EVERY NOW AND THEN it hits me that most people don’t make friends wherever they go. I do. Assembly Headquarters is like anywhere else—people just want to be heard, even if what they have to say is boring. And boy is it boring most of the time.
I get good information from it sometimes, though. The woman behind me in the cafeteria line that morning—piling synthetic eggs high on her plate and covering them with some kind of green sauce—tells me there’s a greenhouse on the second level stocked with plants from all over the solar system, a different room for each planet. I inhale a bowl of cooked grains and head there as soon as I can. It’s been such a long time since I saw a plant.
That’s how I end up in the hallway just outside the room for Thuvhe. The corners of the windows are dusted with frost. I would need to put on protective gear to go in, so I stay just outside, crouched near the cluster of jealousies growing by the door. They’re yellow and teardrop-shaped, but if you touch one at just the right time in its growth, it spits out a cloud of bright dust. Judging by the swollen bellies of these, they’re just about ready to burst.
“You know, try as we might, we can’t seem to grow hushflowers here,” a voice says from behind me.
The man is old—deep lines frame his eyes and mouth—and bald, the top of his head shiny. He wears pale gray slacks, like all the Assembly staff do, and a thin gray sweater. His skin, too, looks almost pale gray, like he got caught downwind of the wrong field on Zold. If I think hard enough about it, I can probably figure out where he’s from by the color of his eyes, which are lavender—the only remarkable thing about him, as far as I can tell.
“Really?” I say, straightening. “What happens when you try? They die?”
“No, they just don’t bloom,” he says. “It’s as if they know where they are, and they save all their beauty for Thuvhe.”
I smile. “That’s a romantic thought.”
“Too romantic for an old man like me, I know.” His eyes sparkle a little. “You must be a Thuvhesit, to look so fondly at these plants.”
“I am,” I say. “My name is Cisi Kereseth.”
I offer him my hand. His own is dry as an old bone.
“I’m not permitted to tell you my name, as it would hint at my origins,” he says. “But I am the Assembly Leader, Miss Kereseth, and it is lovely to meet you.”
My hand goes limp in his. The Assembly Leader? I am not used to thinking of the person with that title as a real person, with a creaky voice and a wry smile. When they are selected from a pool of candidates by the representatives of all the planets, they are stripped of name and origin, so as not to show any bias. They serve the solar system in its entirety, it’s said.
“I’m sorry I didn’t recognize you,” I say. Something about the man makes me think he will like a subtle manifestation of my currentgift: the touch of a warm breeze. He smiles at me, and I think it must have worked on him, since he doesn’t look like a man given to smiling.
“I am not offended,” he says. “So you are the daughter of an oracle, then.”
I nod. “The sitting oracle of Thuvhe, yes.”
“And the sister of an oracle, too, if Eijeh Kereseth still lives,” he says. “Yes, I’ve memorized all the oracle names, though I confess I had to use a few memory techniques. It’s quite a long mnemonic device. I would share it with you if it didn’t have a few vulgarities thrown in to keep it interesting.”
I laugh.
“You have come here with Isae Benesit?” he says. “Captain Morel told me she had brought two friends with her on this visit.”
“Yes. I was close with her sister, Ori,” I say. “Orieve, I mean.”
He makes a soft, sad sound, lips closed. “I am deeply sorry for your loss, then.”
“Thank you,” I say. For now I can push the grief aside. It’s not something this man would be comfortable seeing, so it wouldn’t show even if I wanted it to, thanks to my gift.
“You must be very angry,” he says. “The Shotet have taken your father, your brothers, and now your friend?”
It’s a strange thing to say. It assumes too much.
“It’s not ‘the Shotet’ who did it,” I say. “It was Ryzek Noavek.”
“True.” He focuses on the frosty windows again. “But I can’t help but think that a people who allow themselves to be ruled by a tyrant such as Ryzek Noavek deserves to shoulder some of the blame for his behavior.”
