Striding through the starfire came a dark figure, dressed in Solarian robes, the gold Lion constellation tattoo wrapped around her throat shining like the sun. Soren was well acquainted with figments of the imagination in the poison fields, and this would have been no different save for the voice echoing through his mind like temple bells.
Let it die. Let it go.
Soren opened his mouth, cracked lips peeling apart, but he couldn’t find his voice as Callisto came to a stop before him, staring down at where he knelt. Her dark skin was a shadow against the brightness of the starfire, though her eyes burned like one of those celestial bodies.
This isn’t your road, child.
Soren tightened his grip on the hilt of his poison sword, breathing out words that hurt. “Isn’t it? You put me here.”
Callisto smiled, kind in the way only death could be. But he’d died for her once already, long ago, and woken in a nightmare, the silhouette of a life lost fading into the shadows. He didn’t want to die for her again.
The Dawn Star reached for him, ghostly fingertips brushing against his forehead. Ice poured through Soren, freezing him like the snow he’d seen only in training exercises in the Eastern Spine as a tithe. When he breathed out, it felt like a blizzard left his body, whiting out his vision.
Walk the road I gave you.
The Dawn Star’s words rang in his ears until the sound of her voice faded into the wind. He opened his eyes, finding himself lying on his back and staring up at a soft blue sky, the stars fleeing the sun breaking free of the horizon. Soren licked his dry lips, body aching fiercely, but he forced himself to move because a downed warden was a dead one in the poison fields.
Slowly, he sat up, swaying a little as he took in the charred devastation around him. Every building and vehicle was gone, burned to ash or melted down to misshapen slag. The land lining the quarry was nothing but blackened dirt, the scorch marks spreading down the far side of it.
If there’d been bodies left behind anywhere, they were nothing but ash.
Soren got to his feet, hissing at the throbbing in his arm with the bite wound and in his skull. He eyed the bloodstained shirt sticking to his skin and decided trying to clean it here was useless without his gear. He had a kit back with his velocycle, and he needed to get there.
He needed to get to Oeiras.
Soren carefully bent down to retrieve his poison sword, sliding the blade free of the earth. It was the only weapon of his that remained intact, the space around where he’d lain unmarked, and he carefully sheathed the poison sword on his back.
Taking a deep breath, Soren stumbled forward, leaving the ashes for the wind.
Two
JOELLE
VezirJoelle was methodically going through the daily reports delivered from thevasilyet’s council when a heavy knock came to her office door. Considering the only people who had access to her this deep in her House’s estate in Bellingham was family, she deigned to answer.
“Enter,” Joelle called out.
She glanced up, watching as Artyom strode inside with a grim look on his face. One of her handmaidens who acted as her secretary rose from her seat at the side table where she’d been organizing files and left the office, closing the door behind her.
Artyom came to a stop before Joelle’s desk and bowed. “Mother.”
“Shouldn’t you be at the council meeting?”
He’d taken over the duties as heir from Karima two years ago. Joelle’s daughter hadn’t taken the demotion well, the loss of power and influence within their House wounding her almost as surely as the loss of Nicca. Karima’s erratic behavior merely proved to Joelle she’d made the right choice for her House’s future by designating Artyom her heir.
Artyom drew a folded piece of paper from his robe’s pocket along with a tintype photograph and set both on her desk. “A messenger came from the town by the quarry. It’s gone.”
Joelle frowned. “The town?”
“No. The quarry and the laboratory. A witness said it burned by starfire.”
Joelle’s gaze snapped to her son’s face and the grim worry in his eyes. She picked up the photograph first, staring at the ravaged land it depicted. The ground was so black she’d have thought the printing process made a mistake if Artyom hadn’t told her what she was looking at.
“The witness could have been mistaken,” Joelle said.
Artyom shook his head. “I am inclined to believe the witness’ report. The man was caught outside the walls by starfire and burned over seventy percent of his body before escaping the conflagration’s boundaries. Someone from the town found him in the prairie. He spoke of what he saw before he died.”
“A hallucination, perhaps.”
