Bile and Blood by Katherine Franklin

Author:Katherine Franklin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fiction, sci-fi, dystopia, space
Publisher: Katherine Franklin
Published: 2023-02-01T09:45:48+00:00

Chapter Thirty-Three

Palia had never felt more watched than she did walking through the palace complex. Every Rythian she passed looked at her with some combination of pity, contempt and mistrust, and she found herself walking faster just to outpace their stares. More alarming, they didn’t seem to fear her. They must have seen her as empyrric. They must have seen the white hair and known that’s what it was, but to know that and not be afraid... Maybe they thought she had just been scarred by one. Maybe it was all too distant when Rythe had no empyrrics of its own.

It had spies, though, and in abundance. Four of them moved in her awareness, shadowing her movements from other floors, probably following her via camera feeds. They wanted her to see them. Even Hesperex hadn’t felt like this – though she supposed the trap of Hesperex was that the spies were the people who lived there.

As Palia grew closer to the music, she let the material of her one-piece reshape from trousers back into a skirt, then brushed the fabric smooth. They had told her she would travel beast-back, so she had dressed for beast-back, little knowing the transport carriers were more comfortable affairs. No matter. At least she had the choice again, after losing most of her clothes on Everatus IV.

Palia stopped by the entrance to a walled garden, drawing a deep breath of fresh air. Birds – no, flying reptiles – tipped their heads back to gulp water from the central stream, heedless of the chattering crowd.

If only Bek could have been here for this. It wasn’t like him to miss a party – or not like she knew him – but he had insisted on staying up on the ship. The surgeon had pronounced him well recovered, physically, so that couldn’t be the issue.

She scanned the crowd. Rythians mingled with those from the Hegemony, the two peoples surprisingly difficult to distinguish. The Rythians had dressed as they chose, and she supposed most of the Hegemites had been briefed to match them, out of diplomatic courtesy. Palia hadn’t, but transitor families like hers were closer to Rythian fashion than the heredrae and the voidfarers anyway.

Spotting Fabien in conversation with another man, Palia smiled and moved out of the way of the door so she could wait for him to be finished.

Whatever they were talking about, it didn’t sit well with either of them. Fabien had his lips pressed tight. He clasped his hands together so hard in front of him that his knuckles were white, then he inclined his head, once. Relief surged through the tangled mix of the other man’s emotions, and he chose that moment to leave the conversation.

Palia set off to make sure she reached Fabien before anyone else, glancing to the dais as she did so. A lot of the crowd’s attention seemed to be focused on that spot. At a guess, the red-haired woman towering over those around her was Fabien’s new wife. Handsome, Palia thought, and not at all young.

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