47

Marcus

It’s working! I hit the training field before dawn. Belair soon joins me, and by the time the bell rings for morning ritual, we’re already sweating. When everyone else goes into the dining hall, we sit cross-legged on the sidelines and share bread, cheese, and apples from the kitchen. It’s quickly dispatched, then back to it. By the time Zarah arrives, shouting for the class to do laps, I take the lead, Belair right beside me. My training must be inspiring him, too. And the best part is, Zarah notices.

“If you’re trying to impress us, Baiseen, you’ll have to do better than this,” she says, but I see approval in her eyes. That afternoon, she is still sharp as knives on me, but she takes more time with us both, giving extra instruction. It means more work, especially when she assigns us special training, nothing less than ten times the workout, up and down the long steps to the leeward side of the island. And even better, Ash is always there to note it. Of course, she has said she’s proud of me all along, but now the truth shines in her eyes. And I believe her. Belair and I won’t leave the Isle empty-handed.

“I’m not sure I should thank you.” Belair keeps pace with me as we run up to the top lookout, his chest heaving and hair sticking to his face.

“You’ll thank me when you win all your matches.”

De’ral surprises me with a war cry so loud, long, and guttural that it raises the hair on my neck. I holler a challenge as well, Belair and the sun leopard joining in.

“We’ll be awarded our yellow robes. There is no doubt.”

…

My new training schedule has made meeting up with Ash nigh impossible. Sure, she’s on the sidelines, recording my classes with Zarah, but that’s not when we can talk. When she’s in the library, I’m taking extra training sessions with Belair on the beach. In the evening, I pass out in bed as soon as my studies are done.

It’s been a week since Ash told me she and Kaylin discovered something interesting. Extremely interesting, were her exact words. She insists that Samsen, Piper, and Belair hear it as well, so finally, here we are, in her room, waiting on this “extremely interesting” report.

And waiting…and waiting…

Belair, who’s finishing up writing his summary on the history of warrior phantoms throughout the realms, has yet to arrive.

“Why aren’t you working on your report, Marcus?” Piper asks, glancing at my empty hands.

“Because I handed mine in this morning.” My smile is smug, but bless the bones, I earned it.

The tide is starting to turn.

I’m no longer lagging behind my classmates, taking the brunt of oversized phantom jokes and withstanding thoughtless jeers. De’ral and I are neck and neck with the best of them, Destan included, though I’ve yet to beat him in a sparring match. Still, we are not the witless savant-phantom pair that stumbled through the gates of Aku scant weeks ago. Neither are Belair and his sun leopard.

I take a deep, expansive breath. No accomplishment in my life has ever felt this good. Or more meaningful. “Raw salmon and chile flakes?” Kaylin offers the plate of fillets surrounded by lemon wedges. My stomach growls and he laughs. Seems my taste buds have matured as well, thanks to the dish-of-the-realm custom here on Aku.

Ash, Samsen, and Piper join me at the table to slice off bits of the fine pink fish, while Kaylin takes his seat by the window and continues sculpting a lure. I’ve already put in a request for half a dozen of various sizes. Finest craftsmanship I’ve ever seen. I can’t wait to try them when we get back home.

When Belair arrives, we brew another pot of Ochee and Ash calls the meeting to order. She has us in a semicircle, like a proper class, and proceeds to launch into a topic I don’t quite follow.

Honestly, I have no idea what she’s talking about.

“Can you repeat that please?” The cycle of the Great Dying? I vaguely recall the palace tutor mentioning it, but that’s all. “How is this relevant?”

Ash blows hair off her forehead. “Are you paying attention?”

She sounds like my old tutor as well.

This is all very instructional if we ignore the fact that she broke into a storeroom and stole these “extremely interesting” books from the library archives. The sailor’s light fingers are rubbing off. I plan to have a talk with her about it when we’re alone. The last thing I need is to justify theft to the High Savant. “Tell me again?”

“This is written in a language called Retoren,” Ash says. “I haven’t translated much yet, but what we see here concerns all of Amassia and her leaders.” She looks poignantly at me and Belair while holding up the page for us to see.

I recognize the drawing. It’s the solar system, Amassia and her moon, the third planet from the sun, and seven others expanding farther and farther outward. But there’s something else. A red dot with an orbit that goes right off the page. “You’re saying this is written in the same script as the tattoos you saw on the Gollnar scouts?”

“Exactly, and the same as the notices at the Clearwater apothecary and Capper Point harbor, too.”

Kaylin holds up the flyer and points to the overlapping circle symbols. “Recognize these?”

