“Yeah, Earthling,” Cassala said as she brushed by us, pounding Vania in the shoulder with the bloodied torture glove hand, surprisingly hard, "earn your spot here." Cassala walked on, and I grinned, pointing at Vania's shoulder, where my name was now clearly imprinted in red blood.
“Dammit,” she grumbled, staring at it, then glaring at me. I laughed and tossed her a cloth off the nearby table with a small display of telekinetic powers.
"Wipe it off quickly. I won't be offended. You don't need to have any blood on you before the battle even begins. Besides, if I leave my mark on you, I want it to be memorable.” She looked at me sharply, and I laughed again, then just shook my head and walked after my Commanders, leaving her to wipe my bloody name off her shoulder. I heard her cursing as the door closed, and it made me grin. I doubted the blood was wiping off.
Lightning cracked the sky as we made our way toward the airfield. It would be a turbulent flight to the southern fields. Rain was getting ready to unleash as we walked quickly to the cover of the hangars. I wondered about leaving the Earthling behind and whether or not she knew her way around enough to find where we were going, but then I heard her jogging behind me to catch up. I ignored her and moved to the front of the pack, but found it hard to resist turning around to look at her blazing green eyes and perfectly picturesque curves.
She had better not be a distraction on this mission.
I refocused as the sky unleashed and huge droplets of water fell, cool on our faces.
I had my throne to protect.
Five
Vania
The knife flew so quickly from Aimer’s hand that I could hardly see the release. It whipped through the air with an audible snap. It zinged and made a slight whiffing puff as it arrested right before my face, but not before I moved a slight, involuntary jerk backward. The others on the transport chuckled, otherwise ignoring the exchange between Aimer and I. Aimer was giving me some telekinetic instruction. The rest of the Crew were sitting against the sparse transport’s sides on the jump seats, while she and I braced ourselves in the open cargo area, practicing the skill that the Curans prided themselves in holding so dearly.
Alpha Jase was sitting separately from everyone, that strange little box in his hand, not looking at it, just rubbing it, playing with the many surfaces, like a worrystone… was he worried…? That made me feel a lot more worried… I wondered again what he kept in that little box. There were rumors around what he kept inside the multi-colored wooden dodecahedron case, no bigger than a clementine orange. His baby hair. The teeth of his enemies. A talisman from another planet. A cursed flower. A potion that gave him his power. Who knew?
I evaded Jase’s eyes as he looked my way and reached up to pluck Aimer’s knife from the air. It resisted my hand at first, and I tugged hard on it before it released with a swift jerk to the side as Aimer’s hand fell, her permission given to release it from its sealed place in space.
“Throw it at me now,” she said.
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely. Stop it in the air before it gets to me.”
“What if I can’t?”
“Then I will catch it.”
I shrugged and flicked the six-inch throwing knife straight toward her chest, well-practiced, and then put the little pluck of emotion that Aimer had been instructing me to pay attention to, into the intention on the knife. I welled up that emotion and gave all its Will into the direction of the knife as if I were pulsing that emotion as a physical piece of air into the metal shard flying through the air between us.
It stilled in the air, slowed, stopped, dropped a few feet, then veered off away from Aimer’s chest and fell to the floor as I pumped my fist triumphantly in the air.
Aimer signaled her hand in a little swoop, and the knife leaped up from the floor of the transport to her hand, in time with a bump of turbulence that made us both tumble a couple steps to the side. She still caught the knife without slicing her hand. Artful, I thought. That’s what she is. Weaponry is her craft, and she is a skilled artisan.
I looked around the small transport. They all were. These twelve of Jase’s Crew, including himself, were hand-picked and the best at what they did: which was fighting, strategizing, leading, bleeding, and killing.
They were warriors.
What was I?
I shook my head slightly and hid my fear. I can do this. I can do this. I can earn a place here.
“You know how you are always feeling things, even when you compartmentalize and use only logic and your brain? From what I’ve heard, humans lead from their heart more than most species, anyway. Telekinesis should come easy for you, especially with King Kajo’s magic flowing in you. Just key into that emotion you’re feeling and use it to direct action. That’s it. That’s your Will. That’s the truth of the connection to the telepathic and telekinetic mysticism in our world.”
“I don’t know why Aimer is bothering with the alien,” one of the other Commanders, a man named Criper said behind me. “Even if she learns the skill, she’ll never use it with the same loyalty to us. She should be placed in the Queen’s guard if she’s to be a soldier. That’s the only place she’ll ever have true allegiance: to her own
