Shoot For the Scars

PROLOGUE

The darkness behind Regola’s eyelids was all-consuming. Sleep, she believed, was the only real escape, to enter a world of dream and endlessness where nothing was at stake and she was free to live and die and live again; but she couldn’t fall asleep, even if she wanted to.

To thwart the dark, or just pass the time, she imagined a billion points of light, but they weren’t stars. They were the brilliant fluttering flames of a billion upside down candles raging into a beyond she would never know.

Why am I thinking like this? Like a lost and lonely cloud? Stay focused, Regola. It all comes to this moment. Well, a moment in ten minutes.

In ten minutes, Regola would press a button that would ignite an upside down candle’s—a rocket’s—engines sending it into the heavens with a device that would allow it to pass out of the world of Oro, inviting billions more of these upside down candles to join it…

And then she would be dead.

Or exiled.

Or have escaped.

She couldn’t decide if they’d execute her for this or send her north to the Aspian Order where they’d induct her, enrobe her, brand her, and mark her as a monk for the remainder of her days.

Execution seemed far more agreeable, if not preferable. But not yet.

For three weeks, Regola Orndol—a dutiful member of the staff—had been living and toiling away on the grand estate of Baron Holven Mariner III. After all the cleaning, and the scrubbing, and the sewing, and the turning over of oversized beds, and the undeniable sense that she was not wanted by the other servants, she might have built up enough clout with the Baron to stave off execution. Execution, sure, but certainly not from being condemned to the endless glaciers, or Frigid Forever as many called it, of the Aspian Mark.

In those brief three weeks, she had learned the lay of the land: the Baron’s peculiarities and habits, the schedules of staff and security, visits from friends, family and officials, and the nighttime routines of everyone down to the family pets (their mascolet dog Beritus was something of an insomniac and she had to bury sleeping pills in his food), all in painstaking detail… so ten minutes of waiting in bed should feel like no time at all.

The past few hours, however, of lying on that soft, enveloping mattress didn’t give Regola hope. It felt like an eternity of eternities on that thin slice of sun-warmed cloud that threatened to keep her there until dawn arrived in a few hours time. The staff quarters here were indeed several cuts above the rest (Baron Mariner had an appreciation for manual laborers that was rare in the rarefied upper crust), with full kitchens, clawed foot bathtubs, and a place to hang your saddle because the Baron encouraged his staff to ride on their off hours whether they wanted to or not. (Regola did not, though she grew fond of the mercurial, spotted desair, Dottie).

Why would I ever leave? Truly.

Truth was, she had been living a better life—albeit in the vein of servitude—than her own back in Aoroa where she was the wife of a respectable drudge, the mother of three adorable children that drained the life from her, and kept a pet goat that she believed had long since plotted out her death. She had no real prospects outside of keeping the household in order until the day she died; that, and hiding her secret passion for assembling and launching rockets. It wasn’t that she despised or forsook her family, but they couldn’t understand her need to pursue what was forbidden. Rocketry was against the law here in the Sounding Isles; frowned upon in the Bounding Guilds; embraced on the Founding Isthmus; ignored by the Regolyn Domain; and renounced by doctrine under pain of death in the Aspian Mark.

Regola kept telling herself she had to get out of that bed soon or risk never moving again.

Problem was, she couldn’t move. Not yet.

Not before the scheduled time, otherwise she would be seen or heard by the visiting Cutlasses, the regional authorities, and her pressed uniform would not keep her safe from their trained suspicions, and her snow-soft footfalls would not keep her hidden from their tuned ears. If she failed, then all that work, subterfuge, self-sacrifice, and some damn good lying would be for nothing. If she succeeded, she would be the first person to penetrate The World Shield.

The World Shield.

Impenetrable. Everlasting. Damnation.

That’s what many believed, that it condemned everyone to this world alone—both cradle and grave for humanity. After more than a century of confinement, with the technology to leave at hand, most people had given up on the dream and long been convinced that it was their fate to be locked in this beautiful flask peering up at the galaxy. Ever the spectator, never the actor. Anyone who could shatter the flask would usher in a new era among the stars, but would enough people care to see it through.

