8. Novicius

novīcius ~a ~um, a.

1. new, fresh

The noble spire spins slowly in the very center of the Station’s ring, growing closer outside the window of Dravik’s hovercarriage. The quiet hum of our engine insulates us from the bustle of a hundred more hovercarriages sluicing down the orange ribbon of the hard-light freeway, their driver’s seats empty as programming guides them.

“I’ve never taken a hovercarriage before,” I say. “Always more of a public tram person.”

“Your life from now on will feature many firsts, I imagine.” Dravik chuckles, tucked into the corner across from me with his cane over his lap. He wears no blacklight halo to mark him noble beneath his mouse-hue bangs, yet he has a private hovercarriage—a very expensive one, if the interior detail of powder-blue lilies on silver inlay is any indicator. The smoothness of the fine linen bliaut he gave me to wear out of the hospital slithers over my skin—too nice compared to my burlap tunics. The woolen shawl is broad, with no moth-eaten holes. The soft leather boots fit too well—far different from the plastic-woven sandals I’m used to.

“I see one major flaw in this grand plan of yours,” I say. “I have no rider training.”

“This will be remedied,” Dravik agrees offhandedly.

“Going to send me to the rider academy and put me in class with the children?”

“No need. I am a former rider. The Supernova Cup is in two months—more than enough time to teach you what I know.”

My brows shoot up. So he is a noble. Or…was? “Is that where your injury came from? Riding?”

“No.” He taps his fingers on his right knee. “This was more…personal. You, however, have no such injuries, and if we train you correctly, it will remain that way.”

“You make me sound like some animal,” I snarl. His smile is perfectly calm.

“Would you not become an animal to get your revenge?”

I snort and lean back in the seat, arms over my chest. He makes rider training sound easy, but I’ve been asleep for two months—my body is weak. Even if I miraculously manage to grasp the intricacies of riding, going up against nobles who’ve been in this game for years—if not decades—is a losing battle. They have technique. Experience. I have nothing. Dravik could choose any skilled noble rider who graduated from the academy to ride for him, so…

“Why me?” I ask.

Dravik taps the side of his leg. “I cannot ride, and you cannot hope to destroy a House. We each have what the other wants.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

“Your mental handshake in Ghostwinder’s saddle went very well; you have a talent for it. Riders often experience nosebleeds and fainting their first time.”

“You could go to any academy first-year for that. Is it because I’m desperate, easy to manipulate?”

“No.”

“Is it because I hate the nobles?”

“No.”

“Then why?”

The quiet thrum of the engine. The tinkle of the sapphire-studded tassels swinging from the hovercarriage roof. Sunlight catches in the gemstones, refracting rainbow over the soft man as he gives me a softer smile, a no-answer sort of smile—an answer he can’t give or won’t give—and I realize then I’d be a fool to trust him. This whole thing reeks of manipulation and control. I stand up. Sensing my movement, the carriage slows to a crawl automatically.

“Open the door,” I demand.

“Synali—” Dravik starts.

“I said open the goddamn door!”

He doesn’t move for his wrist. The carriage controls might be linked to his vis and his vis only, but everything on this Station has an emergency redundancy—even noble transportation. I find the button tucked below the handle, and I reach a single finger for it—

“Do you truly think your father killed your mother on his own?”

Dravik’s voice freezes my hand in place.

“Seven,” he says. “Seven other members of House Hauteclare voted to take her down. They each coerced your father or otherwise helped to find, track, and kill your mother. It was a group effort. Noble dealings always are.”

My ears ring, my mouth thick with iron sand. The family helped him. The dagger across Mother’s throat touched more palms than just the assassin’s. I grip her cross pendant. Hard. Harder. The hovercarriages outside pass us in screaming lights. An eternity passes before I find my voice.

“These seven… You’re certain they were involved?”

“Without doubt,” Dravik asserts. “I verified each one carefully during the two months you were recovering. I will provide you with evidence of their guilt, should you so require.”

For a moment I almost wish I could doubt this strange man. I wish he was wrong, but I know in my bones he isn’t—of course they’d all want Mother and me dead. They are a House. They are together. It was all of their honors on the line, not just Father’s.

I collapse back in the seat, and the carriage lurches into motion. For once, Dravik wears no smile. “I had hoped to wait until we were at home to discuss the conditions of our contract, but…for every round in the Supernova Cup you win, I am offering to kill one of these seven nobles. Should you win the entire Supernova Cup, I’ll erase House Hauteclare itself.”

