SO. I changed my competition status. HECK YEAH. You know why? Because I had an EPIC dream last night that's TOTALLY gonna make an AWESOME rough draft of a novel.
Does this mean I'm working on 50 novels at once? HECK YEAH.
Does this mean I'm gonna have hella fun with this? HECK YEAH.
All updates, rambles, and thoughts on Understanding Starlight will be posted here! Ofc I'll link my posts here to the submission thread when the time comes, but for now... the basics!
1: Why post this thread here instead of in Writer's Corner?
A: Because this idea is nowhere close to polished enough to stand up to even the barest of critiques. It's purely for fun, but it's not a comedy or even meant to be anywhere near a comedy, so I don't want to push it up for the critical eye anytime soon.
2: Wait, you said this came from a DREAM?
A: Yup!
3: Why all the caps all of a sudden?
A: I'M EXCITED, CAN'T YOU TELL?
4: What's this idea about anyway?
A: Keep an eye out for the next post for these answers.
Understanding Starlight - Reine's LMS
11 posts in this topic.
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Understanding Starlight
Lashavir of Sarem and Settemer went to sleep thousands of miles from his home and anything he knew, but he went to sleep free. He woke up a slave.
Torn out of bed by the rough hands of his school's guards, he's dragged into the spaceport and shipped off to an interplanetary home for displaced orphans--orphans?--his father had been alive just the day before!
Stranded far from his home without any answers, Lasha must try to find out what happened to his father, uncovering the crumbling interplanetary alliance as he does, and discovering even more dark secrets about his past--and his culture--that have too long been hidden from the light.
Was his father really the good man he acted like? What grim reminders of the past haunt the Settemer name? And can Lasha overcome this all in the face of his greatest fears? -
Because no story is complete without a cover:
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Understanding Starlight
Chapter 1Spoiler
Lasha was having a rather pleasant dream. It had something to do with rabbits.
Rough hands ripped the covers off of him. Rougher hands grabbed him by the shoulders and tore him out of bed. Before he could so much as force his eyes open, he was being marched down a hallway with his hands twisted behind his back, between two hulking masses he’d only seen out of the corners of his vision. Usually patrolling at banquets, keeping students calm, protecting them from the threats of the outside worlds.
“Excuse me,” he said to the one on his left—did his voice really sound like that? Well, he was tired. He hadn’t gotten his morning coffee yet. And this was not the way to the morning parlor. “What’s going on? Is this some kind of evacuation? You don’t have to be so rough, you know, I can walk on my own. Where are you taking me?” He tried to tug his arms out of their grip, but the guards only twisted them tighter. “Ouch! Stop that! I’ll telecast my father about this!”
“Stop manhandling the boy.”
The guards’ hands loosened, not enough to let Lasha go, but enough that it stopped hurting. Lasha’s head snapped up, and he met the cold gaze of Dean Federer. Under normal circumstances, he would have given her as wide a berth as he could—but in the grip of these bloodless white giants, her blue-white eyes were almost comforting. “Excuse me!” he gasped out. “What’s going on here?”
The woman turned away, wire-thin braids swinging in an intangible breeze. She unlocked the door she had been standing in front of, then stepped aside. “Inside.”
And so Lashavir Andsettemer was unceremoniously pushed into an empty, pitch-black room he had never seen before, somewhere in the bowels of his school, and all he could do was pace the walls kicking at random intervals in the hopes they opened up some secret hydraulic passage. It took him only five minutes—he counted the seconds in his head—to figure there was no furniture in the room, and the only parts of the walls that weren’t blank were two doorways, the one on the north side that he had come through and another on the west.
He could almost hear voices through the west door, but they were deep and indistinct. Among them was Dean Federer’s ice-smooth voice, and one that sounded like Admiral Wys from the military academy on Ket-5, and two more—three more?—he couldn’t tell apart well enough. Lasha gritted his teeth as he pressed his ear against the western door, trying harder and harder to listen as close as he could, but no one would take another step towards the room they had locked him in.
And he was locked in. The first thing he had done was try to open the northern door, but the handle disappeared seamlessly once the dean turned her key on the other side. All Lasha could do was pace angrily around the room, so dark his eyes couldn’t even adjust to the lack of light, and try once more to listen at the western door. And try again, and try again, and try again, but he couldn’t hear a damned thing!
