Wandering Star: A Zodiac Novel (21 page)

THE SHIP’S LIGHTS BLINK BACK
on, and I see Lord Neith’s towering, white-haired figure at the control helm, binding the hands and feet of the injured soldier, who’s been knocked out. Hysan is tying up an unconscious Corinthe.

“Neith, are you okay?” he asks.

“Yes,” booms Lord Neith’s sonorous voice.

Hysan surveys the rest of the room, and our eyes meet.
“Rho.”

The golden color drains from his skin, and I can only imagine the version of myself that’s reflected in his horrified gaze. He rushes over to where I’m sitting and bleeding out. He quickly but carefully undoes my shackles and scoops me up in his arms. In my periphery, I can see Lord Neith and Aryll tending to my brother and Nishi, but I can’t speak. Hysan is silent as he carries me into his cabin and sets me on his bed to rest. He hits a few keys on a wallscreen, and the healing pod emerges from a hidden floor compartment.

“I don’t want it,” I whisper, my voice so frail it splinters.

“Rho, you need to heal.” His words are thick with suppressed emotion.
“Please.”

I shake my head, my whole body shivering. Hysan quickly pulls back the sheets so I can burrow in, and I surprise myself by repeating something Mom used to say:
“Erasing a memory from the body doesn’t erase it from the mind.”

Hysan pours me a tonic for the pain, and as soon as I take it, I feel a sleepy sensation come over me. I’m still awake, but my muscles feel dormant even when I’m tossing and turning to try to get comfortable. Then he brings over a healing kit and carefully cleans my cuts. Hysan finishes by wrapping a long bandage around my arm, covering it completely. Then he tends to the raw skin beneath my nails and bandages the ends of my fingers.

Once I’m finally sitting up and seeing clearly, Hysan holds my uninjured hand in his and whispers, “I’m sorry, I’m
so
sorry, Rho. I should have been here. I shouldn’t have left—”

“Stop.” I wrap my healthy arm around him and let myself fall apart, the way I did when I lost Mathias. Only this time, I lost Deke. My best friend. My second brother.

“H-how did you find us?” I ask when I’ve calmed down some, my face still buried in the crook of his neck.

“Sirna’s necklace.”

I stare up at him in surprise. I touch the rose-colored pearl, the token that’s become such a part of me I don’t even think about it. I owe my life to Sirna—again.

“Neith and I flew a Dragonfly over. It’s veiled and docks into a secret port on ’
Nox
, so the soldiers couldn’t detect us.”

“But how’d you override the Marad’s controls? When we tried to escape, Twain said . . .” My voice breaks on his name, and I forget what I was saying.

“I’m sorry, Rho.” Hysan kisses my hair, his heartbeat pounding faster in my ear. “I knew Twain. He was an absolutist—he was seeking something to
believe in, and once he found it, he could only believe in it all the way, no compromises. I know he would have considered this a worthy death.” Even though his words are soothing, his voice is swimming in sadness. Twain was his friend for far longer than he was mine.

“Remember how I told you I built the Libran Talisman into ’
Nox
’s brain?” asks Hysan, and I nod. “Well, the Talisman is more powerful than anything manmade, and it responds only to me. So once I located you, I had no trouble gaining access.”

“What happened with Neith?” I ask, suddenly remembering why Hysan wasn’t with us earlier. And it’s a good thing he wasn’t, or none of us would be here now.

Hysan frowns. “I’m not sure. I have to run some more diagnostics when we land. I found him on the streets of Aeolus, completely disoriented. According to his Royal Guard, he was missing for more than a day, but he doesn’t know where he was. He’s lost time.”

There’s a knock on the cabin door. “Come in, Neith,” says Hysan.

The android’s regal figure shadows the doorway. “Lady Rho, I’m so relieved to see you safe.” As always, his quartz irises are strikingly human. “I have secured the hostages in the storage hold. Your friends’ wounds have been tended, and they are in their cabins resting. Nishiko might need the healing pod if you’re done with it.”

