The Second Rebel, page 2
Message excerpt from Aunt Marshae, head of the Order of Cassiopeia
Golden light falls through the greenhouse windows, tumbling through the leaves of tall trees and climbing ivy. Below, kneeling amidst the roots and stems, I am bathed in a calming green glow and wrapped in the loamy scent of wet earth. The morning broadcast, coming from a compad I left near the entrance, softly filters through the foliage and fills the air with swaying orchestral music. I am, in this place, in this moment, perfectly happy.
Of course, all things must end, and as the melody comes to a close, it is replaced by the dulcet tones of an Aunt. “Today, let us consider the Meditations,” a woman I instantly recognize as Aunt Margaret says. The broadcast must be an old recording, since Aunt Margaret is here on Ceres and not on Mars. “Specifically, chapter one, verse twelve.” She speaks clearly and forcefully for the recording; in person, she talks with a Gean clip, putting the onus of understanding squarely on the listener’s shoulders. Still, she is a welcome change from Aunt Marshae. By comparison to the Auntie in charge of me on the Juno, Aunt Margaret is as gentle as the Marian’s Fire roses I tend with their gentle yellow centers and orangey-red exteriors.
The recording catches the sound of turning pages. Aunt Margaret must be preparing to read from the Canon, as opposed to quoting from memory. But I know Meditations 1:12 by heart, and while I used to solely consider the scriptures in my head, now, with my voice, I join in as she reads. “ ‘Nature may be bent by mankind,’ ” I quote alongside Aunt Margaret, “ ‘but never broken.’ ”
While Aunt Margaret closes the Canon with a thump and goes on to speak of tenacity and faith, all the usual things associated with the verse, I continue to Meditations 1:13. “ ‘What is plucked may yet bloom. What is burned may yet nourish. What lies fallow may yet grow.’ ” They are words that have come to mean much and more to me on Ceres as the months have passed. As trials, one after the other, have set themselves before me.
This is what the people know: Four months ago, Mother Isabel III was slain by Saito Ren, the captain of the Juno gone rogue, in a protest against the Annexation of Ceres. This was a shock to everyone, but particularly the Sisterhood. Before her death, the Mother named me the First Sister of Ceres because of my valiant attempt to unmask the traitor Ren, with help from Aunt Marshae.
Those are all lies from the Agora, the seven Aunts who lead the Sisterhood. This is the truth: The Sisterhood suspected something traitorous about Saito Ren from the beginning and hoped to embarrass Warlord Vaughn, who had traded highly valuable political prisoners to the Icarii for her release, by proving it. Aunt Marshae and the Mother assigned me to spy on Saito Ren, but I never gave them the information they wanted. Undeterred, Aunt Marshae lied to her superiors to make herself look good and made me desirable as a side effect. She was named Aunt Edith’s replacement as the head of the Order of Cassiopeia, and I became the First Sister of Ceres. She is even now, I’m sure, working to undo my appointment as part of the Agora on Mars.
Perhaps the most startling facts are the ones that only I know. The person called Saito Ren was actually Hiro val Akira, an Icarii geneassisted into Ren. They had come not only to assassinate Mother Isabel III, but to influence someone who might rise to the status of Mother who aimed for peace between the Icarii and Geans. Someone like me.
Only Hiro did not kill the Mother. They failed in that task. The Mother was murdered by my hand.
After she revealed the illegal usage of Icarii neural implants within the Sisterhood to take away our voices—well. To say I reacted poorly would be an understatement.
My hands slip from the soil to the pocket of my dress. I feel the outline of the ring box there, a shape and weight that brings instant relief. After the Mother’s implant was turned over to me as First Sister of Ceres, I feared losing it, as small as it is, so I decided to keep it in something larger. But I fear to leave the box anywhere, knowing that, even now, secrets are hard to keep.
The door to the greenhouse opens with a whoosh, releasing both pressure and heat. Whoever has come, she—as only Sisters are allowed here—lets the stresses of the world in as well, and I am reminded of everything I must do. Everything I must be. She turns the compad’s volume down until I can no longer hear the morning broadcast, but it is not until the visitor says my name that the tension releases from my shoulders.
