Spinning Starlight (11 page)

THE MEDICAL EXAM
takes the rest of the day. It probably doesn’t need to, but Shiin’alo didn’t tell the doctor the truth about me
being from off-Point. She just said that I might have picked up something unexpected in my travels, so they needed to check for everything. The doctor looked confused but didn’t argue, just
got to work.

Apparently “everything” includes a lot and goes hand in hand with “takes forever.”

Testing is a dull process, requiring me to sit still in an isolation booth while the doctor peruses the computer. I wonder if she’ll notice the implant in my throat or the
“broadcasts my living-or-dead status” one in my arm, but it seems not, because she never says anything about them. From the sound of things, she’s just analyzing my blood and the
air I breathe out, looking for viruses and bacteria and other nasties. I’m given lunch, and the tests continue. Inevitably, my mind wanders to the dreams I had last night.

It stands to reason—if I could feel and hear my brothers while in a
portal
, they’re not just in the conduit network, but in some combination of the two, or maybe a
hyperdimensional space connects them. Then since I can access the boys through a portal, maybe they can escape through one. Some aspect of what Minali did to them keeps them from coming out under
their own power. Before, we came through the barrier after the long journey from Sampati—at least, it
felt
like a long journey. Maybe if there’s no journey, I can keep enough
strength to pull one of my brothers back. And if I can free one, I can free the rest.

So it’s a matter of making sure I don’t go all the way back to Sampati, or any of the other Points. Of only barely going inside the portal, just far enough to find my brothers.

I don’t know how the portals work, though. Are they like the conveyors in old factories, moving inexorably in a particular direction? Is it true that you just have to think hard enough
about where you want to go, and that’s where it’ll take you? If so, I just have to think hard about going nowhere.

The idea of relying on my own brainpower isn’t very reassuring. I could use a backup.

Maybe Tiav could give me some ideas. But he didn’t even know what “portal” meant. They must use another name. I can probably get him to understand that. Then I need to figure
out the shortest way to ask the question.

Portals, stuck, how out?

That’d take maybe ten minutes to write, if I’m lucky, but it’s so vague. Tiav probably wouldn’t have any idea what I meant.

I thunk my head against the wall behind me. Maybe it’s worth a try.

“Is something wrong?” the doctor asks.

I shake my head. Nothing she can help with.

“Good. I believe we’re done. I’ve found no trace of any pathogen or contagion.”

The door to the booth slides open, setting me free at last. Outside, the doctor isn’t alone. Kalkig stands next to her, glaring at me. It’s a lot of hate from someone I’ve
never said a word to, and my feet instinctively scoot me back an inch.

“I’ve sent a message to the Aelo,” the doctor says, oblivious to the fiery loathing the Agnac sends my way. “Shiin will be glad to know you’re perfectly healthy.
Kalkig volunteered to escort you back to them.”

Right, and I’m sure he did it because he’s just so charitable. I need to get back to Tiav and Shiin somehow, though, and without my voice, protesting is difficult. I nod my thanks to
the doctor and follow Kalkig.

It’s dark outside. I knew I was in the test chamber for a long time, but I didn’t realize it was
that
long. Then again, I have no idea how long Ferinne days are. We start
down the street, but not toward the Nyum. At least, I’m pretty sure it’s not the way I came with Shiin earlier. Kalkig’s odd long-armed gait makes good time, forcing me to
semi-jog to keep up. I wait for him to say something, to reveal why he wanted to walk me to wherever he’s walking me. But he doesn’t, just keeps barreling on in silence.

Several blocks later, the buildings look more familiar. Even without reading the symbols, I’m pretty sure I recognize the colorful sign outside a restaurant. Kalkig’s taking me back
to Tiav’s home.

Except he pushes me into an alley two buildings short of Tiav’s. Seems he wants a detour first. He tries to box me in with those long arms of his, but I duck and sidestep to avoid having
my back to the wall. I should’ve stepped the other way, because now he’s between me and the only way out of the alley. He doesn’t move toward me again, so I stand my ground and
wait for him to say something. I watch his lips when he does, making sure I catch every word through the accent.

“I respect the Aelo. More than that, Tiav is my friend and has been from a—” He uses a word from his own language, including guttural sounds I could never duplicate. “I
would not defy Shiin’alo. But if the world cannot know how dangerous you are,
I
will watch you that much more.”

He thinks I’m going to be bothered by one person keeping an eye on me? He has
no
idea what my life has been.

I may smirk just a little.

“You and your kind are poison. I do not doubt this. Whatever evil you’re here to do, I will not allow it.”

Evil?
Words gather in my throat to defend myself, but I hold back, choking on them and my frustration instead. Too bad it wasn’t Minali who came through from Sampati. She’d
actually deserve this attitude from Kalkig. I can’t respond and he knows it, so I’m not sure what he wants from me. I know that
I
want the conversation to be over, so I shove
past him, daring him to do something about it.

He grabs my arm again, but that’s as far as he gets.

“Kal!”

Tiav rounded the corner just in time to see his friend grab me, and Kalkig immediately drops my arm. I finish passing him and put some distance between us.

“I was only talking to her,” Kalkig insists.

“Reminding her that she’s nothing but heathen dirt, right?”

Kalkig presses both hands against the ground. I don’t know what the gesture means for him. “She’s from the Lost Points, Tiav.”

Lost? No, lost is what I am
now
.