I want to disagree with him. Supporters of the Noaveks, sure, I can blame them. But the renegades, the exiles, the poor and sick and desperate people living in the neighborhood around that building we used as a safe house? They’re just as victimized by Ryzek as I am. After visiting the country, I’m not sure I can even think of “the Shotet” as one thing anymore. They’re too varied to be lumped together. It would be like saying that the daughter of a Hessan farmer and a soft-handed Shissa doctor are the same.
I want to disagree, but I can’t. My tongue is stuck, my throat swollen with my stupid currentgift. So I just look passively at the Assembly Leader and wait for him to talk again.
“I am meeting with Miss Benesit later today,” he says at last. “I hope that you will attend. She is a bit thorny at times, and I sense your presence would soothe her.”
“That’s one of the things I like about her,” I say. “That she’s ‘thorny.’”
“I am sure in friendship it is an entertaining quality.” He smiles. “But in political discussions, it is often an impediment to progress.”
I give in to the instinct to step back from him.
“That depends on how you define ‘progress,’ I suppose,” I say, keeping my tone light.
“I hope that we will agree on a definition by the day’s end,” he says. “I will leave you to look at the plants, Miss Kereseth. Do stop by the Tepessar area—it’s too hot to go in, but you’ve never seen anything like those specimens, I promise you.”
I nod, and he takes his leave.
I remember where I’ve seen those eyes before: in pictures of the intellectual elite on Kollande. They take some kind of medicine designed to keep someone awake for longer than usual without suffering fatigue, and light-eyed people’s irises often turn purple from prolonged use. That he’s from Kollande doesn’t tell me much about him—I’ve never been there, though I know the planet is wealthy and not particularly concerned about its oracles. But those eyes do. He’s someone who values advancement over his own safety or vanity. He’s focused and smart. And he probably thinks he knows better than the rest of us.
I understand, now, what Isae meant when she said it was me, Ast, and her against the galaxy. It’s not just the Shotet we’re up against, it’s the Assembly, too.
Ast, Isae, and I sit on one side of a polished glass table, and the Assembly Leader sits on the other. It’s so clean that his water glass, and the pitcher next to it, almost look like they’re floating. I rammed my legs against the edge when I sat down, because I wasn’t sure where the table ended. If it’s supposed to disarm me, it worked.
“Let us first talk through what happened in Shotet,” the Assembly Leader says as he pours himself a glass of water.
We’re in the outer ring of the Assembly ship, which is arranged in concentric circles. All the outer walls are made of glass that turns opaque when the ship rotates to face the sun, so nobody’s corneas get burned. The walls to my left are opaque now, and the room is heating up, so there’s a ring of sweat around my collar. Ast keeps pinching the front of his shirt and pulling it away from his body to keep it from sticking.
“I am sure the footage the sights provided is more than sufficient,” Isae says, clipped.
She’s wearing chancellor clothes: a heavy Thuvhesit dress, long-sleeved, buttoned up to her throat. Tight boots that made her grimace while she laced them. Her hair is pinned to the back of her head, and shines like she lacquered it there. If she’s hot—which she must be, that dress is made for Thuvhe, not . . . this—she doesn’t show it. Maybe that’s why she put such a dense layer of powder on her skin before we left.
“I understand your reticence to discuss it,” the Assembly Leader says. “Perhaps Miss Kereseth can give us a summary instead? She was there, too, correct?”
Isae glances at me. I fold my hands in my lap and smile, remembering that the Assembly Leader’s preferred texture was a warm breeze. That’s how I need to be, too—all warm and casual, a layer of sweat you don’t mind, a gust of air that almost tickles.
“Of course,” I say. “Cyra Noavek challenged her brother Ryzek to a duel, and he accepted. But before either of them could hit each other, my brother Eijeh appeared—” I choke. I can’t say the rest.
“Sorry,” I say. “My currentgift isn’t being cooperative.”