“Astrid.” My secret name. The name I have chosen, since I cannot remember the one I was born with.
“Good morning, Eden.” The Second Sister of Ceres, who was also my Second on the Juno, moves until her shadow falls over me. At one time we were enemies, but fate—disguised in the actions of Hiro val Akira—brought us together. Then we realized who our real enemies were.
“It’s after noon, Astrid, not morning.” When I look up at her, I see she is diplomatically keeping her face pleasantly blank. She is beautiful, my Second, as most who advance in the Sisterhood are, but her fiery-red hair and emerald-green eyes are particularly noteworthy on Ceres, where few look like her. “You’re due at the dedication ceremony in less than an hour… and you’re wrist-deep in dirt.” Ah, there’s the judgment in her tone I know so well.
I gently pat the earth over the newly planted rose seeds and clap my hands to rid them of excess soil. My fingernails are ragged, though; there’s no hiding that. “I can wear gloves,” I say with a shrug. Eden sighs, so I add, “Tending a garden is an important part of my worship.”
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you,” Eden begins, playing with a pair of gardening gloves I abandoned, “but it’s hard to get you alone lately.”
She has no idea. “About what? Caring for my hands?”
“No, no.” Eden tosses the gloves aside. “About the communications tower. I want to earmark some funding for it so we can improve the transmission speed between Mars and Ceres.” I keep quiet while I pretend to think about it. “Then perhaps you’d get your morning broadcasts in the morning instead of the afternoon.”
I cannot help but laugh at that. I have lost track of time in the greenhouse, and the broadcast didn’t help. “I’m sorry, Eden, but the next month’s budget has already been approved.”
Eden jerks upright. “What’re you spending it on?”
I take in a deep breath before I speak again. “I promised Lily she could build the shelter for Asters displaced during the Annexation of Ceres.”
I expect Eden’s scoff, so I’m not hurt by it. “It’s always her.”
I level a hard look at Eden. We have had this conversation many times, and I refuse to have it again. Aunt Marshae may have left for Mars to be trained and confirmed as Aunt Edith’s replacement, but that does not mean she didn’t leave eyes on Ceres. Keeping Lily happy with her pet projects ensures that, if she is reporting to Aunt Marshae, she will be more favorable toward me. Placating an asset is the first way of turning them. I learned that directly from Hiro.
“I should get ready,” I tell Eden as I stand up and brush by her, not inviting her to follow but not barring her either. After a moment, she falls in step beside me, and we walk companionably out of the greenhouse situated in the inner courtyard and across what we have renamed the Cloisters, filled with tilled rows of vegetables and skinny-trunked fruit trees. Eden plucks an apple, pink as her lips, as we pass through the miniature orchard and into the high-ceilinged stone hallways of the Temple of Ceres.
The Temple, once a building that housed the Icarii Senate, is the center of Gean worship on Ceres and the seat of my power. Perhaps that is why I feel kinship with it. Or perhaps it is that I aim to build myself in its image: to appear as one thing, but be another.
Eden takes a bite out of her apple, juice dripping down her chin, and tosses the rest to me with a playful smile.
* * *
THE PILOT WHO navigates our podcar through the streets of Ceres is unnecessary when the programming of the vehicle does all of the work, requiring him to simply watch the screens in silence, but we Geans adhere to one of the oldest Sisterhood laws: May no machine be set above a human. At least, openly we do. My right hand finds the square shape in my pocket, and even through my gloves, the feeling of the box is pleasing.
Step by step, I work toward becoming the next Mother. Step by step, I will make these neural implants illegal. I will change the Sisterhood, and the Geans, for the better.
Already I have left my mark. Ceres is much improved from when I took power four months ago. The streets are no longer rubble-strewn, the buildings no longer pockmarked from Gean bombs. Shelters have been opened for those displaced in the Annexation. Unemployment is lower than on both Earth and Mars; I wasted no time getting the people to work on rebuilding their communities. And Aunt Margaret brought Sisters to the city and helped me start the Green Garden Initiative. Even now, passing through rows of commercial buildings, I see the fruits of our labors: metal trellises amidst strips of green, covered in reaching tomato and cucumber plants. The GGI works on multiple levels but, at its most basic, ensures that Ceres produces its own food and no one goes hungry.
