CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

1664

YEAR OF THE CRUX

The Risen Wave

Somewhere

They don’t see anyone or talk to anyone for four days. There was a period of… forced unconsciousness after the Jeveni took them into custody, and when they woke, they were in a cell, which could be on a ship, or on a planet, or on a station. But they know, with a certainty, that they are still aboard The Risen Wave.

Meals appear at regular intervals, through a slot under the cell door. The food is generous, rich with the flavor profiles of Jeveni cuisine. The breakfast meal always includes a traditional mint reed, a hand-length, fibrous tube Lucos Alanye often lauded in his journals. The objects and customs of the Jeveni fascinated Alanye, a condescending fascination that sometimes made Six walk away from his recordings, exasperated. Discovering that they are descended of a Jeveni woman has brought Six a vindictive comfort, allowing them to conceive of their lineage as branching from her rather than the insipid Alanye. He was not the genocider that the Treble takes him for, but he was an opportunist and a fool, and Six’s disdain for him is tireless.

And yet, like him, they enjoy the mint reed. They sit on their cot with their back braced against the wall. They watch the door and chew the reed. The silence, the solitude, the waiting, are not difficult, after so many months of endless activity. Esek was so… much. Always the biggest personality in the room, always the focus of everyone’s ire and captivation. It was exhausting to be Esek.

Not that they didn’t relish it sometimes—a secret relish, a sensation of victory. Never more acute than when they were with Chono. When they could see and hear and talk with Chono, as Esek had, rather than from an inconspicuous distance.

They have heard nothing about her survival. They refuse any reality where she has died. When Jeveni descended on the train car, everyone pointing guns at Six till they were flat on their stomach with hands behind their back, all they cared about was the group of medics—two squatting down beside Liis Konye, three gathering around Chono. They watched Chono borne onto a stretcher and taken off the train car as they themself were being bound, and for a moment their eyes and Chono’s eyes locked, and Chono was alive, and then a dark shaft of unconsciousness cleaved them apart.

There is no reality where Chono has died.

On the fifth day, the door opens. Three armed Jeveni appear, wearing mountain-gray uniforms with the mask of Sajeven appliquéd on their chests. These are what the warriors who descended on Ketch Market were wearing, as well. Apparently, the Jeveni have a standing army. That’s good. They’ll need their own forces to protect them from the Kindom, going forward.

“Please come with us,” says one of the soldiers.

They expect to be shackled, or at least escorted under drawn guns, but the Jeveni do neither. Led by one, followed by the other two, they enter a nondescript hallway, then a kind of garage where a small roofless warcat waits for them. The soldiers drive them down what seems at first an interminable service tunnel. One of the Jeveni lights a cigarette and offers them one, an unexpected courtesy that reminds them of old stories about prisoners getting one last cigarette before execution. They decline. Esek never smoked.

“I hear you’re called Six,” says the soldier.

Ah. So. Was it Jun Ironway or Chono who convinced the Wheel who they are?

They nod to the soldier, who drags on his cigarette. “Funny name. D’ya know ‘six’ means ‘spider’ in Je?”

The corner of their mouth twitches as they watch the road ahead of them. “Yes.”

When the warcat pulls over, the smoking soldier takes a last drag and then grinds out the cigarette in a little metal ashtray in the door. The mundanity of it, after so much, is momentarily fascinating. They absurdly want to ask for a cigarette, just so they can stub it out in the square metal tin. But then the soldiers gesture them out of the vehicle, to a door in the service tunnel. A short flight of stairs later, and they are delivered into some kind of foyer, brightly lit and empty, but for one other person: a very young woman.

“Thank you, friends,” she says to the soldiers.

To Six’s surprise the soldiers go back the way they came, leaving Six alone with the stranger. Except she isn’t a stranger. Six knows exactly who she is.

They look at each other for several moments, before at last Effegen ten Crost asks, “What would you like me to call you?”

Six hesitates. The woman before them is nineteen, maybe twenty? She’s a foot shorter than Six at least; she’s plump and pretty, with greenish-hazel eyes, and it would be very easy to sneer at the idea of answering to such a young person. But Six knows they are not speaking to a girl. They’re answering to the Star of the Wheel.

At first they can’t answer at all. They examine her instead. Effegen is wearing a bright green robe with elaborate silver threadwork, her hair the color of rich dark soil, intricately braided into a crown. There are rings on her fingers and studs in her ears, black as pitch and red-veined. It can’t be real jevite. Real jevite would have paled by now, surely…

“Perhaps… your birth name?” Effegen says. Six’s nerves vibrate like the struck strings of a long-hidden instrument. They meet the girl’s hawkish eyes, intelligent and watchful. For a split second, she reminds Six of a young Alisiana. But the Star’s stare, though assessing, lacks that bite of cruelty. At their silence, she asks, “Or Sa Alanye?”

