Renegade ch 1: Make a Difference

“One person can always make a difference.”

The words were inscribed everywhere—in the interwoven bars of the front door, on various pieces of jewelry, on the table beneath Xlack—rote and meaningless. He hadn’t expected the head scribe to give them voice.

“You believe that, don’t you?”

Yes, but what kind of difference was this scribe trying to make?

Xlack’s hands shook, fingers numb. His grip wouldn’t last. Maybe clinging to the ceiling hadn’t been such a great idea. How long would these old men keep talking?

“Our previous Protector was elderly and wise enough to know when to mind his own business,” the head scribe wheezed. He wouldn’t be the head scribe much longer. Xlack pictured him scraping out broken down litterbugs in the bowels of the sanitation department.

“There aren’t enough Protectors for every city to claim one of their own. Be grateful you were given one at all,” Pim Mianlan countered. His face was like a skull, eyes and cheeks sunken, nothing like the blunt visages of the officials to whom he spoke or the subtle curve of Xlack’s features.

The head scribe sniffed, hands folding on the table. “Our current Protector is a child, and Azmet is a distinguished district.”

“The most distinguished on the Napix homeworld, some would say,” his underling added. His medallion clinked against his wide belt as he leaned forward.

Three scribes lounged on dark divans curved around a low table. Mianlan sat cross-legged in a chair, perpetual scowl deeper than usual. Maybe he didn’t like this new restaurant that occupied the bottom floors of this district’s tallest tower. Maybe he found its open floorplan and rustic décor distasteful. Maybe it annoyed him that a basket of steaming breadsticks on every table filled the air with a warm, yeasty aroma, or that the din of happy customers made it difficult to hear. Maybe he didn’t like the company.

Xlack thought he would very much like one of those buttery breadsticks. Sweat gathered on his brow, dampening his pale curls.

“We have gathered a petition.” The head scribe offered a glass pane to Mianlan, and columns of text appeared as the document loaded. “We wish a more experienced Protector be assigned to Azmet.”

Xlack scowled. His grip failed, and his breath snagged in his throat as his hands fell from the ceiling. His knees started to follow, and he concentrated on keeping them attached to the boards above. As a fan’s tilted blade brushed his fingertips, a bundle of pewter and black scales tumbled from his pocket, asleep and unaware it would plop onto the scribes’ wooden table a story and a half below.

Xlack caught the beastling around his middle as a fan blade swiped beneath four dangling paws. With a squeak, the beastling wiggled, onyx eyes wide as his slender tail whipped his savior’s wrist.

“Rell, shh,” Xlack mouthed. He pulled the beastling to his chest and winced as needle-like claws dug through his jacket.

Below, Mianlan glanced at the offered screen. “Xlack Ekymé has been your Protector for a year n—”

“Don’t say his name, or he’ll show up,” the official sitting left of Mianlan snapped. His gaze darted to every corner, fringes on his pentagonal hat swinging wildly.

No one ever thought to look up. To be fair, these officials’ ridiculous hats made that difficult.

With a smirk, Xlack curled into a ball, hands reuniting with the ceiling’s mosaic of dark and light slats. His hold slipped once, twice, knees and toes shaking. Organic materials like wood, even long dead and highly polished, were difficult for his Talent to manipulate.

Snorting at the indignity of such an unstable resting place, Rell plodded onto Xlack’s belly and squeezed his pudgy feline body beneath the jacket’s slanted hem.

“Calm down. The shipment of contaminated goods we arranged will keep that little Protector tied up with datawork the rest of the day.”

Has no one ever told the head scribe his voice is annoying? Xlack finally got both hands pressed against the ceiling. If your nose isn’t stuffed up, don’t purposely sound like it is.

“What if a legitimate crisis struck while he was busy with trifles you made up?” Mianlan’s loose garb and bulky scarf made him look like a lumpy bag of vegetables plopped in a chair.

“This is Azmet District.” The head scribe huffed. “Who would dare threaten us?”

