“And what would an ocugry be doing so far from his pack?” asks Astrophel, his grin retreating into a sly smile. “You have no power here, either. Alone, as you are, it’s easy to conclude you’ve been disconnected. Now, am I wrong?”

  Nekkan stays silent, but I can feel his growl against my back. It’s charging me, slowly filling me with the energy I need to stand my ground.

  “Dora—if that even is your real name—you should know that things will be much easier if you just come with us,” says Astrophel. “We have no reason to mistreat you. Quite the opposite: you are worth so much more alive.”

  “To whom?” I spit, drawing strength from Nekkan’s warmth.

  “The Coalition,” says Astrophel. He takes a swig of his ale—my ale. “Clone-batching has been banned for centuries. The royal family would give quite a pretty penny to keep the news of your existence from ever getting out.”

  “You intend to blackmail the royals?” Nemo scoffs. “They’re more likely to blow you out of the sky than respond to your demands.”

  “And how would you know that, toaster?” Astrophel snarls.

  Nemo cringes. “I know royals: I was a prince for centuries. Just because it was programming doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.”

  “Sure, keep telling yourself that.” Astrophel turns back to me. “And in any case, you’ve been marching across this planet completely exposed. Everyone here can see you. They know who you are. What you are.”

  “Then what makes you think you’re the only one who gets to blackmail the royals?” asks Crow. “Hell, I could do it myself if I wanted to—I just can’t be bothered. You’re just one man; I’m pretty sure everyone in this room has already worked out how much Dora’s worth, and if they haven’t, you just gave them the blueprints to a perfect crime. So let me ask again: what makes you think you’re getting her first?”

  Ale flies at Astrophel’s face. Nemo slams a now-empty glass down on the table and shoves Crow out of the booth, though she’s already on her feet, bringing her fist between Astrophel’s eyes.

  The wind is knocked out of me as an extremely hairy arm wraps around my waist, lifting me into the air and slamming me down onto an armored shoulder. Nekkan pushes off against the wall, sliding us into the fray, though I’m high above it all, perched awkwardly on his shoulder.

  The tavern has exploded. All the people who have been so hungrily sizing me up are now on their feet, stumbling over each other in order to reach me first. Nekkan bolts toward the exit.

  We’re not fast enough, not with so many people blocking our way. Astrophel is already standing, wiping the ale from his eyes. He lunges at me, managing to grab my hand before I can pull it away. I yipe, but Crow is faster, swinging a chair against Astrophel’s back, like slapping a mosquito off a friend. The boy howls, but spins his leg under Crow, tripping her. She falls as Nekkan makes it out the door. He bolts out of the tavern and rushes me to the safety of the forest.

  “We can’t leave Crow!” I stammer, but my words are ripped right out of my mouth.

  Astrophel slams the door open, dragging Crow out by her hair. She screams, a sound so shrill it makes my heart go still.

  “Give me the clone,” he spits, blood staining the grass at his feet. “Give her to me, and I won’t report your desertion, that you’re an unmuzzled beast to be put down. Give me the girl, and I may even give you this one back.”

  He lifts Crow by her scalp, forcing another scream out of her. A shiver runs through Nekkan, ferocious as an earthquake. I feel the world shift under me, and I’m shaken off balance. I tumble to the ground. There’s nothing left in my lungs. I struggle to stand, but Nekkan’s foot presses into my lumbar, keeping me pressed hard against the ground.

  I should have listened to my gut—he’s going to give me up.

  The only things I can lift are my eyes, and I meet Crow’s gaze across the damp grass. She’s struggling against Astrophel’s grip, and when she looks at me, I see the fear of death there. I’ve never seen anyone so scared before. Something in my gut twists, and I realize I’m more scared for her than myself.

  “What makes you think you have the power here, pup?” Nekkan’s voice rumbles. “You’re a child of the Coalition. I may be removed from my pack, but even your entire family could not take me alone.”

  “You kill me, and you may as well have the entire Coalition on your heels,” he replies. “I am the son of Captain Hardi. Heir to the entire enterprise. My family has maintained the rim worlds for centuries. Without us, the Core starves. Do you have any idea how powerful that makes my people? The Coalition is mine, and I can so easily make you public enemy number one. You mark my words.”

