to get off this planet.
I amble dazedly around, like I’m in a stupor. After weeks of racing forward at breakneck speed, I’m done. My services aren’t needed anymore.
I watch the world around me as though I’m not part of it. I don’t feel like I’m part of anything anymore.
I was deceived after all. Mathias warned me to slow down and think things through, but I couldn’t see past my own obsession. And now I’ve lost both him and Hysan—and the respect of our entire solar system.
Suddenly I realize people have started to trickle out from embassies. Mostly Acolytes and university students—those who didn’t set out in the armada. When they see me, they point and come closer.
Something moldy explodes on my head, and immediately more vegetables start flying toward me. The crowd converges around, calling me filthy names that bleed into each other. Traitor! Murderer! Coward!
They throw their dead at me, too. My husband, my father, my sister, my friend, my daughter—everyone lost someone. And like the Plenum, they too need someone to blame. War leaves all kinds of wreckage.
I recognize one of the faces among them—Lacey, the Piscene from Helios’s Halo. Her face is splotchy and wet with tears. “You were supposed to save us,” she says through her sobs.
A thrown flute glass shatters and slices a cut across my cheek. Fighting tears and covering my face, I drop to my knees, as the circle closes around me. I wonder if the same people who chanted my name to lead them days ago will now rip me to shreds.
Suddenly an air horn blares. “Stand back,” says a man’s voice. “Clear the area.”
I raise my head. My attackers are retreating, but no soldiers are in sight.
People stumble backward, shielding their faces, and a few of them fall to the ground. I hear slaps and punches, but I can’t figure out what’s happening—until an invisible hand grips my upper arm and lifts me to my feet.
“Your veil, my lady.”
A collar slips around my throat, and a golden figure appears before my eyes.
Hysan came back.
“We’re invisible now. Let’s get out of here.”