The Black Stars (9 page)

Mason nodded at Lore; he would not be forgetting her either, the girl who had called him out in front of the entire school five seconds after his first appearance. When they made eye contact a second time, she gave a grudging kind of nod, as if she had decided to accept his presence, but barely.

“And Jiric is the smartest person I know,” Po said. He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “In fact, we're all kind of the best of the school, now that I think about it. I wonder if that's why you guys were put here.”

Risperdel grinned. “So we make the humans look bad.”

“That won't be so difficult,” Jiric said.

Jiric's face was pinched, like he was smelling something terrible. He wore a pair of simple eyeglasses, which enlarged his eyes and made him appear human. When Mason looked closer, he could see data scrolling down the lenses. What data Jiric would need to be monitoring, Mason had no idea. The human look was helped along by the fact that he was the first Tremist Mason had ever seen to have shoulder-length brown hair.

Mason learned that a Tremist only had one name, but if he or she was part of a family descended from royalty, the full name held a part of that royal name. Like Risperdel was directly related to the House of Del, a minor royal family from a faraway kingdom.

The door opened. Reckful stepped inside their dorm.

“Sir,” Po said. Risperdel, Jiric, and Lore slipped from their beds to stand at attention. It was so like the ESC that Mason had to blink the idea away.

“Stand easy,” Reckful replied, “It's after hours.” The students relaxed, Jiric and Lore crawling back into bed. “I'd like to have a word with our newest brothers for a moment.”

Mason's heart began to pound: there was something about the way he said it. His usual smile was gone.

Reckful gestured toward the door, and Mason and Tom stepped past him into the hallway. Reckful followed, and the door shut behind them.

“This way, please,” Reckful said, starting down the corridor. Mason and Tom shared a brief look, but Reckful called over his shoulder, “Move like you have legs.”

Something was wrong. Very wrong. Mason began to sweat, but he took a series of calming breaths, his mind already picturing their escape route. He knew which direction to run for the exit, but then what? The school was surrounded by a living forest of trees intent on sucking them up into the branches.

Mason and Tom caught up to Reckful, who led them into a new hallway—not wood, but a metal that reminded him of the Egypt's decks, silvery and polished. A door opened in the wall, and Mason and Tom stepped through. The room began to brighten from everywhere, that strange ambient lighting present throughout what they had seen of the school. The room was some kind of storage unit, full of equipment Mason didn't recognize or understand.

When it was bright enough to see well, Mason looked at Reckful, then down at Reckful's hands. On each palm rested a small black disk. Their communicators. He had found them. Or someone had found them and given them to Reckful.

Slowly, Reckful curled his fingers over the disks, then let his hands fall to his sides.

“Do you think Rhadgast are feebleminded?” he asked, his tone ice cold.

Mason and Tom were frozen. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Tom shift his weight onto his back foot.
Don't do anything stupid. Don't do anything we can't undo.
He had to trust Tom to be smart, because Tom
was
smart.

“I desperately want to trust you both,” Reckful said. “I desperately want peace between our species.
Desperately.
You see, you two may be seen as heroes for the events that transpired this last year, but I have been on the front lines. I have seen the destruction of war.” His face was twisted in a grimace, so strange after seeing his near-constant smile and easygoing demeanor. “I know what enemy we need to face together. They're coming for us right now.”

“So do we, sir,” Mason said. It slipped. The words just bunched up in the back of his throat, then came out in a tumble.

But rather than set him off, Reckful's forehead unwrinkled, and he gave a long sigh out of his nose. “I suppose you do.”

Mason knew he had two choices:

1. Lie.

2. Tell the truth.

There were no other options. Reckful had come to them first, taken them to this room. Mason and Tom should already have been arrested. Or dead. But they weren't.

“Tell me the truth,” Reckful said. It was like he was reading their minds. Or, more likely, it was just the most obvious request.

Tom looked at Mason, as if waiting for his call. It was up to him. But Reckful already had their communicators, so Mason had to assume he knew the truth.

