It’s not anymore.
After everything that’s happened, convincing the Houses that Ophiuchus exists is all I have left. If I don’t make my case, the Zodiac is doomed. In the same way Mathias can’t find a way to believe me, I’m not sure I can find a way to forgive him.
Because no matter how much we care, or how hard we try, we remain on opposite sides.
? ? ?
The next morning, we leave the village and head to the hippodrome, where the Plenum is meeting.
The city is large, crowded, and disorganized. Yesterday’s bomb threat locked everything down and caused the ambassadors to stay overnight at the shelter, so we couldn’t meet with the Cancrian representative back at the embassy. We’re trying to meet her now.
When we arrive, Mathias’s parents have to report for their duties, but we agree to find them once we have an update. We spend an hour arguing with the clerks at the front desk who control the Plenum agenda, trying to convince them to give me a slot on today’s schedule. First, they insist there’s no way it can be adjusted because it’s jam-packed. Once we’ve persuaded them our business is urgent, they claim to need a series of permissions, and they take forever getting each one.
All around us, soldiers are walking through the crowd, inspecting every questionable person and item. Yesterday’s bomb scare left everyone rattled.
“Anything I can do, my lady?”
I whip around at the sound of Hysan’s voice, a grin on my face. He looks like the sunrise.
Immediately, he takes charge of the situation. Though he’s only seventeen, he’s got all the skills of a seasoned diplomat. While he haggles with the clerks, I check out the hippodrome: It’s a cube housing a giant, freestanding sphere of shining steel in its center. It looks like a small metal planet that’s been hidden in a concrete box.
We’re in the reception hall on the ground floor of the cube, and when I look up, I see the enormous underside of the sphere swelling overhead. Around it, a translucent pipe made of what looks like ruby glass spirals up as far as I can see, carrying people on a moving stairway up to the sphere’s many levels.
“What’s inside the sphere?” I whisper to Mathias.
“That’s the arenasphere. When the Plenum’s not here, the locals use it for holographic wrestling. It’s actually a big business here.”
I’ve seen that on my Wave before. Contestants alter their holograms to look like imaginary beasts—flying horses, gargoyles, three-headed dogs. The technology is similar to what powers the Imaginarium on Gemini.
There’s a holographic newsfeed nearby, and Mathias and I sprint over to hear it. The footage is of ground fighting on the Sagittarian moon, where immigrant Scorps have turned against their Sagittarian employers, demanding the right to practice religious rituals in the workplace. Sagittarians are extremely tolerant people, which makes me wonder what kind of rituals the Scorps want to practice.
Since Sagittarius is a large constellation with many livable planets, I hope Nishi and her family are far away from the fighting. We don’t hear anything about Cancer, but there’s a report on the charred wasteland of Tethys in House Virgo. Where the needle city once towered, a crater now gapes like a dark wound, fringed by smoking rubble.
The fire was contained, but the sky is full of ash, shading out the sunlight, and much of the oxygen has burned away. Zodai predict a bitter winter on the planet’s surface. Years of grain harvests will fail, causing universal food shortages. All survivors have been evacuated to Virgo’s lesser planets, where the main problem now is overcrowding. Empress Moira remains in critical care.
Virgo’s cries still echo in my head when we return to the front desk to check with Hysan.
“They’ve finally agreed to contact your representative. Ambassador Sirna is on her way.” His verdant eyes narrow on mine. “What is it?”
“What isn’t it?”
“We’re still around to bemoan our state, my lady.” His lips hitch into his crooked smirk. “So that’s something.” No matter how dark the circumstances, Hysan can always find the light. It’s my favorite thing he does.
When she arrives, the sight of Sirna’s Cancrian face warms me like a hug. She’s in her thirties, with dark hair, ebony skin, and sea-blue eyes, and she’s wearing Cancrian formal attire: a long, flowing skirt coupled with a coat that bears the four sacred silver moons. But up close, I realize she’s not smiling. “Honored Guardian, we meet at last.”
We exchange hand touches, and after I introduce my friends, she says, “Your long silence perplexes us. We don’t understand your presence here when our people need you so desperately at home.”