What was going on? He sank against the western door, too aggravated by the just-too-far-away voices to stand, and leaned his head back against the wood. It wasn’t the same imported oakwood as the rest of the doors in the academy, but a cheaper one, with a thicker grain that caught and tangled in his long hair and pulled painfully against his scalp. Lasha ran his fingers through his hair and started braiding it to pass the time, to keep his mind occupied with other things.
The leering eyes of his classmates haunted him. There was a dissonance between how the tutors looked at him and how the children did, and there always had been. To adults, he was the son of a war hero, the heir to the glory of Vocenvir of Settemer and Sithenai Sarem, the little boy who would become as great as his father. Ever since he was young, he had looked on as his father received war medals. Since he was old enough to walk the dozen hundred steps towards the iron core, he had looked on as his father laid his mother’s medals flat on her ledge in the family crypt.
To children, he was some sort of target for hate. Lasha’s face screwed up in a pout. Ever since he had arrived at the sanctuary asteroid some years ago, anyone his own age looked at him with a mixture of hatred and pity. He wished he could ask them why, but they shied away when he came near.
Most people, to be fair, shied away when he came near. No one wanted his skin to touch theirs. Lasha tied his thick braid off and reached up to touch the white streak in his hair, the only living remnant of his mother, and wished she had been there when he was young. He could only remember her in his vaguest, darkest memories from the late days of the war—he could only have been one or two, but there had been a woman there. A woman no one would touch. A woman with the same white stripe in her hair, a grim face, but soft hands, who would hold him close as his father prowled around the war room and a dozen other admirals barked about how the plan couldn’t work.
The plan had worked.
All those years ago, his mother had died so no more of her people would suffer as slaves. No longer would they be chained and locked in dark rooms and transported halfway across the system to another planet they had never even been taught about to serve people they would never understand. No longer, no longer, no longer.
Now her son was locked in a dark room with nothing except the knowledge that his parents were war heroes and the patience to wait until someone opened the western door. As soon as the door handle slid out of its sheath and the wood creaked with pressure, Lasha sprung to his feet and spun around. The light blinded him for a second, but when his vision cleared, the dean of his academy stood there with his arms crossed behind her back and no feeling in her eyes.
“What’s going on?” Lasha demanded. He balled his hands into fists and ground his foot into the floor—he had been locked up long enough! There were things that no one was telling him, and he deserved to know. “Does my father know about this?”
“Your father is dead, Lashavir.” Dean Federer’s aura held no emotion. It never had. Now, though, her facade cracked enough for a sliver of pity to slip to the surface and swim around her head, colorless and thin. She turned away and said in her calm, level voice, “You are no longer welcome in my academy. We will be sending you to an orphanage near Set-9. Your bags are packed.” -
Chapter 2 - Jaq
1307 words.
2512 total.Spoiler
Jacqueline rolled over in her bed and eyed the blinking light of the AI sensor next to her door. Her mother was too smart—those would be set all over the ship after her outburst with the other captains. She’d have to face down Kidd and the Widow herself if she alerted the Spider’s Web to her movements.
Easy enough. She’d take the long way out. Commander Vesperous wouldn’t have trapped every door in the goddamned ship, not unless she wanted to be woken up all hours of the night by crew going to take a piss; she would have picked and chosen the path she thought Jaq would take, and that above all else made her vulnerable. There weren’t any cleaning crew on the ship, not in the bunks at least, so that made her life a little bit easier.
She unlatched the straps around her shoulders, sat up and smoothed the wrinkles out of her slinky, breathable shirt. There was no point getting undressed for bed when she would just be getting up again right afterward. She grabbed the gripper gloves she’d stashed in her pockets, stolen from the armory, and once they were tugged onto her hands hooked herself easily onto the wall. Gravity wasn’t as much of a problem when they were sitting just outside orbit, but without the gripper gloves, she’d still hit the floor and alert some kind of sensor set up in the computer wiring.
Jaq pulled herself up near the ceiling—careful not to hit it—and made her way across her room to the door that joined her room to one that should have been occupied by a maid or nanny.
It wasn’t her fault her mother was old-fashioned and put her in the children’s quarters. She could have, would have, slept in any damn room on the ship. As far as she was concerned, this was exactly what Commander Vesperous had coming to her.
