Brandon Sanderson
We're now gonna jump to Chapter Eleven. This won't be terribly much spoilers, because this is going to be the first time you see Starling again after that prologue.
Brandon Sanderson
Chapter Eleven
Starling crawled down the ladder in a metal tube, far from her homeworld—and even further, at least emotionally, from that glorious day when she’d first transformed.
Over fifty years had passed. She was basically an adult. But she had replaced grand palaces with dimly lit corridors on a half-functioning starship. She reached the bottom and turned toward engineering, wearing her human shape.
A shape she’d not been allowed to leave for twelve years now.
She forced a spring to her step and told herself to keep positive. There was at least one blessing about being exiled: it turned out that there were a whole lot of places that weren’t home—and many of them were vibrant, magnificent, and amazing. She’d never have visited them if she hadn’t been forced out into the cosmere against her will.
For that, she had decided to be grateful for what had been done to her. Her master said she worked too hard to find sunlight in dark places, but what else was she to do? Darkness was too easy to find, and she preferred a challenge. Besides, the cosmere really was a wondrous place.
Not that her current location was anything spectacular. A metallic corridor with flickering florescent lights. Pipes for decor and barely enough space to walk upright. It took a lot of energy to keep a ship like the Dynamic flying, and designers learned to be economical.
She paused by one of the portholes, gazing out at the bleakness of Shadesmar—an endless black plane with no curvature or horizon. Darkness. Wasn’t it the darkness that reminded one of how wonderful the light was? Traveling through Shadesmar was dreary at times, but at least she could to it in a ship, rather than walking in a caravan like people had done in the olden days.
She tried to imagine them out there on the obsidian ground, walking across the lonely expanse. Or, worse, straying out into regions where the ground went incorporeal and turned into a misty nothing called the unsea. Or . . . the emberdark, they sometimes called that vast emptiness: the unexplored parts of Shadesmar.
Here, on the more frequented paths, the ground solidified—and had been that way for millennia. You often encountered other travelers on these patrolled lanes between planets. For Shadesmar, such places were conventional, understood, and safe.
But her ship had strayed close to the edges of one such corridor. And out there . . . Well, anything could be out there in the emberdark. Starling found that both exciting and terrifying, all at once.
A figure stepped out of the wall beside her. Transparent, with a faint glow to him, Nazh had pale skin and wore a black formal suit—the kind with a fancy cravat that normal people wore only to the most exclusive of gatherings. He didn’t have much choice as to do so all the time, though, seeing as that is what he had died in.
“Star?” he asked her. “Is everything all right?”
“It’s strikingly beautiful,” she said, stopping along the hallway, running her fingers along the metal. “This corridor.”
Moving let the sleeve of her jacket slip back, exposing one of her manacles. Silver against her powder-white skin, the thick pieces of metal—more like bracers, really—were the symbols of her exile, binding her into her human form, locking away her abilities. Until she “learned.”
She still didn’t know, years later, how much the exile was to punish her and how much was to teach her. Her people’s leaders could be . . . obscure about such matters.
“Strikingly beautiful?” Nazh asked. “The . . . corridor? Star, are you having one of your moments?”
“No,” she said. “Maybe. Look, I was thinking that this ship is almost starting to feel like home to me.”
“The dragon,” he said with a smile, “who flies a starship.”
“I don’t do much of the flying. That’s Leonore’s job. I just get flown around.”
Twelve years now, trapped in her human form by these manacles. Twelve years since she’d stretched her wings and taken to the sky under her own power.
Shards. She would not let that break her.
She would not let them win.
She continued on her way, Nazh joining her. He didn’t walk, and he didn’t really float. He glided, feet on the ground, as if standing still—but moving when she walked. Hands clasped behind his back.
“I shouldn’t complain,” she said. “I mean, there are advantages to letting someone else do the flying. Easier on the muscles this way. Plus, I can sleep while we travel! Try doing that when flying with your own wings.”
“Star, dear, if I had a stomach, I believe I’d find your optimism nauseating.”
“Oh, come on,” she said. “You have to admit. Things could be worse. I could be dead—”
“One gets over such trivialities.”
“—wearing a formal suit for eternity—”
“I’ll never be underdressed.”
“—and have a face that is . . . well, you know.”
Nazh stopped in place. “I know what?”
“Never mind,” she said, reaching the ladder to the bottom deck. She climbed down it, while he floated alongside her.