Suddenly, the impossible golden fruit sprouts lesser, far closer fruits all around it.

“How will you—”

“Connections. People, places, things—none of which you need concern yourself with. Your only concern will be riding.” He sees the unsurety in me. “Do you think me not capable of disposing of them?”

I glare at my palms. “I think you’re capable of your end, but mine…less so.”

His face breaks into a smile again. “I never thought I’d see the day when one of Hauteclare’s blood would choose humility. Brave one—you drugged a janitor, snuck into a highly guarded tourney hall, deceived a rider, hijacked a steed, and stabbed a duke to death. I know crime lords in the Under-ring who have done less.”

“Riding is different.”

He looks wistfully out the window. “I suppose it is.”

Our carriage dips into a black tunnel and emerges onto the silver wash of artificial moonlight bathing every gilded building and cobblestone road. I’ve always seen the noble spire from afar like a hateful miniature, a conceited dollhouse, but now fountains pour water in elaborate antigravity spirals over my head—up, across, and between buildings until the sky is braided with them. Nobles traipse the sidewalks in amber-studded corsets and holograph parasols and elaborate wooden masks. Twisted little creatures hang on their arms—monkeys, dogs, all of them bred beyond textbook recognition. Muffled music ricochets from quartets with real whitewood instruments on every other corner, and jesters in neon-lit caps and butterfly-incandescent suits flit and flip among the loose crowd.

No beggars, no molerats or thin dogs feeding on trash, no ragged moths choking on neon lights. No blood on the roads. No filth, no vents belching yellow sulfur. Everything’s ventilated, perfumed, sheened in holograph and precious wood and the sound of music and water—clean water, the sort people die for in Low Ward, stab each other for—it’s here, and it’s made into art, made so their little pets can run through it and they can laugh at the sight.

My fury blitzes past itself and crash-lands into nausea.

“Fascinating, isn’t it?” Dravik asks, the lights dancing in his eyes even as he holds out a plastic bag for me. I claw at it. Someone outside laughs. A band begins to play. The joyous music tries and fails to drown out the sound as I retch.

In the time it takes for the nausea to subside, our hovercarriage turns onto a quieter road, away from the music and dancers and perfumed crowd. We wind up a rise lush with green grass and white trees (real trees, like there were on Earth), sleek marble noble manses peppering the hillside. The carriage stops before a great metal gate, and it swings forward as readily as a black iron maw.

“We’re here,” Dravik announces rather perfunctorily.

The hovercarriage glides up a hill-cut path through a garden. Unlike the other manses’ verdant greenery, this one is faded, unkempt, the grass yellowed and the whitewood trees starving thin. Still…it’s more empty space than I ever thought possible on the Station. Still, they’re real trees—leaves and roots curling much like the enemy’s tendrils on the hangar door. The glass-and-marble manse sitting atop the hill could easily fit fifty Low Ward families.

I clutch my bagged vomit tighter—I knew noble Houses lived comfortably, but seeing it up close burns far hotter, realer. Finally, the manse envelops us in a manicured plaza of white gravel, lined with marble statues of saints and sinners. Saint Petyr hangs on his upside-down cross in utter humility, in utter reminder of how far I’ve fallen.

I’ve allowed my life to fall into a noble’s hands again.

“Welcome, Synali”—Dravik sweeps his cane around—“to my home. And your home, too, of course, for however long the duration of our alliance runs. Shall we?”

He motions me in, and it takes me two steps through the front door to smell the dust—a thick layer of the stuff covering every plush sofa, every pre-War painting. It coats even the marble floor; paths cut through where traffic treads most. Shadows choke the rooms, only a few warm lights blinking out of the very bowels of the manse. This is Dravik’s smell—moths and time and that unquiet darkness. My eyes dart around, searching for waiting guards, but if he wanted to turn me in, I suppose he wouldn’t’ve bothered dragging me to the noble spire to do it.

“I hope you’ll forgive the untidiness.” Dravik catches up to me. “I don’t spend much time here if I can help it.”

“Why?”

He pauses. And then: “Memories.”

I don’t know why he wants me to ride in the Supernova Cup or why he chose me in particular. I don’t know if I can trust him, even. But memories and the pain that keeps you away from them—that’s something I know well.

A sudden barking resounds, metallic and simulated, and I watch a shiny thing dart down the hall toward us—a robot in the approximate shape of a medium-size dog. It’s made of smooth gold, but one leg and sections of its torso have been replaced with rusting, mismatched parts—doodled on with long-faded holostickers and childish laser artwork. Its ears clank against its head as it comes to a stop before Dravik’s feet, wagging its rusted tail in a frenzy.