Regola didn’t care much for all that noble nonsense, but she did find the infamy of achieving this monumental task appealing as both her lovely visage and incomparable deed would last for eons, far beyond her own death. Her historical avatar would elevate her to the pantheon of figures most everyone reveres, and some happily despise. Of course, should she fail and be caught, she would die or be exiled and be but a brief and mediocre laughingstock, the notoriety lasting only a few days as she joined the never ending pantheon of wannabe heroes who wished to make a name for themselves in this pursuit largely regarded as both foolish and futile.

But it would fly, that rocket. It would soar in… eight minutes.

That is, if a certain someone came through for her; and given the person, Regola almost hoped she didn’t because then she’d have to thank her; and thanking her was among the most vile things she could imagine happening; even more so than that sublime rocket not taking flight.

Exactly three meters tall, it was not just any vehicle. It was a gleaming silver spike, polished to an impossible mirror shine, and fitted with a custom CRM-55 Polestar Engine. Its fuselage and fins were made of an inlanium alloy, and fastened with vingsten steel screws. It even had a small onboard navigation system to keep it in orbit as long as it had fuel, which, after the launch, could last several months. Locked in the conservatory with all of the Baron’s other special items from his expeditions from all over the world, it held a honored spot in this vast house of a well-traveled and worldly man of honor. Regola would have broken into the conservatory to complete her mission, but lucky for her, she didn’t have to.

A week ago, on her way back to her room, the door was open, which it never was, and a Cutlass stood by with his eyes fixed on a point in the middle distance. She would have flashed him those dark brown eyes of hers and got his heart fluttering about the possibilities of a fleeting dalliance with a house servant, but that was shot down because he stepped aside and waved her in. A bit perplexed, and her own heart fluttering about what awaited her inside—the rocket on a silver platter, or the Baron half naked and wanting his own dalliance—she entered to find instead the Baron spit polishing the rocket’s already perfect mirror with his grandfather’s deep blue handkerchief, the corner embroidered with the white ecalius and its five broad petals flapping at his insistent rubbing.

“There you are, my dear. Come. Have a look.” He held out his hand for her to take. His voice was deep and blood warming, his cutting blue eyes invitations to another world, as if taking his hand was itself a way of stepping off the planet into a realm of endless possibilities.

Without hesitation, Regola took the Baron’s hand and joined him, trying to hide a blushing smile at how close she was. Not to him—though that was agreeable as well—but to the rocket. She had only glimpsed it through the windows, and from a distance at a festival when the Baron showed off his various collections of antiques and precious artifacts. There he wouldn’t allow anyone within a hundred feet of it, Cutlasses forming a wall between onlooker and shiny object; and yet here she was mere inches from it, her breath condensing and misting the silver for a few seconds, then disappearing and revealing her red cheeked face. “I want you to take your hand and draw it down the fuselage. Go on, you have my permission. Don’t be frightened. It’s not going to take off and take you with it.”

If only it would. The thought felt like someone else’s, but she suspected it was a part of her speaking out of turn. She stifled it, and brought her attention back to the present quandary. Regola hesitated now. No one touched this rocket. No one. Not his wife, his children, his parents, the gods, and she surmised that the dust, air, and light all had to make a deal with him just to share the same space. She didn’t want to upset him, and though he wasn’t known for violent outbursts, everyone had their limits. She smiled at the Baron, and he at her, and her fingers dared to touch—

He stopped her. It wasn’t rough, but gentle as his grasp was, she detected a firmness, a dogged withholding as if it took all he had not to crush her bones.

“I’m sorry, my dear. I thought I was ready for this, but…” he shook his head as if he had been in a trance and wasn’t sure where he was, or what he might do. “Forgive me, you must be wondering what on Oro are you doing here? Suffice it to say, I heard about your interest in rockets.”

“From who?” Regola caught herself too late, realizing just how sharp and angry she sounded.