  My pocket squirms. It makes no sense—I turned Tau off, I’m sure—but, somehow, he is pushing himself against my chest, painfully begging to be released. As Nekkan pushes down on me harder, Tau pushes back, and I want to scream, but I still don’t have the air.

  The bot bursts from my collar like a wasp from the hive, and before anyone can make sense of him, there’s a flash, so bright my eyes tear up. They burn, but it’s a small price to pay to hear my would-be-kidnapper scream.

  Flash. Flash. Flash.

  My eyes are sewn shut against the light. I’ve never programmed this behavior in the bot, have no idea where Tau has gained the skill. Even through the pain, I’m bursting with pride at his tiny rescue.

  I always knew he was brilliant.

  There’s a human scream and then a roar of anger and pain. His paw lifts for an instant, just long enough for me to roll out from under its clutches. Air fills my lungs so fast I feel they might burst, but I can breathe, slaggit. I push myself to my feet and scamper away from Nekkan as the sweet taste of air runs over my tongue. My back is screaming as I run, eyes still blinking out the residue of Tau’s light. My fingers reach for my ears to block out the roaring, but they’re too thin to make a difference. The only way to escape the sound is to run from it.

  But I can’t leave Crow. Though I can’t save her if I can’t see her.

  There’s a new roar—a human roar. Hope flares in my chest, and I find myself spinning on my heels even before I fully open my eyes. I speed back toward the tavern.

  Astrophel is back on his feet: he’s not waiting around for a rematch, and already he’s sprinting off into the woods away from the tavern. Neither Crow nor Nekkan are strong enough to give chase. The massive beast is forcing his eyes open, but I can see they’re red even from here, and he won’t shoot where he can’t aim. Not without his HUD. And Nemo—I’m not even sure where he is.

  Crow is panting heavily, her forehead a crown of red. I don’t stop running until she’s in my arms. The move surprises us both: I find myself crumpling into her, holding her against me just to be sure she’s real.

  “Well,” she says, panting. She doesn’t outright reject the embrace—what am I even thinking?—but she holds me at arm’s length. “Never a dull moment with you.”

  Tau drifts back to my side, chirping proudly. I clutch him in both hands and kiss the top of his tiny egg-timer body, causing him to emit a gentle pink light. Also not a behavior I’ve programmed. When did he even get red LEDs?

  “I truly am a failure to my race,” Nekkan grimaces, still wiping his eyes. “I could crush that bot in my fist. Yet it won.”

  “Anyone seen Nemo?” asks Crow, glancing left and right. “We need to get out of here before the creepy kid or his cronies catch wind of where we went.”

  “They have my family,” I say. The words sink in my gut like a stone in a pond, slow and heavy.

  It’s worse than I feared: they have my family hostage.

  And it’s all my fault.

  “We’re so close to reaching the Mage,” says Crow. “He’ll get you home. You’ll save them. Your witch lady said he can do anything, right?”

  It sounds more like she’s trying to convince herself.

  My heart jolts as the tavern’s back door flies open. Nekkan has his gun pointed at it in an instant, but it’s only Nemo.

  “Fat lot of help you were,” grumbles Crow.

  “Apologies,” he replies. “I was ensuring that we were not followed. And I paid our tab. It seems your money was more than enough to cover the damages we made.”

  “We?” asks Crow.

  Nekkan lets out a hearty laugh.

  “Do they program all the princes to throw down like this in the Outer Zone?” asks Crow, peering into the tavern. The eerily silent tavern. “We should get going. Not that we’re going to be followed for a long, long while. Not if the droid can keep pulling this off.”

  “Unfortunately, this was a… one-time only kind of situation,” Nemo says. “Had some defensive gas left over from the enchanted forest. You know, to calm an unruly crowd. It must have gotten a little… stale while I was in the ditch.”

  I’m surrounded by the impossible.

  And I think I’m loving it.

  Part Three

  Stairway To Space

  Chapter

  Fifteen

  “What are we looking for, exactly?” asks Nekkan. “A geocache? Some kind of handler?”

