Horizon (20 page)

Calli took a step back and lifted her chin. “Thank you, Senator,” she said briskly, and loud enough for the whole room to hear. “You may return to your duties.”

Her tone seemed to shock Niobe out of the panic she’d been succumbing to. The Aviar rustled her wings into place behind her back and stiffened her spine. She said, “Yes, Vice President,” her voice crisp, precise. Calli knew Niobe would be able to hold herself together a little longer.

While Niobe rejoined the other Aviars, Calli marched across the room toward her mother’s chambers. She paused only a moment outside the door before sucking in a huge breath and plunging inside.

H
ER MOTHER’S ROOM STANK
of sweat and medicine. Calli put a hand over her nose and mouth but it did little to temper the stench. Heavy cloth had been hung over the tall windows, casting the large suite in darkness.

“Get out,” a shadow by the bed snarled.

Calli squinted. “Electra? Is that you?”

The shadow paused. “Calliope?”

She nodded, which was a stupid thing to do in the darkness, but she wasn’t exactly thinking properly and her eyes were already threatening to fill up with even more stupid tears. “Is my mom . . .”

Electra slumped. “Iolanthe — your mother — is alive, but not awake. She hasn’t opened her eyes for days, and she hasn’t spoken in almost two weeks.”

Calli walked slowly toward the bed, stepping over dis carded bandages and soiled clothes. The room felt thick with futility. Her mother seemed impossibly small in the huge bed, her body curled into one corner, her remaining wing hanging out of the covers and lying slumped on the floor. She could just make out her mother’s features pressed into her pillow: her small nose, thin lips, scarred cheek. Her mother’s hair, normally spiked and fierce, lay matted and defeated against her head.

“What happened?” she asked quietly.

“Infection,” Electra said. “The Upgraders sent someone to talk under a flag of truce. I wanted to send him back in pieces, but your mother . . . but Iolanthe wanted to hear what he had to say.”

“He attacked her?” Calli asked. She touched the scar across her own ribs where Weaver Sokhor’s men had stabbed her. “With poison?”

Electra slammed her fist into the wall and Calli jumped. Electra’s knuckles came away bloody, but the woman only dropped her hand as if nothing had happened. “No poison, just a dirty blade.”

“Where is he?” Calli said. “I want to talk to him. Maybe I can figure out where —”

“He’s dead,” Electra said. Her tone told Calli everything she needed to know about the man’s death: that it had been immediate, and that it had been at Electra’s hands.

Calli sat on the edge of the bed and stroked her mother’s hair. It was thick with sweat and grime. “Where are the healers — the medics? They should be in here cleaning the room.”
And cleaning my mother.

“Useless,” Electra said. “I sent them away. I sent them all away.”

“Niobe needs help,” Calli said. “The battle — it isn’t going well.”

Electra leaned over the bed and tucked the blanket under Iolanthe’s chin. “She needs me. I’m not leaving her side.”

Calli sat back, shocked. She knew how Electra felt about her mother — the whole city did. But of all the people in Skyfeather’s Landing, she never expected Electra to be the one to fall apart. Not even for something as unspeakably horrible as this.

She felt heat rise to her cheeks, felt the first stirrings of anger course through her veins. Iolanthe was her mother. Calli was the one who should be sitting by her bed and wallowing in misery and self-pity. But now she couldn’t, not when Skyfeather’s Landing needed a leader and Electra refused to fly up and take her rightful place.

“Get up,” Calliope said, her teeth clenched. She’d never spoken to Electra like that, not ever. Her body trembled. “Get up now.”

Electra ignored her. “Go, child. Get something to eat and take a nap. I’m sure the others will want to hear of your exploits.”

Calli raised her chin and stood. “I told you to get up, High Senator, and that was an order.”

Oh, now she had Electra’s attention. The woman turned, red-hot rage flashing in her eyes. “What did you say?”

“You’re a disgrace,” Calli said. “Half the world is at war, fighting for its very freedom, and here you are, living in filth, forgetting your duty, letting your own people die. Niobe thinks all the deaths are her fault, but they’re not. They’re
yours.
”

Electra was up in heartbeat, her nose a centimeter away from Calli’s, her breath rank.

“Who are you to talk to me that way, little girl?” Electra said, her jaw clenched.

Calli wanted to cringe, to cower, to crawl under the bed and hide. Maybe even to whimper or cry. Her hands shook, so she gripped the hem of her shirt and silently begged them to stop. “I’m the vice president,” she said, trying to disguise her fear with anger. “I’m my mother’s heir.”

Electra’s lip curled up, ugly and threatening. “Well, then it’s your job to fix this place, not mine.”

“Skyfeather’s Landing is crumbling around you, and you won’t lift a feather to help?” Calli said. This could not be happening. Her mother couldn’t be lying there one breath away from death, and Electra could not be this grief-worn shell of the woman she once was.

“I know my duty,” Electra said. She pulled away from Calli and resumed her seat by the bed. “Now go do yours.”

And just like that, Electra was gone, spiraling back down into the pit of despair where she now lived.

Calli swallowed, uncertain of what to do. More yelling? Gentle pleading? A hug? All her options seemed to carry the same dismal chance of success. She longed to leave the room, to run away from Electra and her mother, and return to adventuring with Aluna and Hoku and Dash. She never felt alone when she was with them. She never felt so without hope.