Everyone who wants what you have.

If Xlack somehow survived landing on his neck in front of these lard-brains, the shame would kill him anyway.He slid one hand in front of the other, knee following as he crawled toward a truss supporting the fans. That seemed like a much better place to await the right moment to reveal his presence.

“An alert and competent Protector is what maintains that status quo,” Mianlan lectured.

The scribe to his right bit a breadstick, and the crunch of its flaky crust echoed in Xlack’s ears, mocking him for having been too busy to eat today. His stomach growled.

Surrounded by warmth and darkness, Rell answered it with a purr, and tiny claws kneaded Xlack’s gut.

Xlack stopped, cheek trapped between his teeth to bar any sound.

Mianlan continued, “Xlack Ekymé is the Lead Protector’s favorite. You are idiots, and this petition of yours will only succeed in insulting them both.”

As Mianlan stood and gave a slight bow, Xlack’s elbow nudged the lump in his jacket. Punctuated by a hiss, claws fully extended into his abs.

“Rell!”

Xlack lost his grip on the ceiling. His heart dropped to his toes, weightlessness lasting only a moment. Pulling his legs in, he tucked into a flip and landed in a crouch atop the scribes’ table. The impact’s hollow, reverberating thud called every eye in the room.

At least he landed on his feet. He could call this a good entrance.

Plucking one of the breadsticks from the basket alongside his knee, Xlack straightened. “For once, I agree with Messenger Mianlan.”

With his face concealed behind a cloth napkin, the scribe to his left scrambled backward off his divan and ran for the door. “I told you!” His fear was frozen dew on Xlack’s skin, a wispy trail visible to his Mental senses.

The head scribe sat mouth agape, double chin quivering. Beside him, his underling backed away and swiveled into an empty chair at a nearby table, where the other occupants stared at him with a mixture of frowns.

“You might not be aware, but monitoring everything in the district includes monitoring you,” Xlack explained, “and you sure seem to not like that. What is it you don’t want me to see?”

The head scribe’s jaw flapped, but no sound emerged.

Rell peeked out from the bottom of Xlack’s jacket. His velvety nose twitched, searching for the source of the buttery scent. As he spotted the breadstick in his master’s hand, his soft-scaled, floppy ears perked, and his dark gaze zeroed in on his quarry.

Holding the bread like a conductor’s baton, Xlack knelt closer to the shivering man. “Here’s how this is going to work: You’ll return to your office. The title ‘Head Scribe’ belongs to whichever of your kind I think does his work the best, and there are several beating you at the moment. I’d suggest working really hard today.”

Rell slunk along Xlack’s arm, tail waving as he stalked his prey.

The head scribe’s mouth closed, and a delicate shine spread over his eyes. “You don’t have to make this personal.”

Xlack’s gaze narrowed on the petition. “You made it personal with this.”

The screen rose from the head scribe’s hand, then shattered with a firework’s boom. A yelping Rell dove under Xlack’s forearm. With his claws stuck in the sleeve’s underside and head tilted, he tracked the glitter raining on the scribe’s lap.

“Try something like this again, and it won’t be the screen that falls to pieces.”

The head scribe gulped and nodded quickly.

Xlack bit his bread. It tasted as heavenly as it smelled, a satisfying crunch with an inside that melted in his mouth.

Everyone still stared.

“That was it. Get on with whatever you’re doing.” With a dismissive wave, he hopped off the table.

Rell was the first to obey, resuming his climb on Xlack’s arm, but the sleeve kept bunching at his master’s elbow. Face scrunched, the beastling roared, small sound lost in the crowd’s growing chatter.

Mianlan waited, a specter with crossed arms and a disappointed glint in his pale eyes. His robe hung long enough to brush the ground, and his gait made no sound. If he had feet, Xlack had never seen them.

“Falling from the ceiling? You should be able to cling much better than that.”

