Clarke - Stars End

Also by Cassandra Rose Clarke

Our Lady of the Ice

The Mad Scientists Daughter

Magic of Blood and Sea

This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the authors imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental. * Text copyright 2017 by Cassandra Rose Clarke * Jacket illustration copyright 2017 by Darren Hopes * All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Saga Press Subsidiary Rights Department, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020 *

He was dying.

The restaurant hummed, soft murmuring voices, the rattle of silverware, a cobwebbed overlay of music.

What? Esme said.

Miguel balanced his fork on the edge of his plate and made a show of wiping his hands on his napkin. He wouldnt look her in the eye. It was a tell she had warned him about when he first joined the company.

Hes dying ? Esme said.

Miguel nodded. He went in for testing three days ago

Three days?

Yes. Its galazamia.

The word was sharp-edged, like a knife. Galazamia. Aina Mitsukes disease. Zamia. It had a hundred different names but the results were always the same: you wasted away until you were nothing. It was not a disease Esme would ever have associated with her father.

Im sorry he didnt tell you himself. He asked me not to, but Miguel twisted in his seat. It didnt feel right, keeping it a secret from you.

Esme closed her eyes. Her body hummed like a live wire. She thought about the last time she had seen her father. It had been less than twenty-four hours before. Hed been sitting across the table from her at an investors meeting up in the space station, lightscreen glowing while Steve Bajori rattled on about this seasons financial reports. She hadnt paid much attention to him, having other things on her mind, but she did remember glancing at him halfway through the meeting to catch him staring out the window at Coromina I, at the fine-hewn golden-red swirls of its surface.

Her father wasnt one for looking out windows.

Esme?

Esme opened her eyes. Miguel was staring at her, leaning into the table, looking concerned.

Im sorry if this was an intrusion he began.

An intrusion. Esme shook her head. No, its fine.

I felt bad keeping it from you.

I understand. Its fine. Esme looked down at her half-finished meal. She didnt have the appetite to finish. He seemed healthy the last time I saw him. She said this more to herself than to Miguel.

Its in the early stages.

Esme laughed, shaking her head. She didnt mean to but it slipped out anyway. The early stages, she said. What else do you know? She looked up. Miguel looked away. Come on, Miguel, it sounds like he really opened up to you. It came out more bitterly than she intended, but bitterness was impossible to avoid when Phillip Coromina was involved.

Not much. Miguel sighed. Just that that its galazamia, that its in the early stages, that hes already started treatments.

How long?

How long what?

Esme clenched her jaw, teeth grinding together.

Oh. How long till he Miguel shook his head. God, Esme, I dont know. He didnt tell me. I dont know why he told me about the zamia in the first place.

He likes you.

Miguel blinked at her in surprise, his eyes big and dark. Her father did like Miguel. Esme liked Miguel too, which was why she had brought him on as her assistant almost fifteen years before. But it had been her father whod been impressed with his work, who promoted him to senior vice president. Esme outranked him on the corporate ladder but not, apparently, on personal matters.

Esme, Im sorry, he said. Let me get lunch.

The muscles in Esmes face tensed into something like a smile. She didnt know what Miguel was apologizing forthe fact that her father told him first, or the fact that her father was dying at all. Maybe both. Maybe it didnt matter.

Its not your fault, she said, a response that would fit either circumstance.

Miguel smiled at her, a sad smile, tactful and appropriate. Esme poked at the salad on her plate, then dropped the fork and drained her glass of wine. Miguel watched her, his face blank. Nonjudgmental. That wasnt the reason she hired him, but it was the reason she went to lunch with him.

Ill get the check now, he said, and lifted one hand in the air.

Esme clicked off the holo and stared at the bluish haze the image left behind as the light faded. Another call finished. This one had been with the lab out at Starspray City on Catequil, the heart of the Coromina Groups weapons manufacturing. Shed been on three such calls in the two hours since lunch, and with each one shed smiled, shed soothed, shed promised her employees that the Coromina Group was looking into their concerns about the whispers of anti-corporate rebels hiding out in the system, about the possibility of a containment breach. She didnt let any of her colleagues know that her father was dying.

Esme pushed away from her desk and walked over to her window. Her office was on the seventy-fifth floor, high enough that she could almost make out the ocean sparkling in the distance, the water that bright emerald green that was one of Ekkekos many trademarks. She crossed her arms over her chest. Her reflection moved in the glass. Her father was in a meeting; at least, thats what his assistant Lucia had told her when she rang her up on the holo, right after she had returned to her office. No telling when hed be out.

Esme leaned against the glass. Wind whistled around the building but down on the ground the jacaranda trees and tall silvery-green sea grass were unmoving. This wasnt the first person shed lost in her lifeher mother had died in a war in the Iaon system a few years earlier, doing what she loved. And of course Esmes sisters were gone, a fact she had come to accept a long time ago. But her father was different. He was three hundred years old. Hed been taking rejuvenation treatments since before they were safe. He was the sort of person you wanted to die and so you knew never would.

The holo trilled on Esmes desk.

She pulled away from the window and sank down in the chair. She ran one hand over her hair before switching on the holo. It was a reflex. She hardly even knew she did it.

Lucia materialized in miniature on the top of Esmes desk. Good afternoon, Ms. Coromina.

Lucia. Esme said the name carefully, not wanting to give away any of the turbulence spilling around inside of her.

Mr. Coromina is out of his meeting, if youd still like to speak with him.

Love to. Esme forced a smile. Ill be right up.

Very good. Lucia reached forward with one hand and then her image vanished. Esme took a deep breath. Shed told Lucia this was about the contract with the Spiro Xu Military Alliance. It was going to be a surprise when he found out it wasnt. As much of a surprise, perhaps, as Esme learning from Miguel Lee that her own father was dying.

Esme rode the elevator to the top floor. She wore a lightbox around her wrist to look official, but no one was in the elevator with her, so she just leaned against the cool, sleek metal and closed her eyes. Her heart fluttered. It was like she was a teenager again, an intern, afraid to look her father in the eye. She hadnt felt like this in years.