  We’re standing on an outcrop of rock that overlooks the sprawl of Anchor city below: a jumbled mash between original colony homes—old metal barracks assembled from the hulls of the first ships to have landed, back before planting colonies was privatized by the Coalition—and cold stone bricks. From our vantage point, I can see highly modern patches with sleek chrome and glass, intermingled with rougher barracks, all built together into what seems to be a crater.

  “We don’t know,” I say, eyes fixed on the point where our single road diverges into many. “Gleïa just said, Don’t give up the locket, stay on the road, and find the Technomage. Avoid my sister and have fun! before pushing us out the door.”

  Crow stares down into the crater. While she says nothing, I can feel her trepidation. Even I’m trembling slightly, hands stuffed into my pockets for their own good. I’ve never been to a place so big and so dense before. We’re two-hundred and forty-four colonists on Nesworth, and this city has at least a hundred or even a thousand times that. I can’t tell, I have no sense of scale. I’m not sure if I’m excited or terrified, especially after the near miss at the tavern.

  “So, I take it we are going to the ’vator, right?” asks Nemo. He points to the center of the crater, where the skyscrapers cluster around what can only be a spacescraper so tall I can’t see where it ends. But as I stare, I realize it’s not a building at all: four massive coils rise straight into the sky, reaching from the earth to the clouds and beyond.

  “What’s that?”

  “The space elevator,” he says, “which links Anchor to the moon? Well, it is not exactly a moon, but it is less of a mouthful to say than ‘artificial satellite.’ Since that is where the Mage lives, it is probably where we’re headed, correct?”

  I follow Nemo’s finger to the sky. I haven’t missed a celestial body hanging above us—I’m so used to Thebos I would be relieved to see one again. Instead, there’s only a great green gleam, like a star in the middle of the day. So that’s the Mage’s moon. What makes it so green, so bright, I don’t know, but it’s glorious.

  “The emerald moon.” Nekkan lets out a low whistle. “The crown jewel above Haven.”

  “Damn, is the station really made of emerald?” asks Crow, staring at the thing in awe.

  “No, I believe the name comes from the color of the solar panels,” says Nemo.

  “But how do we get there?” asks Nekkan. At least one of us is thinking proactively.

  “We ride the ’vator, of course,” Nemo replies. “We will ask for passage. If the Technowitch of Dawn is your sponsor, then I am sure they will allow us.”

  “I sure hope so,” I mutter under my breath. Reaching the Technomage suddenly feels like a whole other insurmountable mountain. We’ve walked so far, and now it looks like we’ll have to walk all the way to space. “Can I borrow a scarf?”

  No one has a scarf, of course. Fashion isn’t our forte. Nekkan offers his rebreather, but it’s so big, it covers my eyes. He sifts through his belongings until he finds a paw brace, which, when stuffed over my head, passes for a balaclava.

  The city grows up around us quicker than I anticipated. First, a house here or there; then, streets on either side. Some fly flags out windows, others—most of them, really—hang their laundry to dry instead. For a heartbeat, it reminds me of home, of wash days. But the image shatters as a woman slams her shutters shut, loudly ripping me from my thoughts.

  Nekkan was right: the people here don’t give a shipsslag about the four of us walking together in the street. We’re striding side by side, and no one seems to care about the gigantic ocugry, or the battered droid, or the woman with a centuries out of date sense of fashion. But what they might care about, if they could see me, is their beloved princess strolling down the street in broad daylight when she’s supposed to be dead.

  Rule three: she is not me, she is not me.

  But as I walk, my confidence leaks out my pocket. I shove my head into the collar of my spark coat, face hot under the balaclava.

  Rule three: she is not me, she is not me.

  They’re not looking closely enough at my face to make a fuss, and the makeshift balaclava hopefully makes me look like a mine worker at best. I know that, and I know I have a small army beside me, but I still can’t shake the feeling this will all end in an instant.

  “Children, Children, you’re not alone,

  They watch over the Outer Zone.

  Four for the Witches, One for the Mage,

  Five for the Immys who never do Age.”

  There are children in the street ahead of us, singing as they skip between hovering pads. It’s a game I played with my cousins, little stepping stones drifting a few centimeters off the ground that we jump between while singing. But this isn’t any song I know.