That name makes them want to growl. They answer, “Every name I have used has been a tool. I have never chosen a name because it mattered to me. You may call me whatever you wish to call me. All my names are the same to me.”

A low chuckle, belying her youth. “Cleric Chono said you would be mysterious.”

Six’s chest tightens, but they keep their stare impassive. “I take it Cleric Chono has survived?”

“She has. Putting those suture bots in her chest saved her life, and our doctors were able to clean up most of the mess. She’s still weak, but she’ll pull through.” A brief silence passes, Six keeping their expression flat, until Effegen ten Crost suddenly smiles, eyes sparkling. “Have you got any idea how strange it is to look at you?” she asks. Her smile brightens. “Esek Nightfoot was a master class of overblown emotionality. And here you are, wearing her face, but looking like you’ve never had a facial expression in your life. It is totally bizarre. Is this your natural inclination, to be expressionless?”

Six considers. At school, they were never accused of expressionlessness. They were known for a constant scowl, for an air of disdain and distrust that once got them taken aside by the sparring teacher. I know all the entertainments depict cloaksaan as these constantly grimacing behemoths, she’d said, but if you want to be a real cloak, you’ll have to learn to control that face of yours.

Later, when Six fled Principes in the cargo deck of a pirate ship, they realized their teacher was correct. They were too conspicuous. If they wanted to survive, they’d need a lot more skills than fighting prowess. They’d need resilience. Control. Brutality but also dispassion. They decided to mimic Chono. Chono had come to school already halfway to perfecting her emotionless facade, a survival instinct from a home she never talked about. Six determined to be like her, and wear composure like a veil.

It had probably saved their life, this decision. This first of many masks.

Realizing the Star is still watching them, Six finally answers, “It took eight facial surgeries to make me look like this. After each surgery, I had to exercise my facial muscles to prevent atrophy. Each time, I had to learn a new face. When I became Esek, no moment passed that I was not exercising my face like a marionette. After all that, there is… some relief to having no expression.”

Effegen nods sagely, though she’s still looking at them in a disquietingly maternal way.

“You’ve done a lot to yourself.” Six doesn’t respond. “After we arrested you, we injected you with a sedative. I apologize. We believed we were dealing with Esek Nightfoot and couldn’t risk leaving her conscious. While you were under, my casters extracted several encrypted data packets from your neural link. Or, to put it more honestly, Jun Ironway extracted them.” Six isn’t sure what happens to their face, but whatever it is, it makes Effegen smile kindly. “Again, forgive our violations. I believe Sa Ironway did it to prove you were not Esek Nightfoot. As you can imagine, we had our doubts. But the contents of those data packets answered a lot of questions we didn’t even know to ask.”

Still, Six is silent. They have been trying to get into the same room as the Wheel ever since they killed Esek in the Verdant tower. Even for them, a master of infiltration, of subterfuge, of finding things and people, the task proved impossible. So good at hiding, the Wheel. How else could they have survived? In the end, Jun Ironway and Masar Hawks were the best lead they found. They tracked those two space urchins across the Treble, and now, here they are. In the presence of Effegen ten Crost. The thing they’ve been aiming toward for years. Yet suddenly they are as shy as a kinschool student on day one, voiceless under the force of the history that’s brought them here.

The Star is not voiceless. She twirls her fingers, a youthful gesture, and bumps her wrist, tossing an array of images into the air, satellites of revelation orbiting their heads. It’s an eclectic collection: shipping manifests, union leader profiles, correspondences, bank accounts, legal records, and, most importantly, a notarized will…

“It’s taken us three days to come to any kind of theory of what you’ve done.” Effegen looks up at the holograms like a child watching clouds drift. “We thought at first you had simply consolidated the entire sevite industry under Esek Nightfoot. Under yourself, I should say. Given what Cleric Chono has told us about your long-standing rivalry with Sa Nightfoot, stealing the sevite industry from her makes sense as a kind of revenge. But that’s not what you’ve done, is it? Or… it’s not all you’ve done.”

Six says nothing. Six has waited over a decade for this moment, but suddenly they are exhausted. It’s as if they haven’t slept in years, and all the weight of what they’ve done instead of sleeping now lands with slow, crushing pressure. When they do speak, they whisper.

“It is my gift.”