“Don’t be so harsh, my dear. It was rather by accident. No one told me directly, I simply overheard one of the staff talking to herself, as she’s wont to do—“

“Risla!” This time it was with bitter, seething hatred.

“I take it she’s not a friend.”

“I wouldn’t even make her my enemy.”

“Then I shall endeavor to become yours if enemies are afforded such love. Please, allow me to show you something.” He floated over to his work station, a place not graced by his usual penchant for organization and cleanliness. Tools and schematics, pencils and rulers, screws and wires all jumbled together in a glorious merged existence, like a collision of all matter and energy at the end of time. It was as if here, in this place, he could afford to be loose, unkempt, and chaotic. Of course, by the look of the final result, that magnificent rocket, you’d never know; and despite the disarray of his workstation, he found the screwdriver rather promptly.

A madman knows his mess better than their own face, she mused.

The Baron returned to the rocket, and pressed his thumb to the fuselage right above one of the fairings, and the panel depressed and then popped up. He slid it over, and beneath it was another, this one secured with three oversized screws.

“Those are charon screws,” Regola piped up.

“Very good. I knew you would know a thing or two. They’re quite rare, and you need the proper driver, one that has been made custom for those screws…”

“Because,” she continued for him, “it’s not just the thread you have to contend with, but the tiniest of locking mechanisms embedded in the screws. If you have the wrong driver, it won’t retract the spikes, and you’ve stalled out before you‘ve reached the mesosphere.”

“My dear, you are a rocketeer after my own heart.” They chuckled like teenagers on the cusp of a tryst, tucked away in a dim grotto where prying eyes weren’t welcome, but they knew they would find them anyway.

Naturally, Regola didn’t like where this was going. The Baron was a decent man, for a wealthy one, but he was still a man after all, and with his wife somewhere in the Bounding Guilds he was lonely. And loneliness loves young company.

With a deft hand, he removed the screws and the inner panel and placed it aside. Beneath was the firing mechanism, and something that sank her heart and inflamed her brain: an electrical fuse engaged by remote, a little thing he must have smuggled in from the Isthmus. Much of the Isthmus Tech was illegal in the Sounding Isles, courtesy of the Aspian Order’s influence, but men of his stature and repute were granted a certain leeway.

This was not good. It was, but it wasn’t. It was good because it meant that she didn’t need to rig up a fuse to light, which could be snuffed out if someone happened by and decided a good stomp was in order. It was bad because now she needed… well, the remote.

“It’s a remote sensor, correct?” She wanted to simultaneously sound like she knew what she was talking about, but also defer to him for confirmation.

“Indeed. And it can only be set off by one remote.”

“I’d love to see this remote… you know, to see how it works.”

“Soon. When I finally send this off into the clouds in three months' time, I will let you push the button.”

She giggled, and looked away, bashful and inviting. She had him by his fuel injectors, but three months was way too damn long. Her mission window gave her one more week at that point, and she was not about to wait another 90 days until this dashing, considerate, and handsome man decided to get his rocket off.

Regola bemoaned the new development. She wanted to believe her interest in rockets, along with her appealing figure, would be enough to let her have a peek at this remote. Alas, he wouldn’t tell her where it was no matter how much she batted her lashes, and she didn’t want to risk scampering all around the compound on a fruitless search. He loved that rocket more than his own family, and he wouldn’t risk anyone knowing where it was.

With that in mind, she tricked Risla to find it for her, and in five minutes, she would find out if that horrendous girl came through.

In five minutes, it was either smooth sailing, or she’d have to rig up a special electromagnetic fuse, which would mean she’d have to break into the conservatory, open the outer and inner panels, deactivate the remote terminal, split open the casing that holds the ignition switch, use a tuner to find out what frequency the remote used to set it off, and then attach a wire coiled around a magnet (which she saw he had on his station), hook it up to the conservatory lights, and use that switch to launch it. Of course, this would give her no time to escape the compound before the rocket tore through the glass roof and shocked everyone from their beds.