I jump to my feet, the movement so quick it disorients me, and Hysan has to steady me. “Easy, Rho. Relax.”

“I need to see Nishi.” Hysan offers me his arm, and Neith shows us to her new cabin. With a pang, I recall that until today, she’d been sleeping in Hysan’s with Deke.

I’m at her door, but I don’t immediately go in. I don’t know if I can face her. It’s my fault Deke is gone. She has to hate me for it, and I can’t bear to see that on her face.

“She needs you,” whispers Hysan. I nod and open the door.

Nishi is in a ball in the middle of the bed, her blanket of black hair nearly covering her whole body. When she looks up at me, there’s no blame in her eyes—only unending despair.

I don’t know which one of us moves first. All I know is we’re melting together to the floor, sobbing into each other’s ears.

The war’s over.

We lost.

Once I’ve convinced Nishi to use the healing pod, I check on Stanton and Aryll.

“Rho,” breathes my brother, hugging me as soon as I walk into the galley. We stay locked together a few moments, neither of us willing to step away.

“I want to kill her.” We pull apart and turn to Aryll. I’ve never seen his stare so cold before. “She deserves it,” he says defiantly.

“We can’t,” I murmur. “She and her army are our only leads to the master.”

“They’re
murderers
.”

Stanton looks as though he wants to agree with Aryll but knows better than to say so. “Aryll, let’s catch our breath first,” he says, resting a hand on his shoulder. Aryll doesn’t argue with him.

I sit in their silent company until I can’t wait any longer, and then I leave and head toward the storage hold.

“You sure that’s a good idea?” Hysan’s already by the door, having predicted my next stop.

“I have to question them. They’re our best way to find the master.”

Hysan nods. “I know . . . I just wonder whether you’re ready to face the people who, just hours ago, tortured you and murdered your friends.”

I flinch at his words, though he’s made his point: If I can’t handle hearing the facts, how will I handle facing Corinthe?

“What did we do with . . .” I can’t say their names, let alone the words
corpses
or
bodies
.

“Neith and I moved them into an empty cabin for now. They’re resting peacefully.”

“Thank you.”

I pull open the door into an echoing chamber that houses extra fuel, spare parts, compressed meals, oxygen tanks, and other necessities. In the middle of the cluttered space are the two Marad soldiers, bound tightly to chairs that are bolted to the floor.

“Why does he still have his mask on?” I ask, looking at the soldier with the bandaged knee. For Deke’s sake, I hope the wound hurts worse than Maw poison.

“We couldn’t remove it,” says Hysan. “The mask is made of organic matter and is attached to his face. Only he knows how to take it off, and he’s not speaking.”

Thinking of Deke makes me want to shred the mask off the soldier’s face with the five fingernails I have left. He killed him. Aryll’s right: They should both die.

I suck in a deep breath and take a long time exhaling, trying to push the hatred away so I can think. “Why does he want to hide his face at this point?”

It’s easier to talk about the soldiers like they’re not here, to make them feel as insignificant and expendable as they made us feel.

“Because his appearance is a clue,” says Hysan, confirming my suspicion.

We lock gazes, and I know we’re thinking the same thing, only this time neither of us says it. The masks, the brainwashing, the ruthlessness of the attacks . . . they’re
all
imbalanced Risers. The master found himself a whole army of sociopaths.

I think of Datsby and Vecily and the injustice that was served to them. Two girls with the same talents and smarts and potential were diverted on opposite paths just because one of them was born into the wrong House.

Ferez is right. Change has to come.

Whoever the master is, he and I have the same power and resource: our young followers. We have believers willing to act on—and even die for—our visions for tomorrow. This war will be between those who trust in his vision and those who believe in mine.

Corinthe’s dark, close-set eyes follow me in the dim lighting. We both know she’s not going to tell me anything, but that’s not why I came in here. I came to show her she didn’t break me.