“I'm here for two reasons, sir,” Mason began.

Reckful nodded. “Go on.”

“When I was on the Will, a Stone—though I didn't know he was a Stone at the time—told me that I should seek out the Rhadgast if I wanted to find out the truth about my parents.”

If Reckful knew any of this, his face didn't reveal it. He just listened.

“So…” Mason continued, “… once I got permission to take the invite to this school, there was nothing that was going to stop me.”

“And the second reason?” Reckful said.

Mason licked his lips. Telling the truth would be a direct violation of mission parameters. An ESC spy wasn't supposed to reveal himself to the first person who asked.
He already knows,
Mason thought.
If you lie, you're gone, and this is all for nothing.

“If you refuse to tell me, or if I think you're lying, you're gone.”

Mason began to speak. He had to trust his instincts, whether they were borderline treasonous or not.

Reckful lifted his hand sharply. “Let me finish. There is no play here. You will not overpower me and escape. You will simply be locked away until the leaders figure out what to do with you. So I want you to think about that first. The truth, and nothing less, or your time here is finished.”

Tom nodded at Mason. “Do it, Stark.”

Mason sighed. “The ESC has intelligence indicating the Tremist might be working on some kind of weapon or project that is in violation of the new treaty. A project that may be based
inside
the Rhadgast school. Since I'm the only one allowed to be here, I, along with Tom, have been tasked with uncovering the plot—I mean, if there is one.”

Reckful was silent for a very long time, but Mason could see the cogs turning behind his eyes. “I see,” he said after a long moment.

Mason and Tom awaited their fate. All Mason knew was that he didn't want to die here. Not after he already thought he was dying less than an hour ago. He wanted to see Merrin again first, to make sure she was all right. And Jeremy and Stellan, too.

“What Rhadgast told you about your parents?” Reckful asked.

“He wore a mask,” Mason said.

“Would you recognize his voice?”

“I don't know,” Mason said, though the memory was seared into his brain. “Possibly. Yes.”

“I don't know anything about your parents,” Reckful said. “Or about any secret project happening at the school. I would know about a weapon, I think.”

Mason dared to hope they would be allowed back to their dorm.

Reckful opened his hands; the communicators rested on his palms. “What happens if you don't use these? Will there be a problem?”

“I don't know,” Mason said. “We're supposed to report that we got here safely.”

“If we go off the grid,” Tom said, speaking for the first time, “there may be some kind of retaliation.”

Reckful snorted, as if the very idea of retaliation against the Rhadgast school was hilarious.

A moment passed. Reckful took a breath, but Mason and Tom couldn't.

“I don't know if there is anything going on here or not, and I hope in time you report that there isn't. I sincerely hope that.”

He extended his hands, presenting the communicators to Mason and Tom. “Take these. Hide them well. If you're caught, I will say I had no idea you had them, and I will stand by as you're both tried for espionage, the penalty for which is death.”

A chill ran up and down Mason's spine.

“I can't help you,” Reckful added. “But if there is something to this intelligence, I want to know about it.”

Mason and Tom took their communicators. Mason dropped his into the back pocket of his pants. His hand was shaking with relief now.

“I am choosing to trust you boys.”

“Why?” Tom blurted. Mason wanted to slap him.

Reckful's eyebrows shot up. “That's a good question. Perhaps I have my own reasons, Tom. Did you consider that?”

Tom visibly paled.

“Not everything is right at this school,” Reckful said. “I can feel it. And I want the truth.”

“Thank you, sir,” Mason said quickly. “We won't forget it.” Reckful's words left a chill in Mason's gut.

Reckful nodded. “See that you don't. Now get out of here. You can find your way back, I hope.”

Reckful opened the door, and Mason and Tom squeezed past into the hallway. The air was cooler out here. Mason took a big gulp of it, looking over his shoulder as Reckful shut himself in the small room.

“That was a pretty close call for our first day,” Tom said flatly.

“Tell me about it. We can't do anything easy, can we?”

