Page 1 of Stars in Umbra (The Sable Riders #8)

Forgotten Fables

MOLAN

T he alleys of LeCythi, Iccythria Prime’s capital city, were made for the forgotten.

For broken promises and lost, hungry souls who bled desperate ambition and fear into its cracked pavements.

The boy moved through them like a wraith, barefoot, thin as a whipcord, his skin streaked with ash and gutter dust.

He threaded his way beneath the skeletons of rusted sky rails and between the leaking exhaust vents of collapsed market towers.

The wind reeked of burned synth-oil and old battles.

He was thirteen. Old enough to be dangerous, too young for anyone to care.

Most times, he was a phantom in the cracks of the poverty-stricken district.

With fast feet to escape the street cams, and an intellect wily enough to avoid the radar of neighborhood gangs.

Or so he thought.

He rounded a blind corner, breath steady, stride clean, and stopped dead.

They were waiting for him.

Ten of them, maybe eleven if you counted the one leaning against the light post pretending he didn’t care.

Most were eighteen and nineteen-year-old wrecks, their souls already worn and jaded.

They wore parkas crafted from scraps of cracked leather, all branded with the rust-red sigil of the Rakkar Blades, the scavenger mob that ruled these blocks.

The symbol of a jagged serpent wrapped around a broken sword was stitched to their jackets, scraped onto their boots, and tattooed behind some of their ears.

The Blades didn’t believe in mercy.

They believed in speed, strength, and survival at any cost.

They also took what they wanted and burned what they couldn’t keep.

Tonight, his number was up.

‘Yo, kinai ,’ one of them sneered, a tall guy with a smile too broad for his face. ‘Those are some sweet kicks for a street rat. Give ‘em over.’

He glanced down at the only possession he owned worth over fifty schills.

Recalling how every night, trudging home, he’d stop at a corner shoe shop.

He’d press his face into the window, dreaming of possessing just one pair of the displayed mag boots that would fly him away from the misery of his present existence.

He’d worked day and night washing flyers to afford the cheapest version now on his feet, sans the grav thrusters. That upgrade cost 2,000 schills.

Still, the basic edition was warm, solid, albeit caked in dust and grime, and he had no plan to hand them over without a fight.

‘Bag too,’ another one grunted, cracking his knuckles. ‘Bet we’ll find more smart shit in it, like books we can hawk.’

He sensed it then, a coil of dread, pungent and cold in his gut.

He scanned the alley mouth behind him, then the walls.

He found no clear exit. They’d circled him tight.

So much for slipping under the radar.

He straightened, adjusting the strap of his battered school satchel over one shoulder, scuffed boots planted on the cracked cement.

‘You for real?’

His voice came out dry, edged with tired sarcasm. ‘Ten of you for one backpack and a pair of roughened buskins. Not very legendary, is it?’

The leader stepped forward, shoulders rolling.

A smirk split his face. ‘ Nada , the legend comes tomorrow, kid, when everyone hears about how we grifted ten kinais , including you, tonight.’

The youth arched a brow and smirked, unable to help himself. ‘Is that right?’

They exchanged glances, affronted by his moxie.

With shouts and yells, they rushed him.

He sighed and moved.

Quicker than thought, swifter than muscle had a chance to react.

A flash of motion, limbs loose and whip-crack fast.

He twisted, ducked, and lashed out.

The first guy’s knee buckled to the side.

Another caught an elbow to the nose and dropped like a stone.

Electricity prickled at his fingertips, dancing in the air around him, white and aqua, raw, and freakin’ alive.

His skin burned with it, crackling at his heels as if a power core inside him had been flipped on.

He spun beneath a swinging pipe, kicked a boot from under one, and slammed his shoulder into another’s chest, forceful enough to send him sprawling.

They fell, one after another, groaning and cursing.

The alley lights above flickered, shadows fluctuating over the brickwork as the ambiance crackled and glowed with an otherworldly charge.

Then, he was gone, running. Hard.

His feet skimmed the ground, the streets turning into smeared streaks of light and steam as he sped through the sleeping district.

Past broken neon signs, rust-scaled vents, and the reek of fryer oil and burnt plastics.

The suburb he tore through was the ass end of the capital.

It was tucked closer to the strobing dark crater of a stratovolcano that had risen tall over the eons through the accumulation of alternating lava and pyroclastic deposits.

