Spinning Starlight (16 page)

My muscles tighten and I scratch my arm. The same spot where the tether sliced into me. If the Agnac find out my non-believing brothers have been stuck even partially in the Khua for this long,
how far beyond “defiling” would they claim it’s gone? And what would they do about it? New questions usually mean progress, but I don’t like these.

Shiin isn’t done. “Generally, it’s not a problem. As you know firsthand, without the Aelo methods, it’s painful, so no one bothers the Khua. Occasional accidental contact
with small children, but that’s all. The Agnac believe using the Khua for travel between worlds is also a defilement, but no one here has any wish to go to the Lost Points. Asking the Khua to
cut off the Points took care of that. But then you arrived.”

Right, I used the Khua to get here, somehow breaking through the age-old block, then sat around in one for several hours on purpose. That explains last night’s arrest. That would also
explain why Kalkig hates me. I’m the ultimate Defiler.

“Hee-then?”
I write out.

Her expression turns to one of distaste. “Has Kalkig been calling you that? I’ll speak to him about it. It’s an old word for an unbeliever, and I’m not surprised
it’s fallen out of your vocabulary. It’s hardly fair to call you that when all you’ve ever had is what your culture taught you. But you’re here now and have a chance to
learn more. I hope you’ll take advantage of that.”

Learning is exactly what I want to do. But I need to figure out what to learn, and how. Part of me says to spend the next three hours piecing together every word necessary to explain what Minali
did. My own silence presses in on me, making me more alone than I’ve ever been. I need help.

The Agnac and their ideas of defilement keep me from finding a single word. I don’t know if they’ll listen, and I don’t know enough about this “worship” of theirs,
other than that it makes Kalkig want to drop-kick me all the way back to Sampati. An unexpected wave of sympathy for Minali passes through me. Maybe this is how she feels about stabilizing the
conduits, like no one understands, like she can’t trust anyone but herself to get it done.

There’s a difference. I’m not killing anyone—I’m trying to
save
lives.

Shiin can’t stay any longer, and I’m not surprised. In the days I’ve been here, she’s always busy. She doesn’t seem to spend all day
“liaising” with the Khua—I don’t think—so there’s probably more to her role of primary Aelo. I also don’t think for a second that she’ll leave me
alone. Not after what I did yesterday. It’s just a question of who’ll be stuck babysitting me.

Tiav arrives at the office and nods to his mother as she leaves.

He’s still mad. Definitely. I wonder if he got in trouble because I broke the law on his watch. The possibility sends another shudder of guilt through my bones. Maybe I should’ve
thought about that
before
I ran off.

Billionaire-to-be Liddi Jantzen proved once again that the rest of us are mere insects to her—

Wait, that’s not fair. I don’t think Tiav’s an insect, or anyone else. I just wanted to help my brothers. I wanted to try.

Tiav keeps the chair on the other side of the desk, not pulling it around next to me like he has before, and crosses his arms. I’ve had eyes on me all my life, plenty of them judging me
and plenty finding me lacking, but never a glare like this one. He doesn’t say a word, so I guess it’s up to me to break the silence.

“Yoo heer wye?”

“I’m the one who received the alert when you first arrived, so like my mother said, you’re my responsibility…so much so that now my other duties have been
reassigned.”

His words bring an unexpected wave of relief, even with the anger continuing to radiate from him. I’m not sure what that relief means. It’s tinged by embarrassment that I need a
babysitter and he has to waste his time doing it. All together, it makes for a confusing knot of discomfort.

“You’re still not going to tell me what you were doing, are you?”

I’d been considering it, really…right up until the whole “defilement” issue. Bad enough that
I
defiled the Khua. To someone like Kalkig, my brothers might be
infinitely worse. I have no idea what people here think of our conduits, attempts at artificial Khua, but I’m certain Kalkig would hate them like he hates me, and hate my brothers for their
involvement with the conduits.

Tiav isn’t Kalkig, but he is an Aelo. I need more time to figure out what him being an Aelo really means, and whether it’ll make a difference to Tiav that my brothers didn’t
choose
to be where they are. Whether someone here has the power to do something about my brothers, to pull them free, or to remove the defilement by killing them.

I need to know no one will hurt my brothers as certainly as my speaking would.

It’s hard to explain without spending hours forming full sentences, but I piece together what I can.
“See-krets dane-jer dont no.”

He presses his lips together and exhales sharply. “I don’t like that answer.”