“Yes, I know that.”

“We also know what they’re like.”

“So you’re saying all Agnac are the same. All Ferinnes, too. I know you don’t believe that. I don’t believe all people from the Lost Points are the same. And we
don’t know what
any
of them are like, because she’s the first we’ve met. Give her a chance before you judge her.”

In that moment, Tiav holds a quiet power that echoes his mother. If I could use my voice, I still wouldn’t contest him, and Kalkig seems to feel the same way. He grunts, shakes his head,
and leaves.

Tiav shakes his head, too, before turning to me. “Are you all right?”

I’m fine. Other than Kalkig’s hands being rougher than tree bark, he didn’t hurt me.

“I’m sorry about that. He should know better, but this is so new and unexpected, and…” He trails off, sighs. “Never mind. Come on inside, and we’ll get some food.
I have an idea for a program so you won’t need me to read off the symbols for you, but it’ll have to wait. Tomorrow’s the Daglin. I’ll get the computer ready the day after,
I promise.”

I have no idea what the Daglin is, and I don’t want any kind of delay. My gut says to get back to a portal and start hauling my brothers out.

But my head, checked genes or not, knows better. One more day to form a plan isn’t a bad idea. If Minali will take until the Tech Reveal to seal my brothers in the conduits permanently, I
still have time. The boys can wait.

Just not much longer.

The Daglin, it turns out, is Ferinne’s version of a holiday. A very strange holiday. It’s one day a year when everyone—and according to Shiin, they mean
everyone
—drops what they normally do and cleans their town or city. Literally. Cleans the city. The buildings, the parks, the streets, everything gets its annual prettification.

I don’t get it. I’ve seen enough to know they have the technology to automate something so basic. The streamers, the crystal spires, the instruments I saw on the doctor’s
counter—they’re different enough that it’s hard to say whether they have Sampati’s technology beat, but I’d say it’s at least as good.

I can’t ask, and my confused expression isn’t enough to tell Tiav why I’m confused, so I give up on that. I’ve lost count of the unanswered questions piling up inside me
and have never felt so resigned in my life.

“Do you mind heights?” he asks after breakfast.

No, a fear of heights would definitely have gotten in the way of all my tree-climbing as a child. All my attempts to get closer to the stars.

“Good, then you can come with me. My mother prefers keeping her feet on the ground.”

He doesn’t go far, just to a door by my bedroom. Behind it is a stairway going up, so we must be heading to the roof. We’re not the only ones. A handful of people beat us there and
are spread along all the edges, working with cords and straps and what looks like a complicated sort of pulley system. I follow Tiav’s lead to one of the “stations,” where we put
on harnesses.

“Here, you’ll need a tether—I don’t know why they always have so many.” After a little untangling, he hands me a coil of thin cord with hooks arranged on each end.
I have a hard time believing it’s going to hold my weight. “Clip it to your harness like this, then feed the other end into the winder.”

We’re now in matching get-ups, except Tiav adds one more thing to his—an electronic device he straps to his leg. At a glance, I guess it’s a control for the winder, and
that’s confirmed when he taps a panel that extends the arm of the contraption over the edge of the building, leaving just enough slack in the tethers not to yank us off. Then he takes one
step forward into nothing.

He hangs in midair like he does it every day, and the winder assembly doesn’t even twitch. Tiav is definitely bigger than I am, so if the tether supports him, it’ll support me. I
take the suicidal step before he can encourage me to.

The sensation is the strangest ever. Well, not as strange as going through the portal, or even the streamers, but it’s right up there. I’m hanging almost a hundred feet above the
ground, but the way the harness-tether system is designed, it feels like sitting on a dining room chair. My insides flutter at the contradiction.

Tiav taps a command to lower us—I instinctively grab hold of my tether when I start to move—and scoops up two items from the edge of the roof as we pass.

“Here’s your brush,” he says. It’s metallic, rectangular, with bristles sprouting out of one surface and two metal loops arching out from the other. “Brace your
feet against the wall like this. First we scrub the walls, then later the windows. Eighth floor is ours.”

When Tiav says scrub, he means it. The cleanser dispenses automatically from the metal base into the bristles, but the rest is old-fashioned work. I slip my hands into the metal loops and start
working on the wall in front of me while Tiav does the same three feet to my left. My tether gets in my way at first, until I get used to how I need to position myself. It’s easy to see where
we’ve cleaned, where the dingy brown gives way to a brighter tan.

We finish our first section, and Tiav moves us six feet to the right. The winders are on some kind of track system. Halfway into the second section, the muscles in my arms begin to burn.
Spending a day in the workshop may be work, but it doesn’t compare to this.

I can just imagine what the media-grubs would say.

JTI heiress Liddi Jantzen got her hands dirty with the only trade she seems to have any skill at—manual labor.

They obviously never saw me have a mud fight with the triplets.

My breath hitches in my chest, nothing to do with exertion. Cleaning walls isn’t helping Marek, Ciro, Emil, or any of the others. Conversely, having Vic here would help
me
. His
biceps would make short work of this whole building. Imagining it, I’m not sure whether I’d rather laugh or cry.

“Are you sure Kalkig didn’t bother you yesterday?”

Tiav misinterpreted my pause, but even with the frustration of silence taunting me, at least some pseudo-conversation will distract me from the ache in my arms. I nod. The Agnac may be a new
species to me, but hate isn’t.