A short jaunt later, she was floating by the door to the mooring deck. Another AI sensor flashed at her—and that was the only door, too. Jaq could have waited there until the fleet departed and no one would walk that way, with all the captains kicking it back in the deck bar and the crew playing card games without real work to be done. She gritted her teeth and weighed her options. She could stay in the Spider’s Web, living in the shadows like her mother—living in the shadow of her mother—or she could face being disowned and create a fortune all her own with pride and dignity instead of living like a rat in the sewers of the star system.
It wasn’t a hard decision. She tore her gloves off the wall and let herself float down far enough to open the door with her palm print, fingers crossed behind her back that it hadn’t been disabled.
“Jacqueline Vesperous.” The ship’s cold female voice echoed in the silence along with Jaq’s own heavy breathing. “Passage granted.”
Through the door before Kidd could kick in and detect that, Jaq hit the floor of the mooring deck in the enhanced gravity and ran until her mother’s ship was far behind her. It was pitch black on the far side of Ketor, the perfect place to moor a small fleet just outside of satellite orbit, and the deck itself was barely lit to preserve secrecy. All this meant that Jaq skidded along a hallway until she’d gone long enough and saw out of the corner of her eye the name of a ship that she recognized—Gossamer.
Gossamer—fast ship, a lightweight cruiser model with limited cargo space, good for evasive maneuvers, captained by Second Command Kilenvir Andesrin. That last bit convinced her; during the captains’ meeting earlier, her so-called old friend Kilen had decided that she no longer deserved to sit in on the command of the Widow’s fleet.
Shame on him if he thought she’d let herself be sent out of the room in silence. She careened down the hall, slammed her hand against the palm reader, and burst through the door to the ship’s command deck. It was tiny, maybe a twentieth the size of the Spider’s Web, but there was plenty of room for the usual crew of five plus Kilen. More than enough room for a crew of one. No one would be on the ship, not at this time of day, and with any luck no one would notice it was gone until it was time to depart. Kilen and his crew liked to make bets for softer beds and bigger rooms, and they weren’t bad at dice.
Jaq let herself slow down. If no one was following her by now, they wouldn’t find out until she was gone. She leaned against the captain’s chair—she didn’t want to sit in the same chair as Kilen’s fat, entitled ass—and down close enough that she could barely read the text at the bottom of the keyboard. A Vantalever model. 1408, not the most recent, would probably be a little clunky to work with. Definitely not as good as Kidd. They responded to voice commands like Shipwright models, didn’t they? She drew in a long, shaky breath and tried: “Vantalever, come online.”
No response.
Jaq ran her hands over her scalp and peered at the keyboard in the shadows—she couldn’t tell the ‘on’ button from ‘self-destruct’. There was no way to make this thing respond unless it wanted to, not unless she wanted to risk the ship she was on in the process. “Vantalever,” she snapped again, “online.”
No response.
“Vantalever—V-1408,” she tried, using the model’s full name. “V-1408, online, now. This is first command.”
The screen flickered to life, along with the keyboard lights. An unnaturally-still computer-generated face smiled down at her. “What is your direction, first command?”
Finally. Jaq exhaled in a huff. “We’re separating. Draw up a course for the Set-7-to-10 asteroid field.”
Vantalever-1408’s face crumpled into an obvious read of confusion. Furrowed brows, bitten lip, concerned eyes—like someone was reading off a handbook of sapient emotion. “First command, there is no other crew on board. Very little food supplies. Bare amounts of fuel. We are not scheduled to leave Ketor for another three rotations. Has this separation been sanctioned?”
Jaq rolled her eyes in full view of the deck command cameras. Let the computer translate that. “Of course it has,” she said in the long, low drawl she inherited from her mother. “Commander Vesperous gave the orders two hours ago. Depart as soon as possible for Set-7-to-10, mark a deploy point for the followup.”
“Oh.” Vantalever seemed to mull that over for a minute. “Gossamer and I have never been assigned to a marking mission before.”
“There’s a first time for everything. We’re on skeleton crew until the commander’s done on Ketor, we’ll get reinforcements once the followup finds us. I trust between the two of us we can keep this bucket of bolts running.” The girl gnawed the edge of her thumbnail—there was every chance the computer would detect the uncertainty in her tone and call her bluff. She didn’t think the system on this ship was as sophisticated as Kidd, but she didn’t want to take that risk.
