She flicked the boy a glance but didn't acknowledge him. Jealousy wasn't a good look on Tyvian Joshi. It pinched the skin around the leaf-green of his eyes and twisted his mouth, as if he'd sucked a cherry-lemon. Fear looked even worse, and he wore both expressions. He tried to hide them, covering up the fear with jest and the jealousy with a smile, but she saw it in his eyes, eyes that were stuck on Erebos, longing and nightmares in their depths.
She brushed past him, noticed the way he twitched, like he didn't know whether to flinch or snatch Erebos from around her neck, and felt…satisfaction.
She saw her dad in her mind's eye, the downwards cast of his face, the disappointment he would have felt if he'd known, if he'd been alive to know, the way the satisfaction slithered through her chest, warm and sleek.
Subria shook it away. Satisfaction at the expense of another was an ugly emotion, unworthy.
Sinful.
Her dad wouldn't have approved, would have looked at her with that half-frown between his eyes, the one that was felt more than seen: a solid punch below the heart. The kind that reminded her of the duty, responsibility and privilege that came from being a Venere.
Erebos's tail wrapped through her fingers. She caught the tip. Maybe the little shadow was stealing her soul. Part of her didn't care, but the bigger part, the one that remembered the way disappointment would shadow her dad's eyes, did.
It was a long ride to the Farm on the shuttle's hard seats. By the time the pitch of the engines changed, climbed for a heartbeat before cutting out altogether, Subria's legs were stiff and her bum sore.
Instructor Bayard sat at the front of the cabin, a few seats away from the recruits, but it might as well have been miles.
There was a shudder and a gentle clunk as they landed. A ripple of excitement passed through the recruits.
Instructor Bayard stood.
The shuttle fell silent. Tension shivered through the deck.
'This is your hardest exam. There are no right answers, no strategies. The bond between Rider and companion cannot be taught, forced or willed into existence.' The instructor stalked the aisles, eyeing each of them in turn. 'Some of you will find such a bond, some of you won't.' She stopped in front of Subria, looked her in the eye. 'There is no shame in failure.'
Subria stroked Erebos.
Bayard kept walking. 'The surface doesn't give you second chances, and neither do its creations, no matter how much of Old Terra we put into them. If you do not return to this shuttle with a companion, you'll be packing your bags and going home.'
A hush filled the silence in the wake of the instructor's words.
Bayard stopped in front of the airlock, the door cycling open behind her. 'Welcome to the Farm.'
CHAPTER TWO
'Welcome to the Farm!' The man's smile split his dark face. 'We're on level three, just below the site where the very first colonists made landfall.'
'Uh...' Canavan's hand rose in the wave of his voice. '...sir? The first colonists landed on Englic in the Petal Plain.'
The man laughed, pale green lab coat flaring about his knees as he spun around. 'Not so, Recruit...?' Perhaps it was the way the man stuck his finger in the air, the imperious rigidity of it, the way the fat silver sheath encasing it from knuckle to middle joint flashed in the light flooding through the wall of plasglas, but no one laughed as he swung back around to face them.
'Uh... Canavan, sir.'
'Recruit Canavan!' The man must be a spinning top, Subria thought, as he completed another turn. Once facing away from them again, he marched towards the big double doors, boots cracking on the shiny floor. 'It's a common mistake, Recruit Canavan. While the bulk of the colonists did land in the Petal Plains, the first actual human to set foot on Jørn soil did so right here.'
He spun again, feet coming together with a snap, forcing Subria to jerk to a halt before she ran into him. Her back wasn't so lucky, and she winced as someone rammed a datapad between her shoulder blades.
She didn't turn to see who it was, barely heard the mumbled 'sorry'. There was some kind of weird power about the man's finger, the way he held it stiff and straight, pointed towards the ceiling, that transfixed her, left her unable to tear her gaze from the shiny ring.
'Actually,' he said, leaning close and lowering his voice. 'It was twelve point eight metres that way.' He motioned upwards, and Subria's eyes followed, looking straight up at the ceiling along with the rest of her classmates.
Maybe it wasn't his finger; maybe the power was in the flash of his too-white teeth against the dark umber of his face. The twinkle in his eyes, the hint of a secret, a joke buried in their depths? Perhaps it was all of those, or maybe it was a magnet in that damned ring, calibrated not to metal but overeager recruits.
Whatever it was, it was a lodestone in her gut, bending her spine, drawing her eyes, stretching her hearing so she wouldn't miss a single word. She felt Canavan, Bank and Elstra draw closer behind her, crowding up against her back. The other recruits huddled in at her sides, the ring sucking them all in.
The metal gleamed silver. She never wanted to take her eyes from it, never wanted to—
A ringing in her ears, the sharp piercing sound reaching into her brain, winding around neurones and telling her to let go. A loud click sounded somewhere deep inside.
Subria jerked upright.
'Temple!' The name snapped though the foyer, a laser driving away the last of the ring's magnetic pull.
'Stop playing with my recruits,' the same voice said.
'Ursula!' The man's – Temple's? – smile changed. 'How nice to see you.'
Instructor Bayard didn't waste a word, but something radiated off her with every snap of her boots. Not anger, exactly, not
