24. Omnis

omnis ~is ~e ~a, a.

1. every

I once read that a hexagon is one of the strongest shapes in nature—like our projection shields. Like honeycomb. A beehive will kill their queen if they don’t like her, but our beehive is a Station isolated in the void of space for hundreds of millions of light-years around. And our queen is a king.

The Station imperative is, and always has been, this:

1. Terraform Esther and establish a stable colony.

2. Using Esther’s resources, create a method by which to communicate with the six other Stations scattered across the universe.

3. Reunite and return to Earth together.

This is what King Ressinimus rules for. This is what his advisory board Father tried so hard to become a part of exists for—to determine, to regulate, and to steer humanity toward reunification. This is why the commoners work and the nobles entertain. This is why tourneys exist—to distract; this is why protein rations exist—to feed. This is why no matter how many people die harvesting oxygen, no matter how scarce filtered water becomes, no matter how many excuses the advisory board gives for why the terraform is delayed and delayed and delayed again, we continue on.

We are alone. The imperative is our only hope, the only goal. It goes unspoken in every article on the vis, every sidereal window showing empty space yawning all around us; we either achieve terraform or we perish.

We try our hardest to forget this. Tourneys, booze, drugs, clubs. Brothels. In the months after Mother died, I kept my ears open in the brothel at all times, threshing whatever bits of information I could from wild rumor: cloistered and sickly Queen Galbrinth is actually dead; the king’s scientists feed street urchins to a monster beneath the noble spire; the entire sewage-refining substation Theta-7—with all its methane gas—could be repurposed into a bomb strong enough to blow a hole in Esther; the exiled crown prince is still alive somewhere.

The last one, at least, I know is true.

Dravik spreads honey on his toast, ignoring the robot-dog begging for crumbs. “There will be some news running later today. For you.”

I chew my eggs wordlessly, my forearms freshly bruised from dawn training.

“Their credits must be dealt with first, you see,” he says. “House Hauteclare provides nearly all the funding for the keep and training of the king’s private guard. It earns them great favor.” He wipes his lip on a napkin and stands. “The weight room is yours alone for the day.”

“What, you’re abandoning me now?”

“If yesterday’s match was any indicator, you’ve surpassed me. What you learn now will be on the field.”

I won’t let him off that easily. “Did you ever ride Heavenbreaker?”

“No. In my day, I rode a Destroyer-class A4 for a short time. Hellrunner, I believe the name was.” He looks off over my shoulder.

“What happened to it?”

“Nothing. It’s in the king’s possession. Hellrunner is his flagship steed, as it was the previous king’s and the king before that king’s. It’s the only steed passed down through a bloodline, a symbol of the Ressinimuses’ right to rule as much as the amber crown.”

“So Hellrunner would’ve been yours, eventually.”

His grin flickers but doesn’t falter. “In a different universe, I suppose it would’ve.”

I watch his face carefully—is that what he’s after? Hellrunner? The throne? Does he want me to shake the nobility’s faith in the king by winning the Supernova Cup as a bastard, and then he’ll swoop in to pick up the pieces? Is that what I am to him—an excuse to start a civil war?

Quilliam slowly polishes the dining silver in a corner of the room, sniffing and counting his strokes in a low murmur. “Seventy-one, seventy-two, seventy-eight—”

“Heavenbreaker is different from other steeds,” I say.

“Naturally. An A3 model is not—”

“I mean different. It talks to me.”

“All steeds have very advanced haptic feedback programs, Synali.”

“A program doesn’t show you memories from the Knight’s War when it reboots.”

There’s a beat. Quilliam pats under his nose with a kerchief before returning to missing his numbers cheerily. “Eighty-four, eighty-seven, eighty-nine—”

I meet Dravik’s eyes. “Using true AI is illegal Station-wide—even for royalty like you.”

He knows. I know. The remnants of substation Gamma-1—scattered around the remains of Esther’s fourth moon, Ruth, as a fine haze of frozen titanium and glass—know it best. Decades ago, true AI took control of Gamma-1 and rammed it into Ruth, causing a massive explosion and a wave of molten debris that nearly destroyed the Station. We almost ruined the imperative once with true AI, and no one will risk that again…unless one is a prince willing to do absolutely whatever it takes to get back at his father.

The only explanation as to why I’ve been hearing voices in the saddle is AI. With a true AI installed in Heavenbreaker, Dravik could make the steed stronger, but he could also turn it on me.