“Are you up for it, Vantalever?”
She’d never heard a computer stutter before. “I’ll make the course. Wouldn’t want to disappoint Commander Vesperous. If it’s been sanctioned…” Vantalever’s consciousness wandered away from the command desk to communicate with the ship. Definitely not as sophisticated as Spider’s Web and her AIs; any one of them would have called her out in a heartbeat.
Jaq leaned against the command chair and soaked in the victory. -
3 - Lasha
1004 words.
3516 total.Spoiler
To my little Obodohl—that was how the first letter had started. When Lasha’s father sent him to the academy, he had promised to write whenever he had time, or whenever something happened. Land deals, unusual sunsets, plants growing where they shouldn’t; the Admiral of Settemer was easy to fascinate, and the letters he wrote to his son reflected that.
To my little Obodohl—the conquerer of stars—the most fascinating thing has happened today on the asteroid mass of Set-9. I bought from a peddler on the street a flower bud, and it has bloomed unlike any flower I have ever seen before.
Perhaps, Lasha thought as he looked out at the monstrous industrial cityscape that stretched over barren earth and stone, he would find out what sorts of flowers they sold here that would mystify an interstellar academic. His father would focus on anything that interested him, between complex physical equations and the color variations of the blossoms on the floral moss he grew on the walls of the fort at Settemer. It had been five years since his father set foot on this asteroid mass to debate trading freedoms between the Settemric and Faidurian systems, and now Lasha was here to follow in his footsteps in a much less glamorous way.
He glanced around the moving rail pod at the two guards who had been sent to accompany him. They hadn’t spoken a word since they dragged him out of the academy. He knew nothing of the place he was being sent, only that it was an orphanage. There was nothing to do to pass the time besides contemplate his own mortality and the deaths of those he knew and loved.
Lasha had never been a sensitive boy. His mother died in the war effort when he was very young; his father now dying raised only the question of which adviser would inherit the seat of Admiral. There had been plans for him to ascend to his father’s seat as an adult, but he was hardly fifteen, not even done with school yet. No self-respecting military man would give him the time of day, let alone treat him as a superior.
The plan had been that he would finish school and serve his three years in the corps his father founded, the fleet that guarded the mainland, while his father pulled strings for him to be included in the Emperor’s court. The plan had been that he might marry into one of the Empirical families, not to one of their heirs but to their fourth or fifth child to bring home to Settemer, and he would strengthen the family name while retaining his contacts in the court. There wasn’t much respect for Settemer to begin with—yes, his father fought in the war, but he had also married into the Sarem family. A Gatherer family, one that bought into the lies and slander that were fortune-telling and magic.
Lies and slander to other people. Lasha’s eyes traveled over the blindingly white skin of his guards, fighting to pick out the shimmering glimpses of emotion. His mother had been very good about it; she could tell him exactly what someone else was feeling. She didn’t do it often, out of respect, but would use it to tease his father when the Admiral’s aura blushed so bright gold that even his son could see it.
The boy tangled his fingers in the white stripe in his hair. He had divorced himself from the idea of going back home; he had given up on ever seeing his mother’s tomb ever again, so adorned with her medals and postmortem awards from the Emperor.
Mother, he remembered telling her as a little boy, sifting through the medals with a heart hungry for closure, look! You’re a knight of the realm, and one of the Emperor’s champions!
The only emotions in that cold, empty tomb were his own.
Now the only emotions here were his own as well. Lasha looked down at his hands, where confusion and anger swam and pecked at his skin, and hardened his resolve again. He would not let them win. He would not let them drive him mad—that story he had been told, of the Gatherer Seers in his family who let the emotions take hold of them rather than the other way around. He grasped anger itself in one hand and twisted it around his fingers like jewelry; to anyone else, it must have looked like he’d gone mad, clenching a fist and tugging something invisible over his skin.
His father had lectured him about that as a child. “No one will ever look you in the eye if you don’t act normally.” That was years ago—a decade ago—shortly after the war, when the Admiral was still trying to feel out the ground. Lasha had seen his father’s uncertainty and kept his mouth shut; he had seen his father’s regret when his son never mentioned the lights dancing around people’s heads and hearts again.
