The road beyond the outer city was, if anything, worse than the one we'd left behind.
Men, women, children — every one of them looked as though the world had wrung the moisture out of their skin, leaving it dry and cracked and stretched too tight over bone. The ground was in no better shape, torn open in places, scorched black in others, and above it all the sky bled a deep, dull red, staining everything beneath it the color of an old wound. It looked like the sky itself had been injured and never healed.
I sat facing all of it through the open back of the carriage, and somewhere behind me the second carriage rolled along in our wake, keeping pace without falling behind.
Whatever effort it took to pull us, the Dromos in front never seemed to feel it. It moved with the same steady, unhurried gait it might have used on an empty road, muscle rolling easy under its thick hide, as if the weight of the carriage — and everything in it — meant nothing at all. Watching it, I understood why the old civilization stars had favored the beast for hauling. Strength like that didn't need to be told twice.
The carriage itself was open at both ends, front and back, its wooden ribs curving overhead in the shape of an upturned arch, so that wind and light passed straight through instead of being shut out. One of the swordsmen sat up front on the cushioned driver's bench, reins loose in his hands. Inside, four of us sat together — myself, Astelin, Seria, and Aj, the same rude swordsman from before. I'd settled near the back, watching the ruined land slide past.
Astelin slept with his head on my thigh, worn out from the walk and the food finally sitting warm in his stomach. He looked more peaceful than I'd seen him in days, and I kept one hand resting on his hair, more out of habit than anything else.
"Where are your parents?"
Seria's voice pulled me out of my thoughts. I looked up — and, before I could stop it, the same thought from before crossed my mind again: she really was pretty. I caught myself a moment later and answered properly.
"I don't know. They might be on a different star. We got separated during the rescue — they put us on the first rescue unit and gave me some money before that."
"Which star are you two from?" Aj asked, cutting in without so much as glancing my way.
I didn't particularly want to answer him. He'd been nothing but rude to us since the moment we walked up, and the least he could have done was ask with some decency. But he was still one of the people getting us safely to the main city, rude or not, so I swallowed the urge to ignore him.
"We're from ** - **," I said.
Both carriages stopped at once.
~ thump ~ thump
The halt came hard enough that I felt it in my chest, the Dromos' hooves striking the ground twice in quick succession as they pulled up short. Around me, Seria and Aj's expressions changed — the easy, tired look they'd both been wearing slid off their faces, replaced by something darker.
"Haha— kid," Aj said, and the laugh that came with it didn't sound like a real one. "What did you just say?"
"** — **," I repeated.
Aj's forced smile dropped entirely. He turned to look at Seria. For a few seconds neither of them said anything, just held each other's gaze, until finally they both gave a small nod, and the carriages lurched back into motion.
"What happened?" I asked, more than a little thrown.
Seria pressed a finger to her lips.
~ shhh ~
"Don't tell anyone else you're from ** - **," she said quietly. "Better yet, forget you ever said the name."
My mind wouldn't settle after that. What happened to my star? Did my parents make it out? Did something happen there — something worse than what had happened to the rest of us?
Aj must have seen the thoughts churning behind my face, because he said something that stopped them cold.
"That star's the first one that wasn't destroyed."
I looked at him the way anyone would look at someone talking nonsense — because that was exactly what it sounded like. Even as a kid, I knew about the disasters that had swept through the stars, knew that plenty of them had been saved, over and over, by the Protectors. Aj's statement didn't line up with any of that, and for a moment I let myself agree with the old rumor that swordsmen weren't exactly known for their sharp thinking. He was standing — or rather, sitting — right in front of me, doing a fairly convincing impression of the stereotype.
He must have read every bit of that off my face, because his own twisted into something offended.
"Youuu—!"
Seria burst out laughing, reaching over to pat his shoulder. "Haha, it's okay — it's okay, haha — calm down."
Whatever tension had settled on their faces eased a little after that. Seria turned back to me, her voice quieter now, more serious.
"What he meant," she said, "is that it was the first star that wasn't destroyed — and it wasn't saved by the Protectors either. No one's been able to get into it since. Rescue teams have tried, more than once, and every one of them failed. Something's blocking them. Something strong."
"This isn't public knowledge yet, kid," Aj added, "so listen carefully. Whoever made it out of that star is blessed and cursed in the same breath. Blessed, because you're not still stuck in there. Cursed because ~"
From the front of the carriage, the swordsman at the reins spoke for the first time since we'd left.
"Every lunatic out there is going to be looking for survivors from that star," he said, without turning around. "And they won't be particular about how they get their information out of them."