21. Ambages

ambāgēs ~um, f. pl.

1. obscure or evasive speech; circumlocution

2. confusion, uncertainty

This is what they tell you in the evacuation drills: space cannot hurt you unless you let it.

This is what I tell myself, floating inside Heavenbreaker in open space with no training fences to protect me anymore: space is a cold dragon, and it will eat everything in the end, whether you let it or not.

The Supernova Cup’s tilt is farther out from the Station than the Cassiopeia Cup was, and it’s far more impressive, nestled in a gigantic sphere of white hard-light like netting. Neon projection banners for every imaginable hovercarriage and air-filter and mulled-wine company trim its edges. The church’s advertisement is far less colorful but just as showy: a massive LED cross suspended from the center of the netted sphere. At least the tilt inside looks the same—two hexagonal sheets of metal spaced wide and floating on either side of the glowing blue core of a grav-gen. One hexagon faces sidereal, one terrene. Red side, blue side.

I jet toward it.

The white-light net breaks open as Heavenbreaker approaches—a brief black circle like a hole in an egg—and I slip us into the arena. This is it. The real thing. My palms feel slick beneath the tight material of the rider’s suit. The real arena out in space is so much bigger than the practice tilt. Hundreds of drones orbit just within the shell, camera-eyes glinting as they film every angle to project the hologram for the audience back in the tourney hall. They part for us with all the instinctual alacrity of flies in midair, and I can feel Heavenbreaker’s palpable dislike of them—too fast, too many. For me they’re ignorable nuisances, but for the steed it’s an old reminder of something terrible, something like memory threatening just beneath the surface. Machines don’t have memory, let alone emotions attached to memory. And yet…I felt Ghostwinder burn with faint anger so many months ago. I saw a memory that wasn’t mine when I rebooted Heavenbreaker…a frightened memory of something like war.

The commentators’ holoscreen suddenly pops into my vision. “Ladies and gentlefolk, I’m proud to give you the grandest of welcomes to the very first round of the 22nd decennial Supernova Cup!”

“We’ve all been waiting for this one, haven’t we, Bero?”

“That we have, Gress! Ten years couldn’t go by fast enough! Every noble House is trotting out their best rider in peak condition—the cream of the crop, so to speak—and we’re excited to see who wins, who loses, and who—God forbid—gets injured!”

The crowd explodes in my helmet, but all I can hear is my own breathing.

“—who do you think’ll win this one, Bero?”

I ease Heavenbreaker back, flat on the sidereal hexagon, and the magnets lock us in place.

I will win this one.

“On the red side, we have the mysterious House Lithroi! We rarely see this House enter a rider, and certainly not in the Supernova Cup—the last time the records say they rode at all was eighteen years ago, in the illustrious steed Hellrunner! It seems their new steed, Heavenbreaker, is being piloted by one Synali von Hauteclare—a real unknown on the scene.”

“Indeed, Bero. Personally, I’m always happy to get new blood in the circuit. Let’s just hope she keeps most of that blood inside her! Good luck to her, and a safe journey home.”

The cameras flip to us.

Heavenbreaker looks so different canvassed by the backdrop of glittering space. Two weeks into training, the pit crew filled its broken spots; four weeks, and they polished its dull armor to a gleaming silver. At seven weeks, they painted pale-blue accents on the shins, arms, and back. It has a wasp’s torso, legs slender and tucked up at the knees like a rabbit’s. The shoulders sluice backward with two streamlined crescent-moon hooks, echoing the crescent-moon shape of its helmet, the smooth face below broken only by an imprint of jagged metal shark teeth on the jaw.

“And in the blue corner!” Commentator Gress shouts. “We have the morale linchpin of House Solunde, a rider famed for her brute-force takedowns and veritable mastery of the melee encounter despite her young age—Yatrice del Solunde in her steed, Voidhunter!”

I see my opponent pressed against the terrene side. Her steed looks small from my saddle, but the cameras reveal its true magnitude: three times the size of Rax’s Sunscreamer. Voidhunter is made not in the shape of man, but of titan, with a breastplate like a fortress burnished green and striped in hard black. Its helmet protrudes like a warhorse’s muzzle, square extensions on its knees and elbows only adding to its volume. And its impact. If that thing were to hit us head-on at accelerated parses per minute, we’d be obliterated…but it won’t. Only its lance will.

“Seems like a bit of bad luck on House Lithroi’s part, Bero—an old Frigate-class steed like that up against a much newer Dreadnought… I shudder to think of the outcome!”

“I hate to say it, Gress, but this match is shaping up to be a gruesome one.”

Ghostwinder knew. It knew all the rules, but Heavenbreaker knows only practice. My mind races, and Heavenbreaker watches it from our shared mental doorway: helmet, breastplate, pauldrons, gauntlets, greaves, tasset. Lance is the only thing that can hit; all else is foul. Three rounds. No breaks unless ref calls for a reset. Helmet strike is an automatic win. Unsaddling is an automatic loss.