Effegen cocks her head, quizzical as a bird, waiting for them to explain. Their throat feels dry. They swallow. “It began as revenge but… revenge was not enough.” A shiver runs down their spine, which is the memory of Esek’s whisper in their ear, a coax and a curse. But Esek was so small. She amounted to so little, in the end. “I do not need to tell you the jevite industry was more than anyone could ever avenge. Hundreds of years of theft. Of murder and rape and kidnapping and the destruction of your moon. Of my… ancestors’ moon. Revenge could never be enough. I wanted more than revenge. I wanted recompense. That is what I have done, Sa Crost. The entire sevite trade is mine now. And I am giving it to you.”

The Star looks at them for a long time, and if Six expected any particular reaction, they don’t know whether this stare is it or not. Everything feels fuzzy and muted now, a world behind sheets of water, and they are so sleepy. Now that it’s done, they would give anything for that cot in the cell. They would give anything to crawl into a quiet, dark place, and never emerge.

Effegen says, “That is quite a gift. I see that you distributed the various shares to myself and the other members of the Wheel. My kin and I are fugitives now. Certainly the Kindom will invalidate any transfer of assets? Surely they will invalidate you, the traitor Esek Nightfoot?”

Six sighs and nods. “The Cloaksaan and Clerisy, yes, they will try to. But Kindom law is complex and hypocritical, and easily manipulated if you have the right people in your pocket.”

“You mean the Secretaries.”

“I mean the Secretaries. Give your scholars more time to review the data packet. You will find I have… thought of everything.”

It will be difficult, of course. There will be legal challenges. And all of it hinges on Esek’s death—Six’s death—which they will have to fake before the transfer officially takes place. But they have used their clever allies to enact a beautiful and vicious revenge, one that will empower the sevite unions and force the First Families to ingratiate themselves to the Wheel. Even the transformation of their own body does not compete with the complexity and genius of what they have done with the sevite trade.

The Star looks at them thoughtfully, nodding. After a moment she says, “We found evidence in your packet—proof of the Kindom’s responsibility for the Jeveni Genocide. And Cleric Chono says that while she was Esek’s novitiate, you collected records that showed the link between the genocide and the Nightfoots. She says you sent them to her as part of some elaborate game with Esek. Why did you do all of that?”

It surprises Six that they aren’t too tired for the sudden warm sensation of amusement. “My purpose was… fourfold, there. First, I collected the evidence to make sure nothing threatened Nightfoot power before I could find a way to steal it. Second, I wished to retain evidence as my own insurance. Third, it kept Esek off the scent of my real purpose. Fourth…” They pause, and they very nearly laugh, but it would probably sound hysterical and they do not want to be hysterical in front of the Star.

Effegen, however, is onto them.

“You did it to fuck with her.”

They look at each other. The girl’s eyes are sparkling. One could almost think she doesn’t carry the weight of her people’s government on her back, a weight only increased, now the River is dead. Will they have elected Nikkelo sen Rieve’s replacement yet? They will need a strong Wheel, for the work ahead. If the light in this girl’s eyes means anything, then she will be equal to the task. And that, Six thinks—that will make it worthwhile, yes? What else can they tell themself, but that it will make everything worthwhile?

“Did you know we searched for you?”

The girl’s voice, the gentleness of it, jolts Six out of their thoughts as rudely as if they’d been struck. They stare at her. It’s not only her voice that’s gentle. Her sparkling eyes have softened. There’s a tenderness in her look that wasn’t there before. It makes Six flinch inside.

“What?” Their voice is flat.

The Star repeats, “We searched for you. In the past thirty years, we’ve searched for all the lost children of our ancestors. People like Masar have given up their names and their Jeveni tattoos to do it. Your great-great-grandmother was Drae sen Briit, Alanye’s lover. She managed to get off of Jeve in the first hours of the bombings, but succumbed to her injuries later. Her children had been safe on Kator for several months, and one of their descendants, your father, settled on Teros. When we first searched for you, we learned that he had died, and that a secretary took you for a ward. I assume you’re the one who killed that secretary twenty years ago? We tracked you as far as the kinschool on Principes, but by then, you had disappeared.” Six looks at her stonily, which seems not to disturb the girl at all. Her expression is earnest. “We searched for you. We didn’t forget you. But you’ve been so determined not to be found.”

“I was concerned with other matters.”

“Yes, we see that now.”

There’s the faintest hint of recrimination in it. All the years of trying to emulate Chono can’t stop Six’s jaw from tightening, can’t tamp the anger that rises up like a sob.

“And what could you have possibly given, if you had found me?” they demand.

“Purpose, for one. You have gifts, insights—we could have used them. But more than that, we simply wanted you to come home. We could have given you a home.”

Six very nearly steps back from her, as if from a threat. Effegen sighs. She twists her wrist, and the satellites of data vanish from the air. “I want to show you something. Will you come? They’re waiting for us.”