“Never mind what?” he said.
“It wouldn’t be polite to say.”
“You were trained by one of the most obtuse, crass men in all of the cosmere, Star. You don’t know the meaning of the word ‘polite.’”
“Sure I do,” she said, hopping off the ladder. “It’s just that I’m a kindly young woman—”
“You’re eighty-seven. And you’re not a woman.”
“I’m a kindly young—for the relative age of her species—person with a humanoid female appearance. And being kindly means that you don’t tell your friend about the unfortunate nature of his sideburns. You merely imply they are ugly so you can maintain plausible deniability.”
He followed, eyes forward as they reached the door to engineering. “They were quite fashionable when I died.”
“Among whom? Warthogs?”
He almost broke composure—that stern look of near-disapproval cracked, and a smile itched the corners of his mouth. It always felt like a gift when she managed to make Nazh smile. Also, the sideburns weren’t actually that bad—they had a stately, classic air. It was just that he was overly fond of them.
“Hey,” a commanding female voice said in Star’s earpiece. “Are you wasting time again?”
“No, Captain.”
“Then why isn’t my engine working yet?”
“Had to stop by my rooms to fetch something, Captain,” Starling said. “I’m almost to engineering.”
“Did Nazrilof find you?”
“Yes, Captain.”
“I explicitly told him not to.”
“Tell her,” Nazh said, “she can order me a hundred lashings. I’m fond of them. They tickle.”
“Sorry, Captain,” Starling said instead. “I’m at engineering now.”
“Warn that engineer,” the captain said, “that if there is another problem, I will come down and deal with her personally. I am not known for my patience with crew who slack off.” She cut the line.
“Do you suppose,” Nazh said, “we could pitch her overboard and claim she jumped? I’d swear under oath that she was driven mad.”
“By what?”
“My ravishingly attractive sideburns.” He hesitated. “I mean, there has to be some warthog in the captain’s heritage. Have you seen the woman?”
Starling grinned, then pushed in through the door. The engine room of the Dynamic was even more cramped than the hallway—though it had a higher ceiling, the round chamber was clogged with machinery. Starling had to squeeze between engine protrusions and the wall at several points, making her way to the back where a hammock hung from a rivet on the wall and a stack of large barrels, marked with various symbols of aethers.
A young woman sat up from within the hammock and hurriedly hid some items in the pocket of her blue jumpsuit. Aditil had brown skin and wore her dark hair in a braid. As she moved, Starling caught the distinctive pale blue, glass-like portion of her left hand. The center of the palm replaced—bones and all—with a transparent aether the color of sky.
The glass was cracked, an indication that the symbiote she’d bonded was dead. Starling had never asked for the story behind that.
“LT!” the girl exclaimed. “Oh hells. Captain sent you? Did I let the pressure lapse again?” She scrambled, grabbing her earpiece from the pouch in her hammock, fumbling to put it in. “Sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
Aditil fumbled further as she slid out of the hammock, almost falling over. She hopped over a large pipe and began to monitor the engines—which she was supposed to have been doing. The old machinery needed constant attention; the Dynamic—as fond as Starling was of it—wasn’t exactly the most cutting edge of ships. Indeed, it was something of a mongrel. Rosharan antigrav technology, Dhatrian aethers for providing thrust and engine power, a Scadrian composite metal hull. Never mind that all three technological strains had produced their own viable starships without the others.
The Dynamic, like her crew, had picked up a little here and a little there. Really, all it was missing was an Awakened metalmind, but those were expensive—and Starling had never trusted them anyway.
Aditil fiddled with the machinery, checking gauges and aether levels until she got the engine up to full power. Starling leaned against the wall, noting that Nazh had chosen to remain outside. Aditil was new, and he had learned—from painful experience—to ration his time with new crewmembers. Not everyone was comfortable with shades. Indeed, there were some who’d say that bringing one on board your ship was tantamount to suicide.
“So,” Starling said, “this is the . . . third time this week that Captain hasn’t been able to get ahold of you?”
“Sorry, sorry, sorry!” Aditil kept her head low as she worked.
“Want to talk about it?”
“I’ll do better! I need this job, LT. Please. I . . . need to be able to save up enough . . .”
Starling folded her arms, leaning against the metal wall, the cuffs of her manacles peeking out from beneath her jacket.