Xlack ripped off a chunk of bread and held it out to Rell before shoving the rest in his own mouth. “I didn’t fall.”

Rell snatched the piece and scrambled to his master’s shoulder, where he could stretch out and nibble away at his prize. Mianlan never gave him food and was therefore beneath his notice.

The condescending slant of the older man’s sparse, wiry brows steepened. “How long did you maintain your hold before you began shaking like someone freezing to death?”

Xlack winced. “You saw that?”

“I didn’t have to.” Mianlan pivoted, glided to the restaurant’s lobby, and ventured left up wide, steep stairs. Though old and worn, the steps shone with frequent cleaning and made no sound under him. “I’m going to my room. If you have time to lurk about on ceilings, perhaps you should try completing the assignment I gave you yesterday.”

Xlack followed, and the bottom stair groaned as it took his weight. Gaze on his feet, he hurried past it. “Messenger Mianlan, if I hadn’t been here, would you have signed that petition?”

Mianlan paused, and a long sigh escaped as he turned. “Azmet is a large, influential district. I certainly don’t believe it should have been given into the hands of an incompetent child, but it’s not my decision.”

Xlack’s eyes narrowed in a crooked frown, jaw tight. “I’m not a child.”

“An adult should be able to control his Talents.” Mianlan resumed his glide up the stairs. The sinking daystar peeked through a window on the landing ahead, rendering him a silhouette.

“I know plenty of adults who can’t do what I can,” Xlack grumbled, staring at his hands. They were the same gray as the wooden stairs, the color of pyrite without the metallic luster. Dozens of paler scars marked nicks and cuts healed too quickly.

“Do you wish I didn’t expect so much of you?”

No, Mianlan’s austere methods were effective in pushing Xlack to perform at his best. It was hard, though, to live up to his ideals at all times, never caught off guard, never allowed to make a mistake without having it shoved in his face.

If Xlack lost his position as Protector of Azmet District, the shame would drown him. His father’s face, so proud at his graduation, would droop with disappointment, and Mianlan would still scowl.

“You told my father I should be held back, that caring for a district would put me behind in my studies, but it’s been a year, and I’ve proven you wrong. I’m stronger than—”

Mianlan whirled, leg swiping at the side of his student’s knees. Xlack jumped, but his teacher had the higher ground.

With his ankles swept to the side, Xlack twisted. His feet hit the wall and bounced into a retaliatory kick. As his toes brushed Mianlan’s bicep, the older man moved with the strike, letting it turn him. Xlack’s intended punch retreated into a block. A second jab was swatted away.

His shoulders hit the junction between stair and wall, and Xlack lost focus, arms flung wide, trying to grip anything. Mianlan’s hand clamped beneath his jaw, skin on skin above the high collar of his jacket. A chill radiated from the contact, as deep as a chasm and hungry as a black hole.

Hissing and fangs bared, Rell leapt at Mianlan’s wrist, but the teacher scooped him out of the air. A pale sheen spread over the beastling’s pewter scales, and the inky spot over his rump took on a hematite gleam as he collapsed on Mianlan’s palm, one forepaw hanging over his thumb.

I can…counter this.

Xlack flung a hand at Mianlan’s elbow, grip numb and lax. His fingers weighed as much as the planet. Even his thoughts were an icy sludge, urging him to curl up and sleep like Rell.

“You are supposed to become a legend. You can’t afford to display any weakness.”

“Is this a yes?” Xlack whispered. “You would have signed the petition?”

Releasing him, Mianlan backed away, and Xlack sat up with a gasp. His heart pounded. His fingers flexed and cracked.

“Just because I believe a cause is right doesn’t mean I’ll sign my name to it.” Mianlan sighed and slid Rell into his master’s outstretched hand. “The identity of Azmet’s Protector has nothing to do with me.”

No, Xlack supposed it wouldn’t matter to an old Messenger with a rare Talent who had no intention of ever caring about the commoners of this district. He wasn’t sure how much even he mattered to Mianlan.