Six doesn’t have a chance to ask who “they” are before Effegen has turned away. Six follows her to the set of double doors on the opposite side of the foyer, but no sooner have they stepped through than they come to a startled halt.

The room is vast, and domed. Its whole breadth projects a limitless vista of stars. It’s a planetarium, like the one Six visited as a child on Teros. With Da. Before the adopting secretary. Before the kinschool. Before Esek. They stand still and gaze up as if they’ve never been on a spacecraft before, or a station even. It is so… big, that for a shocking moment they feel small. Small, as if they have forgotten they ever were. Small, like a pinprick. How immutable it is. How spectacular they feel, to be small in the face of something so wondrous, and quiet, and unending.

“This way, Sa Six,” says Effegen coaxingly.

But when Six looks the way she is going, their throat closes. The room hosts a large table, ringed with chairs where many occupants sit staring at them, and one voice says—

“Six.”

She’s twenty feet away, and half-shadowed by the dark of the planetarium. Six would know her anywhere. Six would feel her presence in a pitch-black room. She looks at them solemnly, her near death hanging over her like a shroud, face aged and weary. Six had not planned to tell her who they were. Six had always imagined that Chono would attack them, if she learned the truth. But that was hardly possible with her bleeding to death in that train car.

Chono’s eyes snap away, and it’s like the severance of a tight and vibrating thread. Released, Six blinks around at the rest of the table and approaches cautiously. There are other members of the Wheel in their green robes: a handsome middle-aged man, the Tree; a silver-haired woman with cool eyes, the Stone; and a person about Six’s age, fat and elegant, the Gale. No Nikkelo, no new River. They all watch Six’s approach with varying degrees of suspicion, and when Six sits down in a chair across from theirs, it reminds them of exams back at school—a somber jury waiting to see what they’d make of themself.

There are others at the table beside Chono. The pirate Masar Hawks—not really a pirate. The former cloaksaan Liis Konye, now sporting a new arm. When Six discovers Jun Ironway to their right, it actually startles them.

Sunstep.

That scrawny little kid they found in the Riin Kala safe house. Built like a reed and eyes full of fire that was much more than the fever raging through them. Six hadn’t expected her to survive. Certainly not to become this caster genius, this con artist turned world breaker. Of all the absurdities.

“I wasn’t sure they let you live,” Jun says, with feigned brightness.

Six looks at her flatly. “You hacked my neural link.”

An indolent shrug, but there’s a challenge in it. The caster is obviously curious about them, but also wary.

Chono wears no expression at all, though it is not her usual placid mask. There’s a rigidity, a forcedness. She is pretending.

“Were we right?” asks the Stone, her voice as rough as waves on the sand. She’s looking at Effegen. Effegen nods and the Stone looks at Six, some of her guardedness fading, though she does not appear welcoming.

The Gale, eyes a deep and watchful brown, says, “Then I suppose we can begin.”

Effegen smiles. “Yes. Let’s.”

Jun’s body shifts forward. “Begin what?”

The Star looks amused. “Masar tells me you have not stopped harassing him for information about where you are. We thought it best to make the situation clear to all of you, at the same time. I’m sorry if we have tried your patience.”

The caster sniffs. “I threw a Hood over every ship in your fleet and over this generation ship besides and I hacked us transport through a jump gate even though you refused to tell me the coordinates we were going to. I think I’ve earned a little impatience.”

Masar groans, “There’ll be no living with her.”

Jun answers pleasantly, “Fuck off,” and demands of Effegen, “Where in the godsdamned Black are we?”

The members of the Wheel look at one another, all eyes finally resolving on Effegen, who sits back in her chair again and manipulates the air with twisting fingers. Her cast grabs the overhead vista and turns it like a dial. Six winces from the disorientation of the stars above blurring, the room itself seeming to flow toward new coordinates. Then all at once something massive and unexpected floods into view.

A planet.

An ice-blue, cloud-strewn, moon-crowned wonder of a planet.

Six is too amazed to take note of anyone else’s reaction. They have a distant sense of someone, probably Jun, cursing under her breath, but they don’t look at her. They don’t even look at Chono, because how could they possibly? How, in this moment, could they do anything but stare in open wonder, and something akin to fear, at the gorgeous curve of a pale planet blotting out the stars? They have visited every planet in the Treble. Every moon. Every space station. They have stood upon the vast green savannas of Ma’kess, trekked the purple mountains of Kator, climbed down into the red clay gulches of Teros, and the jungle ravines of Braemin, and they have floated on their back in the planet-blanketing ocean of Quietus. And in all these places they have looked up into night skies pocked with celestial bodies, but none of those were this bright white orb of a planet now hanging before them.

