71. Universus

ūniversus ~a ~um, a.

1. whole, entire

2. universal

A vase waits in my tourney hall dressing room with a single tiger lily in it, a note wrapped ’round its neck in twine and gold ink.

Until eternity,

J.

I can hear it—the meaning beneath the ink, beneath his words. It’s inevitable that we’ll meet. Like the eternity of space or the loop of the rise and the descent, he and I will inevitably meet. In the tourney hall, I stare at the Ressinimus banner hanging next to the Lithroi banner. Gold and silver. A4 and A3, holding hands. I am Dravik’s pawn, and J is the king’s. Gold dragon, the sun. Silver rabbit, the moon.

Hunting each other forever across the heavens.

Mirelle’s father was named Grigor Ashadi-Hauteclare.

He was the tall, good-looking sort with a salt-and-pepper beard, his eyes the warmest brown—he didn’t choose to wear the Hauteclare eyes even though he married into them. Still, their winter poison eventually reached him. Grigor went with the assassin to make sure the job was done properly that night—insurance for a family who couldn’t leave anything to chance.

In the dressing room, I watch the video Dravik sent over and over. Grigor in a thick coat and disguising hat. Neon Low Ward reflected in puddles at his shoes, too finely made to be anything but noble. It’s always the shoes that give them away—they never sacrifice their comfort for anyone. His eyes dart every which way down the alley as he keeps watch, as if expecting the worst at any time. The video is only twenty seconds—surveillance-drone footage, possibly. A nobleman lingering in alleys is a commonplace sight in Low Ward; always waiting, always looking. Always reaping advantage.

Preying.

A church cross hangs its shadow over Grigor as he stands outside a familiar patched-tin door. The ten o’clock tram wails overhead. As he coughs into his fine leather gloves, my mother’s throat is slit. Twenty seconds replayed over and over, but my eyes never flicker away from him, the silent knife of knowledge twisting in my brain; if she hadn’t given birth to me, she’d still be alive. The Spider’s Hand assassin comes out of the door on the vis, and my eyes drink in every detail: his lean body only hidden so much by the dark, finely scaled armor, his face obscured by that nightmare cowl.

“Is it done?” Grigor asks the assassin worriedly—worried for himself, for the family, yet not for the family inside that door. The cowl nods.

“Both of them are dead.”

Why did he lie? I knew he did, or in the six months I spent plotting Father’s death they would’ve sent someone else to finish me. I lived for six months thinking each time I rested my head on my pillow it’d be my last, my throat slit in the night. My finger switches back and forth, rewinding to hear his one sentence ad infinitum so I can memorize it.

“Then let us hurry away before someone sees,” Grigor hisses urgently. The video loops. He’ll never speak again. Dravik sent pictures of his body—just his feet hanging in those beautiful leather shoes.

The door to the dressing room suddenly creaks open, and the makeup artist comes in, all smiles. I shut the vis quickly.

“Oh, that’s a gorgeous flower.” She looks at J’s vase. “I think that one means someone’s proud of you.”

I say nothing. She clears her throat.

“It’s an important day today, isn’t it? One of your last matches. And against the amazing Lady Mirelle, no less.”

A quiet.

“N-Not that you aren’t amazing, too! I watch all your matches with my kids…we love them! You’re such a unique rider. The way you keep coming back stronger against all those nobles—it’s inspiring.” Her smile behind me seems bigger in the mirror. “Your parents must be very proud.”

“I killed my parents.”

Her fingers stutter, and her brush falls. It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud, bitter and true, and it will never hurt any less.

“I’m sorry—I’m sorry I assumed.” Her eyes move to her paint pots almost desperately. “Did you have…um. Have a color in mind for today?”

The rainbow is laid out before me—gold catching my eye, red catching my eye. But there was only ever one real color for me. “Black.”

I stare at my darkly lined eyes in the mirror until the fifteen-minute siren rings out. It reflects my face back at me; not as thin as I used to be. Not as terrified, some red back in my cheeks—like Mother before her sickness ate her. I look like her. Even if she’s gone, even if my mind is eaten completely, even if I don’t remember what her face looks like, I can still see her in me.

The crowd seethes outside my chamber.

Dravik stands beneath the Lithroi banner, unbothered and ringed by three dozen private security guards in full silver armor. They allow me and only me into the bubble of faux calm. I walk past him and to the hangar door. The prince knows I’ve studied Mirelle Ashadi-Hauteclare most of all. His words ring after me.

“She is very good.”

“I know,” I agree over my shoulder. “But I will be better.”

Inside the hangar, the light of the saddle beckons. And this time, a woman waits beside it. I walk toward her. She doesn’t waver, doesn’t disappear—her outline is strong and clear, her pale hair and bluish dress fluttering in a nonexistent breeze as she smiles at me. Her mouth moves, every bell-word ringing impossibly deep in the hangar.