He wanted to be someone his mentor would remember, though. He wanted to be known for the choices he made and the things he did, not only because he carried the surname Ekymé.

Not following as his teacher again resumed his trek up the stairs, Xlack kept his gaze on his pet. The side of his thumb stroked the beastling’s back, and scales darkened beneath his touch. With a grunt, Rell snuggled further into Xlack’s palm.

“Your name on that petition would have meant as much as ten thousand others.” Xlack’s voice was a brittle, broken leaf floating on the wind, and he hated it.

“To some.”

A quick, hollow series of beeps sounded, and Xlack pulled a nail-sized card from his pocket. As it unfolded into a flat device just larger than his hand, he scanned its screen.

“I have to go.” He got to his feet and started after his teacher. “I did finish that boring ice sculpture thing you wanted, though. It’s in the coolbox.”

Mianlan shrugged. “It was imperfect, so I destroyed it. Your assignment remains incomplete.”

Xlack froze, blinking several times. He had worked hard on that.

“It was exactly like yours.”

“Mine didn’t have lumps, and the lines were of an even thickness.”

Xlack crossed his arms as much as he could while holding a beastling in one hand and a datapad in the other. “You’re too picky.”

“I could do that simple of a task at age five.” Mianlan already rounded the next landing. Instead of a window, this one had another inscription of the ‘one person can always make a difference’ motto. “How old are you again? Do it correctly this time.”

Xlack didn’t move. “You couldn’t cling from the ceiling at five years old. Still can’t, even though you’re four hundred something.”

A phantom color clouded Mianlan’s gaze, same as the crackling chrysolite over gray Xlack always saw in his own reflection. On his teacher, it looked like cataracts.

“What I can’t do is irrelevant.”

“Right, because I’m supposed to be the legend.”

Mianlan leaned over the rail and rapped his student on the forehead with a pinky that felt more like a steel rod. “Never give way to doubt. If you don’t believe in your goals, you won’t work toward them, and if you don’t work toward them…” The teacher paused, wispy brows lifting.

Xlack sighed. “They never happen.”

* * *

“Ah, the peaceful sleep of a youth who doesn’t believe anything bad can happen to him.”

Sarqii Kys’ eyes snapped open. Darkness gripped the room, his room. The silken sheets draped over his back were the same ones he had pulled over his head before letting tears escape last evening. His pillowcase was still damp. Unless someone had relocated his whole bed with him in it, he was still within his chambers in the Emperor’s Palace.

The deep, sonorous voice spoke again. “Yet, several tragic things have befallen your family recently. Why would you think yourself exempt?”

Sarqii couldn’t place the accent of sharp-edged consonants slurred into growled vowels, but his eyes slowly adjusted to the dimness. A shadow attired in foreign armor stood alongside the bed.

Sarqii’s hand crept beneath his pillow.

“Arise, Prince Kys. I know you hear me.”

“What do you want?” Sarqii whispered as his fingers curled around a warm, metal handle.

“To save you.”

Sarqii squeezed his eyes shut, trying so hard not to think of that horrid day nearly a year past: a group hand-to-hand spar exercise. A thud behind him. His older twin brother collapsed on the padded floor. “You didn’t save the others.”

“If you stay here, tomorrow’s sunrise will be your last.”

Sarqii leapt to his feet, knife-like kanaber handle clutched in his left hand, but he didn’t activate its blade. If the intruder had intended to kill him, he would already be dead. Plus, the liqui-mattress still sloshed beneath him.

The memories were relentless—his fallen brother taken by a sequence of shallow tremors, then stillness, dark blood dripping from the corner of his mouth.

“What’s killing us?”

The intruder remained silent. Moonbeams trickled through the open balcony and glinted in his eyes. His wide gaze shone gray with a gossamer flicker of emerald and bronze.

Chrysolite. It was not the bright green-gold Sarqii normally associated with the term, but still, only those of the Aylata race exhibited the infrared color in any shade.