Effegen says, “We call it Capamame.”

Named for a god. The dear friend, thinks Six. Little respected by his more powerful siblings but beloved of Sajeven and the Quietans. Chono used to tell his story at school. Six dares a glance in her direction, and she is gazing up at the planet with furrowed brow, lips parted.

Effegen explains, “Before our ancestors colonized the Treble, they considered a number of star systems, and a number of planets. Most were rejected because of either distance or habitability. Capamame failed on both counts. Too far away. Too difficult to colonize.” As she continues, an array of planetary data fills the air, which she narrates like a lecturer in a school room. “It’s comparable in size to Ma’kess, but has four moons, as you can see. It’s composed of four continents, which are altogether equal in land mass to the planet’s ocean. There is no terrestrial life beyond insects and microorganisms. There is ocean life, though we’re not sure of its extent. Its warmest recorded temperature is only twenty-two degrees, but if you stay within range of its equatorial line and are properly equipped, you can survive year-round. Which is what we intend to do.”

Six, whose head has been tilted back like an awestruck child’s, now snaps their chin down and looks sharply at Effegen. The young Star is already looking at them, and Six is convinced this whole speech was directed at them.

Jun Ironway asks, “Do you mean we’re orbiting this planet right now?”

“What, you think we’re just showing you pretty pictures?” retorts Masar.

“Um, fuck you, that report says this planet is forty light-years away from the Treble. How the hell did we get here?”

“By jump gate,” he says.

“You can’t just jump to another planet! You need a gate to jump to. You need—”

Suddenly the vista shifts again, rotating them around the ice planet until they’ve circled it entire, and there, balanced on the curving horizon, backlit by a distant, throbbing sun—there it hangs: the mercurial sphere of a jump gate. They sweep toward it, borne closer and closer, as if they are about to enter its shimmering mouth. To Six’s amazement, the very fact of the jump gate isn’t even the most surprising thing. It’s that it looks nothing like any gate they’ve seen before. None of the trappings of Kindom construction. None of the orbiting security stations. The gate is small; it is… spartan. While Kindom gates are gargantuan cages that both contain and constrain the interdimensional sphere, this gate is slim and elegant and invisible in places, a delicate silver latticework, a miracle of engineering.

After a few moments of stunned silence, Liis Konye asks, “How long did it take you to reach the planet by standard travel?”

Effegen ten Crost replies, “Sixty-three years. We began the journey in 1588, a year before our moon was destroyed. Lucos Alanye”—a glance at Six—“and the Kindom scrutiny he brought with him, forced us to speed up our timetable. The crew arrived in Capamame space in 1651.”

Liis nods. Then, bowing her head respectfully, she addresses all four of the Spokes, “Forgive me, Saan, but I studied the Jeveni when I was a student at my kinschool. Even allowing that your people hid a valuable jevite seam for centuries, you were never wealthy after the sevite trade devastated your moon. The resources needed to build a gate—to say nothing of purchasing a ship that could manage a journey that long—how did you do it?”

Effegen’s laugh surprises them, as do the responding smiles of the other members of the Wheel. Sharp, self-satisfied smiles. The Tree lays long-fingered hands on the table, tapping them thoughtfully. “How shall we say it…? You and Jun Ironway are not the only con artists in the history of the Black Ocean.”

Jun’s eyebrows hike upward, excitement in her eyes. “Are you saying you’re thieves? Oh, gods, please tell me you’re thieves. I knew Nikkelo looked like a pickpocket.”

The Stone huffs irritably, though there’s a quirk of humor at the corner of her mouth. “We are not thieves, Sa Ironway. After the jevite trade failed, and the Kindom abandoned us, we did what so many in the Treble do: We sent our best minds out to make their fortunes. They hid their tattoos, hid their origins, and became collectors. A couple of centuries and strict frugality were enough to amass a fortune. Our generations of poverty were in the service of a higher goal.”

Six thinks of Lucos Alanye, exasperated by the Jeveni’s spartan lifestyles. How they refused to use the hydroponics and casting equipment he brought them. Now Six realizes they took that equipment and reserved it for their eventual flight. Far-thinking and clever.

“Meanwhile,” says the Gale. “We mined our jevite seam for enough raw material to power our ship and a jump gate.”

“That was the financial side,” continues Effegen. “But it’s taken more than money. Over two thousand Jeveni gave up everything in order to spend their lives crossing the Black Ocean. They committed to make new families in transit, to have children, to raise their children and their grandchildren for one purpose: reach Capamame, build a gate, and make a way for the rest of us. They did all of this, knowing their ship might fail en route. Or they might reach Capamame, and find it truly uninhabitable. It’s only these past ten years that we’ve seen true cause for hope. A year since we successfully tested the gate. The Spokes of the Wheel are the only ones who know its coordinates. Which means no one can follow us here. Not even if they know the gate exists. This is why Nikkelo let himself be killed, rather than captured. This is our deliverance from the Kindom. This is something we will build for ourselves.”