The months have not been without troubles, of course. The destruction of the Icarii warship Leander had many on Ceres fearing life in the asteroid belt. But if the Gean military knows what happened to the Leander, they have not felt the need to share it with the Sisterhood, and so I focused on increasing patrols around Ceres as opposed to panicking about the unknown something out there that destroyed the Leander. For all we know, it was an accident. Now the Leander Incident is but a memory.
Still, I believe my greatest achievement was my first. When I was the First Sister of the Juno, six Icarii quicksilver warriors boarded the ship looking for Saito Ren. After the battle was over and the Geans stood victorious, Ren decided to cage the warriors as opposed to killing them—the Warlord’s preferred method for dealing with prisoners. But then the Mother was assassinated, and the six Icarii were forgotten.
Except I didn’t forget. As soon as I had the power to do so, I released them with an unallied ship and sent them back to the Icarii bearing a message of peace. With one gesture, I opened a dialogue of friendship between us, resulting in the current cease-fire as our heads of state debate terms for a peace treaty.
Perhaps their release is the reason broken manacles have become the symbol of my rule of Ceres. As our podcar slows to a halt at our destination, I spot the sigil on flags and handmade posters throughout the gathered crowd: two manacles connected by a circle of chains, broken. Snapped in two. Fragmented, and thus useless. A symbol of freedom.
The pilot gets out to open the door for us. In our brief moment alone, Eden nudges me and gestures to the banner hanging from a lamppost, the chains a dark gray against the white background. “I’m sure that’ll thrill Aunt Margaret,” she says wryly.
I have no chance to respond—that it is not Aunt Margaret I am worried about—before the pilot opens the door and the noise of the crowd assaults us. As I step out, the cheers turn wild. Packed shoulder to shoulder, the people are barely restrained behind stanchions and thick velvet ropes. It is only the presence of soldiers that keeps them in their place, though a few residents reach across the line, hands desperately grasping for me as if power flows from a mere touch. I gesture at my bristling soldiers to leave them be.
Eden and I walk single-file on the packed-earth path beneath a wrought iron gate, away from the chaos of the crowd. Around us, the stretches of green hills are dotted with leafy chestnut and almond trees, while the trail is lined with cypresses, offering both shade and shelter. Above, the projected sky is bright blue and calm, a perfect day to dedicate a new park.
Before I’ve even found peace in the nature surrounding us, we break from the tree line into a stretch of field where a wide stage has been set. More stanchions guarded by soldiers keep the attendees on one side, while Eden and I approach from the other. I can hear a ripple pass through the crowd as a few spot us, but it is little more than low chatter from this distance. They are excited, and that is a good thing; it won’t be hard to whip them into a frenzy.
At the back of the stage, Aunt Margaret waits for us. Now that Aunt Edith has retired, Aunt Margaret is the eldest member of the Agora. With her short gray hair like the coat of a sheep and wrinkled, rosy cheeks, it would be easy to think of her as a grandmother figure and nothing more, but I know firsthand it would be foolishness to mistake her old age for softness. She has ruled the Order of Pyxis for the past twenty years, like steel thorns beneath silken petals. The golden medallion she wears around her neck, one of only seven, is evidence of her membership in the Agora.
Aunt Margaret gestures for the soldiers to leave us alone. They back away, but not far enough for me to speak openly; while Aunt Margaret knows I have been released from the oppression of my neural implant, its very use in the Sisterhood is still a secret to most. “Did you see them waving that symbol of yours, shouting, ‘Unchained! Unchained!’ like a bunch of idiots?” she asks.
Eden’s elbow digs into my side as if to say I told you so.
I lift my hands and flex my fingers. I had nothing to do with that, I sign. It feels strange using the hand language of the Sisterhood now that I am free, but sometimes I must.
“Well, letting them get away with it isn’t doing you any favors on Mars,” she says.