The hell with it. Regola slipped out of those seductive sheets, and creeped her way out of the room and down the hallway. She came to the corner, and took a breath before rounding it only to be assaulted by the sight of Risla in her frumpy nightgown.

“What in hellflame, Risla?”

“I am here like you requested, Head Seamstress Regola.”

“I hate it when you address me that way. I’m Regola. That’s it. And I didn’t ask you to meet me here, but at the back entrance of the east wing.”

“Head Seamstress, you are angry with me.”

“Yes. Yes I am. But I am going to withhold my anger so it bubbles underneath the surface like the boiling methane seas of Poless.”

“Our nearest rocky neighbor, with a mass two point five times that of our own. I learned. For you.”

Regola glared at Risla through the narrow slits of her lids, feeling as if Risla were mocking her, but it was even worse than that. She was genuine in her emulation, a reflection of her feelings that were at once naive and overflowing, and it killed Regola to hear it in the poor girl’s voice. Regola sighed, “Do you have what I asked—“

Risla presented the remote in a flash. Regola needed a second to realize she was looking at the remote and not a useless block of metal.

“Where was it?”

“Under his pillow.”

“What!? Are you serious? Is he an idiot? I could have found that.”

“And I know that you would have, and probably much quicker than I would have. Head seamstress, I feel I must tell you something.”

“Nope.” Regola snatched the remote and stormed down the long hallway, the ghostly moon lapping at them intermittently as they passed ten foot high windows with a clear view of the lake.

“It was just that I hadn’t found the right time.”

“Please don’t say it even at the wrong time…”

“But I have this feeling that you’re going away somewhere…”

“Ever…”

“And I know it’s important, because you are…”

“For any reason whatsoever—”

“I love you—”

Regola spun around and put her hand over Risla’s mouth. It was dry, probably because she was so nervous in pouring out her heart to Regola, but she could feel her lips become wet, feel the poor, pathetic girl swallow at the proximity of the love of her life.

“I’m going to remove my hand and you’re going to be quiet, right?” Risla nodded. “Okay. Here we go.” She removed her hand.

“Is it because—”

Regola kissed her. It was abrupt, spontaneous, forceful. If Regola was being honest, she did feel the edge of something: a weak warmth in her stomach, a miniscule surge in her loins. It had been a while since she had locked lips with either a woman or a man, and this wasn’t half bad, but after the initial thrill, she realized Risla was so bound up that it was too static, like kissing a pretty gargoyle. It was lifeless.

Regola released from the kiss. Risla’s eyes slowly opened and a smile grew, the warmest smile Regola had ever seen. In that moonlight, she looked angelic, like a living statue, a moment of captured beauty that would never be seen again.

“I don’t love you, Risla.” With that, and only that, Regola spun around and left.

Risla remained still. A statue indeed she had become, so incapable of knowing what to do in this state of shock and disbelief that she might remain there the rest of her days. Inside was a different story. It was a volatile concoction of various feelings, thoughts, and fantasies all coallescing into a bitter blackness, like a small spoon swirling milk into a cup of black tea but it never lightened no matter how much milk was poured. And that tea grew hotter and hotter and it bubbled under the surface like the boiling methane seas of Poless.

Two minutes.

Two minutes was enough time, Regola thought, to slip down the southwest hall, through the upstairs ballroom (because one wasn’t enough for these people), out onto the balcony overlooking a moonlit lake, climb over the parapet and past the incensed gargoyles watching everyone with disdain (though, she figured they had been sleeping with their eyes open for centuries), down the vine ensnared trellis that latched onto the southern wall, and drop behind the aqanthil bushes that had smaller thorns than the ubgrest flowering bushes. Both skirted the entire estate like a thick, prickly belt holding everything up and keeping everything out. It was a way of deterring anyone wishing to break in, but she always thought it would make escaping a fire interesting.

Regola was on the trellis with about fifteen feet between her and the aqanthil bushes, and was about to drop down when it happened:

She dropped the remote.