At that, Jun Ironway leans forward, her brow furrowed. “Are you saying that all the Jeveni—the assimilationists and the collectives—have committed to this together?”

A dry smile from Effegen. “No people could boast a unanimous mission. Only a fraction of our population knew about this plan. We had intended to use Remembrance Day to share Capamame with our entire population so that each Jeveni could choose for themself. Instead, circumstances have forced us to bring everyone here—and we are still working through the ramifications of that. But we are committed to our secession from the Kindom. There is no other course for us.” She pauses, thoughtful. “It is a great irony… The Kindom has long suspected us of plotting treason. They even believed that we allied with Esek Nightfoot to stage a revolt. In a way, they were right. But not the way they thought.”

Six feels the following silence like a weight on their chest, before slowly, Effegen looks at them again. Her expression is unspeakably kind, but her words shatter their life.

“I’m afraid we don’t want the sevite industry, Sa Six. You see it’s… of no use to us. Running the sevite factories gave many of our people a way to live—but a difficult way, an unjust way, as corrupt at times as when we mined Jeve under the Kindom’s fist. To take control of such an industry—to wield it and maintain it… that would dishonor our god. I hope you can understand this. I hope you can make peace with it.”

Six stares at her. What can they say, after all, that wouldn’t be meaningless sounds masquerading as words? It’s all beyond language, for them.

Years.

Years and years and years. A whole life passed in dark corners and hidden alleys and empty rooms. A whole life of sweat-soaked, late-night exertions, till there wasn’t a weapon in the Treble they hadn’t mastered, nor an inch of their skin they hadn’t bruised or torn or calloused from overwork. Learning to treat their own wounds in isolation. Learning to speak new languages with no one to speak to. Learning new voices. Training the Six out of their vocal cords, and replacing it with Esek’s cruel drawl. Replacing their face and their hands and their skin with Esek so someday they could take, and then give away, everything. And what would Esek say to all of this, now? Esek would laugh. Yes, Six can see her, as she was in her final moments: laughing and gurgling, with their ear between her teeth. Her last blow, all mockery and defiance. Her last vow, to haunt them, even into their death.

“What is it you want from us?”

Chono’s voice splits the silence, more tired than Six remembers. Six looks at her. She is barely recovered. Yet she sits there with her typical proud posture and regards Effegen steadily.

The Star has been looking at Six all this time. Now, she takes in the rest of the room. “A fair question. What we want… is to give all our people a choice. Stay with us, or return to the Treble. You, Six, are a Jeveni, and so you’re entitled to that same choice. As for you three”—she looks at Chono, Jun, and Liis—“your choice is more complicated. Though we have made our plans as Jeveni, we are not the supremacists the Treble takes us for. Building a new world is a difficult enterprise. We need all kinds. There are quite a few non-Jeveni among us, including the last of the Ironways.”

Six glances quickly at Jun, and sees a new expression on her face, a kind of pure joy that she appears to be trying to control. Like someone embarrassed to be caught skipping. Six themself is baffled.

“How did you find them?” they demand, feeling a prick to their professional ego. “I hid them expertly.”

Effegen smiles. “We found them because of you. As I told you, we’ve been looking for you for years, with very few leads. Jun’s aunt married a Jeveni engineer on the farm station. She told him about the stranger who rescued her family. The engineer shared the lead with our collectors. It didn’t ultimately help us find you, Six, but the family left an impression.” She is practically beaming when she looks at Jun. “Your oldest cousin, Bene. He has your ferocity, I think. We could not bear to leave him behind.”

Jun beams with pride, tears in her eyes. Liis Konye puts a hand on the back of her neck, intimate and comforting, and Six looks away. They catch Chono’s eyes, just for a moment, but Chono breaks contact almost instantly.

Effegen continues, “We would never force you to remain with us on this planet, Jun, and it’s not my intention to dangle your family like a carrot. Everyone must make their own choice. What we’re asking of you is… a lot. Life on Capamame will be difficult. If it’s not the life you want, the jump gate is fully operational. We can send you back to the Treble, with all our gratitude for the service you have already rendered. Sa Konye, of course the same offer extends—”

“I go where Jun goes,” Konye interrupts.