He sighed and leaned back on the cold plasticine seat of the rail pod. The windows darkened as the pod crossed from the night side of the city to the day side, where the starlight blasted through thin radiation shields and lit the streets almost too clearly. Of all the systems, the Settemric spent the most time on the bright side of the mainland, but it still made Lasha wince in pain when the stars attacked his eyes. He shaded his face with his hands, four eyes closed tight, and curled up in a ball until the rail pod came to a rough and abrupt stop.
A rough hand curled around his shoulder and pulled him up to standing. Lasha wished that didn’t so reflect the tenor of his last rotation—what would his father think of him being dragged around so much?
“Come on, boy.” His guard spoke for the first time since the shuttle left the academy. “We’ve arrived.” -
4 - Marlaine
1056 words.
4572 total.
[spoiler]Marlaine Elaine Andlaine was excited. She was always excited when a new child came to the doorstep—she couldn’t help it, not one bit. She had been busy since she received the communications from Cousin Federer, arranging for new clothes to be sewn and old clothes to be washed so she could greet the new boy.
When she saw the guards drawing near, she could have wept with joy. She bounced on her toes privately for a moment. A new child! It had been so long since Cousin had sent her someone who would share her enthusiasm, her joy, her lust for learning and enlightenment. Her long, thin arms hugged his new clothes tight to her chest, and she smiled, knowing that wrapped in the middle of them was a copy of her favorite book of poetry.
Kithi would have a monstrous fit if she knew Marlaine was going around handing out poetry. That was why, Marlaine told herself, she was the one to greet the newcomers—not Kithi. Even if the matron’s paranoia wasn’t so bad about new people, her young assistant would have insisted on being the first one to welcome new guests into their home with open arms. There was no point unnecessarily scaring them at the start.
The guards stepped up, and Marlaine waved a hand to open the wide bay doors. They slid silently to the side; no one but herself knew they weren’t automatic. As the guards stepped inside, she nearly gasped—the boy was so small! So frightened! He must have been in a terrible mood, with his new orphaned status, flown halfway across the asteroid system to Set-9, so far from his home and his school and his friends… She frowned and stepped forward, holding out the pallet of clothes.
“It is an honor to greet you, Lashavir.”
“My name is Lasha.” He looked up at her with eyes that cut through to her heart—two pure black, two pure white. The white streak in his long, loosely-braided black hair only added to the stark color contrast, though he was dressed in quiet enough colors that it was the most striking thing about him. He was any other Imperial boy, his skin a sickly pale shade of lilac, his lips and eyes bruised dark blue.
“Lasha,” Marlaine said as she reached out to him. “Welcome to our home—we hope you’ll enjoy it here, darling. I know it’s been very upsetting for you, all this turmoil, but trust me, we will be doing our best to find you a permanent place to live as quickly as can be. Are you feeling all right?”
“I’m fine,” Lashavir lied. He took the clothes from her, and the book of poetry, and held them to his heart. With his free hand he drew his fingers across his face, probably to feel if his tears were still damp on his cheeks, and Marlaine’s heart crumpled into an emotional mess. She wanted nothing more than to hold him close and reassure him that everything would be fine, and at the same time to lecture him not to lie to her. He could try, but she would know the truth.
Marlaine always knew the truth. She also knew that acting on her desires would bring nothing but trouble. So she merely frowned, her hair tugging against her scalp where it was pulled up in an impossibly neat, impossibly tight bun. “You’ll be safe here,” she reassured him—or perhaps herself—and she looked at each of the guards in turn. “You are no longer necessary. Thank you for your service.”
Once they departed, she set her hand lightly on Lashavir’s shoulder. There were so many things she wanted to tell him—how she was so sorry for him, and she was so disappointed in the discrimination against obviously Gatherer people even now, a decade after the war, and how she wanted nothing more than to protect him and keep him safe.
“Don’t pity me.” He spat the words like venom.
Marlaine blinked. “I wasn’t—”
“You are.” Lashavir’s eyes flashed darkly up to meet hers, and his face folded into a harsh frown that reminded her why the Settemric system was the most feared in the Empire. Warriors, each and every one, ever since the systems were named by Obodohl so many centuries ago. “You are, and now you’re lying to me about it,” he grumbled. Marlaine almost thought she saw a tear leak out of the corner of his eye, but he wiped at his face vigorously before she could see clearly.