“I’m still going to fight for a world that accepts you,” I tell her. “Because whether you know it or not, you’re a victim, too.” A sneering, too-wide smile splits her levlan face. “The master is manipulating you,” I go on. “He’s playing on your pain by doing the very thing you hate me so much for doing—giving you
hope
. Only his is a false hope. Murder and destruction will only bring you fear—violence won’t make anyone love you. And I know that’s what you’re really after.”

“I don’t believe in love,” she says, and I feel something like déjà vu coming on—only it isn’t that. I heard her say similar words before. When she first stormed onto ’
Nox
, she said,
“It’s almost enough to make me believe in true love.”

What did she mean by that?

Without another word, I spin around and cut through the ship to the nose. Hysan closes the door behind us and hurries to catch up. “I want to board their ship,” I tell him when we’ve reached ’
Nox
’s main doors.

“Neith is trying to break through their access codes. We’re nearly there.” He joins Neith at the control helm, and I pace the nose until Hysan announces that our communications are back online and the Marad’s Psy shield is off. Then the door into their ship opens.

Neith, Hysan, and I enter a cold, hollow hallway that’s pitch black. We advance into a larger space that’s slightly less dark, its lights hazy and low to the ground, illuminating us up to our waists while leaving our faces in shadow. The circular room is entirely devoted to holographic screens and navigational controls and all kinds of weapons. While Hysan and Neith review the technology, I head down another narrow hallway to the back.

The cabins here are half the size of the ones on ’
Nox
, and each is furnished with a single bed and nothing else. No closet, no desk, no dresser. There’s one lavatory on the ship for everyone to share and a small galley that barely fits one person. All that remains at the end of the hall is a large metal door.

I pull, but it doesn’t open. Hysan comes over and punches a series of codes into a screen, until something clicks and the door slides open on its own.

The smell that immediately wafts out makes us cover our mouths and hesitate. It’s so much darker in there than the rest of the ship that it takes a moment for my eyes to adjust as we peer inside.

The first thing that becomes clear is a wall bolted with chains and blades and spiky weapons. Down in the corner, I see where the smell is coming from: a metal pot someone has been using as a toilet. This is a torture chamber.

We take a few steps, and then I see them. Two people are huddled on the floor under a thin, stained blanket: a guy who’s been severely beaten and a girl who’s leaning over him protectively. With her oily hair matted across her face and her ready-to-pounce pose, she looks like a wild animal.

“It’s okay,” I say softly, “we’re not Marad. We’re not going to hurt you.”

As soon as I speak, the guy looks up, and I see the features in his bruised and hairy face.

I gasp and fall forward to my knees, the breath completely leaving my body. My pulse is a speeding metronome marking off the new racing rhythm of my life, and I can’t think or feel or focus. It can’t be—

“Mathias?”

HYSAN HURRIEDLY FREES THEM FROM
their chains, but I’m still on the floor, my eyes still locked on the indigo blue irises that I never thought I’d see again.

How is this possible?

How did he survive?

Who is this girl?

They’re both so dirty and bloodied and bruised that it’s hard to make out much of their features—if I didn’t know Mathias’s face like it was my own, I wouldn’t have been able to recognize him. I can’t even tell what House the girl is from—not that it matters. Right now we have to get them on
Equinox
and take them to healers. I get to my feet and reach down to help Mathias up.

He jerks away and clings closer to the girl. I seal my lips to keep from gasping as a pain worse than Corinthe’s knife stabs me in the chest.

“Let’s get you out of here,” coaxes Hysan, kicking away the chains that had bound them. The girl puts an arm around Mathias, and together they get to their feet. Hysan leads the way through the Marad ship and onto
Equinox
. Mathias and the girl go wrapped together, still holding on to their ratty blanket, heads bent down against the light.