Effegen ten Crost nods in respectful understanding, then she looks at Jun again. Jun is wiping her eyes. Six thinks about the day they met, the vehemence of this girl’s vow—that she would bring her family together again. Listening to her, they’d felt an unwelcome glimmer of affinity, knowing how much they would give to undo the deaths of their own family. And Jun Ironway’s determination, her grit and recklessness, these were things Six carried in their own heart, as well—that gave both of them the power to survive. The young caster clears her throat, striving for composure. “I have to discuss it with my entire family, but if they want to stay… I’m staying.”

Even as she says it, Jun’s eyes widen a little; she lets out a shuddering breath. Six knows what she is thinking. She is thinking that she has come to the end of a seemingly interminable fight. She is thinking, Hard life or not… I could finally rest. And Six thinks with a flutter in their stomach, So can I. They can let their life of hunting and scheming go. They can give themself to this other world, this Capamame, beyond the grip of the Hands. Surely Esek Nightfoot’s reach won’t extend so far? Surely, here, Six could escape the haunting she promised them, and find peace in the icy climes of a new world? All the work they’ve done, imagined, fought for—Effegen ten Crost wrecked it with a word. But now, she’s giving Six something new. And Six’s heart blooms with a feeling so foreign it almost frightens them: hope.

“And then there is you, Cleric Chono.”

Instantly, the descending cloud of calm shreds apart. Six’s dreaming heart leaps up and lodges in their throat as they turn sharp eyes back on Effegen. She and the other members of the Wheel are looking at Chono. Chono gazes back, tired and pale. Six feels pale, too. Because there will be no peace on Capamame if the Jeveni send Chono away.

Effegen says, “I admit there is… debate over what to do with you. Already we have reports from the Treble. Your kin say you are dead. Would it surprise you to know that quite a lot of people are talking about you on the casting net? They paint a picture that, I confess, we weren’t expecting. Talk of the good works you’ve done. Of the gaping hole you leave behind. The people on Pippashap have declared a month of mourning, and they burn lanterns to your memory. It’s all enough to make us think you are something different from the ones with whom you’ve comported, so—”

Chono interrupts, “But that comportment alone is a heavy mark against me.”

Tension alights at the table, like electricity sparking from one end to the other. Six, who has learned to scan a room for threats and refuge, scans it now—searches the faces of the Wheel, and Jun Ironway, and Liis Konye, for some hint of compassion. Liis’s expression is unreadable; Jun looks conflicted and cautious. Overall, it is not a promising scene.

Effegen nods. “That’s true. Whatever your works, you’re a Hand. Which is why some people have gone so far as to say we should execute you. There’s no need to panic, Sa Six.” A quick glance at them, both reassuring and stern, but Six’s heart doesn’t stop pounding. “We’ve put that idea aside. The more common opinion is we should simply send Cleric Chono back to the Treble. Let her have a resurrection. Of course, if you do go back, your kin may reframe you as a traitor. I predict they’ll torture you for information about our gate coordinates, which you won’t be able to give. It’s very possible they will execute you. Which is why another faction of the Jeveni think we should show you the mercy of our god, and let you remain here, where you’ll be safe. The Wheel itself has heard all these arguments. Before we make a decision, we thought we should give you a chance to state your case.”

Chono must feel Six looking at her, must feel the imploring intensity of their stare, but she doesn’t react to it. She simply straightens her shoulders, looking first at Effegen ten Crost, and then from each of the Spokes to the next. Six thinks of the first time they heard Chono recite prayers. The power and poetry of her voice. The orator in her. If she marshals those skills now, if she shows these people the beauty of her character and the humility of heart, all in that liquid, gods-blessed voice, then they will not send her back to the clutches of the Kindom.

Chono says, “I have no case to make, Sa. With your permission, I intend to return to the Treble right away.”

The surprise in the room has a whipcrack intensity, and Six’s chest is compressing so tight they can hardly breathe. Their mouth opens, their lips move, preparing to say something. Voice some protest—find some way to stop this—

But then, Chono looks at them.

“And you’re coming with me.”

They remember Esek Nightfoot stumbling back, impaled on the bloodletter Six flung at her. This moment feels like that. Impaled, and carrying the same brutal intimacy. There is no one else sitting at the table, anymore. There is only Chono with her storm cloud eyes. It is the first time since the train that she has really, truly looked at them, and Six holds that stare like a climbing rope—like it is the only thing preventing them from plummeting to their death. For once, Chono does not conceal her emotions. Her eyes search Six’s face, a scouring look. A look full of conflict and pain, as she tries to reconcile the face of her mentor with the person of her schoolkin. And Six cannot help her. All Six can do is try to fathom her terrible, incomprehensible words.

Softly, they ask, “Why would we do that?”