She snapped her hand out to grab it.

She lost her grip on the trellis.

She lost her footing.

She fell…

Not into the bushes, but…

Onto the remote.

Ignition.

The sudden hiss and quaking boom that rattled windows and trembled leaves would have been, at any other time, music to her ears. But it was too soon for the orchestra to play the symphony.

Twenty thousand pounds of thrust massaged the estate like a hundred drums in perfect unison. The subsequent shattering of the conservatory’s roof and tinkling of shards of glass only added to the symphony’s depth and tragedy.

Regola sprung up in time to see the silver spike rise over the many gabled roofs and spires of the house and trace a bright white plume of smoke into the dark heavens, splitting the night, and her heart, in two.

Her heart was breaking because it was happening, finally happening, and it filled her heart to bursting, but the reality of what was to follow cut it open and left her feeling vulnerable, alone, and desperate.

There was no time for that. She had to move or she would be giving up that elusive gift of having her own fate in her own hands.

The rocket’s noises were replaced by what sounded like the house bellowing indiscernible nonsense. Servants had stuck their heads out the windows to find out what was going on. Shouts and screams and confusion reigned. She could only imagine what the Baron was thinking right now. Either he was elated his rocket worked, or he was furious someone had set it off without him there. Maybe if he knew it was her he would go easy, impose a less harsh sentence, like working his stables for the rest of her days. Shoveling shit here was a better deal than monkhood or death. Maybe I could bring my bed into the stablehouse.

The rocket traced its way higher and higher above those silvery clouds, and though she could no longer see it, she could see its trajectory clearly as if she were riding it all the way up.

But the only thing she would be riding would be a horse.

Dottie was there. Awake and perturbed. The rocket had woken her, and she probably sprung up with a wicked jolt. Regola didn’t have time to calm the desair. She needed to blaze like the wind, and get back to her house so she could see the data she had gathered. Even if the rocket failed to pass through, it would give her valuable insight into where to go next.

She didn’t bother with a saddle. She urged Dottie out slowly, keeping those heavy hooffalls light and airy on their way out of the stablehouse.

Once she was a hundred feet from there, she leaped up onto Dottie’s back—something the desair was not enthusiastic about. Dottie started to buck a bit, but Regola was able to bring her back with a few good strokes down her flank. Then she kicked Dottie’s sides, snapped the reins, and that’s when Dottie hurled forward into a sprint. But it didn’t last long as something invaded the poor mare’s way and she lifted up and dropped Regola like a sack. Thinking her night just got better, Dottie didn’t bother looking back and took off to a better place. Someone replaced Dottie, standing over Regola like a stunted phantom.

“Where do you think you’re going?” The stunted phantom asked with a low scratchy voice that was both soft and irritating at the same time.

Regola could tell, even in this light, who and what this stout man was. His thin lips were chapped into frayed red wires. His nose took a turn, like a crook of an old branch, and his skin was near translucent. But his cheeks... those were ruddy as apples. a consequence of living in the shivering wastes of the Mark. He was a Director from the Aspian Order.

“You would have missed the show, but now you have the best seat in the house.” Talst checked his watch. “And the curtain call is right about…” A blinding flash from several hundred thousand feet up enveloped all. Regola shielded her eyes. It lasted only a few seconds, but what she saw after that astonished her. A sphere of fire had emblazoned the night, as if the raging sun had torn a hole in space and shown up at their door uninvited. The clouds, two hundred thousand feet below the explosion, parted from the shockwave, and a vast ripple of blue energy raced outward across the World Shield as it absorbed the impact from a nuclear warhead.

“That was something, wouldn’t you say…” The shock in Regola’s eyes was unmistakable. “You didn’t know, did you. Hmm. Then why send it up? Why risk capture and humiliation? For notoriety, perhaps. Hardly worth it my dear. Your path is obviously a disturbed one, corrupted by unnatural ambition and childhood dreams, but we can make that right…”

Regola wasn’t listening to that odious man’s impromptu sermon. She was still reeling from the fact that she had detonated a thermonuclear device, probably on the order of ten megatons, against the World Shield.