“do you know what it means to ride?”

No. Yes. How would I even begin? To ride is so many different things at once. It’s pain and death and bravery. It is both striving and giving up. It’s moving and moving again better. It’s both blistering heat and bone-chilling cold, lust and battle-lust; silence and screaming in silence. It’s escaping reality and facing it. It’s when two people meet at the very center of their beings with fear, and without fear.

It means different things to different riders.

Dravik was right; riders are riders because they impact. I’ve impacted so many times, now. I’ve changed since the beginning, and unchanged. I look up at marble walls, at glass ceilings, at space; at Heavenbreaker’s massive helmet outside the hangar—the graceful crescent gleaming silver like a moon. Like overload. I look into Astrix vel Lithroi’s silver eyes, into the very center of her tiny pupils, like sun-closed pinpricks.

“do you know what it means to ride?”

“I will move forward until I do.”

“Gooooood morning, ladies and gentlefolk! I hope you’ve all had your rest, because you’ll need every drop of it to watch today’s scintillating match between two rider heavyweights battling it out for their position in the quarterfinals!”

“Gress, it’s more accurate to only call one of them a heavyweight, considering this is the other’s very first tourney.”

“Great point, Bero. Even more reason to keep your eyes glued to the vis, folks! We’ll be back for first tilt after these messages from our sponsors! Don’t go anywhere, or we might chug your ale!”

The depressurized hatch drops away from beneath Heavenbreaker’s greaves, and we fall into weightless, star-studded space. jets. The saddle shudders, my eardrums crackling. The thrum of it moves through both of us, a harp string plucked hard. Courage. Both of us vibrate at the same intensity, the same high note rung inside together—a far cry from our fearful beginning.

us.

Gold plasma streaks in the distance, and the arena opens on either side at the same time, Mirelle and I entering in the same breath. We go still in the same breath, white and blue steeds frozen opposite each other. The holoscreen pops up with an impeccable white rider’s suit; a suit I remember still—every cling of it to my body, the sensation of being trapped in it, of being them. The winged lion splashes proudly gold over her helmet, and on her forehead is a perfect halo—blacklight catching the gold of her eyes. Her father is dead because of me. But I gave him his chance to come forward. I gave them all their chance.

And so too does Mirelle Ashadi-Hauteclare give me mine.

“This is my last warning.” She says it like frostbitten steel, a cruel bent to her voice where pride used to be. “Surrender now, murderer, or you will regret it.”

they did not regret it when they slit my mother’s throat.

Mirelle is them and yet not them; she doesn’t hide or try to stab me from the back. She hates me, but she’s always come at me from the front, strong and true. She is noble. A knight, almost. In another life, we are friends. sisters.

My head tilt, an easy thing. My smile, easier. “Make me.”

I cut comms and jet for my tilt, and she does the same. Finally, I get to see Ghostwinder with my own eyes—the herald of my father, the messenger of his will. It’s an immaculate recreation of the finest paintings, of the naked and the damned sculpted in impossibly smooth muscle—more human than Talize’s Sineater, even, and yet softly striving beyond humanity. Every part of it is perfectly balanced in the torso and arms and waist. Gentle swells of metal imitate human muscle on the ribs, the thighs, the biceps. In stark contrast to all the mortal humility, it bears an otherworldly mane attached to the faintly leonine helmet that flows out in pure gold hard-light. The whole of it is painted paper white, and yet it has gold fingers, gold feet—everything that touches the world stained in gold.

The winged-lion sigil cuts gold in the very center of its chest.

The cheers are loud for but a second, everything going quiet as something shifts under my skin. Our skin. I didn’t move, but something moves inside me, long and under—a new thing between Heavenbreaker and me. Not instinct or memory; it’s a real, physical sensation slithering under the material of my suit and along my spine, up my back, between my shoulder blades.

Something’s in here with me. And this time I feel it not in my mind but in my body.

Fear drills at my edges, but inevitability sews me back together; one circle left—every moment has led to this.

My own resolve reverberates, Heavenbreaker’s presence acting like a wall the sound bounces off. I have pity for my opponent, for once—pity that she’ll never understand, pity for her mistake of loving others without question, pity for being born into a House of winter and rot. pity that we couldn’t stand together, just once. Honor or no honor, I have no doubt she’ll try to kill me for what I’ve done.

That, too, is what it means to ride.

“Riders, prepare yourselves for first tilt!”

The tilts right themselves with a metallic clank, locking into place. Mirelle’s gauntlet instantly goes full with her white lance. Heavenbreaker’s lance appears in my hand like quicksilver. The Station slowly rotates in space, roaring into the mouth of the cold dragon:

“In the name of God, King, and Station!”