Chono has been sitting with her hands on her lap, but now she rests one of them on the table. She holds it there, tensely, as if she’s getting ready to strike something. She may seem perfectly steady to the others at the table, but Six has spent a lifetime studying Chono as closely as they studied Esek. Chono is not calm.

“What will happen to the sevite trade?” she asks.

Six hesitates, surprised. Then, irritation sets in. “I expect the Families and the Kindom will kill one another over it.”

“That’s right,” Chono says.

Her stare holds censure now—the righteous cleric, condemning evil. Six begins to understand, and a lance of rage goes through them. “It is not my responsibility.”

Chono is unyielding, unmoved. “You wrote to me for years. I’ve read everything you had locked away in your neural link. I know what you’ve done, to make sure Esek would inherit the matriarchy. To make sure the trade would belong to her, and all the people indebted to the trade would be indebted to her. You did everything to give Esek that power. And you succeeded. Esek has everything.”

“Esek is dead,” snaps Six.

“You are Esek now.”

Six is on their feet in an instant, shouting in fury and terror, “I am not!”

Chono never wavers. Her hand is still resting on the tabletop, an uncompleted gesture, and her eyes are huge and full of grief—but also demand. And accusation.

“You chose her, Six.”

“I did not.”

“We both did.”

Their breaths come raggedly. Chono holds them pinned, and Esek’s ghost flits through the room.

Chono says, “We both chose her. We chose to follow her. To learn from her. We became echoes of her, whether we wanted to or not—whether we were as bad as her or not. Now she’s dead, but we aren’t. We carry the responsibility for what we chose. We must make amends.”

This is unbearable. This is a sickness, if Chono believes it. Six grinds out with all the passion of a lifelong hatred, “Esek was a poison! The Nightfoots are a poison. What would you have me do? Redeem them?”

“What would you have had the Jeveni do, if they accepted the sevite industry?”

Six closes their mouth, stunned. In all the years of bringing their plan to fruition, this was a question they did not entertain. It was not for them to entertain, was it? To give a gift is to let it go, to release one’s ownership of it. The Wheel, whom they had known only from a distance, would make something beautiful from their gift, they were certain. Something to shame all the centuries of Kindom tyranny and Nightfoot greed. But Six had never planned to be a part of it.

Chono, they think, can read all of this on their face, and for the first time since they have reunited in this room, her look shifts to something… gentle. The change is more than Six can bear, and Six stands back from the table as if this will give them the leverage they need, when it all comes to violence. But it doesn’t come to violence. Quiet Chono looks at them gently. And it is the most terrible, excruciating, exquisite thing…

“It will have to be us now,” she tells them. “There is no absolution, otherwise. And I want to be absolved.” A desperate edge enters her voice; her eyes are wet. “Don’t you?”

You’ll spend your life having to convince everyone you’re me.

I’m going to fucking haunt you, Six, I swear it.

I’ll haunt you into the ground.

But what if Chono is there, too, when Esek comes haunting? Could any ghost pass through the bulwark that is Chono? Esek is a phantom. She is ashes in the wreckage of the Verdant tower, and Chono is a cleric who makes the beatitudes seem possible.

“Sa Six.”

The new voice cracks their awareness like a gunshot. Startled, blinking, they discover the room is full of people after all, and one of them is Effegen. Six stares at the girl, the Star of her people, who says, “Not all the Jeveni attended Remembrance Day, and not all will choose to stay on Capamame. And more than Jeveni have suffered because of the Kindom and the sevite trade. My people and I do not want the gift you’ve offered us. But I can’t help thinking about the ones we’re leaving behind. To stay and fight for them… that would be an extraordinary gift, too.”

You must do something extraordinary.

All around them there are eyes, expectant and curious and wary. Somewhere in the room is Esek, too, prowling.

It is not what they wanted. It is not what they planned.

Liis Konye says in her quiet, commanding voice, “The Kindom will seize the trade. There will be no check on their power. You and I know the Kindom, Sa. Can you bear for it to happen like that?”

Six blinks rapidly. They know so little of her. Only that she escaped. And Six wants to escape. They want to escape… but not without Chono.

“Six?” Chono whispers, beseeching.

Six faces her again. For years, they sent Chono letters, not always knowing why. But wanting, needing, to keep the thread between them taut, to send vibrations across it that would ensure Chono never forgot her kinschool friend. For years, they imagined a day when they stood before Chono again, when they looked into her eyes. Eyes that have always reminded them of Esek’s cruel game, her life-consuming offer. Now, suddenly, Six knows Chono’s eyes will remind them of Capamame, hereafter. Capamame, and promise, and choice.

They look at their old friend, their only friend, under the stars of the planetarium. They open their mouth and choose.