We were talking over each other now, comm etiquette clearly forgotten. Lights started winking on at the bottom of the comm feed—the others were joining the line, though no one else had spoken up yet. Tomas. Jen. Sirah. Even Francis was there.
“Those numbers weren’t verified, and this isn’t a discussion.”
“I ran the numbers, Harry. They’re verified.” I didn’t have time for this—I dropped back to my hands and knees and moved quicker. A line of transport bags was scattered behind me, yet I wasn’t even a quarter of the way into the lab.
“Kweku, cut the losses, grab what you can, and come back up. That’s an order.”
“I still need to grab the cultivar, and there’s a bunch of tubers still—”
“That’s an order!”
“This isn’t—”
“Leave the cultivar and that garden, and come on!”
“Give me forty-five minutes, Harry. Jen can buy me forty-five minutes. Send the pod down.”
“Leave it, and let’s go. We’re wasting time.”
“Thirty minutes.” My arms were getting tired, and I shook them out. “Gimme thirty minutes and the pod, and I’ll be up.”
“Damn it, Kweku, leave—”
“I’m not leaving her behind, Harry!” I shouted into my helmet. “I’m not. Leaving her!”
Nobody spoke.
I squeezed my eyes shut. “I’m not leaving our shot at survival. This is…This is all we’ve got. All I’ve got. I can’t leave another piece of us behind, Harry. Not one more piece. I can’t do it. I can’t do it and think we can survive. We need this food. I know you don’t believe the numbers or the projections or the estimates. I know you think this is a silly project, but it’s more than just a project, Harry. It’s all of them. All of them that couldn’t make it with us. My mother and your mother and grandmother and grandfather and…every single one. They all worked on this, kept her alive, just so she—and they—could make it home.”
My chin sagged to my chest, my breath fogging up the display.
“I know you don’t believe in that ancestral nonsense,” I went on. “Just…believe in me. Trust me. Give me the thirty minutes and the pod. Please. I’m begging you.”
He didn’t answer.
“C’mon, Harry, thirty minutes and the pod. Thirty minutes. That’s all I—just thirty minutes. Thirty minutes! Please!”
Tears burned down my face as I continued to scrape in the cold dirt. There were too many. Too many were going to be left behind, too many weren’t going to see the future, but if I could just take what I had and rescue Nana, maybe we could press on.
Maybe.
“Harry.” Jen’s voice broke into the silence. “We can dump the fuel reserves the Research module carried. That should help Kweku get her….That should be enough.”
“Pod’s up,” Tomas added. “Ready to run it down.”
A few more heart-wrenching seconds passed before Harry sighed. “Fine. Thirty minutes, then you’re all back up here and strapped in. Got me?”
“Roger, Harry,” I whispered. “Roger.” And I resumed digging, trying to bring as much of my old home with me to my new one.
* * *
“It ain’t gon’ be easy. Never is and never will be. But harvest time come ’round, you gon’ see your family show up right beside you, singing and working until that whole field is stripped to the bare. Hear me?”
Nana Gbemi laughed her harsh cackle in my ears as we all watched the Research module—and a third of the cassava harvest—tumble away slowly into space. The cultivar pod sat strapped next to me, taking up the rest of the row, and I draped an arm over it as I yawned and settled in to nap during the eight-hour reentry. The last thing I heard were the adults of my family, my uncles and aunts and my older brothers, who just missed the cutoff—generations of farmers who’d put their all into ensuring our future, guaranteeing that the chain linking us all remained unbroken—and I smiled as I recognized each voice.
“Now how do I turn this durned thing off? What? Oh, I see it—well…this is Gbemisola Aboah, signing off.”
“Transcribed by Ahmed Aboah, signing off.”
“Digitized by Mama D, signing off.”
“Reedited by Ammar Aboah, signing off.”
“Transferred and uploaded by Baba Ahmed ibn Ammar, signing off.”
“Cleaned and audio reimaged by Sister Afo, signing off.”
“Downloaded to the colony ship Liberia by Anja Aboah, signing off.”
“Packaged and beamed to Colony 031, New Africa, by Kweku Aboah. Signing off.”
Set in the world of Shades of Magic, this story reveals the beautiful beginnings and tragic end of the affair between Rhy Maresh and Alucard Emery, long before the events of the series unfolded.
I
Alucard Emery stood at the prow of the Night Spire, watching the river turn red.
To normal eyes, the water below glowed with a steady light, but he could see the threads that twined and tangled beneath the surface, ribbons of power slowly darkening from pink to red, like blood dissolving in a stream.
His chest tightened at the sight of it, every moment’s progress carrying the ship farther up the Isle.
Toward London.
Toward home.
But of course, it hadn’t been his home in years.
There was an old saints’ tale—he couldn’t remember the words—about the dangers of getting lost trying to find what had been, and wasn’t anymore.
The past was like a heavy wind, best kept firmly at one’s back.
Speaking of one’s back—
“If you’re planning on stabbing me…”
“You’d already be dead,” answered Lila Bard.
She had a thief’s tread, steps swallowed by the shallow sounds of the ship. But he knew when she was there. He could feel her power, could see the silver threads of her magic dancing at the edges of his sight.
His white cat, Esa, trailed in her wake. Bard hated the cat, and it seemed to hate her back, and yet it followed her around the ship, its violet eyes watchful.