The Baron must have had it smuggled in from the Bounding Guilds—no, it probably came by that route, but it originated on the Founding Isthmus. They would have something like that, a compact warhead of immense power. Then it hit her. That’s why Baron Mariner’s wife started going there the past few years without any real reason—she said something about refurbishing a textile mill, but neither she nor the Baron had shown any prior interest in such things. No, she was smuggling for him. After all, a Baroness could always pay to not have her items checked at the Regionnaire stations. The only ones that could wriggle through without any legal impediments, who were granted a near universal freedom of movement no matter what the region, were the agents of the Aspian Order…

Fangs.

And she very much hoped none of them were close by.

Regola tried to form words, something that could save her skin, something that would soften the blow. “I… I was only… curious.”

“You rocketrists usually are. But you are also your own worst enemy. You know why?” He bent over, or rather awkwardly folded like an overstuffed doll, his rotund belly fighting him every inch of the way. “Because you’re always looking up, Miss Shoren.” Of course he knew her name. “Means you miss everything else.”

“Also makes it easier to slash their throat.” Talst wasn’t alone. Someone had been standing behind and to his right the whole time. She knew immediately what it was. A Protege. Proteges followed their Directors like shadows, only more loyal and far blinder. They listened only to their Director’s orders, and if that was ever in question, the Aspian Order’s Fifth Doctrine guided their hands with blind faith, and absolute loyalty.

“Theatrics are unnecessary, Protege Sornt. Bring her.”

“Verily, Director.” This Sornt was nothing like her master. She was young, lean to a fault, her skin like lightly coppered leather, and her eyes were something of a mystery, orbs of gray blue fog with a hazy speck of sun desperately trying to shine through. Her nose was perfect. She was perfect. A child, no more than fourteen or fifteen, but she possessed an air of haughty righteousness and it gave her a confidence that was ultimately off putting. This perfect child snapped braces on Regola’s wrists, and hoisted her up to stand. Protege Sornt’s grip was astonishingly strong, not so different from a man from the Bounding Guilds who's worked with metal his whole life. Regola imagined she had been training, hardening her body since she was four or five. Ten years and she had become petrified. It was true what they said, the Order made “monks into trunks.”

Falling in behind the Director, who had done enough for the Order that he could give up trying to maintain such a turgid state, Protege Sornt ushered Regola toward the estate house where she would most likely meet her death. If she was spared the blade, she would become a Protege herself, her entire life dedicated to one goal, her entire purpose forced upon her by some half-baked ancient writ. She might have envied Sornt because of her strength and youth, but that was being twisted by her master, her mantras, her monkhood. All that beauty was cold, like she had been carved from a glacier, but she was being used for something other than nature intended. She couldn’t even appreciate her own beauty because it was inconsequential to the Order, and everything about this girl was slave to its past. If they didn’t spill her blood over the cobblestones, that would soon become Regola’s future.

Back in the Baron's courtyard, the Cutlasses had brought everyone out from the house and lined them up, with the Baron stepping out of line to protest such abhorrent disrespect.

“Never in all my life… I held the Cutlasses in such high regard… I’m not even properly dressed!” His pajamas, all silver and glittering like his rocket had been before it was vaporized by a surprise nuke, undulated like a cloth mirror, but the reflections were muted distortions creating an optical illusion that could turn one's stomach. “I demand to know why we are being treated in such a manner.”

“It is quite simple, Baron Mariner.” The Director, with his companions, entered. “I believe we all witnessed the reason a moment ago. A second sun has shed light on your lies.”

“Lies? Please… I had nothing to do with that. And please let my Head Seamstress go. She would never be party to this.”

“So, she was merely holding this as safekeeping for the one responsible?” He showed him the remote.

“I don’t know what that is. What is that?” The Baron stuck his chin into the air, and puffed his chest in a pathetic, cliche attempt at feigning ignorance.