“Riders, prepare your tilts!”

The tilt rotates, and we rotate with it. Nerves hit me like a fever. Bite down like an animal—a tiger, a wolf, something long dead and long dangerous. I am trained. I am ready.

The silver lance materializes bit by bit into my right hand, heavy, but it’s a heaviness I can bear now. A private comm pops up in my visor, showing the gel inside of a saddle and a green skintight suit striped in black. Yatrice.

Her helmet proudly displays the six-legged horse sigil, and through her lowered visor, her eyes no longer smile at me as they did at the banquet.

“Lady Synali von Hauteclare,” she announces. “My name is Yatrice del Solunde. I greet you as one rider to another. I don’t know you and therefore don’t hold anything against you. But House Hauteclare is a good friend of House Solunde; I cannot allow you to stain their good name with your baseless threats and violence. On this tilt, I will be the one to protect their honor.”

The blacklight halo painted on Yatrice’s forehead gleams strongly. Dravik was right; I am, and always have been, the enemy. They always have, and always will, try to get rid of me. Protecting others is an honorable thing—I’m certain of that much. She thinks she’s doing the right thing.

“Lady Yatrice,” I say slowly. “There will be no honor in any of this.”

“Let the countdown to the first round begin!” Bero shouts between us. “In the name of God, King, and Station!”

Every holoscreen wipes out of sight. The white-light net around the tilt disappears. Voidhunter raises its pitch-black lance higher.

My breathing is steady. Heavenbreaker trembles excitedly beneath me, around me. The crowd’s roar echoes in my helmet like a hundred thousand bells clamoring for the beginning of the end…

“In the name of God, King, and Station!”

Just before two steeds impact, there’s a sound.

I passed out too early to notice it against Rax all those months ago, but now a cry screeches around the cockpit for a split second just before our lances crash together, just as we pull even, and at the exact same time, there’s a floodlight flash—white white white light filling the cockpit, and it feels…familiar.

I blink dizzily. Heavenbreaker’s never cried like this, never made light against the training dummy. Is something wrong with it?

No, Voidhunter cried, too—it made light, too. I think. It’s all too fast to be sure—the grav-gen pulling us into each other, the white flash, the sound like music played backward (sound isn’t possible in space, no air, it’s coming from inside the steed), and Voidhunter’s black lance speeds close, narrowing to a point.

I clench everything and hover on the blade edge of control and uncontrol.

Impact.

Yatrice’s lance punches into my ribs dead center, agony, and my lungs suck in a breath on their own. Breastplate hit? Fractured ribs? It’s a temporary saddle injury but it feels so real; I can’t breathe enough to think or scream, but I’m still awake, at least.

Gravity lessens as our two steeds part and sail out into space, past the tilts, before the inevitable generator drags us back into each other. Every breath hurts like fire on the inside, and I swallow my body’s urge to panic. It’s all so different from the training dummy—worse. Everything hurts so much more, feels so much more real and sharp.

“This part of the round is called the rise,” Dravik would say.

It would be peaceful, almost, if I wasn’t being suffocated by my own rib cage.

Heavenbreaker sails into open black, and for a moment there’s no opponent, no Station, no Esther. Just…nothing. Nothing but the pain and my own thoughts. Yatrice got me, but I got her, too; I felt it—I just don’t know where.

The status screen flickers to life in my visor with the scoreboard verdict: Red, 1. Blue, 1. So I didn’t get a helmet hit, but I did get her. She’s heavy in her thrusts and very good at aiming them, but of course she is. This is the Supernova Cup.

The curve of the rise finishes, and I angle Heavenbreaker back, left side jets burning bright. The stars fade, the blue glow of the grav-gen drawing my eye to the green-black titan lurking beyond it.

“Remember this always, Synali: after every rise comes the descent.”

I switch the lance to my other hand, just like in practice. My left hand grasps tight, more experienced. As sharp as a blade, I think the jets to maximum— go. hard.

If Yatrice is heavy, I’ll be light. If she’s good, I’ll be better. The descent and the rise are an infinity symbol played out infinitely on the tilt, played out for four hundred years now. In the very middle of it is the only pause—the only spot of meeting between the two, that one singular moment of friction. “Riders aren’t riders simply because they’re nobles, Synali. Anyone can descend. Anyone can rise. But only riders can impact.”

Yatrice draws ever closer ever faster, green jets blazing, all the weight of green Esther stacked behind Voidhunter’s monolithic silhouette. The lance is too heavy, weighing on my broken ribs like a sawblade. With a cry, I wrench my other hand to hold the lance, too. Two-handed is not correct, but it takes the pressure off my pain, and I can think again. Heavenbreaker almost keels with the uneven weight, and I burn the jets as hard as I’m able to compromise. My thoughts go frantic; if we get hit like this anywhere, the unbalanced tension will fling me from the saddle instantly. Instant failure.

We have to dodge.

