28. Quassatio

quassātiō ~ōnis, f.

1. the act of shaking

A woman wavers in front of me.

She is not a memory, nor is she a nightmare. She isn’t Mother—her hair is too pale a brown, her eyes too pale; almost white, no—silver. Her irises are alive with a wet silver color. The blackness over her shoulder goes on forever like space, but there are no stars. Her patient smile stops wavering, crystallizes for a moment, and I’d know that smile anywhere—Dravik. Those portraits. His mother.

Queen Astrix leans in, whispering softly and carefully in my ear.

“do you know what it means to ride?”

And then something reaches up and drags me down.

Like breaking the surface of water upside down, my feet are pulled through a layer of something, and I float in star-studded space without fear—none of my usual terror, just comfort and certainty, and that’s how I know this is not my memory or my feelings. These are someone else’s. I watch it like a video, feel it like a dream. A white-gold sun much smaller than the giant one Esther orbits flashes its light over distant metal things—silver steeds zipping against the stars before coming to rest in a crisp pattern: A3s. Thousands of Heavenbreakers wait and move and rearrange themselves in lightning-quick bursts to make strict formations.

The War again. The War again, but I can’t see the enemy at all—no snakelike tendrils, no fangs, just steeds. There’s fear, but it doesn’t crush me like the reboot memory, because in this memory, I’m not alone. There’s another…someone here with me, and I know we’re the only two left—only two of us facing down an entire army.

Behind the steed formation is a planet draped in beautiful blues and greens and wispy whites. The me-of-the-memory knows the name of it like a song, and the Synali-watching knows the name of it like a textbook: Earth. Faintly, I feel the handkerchief beneath my suit brush against my collarbone scar, and it takes me out of the memory—reminds me I’m real elsewhere—and my brain starts spinning.

Who is still alive who remembers Earth?

Everything shatters at that thought, the white sun fragmenting and the silver Heavenbreakers disintegrating into black, and I burst out of the memory gasping for air, ears ringing, head throbbing.

Where am I?

Reality, I think. Nerve fluid, tight suit, the saddle all around me, Heavenbreaker with me. It rings a thought at me sadly.

“miss”

Miss who? I ring back, fiercer. Was that your memory?

Silence.

No time to waste—I have to turn my attention forward. I blacked out, but for how long? The rise is still ushering us farther into space… I was out for thirty seconds, even if it felt like eternity. The status screen flashes: Red, 0. Blue, 0. Sevrith missed me, and I missed him. I saw Queen Astrix—a dead woman—and then…I remembered Earth? Heavenbreaker fought in the War, saw Earth, but machines don’t have memories. The camera drones click and adjust around us, and I suddenly understand in cold clarity: too small, too fast, too many. That’s why Heavenbreaker is uneasy around the cameras—they move like all those A3s did. But why would a steed be afraid of other…

The holoscreen mercifully pops up with a displeased Sevrith on it.

“Stop squirming, kid. You’re impressing no one.”

“You sound impressed,” I lilt. He snorts.

“Dravik should’ve told you. He had a duty to tell you what it means to ride, but now it’s up to me to show you.”

I freeze, Astrix’s question echoing: do you know what it means to ride? I don’t. But I know what it means to win.

The rise finishes, and I max the jets—go—blue-white plasma burning trails behind me. The comms cut automatically for descent, and I switch my lance into my other hand. There’s more pressure to hit in the second round if neither of us scored points in the first. He’ll go for a hit, but he’ll try to evade mine. Yatrice dodged my hit by rotating her pauldrons, the widest part of her, and Sevrith’s Everseer is proportionally even wider there. He has to know that’s where I’ll hit. He’ll dodge away, and I’ll be ready for him when he does.

The cry between steeds reverberates in my bones. Sevrith’s blue-green armor gleams the color of Earth. White light sparks between us, a tinder, an ignition, and the closer we draw with our steeds, the louder and brighter the world becomes. I make one last-second blink. One last-second thought.

The A3 steeds in that War memory… They were close to one another, but they never lit up like this. Never made noise like this.

Impact.

A sharp pain lodges in my shoulder, my left pauldron shattering and shards of silver armor spiraling into space. My eyes dart frantically to the status screen: Red, 1. Blue, 0. But I was ready! I was ready for his dodge, but…he never dodged at all. He didn’t even move. I hit him where he never planned to be in the first place, and I missed because of it.

This is the final rise. The final descent. The holoscreen pops up again.

“When they’re dead, what will you do?” Sevrith asks. He’s so still it’s as if his screen is lagging, brass horns on celadon helmet lowered. I swallow the lump in my throat.

“I will die, too.”

His voice softens. “If all your enemies were gone, Synali, what would you do?”

He’s painting me a world in which I don’t die—in which rest eludes me. If House Hauteclare was gone…I’d have no reason to ride. I’d have no reason to go on. I’d be alive, and even worse, purposeless. I’ve hung on to the edge of the abyss all this time, but without enemies, my fingers would grow weak. A different fear than any I’ve felt before sinks barbed teeth into my heart with no pendant to ease it. The memory wells up—the assassin’s hood, his blade, the blood, her throat—

“All that matters is moving forward,” I grit out. “The past cannot be undone.”

“That doesn’t mean it didn’t do something to you.”

Silence like calamity.

“it hurts” Heavenbreaker rings.

The machine says what I can’t, what I don’t, what I refuse to. I have my memories. The past isn’t pain—not all the time. It’s the smell of baking and the color of flowers, too. The future is not pointless.

I’m just afraid of living.

Sevrith raises his lance in a perfect mirror image of mine, like balance, and speaks. “Are you ready to learn your lesson, kid?”

I raise my helmet.

“Already have, old man.”