  “Witches, Witches, Spark and Wire,

  Can make whatever your heart desires.

  Dawn and Dusk and Noon and Night,

  Don’t come between them as they fight.”

  Tau lets out a low, long note. He senses my distress. I pluck him out of the sky, whisper for him to hush, and put him in my pocket again. There’s no point turning him off, knowing now that he can switch himself on at will. He’s learning so much so quickly: he’s a real AI, just like I built him, but it’s a little scary seeing how independent he’s become from my programming.

  “Are they going to come at us with pitchforks?” Crow asks, pushing herself close to me as if her added frame can help mask my recognizable face.

  “Not if we reach the Technomage first.”

  “Oh, gotcha.” Crow grins.

  “I thought the practice would be enough,” I say, staring at the paving stones as we walk. “My entire life I’ve been preparing for this, but none of it was worth anything.”

  “Well, no one is trying to outright kill you yet, so I’d call that a victory.”

  I let out a small laugh, remembering to force the harsh and guttural one rather than the sweet tinkling of the princess’s cheer which is natural to us both. Still, I don’t take my eyes off my feet.

  Rule three: she is not me, she is not me.

  It’s too late to turn back now. I slow my pace, marching closer to Nekkan, his monstrous form reassuring. All we have to do is make it to the elevator, and then this will be over.

  The street slopes slowly down into the heart of Anchor. Now, there are shops and restaurants and cafés, and the world feels alive in a way I’ve never felt. The rich tapestry of people’s lives twisting and turning around each other fills my gut with anxious and excited flutters. They brush past us on their ‘scoots, weaving down the streets like we’re just part of the crowd. The roads are filled with the ding ding of streetcars and the smell of fried treats.

  I don’t know any of these faces, and they’re not giving us a second glance. I try not to stare too long at any one person, but it’s hard not to become engrossed by the novelty of the whole experience. Anchor’s center is a beating heart. While I know this is just a small taste of what a city on Apricus might offer, I’m enthralled all the same.

  And there, at the very center of this crater, in the middle of a shockingly empty plaza, stands a magnificent building, all marble and ornamental edifice, bright and glittering white. From it extends huge cables, wider than a house: these must be the cables that carry the elevator to and from the Mage’s moon.

  Now this is some serious engineering.

  I’ve never seen something so technically perfect before. The space elevator was a thing of science fiction until quite recently, and I never believed I would lay my eyes upon one. I hold my breath, staring wide-eyed at the contraption.

  “Why is everyone stopping?” asks Crow, poking Nekkan in the ribs.

  Before, I wondered if the girl had a death wish before; now I’m absolutely certain of it.

  “Nemo, come off it, you don’t give a shit about the ’vator,” she says.

  “I stopped because the others stopped.”

  “You see? You’re messing with the droid,” she says, storming ahead with Nemo by her side, neither of them apparently taken in by the inspiring scale of the thing. “Come on, the sooner we get to this guy, the sooner we all get what we want and never have to see each other again. Isn’t that great?”

  At once, a chill runs through me. My fingertips turn cold at the thought, as if Crow’s words have brought an ice age crashing down.

  “Yo,” says Crow, snapping her fingers in front of my face. “You a droid, too, Buttercup, glitching out the way you are? Come on, then.”

  “Huh,” Nemo stuff his hands into the pockets of his khakis. “I think glitching out is considered a slur. It certainly… feels…wrong. Please refrain?”

  “Oh, sorry,” she says, and she seems to mean it. Then, she turns back to me and waves me forward, flustered. “Come on, let’s go.”

  There’s nothing quite like the entrance to the ’vator. The building looks even more imposing up close than it did from up the hill: the great white columns out front, topped with fleeing birds frozen in stone, are the work of a master craftsman, something rarely seen on small outer colonies like Nesworth. My little farming moon isn’t worthy of such impressive artistry. Even the other buildings give it a wide berth—no patio seating on this plaza. The sounds of the city seem distant as we draw closer. The only stores are selling souvenirs, with postcards and replicas of the ’vator displayed outside the shopfronts.