Dodging isn’t illegal, but it is difficult. To determine what direction the opponent’s lance is going and at what angle—to exert enough force to resist the pull of the grav-gen… I’ve barely ever accomplished a dodge against the training dummy. The flash of light between steeds—if it happens again—will only make it that much harder to see. But there’s no choice. I’m past the point of terminus, and the speed is nauseating. Green plasma blurs the rapidly closing distance, Voidhunter’s helmet in my face, and the instant I hear that melodic, eerie, backward cry—

“roll”

I release. Everything.

Heavenbreaker keels. The silver lance drags us down with it, and we roll violently, hitzone rotating in a split second. Yatrice can’t adjust, not that fast. We spin out of control, all my organs stuffing into my nose, the flash of light, and then a tearing sensation in my leg.

She hit.

She adjusted on me! Panic sears my throat as I try to straighten out with the jets, but my left leg won’t kick on no matter how much I razor-think go. I can’t feel it anymore, and that’s worse than pain. I look down in the saddle; my leg’s still there, but it won’t respond to even a single toe-curl. Something must’ve come off on the outside.

A flash of silver against space catches my eye—there! Yatrice ripped our leg clean off, and my animal brain screams it could be gone forever, and we spin, spin, spin. The status screen updates mid-rotation: Red, 1. Blue, 2. If I don’t hit her this round, it’s over. But how? One-legged, I won’t have the jet momentum, won’t have balance, won’t have thrust, won’t have anything—

I won’t last to overtime. I have to hit her helmet.

I dart my eyes into space, catching the flash of silver leg again. The rise takes us close to it, and we judder in slow rotations—up is down, down is up, it’s all black dotted with smearing stars as our uneven jets sputter. I reach out and grab for the leg, missing, blue metal hand stretching frantically. I can already feel the grav-gen trying to pull me back down to the tilt—after every rise comes the descent, but I can’t reach, and the leg spins farther out into the void, gone forever—

“our leg”

The soft, high voice rings in my ears as clear as a bell, and this time it brings sense with it. Meaning. It’s not just its leg, and not just mine—it’s ours. I can’t feel my leg, but if I focus, I can feel our leg.

return.

Nothing. I close my fist around the thought, around the spinning leg, every finger stabbing into what the word means—acid-rainy days and creaky tin doors, the smell of baking and Mother smiling when I—

RETURN.

In the distance, a new star forms—a spot of blue-white plasma blazing against the dark. The leg. It rushes to us, an arrow to a target, a child to a mother, and I suddenly know. It’s a long shot. It’s a fool’s idea. Every rider’s databank clip flashes in front of my eyes—normal, effective, perfect. This is nothing like that. But I have to try.

I have to win.

My hand darts out and grasps the flying leg. The jets on it blast hot, enough counter-momentum to stop us from spiraling out. Steady. Dizzy. I’ve vomited countless times before in the helmet, and I drip it out of my mouth carefully so it won’t splatter and blind me. I tuck the steed’s remaining leg up and force it sideways at the knee, breaking it. There’s a popping noise, a popping stab of pain.

Finally, mercifully, we have even jets, steady propulsion along the tasset. We won’t be as fast, but it’ll keep us steady enough to aim. I drip sweat, panting like a cornered animal as the rib pain sears brands across my lungs. I grind the lance handle into the leg’s socket, metal locking into metal. This rise isn’t peaceful; every second of it is head-fuck static torture in my legs, my mouth, the sick sour smell in my helmet, and then…

Descent.

I hold the lance under my arm, try to disguise the handle-leg behind me—she must only see it when it’s too late. Voidhunter barrels forward, and I lean in. Momentum, speed, g-forces peeling skin away from bone, vomit sliding in the helmet from front to back, the suit fighting to hold me together and that soft voice fighting to warn me something’s wrong: “pain wrong pain wrong pain wrong”

The stars blur to shreds of light. Voidhunter looms. Closer. Closer. Wait for the light. The cry.

KrrrkRRRRR—

There.

go.

Yatrice del Solunde doesn’t see it coming until it’s too late. Heavenbreaker’s lance blasts toward her from a lower angle—not held by my hand or thrust by my arm but propelled by the plasma jets of the detached leg. Our leg holds it, spears it forward and up with all the jetpower we have left. This should not work. This will not work. The cross glows white above us, suspended, and I use His name this once—

Please, God.

A black lance slides over a silver shoulder.

A silver lance pierces clean through a green helmet.

We blaze past each other, then come to a slow halt in space. With a wrench of pain, I remove my helmet for the cameras embedded in the cockpit walls, red-light eyes blinking from all directions. I remove it for the king, entire body drenched in sweat and misery. Vomit crusts on my neck. My makeup is running. I can’t feel my leg. I resigned to give the nobles nothing—no happiness or sadness or any emotion at all (they don’t deserve that from us)—but one corner of my lip still twitches.

A win. The Supernova Cup has the best riders in all the Station. And I beat one of them.

There was never hope.

But now the fire of it flickers to life in my chest, sickly.