From his pocket, he extracts a few of the crystal figurines and tosses them into the cone-shaped sea of stars. Instantly, the figurines float in the air as if they’ve entered zero gravity. It does something else to each one. The figurine shaped like a spix animates and rears up on its hind legs, pawing the sky like a wild mustang. The saer opens its saber-toothed mouth, stalking the other figurines and swiping its paws at them, but it never quite seems to actually touch any. The elegant couple in formal attire dance together. I recognize the moves as the dance that Tofer taught me to do for my debut swank with the Regent. Those memories scare me, so I clear my throat and ask, “What are these things called?”
“Targets,” he replies with an evil grin.
“You mean we’re going to shoot them?” I ask.
“Oh, we’re going to destroy these targets,” he breathes like he’s been waiting for this day all of his life.
I roll my eyes. “What are they really called?”
Trey searches his mind. “Sacred Moments? Special Moments? Crystal Moments—Crystal Clear Moments!” he says, excited that he remembers their name. “They were really popular about seventy-five floans ago, before the war—the Terrible War—the war before this one,” he amends.
“Really? You don’t seem to be a fan of them.”
“I’m not. They annoy me. That’s why we’re going to use them for target practice.”
“You can’t do that, Trey!” I say, “They’re not yours!”
“They’re not going to make it through this war, one way or the other, Kricket. We might as well learn something from them before they’re destroyed,” he replies. “Charisma didn’t like most of them anyway. She only kept them because they were gifts from family. This one”—he points to the elegant couple—“was supposed to be us at her coming-out swank. She hated it. She thought it looked nothing like either of us.”
While he goes back to the display cabinet for more figurines to murder, I walk closer to the dancing crystal couple. They’re perfectly matched as they spin in synchronization through the stars; the female holds her billowing crystal dress while the male’s capable arm at her back holds her frame close against his powerful chest. The crystal male figure bears a strong resemblance to Trey, although he’s much stronger and more muscly looking at present. The male bears more of a resemblance to Victus than Trey. I still hate it for what it represents—Trey and Charisma forever entwined in each other’s arms.
When Trey returns, he tosses a mastodon into the mix. It raises its noble, crystal snout in a defiant posture. “A mastoff to represent her first trip to the Forest of O,” Trey says. He tosses an expensive-looking trift into the air; it catches in the zero gravity pool. “Gets her license.” The Stealth-like trift flies around the galaxy in twisting, fantastic maneuvers, avoiding the other crystals by centimeters. “Graduates from Robard’s Academy for Blushers,” he tosses a pointed-toed ballerina-looking dancer into the mix.
“The school wasn’t really called Robard’s Academy for Blushers, was it?” I ask him with a smile.
He shakes his head, grinning again. “It was Robard’s Academy for Accomplished Young Fays, which really is just code for ‘pampered blushers.’”
I watch the ballerina-like figurine circle the rest in a hypnotic spinning motion. I like her. I relate to her solo dance—I used to always dance alone, just for me. “What was the spix for?” I ask, as she passes by it.
Trey squints at the spix, watching it rear up again and paw the air. “Best in Show. Charisma trains spixes—breeds them for competition. She also rides them in tournaments. That’s why I bought her these sonic sayzers; she uses them to shoot targets while riding her competition spix through a course. The competition itself is called Biequine. She’s quite skilled at it too—a perfect shot.”
My eyes return to the spix. I like that one too. It reminds me of Trey—the Knight. He dumps several more crystal statuettes into the Milky Way pool. When he turns to gather a few more, I rescue the crystal spix from the sea of stars. Quietly, I palm it, feeling an instant connection to it. I then slip the spix into the pocket of my black robe.
Trey moves to the bed, extracting the other cuff from the box. He quickly calibrates it, adjusting it to fit his much larger arm. Then he joins me in front of the menagerie of Stolen Moments, or whatever they’re called.
“We need to move back.” He pulls me back to the far wall. From the side of my wrist, he touches an empty windowlike arch in the metal. It opens a compartment that contains a small earpiece. He extracts it and pushes it into my ear. A mouthpiece slides out from the earpiece and positions itself in front of my mouth. “It’s not armed yet,” he says, “but when it is, make sure that your sayzer isn’t pointed at anything important—like me.”
I nod solemnly. “I understand. How does it arm?” I ask.
“We’ll have to enter a sequence of finger movements that will arm it. It will be personal so that only you can use the weapon. I’ve overridden Charisma’s settings with the master code I used to set it. I’ve got this on a practice setting. It will only shoot short-frequency bursts. They’d sting if they hit skin, but it would be more like a small pellet—not lethal.”
“Okay.” We come up with a combination of finger movements that Trey says will become a muscle memory response the more I practice with the weapon.
He walks me through the basics of how to use it, but when I raise my wrist Spider-Man style and say the words that are supposed to fire the weapon, the rotten thing does nothing but vibrate.
“Seriously?” I ask after Trey strikes two more crystal figurines without even trying by using the word fire. But when I say it, nothing happens!
Trey examines the weapon, checking and rechecking it. “It’s working. Maybe you just need to try different tones of voice.”
Trey uses his sonic sayzer, hitting a couple more crystal figurines with the words “knob knocker.” He’s so good at it—he never misses.
“You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
“You mean destroying these statuettes?” he asks.
“Yes,” I say, nodding.
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain it.”
“Try.”
“Ever since I was old enough to know who I was, I knew that the future everyone wanted for me wasn’t what I wanted for myself. I wasn’t encouraged to make a career in the Cavars; I was only supposed to serve for a few fleats—do my service, and then leave it behind to go into the family business.”