“She can’t always say what she wants to say,” Isae clarifies. “Which is that Eijeh was holding a knife to my sister’s throat. He killed her. The end.”
“And Ryzek?”
“Also killed,” Isae says, and for a tick I think she’s going to tell him what she did on the ship, how she went into the storage room with a knife and teased a confession out of him and then stuck him with the blade like it was a stinger. But then she adds, “By his own sister, who then dragged the body aboard, I assume to keep it from being defiled by the mob that had erupted into chaos.”
“And now, his body is . . . ?”
“Drifting through space, I assume,” Isae says. “That is the preferred Shotet method of burial, no?”
“I don’t familiarize myself with Shotet customs,” the Assembly Leader says, leaning back in his chair. “Very well, that is all as I expected. As far as how the rest of the galaxy has responded . . . well, I have been fielding messages from the other leaders and representatives since your sister’s death was broadcast. They have interpreted the killing as an act of war, and wish to know how we will proceed from here.”
Isae laughs. It’s the same bitter laugh she gave Ryzek before she cut him open.
“We?” she says. “Two seasons ago, I asked for support from the Assembly to declare war on Shotet in light of the killing of our falling oracle, and I was told that the ‘civil dispute’ between Shotet and Thuvhe, as you have termed it, is an intraplanetary matter. That I needed to handle it internally. And now you’re wondering what we will be doing? There is no we, Assembly Leader.”
The Assembly Leader looks to me, eyebrows raised. If he expects me to—what word did he use?—soothe her, he’s going to be disappointed. I don’t always get to control my currentgift, but I don’t want to do something just because he says so. I’m not sure, yet, whether there’s any advantage to Isae being soothed.
“Two seasons ago, Ryzek Noavek didn’t kill a chancellor’s sister,” the Assembly Leader replies, all smooth and level. “Shotet was not in a state of total upheaval. The situation has changed.”
The opaque panels on the left side of the chamber are starting to lighten up again, turning from wall to window.
“Do you know how long they’ve been attacking us?” Isae says. “Since before I was born. Over twenty seasons.”
“I am aware of the history of conflict between Thuvhe and Shotet.”
“So what was your thought process, then?” Isae says. “That we’re just a bunch of thickheaded iceflower farmers, so who cares if we get attacked, as long as the product is safe?” She laughs, harshly. “The town of Hessa is decimated by guerilla warfare, and you call it a civil dispute. My face gets carved up and my parents get killed, and no one budges an inch except to send condolences. One of my oracles dies, and another is kidnapped, and it’s my job to handle it. So why are you all hopping with excitement to help me now? What has everyone scared?”
His eye twitches a little.
“You must understand that to the rest of the galaxy, the Shotet were little more than an annoyance until the Noaveks came into power,” he says. “When you came to us two seasons ago, describing vicious warriors, we thought of the sad wrecks who once came begging at another planet’s doorstep, every season, to dig through our trash.”
“They’ve been looting hospitals and attacking fueling outposts for longer than two seasons, on their sojourns,” she replies. “This escaped the attention of every single planet’s leadership until now?”
“Not precisely,” the Assembly Leader says. “But we received information from a credible source that Lazmet Noavek is still alive, and will soon move to reclaim his place at Shotet’s helm. You have not been alive long enough to truly grasp this, but Ryzek was remarkably civil compared to his father. He inherited his mother’s desire for diplomacy, if not her ease with it. It was under Lazmet that Shotet became fearsome. It was still under his guidance—from beyond the grave, apparently—that Ryzek pursued oracles and, indeed, your sister, at all.”
“So you’re all afraid of him. This one man.” Ast frowns. “What can he do, shoot fire out of his ass?”
“Lazmet controls people—quite literally—using his currentgift,” the Assembly Leader says. “His abilities, combined with the new strength of the Shotet fighting force, are not to be underestimated. We must treat the Shotet as an infestation, a blight on land that could otherwise be used for iceflower farming—for something useful and valuable.”
