Spinning Starlight (10 page)

Madness fills my dreams, the cell-tearing chaos of the portal. My brothers beg me to hold on tighter, to pull them through.

They slip away every time. I fail again and again.

I wake up with only a few minor aches remaining, but the dream of my brothers lingers. When I tried to pull Emil through with me, I wasn’t ready. I was too weak. I’ll have to get
back to that portal with the spires, try again. Maybe once I have a better idea of this place and what’s happening.

After cleaning up and getting dressed, I find a tray of food outside my door. No idea where it came from, but I bring it in and eat the provided breakfast. The fruits are different, sweeter, and
the grains less refined, but it tastes good.

“Ready to go?”

I didn’t notice Tiav arrive at the open doorway, yet his words didn’t startle me. Maybe because I welcome any break in the silence. As for whether I’m ready to go, I
don’t know where we’re going, but I’m ready enough, so I follow him out.

Yesterday Tiav had a cautiousness that’s gone today. Now his eyes hold a distinct energy as he leads me back down to the street, like he’s overflowing with the questions he mentioned
last night. He sticks to easy-to-answer ones like whether I slept well (yes, well enough), whether I’ll need additional clothes (yes, most likely), and whether I have any lingering injuries
from my journey (no, not that I’ve noticed).

I don’t know what other questions he could possibly have. They already know the Points exist, and they somehow control portals, which puts him at least seventeen steps ahead of me. Any
details he doesn’t know are insignificant next to the mind-boggling parade of
aliens
that again greets me outside.

We don’t get into a streamer, instead just walk along the street. Tension I hadn’t noticed relaxes from my body. Give me a hovercar over those confounding streamers any day.

Walking means weaving among the other pedestrians, including all the alien types. Again, they look at Tiav much more than at me. Like I’m only interesting because I’m with him.
Whatever
primary Aelo
means, being her son calls attention to him, too.

I get that.

“We’re going to the Nyum,” Tiav says, keeping his voice low enough that only I can hear him. “Every town and city has one. It’s where the Aelo work, and sometimes
representatives from the Agnacki, Crimna, and Haleian governments. Remember, Kalkig is Agnac. That woman over there, she’s Haleian.” He subtly jerks his head toward one of the big,
athletic-looking types. “And that one’s Crimna.” One of the slight, delicate people.

The building—the Nyum—isn’t far. The front wall curves away from us and goes up in four asymetrical levels. It’s not huge by Sampati standards, but big enough that I
can’t tell whether the whole building is round or just the front. Judging by the inside, I’m guessing the whole building, because the lobby taking up the entire first floor seems to be
completely circular. Smooth tiles cover the floor and shelves line the walls. All the shelves are packed with similar rectangular objects, varying sizes, but I don’t recognize them. To the
left and right, sweeping staircases lead to a balcony overlooking the lobby before continuing on to the rest of the second floor. Several people stand near the shelves or on the balcony. A few of
them nod at Tiav before returning to their conversations.

Something about this place reminds me of Tarix, but I’m not sure what.

Tiav leads me up the stairs, then to a smaller staircase leading to the third floor. It’s much less grand than the lobby, more utilitarian, and I spot more touchscreens and other signs of
a technological presence. We enter a small room—some kind of office, I think—with a desk in the middle and a few chairs, plus a large wallscreen.

“My mother suggested we work in here,” Tiav says, gesturing for me to take a seat. I do, and he taps some commands into his com-tablet. The desk in front of me lights up, and so does
the wallscreen, both with the same grid of symbols he showed me last night. He looks at the wallscreen and scratches the back of his neck. “Okay, where to start?”

He doesn’t say anything else for several long minutes, until he finally turns around to find I’m staring at him, waiting.

“Sorry. I just never thought about how to teach writing to someone who’s never seen it before. It’s a semi-syllabic system, so there are two stages to the keypad. This is the
primary stage with the base characters. When you tap one, it takes you to the secondary stage. See, each of these has different markings added to the base character to complete the syllable. The
primary is in alphabetical order, but the secondary stages are a little more complicated.”

I slump in my chair. Up until now, I’ve been reassured by the fact that Tiav speaks the same language I do—and come to think of it, that’s some odd luck. But he just veered
into something foreign.

Fortunately, he sees my instant hopelessness and shakes his head. “Wait. You don’t know what alphabetical means, do you? Let me just show you my name so you can see how it works,
then. Tiav, so I need the
t
base, which is here.” He taps it, and a new grid appears. This must be what he meant by the secondary stage. All the symbols here look similar, but with
minor variations in the details. “This is the specific symbol for
tee
. Then back to the main board for
ah
. And this one for
ahv
.”

I look at the two symbols side-by-side, together representing Tiav’s name. There’s a kind of beauty to them. They’re almost art. But I can’t imagine anyone ever keeping
enough of the symbols straight in their head to understand more than a word or two.

“You look like I’ve asked you to eat an Agnacki boar in one sitting.” He pulls another chair around next to me. “Here, I’ll tell you the sound for each base letter,
and you stop me when I get to the one you want. Let’s start with your name.”