“The flags flying over the Aturnian camp?” They’re more elaborate but definitely the same shapes. “Whatever this is, you’ve linked it to them?”

“Yes, though we aren’t sure in what way.”

“And the red dot?” I indicate that solar system image.

“Amassia’s second sun.” Ash’s eyes brighten as she taps it.

“Second, as in there are two?” I ask.

“That’s right.”

Sounds farfetched to me. “Don’t you think if Amassia had two suns we’d know about it?” I say. “See the other rise and set? Have endless daylight?”

“Not when the second sun is so far away. Only a bright star, until—”

“It draws nearer.” Kaylin seems as excited as her by this discovery.

“It orbits our sun?” Piper asks. “Like a comet? Is that what the image shows?”

“Sort of.” Ash lowers the book. “The Sierraks say they are twins—binary stars—that travel around a central mass. In our case, Amassia’s second sun—and I daresay the translation could mean a ‘dark comet’—has a much, much wider eccentricity in its path. This dark sun, or second sun, syncs with our bright sun only once in a great while, and even then, they don’t show it getting very close.”

“How great a while?” Samsen asks.

“Every twenty-five-million years, give or take.”

No one speaks for a few breaths, the silence heavy.

“How can this knowledge have been passed down for twenty-five-million years?” Samsen asks. “Especially if there was a Great Dying. I assume everything dies?”

“The reference is the ancient sea scrolls.” Kaylin lifts his brow. “The fossil records preserved in the thousands of petrified tablets found in the last centuries. Some predate several Great Dyings.”

Ash turns the book to another page and passes it around. It’s a more detailed representation of the planets, including Amassia. All are in orbit around our central yellow star, but out in the far distance is a second, dark red sun, so red it’s almost black. “According to this, the dark sun’s approach heralds the next Great Dying.”

“Maybe it causes it,” Kaylin says. “Some say as it comes closer, it drags debris behind it.”

“What debris?” I ask.

“Stardust, ice, rocks, the crumbs of broken planets and exploded comets. It brings it to our inner solar system, and it falls on Amassia like rain. It…”

“It causes change,” Ash says. She looks at Kaylin for support and he nods, though where the sailor learned this cosmology, I don’t know. I plan to ask.

“Changes?” Samsen asks.

“Ice caps melt, the seas rise, the land heats and then freezes,” he says. “The climate changes as Amassia is bombarded with solar dust that lasts for centuries. Everything dies. So it says.”

“Everything?” I cross my arms. “How are we still here, if everything dies?” I’m not trying to disparage Kaylin or Ash, but what they’re suggesting seems too far from logic.

“Not every single thing,” Ash says.

“What then?” I ask.

“For each hundred species that die, five will live on, but in a different way. All must adapt to survive, or they perish from the path forever.”

I stare out the window. It’s a lot to consider, be it true or false.

“The stargazers of Sierrak plotted the course of the second sun,” Ash goes on.

I rub my forehead. “Let me see if I have this right. Amassia has two suns, and the second, dark one, has an extreme orbit, returning into view only once every twenty-five-million years, dragging space dust behind it, which rains down on us and triggers the next Great Dying.”

“Correct.” Ash beams at me.

“And you gathered us for this discussion because…?”

“There’s more, about a Crown of Bones.” Ash turns to another page.

Belair leans in for a better view. “Whistle bones?”

“Not just any whistle bones,” she explains, “but the original twelve carved from the skeleton of Er. Apparently, long ago, when under threat of war, the black-robes took apart the crown and sent each piece to one of the Sanctuaries for safekeeping.”

“The honored whistle bones that hang in the Sanctuaries? They form a crown?” I smile. “Must be for a huge head.”

Ash tsks me. “The crown could be a metaphor, Marcus.”

“Fine, fine.” I mull it over. “So now the crown is dismantled, one whistle bone in each sanctuary?” Well, I know that part is true.

“If we’re translating right, yes, but for now, we need to decide what to do with the knowledge.”

“Tell Yuki,” I suggest, rising. “Or Brogal, when we return.”

“But can we trust our High Savant?” Ash reaches for my sleeve to hold me back. “Brogal put me off the path when I asked him about this language. And Yuki’s orange-robes would have seen the notices at Capper Point, and these texts are in her archives. She must know about the Great Dying and the Aturnians’ sudden interest. Huewin tried to hide it from me, too.”

“If they know or not, what does it matter?” I pull away and head for the door. “I mean, it’s an interesting discovery, Ash. Maybe even extremely interesting. But once every twenty-five-million years?” I shrug. “You can spend the rest of your life working it out.”

“That’s just it, Marcus. I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“According to the notices, Amassia’s second sun is nigh.”