“I must be in total control of something in this plan,” I say. “Or our partnership becomes a dictatorship.”

The prince doesn’t blink at the accusation. The two of us stare at each other, waiting for some invisible signal, for either one of us to break.

“One hundred!” Quilliam cheers, putting the silver spoon aside and picking up a fresh utensil. “One, two, three, five—”

It’s not the right signal. But it’s enough. The prince makes a slight bow. “If you’ll excuse me, Synali, I have business I must attend to. Be sure to eat your fill.”

My chair screeches as I stand up, intending to go after him, but just then my vis pings on my wrist, Quilliam’s vis pinging in concert. We watch the emergency news report as it scrawls past in blue holograph: BREAKING—THIRTEEN GENTECH ENTERPRISES LITHIUM ENGINES EXPLODE ON SUBSTATIONS THETA-4, GAMMA-4, UPSILON-6, OMEGA-3; ONE NOBLE CASUALTY.

One noble casualty.

I didn’t know the true worth of words until Dravik.

My heart beats frantically—all fatigue suddenly gone, all bruises suddenly bearable. I dart back to my room, the robot-dog hot on my heels. I dig in the drawers of the boudoir to find the diamond pendant and clutch it like the edge of a weapon.

KING RESSINIMUS HOLDS EMERGENCY ADVISORY BOARD MEETING OVER LITHIUM ENGINE CONCERNS. GENTECH EXPLOSIONS FORCE RING-WIDE RECALL, RAISE CONCERN OF SETBACKS ON TERRAFORMING PROGRESS.

They don’t release the name of the deceased. But Dravik does.

His name was Balmoran Aglis-Hauteclare—my uncle by marriage. He had two infant twin sons—my cousins. Ten months ago, while his wife was pregnant, he gave Father the untraceable credits to hire the assassin. Dravik provides the hard evidence: encrypted message logs between the two scrawling long in my irises.

BALMORAN: Farris, think logically—if the bitch and her pup howl even once, you’ll drag us all down with you.

Finally, finally, finally—

GENTECH DENIES ACCUSATIONS OF POLITICAL SABOTAGE, CUTS TIES WITH UNNAMED NOBLE HOUSE.

I walk to the wall and cross the first of the seven circles out as deep as my muscles allow, and when it’s done, I collapse on the floor. Dravik did it. He really did it. He kept his end of the bargain like no one ever has. My brain promptly swallows the elation and regurgitates warning—I still don’t know his real goal. If he put true AI in Heavenbreaker, I need to know.

I wait until the Lithroi hovercarriage leaves the driveway with Dravik in it to start the fire in the kitchen—green onions left on the burner. The smell is acrid, but it does the job—I hear the robot-dog alert with a shrill beep from its mouth, and Quilliam rushes down the hall as quickly as his bent posture will allow, sniffing and sniffing again at the smell of smoke. I grab a handful of the silver spoons and knives he was polishing and dart out the front door.

The hermetic Noble Ward tram is only lightly crowded. People glance at me, but I tuck away from any holoscreens replaying Supernova Cup matches, and soon they lose interest. So much of my life has changed, but the Low Ward tram remains the same. It’s puerile, in a way, to be comforted by the smell of unwashed bodies, the sight of yellow puddles of sulfur, and the metallurgic foam patching the wall cracks like pinkish, bulging fungus. Low Ward teems with life: Garden Square is named ironically with not a single green thing in sight and packed close with shouting vendors, preaching priests, and shuffling pickpockets—and tired workers trying to avoid all three on their way home.

Waves of molerats scurry ahead of me as I cut through an alley, naked bodies and blind eyes scrambling from rusting trash pile to rusting trash pile on smell and vibration alone. Thin cats hunker on the holoscreens above, waiting for the right moment to pounce on their disturbed prey, their fur glowing green in the rays of UV sterilization leaking between buildings. The red-light district opens up on the other side of the alley, bustling with jet-powered buggies and drab gray taxi hovercarriages, flickering LED signs screaming establishment names and prices.

I swore to myself I’d never come back. And yet here I am.

My feet follow a path carved by memory, by anger, by everything swirling tight and hard in me after Mother died. It swirls still, satiated in the smallest increment by my first win and the first death. And then the neon sign of BELDEAUX’S struggles out of the others—green shutters and a vivid holoscreen replaying unsubtle still-life art—dew-wet peaches in a basket—and I lose all feeling in my hands. My breathing goes shallow. I’m surprised to see Yarnald still working the door, and by the way he raises his eyebrow, I gather he’s surprised to see me, too.