“Ah.” Dravik looks down, his smile ever-so-slightly bitter. “So he’s kept you alive this long, has he?”

The robot-dog barks and circles Dravik’s shoes. It’s strange but less intimidating than the inbred pets that haunt noble shoulders—and far less intimidating than the man at my side. I extend one slow hand to it, and it looks up at me with polished sapphire eyes, sniffing my palm warily.

“Hello,” I whisper. “I’m Synali.”

The dog growls, metal pulling back to reveal mother-of-pearl teeth.

“Be quiet.” Dravik scoffs, then looks to me. “Pay it no mind. It’s a relic of a bygone era, nothing more.”

“Master.”

I startle as a white wraith emerges from the gloom: an old man, his face paler than vellum and his gray hair a cloudy shock flying in every direction. He’s so gaunt, it looks as if he’s been eaten away from the inside—only skin and bones left. In stark contrast to his chaotic hair, his breeches and tunic are painstakingly neat and his posture is immaculate.

“You’ve returned, Master Dravik,” he croaks with a smile. I swear I see Dravik wince at the title.

“That I have, Quilliam. Is the guest room ready?”

“Yes.” Quilliam turns his papery smile on me. “Everything fit for a young miss is within. Oh, I am so thrilled to see Moonlight’s End receive guests once more—”

“And the bunker?” Dravik asks.

“I recalibrated the systems myself, master. There were quite a few cobwebs, and the visitor seemed rather hungrier than usual—”

“Very good.” Dravik abruptly takes the vomit bag from my hand. “Please dispose of this, then prepare a light tea. Synali and I will take it in my office.”

“As you wish.”

He bows and trudges away into the dim maze of rooms, and Dravik wordlessly turns in the other direction, cane rapping as he motions for me to follow. The robot-dog trots fast on his heels—as much as he hates it, it seems rather loyal to him.

“Do you usually have hungry visitors stay in your cobweb-filled bunker?” I ask, my eyes taking in every lush ancient painting we pass—Earth art. This “Moonlight’s End” place is so empty and dusty and still—it feels less a manse and more a tomb.

“No.” Dravik chuckles. “I’m typically better mannered than that.”

“Then why—”

“You’ve had a very long day, Synali.” He cuts me off smoothly. “Or rather, a very long two months. Let us draw up a contract and then rest for the night—there’s much work to be done come morning.”

He’s clearly avoiding the subject. I follow him into a room—a room made not of marble but wood. My mouth nearly falls open. Every metal is synthable depending on what elements the substations siphon off Esther, but you cannot synth trees—they take soil and space and time to grow. To the nobles, whitewood and the amber it gives is more precious than gold. Dravik’s office is made entirely of pre-War wood, old wood grown on Earth—rich, reddish stuff. It’s warmer than fire, more alive than metal, sleeker than marble, with spirals winding through the grain like coffee smoke in an ember sea. It’s the same wood as Mother’s pendant. She loved it, stroked it like the priests stroke their gem rosaries until it was worn smooth. My thumb works over the cross around my neck idly, tracing her imprints.

“Please.” Dravik motions to an armchair just before a whitewood desk. “Sit.”

I do—no dust on the armrests. This must be the room he uses most. A butterfly collection hangs on the wall like jeweled candies bunched in orderly rows, and real paper books cluster on the shelves in all their expensive, outdated glory. The robot-dog lays down on a fine carpet, sapphire eyes dimming in an approximation of rest. Before I have the chance to settle, Dravik speaks.

“Your father had your mother killed.”

The warmth of the room fades. I try to say something, but the words stick like swallowed ice. It’s a simple sentence. It should be simple to hear, to process and put aside—it’s truth—but the hounds of memory strain their leashes at it… Blood pooling on the tin floor, the hot salt smell of it, her black hair wet with it—

“Your father killed your mother, did he not?”

“Stop,” I say quietly, “saying it.”

The dog lifts its head at my tone and growls again, but Dravik’s voice goes stern.

“Enough, you silly thing. My apologies, Synali—I’d forgotten how long the wound lasts when fresh.”

Forgotten. Implying he knows what it feels like to lose his mother? I stare at him—no tells, no lip-licks or flicker of the eyes. Lesser nobles frequented Madam Beldeaux’s brothel—merchant types barely related to the lowest of barons—but the higher they went in station, the harder they became to read. The Nova-King’s court trains them all whether they like it or not, and it’s trained Dravik very, very well; I can’t read him in the slightest.

