A life for a life. For all the lives, of her mother and sister and father.
“Let’s go,” he said, then led her toward the entrance. The crowd made a path as it caught on that she was Marked, not knowing the disfigurement was on account of the octoerces. Some were polite in trying to conceal their horror, but others turned or shrank away from her. During the Great War, Fontis had dropped its biological weapon first, though Kalu retaliated—and the result was a mass die-off from radiation and cancer near all the drop sites. Those who survived were changed, and they passed the mutations down through their lineage. And their children, if they had children, would be Marked—scars, boils, health problems—each generation worse off than the last. They saw the ugliness of war when they saw her.
She didn’t miss the way they looked at Dahlen, and how their eyes lingered over his tattoos.
At the entrance, the stream of people narrowed, but she moved freely after the crowd gave her a wide berth. A Tasinn, his face wide and the shape of a mooncake, nodded at her to enter. Dahlen forked to the right, around to the other side of the wrought iron fence where the rest of the crowd stood. She was pushed forward by the force of people behind her, but she kept her eyes on Dahlen until he was swallowed by the masses.
Around her, people were chattering in languages she couldn’t understand. Now she was too hot; it was so crowded she could almost imagine that she was back on Nau Fruma pushing her way toward the marketplace. But the mood wasn’t happy or carefree. There was nothing to celebrate.
Instead of families and merchants, the crowd was made up of children, many younger than her, all of them pushing forward like a single living organism. Hundreds of people were weeping, and Rhee felt as moved as she was disturbed. Did they truly mourn her? Or were they here to partake in spectacle, to say they had been at the vigil for the Rose of the Galaxy?
These were her people—the ones she would serve, dedicate her life to, just like her father had—but she didn’t know them, didn’t know what they were thinking or what they feared. When this was all behind her, she would think of them, always. But not a moment sooner. Not until Andrés Seotra took his last breath.
In the distance, Rhee could see Seotra standing at the edge of the crystal formation, his face turned down as if he were deep in thought. Rhee could kill him just for the false grief on his face.
She was also, unexpectedly, overcome by a desperate wish to see Tai Reyanna. She was convinced that if she could just look the woman in the eyes, Rhee would know once and for all if her caretaker had betrayed her. But the crowd had begun to snake up the hill, and her view of Tai Reyanna was blocked. Before the vigil started, people had forced their way up to the crystal formation so Tai Reyanna could lay her hands on their heads, touching them for a brief moment as she mumbled a prayer.
Closer, closer, closer Rhee moved. Step by step. Person by person.
Fear began to beat a rhythm in her chest, and she kept wiping her hands on her tunic, terrified that when she grabbed for her knife, her palms would be too slick to hold it. As she approached, the crowd became less generous despite her mark and shoved back, though the look of disgust was plain on their faces. Rhee knew that even if it had been manufactured, she’d been marked in her own way: the last Ta’an, a bad omen of sorts, as if the family history of tragedy were contagious. She’d never felt more anonymous, or more alone. Instinctively she sought Dahlen out in the crowd. It was telling, the way he killed with confidence. It meant he’d had practice, and had done it many times before.
A wave of momentum traveled through the crowd and pushed her forward, knocking her to her knees. Something was wrong. Rhee had never been superstitious, but she knew immediately—the thought of one bad omen had triggered another. Suddenly she had to break free, to kill Seotra now—before it was too late.
Rhee plunged through the crowd, ignoring the children’s moans and complaints. The harder she pushed, the more ashamed she felt.
“Think you’re special?” someone growled in her ear as she passed.
Did she think she was special?
You think you have all the answers? Veyron had said.
Someone grabbed the back of her hood, another one her arm. She wrenched away from a boy with a shock of red hair, his face covered with plague scars.
“Wait your turn,” a little girl cried, but she couldn’t wait. Seotra had to die, now, before she lost her chance.
She was close now, a short sprint. She could see Seotra and the Tasinn guards behind him, hands ostentatiously resting on their holsters. He was smiling. That smile—it was the same smile that had moved across his face as he watched her parents’ craft embark.
It was a smile, wasn’t it? A smile of knowing, of triumph?