“Bel’s not happy,” he says simply. “Hates it when people vanish for four months.”

“I know. I brought gifts.”

Yarnald shakes his head (your funeral) and opens the door for me. Perfume hits first—that sickly sweet wisteria smell covering up old carpet. Nothing has changed. The same thick green velvet curtains block out the street, the same holocandles burn mercilessly white against fake-wood patina, and the same girl sits at the glass reception desk. She smiles at me just the same.

“Synali!” She rounds the desk. “Oh my saints—is that real gold thread? Who gave you those fancy clothes? You were gone for so long, we thought you were fed to the monster under the sea! Willemina’s been saying you ran off with some baron’s footman this whole time, but then Helyn saw you in the Supernova Cup, and we— Should I be bowing right now? Are you a lady?”

It’s better to keep this short. Keep them out of it. “I need to see Madam, Gwenna.”

She pouts mightily. “Always quiet and to the point. There’s no fun with you, is there?”

Gwenna looks harmless, but she’s the heart of Beldeaux’s. She knows more about everyone than she does about herself, but I’ve realized now that’s the point of gossip—to worry about others until you lose your own business.

I follow her down familiar hallways, jumping at old shadows and the idea of seeing older clients, but no one’s around. Busy. Each soundproof door is an invisible scar deeper than the one on my chest. I never knew what sort of day it was going to be on the other side of the door. Madam warned the other girls in advance, but for whatever reason she took special glee in watching me go in blind. Looking back, I think I reminded her of herself—driven, stubborn. She liked the fear on my face, the idea of my stubbornness finally breaking.

So when I walk into her office this time, I make sure there is none.

Madam Beldeaux doesn’t look up from her papers, hard-light quill scratching relentlessly. Her office is plain, with a round window facing the street. Her vice isn’t gold or gems—it’s paper. It’s always been paper; the scratch of it, the feel of it. The projection-proof safe in her wall is only for fine white sheets of real paper. I clear my throat. She smooths her hand over her parchment and glances up quickly, gray eyes behind grayer glasses.

“Ah, Synali. I was wondering when you’d drag yourself back here. He tired of you, did he?”

There’s an instinct to shrink back, but I settle in the chair across from her desk. “He did. And then I killed him.”

The quill stops. Madam’s gaze lingers on the word she just finished writing—hellbent. Finally, she clicks her tongue and continues scratching. “This is why I couldn’t give you any of the decent clients—girls like you can never control your tempers. You scare people away.”

Heavenbreaker uses words like a child, but Madam Beldeaux uses them like slivers. I was too numb to feel them a year ago, but I feel them now, saddle-like, cold and biting and lodging in my windpipe. She glances up again, disinterested.

“Who put the muscle on you? No one will bed you if you look like a man.”

“I want to see Jeria.”

The quill moves faster, black ink shining in holocandlelight as she snorts. “No.”

I stand, and to my surprise she gives the barest flinch in her chair. Her word-splinters evaporate—all of them, the old and new, the felt and unfelt—and something in me swells. Despite all she put me through, I can’t bring myself to hate her. She gave me what I asked for when no one else would—a way to get closer to the nobility. She gave me a road to walk when everyone else destroyed mine. With a certain slowness, I dump my pockets onto the table in a cacophony—each utensil gleams.

“Silver,” I say. “Enough to pay for Jeria’s time for at least an hour.”

“This is—” Beldeaux reaches for a fork, fingers working over the tines in rapture. “This isn’t synth. This is old Earth silver. Where did you get it?”

I’m quiet, watching her do the calculations behind her glasses—how much paper this could buy, what kind, what quality. She’s probably never been paid like this, never grandly and with things from real nobility, and for the first time I’m on the other side of it, and the power is heady and evil and tastes like electricity. She looks up at me, disbelieving or starting to believe, I’m not sure which, but her confusion is clear; I am a bastard the court hasn’t touched, a bastard who defies them and still lives. I am no pretender, no sycophant, no pale imitation. It takes me until this moment to truly see there is no escaping my own blood.

As much as they hate it, as much as I hate it, I am them.

“My name is Synali von Hauteclare, and I will see Jeria—now.”