He sweated as he raced through the super-heated, purple haze that enveloped the surface of the volcanic planet’s shattered landscape.

The only sound left behind was the fading echo of his breathless laughter, guttural and ragged, chased by the hiss of dying streetlights.

When he finally reached the familiar wreck of his apartment complex, he was trembling head to toe.

Muscles burning and heart pounding.

His soul roaring from the victory, even as his thin limbs shook with the intoxicating surges of adrenaline coursing through him.

He slipped through the warped front door like a shadow, crept past the worn living space, his hand brushing against the threadbare curtains of his room.

‘Mo.’

He froze.

She sat at the tiny kitchen table.

The flickering light of a cracked holo-lamp haloed her silhouette.

Around her waist was a ragged apron, wrapped crookedly, over a faded tunic that had formerly been ivory but was now streaked with bleached spots and burns.

He stared at her in the radiance of a weak moon that hovered above the wild-hued andesite rock and rhyolite basalt hills outside.

Her golden hair grew duller every day, tangled at the ends and twisted into a loose knot that had likely been redone more than once by tired hands.

It was not the gleaming mane of her glorious past, but a threadbare crown of survival.

Her face had changed too; over the years, lines had carved deeper around her eyes.

Her cheeks were more sunken than full, but they still carried that stubborn trace of beauty, bruised now by time and sadness.

From time to time, under the skin of her arms and throat, he caught a flicker of peculiar, elusive glyphs.

They shimmered like submerged starlight, and though not as bold as the ones etched into his own body, they were kindred.

He still had no clue what they signified.

Now, he stood still in the doorway, his frame casting a shadow across the chipped floor.

A part of him longed to speak, but the other, scarred, jaded, and raw, only studied her in silence.

What words might he offer to a ghost who lived somewhere between the living and the dead?

She glanced up at him with a wry smile and eyes that held a flickering warmth for him.

‘Rough night?’ she murmured.

He shrugged, tossing his bag onto the corner of the sofa. ‘Nothing I couldn’t handle.’

She smiled, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. ‘I keep telling you, better days lie ahead, baby. Wonderful things are waiting for you; a life that’s more magnificent than all this grime.’

He leaned against the door frame, arms crossed. ‘Yeah? Like what?’

Her gaze drifted, as it always did, toward the cracked window, as if she might see through it to the amethyst haze and stars beyond.

‘A throne. A destiny. You weren’t meant to rot in these streets. You were born for more. One day, your real power will rise, and when it does, this galaxy won’t be able to hold you.’

He gave a quiet laugh. ‘You been dreaming up those old stories again, Ma?’

She didn’t answer right away, just smiled that sad little smile he recognized all too well. ‘They’re not fables. They’re your birthright. If only-.’

Her voice softened, faltered, guilt swimming behind her words. ‘If only I hadn’t -.’

She cut herself off, her utterance hardening, the lines in her face deepening. ‘Get some sleep. You’ve got school tomorrow.’

He nodded, yawning, eyes still on her face as she canted it to the heavens.

Her eyes dilated, then misted over, and he sighed.

She was remembering again, lost in a dimension far away.

After years of listening to her sleep-talking babble, he had pieced together the reason for their demise.

An affair, a shameful, secret liaison, had gotten them hurled down from wherever they’d been before.

She spoke of a heavenly realm, a place called Sivania, the seat of the one she named Most High; a palace he had no recollection of, no matter how hard he tried.

Having fallen from grace with a three-year-old toddler, she landed in LeCythi and hawked her jewelry to pay for their first few months’ living expenses.

With nada but the literal power in her hands, her otherworldly circuitry that flowed from her fingers, she went to work.

She used it to patch wires in damaged hover bikes for street gangs and fixed plasma heaters and electronics for local merchants.

While she eked out their survival one repair at a time, she often made it clear that it was his powers that would fix everything.

‘When you come of age and your Ssignakht and Ssukigrat come to fruition, you will use it to find us a way back home.’

He thought she was clinging to a dream.

Even so, he listened, because he loved her.

Also, because somewhere, in the quiet places of his heart, he wanted to believe her.

He slipped behind the curtain and curled onto the thin mattress in his room.

Soon, sleep dragged him into dreams of grand thrones, towering principalities, and powers he wasn’t sure he wished to claim.