Kavax’s eyes are apologetic as he turns to say farewell. I shake my head. “Lord Kavax, you said if I ever needed anything, you would do your best to give it. Are you a liar too?”
“I am sorry, little one. If it were in my power…There are regulations. We must obey them. Stupid Senate. I have friends here. I will tell them to come help you. Have patience.” He kneels and picks a piece of mud from my trousers. “Farewell.” He leaves me at the bottom of the ramp. “Come, Sophocles.” He pats his leg, but the animal does not join his master. He’s fixated on me. Tail swishing back and forth. “Sophocles?” The animal plods silently down the ramp to my side. He sniffs the air as if it were heady with a delicious scent. And then he lunges. I yelp, thinking he’s going to bite me, but instead he’s stuck his snout into my pants pocket. Sniffing, he rummages around till he’s found what he’s looking for. He trots happily back to his master. “What have you got there, my little prince?”
Kavax takes two pieces of candy from the animal’s mouth, one green, one purple. The large man’s eyes go wild and wide as he tastes the purple. “Grape! It is a sign,” he breathes through his white teeth. “A sign!” Xana turns back to see what’s happened.
She sighs. “Father…”
“Quiet, skeptical child. Sophocles has given Lyria his blessing.” The big man holds up the candy to his daughter and comes back to me, his hands gesticulating wildly. “There is magic yet left in the world.” He tosses the candy to the animal. “And Sophocles has found it.”
“Father.”
“Has Luna changed our house, so?” he asks. “Must Sophocles remind us of our Martian honor?” His daughter does not answer. “Apparently! She comes with because…because…” An idea finds its way from his huge head down into his eyes. He points at the silver pen on my hospital gown. “Because she is now a valet of House Telemanus.”
“A valet?” Xana and I ask in unison.
Xana sighs. “Are you going to make the entire village our employees?”
“Just this one. Sophocles has chosen, and House Telemanus does not leave one of their own behind.” He puts a heavy hand on my shoulder. My knees almost buckle under the weight. He doesn’t notice. “Does that meet your judgment, daughter?”
Xana smiles, surrendering to her father. “I’ll add her to the registry. Customs won’t like it.”
“Well, then they can suck my beard…”
“Now you sound like a Barca.”
“…telling me who I can and cannot hire. Uppity, Pecksniffian Pixies.” Kavax waves his hands at his men. “Underlings, on your feet! Find her nephew. A little blind knight with a mole on his nose that looks like chocolate. You cannot miss him. Bring him here.” He punches his palm with a fist. “We depart with haste.”
I stand in shock, not understanding even though I heard well enough. But the soldiers are moving past me, following orders, and Xana is going back up the shuttle ramp into her ship, leaving me alone with her father. I can’t believe it is actually happening. We are leaving.
After he watches his daughter disappear into the shuttle, Kavax kneels so he can look me in the eye. “Don’t mind Xana. She thinks her duty is to protect everyone from themselves.”
“I didn’t have anything in my pockets. Did you put the candy in there?”
He turns to me with a mischevious smile. “Sometimes, little one, it’s best if the worlds think you a little mad.” He winks. “Inspiring what they’ll let you get away with.”
He extends a hand to me. My fingers wrap only around his index and middle fingers, but he’s gentle as a bird despite the calluses, and he pulls me along with him to walk up the ramp into his ship. At the top, before we enter the craft, I stop and look back at the camp. A strange quiet presides. The fires have died. The bodies are being buried. And amidst the tents at the edge of the landing strip, my nephew’s head bounces in the breeze as he’s carried to us by a fair-haired Obsidian.
I feel Kavax’s hand settle on my shoulder and I think of my sister and father and mother and all my family that has lived and died and been swallowed by the ground of this planet. The sadness in me is a well without a bottom. But it is right that I leave. Without my family, this place is just mud and memories. I look up at the sky, knowing my brothers and Ava’s husband are out there, somewhere. Several stars are visible even at the height of day. I wonder if my sister looks at them too from the Vale. I know she does. And I know I must live life for the both of us.
“Thank you,” I say to Kavax through the tears.
He squeezes my shoulder. “The worlds are very big and you are very small. Do you think you are ready, little one?”
“Yes,” I say with a trembling voice. “Yes, I am.”
I SUFFER THE SPLINTERING HEADACHE and telltale nausea of a concussion as I come to. Wish I could say it is a new sensation. There’s water trickling nearby. The shuffling of feet and murmur of voices. I’m sitting in a hard chair; metal binds my wrists at the small of my back. The stink of ammonia is like fire ants in my nostrils. I blink groggily and open my eyes.
A table sits before me. Lying in the center is a silver bonesaw. My blood runs cold. Screams echo in memory.
Past the table, an insidiously beautiful man with slender legs, alabaster skin, and eighty-thousand-credit designer cheekbones stands amidst a half-completed highrise. He looks interminably bored. His shark leather boots tap impatiently. His long overcoat, tails falling to his mid-calf, is the color of a rainy midnight street. His tailored pants are black, and so too is his high-collared silk shirt, held together with an onyx clasp. To top off the dashing absurdity of him, his feathery hair is blown straight up like a lazy pink candle flame. Rose-quartz eyes twinkle as he looks out the window into the darkness.
Men linger in the shadows of the unfinished highrise. They wear black leather duster jackets with collars to the ears and tails to the boots. Fleshware glows softly in eyes and jaws and around bald heads covered with bright tattoos.
I feel a deep nauseating fear in my belly as an Obsidian nightmare walks from behind me into my field of vision. He’s one of the biggest men I’ve ever seen. With beetle shell eyes and white hair unbound to his waist, he leans against a concrete support beam in a chrome suit. His face is bloodless. His eight-fingerered hands the size of dinner plates and wormed with blue veins, tipped with immaculate, razor-sharp nails. He flicks a package of ammonia inhalants onto the ground.
“The thief is awake,” he says in a low, intelligent voice.
“Thank you, Gorgo,” the Pink says. He turns his attention from the darkness and approaches carrying a thin cane with him, twirling it as he goes. The shaft looks like real ivory, but at the sight of the onyx octopus handle I blanch, swallowing down my fear. He sets the cane on the edge of the table and sighs down into his seat.
I grimace. “Well, this is ominous.”