1. Acies

aciēs ~ēī, f.

1. a sharp edge

2. a battle line

When I met my father for the first time, we talked about roses, the theoretical feel of rain, and the lilac perfume that used to waft from Mother as she brushed my hair. Oh, and the dagger in my father’s back. We talked about that, too.

But only briefly.

Now he’s dead. And I probably will be soon, too.

I inhale and turn the gold-plated handles of his sink. Under the gentle water, I scrub my hands and watch his blood circle the drain. Bit by bit, I scrape him out from under my nails.

The lights of his office bathroom are soft, steady. Nothing like the constantly flickering fluorescents of my apartment in Low Ward. In the bright light, I can see every unraveling seam in my patched tunic beneath my janitor coat disguise, every old tear Mother fixed with plastic fibers as thread.

I shiver at the face staring back at me in the mirror. It looks like Father’s. Same black hair, although his was salt-and-pepper. Same cheeks set at a sharp angle.

And we both have the same thin blue eyes that look dead inside.

No. Not “have.” Had.

A knock at the office door jumps me out of my skin, then a silken voice on the other side calls out, “Duke Hauteclare?”

My heart catches in its own beat. Father’s attendant.

For a moment, my insides twist in anticipation, my breathing shallow. Is it now?

Do I die now, when he comes in and sees the blood pooling on the rug and draws a hard-light pistol? Do I die when he calls the guards and they airlock me into space to join Father’s corpse? Or do I get to wait in a cell before receiving their so-called justice—an excruciating death burning beneath a plasma vent?

I, Synali Emilia Woster, have killed my father, a duke of the glimmering court of Nova-King Ressinimus the Third. After so many months of planning, waiting, watching…I’ve done it. All that’s left now is to escape back into the alleys of Low Ward.

The attendant’s voice is guileless. “Your steed awaits in hangar six, Your Grace. They’ve issued the twenty-minute warning, so please send your chosen rider out shortly.”

Footsteps in the marble hall outside signal the attendant leaving—small miracles—and yet still my guts writhe. He’s not the only one out there waiting for me. The guards, the cameras… I planned my entrance route into the tourney hall down to the minute, but with revenge burning in my blood, my exit route was only ever a vague idea.

Only now do I realize it with cold finality—there is no exit.

I glance at the sleek white riding helmet on the marble counter, a gold lion with wings gracing the visor. The flying lion is the emblem of the noble House Hauteclare—my House, a House I didn’t know I was a part of until six months ago.

My father, Duke Hauteclare, ruled it like a despot, like all noble Houses are ruled—underhanded deals and drug rings and protecting weapons dealers. I grew up watching the noble Houses pillage and destroy Low Ward: slowly, insidiously, and then all at once when the honorable duke sent an assassin to murder Mother and me.

I survived. She did not.

My gaze falls onto the bloodstains on his office carpet, viscous and dark. Footsteps in red, drag marks in red. I turn away, my shoulders shaking. Space lingers outside the office window, even darker. Our Station is one of the seven made during the Knight’s War—a giant ark protecting the remnants of humanity after the enemy razed Earth’s surface with their laserfire. The knights eventually won, but in their last attack, the enemy flung the seven Stations across the universe with some mysterious power—and so we remain here, alone, orbiting the green gas giant Esther and trying desperately to terraform it and make contact with the other Stations.

I stare at Esther until my eyes water. I don’t know what to do now. My life since Mother died has been clear-cut: eating, sleeping, preparing—a list of steps I followed to the end. I touch my right wrist, the rectangle of implanted blue light blooming beneath my skin and projecting my vis into the air in a perfect hovering holograph. I tap the timer and set it for sixty seconds. One minute of weakness. That’s all I will allow myself.

I clutch Mother’s cross pendant around my neck until I feel it biting into my palm.

“It’s all right to cry, dearheart.”

I let my tears wash his blood splatter off my face. His blood ruined everything.

He killed her, and he tried to kill me. My father, my family, the man I never met, the man I dreamed about as a child, the strong and good man Mother always said he was… Why? No—I know why. I traded my body and soul these last six months to find out why.

Muffled sobs impact in my chest like half-swallowed pain, like fury, like despair. It all rises up again like a terrible wave as the blue vis digits count down starkly in the air: Five. Four. Three. Two.

One.

My tears slow and then stop. It’s not over. I killed Father, but he isn’t really gone. I’ve destroyed his body but not his world. My world was Mother, but his world was his reputation, his credits, his power and pride. He killed her for power. For his House. So long as House Hauteclare stands, he yet lives on.

I can’t dissolve a noble House; no one save for the king himself can do that. But I can disgrace one.

There is no escape, but I can still die on my own terms.

Suddenly, a dim roar pierces the office walls: the arena crowd. They wait outside for the greatest show of all—a riding tourney. Only pureblooded nobles are allowed to ride in such tourneys, but I will ignore this. I am the shame they whisper of in the Nova-King’s court, half Father’s noble blood and half Mother’s commoner blood—his bastard daughter.

And if I’m the reason Mother died, then I will be the reason House Hauteclare meets the same fate.

I have never ridden. Steeds—the giant mechsuits the nobility rides in tournaments—are not for commoners; they were killing machines designed for knights in the War.

Nobles must train from childhood to ride a steed, or they’ll die in its saddle.

I swallow down a stab of fear. Like most everyone in Low Ward, I’ve spent my childhood watching noble tourneys on my vis. I know what they look like from the outside and only the outside. Nobles participate, and nobles spectate. Bastards do not ride. It would be an unforgivable disgrace on whichever House let a bastard like me ride.

The extra rider’s suit in my father’s cabinet gleams, white tipped with gold. He used to ride for House Hauteclare before his age caught up with him, and the irony isn’t lost on me; now his old suit will allow me to disgrace his House once and for all. I will not die quietly. My death will be a blaze of revenge.

The massive sheaf is made of a patent leather–like material and double my size, but when I drape it over my head and press on the golden wrist cuffs, it conforms to my body with a single hiss as it snaps tight against my half-starved flesh.

I slide the pompous helmet onto my head, and in the cabinet’s reflection, the opaque visor consumes who I was and turns me into what I must be.

I will hide our family’s bloodstains as Father did—with white and gold all over.