I’ve heard what they whisper on Mars, that the symbol of the broken manacles is meant as a reprisal against the Order of Andromeda’s chain-wrapped stone. Being that I am from that Order, it is almost as likely as the story that freeing the quicksilver warriors gave me the symbol. But truthfully, though I do not know where it came from, I like it, and so I cannot bring myself to do away with it.
What would you advise me to do? I ask instead.
“Bah,” Aunt Margaret spits. “It doesn’t matter now. After all this is over, we have more important things to focus on.” She pats my arm with a soft smile, once more calling forth the image of a doting grandmother—or what I would imagine one would be like; being an orphan, I wouldn’t know. “Afterward, we’ll talk. All of us.”
All of us, as in her, Eden, and me? But no, as she steps toward the stairs leading onto the stage, I spot the small Sister lingering in her shadow.
I shoot a look at Lily—short, plain Lily with her brown hair cut in a childish bob at her chin. Of all the people here, Lily is the only one who looks unhappy. Because Aunt Marshae is displeased, or because of the news Aunt Margaret wishes to share?
I do not have time to think about it. Aunt Margaret gestures for me to follow her up onto the stage. “Pull your head out of your ass, girl,” she says before offering me her arm. Onstage, she’ll affect an elderly shuffle, allowing me to brace her, to really pull at the crowd’s hearts. It is a song and dance we have done before, and one I am sure we will do again.
We have been planning this dedication ceremony for the past month, and today it comes to fruition. Everything goes smoothly, for once.
After Aunt Margaret says a few words and leads the crowd in prayer, we each take our place on either side of a silk-covered figure and grab hold of the golden ropes that hang beside the statue. Aunt Margaret nods at me, and we pull together without a word.
The sheet falls, revealing a statue with the likeness of our late Mother Isabel III. The crowd applauds politely, a few cheering in fervor for the Sisterhood.
And, with a beautiful smile on my face, I stare into the stone eyes of the woman I killed, knowing I would do it again if given half the chance.
* * *
BACK IN MY chambers at the Temple of Ceres, my ears ring with the thrum of the crowd, but better that than the overwhelming memories of the past. Though I have done my utmost to make the space mine, pulling down priceless icons and paintings and hanging plants in their place, this is the very room where the Mother greeted me four months ago and taught me that I could speak. The stark, hard leather chairs have been exchanged for comfortable divans and sprawling couches, but this was the sitting room where she forced her will upon mine and controlled my body.
The space does bring comfort at times, with its shelves of books in a variety of languages, its private bedroom with a spacious bed and bathroom with a deep tub, its office with its real wooden desk and glass doors that open onto the courtyard. But while the blood has been washed away, the memories remain.
Just there, I shot the Mother. Over there, Eden and I wrapped the rope around her neck to hang her body from the balcony. And there…
That is the place I stood as I discovered Ringer was not real.
There is no point in thinking about him, I chide myself. Hringar Grimson, the specter soldier, was created thanks to the neural damage from the Icarii implant the Sisterhood put inside my brain. But there is no need to consider his ghost, no need to ruin a good day such as this with thoughts of the harm done to me by the Agora.
I close my eyes and try to recall the overwhelming peace and happiness from the greenhouse this morning, but there is no chance of finding it when the day is far from over. Now that the dedication ceremony is behind us, we still have to meet with Aunt Margaret to hear the news. My head begins to spin when Eden sits at my side and tosses something into my lap. When I look down, I see her bare feet on my skirt. She wiggles her toes. “Rub them,” she says.
I snort a laugh. “Eden!”
“Pleeeeease.”
Still, she has coaxed a smile from me. “Only if you rub mine.”
“Deal,” she says, patting her lap, “but I want you to rub my feet like you hate them.”
The two of us are giggling when the knock on the door comes. We sober at once, and Eden jerks upright as Aunt Margaret enters, escorted by Lily. Guards are stationed farther down the hallway, but none of them would dare stop an Auntie from going where she pleases. “Oh, stuff your formality,” Aunt Margaret says. “Sit down and relax.”
Still, when Eden settles at my side, she’s much stiffer than before. I fight the urge to reach for the little box in my pocket, to rub it in my anxiousness. “Can I offer you something to drink?” I ask. “I can call for some tea or lemon water.”
