48. Eminus

ēminus, adv.

1. (of fighting) at long range

2. from a distance

Today, there are enough people outside my hangar to warrant a single guard. Faint cheers go up as I approach. My scratches have been bandaged, the bruises from last night hidden beneath makeup. No gel shot burns in my throat, no woozy frog drug in my veins—my mind is clear and laser-focused.

Dravik stands in front of the small crowd with an aimless grin plastered on. “You look well.”

I have no patience for his mind games. “You sent the carriage for me last night.”

“Yes—you were quite under the weather. If I was a learned sort of man, I’d have called it an overdose meant to incapacitate you for several days.”

“How did you know where I was?”

“It hardly takes a steedcrafter to know where you went, Synali.”

I narrow my eyes. “But you knew when. Exactly.”

“Naturally. The biometric scanner I put in your pendant alerted me to your rapid heartrate. Far beyond healthy. I knew something had happened, and I sent the carriage for you.”

I clutch at the redwood around my neck, and my stomach churns. He must’ve altered it when I gave it to him to hold during my matches. “You’ve tagged me like a dog.”

“Like a girl who refuses to listen to those invested in her safety,” Dravik says coolly. “You’re quite lucky I kept tabs on Talize’s work prior to this, or I would never have been able to give you the antidote in time for you to come to this match.”

He couldn’t’ve known I would get in the carriage. I could’ve just overdosed on the dance floor. Unless…unless he was certain I’d met someone who’d help me into it—heard me talk to them. Rax. Mirelle. He saw them help me at the conference.

“You’ve put a mic in it, too,” I snarl.

Dravik’s smile grows. “I will not lose you.”

“I’m not yours to lose, Your Highness.”

“I’m curious—how did you do it?” he asks abruptly. “Break the lockdown. Your friend’s module again?”

“You’re pretending not to know to trick me into narrowing your approximations for you.”

“I’ve taught you too well.” The prince looks down at his cane and laughs softly. “After Olric, I was worried, but…it seems Heavenbreaker is progressing much faster than I thought. You’re doing splendidly, Synali.”

“What exactly am I doing ‘splendidly,’ Dravik? Riding your steed? Helping you start a civil war?”

His smile this time shines like a father’s. Proudly.

“Growing.”

We play the game in the shadows today.

The sun haloes Esther from behind, the Station shining like a gray brooch on her breast. The detritus of Theta-7 and the Endurance collision remains in the distance, removal crews jumping across pieces of loading decks and half-melted twists of metal, their projection tethers to the reclamation ship shimmering like neon-orange umbilical cords. The white orb of the Supernova Cup arena opens its netting, and Heavenbreaker and I jet through.

Talize is already here.

She floats under the suspended LED cross like a fetal child, her steed’s hands folded over each other in prayer. Her entire steed is without angles or sharpness—gradually spiraled legs and arms and an S-shaped torso. Its head is smooth with no features, save for the two ghostly fingertip indents where eyes would be, like a bride wearing a veil. The entire thing is painted in cream, with pale pink at the joints. The deepest pink of all is on its breastplate as a sigil: the holly and snake.

Snake and rabbit, forever at odds.

We near, and Talize uncoils, a holoscreen popping up in my helmet. Her pale-pink rider’s helmet shines, halo faintly catching her pleased expression through the visor. “Ah, Synali. Care to join me? I was saying a few words to our Lord before the match.”

Heavenbreaker jerks toward the invitation. “friend.”

I jerk back. we two friends. no one else.

Heavenbreaker makes the emotional equivalent of a flip at the thought we—a joyful thing. I focus on the handkerchief against my skin. Draw a line. Not a heavy one—not like Olric’s match—but something lighter, something like a nod, an acknowledgment at the edge of a pool and nothing more.

My extended silence has Talize straightening, delicate hands to her sides as she asks, “Do you know what I was praying for, Synali?”

I jet to the terrene tilt, the magnets pulling us in taut and flush. “Hopefully,” I say, “mercy.”

I shut the comms, but they come roaring back with the crowd and the hooting of the commentators:

“—bringing you a match smack-dab in the middle of the Supernova Cup’s A seed! Things are starting to get ugly, folks—but not before they get beautiful! Today’s sidereal contender needs no introduction; she’s the undisputed winner of the Nova-Court’s comeliness pageant four years and running—please welcome the glamorous vixen of House Michel, Talize san Michel, and her steed, Sineater!”

The crowd blasts their resounding approval in my ears.

“Lady Talize is a real heavyweight in the Cruiser-class riders, Gress. She’s got an eye for accuracy we rarely see on the field.”

“Or is it an eye for weakness, Bero?”

“That’s a great point, Gress—she’s a rider who watches her opponent carefully, pinpoints their tender spots, and then goes in for the kill. Real exciting to see what she’ll do today against our next contender—a true firecracker with little predictability and even less prudence! She’s made it this far on sheer grit, clinging to precipices other riders would’ve considered impossible! No one can doubt her determination; please welcome Synali von Hauteclare and her steed, Heavenbreaker!”

My hands clench. Every word of his introduction for me screams “desperate” without once saying it.

“Riders, ready your tilts for the first round!”

In a blink, Talize turns and jets to her tilt, leaving trails of pink plasma in her wake. She’s fast. But I’ve seen faster.

“Let the countdown to the first round begin! In the name of God, King, and Station!”

