31. Argentum

argentum ~ī, n.

1. silver

2. a silver thing

I call Sevrith the worst thing a noble can be called—me.

“Bastard.”

Sevrith doesn’t stir in his hospital bed, dark hair splayed over the pillow. He’s not dead—the heartbeat monitor proves that much—but he can’t breathe without a machine doing it for him. The steady hiss of each inhale and exhale fills the empty room.

“Why give up your win for me? You were fine, and then—” I snarl. “You don’t even know me.”

Utter silence. My fists ball in his sheets. I would’ve lost if he didn’t put himself in this bed. He did this to himself. He let the spirals in by taking the handkerchief out, and they came out of his eyes. But why? Why surrender a win like that? It’s unthinkable.

He saved me. Twice.

My numb fingers flit over the screen at the end of his bed—blackened pictures like X-rays. It’s a brain—Sevrith’s—but something about it seems abnormal. The rainbow overlay shows spots of red and orange along the tissue, like a thermal map of some sort, but there are stark black spots with no color at all, hundreds of them—some small, some large. What do those spots mean?

The sliding door to Sevrith’s hospital room opens with a gentle shlick, and I drop the chart. From behind me are footsteps, the smell of flowers, and a deep-voiced, half-surprised, “H-Hauteclare?”

Rax. My body goes stiff and on point, hyperaware of his every twitch. I refuse to give him more than a passing glance, but without all the usual camera-friendly rider makeup, I catch hints of exhausted dark circles. Does he not sleep well in that noble feather bed of his? How tragic.

I straighten and gesture at Sevrith. “I saw silver come out of his eyes.”

Rax puts a vase of sunflowers on the bedside table and frowns. “The Lithroi man with the cane didn’t tell you about that?”

“No one’s told me anything, so now I’m forced to ask the likes of you,” I snap, baring my teeth at him to hide my soft tongue. He has no teeth to bare, or if he does he keeps them well-hidden under a veneer of soft grimness.

“It’s called overload.”

“I know what it’s called—what is it?”

“Right, you…you’ve probably never even seen them, huh? Since you didn’t go to the academy.” He opens his vis, clicking through a list of videos and finally opening one, projecting it large so I can see. It’s just black. Empty space.

“It’s nothing,” I deadpan.

“It’s actually a vid from a rider-restricted textbook, but nice try.”

“You facetious little—”

“Look closer,” he interrupts. I scowl and lean in until the hologram quietly buzzes inches from my face, until I can practically scent his body heat through the diffused plasma—clean herbs. It’s the same grainy four seconds played over and over—black space, glittering stars, and nothing else. Until something moves. Something huge and clear and glass-like ripples a patch of space in thick, serrated tendrils, the faintest of rainbow lights flickering in each one. The same indecipherable tangles as Saint Jorj’s doors. I pull away abruptly, throat hoarse.

“What…”

“That’s the enemy.” Rax shrugs. “Or the one glimpse the academy gives us of them, anyway.”

“How—” I swallow. “How is the enemy related to Sevrith’s condition?”

“Well, uh, we took the nerve fluid out of them when we killed ’em back in the War, and we figured out how it worked. Used it to make steeds. It lets us fuse completely different stuff together—metal with electricity, light with matter, human with machine. That’s how we got hard-light and saddles. It connects our minds to the metal of the steeds.”

I bite down hard on the world to keep it from spinning. “You’re telling me…the gel inside the saddle—”

“Is derived from the enemy’s nerve fluid. Yeah.”

“Isn’t that dangerous—to have a part of the enemy just…”

“Nah, they’re dead. We’re just taking the useful parts of their corpses. Like fur or meat, you know?”

I don’t know. I’ve never heard of this, not even in the wildest Beldeaux rumor. There’d be chaos if commoners even got a whiff of it. The enemy is the devil. The enemy is what killed us, forced us off Earth and into space, forced us into the Station, forced us into solitude and struggle. The idea of even a single part of the enemy being inside Heavenbreaker, being inside all the steeds… I’ve touched that gel. Swallowed it by accident. Sweated in it, bled in it—

My knees buckle. Rax’s hand instantly juts out and clasps my elbow, and like four months ago, my traitor body shoots electricity through itself and raises every hair at his touch.

“Whoa, you okay? Might wanna sit down—an eight-round match’ll take it out of you for sure.”

“Stop touching me.” I rip away. There’s a long moment as I glower at the end of Sevrith’s bed and Rax stares at my cheek…and then he smiles.

“You really hate looking at my face, huh?”

His handkerchief gift burns in my pocket. Stop trembling. A remnant, an echo; that’s all this fear is. Focus. I cannot let him see me weak. “The handkerchiefs—why do they keep the spirals away?”