I need him to understand this. I don’t know why, but I do, so I try again.
“Rong choys pee-pull dye.”

The battle shows like explosions in his eyes. He still doesn’t like the answer but is trying to work a way through it. “If I can convince you—eventually—that telling me
is the right choice, will you?”

“Hope soe. Meh-nee fak-tores.”

“Other people? The ones who could die.”

“And kill-er and pee-pull heer and dont no.”

“You’re saying you’re not at the top, the one running the game.”

Not even close.
“Vare-ee bah-tum.”

Something snaps in him, with a sound of disbelief huffing from his chest. “You come here, this impossible thing, from a place we’ve barely heard about, and you force me to lie to
almost everyone I know about who you are and where you’re from, but I do it. Then you break the law, and people think
I’ve
lost respect for the Khua, for my mother’s
station, but still I’m here. You’re not at the bottom, Liddi. I am, because you’re the one holding answers and refusing to give them up.”

He’s right. I’ve put him in an awful position, but my choice is made. My brothers’ lives come first. That doesn’t mean I feel good about it.

“Vare-ee saw-ree.”

Tiav stares at me for a long time, like he’s trying to make a decision. Finally, he exhales sharply again and rests his crossed arms on the edge of the desk. “Fine. If you’re
not going to answer questions, then you might as well be the one asking them.”

There wasn’t much snow that winter, but there was rain. Plenty of rain. Enough rain to make Liddi despair of ever seeing the sun again, and enough to drive her to more
parties and clubs than usual. At least the lights there weren’t gray and dreary. Then it became too much rain, with a storm that flooded the river and ripped branches and debris from the
woods, blowing it all into the yard.

Afterward, though, the sun finally returned. Blue sky with a side of
more
blue sky. So when Emil asked Liddi if she’d help the “Triad” clean out the yard along
with the garden so it’d be ready for planting, she agreed.

The four of them piled up branches and dead leaves in one corner of the yard, picked carefully through the flowerbeds, and pulled up the remnants of last year’s garden
plantings…which they should’ve done at the end of the growing season but hadn’t gotten around to. The triplets had been very busy with their projects, so Liddi had kept just as busy
in the city.

After working awhile, Liddi took a large armload of dead vines. Maybe too large. Two steps later, her foot took a squelchy slip in the mud, and she couldn’t right her balance. The
vines landed back on the ground where they’d started, with her next to them, chilled mud seeping into her clothes.

“Are you okay, Liddi?” Marek asked, hurrying over to check on his sister.

Just a few years ago, Marek and Ciro would’ve laughed at her, but now she was the one laughing. She stretched her fingers into the mud. Then she curled a fist and flung the handful of
muck at Marek. It hit him right in the cheek. He wiped it away and grinned.

“Boys, Liddi has declared war.”

From there it was a mess of mudballs and tackling each other and painting mud designs on their faces and arms until every inch of their skin had gone from sienna-colored to the deep walnut
of their sitting room furniture. Liddi had never been so deliriously dirty. She collapsed on the grass, letting the sun dry the mud covering her.

“Well, that was productive,” Emil said, looking down at her.

“Yes, it was,” she countered. “It was fun. You guys are leaving soon, and we won’t have many more chances for fun like this.”

“Sure we will. We’ll visit.” He reached down for her hand and pulled her to her feet. “Come on, let’s get cleaned up.”

I CAN ASK QUESTIONS,
pretty much any questions I want. Tiav says he might not answer them all, either because he won’t know or won’t be
allowed, but I should ask. It’s hard to choose where to start, but the immediate past makes the most sense.

“Owt uhv koo-ah how?”

Maybe talking about that isn’t a good idea, because his expression goes a little stormier again. “How did we get you out? With you using that tether to anchor yourself, we
weren’t sure what to do. No one does that. You’re lucky it wasn’t any worse than those cuts on your arm. Crossing the physical world with the Khua…strange things can
happen.”

“How?”
I repeat.

“Wasn’t that complicated in the end. There’s another Khua less than a mile from there. I went in and asked your Khua to pull you back and push you out. Still took some
time.”

Something pulled that tether, no question. I thought it was the people on the outside. Maybe it was. Maybe while Tiav was coming back from the other Khua, the keepers or Kalkig pulled me in.

“Yoo theenk koo-ah ah-live?”

“Don’t think. Know.”

Right, he couldn’t be an Aelo if he didn’t believe it, I suppose.
“Wer-ship lyke Ag-nak?”