Galaxy of Exiles book 2 - Bile and Blood

Chapter One

Palia had never been to a funeral. All her grandparents had died before she was born and the tour of duty she had undertaken as part of her mandatory service, in peacetime as it was, had been remarkably uneventful. She had never been to the Origin system either, yet here she was, on the curated world of Viken's Garden, burying her son.

There was nothing to bury. When the Magister had burned Everatus IV in Empyrean fire, he had torn Derren away with it. If you were a stickler for common belief, then it was the tides of empyrric energy known as Varna – only visible to the naked eye when travelling between nexuses or witnessing the Empyrean's use – where souls went when people died. If you believed that, you believed in the transfer of energy from one source to another. A practical, physical perspective. If the belief held true, it meant Derren's soul was trapped somewhere in the nexite batteries of the Hegemony's flagship, along with everything else that had died on the planet.

Palia didn't know what she believed.

Blinking awake from where she had retreated to the depths of her mind, she realised everyone was waiting for her. She couldn't see her mother, but she felt the cold heat of her gaze. Fabien stood to one side with tears in his eyes, framed by the trunks of two whisper-trees that became entwined amongst their upper branches. A steady breeze brushed against her skin. It carried upon it the scent of fresh life, of bare earth, of water running to meet the sea. Life, on a world of death. Or perhaps it was the other way round?

Palia drew a breath past the tightness in her chest and stepped forwards, then knelt to pick up the sapling the curator had placed there for her. Its leaves rustled when she lifted it, bright and glimmering. Green, of course. How did nobody get the irony of that? Green was the colour of the flames, and everything that had gone wrong since. A wave of nausea rose to her throat at the memory of the inferno siphoning him away. She hadn't been fast enough. She hadn't been close. He hadn't deserved to die, and he had deserved better than her.

'Do you have any words for him?' the curator asked. Her words were gentle, but Palia resented them nonetheless.

Palia lowered the sapling into its pre-dug hole and pushed her fingers into the loose soil. 'If I did, I should have said them while he was alive.' After a few pats to firm up the soil around its trunk, she pushed herself upright. 'There's no point now.' Nothing that makes up for it.

For the thousandth time, she felt the guilt of not being able to save him and not being able to mourn him for so long afterwards. She was past that stage now, she hoped. Half-welcome grief sat curdling in her gut, aching in her bones, clutching at her throat. Palia clenched her fists tight, grinding soil into her palms, but it wasn't the grief that made her do it. It was the emotions she saw in the landscape of the Empyrean – in others, not herself. They judged her. Maybe they didn't mean to, but they judged her, the mother of the dead and the only one with a face unmarked by tears.

She was sick of it. Sick of reuniting with people she had known since childhood and having their deepest feelings laid bare to her. The sooner she could get out of here and back to finding Ferrash, the better. It was the only one of her mistakes she still had the power to fix – she hoped.

'I... could say something, if you aren't able,' Fabien offered.

Palia nodded, flashed him a half-grateful smile, then turned on a heel and walked away. The pressure of everyone's gazes weighed upon her back.

Overhead, the light of Origin's star glimmered through the emerald canopy. Palia was happy she had come here, at least – happy to put Derren's memory to rest, even if she couldn't speak for his soul, or his remains. If he was in Varna, perhaps some part of what once was him would become life on this planet, at peace, in time.