“Gal is my leverage,” I snap. “Me, I’m worthless. Nobody. Nothing. But the Umber heir needs our help, and that means I need a way to Trost. Please, Hanji…You work the tower. You know the schedule. What’s leaving?”
Rin and Hanji glance at each other. The calculation plays out on their faces. The amount of their loyalty that’s based on survival factored against their true loyalty to the Umber Crown. The years we’ve trained together divided by the way I disappeared in the middle of the night. And all of it pressured by the way time ticks steadily onward, waiting for one of the other soldiers to notice us.
“Lot B, down by the east gates,” Hanji says, just as I’m about to get desperate. She pushes up her glasses and slips her datapad out of her pocket. “There’s a convoy of buses scheduled to leave for the city in twenty minutes, out to collect officials with no off-world transport of their own and bring them back here for evac. If you can get on board, that’s your ticket.”
I nod, picturing the layout of the lot and the buildings around it. “Gonna need a distraction to make sure that happens.”
“Oh no, no, no—I don’t have the time—”
“Ollins owes you money.”
That shuts her up fast. Ollins has the luck of a devil where wagers are concerned, and Hanji’s cantina debts are the stuff of legend.
“That bet you made on Trisu—the one about me and Gal.”
Her jaw drops. “You did not.”
“It happened. About two weeks ago.”
“Holy ruttin’ shit. He’s the prince. Ettian Nassun, you maniac. Who made the first—no, never mind. Details later. Rin?”
The smaller girl snaps to attention, grinning. “Yeah?”
“There must be something we can do for our dear friend Ettian, right? After all, he’s given us so much.”
Rin pretends to think, her brow furrowing comically. “But what could possibly be loud and distracting enough to turn every head on the tarmac?”
“If not Ollins, what about something of yours stashed under his bunk?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
CHAPTER 28
FIFTEEN MINUTES LATER, I’ve wedged myself into the undercarriage of a bus. My hearing’s coming back in parts, and I’m still frantically trying to beat out the embers of Rin’s homemade fireworks where they’ve singed my shirt and pants. The engine rattles my teeth, and I tuck my legs close against my chest, praying that the driver sees no need to check the luggage compartments before she takes off for the city.
Gal and Wen were counting on me. Now it’s my turn to count on them. They made it. They must have made it.
The rumble grows into a roar. The bus sways forward. I close my eyes and wait.
* * *
—
When the driver cuts the engines, I don’t hesitate. No time to listen to voices, to guess if I have an opening. I pull the release that pops the luggage hatch. Light streams into the narrow compartment as I tuck and roll out of it.
And Trost welcomes back its native son with open arms. I’m five years off these streets, and yet my bearings lock into place so quickly that I nearly trip over my feet, as if I’m unused to the length my legs have grown in the time since then. Confused shouts rise around me, but I don’t have room to process any of the words they’re yelling. The only thing I can hold concretely in my head is the layout of the city and my place in it, the grid that had two years to etch itself into my bones.
There. I lunge forward, all but diving headfirst into an alley ahead. Stone and brick snatch at my clothes—I wasn’t nearly this big the last time I slipped between these walls. Behind me, the shouts fade. The soldiers think I’m a deserter, and with an evacuation to manage, they don’t have time to deal with it. I throw myself around the next corner, slam back against the wall, and heave a deep sigh of relief.
The shriek of starship engines takes that relief by the throat and pins it, sending my fingers scrabbling into the brick for a handhold as a shadow passes over me. My memories tangle with my present as all around me I sense the utter wrongness of a city trying to flee. It’s not the same, I tell myself, swallowing back the bitter wash of nausea creeping up my throat. The armada approaching Trost is a sympathetic one. Archon is committed to serving its citizens, not dominating them like Umber. There will be no bombs falling upon the fleet’s arrival—or, at least that’s what I’m telling myself, knowing all too well how the past seven years have changed my priorities.
After all, I once crawled out of a dark tunnel not far from this block with my innocence intact as the world began to end around me. It didn’t take long for me to cave to what was necessary to keep myself alive. My fists clench, remembering the shapes of a hundred different pieces of rubble in my hand, the sensation of blood slicking off them, the twinning triumph and despair at the fact that I had lived. I wasn’t made for violence, but I learned it fast and well under Umber-ruled skies. I don’t want to go back to the city I knew years ago and what it will take to survive it.
But this time is different. This time it has to be. This time, there are people waiting for me at the other side of this nightmare. And it’s that thought—the thought of the relieved look that’ll break over Gal’s face and the wry smirk that’ll tug at Wen’s lips when I make it to the rendezvous—that has me pushing off the wall and diving headfirst into the tumult of the evacuation.
I steel myself against the sights and sounds of people fleeing the planet in droves. The bawling children being dragged by their wrists through the crowds, unable to comprehend leaving their home behind. The shouts and sudden clusters of people that ring where a fight has broken out. The omnipresent voices of newscasters echoing against the buildings as they do their best to keep the population calm. The near-constant rumble and scream of starship engines as yet another shuttle launches, sometimes with people banging on the doors, begging them to let just one more passenger aboard.
I’ve seen it all before, but it doesn’t get any easier—not even with the knowledge that this is a homecoming, not an invasion. My heart’s in my throat. My eyes keep flicking to the sky as if the ships will be in sight any minute. There’s no thrill to Archon’s victory this time. War is marching toward us, and the people of Trost are doing everything they can to get out of the way.
As I cut through a square choked with advertising billboards, their screens flash red with an update. My stomach twists as loudspeakers hum to life across the downtown. A shaken-looking newscaster appears, clutching a datapad against her chest as she stares into the camera. “Citizens of Rana,” she reads from an unseen teleprompter. “The latest in the unfolding of events surrounding the secession of the planet. This is a broadcast from General Maxo Iral, thought to be executed five years ago, now appearing to be in command of the approaching invasion.”