Beldeaux walks me there herself, rigid steps and silence. Jeria’s the only person I know who’s anywhere close to as smart as Dravik—if anyone can help me break into his systems, it’s her. By the way Beldeaux’s leading me, I can tell she’s currently in the penthouse suite, and soon enough we come across it, the door a mockery of a noble manse’s, holographed over to look like redwood. The light fizzles under Beldeaux’s knuckles as she knocks, leaving holes through which the plain white plexiglass shows.

“She has a client soon,” Beldeaux turns to me and says. “So I suggest you speak quickly.”

I raise an eyebrow. “And I suggest you delay them for as long as I need. Or do you not require my silver?”

She unlocks the door with a sour curl of her lip. I push in and close it in her face with a smile. It’s a fragile thing that melts when I turn, the scent vortex of perfume and latex and silicon and sweat bearing down on my memory. It might be the penthouse “suite,” but the carpet is the same yellowed dizzying pattern I forced myself to get lost in one too many times.

“Synali!” I look up at the voice—Jeria sits on the canopied bed but gets off it quickly when she sees me, the bells in her jester cap jingling. Her tunic, her shoes, her tights—all of it is a perfect mimicry of the king’s jester, though made with less-expensive material. Her face is painted like the fool—whitish powder and rosy nose and cheeks. We’ve seen each other in all kinds of odd getups, but this one is strangest by far. She makes it work, somehow, her heart-shaped face beaming up at me. “I didn’t know you were back!”

“I’m not,” I manage.

“Oh.” Jeria frowns, pushing wisps of brown hair off her forehead. She sees me staring and laughs. “I’m supposed to tell really terrible jokes and get ‘punished’ for it. It’s nice to see you again.”

My mouth struggles with the truth. “You too.”

“I know you don’t like touching.” She smiles. “Otherwise I’d hug you. Nothing’s really changed since you’ve been gone, except Willemina getting more unbearable every day, but that’s just business as usual.” Jeria sits back on the bed, then claps her hands. “Oh, and I finally got my sister that apartment in Mid Ward!”

I make a soft applause. “You were saving up for that for a long time.”

“Yeah. She’s so smart—she got into the Freynille steedcraft school on a scholarship! Can you believe that? A scholarship!” Jeria realizes quickly. “But you’re not here to catch up, are you?”

Explaining doesn’t take long—it’s pulling out the backstory that’s a struggle. Where I’ve been, what I’ve been doing, how I am now… I don’t want to tell her. At the heart of it, Dravik and I are going against the king. The more someone knows, the more danger they’re in.

Jeria pauses after I finish. “So you need a way to get into someone’s vis, essentially.”

“Essentially.”

“Right. Well, this isn’t, like, a hundred years ago—true AI is pretty scarce these days, after the purge. False AI isn’t—it controls lots of maintenance stuff on the Station.”

“So?” I lead.

“So, this guy could be using a false AI or a series of false AI to make you think he’s using true AI. Or it could be a real true AI—I dunno. What I do know is all AI leave artifacts on the coder’s vis. Stuff it chews up and spits out. I could make you a module that combs his vis for more complex artifacts, but it would only work if you could get into his vis in the first place.”

“Personal vis are locked to bio-signatures.”

“Yeah. Cracking one would take months.” She ponders for a moment and then looks up, bell cap jingling mightily. “Does this rich guy have any systems in his house? Not the air or heat or gravity—but like, extraneous systems.” I think back to the sleeping-gas vents I never found, the way Dravik locked all the workout equipment in the manse remotely. When I tell Jeria, her eyes light up, and she begins typing madly on her holographic keyboard.

“Perfect. I can make something that injects into his vis when it interacts with the house systems,” she blurts, eyes scanning her screen rapidly. “Those usually have way less security—even if he’s made his own language for it, he probably hasn’t bothered altering the initial query. It validates you, and bam—you’re in.”

I scoff. “Remind me again why you’re here and not working for the king’s guard?”

“Oh, hacking’s easy.” She motions down at her jester outfit. “This is the real puzzle.”

I feel a stab of jealousy—jealousy that this place is nothing more than a puzzle for her. It was dark for me. I was suffering. Only now do I realize the same experience can feel entirely different for different people. There’s no need for jealousy or any feeling at all—this place isn’t my world anymore. It’s not my only weapon anymore.

“I’ll send you the module as soon as I can,” Jeria says through the silence.

“Thank you.” I move for the door and pause on the threshold. “Be safe.”

“You’re the one who needs to be safe, Synali. People like this…they do bad things.”

People like this. People like me. Nobles. I make my smile over my shoulder as gentle as I can.

“I know.”