Aryll and Stanton’s jaws drop when they see us walk in with two badly beaten hostages, and they silently follow us into Hysan’s cabin. Nishi has already left the healing pod and must have returned to her room, so Hysan tries to help Mathias into the pod.

“NO!”

His shout is so loud, I can almost feel his voice reverberating through the room long after he’s gone quiet. Something’s different about it.

His music is gone.

“I’ll tend to him,” says the girl, her voice scratchy, as if she hasn’t had water in days. Hysan immediately fetches them a carafe and a couple of glasses, and Stanton and Aryll carry in a tray piled with food. Meanwhile, the girl gently deposits Mathias on the bed and investigates the contents of the healing kit Hysan used on me earlier.

As the four of us are filing out of the cabin minutes later to give them some privacy, she manages a quiet “Thank you.”

In the hallway, I’m conscious of Hysan’s eyes drilling into me. Only I can’t meet them. Instead, I storm into the storage hold.

Corinthe barely has time to lift her head before I charge my fist into her face. My blow lands on her jaw, and she laughs out loud for the first time.

“You found my gift, then?” she asks in her raspy voice.

In response, I punch her again, this time landing on her nose, and I feel the brittle bone crack. A patch of skin is flayed off where I struck her, as if it’s made of actual dried-out levlan. The Marad’s advanced technology and special suits hide her inferior makeup: Imbalanced Risers have the highest number of diseases and deformities of anyone in the Zodiac.

I pull back to hit her again, but a hand cinches my wrist and yanks me away.

Hysan drags me out of the room while Corinthe cackles with glee. He pulls me into the galley, where Aryll and Stanton are waiting for us. Holding my bleeding knuckles in his hands, Hysan starts sterilizing the wounds without a word.

“What’s going on?”
Stanton finally asks. “Who are those people? What happened to your hand? And no one has explained what the Guardian of Libra is doing here!”

“Lord Neith personally requested to lead the rescue mission,” says Hysan tonelessly, his face focused on my cuts. “Those people are hostages we found on the Marad ship. One of them is Rho’s former Guide.”

“Your
Guide
?” asks Stanton incredulously. “The person the Plenum practically charged you with killing?”

“I don’t get it either,” I say, my metronome pulse still racing at its new record speed. Mathias is alive . . . I saw him, but I can hardly believe it. What if it’s a trick? The master’s technology outmatches ours, so odds are he can build androids as sophisticated as Hysan’s. Creating a false Mathias to toy with my emotions sounds just like the kind of twisted torture the master would want to inflict.

“So what now?” asks Aryll, just as Lord Neith appears in the galley doorway.

“The ambassador from House Cancer is calling.”

We run into the nose to find Sirna’s hologram waiting for us. “Rho, thank Helios—when we lost your signal, we feared the worst.”

“Thanks, Sirna—once again, I owe my life to your Tracker.”

After a transmission delay, she bows. “I’m relieved you’re all right.”

“I don’t know what we would have done without you. We’ve taken two soldiers prisoner. They had two hostages with them who are in pretty bad condition. We need to take them to healers.” I don’t mention Mathias by name in case he’s not real—I’d rather Hysan and I find out all we can first, in case this is part of the master’s plan.

I especially don’t want his parents to have to lose him twice.

“Bring everyone to House Taurus,” she says, an unexpected smile breaking through her usually stern face. “We found evidence of an explosive, which means the destruction on Tierre wasn’t set off by a Psy attack. What’s more, Sage Ferez appeared as a holo-ghost from the undisclosed location of Moira’s bedside to tell us that Ophiuchus is real. He advised the Plenum to heed your advice.”

My skin tingles with new energy.

“Ferez’s revelation has made such an extreme impact that the Houses have split into two polarized factions. Aquarius, Aries, Scorpio, Taurus, and Leo believe the Marad is the true enemy and remain unconvinced of Ophiuchus’s existence, but Houses Sagittarius, Gemini, Libra, Virgo, Pisces, Cancer, and Capricorn are behind you. They believe you have been telling the truth, that you are the most gifted seer we’ve seen in ages, and they have called on you to testify to Ophiuchus’s existence. This split in the Plenum is unprecedented in Zodiac history, Rho. Your testimony is vital—it could bring the Houses closer than we’ve been in centuries.”