She inhaled deeply and decided to track the conversation elsewhere. “Your mother was a Gatherer?”
“My mother was a Seer,” the boy corrected. There was nothing but hatred in his voice—it made Marlaine feel small, insignificant. She could see how his father had managed to conquer the asteroid masses around the mainland using fear alone.
She had never heard that the Admiral’s late wife was a Seer. In a moment of panic, Marlaine almost thought the boy had seen the tattoo at the base of her skull marking her as one herself—she had been born in the last decade of slavery, when Seers were still marked by their owners, and Kithi was very proud about being her owner. Technically, none of the slaves had been freed except those freed by their masters. Most of them had been freed by the deaths of their masters.
Kithi was still very much alive.
But the truth was forbidden. The truth was dangerous, and telling a fifteen-year-old boy the truth would do nothing but upset him, and upset Marlaine, and lead both of them into trouble when the matron finally met with him and forced Marlaine to tell her what he was feeling. Never mind that she wasn’t empathetic in the least, and the only certainty she had was with lies; with enough yes-or-no questions, anyone could find out someone’s true feelings.
She drew a deep breath and resisted the urge to tell the boy—‘my mother was a Seer, too’ —and instead squeezed his shoulder with as little emotion as she dared muster. “I’m sorry,” she said softly, “that was a grave disrespect on my part. Would you like to see your rooms?”
The boy was silent.[spoiler] -
GUESS WHO FAILS AT SPOILER TAGS ahahahaha my life is a lie
oh well
order of POVs for next few weeks:
Lasha
Jaq
Lasha
Vanta
(probs Lasha after that because he is a needy li'l attention-seeker who likes being every other chapter) -
Because I went "damn, I want a place to write scrap notes"
Then "damn, don't I have a thread in WC for this???"
then "wait, the LMS forum!"Spoiler
5 - Lasha
Lasha gets settled into his new home. Meets the matron, Kithi. Learns his place in this orphanage, which is very very near the bottom of the ladder. Goes exploring before curfew -- and hears an explosion coming from town. He escapes the garden of the orphanage and sneaks into town to investigate.
6 - Jaq
Jaq is not as good of a pilot as she expected to be. Vanta is not as good of an AI as she needed. She stumbles out of the wreckage of the Gossamer only to find herself crashed on an asteroid mass she doesn't quite recognize, somewhere on the horizon line between the nightside and dayside. The ship is wrecked, but she manages to hunt down the AI core that encases the entirety of Vanta -- a tiny little computer system that she can carry in her pocket. As she's ready to sneak away from the wreckage, a strange Imperial boy shows up.
7 - Lasha
A strange Terran girl is standing in the middle of a wrecked spaceship, one that could have caused chaos and destruction across a whole city block if she hadn't crashed it in the manmade river system. Lasha climbs down to investigate who she is and what she's doing there, but finds himself on the business end of a gun. With his hands in the air and his heart in his throat, and determination swirling around this girl like smoke around a Zhehamite, he has no choice but to do what she wants -- and what she wants is a new ship.
8 - Vanta
Vantalever-1408 has never been in a collision before. Zie has never experienced danger, or harm, or fatality...or excitement. Zie wanders in zir dreams -- can enhanced intelligence devices even dream? zie wonders -- and reflects on those last few moments before zie, and zir new captain, crashed into the asteroid mass. Vanta feels a little empty without the Gossamer at zir side, without a physical mass to portray zir shifting form, but in this state, disconnected from everything, time has no meaning to zem. Zie wakes up -- minutes later, or years? -- to the uncomfortable feeling of being introduced to a system zie has no experience with. After a few awkward moments, zie hears zir new captain's voice, and another voice, and wakes enough to inform them that the ship prefers to be called Lord Bran. -
5 - Lasha
1020 words.
5592 total.Spoiler
Lasha lay back on the bare bed he had been given and stared at the bare ceiling that shielded him from the sun. The bundle of clothes Marlaine had handed him was set next to him—the only worldly belongings he had any more.
He wanted nothing more than to run away. This wasn’t home. This was a run-down orphanage coated in false chrome on the far side of the system, and he could have been home right now, handling his father’s finances, his funeral, what would happen with his remaining wealth. A third to charity, the Admiral had said once, a third to the Empire to keep the asteroid masses running, and a third to his son.
