Page 28 of Last of Her Name

That little revelation, for some reason, leaves me deeply uncomfortable.

We hear shouts from farther in the junkyard.

More knights.Loadsmore.

Pol steps in front of me as I stoop to pick up one of the fallen guns. But then more peacekeepers appear from behind us, and in seconds, we’re surrounded. There must be two dozen of them, all screaming at us to drop to our knees.

I press against Pol, squeezing the weapon, bracing myself for the pulses that will knock us out.

But instead of the hiss of Prismic rays, I hear startled shouts.

Opening my eyes, I see the peacekeepers drop one by one. Their guns hit the metal floor plates with dull thuds, and the men follow, crashing to the ground and pressing into it as if an invisible heel were crushing them. They cry out in strangled voices, eyes wide and pained. But strangest of all is the distortion in the air around them, a pattern of transparent triangles that shimmer and shift with a sound like sizzling electricity. It’s as if I’m looking at the world through a kaleidoscope; air and quay and peacekeepers appear to warp and fragment, broken down into sharp planes and angles. I blink hard, but the illusion doesn’t clear.

Pol and I look up, bewildered, to see a hooded man stepping over the writhing knights, his staff raised before him, his gray robes brushing the ground. Through the distortion in the air, it takes me a moment to make out his face.

“You!” I shout.

The stranger from the fare stall approaches us slowly, and I can just see his two silver eyes glinting beneath his hood.

“Stay back!” Pol warns, raising his weapon again.

The man freezes, then slowly lowers his hood. The distorted illusions in the air vanish as he relaxes his grip on the staff.

He’s even younger than I first thought, no older than we are. His head is clean-shaven, his dark brown scalp traced with silver tattoos. Around his eyes, dark lines smear from his temples to the bridge of his nose, like he’s rubbed engine grease across his face. But as I watch, the lines begin to fade, until I almost think they were just a trick of shadow.

“What are you?” I whisper.

His eyes flicker over me. “You must come with me.”

“Not a chance, pal,” says Pol, raising his gun.

“There are more knights coming,” says the stranger. “I can’t fend them all off, but I can get you off this planet.”

He turns and walks away, cloak swirling, not even looking back.

“He’s a tensor,” Pol growls. “A gravity witch. You saw what he did to these guys.”

I glance at the peacekeepers, most of whom seem unconscious, but a few are still groaning and clutching their ribs.

“You mean these guys who were about to kill us? Pol, he saved our skins. I’ll take him over the knights, thank you.”

I dart after the stranger and hear Pol follow with a curse.

As I trail the cloaked boy through the market—he dodges the groups of guards as if he knows where they are before he sees them—I struggle to remember what I’ve heard of tensors. Not much. They always seemed more legend than reality, monks from the fringes of the galaxy who can manipulate gravity enough to crush a man into the size of an Amethyne grape. They make for good stories, but they aren’t supposed to show up in real life.

Then again, I’m not supposed to be on Sapphine, branded a terrorist and a princess, while my best friend is in the clutches of the most powerful man in the galaxy.

I guess my idea of normal is a bit obsolete these days.

The tensor leads us through the flotilla city, taking furtive routes to avoid the crowded markets and neighborhoods. He leads us to the docks where the eeda dropped us off yesterday.

“There,” he says, pointing to a ship. “Hurry, now. They’ll be onto us soon.”

“Stars above,” I sigh, melting with awe.

It’s a J-Class high-end clipper. I’ve never seen one before, except on holovision. Larger than our caravel, shaped like one of Sapphine’s graceful manta rays, it shines in shades of black and silver. Its name is engraved along the hull:Valentina.

It’s easily the most beautiful machine I’ve ever seen in my life, and I wish there were time to stop and admire it properly. But there are more knights nearby, starting to give us suspicious looks.