I look at Hysan, forgetting that I’d been avoiding him, though the vulnerability I sense in his expression immediately reminds me. “I heard the news right before Neith and I found you,” he says somberly. “I think Ambassador Sirna is right. This is a huge chance to unify at least half of the Houses.”

I nod, and something Hysan said on Capricorn about the Houses flits into my mind:
The greater our need to unite, the deeper we divide.
Hysan and I are guilty of that same crime—right when our worlds are finally communicating, he and I aren’t.

We end the call with Sirna after I agree to testify at the Plenum, and Neith charts a new flight path that will get us to Taurus within two days. He and Hysan detach the Marad ship from
Equinox
, and since Brynda and Rubi have already dispatched the rescue craft to these coordinates, their Zodai will study the Marad’s equipment for clues once they arrive.

Neith hands back my Ring and the other devices the Marad took from us, and I return everything to the rightful owners, saving Nishi for last. When I open her door, she’s asleep. She seems to have raided the sleeping powders in her drawer and ingested more than one variety. I rest her Tracker and Deke’s Wave on the desk, then cover her with the blanket and gather up the remaining powders before leaving the room. As I’m depositing them in one of the ship’s larger healing kits, I hear my name.

I look up. The girl we rescued is in the hallway with Hysan, waving me over. The cabin door behind her is open only a sliver. The three of us slip inside and shut it behind us. The room’s lights have been dimmed to semidarkness.

Now that she’s washed her face and hair and changed into the yellow, temperature-controlled Libran suit Hysan loaned her, I can tell she’s Aquarian. Her ivory skin and dusky violet eyes give her away.

She perches on the edge of the bed, while Hysan and I stand in the center of the room. Sitting beside her, but hidden in her shadow, is Mathias, his face shaven and clean save for a few bruises and shallow cuts. A long, straight scar runs down the side of his neck, and his wavy black hair is longer than I’ve seen it. He doesn’t meet my eyes, but his midnight blue gaze pierces through the gray air.

“He was there longer than I was,” says the Aquarian in her misty voice. Her auburn locks drape down like a waterfall, swallowing her small face but tapering in at the ends, past her shoulders. “He endured . . . unspeakable things. I tried keeping him sane. I’d remind him who he was every night, so he didn’t forget and lose himself completely. I’m Pandora, by the way. Of the Nightwing clan.”

Aquarians are divided into six clans. Nightwings are the House’s star-readers. “Like Mallie,” I say, picturing the owl design of her Philosopher’s Stone, which I’d admired the night of Helios’s Halo.

Pandora nods. “She’s partly the reason I’m here . . . though the real reason would be you.” Her amethyst eyes watch me, unperturbed by
the strangeness of her declaration. Her disarming stare reminds me of Leyla’s.

“Then you were at the Plenum on Aries?”

She nods again. Beside her, Mathias is still turned away from us, giving no indication he’s even listening.

“I joined the armada,” says Pandora. “I was on an Aquarian ship, and when we were attacked, I ejected in an escape capsule . . . same as all the others.”

“Others?”
echoes Hysan.

“The Marad’s ships were there, too. We just didn’t see them. They used their own Veils. While the armada was being destroyed, their ships snuck in and stole escape capsules and Skiffs without anyone noticing. They took dozens of us hostage. They were waiting for us.”

“How do you know that?” My voice sounds suspicious, and I almost regret prying, after everything she’s been through. I don’t mean to put Pandora through more pain, but I can’t dismiss the possibility that she and Mathias might not be who we think they are. That the master could be luring me into another trap.