The roar of the crowd echoes him. Sineater raises its pink lance. Talize’s holoscreen pops up again. “There’s no worth in suffering without release, Synali. I tried to give you release last night, yet you refused it.”

“Three, two, one—”

“I offer it to you again, little lamb.”

A threat. A cut-off silence as all comms close for descent. A breath. A moment.

go.

The instant roar of Heavenbreaker’s jets at full power floods my ears. The steed’s on me but not heavy—with me but not suffocating or too far away. It hovers at just the right distance, inches above my mind, taut and ready. Talize stays farther out on the tilt than anyone I’ve ever fought. It’s like she’s orbiting another planet, another grav-gen, another arena entirely. She’s avoiding me. No—leading me; a matador waving a refined silken flag.

But the animal has learned about traps, now.

Grav-gen blue consumes us. She moves wider, but we’re faster. I pull our shoulders in, lean deep left, and lock on. The g-forces peel me off myself, but they can’t peel Heavenbreaker and me apart anymore. Talize’s lance spears forward, all her Cruiser power focused on fighting the gravity pull with her arm as she angles the lance inside.

I have just enough time to blink before the scream.

FRIEND

My ears ring, brute-force urgency bashed against my brain—it’s the first time I’ve heard Heavenbreaker shout. Rejoice. The idea of friend is suddenly everywhere in the saddle (Rax Mirelle Jeria happiness gratitude safety looks like me same as me) and all-consuming, and Heavenbreaker goes limp—opens itself up to Sineater. It doesn’t want to fight. It wants to drink, to laugh, to touch something that looks like it, but this is my fault. I taught the true AI a too-true thing, and it’s running wild with it, and my frantic correction is a blood-curdling siren, a bell smashed with the biggest mallet I have.

NOT FRIEND.

I wrench with all my might.

Impact.

The stars spin, Sineater’s cream-and-pink lance just barely missing me. The rise takes us out, momentum jerking me cruelly around the saddle. I smash in on myself, rider suit squeaking against the gel as it balloons out, surface tension the only thing keeping me in and a single word keeping my bouncing brain on track: jets jets jets. I blast every jet in rapid succession and neutralize our wild speed. Red, 0. Blue, 0. The comms flicker on.

“I gave you a chance to accept His grace,” Talize says. “Little Nightshade and the antidote in the tea—this you refused. Much like our Father warns us with our good conscience, I, too, gave you leeway, and you’ve scorned my charity wholeheartedly.”

Sineater raises its lance.

“All the fighting you’re doing for Sir Lithroi, and all the killing he’s doing for you.” Talize sighs. “The Lord will forgive that, Synali. I can hear His love for you even now, calling out for you to accept Him. He would take away your suffering and use me as His instrument to do so…all it requires of you is to be still; to listen to your heart, to relinquish this dire sin of wrath you hold so dear and accept the divine in forgiveness. Would your mother not want you to live in His light?”

I grip my silver lance harder. Talize’s voice lowers to nothing but a whisper.

“Do you not wish to live gently, lamb?”

“Gently?” I snarl. “Did you let us live gently, noble? Did they kill my mother gently? They used her and discarded her and then killed her in front of me like she was nothing, and your king and your god allowed it.”

Heavenbreaker bristles as my anger fills the saddle gradually—not searing heat like Olric but a steady burn. It flashes me a memory again: the A3 and A4 steeds holding hands but this time covered in rust. Newer, modern steeds arrive and separate the two, forcing their hands apart. The gold A4 steed drifts away from the silver A3’s vision, and I feel a not-me surge of utter rage toward the newer steeds for separating them.

not friend, Heavenbreaker asserts.

The descent comes. Talize san Michel tries to stay far away again, but I no longer have patience for her games. I come in farther and slingshot diagonally across the tilt before terminus. A crash isn’t illegal as long as the lance hits first.

If she wants to drink pain, I will drown her in it.

We speed toward each other, and she stutters when she realizes what I’m doing—Sineater jerks back but not away. The g-forces are too strong; she can’t get away anymore. She can only fight, and she knows that. Her pink lance moves to confuse me, blurring what direction she’s coming from—like needle into fabric, it positions so quickly I can barely follow—up, more left, underneath. Heavenbreaker wants to be close to Sineater, to hold hands with another steed again, and its wants and my wants start to blend; Rax and Mirelle and gel shots toasting and his chest against mine, and I understand all at once—enemy/friend—fire/fuel. Entropy. Energy. Words mean more things below the surface. I am a rider in the Supernova Cup. I’m going down in a dark blaze of unglory, and I need fuel to continue burning. Enemies, friends, love and hate—I will experience it all and burn brighter for it.

Before I die, I will live.

bow, I coax. properly greet our not-friend.

Heavenbreaker lowers its head eagerly, Talize’s lance sliding just between the hollow curve of our crescent-moon helmet. The cry, the light, the thrust.

Impact.

We compact. Metal crushes on metal, steed-on-steed crushing into each other—glass and gears and cables explode, and we spin out like two birds in death dives. The g-forces play with my vertebrae, twisting me one way until I manage to turn on a single jet and stop our death-spin momentum. We float in the wake of the aftermath. Heavenbreaker sounds faint, injured but happy.

“close to friend.”

My insides feel twisted up—pain all over. Talize and I are a travesty of cream and blue smashed together by a giant, two metal dolls sharing the same twisted right side. The crowd roars.

My silver lance pierces through her pink forehead, and I snarl into her fractured helmet: “Go to hell.”