Aditil worked for a moment longer, but then slumped as she knelt on the floor beside her equipment. She leaned forward, forehead against the engine. A low humming sound came from within the machinery as it used zephyr aether to generate gas, which created pressure which was the basis for powering the ship. The fact that they could also use the zephyr as propellant and for breathable air meant that the Dynamic was spaceworthy. They rarely needed that, as Xisis—the ship’s owner—usually had them do merchant runs through Shadesmar, which had its own atmosphere.
“They’re pictures of your family, aren’t they?” Starling said. “The things you hide whenever I walk past?”
Aditil glanced at her, surprised.
“Can I see them?” Starling asked.
Sheepishly, the young woman fished them out of her pocket and handed them over. Only four photos, depicting a crowded family with . . . seven children? Aditil appeared to be the oldest. Her parents were smiling in every one, wearing the colorful clothing common to people of her planet.
“They didn’t want me to go,” Aditil said. “Said I was too young, even if I’d done the apprenticing. But after . . .” She looked at her hand, pressed flat on the ground, and the cracked aether bud left in the palm. “I couldn’t stay. I took the deal to work for passage offworld, but do you have any idea how much it costs to get back to Dhatri? I didn’t. Stupidly, I left my family. And with them, the one place where anyone has ever wanted me . . .”
“Hey,” Starling said, kneeling. “You’re wanted here.”
“I shouldn’t be,” Aditil said. “I’ve screwed up every duty I’ve ever been given. You deserve a real engineer, with real experience, and a functional aether.”
“Aditil, you think we can afford a full aetherbound? On this old piece of junk?”
“She’s not a piece of junk.” Aditil put a hand on the engine. “She’s a good ship, LT.”
Now, that was encouraging. You always wanted an engineer who cared about the ship.
“Either way,” Starling said, “you’re a blessing to us here. A fully trained aetherbound?”
“Without a functioning aether.”
“Either way. We get your knowledge, and your skill. You always get the aether working again, when you try.”
“I talk to it,” she said softly. “You can only afford older spores, the kind that tend to be drowsy. I wake it up, that’s all.” She turned away. “I’m broken, LT. Ruined.”
“You can never be ruined,” Starling said, taking her by the hand. “Hey, look at me. Never, ever, Aditil. It’s impossible.” Then she shrugged. “But here, we’re all a little off, eh? We’re family regardless.” Starling had let her jacket sleeves retreat, and Aditil saw the manacles, thought a moment, then nodded.
“Thanks for the pep talk, LT,” Aditil said, pulling away to work at her post. “I’ll stay on it. Won’t let you down.”
“Well, good,” Starling said. “That’s what Captain wants.” She handed back the pictures, then slipped something out of her own inner jacket pocket: an envelope fetched from her room earlier.
Aditil took it with a frown, looking to Starling, then opened it. It took a moment for her to register what was inside. When she did, her eyes widened, and her hand went to her lips, covering a quiet gasp.
One ticket to Dhatri, Aditil’s homeworld.
“But how?” Aditil asked. “Why would you . . .”
“Nobody,” Starling said softly, “on my ship is trapped here. Everybody on my ship has the right to go home. You’re a great engineer, Aditil, and I love having you on this crew. But if there’s another place you feel you need to be, well . . .” She nodded toward the ticket.
“But what does Captain think?”
“Captain doesn’t need to know,” Starling said. “You’re not our slave, Aditil. You’re our friend and colleague.”
She stared at the ticket, tearing up. “How . . . How long have you known how homesick I was?”
“I made a good guess. I did buy a refundable ticket, in case I was wrong.” She gave Aditil a squeeze on the shoulder. “When we get to Silverlight, I’ll sign your release papers. You can return home, until you’re ready to leave again—if ever.”
“I . . .” Aditil closed her eyes, tears leaking down her cheeks.
Starling smiled. “For now, though, please just keep the ship moving. Captain keeps threatening to come down here herself, and I think she might actually do it next time.”
“Thank you, LT,” she whispered. “Starling . . . thank you.”
Starling left Aditil working with renewed vigor, then stepped out of engineering, to where Nazh was waiting, one eyebrow cocked.
“What?” she asked him.
“How did you afford that?”
It was expensive to travel to Dhatri. The law of commerce was this: if you could get to a location through Shadesmar, it was cheap. If not, you had to pay. A lot.