“I heard you had an affinity for your workers. Inexplicable as that may be, I can understand if you have an eye for this creature. She is easy on the eyes, and the Baroness is away.”

“Are you implying that—“

“It was me!” Risla stepped forward.

“Risla, no. What are you doing?” Regola’s plea was sincere. She couldn’t believe it, but it was.

“Do we have a confession? Sornt.”

Protege Sornt escorted Risla over to Talst. “Speak servant?”

“I used them.”

“Used who?”

“The Baron and Regola to get access to the rocket whereby I implanted the warhead.”

“Where did you get it?”

“Smugglers. From the Isthmus. I’ve been planning it for months.”

“I see. So they are innocent?”

“Yes--”

“But the rocket was The Baron’s,” Protege Sornt interjected. “He’s made no attempts at concealing that.”

“It was, but everything else was my doing. Regola would never break the law.” Regola couldn’t believe her ears, not only at the intense selfless stupidity Risla was displaying, but at how convincing she sounded. The Baron should take notes, she thought.

“Stop. Don’t listen to her. She’s an idiot. I did it. I mean, you caught me trying to make a break for it on a horse.”

“Both throwing oneself on the fire for the other. If I didn’t know any better, I’d call that love.”

Regola and Risla’s eyes met, and Regola couldn’t believe it, but there was… something. Not full blown, knock the wind out of her love, but Risla’s self-sacrifice had touched her, put her on a path toward some kind of affection that, given time, might blossom. Unfortunately, she felt the path was all too short.

“Director Talst, I have a way of figuring out who the real one is.”

“By all means, Protege. Impress.”

Protege Sornt stood fully erect, her chin up as if she was called to attention and had to present colors. Her military precision was intimidating, not to mention depressing. “What is the nominal frequency of The World Shield?”

That was easy. Regola knew it like she knew her own name. “It’s—“

“311.48 trillahertz.”

Risla beat her to it. But how? How would she know? Her notes. She had gone through Regola’s notes, memorized things… for her. All for her. And it sealed her doom.

“No, you don’t understand. She’s doing this to save me. Spare her, not me. Please, I can tell you more about the shield. It has a phasic energy component of—“

Risla’s eyes went wide, and she collapsed to the ground. Director Talst had pricked the back of her neck as he passed behind.

“No!” Regola looked on, helpless. Risla’s body was immobile. She looked like she was sleeping—peaceful, beautiful… sublime. “Why? You know it was me.”

“Of course,” Talst said.

“She was innocent.”

“Innocent? Innocence is guilt in hiding. And she’s not dead.”

Good, Regola thought with a blessed sigh. She had a chance at more life, even if it was in their awful hands. She’d have a chance to escape, and Risla’s recent courage and cleverness gave Regola hope that she could pull it off.

The Director knelt down and moved the hair from Risla’s face.

“Don’t touch her,” Regola seethed.

“She will come with us to The Mark, and behold The Aspect in all of its glory, and commit herself to the Order. That, and you require a final lesson, a punishment for your hubris in thinking you could overcome the Aspect, the power of the gods themselves.”

“You want me to live with the pain, is that it?”

“No. I want you to take it with you into the next life where you will meet them.”

Director Talst removed a slender spike from a barely noticeable holster on his hip. It wasn’t merely a pouch, but an actual holster upon closer examination, with a tiny clasp to keep the deadly object contained. He handed the spike over to Protege Sornt. Gleaming, it appeared as if the rocket had been pounded into an oversized needle.

Sornt seemed both honored and overwhelmed by the Director’s faith in her. It was obvious this would be the first time she had killed anyone, at least ceremonially as part of the Aspian Order. With pride, Protege Sornt positioned herself behind Regola who could hear the girl’s breath grow slightly more clipped.

“Aren’t you going to do anything?” Regola was speaking to the Baron.

“Who? Me?” He was genuinely taken off guard.

“You’re a Baron. Use your title, your power, or was all of it vaporized in the explosion? You can launch a rocket, but you can't extend a hand.”