She stood there, uncertain, feeling more and more awkward with each passing moment. If there was a right answer to her current problem, it eluded her. Her mother had to face moments like these all the time. So did Aluna. Right or wrong, they made a decision and acted. They led.

“I’m going,” she said finally. “I’ll do whatever I can to save our home from the Upgraders and keep our people from enslavement. If I come back to this room, then I expect to find those curtains down, the floor scrubbed, the linens changed, my mother wearing fresh clothes, and every ounce of dirt erased from this place.”

Electra snorted quietly, but didn’t even turn her head.

Calli continued. “And if I don’t come back to this room, then you, Electra, my mother’s most trusted friend, will be the one who tells the president that her only daughter is dead.”

Electra stood, but Calli didn’t wait for her to speak. She turned and left as fast as she could. She didn’t have time for more tears — not for her mother, not for Electra, and not for herself.

She joined Niobe at the strategy table. “Niobe, I want every senator who is not engaged in maneuvers to meet me in the audience chamber within the hour. And I’ll also need three volunteers — preferably scientists or techs — to meet me in the comm room right now.”

It only took Niobe a moment to recover from her surprise. She nodded. “It will be done.”

Calli pulled her aside. “Send medics into my mother’s room every hour. Electra will undoubtedly toss them out, but keep sending them. If she doesn’t relent by dawn, start sending in warriors as well.”

She gripped Niobe’s arm, just under the scar on her shoulder. “You’ve done well,” Calli said. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but you have. And from now on, you don’t have to do it alone.”

Niobe nodded and sighed. Calli could see some of the tension ease in the woman’s body.

Niobe turned back to the Aviars in the room. She began rattling off names and issuing orders. “You heard the acting president, get moving!”

Acting president.

Calli had never wanted to lead her people, not in any way except through scientific discovery. But sometimes life wasn’t about what you wanted; it was about what needed to be done.

Her legs trembled. Her wings rustled against her back. People were going to die because of her, because of orders she gave them. The thought made her want to vomit. She didn’t know strategy and tactics, or even all the parts of an army and what they did. She didn’t understand supply lines or know how much fresh water they had on hand. She had no idea how long the city could withstand a siege.

But Calli had paid attention during all those long conversations with Dantai khan-son. They’d talked about leadership, about what it meant to make life-and-death decisions, and about the best way to serve one’s people. She was grateful for his tutelage.

She would surround herself with smart people who knew everything that she didn’t. She would ask them for advice and she would listen to their answers. She would take responsibility for lives that were lost so that no one else had to. Her primary job was to help everyone else do theirs, and to ensure that Skyfeather’s Landing and its Aviars survived this battle and knocked Karl Strand’s army back to whatever hole they’d come from.

Electra was right: Calli had a duty to lead her people. It was time for her to stretch her wings and finally see how high she could fly.

H
OKU SLURPED
the last of their clams and let Zorro lick the remaining goo out of the shell. Data streamed across the largest monitor in the room: complex diagrams, maps, logs, and file names so technical that he couldn’t even begin to figure them out.

Almost a full week in Seahorse Alpha and he had yet to find a way to save the Kampii. The most obvious sources of energy were the sun, wind, and waves, all available in great supply. But sun and wind catchers would be too obvious floating on the ocean’s surface, and the Kampii didn’t have the materials to build them. Harnessing the power of the currents seemed like the smartest, most sustainable choice, but he didn’t have a
turbine
— the ancient tech that took flowing water and turned it into power.

He’d even looked into diverting the power from Seahorse Alpha itself, but there was precious little to spare. What had been a thriving research outpost hundreds of years ago was now barely operational. Hoku was lucky its generators found enough power to run the computer and comm system in even one building.

Rollin had been no help, with her constant wisecracks from the Shining Moon comm screen and suggestions like “Be smarter” and “Maybe if you bash it with a hammer, you noodly basic.” Now she was off arguing with the Equians about their preparations for war. He hoped it took a long time.

“Zorro, show me the turbine again.”

A complex device forged from metal rotated on the screen, a hundred different labels and formulas popping up as it spun. Working with metal required fire, so even if he could figure out how to shape something similar, it wouldn’t be a good choice for the long run. If the Kampii couldn’t fix the tech when it broke, they’d be no better off than they were now.

Hoku rubbed his eyes. He needed a break. Maybe his subconscious would figure out a solution if he worked on something else for a while. Something like finding Karl Strand. He reached over and scratched Zorro behind the ears. “Zorro, show me everything you can find that mentions Strand.”

Zorro’s eyes glowed green. The screen flickered and a list appeared on the monitor. Hoku groaned as the names of thousands of files slid down the screen. And the first few items weren’t even about Karl Strand at all, but something called DNA.

He sighed. “Zorro, pick a random file containing the words
Karl Strand
and enable audio playback.” Zorro’s eyes glowed. Soon a sleek voice began reading a report titled “Effects of Seawater on Human Digestive Processes.”

Hoku flopped onto the smooth plastic floor and tucked his hands under his head for a pillow. The computer droned on about “sodium chloride” and test subjects. He studied the room again, begging his brain to take mountains of overwhelming data and distill it into the answers he needed.

From the floor, he could see the undersides of the workstations that ringed the room. They looked as smooth as the surfaces, except for a few long scratches starting at the edge and going back to the wall. Only . . . the scratches weren’t random. They were spaced evenly under each station in pairs.