Most cities were in the Physical Realm, not in Shadesmar, but you could transfer between the two dimensions with ease—if you had a special kind of portal. They were called perpendicularities, and most major planets had them. So traveling was simple. Pop into Shadesmar at one planet, travel easily through to your destination, pop back out.
Unfortunately Dhatri didn’t have a perpendicularity anymore. Which meant you couldn’t travel there using conventional ships like the Dynamic—or, well, you could travel through Shadesmar to the location of the planet, but you couldn’t hop out and visit it. To get to Dhatri you needed an expensive, faster-than-light-capable ship that could travel through space in the physical dimension.
Those were expensive. And mostly controlled by one military or another. Hence why Aditil could catch a ride on one leaving: a ship had needed a post filled, and had recruited her. But to get back, your only reliable way was to buy an overpriced ticket, as every ship traveling there knew how valuable their seats were.
“Well?” Nazh asked as they started walking. And floating. “How did you afford it?”
“I had a bit of savings,” she said.
“You realize,” he replied, “this is only going to convince them further you have a hoard of gold somewhere.”
Shards. She hadn’t thought of that. Their crew was small—only eight people—but the myth about Starling’s kind and their caverns of gold had persisted among them no matter how much she tried to stamp it out. At least they believed her when she’d insisted that dragons didn’t eat people.
She climbed the ladder to the middle deck. Truth was, she felt good, having guessed accurately what Aditil needed. She was finally starting to feel like she understood the crew, and how it was to be a leader, like Master Hoid had been trying to teach her. Before he’d vanished, of course. It was his way.
He’d be back. Until then, she had to do her best to guide the crew and protect them from the interim captain. Starling reached middle deck, and walked through the hallway toward the stern, where she could climb up into the bridge. As she did, though, she spotted someone standing outside the medical bay, peering in.
ZeetZi was a Lawnark, a kind of being that was basically a human—except instead of hair, he had feathers. A mostly bald head, with dark brown skin, and a crest of yellow and white feathers on the very top. Tiny feathers along his arms, almost invisible against his dark skin. Arcanists said the Lawnark hadn’t evolved from birds or anything like that—more, they were humans who had been isolated, and whose hair had evolved to something akin to feathers.
ZeetZi was supposed to be checking on the life support systems. While Aditil handled the aethers and the engine itself, ZeetZi was the technician for the rest of the ship. He was a genius at this sort of thing . . . when he wasn’t getting distracted by the ship’s doctor.
He spotted Starling and Nazh as they approached, and his crest perked up in alarm. Then he stepped forward to meet her.
“Yes,” he said before she could ask. “Yes, I was checking on the doctor again. Yes. I know you said I shouldn’t be so worried. I can’t help it, LT. We shouldn’t have one of those on our ship.”
“Zee,” she said, taking his arm. “Have you listened to yourself when you talk like that?”
“I know, I know,” he said, crest smoothing back down. “I’m sorry. It’s just . . . LT, you know what they did. To my people. To my world.”
She nodded, and she did. She’d never been to his homeworld—amazing though it sounded—but she knew what the hordes had done to other planets. It was a familiar story.
“Master Hoid,” Starling said, “trusts Chrysalis. He invited her on board.”
ZeetZi shivered at the name, and even Nazh looked away. It said something that there was a dragon and a shade on board this ship, but the crew were frightened of the ship’s doctor.
“I found one of her spies,” ZeetZi whispered, “in my room again.”
Well, that was a problem. Chrysalis did have difficulties with privacy. “I’ll speak to her,” Starling said. She’d made a breakthrough, finally, with Aditil earlier. Could she manage another?
“Star,” Nazh said softly, “you need to stop worrying about that one. The horde will be gone from this ship as soon as Xisis finds us a proper ship’s doctor.”
“Master Hoid told me to watch over the crew.”
“That’s not a member of the crew,” ZeetZi said. “It’s . . . LT, just trust me. It isn’t here to help us. It doesn’t care about us. Except how it can use us to further some mysterious goal.”
“We’ll see,” Starling said. “You two head up to the bridge. I’ll meet you in a bit.”
Both reluctantly withdrew. Starling stepped up to the medical bay, peering in at a figure who wore a tight, formal uniform from a military Starling hadn’t ever been able to identify. The individual worked at a cabinet, cataloging their medicines, as Captain had asked.
As the figure heard Starling enter, it turned. Revealing a face with the skin pulled back, and a network of insects beneath.