The Baron could have snapped back, but instead he used this moment to reflect, and take in all of his subjects, their fear, their subjugation, their helplessness. Regola could tell he felt exactly the same way. For all his authority, and bravado, in the face of the Order he was as useless as a spent booster.

The Baron remained silent, and dropped his head. All that power, and no strength. A dud.

“Baron, your estate will be confiscated, and all of your servants will be placed elsewhere.” The Baron tensed up, but he offered no rebuke. “You’ll have to tell the Baroness, and from what I hear about her temper, that’s punishment enough." Talst took a breath. “Well?” He said, with a slight impatience aimed at Protege Sornt.

Protege Sornt pressed the point of the spike to the back of Regola’s neck, right at the base of the skull.

“A bit higher, Sornt. We want it to be absolute and painless. We are not barbarians, after all. Mercy is our way.”

Sornt lifted it a centimeter higher. But she hesitated.

“Protege Sornt, is there a problem?”

At that moment, even though Sornt was having a crisis of conscience, Regola could feel her demise at hand. Fate had brought her right up to the brink, and though something—anything—could intervene on her behalf, she knew this was it. All of her life she had felt like something had been pressing at the back of her head, but she always thought it was this itch, this undeniable motivation to keep moving forward in the direction she desired. No, it was the future telling her how she was going to die.

Then she thought of her husband, his silly face and the way he scratched behind his ear all the time and how he laughed at just about anything, even her stupid jokes. Especially those. Her children were sleeping, all in that one bed, like crimson moxes huddled together in their hovel. They would wake tomorrow morning, haul their father out of bed, make him breakfast because she had taught them, and they would eat, and then they would ask, “Where’s mother?” He could say anything, but she was quite sure he would answer, “She’s out there for you, but she will return.” A tear escaped her eye and fell to the dry cobblestones.

“You know what the problem is, Director?” Regola’s voice was low, but it was full of conviction. “Your Protege knows it’s wrong. Her faith isn’t strong enough no matter what she says or does. But don’t worry, mine is. And so is Risla’s.”

Risla fluttered her eyes open as Regola reached behind her head, grabbed Sornt's hands, winked at the drowsy young maid, and drove her head back, impaling herself.

Her pupils dilated—

Instantaneous.

Death.

She dropped.

Risla threw herself toward Regola, but the Cutlass guard held her back.

“Let her go,” Talst ordered. “Let her hold her dead lover’s body. As I said, mercy is our way. Everyone else to their beds.” While the wailing Risla embraced the limp body of Regola, the servants, heads down, shuffled their way back inside. The Baron, for all his prestige and wealth, and even those ridiculous pajamas, fit right in with this sad procession. “Protege Sornt…”

An ashamed Sornt lifted her head. “Yes, Director?”

“She has one more minute. Then clean this up. Seems it’s all you're good for.”

Director Talst left her to stew in her own storm of self-defeating thoughts. She glared at Risla weeping over Regola’s body and although her face never betrayed any emotion, a rage swelled in her, one she had never felt before, and was all too sure it would stick with her the rest of her days, despite that being a clear violation of the Order’s emotional clarity doctrine.

Risla turned Regola’s head so she gazed skyward through cold, dead eyes. “There,” Risla whispered. “Now you’re on your way to meet the stars.”

Protege Sornt narrowed her eyes. “Take her away,” she snapped, severing the moment. “She comes north to meet her true destiny.”

The Cutlasses grabbed her under the shoulders and dragged Risla still reaching out to Regola. She would never reach her. She was hauled off, her sobs fading to silence.

With the courtyard to herself, Protege Sornt sidled up beside Regola and kneeled down. She stared deep into those dead eyes as if looking for something, a remaining ember of life so she might spit in them and extinguish the soul herself. Then Sornt betrayed that emotional clarity once again with the slightest smirk, one only a trained eye like the Director would catch, but he wasn’t there. “The stars were never yours.”

And with that, she shut Regola’s eyes for good.