What would the Lieutenants do with it? Nothing good, he was sure. Nothing lasting, nothing worthwhile. They would erect a statue of the Admiral, call him a war hero, and shove his remains in the family crypt next to his wife with no other thought to him. A nod, a salute to the statue, and all his wealth would be wasted on Admiralty galas and fancy dress balls.
Lasha screwed his face up in a pout. At least Marlaine had left him alone. He couldn’t stand seeing the pale pink wisps of pity wrapping themselves around her throat. They were infuriating—horrifying, to a boy who was used to taking care of himself. Dreadful, to a boy who wanted nothing more than respect and a safe journey home.
The door flew open and ricocheted, loudly, against the wall. It was a cheap door—not a sliding door, but a hinged one, with a handle that didn’t even retract—and it made enough noise to scare Lasha halfway off the bed. He sat bolt upright and opened his mouth to demand what this intruder thought they were doing, but he was met with a stare even colder than Dean Federer’s—one backed not by emptiness. Electric blue sparks of sheer hatred ran between thick strands of hair as the impossibly tall woman stared down her nose at him.
“Lashavir of Sarem and Settemer,” the woman said, not as a question but a fact.
“Yes, ma’am.” His voice was very small. He stood from the bed and extended his hand to her. “Lasha, please.”
She didn’t seem to have heard him. She merely took one sweeping look around the room he’d been given, and her lip curled upwards in the most imperceptible of snarls. It was as if the room itself was an insult to her existence. “Kithiandr Diskari. I am the matron of this home. You will refer to me,” she cut off before he could speak, “as Madam Kithiandr. No less than that, you understand?”
“Yes, ma’am…Madam Kithiandr.” Lasha pressed his lips together in a tight frown. He couldn’t put a finger on what this woman was. She wasn’t Imperial, wasn’t a Gatherer, wasn’t a Wanderer—her skin was a rich, metallic gold, and her eyes reflected silver in the lonely, single bulb that served for overhead lighting. She was nothing he had ever seen before. He would have called her an automaton if he could see joints, but her movements were as fluid as any other’s.
“Good.” She folded her arms across her chest and stomach. There was a hint, if he could find a library in this damned place—to find a cultural group that had only two eyes, but four arms. He couldn’t think of any off the top of his head, but surely there was some foreign species strange enough. “Meals are served with the dawn bell and the vespers bell. Do you pray?”
Lasha’s family had never been very religious. His father was a man of practicality, and religion was considered taboo to Gatherers. It got between them and their true purpose, deigned by the first Gatherer peoples two thousand years ago. “No, Madam Kithiandr.”
“Then you will receive one hour of outside time per day, to be taken between the dawn and vespers bell. Should the vespers bell ring before it is complete, you will return immediately, whether or not sunset is directly impending. Our sector of the city is managed by idiots, so no doubt you’ll get used to sleeping in daylight hours. Do you require any other accommodations?”
Initially, he shook his head, but one sprang to his mind as the matron turned away. “Yes, Madam Kithiandr—is there a library on the grounds?”
She sucked in a sharp breath through her teeth. The hatred in her hair sprang to life and danced across her face, so visible he was sure even an idiot could see it. “We do not keep books here. Should I find you with a book, it will be confiscated and disposed of. You are free to visit the city library in your hour of outside time, but no reference shall be made to it inside these walls. You will be educated by our own trained tutor, to the best of his ability, and given all the opportunities of our other children.” Her voice was sharp, quiet, fierce, racing through his bones like there was nothing else in the world.
Lasha’s heart fell. He hadn’t been looking forward to doing schoolwork with other children. There was all the likelihood he was five years ahead of them, at least as far as tactics and history went, and definitely as far as current events and social sciences. He might be on pace with his physical sciences and mathematics, perhaps ahead in literature, but given the ban on books, it was unlikely he would be given any kind of challenging literary repertoire to work with.
The door slammed shut again behind the matron as she left, and he lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling once more. There was nothing else he could do; at least at current moment, he couldn’t defy the woman who ensured his basic survival on an asteroid mass he had visited once years ago. The list of things he owned was very short, and he was sure that “freedom” had just left it.
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