A series of images flashed through Scout’s mind: Clementine’s mouth contorted in an endless scream with Ruth’s too-still body beside her, the strange little device Warrior had perched on Ruth’s belly to learn what had killed her.
Ruth’s body wrapped in a sheet between Viola’s and Liv’s. Scout had stood over them, wanting to say some words but not knowing what words to say.
Scout triggering the explosives that collapsed the entire compound hidden deep under the surface of Amatheon.
But only one real thought would form in her mind, although it repeated ever faster on a desperate loop.
How much does he know?
Daisy let go of Scout’s hand and straightened to her full height. Now that fleeing without being seen was no longer possible, she had no qualms about confrontation.
Scout wasn’t so sure that was a good idea. She tried to keep her body between Daisy and the governor, but he brushed past her to look down at Daisy’s upturned face. He raised a hand, not quite touching the strands of her closely-cut hair.
“Not Clementine,” he said, but there was still a question in his eyes.
“I’m her sister, Daisy,” Daisy said. “Clementine is dead.”
“Yes, I know,” he said. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Your loss too,” Daisy said.
“My loss, but also my fault,” he said. “There are so many things I wish I could have done differently.”
“Is that why you’re here?” Scout asked.
He looked over at her as if suddenly noticing she was there. “You’re from Amatheon as well?” he asked.
“Sunshine Valley, originally,” Scout said. He flinched, recognizing the name of one of the cities destroyed in the war. “My name is Scout Shannon,” she said, bracing herself, uncertain of how much he knew. But if her name was familiar to him, he didn’t show it. He just nodded absentmindedly.
“You’re here for the court case,” Daisy persisted.
“Yes,” he said. “The tribunal enforcers fetched me, right out of a council meeting. Now I’m here, but I don’t think anything I say is going to make any difference. I can see it in the eyes of those three judges. They already know their answer. This is all just formality. A time-wasting formality.”
“They are giving control of Amatheon to the Months,” Scout said, her hands tightening into fists.
“Who?” the governor asked.
“Mai and Jun Tajaki,” Scout said.
“The sisters? Oh no,” he said, shaking his head with absolute surety. “No, Bo Tajaki is who we will answer to soon.”
“You don’t think that’s the best outcome?” Scout asked.
“Absolutely,” the governor said. “I’ve only been here for two days, but already Lord Tajaki and I have shared a great rapport. He has great ideas for improving life on Amatheon and knows exactly what my role should be in implementing them.”
“So why are you so sad?” Scout asked.
“Because none of it’s going to matter,” he said. “The tribunal court requires my presence here for four more days. Just some formality, they say. But in four more days, life on the surface and in orbit around Amatheon will likely be destroyed.”
“What do you mean?” Scout asked.
“War is breaking out, and because I’m here, there is no one there to stop it.”
“War,” Daisy said.
“There’s a lot I didn’t tell you,” Scout said, her voice pitched low, but the governor looked at her intently. Clearly, he wanted her to go on. “The rebels have what your daughter was bringing to them. I tried to keep it away from them, but I couldn’t. They know about the gun under construction.”
“I’ve tried to block that monstrosity at every turn,” the governor said, pressing one fist to his mouth as if to hold back his own frustrated anger. “I did block it, officially. Not that it mattered. Our laws no longer matter. Not even to my own council. I’ve long suspected they were working against me, but I didn’t want to act without proof. I regret that now.”
“It’s going to be a three-way war,” Scout said. “Planet Dwellers, Space Farers, and rebels, all fighting each other.”
“No,” the governor said. “Not that it matters in the bigger picture, but we lost control of that gun some time ago. And the guns that date back to the first war have fallen into disrepair. My government is out of the fight. Our people will just be collateral damage now.”
“Lost control?” Daisy repeated. “How?”
“The rebels have it,” Scout guessed.
The governor nodded. “It won’t matter who fires it,” he said. “The Space Farers will retaliate. Life on the surface will be wiped out long before I can get back there.”
“So leave now,” Daisy said. “I can get you a ship.”
The governor’s eyebrows raised. But then he shook his head. “No, it’s quite impossible. I’m being monitored at all times. The tracker is irremovable. I cannot leave until the tribunal court dismisses me.”
“Is there anyone back home you can get a message to? Anyone you trust?” Scout asked.
“No one, not anymore,” the governor said. “Someone has been turning my council members against me, against our planet’s interests. I thought it was just one or two, but I’m increasingly certain it’s all of them. I don’t know who or why or what they want. I just know there is no longer anyone I can trust.”
“It’s the Months,” Scout said, looking to Daisy. “They know they’re going to lose this. They would rather see it all destroyed than not own it.”
“Are you sure?” the governor asked, then grasped Scout’s arm to lean closer to her. “Can you prove it?”
“Yes,” Scout said, but was forced to add, “and no.”
The governor looked like he wanted to say more, but a clutch of Bo’s lawyers came into the room. Scout saw to her surprise that they were all dressed in different colors. When she had been on Bo’s ship, everyone had worn the same color to suit his whim, the color changing as his whims changed.
It seemed that he had given up a measure of control. Scout was pleased he had listened to her.
The governor released her arm and turned to the lawyers, but his release was more of a shove, a hint that she should make herself scarce. Daisy was already fading back against the wall, slipping out the door to the hallway beyond. Scout ducked her head, flittering unnoticed through the mass of chattering lawyers.
Scout was torn between relief that he didn’t know she had been there when his daughter died and a more complicated, confused, disappointed sort of feeling.
Had she gotten that used to everyone just knowing who she was? Which was ridiculous. She was a bike messenger from a planet so remote it was literally sealed off from the rest of the galaxy.
Granted he had been from the same planet, but still. And anyway, it was better that he didn’t know her. It saved telling the story of everything that had happened in the underground compound during that solar storm.