His eyes glitter. I may not have grown up fancy, but I know how to speak Subtext. He wants the Shotet gone. At one point they were a husk of a people, clanking around the galaxy in their big, outdated ship, starved and sick and sagging. He wants that back. He wants more iceflowers, more valuable Thuvhesit land. More for him, and nothing for them, and he wants to use Isae to get it.
Mom used to tell me that all the galaxy once mocked the Shotet. “Dirty scavengers,” they called them, and “fleshworms.” They flew in circles around the solar system, chasing their own tails. Half the time they didn’t even sound like they were saying words. I knew all this. I’d heard it, even said some of it myself.
But the Assembly Leader isn’t just mocking the Shotet now.
“Then tell me,” Isae says, “what disciplinary action the Assembly has planned for the Pithar, given that the Pithar leadership suggested it might be amenable to a trade agreement with Shotet not long ago?”
“Don’t play the fool with me, Chancellor,” the Assembly Leader says, but not like he’s mad, more like he’s tired. “You know that we can’t act against Pitha. The galaxy cannot function without the materials Pitha provides.”
I’d never given Pitha much thought before. I’d actually never thought about politics, period, until I fell back in with the Benesit sisters after my dad died. But the Assembly Leader is right—durable materials from Pitha make up almost all the good tech in the galaxy, including ships. And in Thuvhe, especially, with our frozen air, we rely on insulated Pithar glass for our windows. We can’t afford to lose them any more than the rest of the Assembly of Nine Planets can.
“Pitha has retracted their willingness to engage with Shotet, and that will have to be enough. As for the rest of the nation-planets, they still believe the war effort should be headed up by Thuvhe, given that it is an intraplanetary matter. They are open to discussions about aid and support, however.”
“So in other words,” Ast says, “you’ll throw money at her, but she still has to give you a wall of flesh between Shotet and the rest of you.”
“My, you certainly do enjoy dramatic language, don’t you, Mr. . . .” The Assembly Leader tilts his head. “Do you have a surname?”
“I don’t need any kind of honorific,” Ast says. “Call me Ast or don’t call me anything.”
“Ast,” the Assembly Leader says, and he softens his voice like he’s talking to a child. “Money is not the only form of aid the Assembly can offer. And if war is what confronts you, Miss Benesit, you are in no position to refuse our help.”
“Maybe I don’t want to fight a war,” she says, sitting back in her chair. “Maybe I want to broker a peace.”
“That is, of course, your prerogative,” the Assembly Leader replies. “However, I will be forced to pursue an investigation I had hoped I would be able to avoid.”
“An investigation into what?” Isae scowls.
“It would be quite simple for a person to consult the heat signatures in the Voa amphitheater at the time of Ryzek’s alleged death. And if a person did, they might see that Ryzek was alive when he was taken aboard that transport ship,” the Assembly Leader says. “Which means that if his body is adrift in space, as you say, someone else must have killed him. Not Cyra Noavek.”
“Interesting theory,” Isae says.
“I can’t think of why you would lie to me, and tell me Cyra Noavek committed the crime in the arena, unless you needed to protect yourself, Miss Benesit,” the Assembly Leader says. “And if you were to be investigated for murder—particularly premeditated murder against a self-declared sovereign—then you would not be permitted to rule Thuvhe until you were acquitted.”
“So, just to clarify,” Ast says, glowering, “you’re threatening to tie Isae up in bureaucratic nonsense if she doesn’t do as you say.”
The Assembly Leader only smiles.
“If you would like me to proofread your declaration of war before you send it to the Shotet, I will happily take a look at it,” he says. “I must now take my leave. Good day, Miss Benesit, Miss Kereseth . . . Ast.”
His head bobs three times, once for each of us, and then he’s gone. I glance at Isae.
“Would he really do that?” I say. “Charge you with murder?”
“I don’t doubt it.” Her mouth puckers. “Let’s go.”