“If it’s okay, Pandora, do you think you could try telling us what you remember?” Hysan’s voice is velvety soft and lacks the suspicion that sharpened mine.

“I don’t know days or hours anymore,” she begins, addressing Hysan. “Time is just one long, run-on sentence. I only know that before the beatings, I was in a kind of detention center with other girls my age. Most of us had been taken in the attack on the armada, but some were abducted earlier—disappearances across the Houses that no one had thought to link. The armada had provided the army with a feast.”

She pauses, and when she starts speaking again, her voice is lower. “Once they caged us, the soldiers spoke openly around us. . . . They knew we would be killed soon. Every now and then they’d take a couple of us away, and
we’d never see those girls again. One day, it was my turn. I was put in that torture chamber where you found us. When I arrived and saw him,” she says, taking Mathias’s hand, “he seemed dead. I think he nearly was.”

At her touch, Mathias’s eyes cut to mine, and this time he holds my gaze. He always seemed so invincible that it’s hard seeing him so damaged. It’s even harder watching someone else tend to him when I would give anything to be the one touching him. To feel his realness.

If
that’s really him.

“What’s the Marad doing with the people they’re taking hostage?” asks Hysan.

“I don’t know . . . I only heard vague things.” She sounds like she knows more but doesn’t want to say.

Hysan moves toward the bed and kneels on the floor, looking up into Pandora’s face. “Please . . . if there’s a chance what you know can help us save others, we must know the rest of your story.”

She shakes her head. “It’s . . . it’s awful. They’ve been
studying
us. Running psychological experiments. When we die, they conduct autopsies to see how people from each House differ on the inside.” She swallows and blinks rapidly. “They . . . they’re organized. They’re not just a random group of disgruntled people. They hold seminars and mandatory classes the soldiers have to enroll in. There was one lesson where I watched them strip naked twelve people, one from each House, and talk about them as if they were cuts of meat.”

She looks at me then, her amethyst eyes wide. “When I realized who Mathias was, I couldn’t believe it. I remember when I first heard they’d captured him. The soldiers were excited to have someone so close to you. They thought he would be a good surprise weapon if they ever needed one. He became a novelty prize—they passed him around among the top officers, torturing and humiliating him. They scoffed at how noble he was. How he wouldn’t break, wouldn’t denounce you, no matter what they did to him.”

Dizziness—not just from my own blood loss, but from Pandora’s tales of torture and death—rises up in me again. The painkilling tonic is beginning to wear off. Hysan seems to notice, because he rises to his feet and steadies me with his arm.

Mathias is still watching, and I whisper, “I’m sorry . . . I’m so sorry.” He turns away, facing the wall instead, and the renewed rejection is worse than anything Corinthe did or could do to me.

Hysan helps me out of the room, and the last thing I see is Pandora laying a consoling hand on Mathias’s shoulder. He doesn’t shirk her touch.

“This is a little too hard to believe, Hysan. I’m worried he’s an android,” I say as soon as we enter my cabin. “The master has sunk to an all-new low, using a Mathias look-alike to unnerve me.” Hysan helps me into bed and hands me a glass of water. “I’m not sure we can trust her either,” I go on. “She knows too much for a prisoner.”

But Hysan isn’t looking at me. He’s sitting at the far end of my bed staring at the wall. “Rho,
Equinox
does a full-body scan of every person who comes on board. She’s really an Aquarian teen believed to have died in the armada . . . and he’s really Mathias.”

He’s really Mathias.
Those are the only words that linger in my mind after he’s spoken.
He’s really Mathias.
He’s alive.

Something savage and painful erupts in my chest. I gulp down the water to keep Hysan from seeing my face. The wave of relief spreads to every corner of my being, making even my stinging skin feel soft and sleepy. In spite of all the horrors . . . I’m
happy
.

I’m happy Mathias is alive.

I lie back on the mattress, and I feel myself falling, only I’m lying on the bed. Before Hysan can shut off the lights, I’m swallowed by darkness.