He shrugs. “Sev used to just say it’s good luck, but…I’ve heard other riders say they interrupt the synaptic flow of the suit. The suit’s gotta make complete skin-to-skin contact for the mental connection between you and the steed to really stick, but the handkerchief interrupts that. Keeps you conscious of yourself.”

This time, his words make sense. When I blacked out and saw that memory, the feeling of the handkerchief on my body kept me from being completely immersed. I could think for myself, instead of just floating helplessly in the memory like I did during Heavenbreaker’s reboot.

Rax crosses his arms over his considerable chest. “Handkerchiefs keep the buildup low. Well, as much as they can, anyway.”

“Buildup of what?”

“Lithroi really didn’t tell you?” He makes a disapproving click of the tongue. “The nerve fluid is, uh, a little weird. It builds up in your body bit by bit every time you ride, until it reaches critical. And then—well. You overload like Sev did. Used to be a lot worse, but suits are better now. But, I mean…until suits got better, riders had to figure out their own ways, you know? And they found the handkerchief thing.”

I look at Sevrith lying still. Did he know when he approached me at the balcony railing that he was close to overload? That I might be his last ride?

“Some riders resist buildup better than others.” Rax sighs. “But even with the handkerchiefs, and no matter how naturally resistant you are, it gets everybody in the end. Unless you quit riding for good.”

“Every rider? Every single one overloads?”

He nods, the most solemn I’ve ever seen his smirking face be. “Unless you quit—”

“I’m never quitting.” My words come like knee-jerk, like trigger-pull. Rax watches me for a moment, the steady rhythm of Sevrith’s heartbeat sewing staccato between us. “Will he ever wake up?”

Rax shoves his hands in his pockets. “Nah. It’s a coma. There’s a special ward for them—their families keep ’em there till their bodies give out and they die proper.”

He says it so matter-of-factly, as if he came to terms with this long ago. Dravik didn’t tell me any of this…but we both know I won’t be riding for long—just until the final round of the Supernova Cup at the latest. What buildup I accumulate in the saddle is no doubt insignificant compared to years and years of riding. But someone like Rax… His parents put him in the steed as a child to gain status in House Velrayd. They knew overload would be his fate. Father sacrificed Mother and me, but Rax’s parents sacrificed him together. Again, pity rises in me. Again, I squash it.

“You’ll end up like Sevrith soon, then,” I say. “Since you’ve been riding for so long.”

Every muscle beneath his red breast coat seems to tense up, stronger, but his laugh sounds brittle. “Hopefully not.”

His chuckle dies at the sound of footsteps coming down the corridor outside; the whisper-shuffle of expensive fabric and hushed urgency. Two voices bounce back and forth.

“—certain, Doctor? His wife has so been looking forward to a son, and I a grandson.”

“I assure you, Duchess Freynille—your son remains entirely viable. The nurses will look after him, and should his wife require it, he will be here at her disposal.”

Duchess Freynille—Sevrith’s mother? And what was that about “viable”? My eyes dart to Rax for translation from noble tongue to common, but his face shows nothing. He merely reaches out and touches Sevrith’s bedpost one last time.

“Sorry, Sev.” His voice cracks.

“Were you—” I swallow the question.

“Yeah.” Rax smiles. “Sev taught me a lot.”

The truth yawns open. “He…he taught me some things, too.”

Hesitantly, I crawl my eyes up to Rax’s face, and my breath catches. He looks so terribly sad, his redwood eyes dimmed and his mouth a quiet line filled with regret. His weary expression reminds me of my own in the days after I lost Mother.

Rax turns on his heel and leaves, and I follow, not knowing what to say and knowing there’s nothing I can say. Comfort is pointless—he is the enemy.

We walk apart down the same white marble hall, the hospital lights bleaching everything pale. A pair passes—a doctor in a white coat and an older woman dressed in brass and celadon gems, her hair like a towering pillow and her eyes dark. Ahead of me, Rax gives a stiff bow to her.

“Duchess Freynille.”

“Rax!” Her bright smile sends chills down my spine—why is she smiling when her son is in an irreversible coma? “So good to see you. Congratulations on your win.”

I half expect Rax to revel in the attention, but he just nods and gives her another clipped bow. “Good day, Your Grace.”

The pair continues walking. They ignore me, but I stop and watch them go, the duchess prattling on.

“—Duke Freynille and I have settled on ‘Barquois’ if it’s a boy. ‘Telvira’ if it’s a girl; after my father’s sister, you see.”

Sevrith’s mother is smiling while her son lies comatose in bed. She talks of his future child’s name when he’ll never wake up again. They keep them in a special ward until they die. They keep them in a special ward until they die.

Words, and the words beneath.

I barely make it to a bathroom in time.