They were back out in the hallway, and Scout looked at the moving platform, which only ran in one direction. She was just lamenting the long walk back and considering trying to bust out one of the windows so she could ride out on her glider when Daisy caught her elbow, directing her through one of the open doorways. This courtroom was empty, the only light from the hallway behind them and through another open door on the far side of the room. Beyond that door was another hallway, this one with a moving walkway running back towards the main door.
Without a word, Daisy and Scout rode the walkway until it ended, then went down the steps and back out to the plaza.
“What now?” Scout asked as Daisy led the way past the fountain. “Are you going back to work?”
“Work?” Daisy said. “No, we need to find Sparrow.”
“Sparrow?”
“If your hunch is right, and it is the Months behind everything, she’s our best bet to find proof.”
“What good will proof do?” Scout asked. “We bring it back here, and then what? Someone is holding the governor here for no reason. We’ll just end up trapped here with him. He said he can’t trust anyone on Amatheon. I don’t think we can trust anyone here either,” Scout said.
“Maybe not,” Daisy said. “But I still want reliable info before we act.”
“Did you hear something about where we can find Sparrow?” Scout asked as Daisy led the way through the arches of the public house and back into the marketplace.
“No,” Daisy said.
“So this is hopeless,” Scout said.
“I know it’s not how we wanted to play it,” Daisy said. “But I’m here with you, so I think it’s our best bet.”
“What’s our best bet?”
“We’re going to let your pursuers come to us.”
It took a lot longer than Scout would have liked. Soon her stomach was growling so loudly that even Daisy could hear it. She stopped at a food cart and got her a skewer of grilled fish and another of vegetables, and Scout ate as they continued to roam down the most remote, narrowest alleys they could find.
There were a lot of places in the marketplace that were ripe for an ambush. Too many.
“We should get back,” Scout said some hours later. “Or at least one of us should. The dogs need to be let out.”
“I guess you’re right,” Daisy said, disappointment clear on her face. But then the corners of her mouth quirked as if she were fighting a smile. Scout looked at her, but she just raised hands.
“We surrender,” she said, and Scout turned to see five kids all dressed in black walking up behind them. She looked the other way and saw three more blocking the only other exit.
“Yes, we surrender,” she said, letting one of them take her glider from her. “Take us to your leader?”
None of them said a word, just led the way down a maze of alleys to another public house. It was nowhere near as large as the one where Daisy worked, but this one too had been tunneled into the stone of the bridge itself to gain a sublevel. There were no floating platforms here, and Scout had to duck to get her head under the coarsely made wood floor as she followed the steps cut into the stone down to a dark basement.
“I hope this wasn’t a bad idea,” she whispered to Daisy. Daisy had enhanced hearing; Scout had to just barely speak for her to hear, only a slight rumble to her vocal cords.
But if Daisy responded in kind, Scout with her conventional ears heard nothing.
The staircase was almost completely dark, her glasses giving her the general outlines of the walls and ceiling and of the kids crowded all around her.
Then it took a turn, the steps grew wider, and she could see a warm light at the bottom.
The space had clearly been intended for storage, with dusty crates stacked all around the walls, but the center of the space had been cleared and swept clean. A single chair sat under a pair of lights, and on the chair sat a girl with an explosion of thick hair barely contained by the red hood she had pulled up to keep her face in shadow.
The minute Scout stepped into the light she threw the hood back, launching herself off the chair to tackle Scout in a fierce hug.
“Hey, Sparrow,” Scout said, patting her awkwardly on the back. “You know, if you wanted to talk to me, you could have just told these kids to give me a message.”
“It’s all messed up,” Sparrow said. She wasn’t crying, but she was very close to it. “It’s all so, so messed up.”
“The Months?” Daisy asked, and Sparrow looked over at her.
“This is Daisy,” Scout said. “A friend. Daisy, this is Sparrow.”
Sparrow looked her over. By the time she was done assessing her, she had her emotions back under control. She returned to her chair under the lights but left her hood thrown back.
“Yes,” she said. “The Months.”
“You know about the war that’s about to break out,” Scout pressed.
“Probably more details than you do,” Sparrow said.
“You still work for the Months?” Scout asked.
“I bring food to your friends twice a day,” Sparrow said. “The rest of the time, no one cares where I am. So I’ve been snooping.”
“Were they called to testify?” Scout asked.
“Yes, but they didn’t go to the court building to do it. It was done remotely. It could have been done from home,” Sparrow said bitterly.
“Daisy and I have a way to get them out,” Scout said.
“And we have a ship that will take us back to Amatheon,” Daisy said, which was news to Scout.
“Those are good things,” Sparrow said. “But they aren’t going to matter a bit if you don’t have a way past the blockade, which is still standing. Or a way to get on board Amatheon Orbiter 1 or down to the surface without being detected by the Space Farers or the rebels.”
“It’ll probably be easier just to get caught,” Scout said. “It worked to get us to you.”
“It won’t work for this,” Sparrow said. “I’m not your enemy. They are.”
“You already have a plan,” Daisy said, and Sparrow narrowed her eyes at her for a long minute before breaking out in a broad smile.
“I do indeed have a plan,” she said. “More than that, I have allies.”
“Who?” Scout asked. The last she had seen, Sparrow had been a tiny presence lost among the pirates that flocked around the Months. She had passed her time befriending the crew in engineering. How could engineers help now?
Sparrow pulled a cloth with a flourish to reveal a communications screen, and Scout realized even as her eyes confirmed it just who Sparrow had been plotting with.
Tom Tom. The pilot Sparrow had introduced her to in an arcade back on the Months’ ship.
The pilot that had run missions between the Months in orbit and the rebels down on the surface.