One by one, he names the sounds. The
l
isn’t in the first row. Halfway through the second, they begin to blur together and my mind wanders. I almost miss when he gets it at the
start of the third row. He’s already said the next sound by the time I tap his arm and point to the one before. We continue through the secondary board until he finds
lih
. Then the
whole process again from
d
to
dee
.

The two symbols line up on the queue underneath the grid. Tiav starts back at the beginning of the main symbols, but I tap his arm again and shake my head.

“That’s it? Your name’s Liddi?” When I nod, he smiles.

I’ve had a lot of nice-looking boys smile at me, not least among them Reb Vester. Tiav’s is different. It’s missing something. A media-cast in my head answers the question.

For the first time in Liddi Jantzen’s life, a boy smiled at her with no scheming, no calculating…without
wanting
anything.

The realization sends a shock through me, the thrill of finding something’s not so impossible.

“Nice to meet you, Liddi. What next?”

It must have taken two full minutes just to write my two-symbol name, so I need to think of something short and efficient to say. I gesture for him to restart the cycle. I think I remember the
p
sound being somewhere on the first row.

No, that was
b
. Tiav keeps going, and going, until finally he gets it in the last row. We run into a problem on the other stage, because there is no
pore
. I select the closest
thing—
poh
—then circle the empty space next to the resulting symbol in the queue.

“Oh, I forgot,” he says. “Some syllables cycle back to the primary stage for their end-sounds. You just have to touch this one in the corner to show you don’t want it to
go into the secondary stage yet.”

So we go again until we find the
r
sound. Its symbol shows up differently in the queue, smaller and hovering above and to the right of the
poh
.

And again through
t
and
tah
before adding
l
.

“‘ Portal’? Do you mean Podra, this city? What about it?”

No, he doesn’t understand. My bones feel like they’ve been charged with explosives. It’s too slow and inefficient and my brothers are out there waiting for me. I never imagined
writing would be so complicated. No wonder we got rid of it. Maybe if it were Luko or Emil instead of me—they’re both sharp with visual details—but it isn’t, and this
isn’t going to work.

I don’t have time.

Silence stabs every corner of my body. I want to scream—I’ve wanted to for days—but that’s the very last thing I can do. Instead, I jump out of my seat and start pacing,
trying to burn off the frustrated, impotent energy that begs for me to cry out.

“What’s wrong? I don’t understand.”

We’re agreed on that, but I don’t even know what word I could try to write to explain it to him.

“Is everything all right?”

The voice from the doorway stops my pacing. It’s Shiin’alo. Tiav stands as she enters.

“Yes, everything’s fine. She was able to tell me her name’s Liddi. Not much else, but we only just got started.”

“I’m afraid we’ll have to postpone anything further for a little while,” she says. “When I informed the council, Ymana pointed out something I hadn’t thought
of—Liddi may have inadvertently brought foreign contagions with her from Sampati. We’ll have one of the doctors check you over, Liddi, just to make sure.”

“I can take her,” Tiav says.

“That’s not necessary. You have other duties to attend to.”

He doesn’t make any attempt to argue. “Yes, Mother.”

Shiin’alo gestures for me to follow her, but before I go, I turn to Tiav. I mimic pointing at the symbols one after another after another, drawing my face into an expression of the most
mind-numbing boredom.

He nods, allowing another smile. “I’ll see if I can work out something better.”

That’ll be good, because judging by the way his mother said “duties,” I’m pretty sure he has better things to do. When it comes down to it, so do I.

Joon Elyson had been dreamed up by the artists on Yishu, as far as Liddi could tell. That was probably why so many artists and designers employed the teen. Skin as dark as
her hair, tall and confident, with eyes you couldn’t miss from across a crowded room. Yet at the party to celebrate Igara’s new jewelry line, Joon was the one who crossed the room to
where Liddi stood.

“Liddi Jantzen, right?” Joon said. “Iggy said he’d invited you.”

“Unfortunately, my brothers don’t think fourteen is old enough to go out by myself, so I’m chaperoned,” Liddi said with a roll of her eyes toward Vic. He was talking
laserball with a media-grub but had time to give Liddi a “stop-complaining” glare.

“Oh, they’ll get over that soon enough. Come on, let me introduce you to some people.”

Joon knew everyone important, and with her and Liddi together, there was hardly a vid-cam pointed anywhere else. Like Liddi’s brothers, Joon knew how to handle the attention like it
wasn’t there at all, which put the younger girl at ease.

At the end of the evening, Joon gave her a quick hug. “Thanks for keeping me company. These parties can be so annoying with people who want to talk to the media-cast of you, not the
real you.”

It was like after years of people saying Luna Minor was the only moon, someone other than Liddi’s brothers finally acknowledged Luna Major straight overhead. She felt exactly that way,
like people wanted to talk to “the Jantzen girl, heiress to a fortune” rather than just her.

“I’m going to live-comm you,” was the last thing Joon said before Vic took Liddi to the hovercar.

And she did. The two of them went to other parties and openings, shopping in the fashion district, and Joon came out to the country house to visit. Liddi had something she hadn’t
experienced since her parents died.

She had a friend.