Traitor Born (Page 32)

“Have you ever thought about the nature of dawn?” I ask. Reykin doesn’t answer. “I have. When you’re a soldier, you think about those things, especially because you hardly ever see the sunrise unless you’re in battle.” He doesn’t look at me, but he’s listening. “I’ve heard it said that dawn is the light, asking the night for permission to exist.”

Reykin snorts rudely.

“I agree,” I reply, watching the sun break the plane of the horizon. “I don’t subscribe to that either. I believe dawn is the violent overthrow of night. But night is always still there—just on the periphery—waiting . . . and at the end of the day, it comes to claim us all.”

“I thought you were dead!” Reykin shouts. My fingers curls on the armrest in reaction to his violent outburst. “Witnesses saw you push a man through a window at the top of the building. Sea-Fated divers are dragging the lake beneath the social club searching for your body.”

“People think I’m dead?” I ask.

“No one survives that fall!”

“I had hoverdiscs on. One of them continued to work. How did you find me?”

“I infiltrated the secure access at the Halo Palace and located your moniker tracking . . . and then I waited. At first there was nothing. You were just gone. But then, I got a ping. It faded in and out, but it was there. The readings were bizarre: spotty location, alarming health readouts, hypothermia, distress. I was sure you were alive, but being tortured.”

“My ribs are broken. I soaked in a bath of ice water last night. If you think that I derived any pleasure from it, I invite you to try it. I’ll even break your ribs for you.”

He makes a growling sound that raises the fine hairs on my arms. “I thought you and Trugrave . . .”

“I know what you thought, and it’s none of your business!” I retort.

“It is my business! I can’t hide you like I hid your friend Hammon. Most people know you on sight.”

“Don’t try to shame me, Reykin. You spent the whole night and an entire day in my apartment alone with me. You’re a firstborn. It’s the same thing.”

“That was different!”

“How was it different?” I ask.

“It just was. I wasn’t in your bed with you all night. Dune wasn’t standing by the social club’s lake, demanding it be drained.”

I cringe. “Does he know I’m alive?”

“He doesn’t know for sure yet,” Reykin admits.

“You knew I was alive when my moniker showed the coordinates of Hawthorne’s home,” I press. “Why didn’t you tell him then?”

He ignores my question. “Tell me, why is Hawthorne still alive? Your brother didn’t kill him. Maybe your new firstborn Sword changed his mind and decided your brother and mother were the safer side?”

“Hawthorne would never do that.”

“Desperate people do desperate things,” Reykin replies.

“He’s alive because of you,” I murmur. Reykin’s eyes narrow. “I know it was you who saved him. You erased every trace of our escape from the Sword Palace that night.”

“I did that for you, not for him.”

“That was dangerous. It could’ve alerted them to the fact we’d infiltrated their systems.”

“They’ll never find anything.”

“Do you think my family are the ones behind the attack last night?”

“Yes.”

“Is there evidence in any of their communications? Something we can use?”

Reykin frowns. “I don’t know. I need to dig in and search for it, and that will take a while, but I know a few things. It wasn’t Gates of Dawn who attacked last night, and I’d rule out the Rose Garden Society, seeing as how quite a few of them are dead now. They wouldn’t shoot up their social club. Media outlets have already been calling it the ‘Rose Goddess Massacre.’”

“Why ‘Rose Goddess’? Why not ‘Rose Garden’?”

“They’ve been interviewing survivors all evening. The accounts of you defending Sword-Fated firstborns is becoming legendary. Complete idiots who attended other balls, like the one Grisholm and I were at last evening, are actually upset that they weren’t at your party to see the Goddess of War smote the Gates of Dawn.” I give him a side-eyed look. He stares at me derisively. “You didn’t think The Virtue would call out your mother, did you? The Gates of Dawn are a good scapegoat. It makes the continued conflict more palatable and you more of a heroine. The Virtue is biding his time. This attack binds Salloway closer to him. Their common enemy is proving to be a many-headed dragon.”

I gaze out the window at the landscape flying by. Large tracts of land stretch as far as I can see. It’s so green, the kind of green that you never see in the city. Horses startle and run from our low-flying airship.

I watch for a long time. Reykin communicates with Dune, letting my ex-mentor know that he found me. When the messaging between them ends, the silence grows.

“I want to see my father,” I murmur.

Reykin’s face changes. He loses some of his anger. The struggle in his eyes is real. “Roselle . . . I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to say it. Your father was murdered last night.”

“I know. I saw him. I killed his murderers.” I think the shock of what happened last night is finally wearing off. My hands are trembling, and my throat aches with emotion I refuse to show. “He wanted to be buried in Virtues—beside his parents. He told me that. He said, ‘Don’t let them entomb me in that Sword whorehouse.’ We were at my grandfather’s funeral. He was drunk, of course, but he made me swear not to let his body rot in the Sword Mausoleum.”

“He was the Fated Sword. Your mother is expected to hold his body in state and inter him in that shrine.”

I grit my teeth. “He didn’t want to be there. It’s insanity to give his body to his murderers. Do you know what they did to him?”

“No.”

“They cut out his tongue. They literally made him hold his tongue.”

“You can’t stop what they’ll do with his body. You won’t even be allowed at his funeral.”

He’s right. Transitioned secondborns are rarely allowed to attend the funeral of a parent. In Swords, it’s usually because we die before our parents. But if that doesn’t happen, the surviving secondborn isn’t welcome at the funeral because it makes the rest of the family uncomfortable, and maybe a little afraid for the firstborn. “This is an insane world, Reykin.”

“I know.”

“I still need to see him. I need to say good-bye.”

“Your father was a cruel man.”

“Still.”

Reykin sighs. “I’ll see what I can do to find out where his body is.”

We fly in silence to the gorgeous city of Purity, though I hardly see any of it because I’m lost in thought. “Reykin?”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask you a question . . . about your family?” I glance at him. He nods. “After Census murdered them, did they allow you to bury them?”

He stiffens. “No,” he replies softly. “My mother and brother were dragged through the streets of our town, and then left in the square to rot. I wasn’t allowed to move them. My father was killed trying to defend them. They set his body on fire.”