As far as Sarqii could tell, he held no weapons. Not that Aylata needed any.

“When you meet the leader of the Aylata, he will take your life.”

No, that didn’t make sense. Mind racing, Sarqii fought not to sink to his knees. The first prince had disappeared behind med-center doors, and Sarqii had not been allowed to see him, not until the Honoring. The body within the glass coffin had his brother’s face, but it lacked his intrinsic, wild energy. It was still, much too still.

A disease, they said, though where it originated or what exactly it was remained unknown. Medical experts still disputed how it killed him. His opponents from the spar had been thoroughly inspected and disposed of for good measure, no useful information gleaned.

The Ravida, highest ranked of all Aylata, hadn’t been around for any of that. He was supposed to be the mediator between the emperor and the overpowered Aylata race.

Overpowered.

Doubt trickled through Sarqii. Aylata were hybrids both genetically and by law, not fully subject to his father’s reign. They possessed inhuman powers. Could this disease have had something to do with them?

“I have to meet with the Ravida and gain his approval,” Sarqii recited with a shake of his head. “Without him, the Aylata won’t follow any emperor.” The words left his mouth with little voice. Most of his energy was invested in sorting out the mass of confusion in his brain.

Aylata could use that as a weapon, too. What Talent did this one have?

“You are an eighteen-year-old second son of an adored ruler, and a massive empire has been dropped on your shoulders. Your tremors are understandable.”

Sarqii knotted his free hand into his long hair and pulled, as if that would sort out the mess in his mind. “You sneaking into my room and telling me vague, daunting things is worthy enough of my unease.”

He backed toward the edge of the bed. He didn’t have a shirt, and his loose pants wouldn’t encumber him, but any sudden movement would easily see him entangled in the blankets or the bed’s canopy. He would rather have his feet on the solid stone floor or the braided rug, but even then he couldn’t fight an Aylata.

Where were his guards?

Sarqii swallowed an unhealthy dose of paranoia. “How do you know the Ravida’s plans?”

“I heard him speak them.”

Sarqii opened his mouth to protest, but the stranger raised a finger and held it a hairsbreadth from Sarqii’s nose.

“Before you ask how, let’s say it’s my duty to spy on Aylata. My knowledge keeps my people alive.”

Again, that made no sense. Why would he need to spy on his own kind?

“You don’t need to know how I know. Just know that I do. If you come with me now, I can ensure you’re protected, but if you stay, I can do nothing. I cannot confront the Ravida.”

Sarqii tried to slap the intruder’s finger out of his face, but the man returned it to his side before Sarqii finished raising his hand. His blow fanned empty air.

Indignation swelled within him. “You think I’m an idiot! Like I’d run off under the protection of strangers. You’re trying to get me to run from the Ravida so he can’t protect me. To tear apart the system of succession. To undermine my trust in my protectors.”

“Keep calm, Prince Kys,” the man advised, an unmoving portrait of serenity. “I mean only exactly what I say.”

Sarqii activated the kanaber. Its finger-length, flat laser blade cast an eerie glow over the spacious room, and the stranger vanished.

Sarqii crumbled, shins riding the liqui-mattress’ waves.

What do I do?

He didn’t trust the Ravida to begin with, and now?

The last memory of his father clawed to the top of his mind as tears flowed down naked cheeks, shining in the kanaber’s glow. Only two days ago, Emperor Gera Kys had patted his heir’s head and promised to join him for breakfast after this one conference. Within that meeting, he had collapsed. Death reaped him before a doctor could arrive.

His Honoring and Sarqii’s inauguration were tomorrow. The Ravida would be there.

The kanaber’s blade retreated into its handle as Sarqii fell sideways onto his pillow. What were the odds this was all only a stress-induced dream?

The thought made him feel marginally better. He would deal with reality in the morning. For now, he chose not to believe any of it.

Continued in chapter 2: Never Fail

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