He pushes a blank piece of vellum across to me with his ring-drenched fingers. No vis signatures, no screens—real physical contracts, impossible to hack and harder to trace.

“Name your terms,” he says. “We will each retain a copy signed by the other person. If either of us breaks the contract, we may take our copy to the police and implicate them in treason. Your treason would be killing a member of the nobility.”

“And yours?”

“Attempting to destroy a House—something only the king is permitted to do. ‘Assuming the responsibilities of the crown without leave of the throne,’ I believe it’s called.”

I snort. “Contract or not, the police never arrest people like you. You have friends in high places.”

“The ‘high places’ shunned me long ago.”

Lies again. Or the truth? It’s maddening that I can’t tell with him—it’s like staring at a gray-eyed wall. I pick up a laser-quill from his inkwell, hovering the nib over the paper.

“I might not win. Anything. I could go out there on the first match and die.”

“You won’t.”

“How can you be so sure of that?”

“Before she died, my mother told me stories of the Knight’s War.”

The quiet manse pulses silence. Dravik’s gaze goes past my shoulder to the doorway, and I look back, but there’s no one there. His face says someone is.

“The knights of the War were the greatest riders to ever exist. Legendary. Even in their rudimentary steeds, they accomplished unmatched feats of ease and prowess on the battlefield. Their mastery cannot be rivaled today by any modern rider—or so they say. Do you know why?”

I frown at the cold fireplace. “Because they were desperate to survive. To kill the enemy.”

His mouth crinkles with a smile. “I thought so, too. But Mother says otherwise.”

“‘Says’? You just told me your mother’s dead.”

“She is. Fourteen years gone.”

“You meant to use past tense, then.”

He tears his gaze from the doorway. “No—I did not. My mother still says many things to me.”

My sputter drains to a hiss. “You’re a lunatic.”

“And you’re a murderer.” Dravik smiles brighter. “But that’s neither of our faults. Our fathers made us this way, did they not?”

He’s mad, but he’s not wrong. Father is why I’m here. I’ve used cruel men to my advantage. I’ve used egotistical men to my advantage. But this will be my first time using a madman.

My fist clenches around the quill. My hand makes each painful letter: SYNALI EMILIA WOSTER. It’s fitting that House Hauteclare’s death warrant is signed with Mother’s last name, but the gnawing feeling of having signed my life away to a noble lingers. Dravik signs his contract as Dravik vel Lithroi. The surname rings a faint bell…but as I’m thinking, I’m startled by the sudden clatter of a tea tray rolling into the room. The phantomlike Quilliam comes to my side with a plate, upon which a small cake slathered in frosting and sugared flowers rests. His watery old eyes glow in the single candle flame flickering atop it.

I pivot to Dravik. “This—”

“I had much time to read your file,” he says. “I was saddened to learn the day of your death would have also been the day of your birth.”

I can’t move. I can’t do anything but breathe in the smell of baking, of wax, of memories. “I don’t need your pity.”

“Not pity—tradition. In this house, birthdays are celebrated.” He looks up at a painting of two deer chasing each other. “They always were.”

Quilliam nods enthusiastically for me to take a fork. “It’s two months late, but…happy birthday, Miss Synali. I hope the taste is to your liking.”

I grip the silver tines tightly. After a moment of silence, Dravik stands.

“I think Quilliam and I will retire for the night. You’ll find your room at the end of this hall, by the centaur statue. Your vis has been sent the bio-key. Breakfast is at seven. We will see you tomorrow, then.”

Dravik nods and Quilliam bows before they leave in cane-step and shuffle-step, the robot-dog trailing behind them. I stare at the melting candle alone. No one in their right mind would leave a stranger unsupervised in their private office. He either has surveillance or…he trusts me.

Ridiculous. This gesture of kindness is a ploy. How many commoners have I seen fall to bribery, to displays without substance? Mother fell for Father’s promises to take care of her. I know all that, and yet still I reach for the cake as one might reach for the heart in someone’s chest, and I pull a chunk out. Another. Crush it between my fingers. It’s airy and delicate and refined—noble to the core. I tear it apart. Eat so fast I bite my tongue. A noise comes out of me that is neither sob nor laugh, and the taste is blood and buttercream and the realization I can’t see her until it’s over. Until all seven of Mother’s killers in House Hauteclare have paid, I will live. I will train as an animal does.

I will devour them all.