The hovercarriage back to Moonlight’s End feels like a fragile shell that could crack at any time, dump me into the pale, never-ending abyss of the magnetic field below. I clutch the cushions, trying to hold on to something as my insides free-float. The nobles will use Sevrith. They use all the riders who overload—breed them like dogs. Like pets. I allowed the brothel to use me to get the information I wanted, but Sevrith cannot allow anything. He’s brain-dead. And they don’t care.

My vis pinging is the only thing that saves me from spiraling—Jeria. Finally.

JERIA: I saw your match! Your win was amazing!

SYNALI: I lost, technically

JERIA: Well, you looked amazing doing it!

The victory feels hollow, sickly—nothing like my victory over Yatrice. Dishonorable. I download the attachment Jeria sends. Her instructions are clear: stand next to one of the exercise machines and send a request to link my vis to it. Her module will do the rest.

JERIA: The next time he logs into the manse systems, you’ll get a notification. It’ll sift through everything and send me back anything suspicious.

SYNALI: What do I do in the meantime?

JERIA: Nothing in particular. You’ll have remote access to his vis from yours, but only for 120 seconds after you initiate contact. Look around if you want—just don’t try to enter any password fields, or it’ll kick both of us out. Good luck!

Two minutes. It’s so little, but I’ll take any glimpse into Dravik’s secrets I can get.

I wait in his chair, the fireplace cold and the robot-dog lying at my feet colder. The simulated moonlight rises bright, washing the marble in ghostly nacre. The dog seems to sense my unease, and its leap into my lap startles me. It’s never gotten this close. I’m frozen until it settles, chin on its paws, and tentatively, I put one hand on its head. It may be metal, but stroking it comforts me all the same.

“What do you think of having a name?” I ask. “Something like…Luna?”

The dog wags its tail against my tunic in wordless agreement. The holographic grandfather clock ticks eleven, twelve, one, and when Luna jumps down with perked ears I know he’s finally home. His cane taps grow louder, passing the sitting room.

“You didn’t tell me,” I say. The cane stops, and Dravik’s voice peels velvet out of the night.

“Of what, brave one—overload? Surely such a long-term effect doesn’t concern you.”

I glare at a distant stain on the dining table from Quilliam’s cleaning, from when I couldn’t keep my dinner down thinking about Sevrith. About me. I walked into Madam Beldeaux’s brothel only half knowing what they’d do to me, but he took the kerchief out knowing full well.

“They use the overloaded riders,” I say. “Like cattle.”

“I thought you understood, Synali; for them, the blood must remain pure, but above all it must continue.”

He doesn’t sound surprised—as if he knew Sevrith’s demise was inevitable. They all know. Every noble knows how the riders end up, but they still send them into matches anyway. It’s demented. Sick. No—it’s their idea of honor. Dravik brushes sulfur dust off his cuffs—he’s been in Low Ward.

“Sevrith sacrificed himself for you, and now you feel guilty.”

“He was your friend,” I counter.

“I relinquished all friends when I left the royal family. Sevrith understood that.”

It’s unfair how easily the prince can read me—even more so after two months of training—but when he next logs into the manse systems, I’ll be able to read him, too. He comes to stand at the fireside, Luna stuck to his shoes with a wagging tail and big sapphire eyes.

“Can you kill Sevrith in the hospital?” I ask. “End it for him.”

“I could,” he says lightly. “But I will not.”

My nails dig into the armchair. “Why?”

“Because I believe he’s not as gone as we think.”

“He’s in a permanent coma. All overloaded riders are.”

The holographic grandfather clock ticks on. Dravik’s smile carves shadow. “That is what they say.”

What does he mean? He sounds like Sevrith, saying words but making no sense at all. Like Astrix. His portrait as a child across the hall is green-eyed and copper-haired, but now he looks just like my hallucination of her in the saddle. He made himself look like her—pale wheat-brown hair, and, although her eyes were unnaturally silver (why?), they might have once been gray like his post-surgery eyes.

“What are you trying to do, Dravik?”

Luna perks its gold ears up at the prince. All of it—this “game” of his—the pawn I am. The Supernova Cup, the king, the chessboard upon which we all sit—what exactly is he trying to do? This is your last chance to tell me before I have to hack it out of you.

The prince looks to his side at something—at that invisible someone who isn’t there, someone who always makes his eyes crinkle warmly. “Start over, I suppose.”

There’s nothing there—I know that. But when he’s gone and I get up from the armchair, a flicker catches my eye.

It’s just moonlight. Just the sickly white trees and their shadows through the window. It’s not the flutter of pale-brown hair. It’s not the hem of a blue-silver dress disappearing.

It’s not Luna’s tail happily wagging as if greeting someone.