Zai by Starla Night

Author:Starla Night [Night, Starla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wendy Lynn Clark Publishing

Fifteen

Zai

Our return to my quarters is sober.

It’s been over a shift since we left, and Esme hasn’t complained once. She falls into her seat, gulps water, and crunches nutrient cubes. We eat in silence.

When I thought that someone had broken in to get her, I felt stupid and angry—and incredulous. How dare someone break into my space? How dare they attack me, the general master, in my own quarters?

But now it seems like the sabotage might have been more direct. And all my attempts to confirm it have only led to more questions.

I don’t understand this plot. What’s the motivation? What even is going on?

She sits back in her seat with a sigh, having finished her whole bowl. “What are you going to do now? Sleep?”

I scrape my bowl. “Await results.”

She points over her shoulder. “Do you mind if I sleep? I’m wiped.”

I tilt my head in permission, and she stretches and yawns. At the doorway, she hesitates. “Why did you want to hide your investigation from the head of facilities?”

“Because if someone is trying to kill me, the prime candidates are my fellow masters.”

“Is someone trying to kill you?”

I don’t know. I really don’t know.

That is truly a question.

I feel disorientingly alone in this.

She guesses my thoughts. “Do you have someone you report to?”

“The emperor.”

She raises her brows. “You know the emperor?”

“He confirmed my appointment to general master.” I had to travel to Arris Central only clegs after the previous general master was confirmed dead of a freak engineering failure—an erroneous discharge of the local field analyzer—on the exact same route.

Her lips pull to the side. “If someone’s trying to kill you, should you tell the emperor, maybe?”

“He has no insight into this matter.” I offer her a few more nutrient cubes since she ate hers so quickly, and she obediently returns to the wall bench and crunches them. “Not unless he’s the one ordering my assassination, and why? Why not just summon me to Arris Central and publicly execute me?”

“So you don’t plan to ask him what he thinks?”

“In the Arsenal? No. I’m the one who thinks. I know my staff. I run the Arsenal, and if I lose control of it, he’ll get rid of me and give the position to a blade who will take command.” I scrape my bowl. “Anyway, I’m not sure I’m actually under attack.”

She looks confused. “Aren’t you? What about when you got electrocuted?”

“It’s easier for the engineers to blame a saboteur than to take responsibility for failed maintenance. And the iro-sulfurin isn’t even a poison.”

It’s just like when I stumbled upon the first lusteal-infused lesser, Catarine, causing havoc on the dreadnought. I was expecting a power struggle between my newly installed blades and the military personnel they commanded, not an intergalactic conspiracy to drive us mad.

“Besides, I’ve already sent the emperor several reports on the Vanadis matter. I expect no reply. He’s not speaking to me.”

Her eyes widen. “Why not?”

“Because I refused to deploy my blades to conquer Tabulis. It’s a hundred macrotungs past Humana.

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