Tom didn't quite smile: they were both too tense for that. “I hope we know what we're doing,” Tom said.

“I don't think we do,” Mason replied.
But it's too late now.

They got back to the dorm and found the rhadjen had hung their robes from pegs on the wall. They were all in bed, working at their pull-out desks. Mason and Tom hung their robes in two open spaces, and now they wore a uniform not unlike the one worn by ESC cadets. Mason and Tom took off their boots in silence, sliding them into the row of boots, careful to make them as neat as the rest.

“Welcome back,” Po said, and Mason was grateful he didn't start asking a bunch of questions Mason couldn't answer.

The Blood girl known as Risperdel didn't mind. “What was
that
all about? An after-hours visit from a teacher?” She looked around the room as if trying to gain support for how crazy of an idea that was. It didn't seem so crazy to Mason.

“He just wanted to make sure we were settling in,” Mason said.

“Reckful's manner was less than casual,” Jiric replied, studying them with his huge eyes.

“Save your questions for tomorrow, please,” Po said. “Lights out in thirty seconds.” He seemed to be the captain of the room, or something. The rhadjen listened. Over the next thirty seconds, the lights began to fade. Mason caught Lore's eye one more time before crawling into the bed below her. He couldn't make out her expression in the dim light, but assumed it wasn't that friendly.

Mason listened hard in the dark. The sounds were familiar, since he'd been sleeping in a room with a dozen or so people his entire life. First there was the rustle of blankets and pillows, the sniffles and sighs. Then the change in breathing, indicating someone was unconscious. He listened hard for Tom, who was still awake but completely still. He could not see him in the dark.

After another five minutes, Mason pulled his blanket up over his face, then slipped the communicator into his hand and squeezed. He felt a tingle build in his palm as the natural electric field produced by his body linked with the machine.

Mason closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he stood in Grand Admiral Shahbazian's office.

“There you are!” GAS said, slamming his hand on the table. He was smiling. “I was worried. Are you safe?”

GAS's own communicator rested on a pedestal in the middle of his office, displaying a silvery-white re-creation of Mason's face. Mason didn't have to speak aloud, just think, and the head spoke.

“We're safe,” Mason said. “I'm sorry, this was the earliest we could make contact.” One problem with the communicator was that it blocked out the things happening around your body. Someone could be looming over him right now, watching, and Mason would be completely unaware.

Suddenly, Tom snapped into focus next to him. He was using his own communicator.

“Good, you're both alive,” GAS said. Mason could tell his eyes were bloodshot, even though he was seeing them through a series of cameras on GAS's communicator.

“Were you expecting otherwise?” Mason asked.

GAS made a beckoning motion with his hand. “No, no. Just give me your report. In detail.”

So they did. Mason and Tom gave a play-by-play of their experiences since leaving the grand admiral.

“I'll expect to hear from you when you have something useful to report.”

Mason thought the revelation that there were two kinds of Rhadgast was pretty important, but maybe GAS had already known that.

“When do you want us to check in?” Tom asked.

“When it's safe. Get some sleep you two. Watch your backs … and well done.” GAS killed the feed, and Mason returned to the darkness of the room, surrounded by sleeping rhadjen.

He had expected to stay up the entire night. He was on an alien planet, in an alien school, on an impossible mission he didn't know how to begin. Using the communicator had left his head feeling buzzy, his skin itchy.

But once he closed his eyes, Mason slipped into a dreamless sleep.

 

Chapter Twelve

 

A loud buzzer ripped Mason from sleep, followed by a voice:
Welcome to the morning, rhadjen. Be in the refectory within five minutes.

Mason jolted upright and banged his head on Lore's bunk, not used to sleeping with something above him again (at A2, he was given the top bunk by fellow cadets as a sign of respect, which had only made Mason feel more alienated).

The others were already out of bed, filing in and out of the bathroom. Mason could hear running water. He followed them in, found a stall, and went inside to take a five-second shower. The water blasted his body so hard it hurt. He bumped into Tom on his way out.