Radiant Star

by Ann Leckie

Genres: Space Opera

Synopsis

Space opera's sharpest mind returns to the world of the Imperial Radch in this brilliant standalone from award-winning author Ann Leckie.

The Temporal Location of the Radiant Star has always been a source of both conflict and hope for the people of Ooioiaa. However, the imperial Radch see it only as an inconvenience, an antiquated religious site soon to be absorbed into their own, superior culture. But local politics is complicated, and the Radch have made a final concession: One last man will be allowed to join the mummified bodies in the temporal location to become a “living saint”.

But this decision will ripple out to affect every part of the city. Amidst a slowly worsening food shortage, riots, and a communication blackout from the rest of the Radch Empire, a religious savant will entertain visions of his own sainthood, a socialite will discover hir comfortable life upended, and a young man sold into servitude will find unlikely escape.

Release date: May 12, 2026

Publisher: Orbit

Print pages: 432

Sample

In the city of Ooioiaa, there are of course several different consororities, but when one says “the Consorority” one means the Consorority of the Translocation. And the difference between the Translocationist consorors and the rest is clear and easily described (though not so easily explained): where every other consorority accepts members from anywhere (give or take—there are requirements and regulations) one must be born a member of the Consorority of the Translocation. They are, essentially, a single family.

Like many other families in the Chath Precinct of Ooioiaa, all the children are boys, whatever their personal inclinations. Unlike other families, on reaching adulthood those boys are sorted by the family’s matriarch into those who will become women, and hence consorors, and those who will become men. Though Ooioiaan boys may grow up to be any gender one may care to imagine, for the boys of the Consorority of the Translocation there are only those two options available.

Potential consorors will display either business acumen or a tendency to the visions that are the mainstay of the Translocationists’ reputation and income. The rest—the men—become servants and minor household administrators. If there is no place for the men, they are sent out to be servants in other households—servants trained by the Consorority are highly sought after.

In the 3,008th year after the manifestation of the Radiant Star (the 1,024th since the founding of the Consorority itself), Zaved, a newly minted consoror, disappeared a mere two days after the ceremony that elevated her to womanhood. She left a note that read, Bored. Back whenever. This was not normal or even remotely acceptable behavior in a consoror, particularly one who held as much promise as Zaved had, but what could the consorors do? They had, perhaps, indulged her a bit too much when she had been a boy, but that had been expected; her gene mother was matriarch and it had been clear from Zaved’s infancy that she was destined for womanhood. There was at this point nothing to do but go about their daily business, and so the consorors did.

Five years later Zaved returned, walking in the Consorority’s front door with a cheap plastic bag full of trinkets from three different star systems; a trunk made of actual cherry wood; a wide, shining necklace of platinum set with pearls and olivine cabochons; and an obvious pregnancy.

The scandal of this—the matriarch of the consorors carefully plans each addition to the family and no one becomes pregnant unless she feels very strongly that she wishes to be, and even then she must obtain the matriarch’s approval—was somewhat mitigated by the fact that the cherry wood trunk proved to be stuffed full of cash in very high denominations. “This is only half of the payment,” Zaved said. “The rest comes on delivery. Which will be some years, because the client wants a servant specially trained by the Consorority and I couldn’t possibly promise any of our boys to some foreign atheist, but it was so much money! And I had such a lovely time. So anyway when this one”—she gestured to her swelling abdomen—“is born, we educate him with the others, and when he’s old enough, we just pack him up and send him off, and…” She gestured airily. “More money!” She frowned just the slightest bit. “Well, it will take a few years for him to get there, and a few years for the money to get here, but that hardly matters.”

So Jonr was born. Certainly there was no way for tiny Jonr to know, or even have the slightest suspicion, that he might not be exactly the same as any other infant in the nursery of the Consorority of the Translocation. His small bed was just as comfortable, his clothes and blankets just as warm and soft. His food was the same as the other babies and small children ate. He crawled in the same brightly colored play-space, chewed and drooled on the same toys. He was changed and bathed and tucked into bed when scheduled or needed, just like all the other infants. If you had asked the men who cared for the children, they would have told you with absolute sincerity (and no little indignation) that of course they treated all the children the same. There was no way Jonr could know that he was not, in reality, one of them.

He knew. Oh, the caretakers meant well. Or perhaps more precisely, they meant to mean well, which is not, in the end, the same thing. As he grew more and more aware of his surroundings and his simple understanding of the world increased, he became more and more certain of a division between himself and the other boys. Even after he learned to speak about the things surrounding him, he couldn’t find words to describe that division, but it was absolutely there. And the men who cared for the children absolutely could or would not speak of it—but Jonr saw it in the shape of their actions, the slight chill in their voices when they spoke to or of him, the smallest, barely perceptible edge of roughness in their handling of him.

It was, for him, just the way things were. He did not yet imagine that things might have been different, that there might be some reason for the division, let alone that it might be avoidable or reparable. So he did not ask why, and he was not surprised when the other dozen or so children, no less perceptive than Jonr, withdrew from him and left him to play alone in the corner of the room or the section of the garden farthest from them.

It will hardly surprise my readers to learn that, as the other boys grew in understanding, their perception of that division between them and Jonr only intensified. We’ve often heard it said that children can be so cruel, and it’s no doubt true. Of course, it’s also true that children can be astonishingly generous and kind. Who can say why children are cruel in one situation and kind in another? All I can tell you is, these children were less and less kind to Jonr as they grew. It may have been the uncertainty of their own futures, the importance to those futures of pleasing the adults around them. But for whatever reason, by the time Jonr and his age-mates reached their First Convictment—around eight years, as my Chath Chenala readers will know—Jonr had become the constant target of the other boys’ contempt. When he went for help to the men who cared for the children, he was told that if the other boys didn’t like him, it was his own doing. That he should behave less like a victim and so present a less-appealing target to his tormentors. That he should ignore their words and actions.

It was impossible to ignore their words and actions. So it will be hardly any surprise that he did his best to flee.

Under the quarters of the Consorority was a multitude of basements: labyrinthine levels of storage rooms, piping and wiring, piles of leftover building materials, old furniture—and in the second basement, at the very back, behind a long, ancient table, a rift in the stone, damp and sulfur-smelling and just the right size and shape for someone like nine-year-old Jonr to try to crawl through. And if you have ever been nine years old and wishing to be anywhere but where you are, you know that, presented with such a rift, he did indeed crawl into it.

Fortunately it opened out again, not very far in. He found himself in a cave, a long tube with more or less smooth walls, lined at about the height of Jonr’s shoulders with a ridge that marked the surface of the lava that had once flowed there. Over time water had found its way through the ceiling of the tube, slowly dripping, accreting pillars of smooth, shining stone that curtained off one section of the space. This was where Jonr left his treasures—for nothing precious to him could be safe within reach of his crèchemates. Chief among these treasures was a tzetar that Jonr had found in a storeroom and had restrung himself. He had then made the mistake of bringing it to music lessons, where the teacher had half accused Jonr of stealing the instrument, and been openly doubtful of Jonr’s joining the other boys learning to play. After class those other boys, laughing, had snapped the tzetar in half. The men nearby somehow did not notice that it had happened. From this Jonr learned that he could not depend on anyone for anything he wanted. He repaired the tzetar as best he could, and if it was never afterward as sonorous as a tzetar could be, it sufficed for Jonr to console himself with in the privacy of the cave.

There were other cracks in the cave that led other places. One led to a wide, echoing space with a glassy pool, in which a small meadow of thin, nearly transparent worms drifted sluggishly. Another, after a long journey of walking and climbing and crawling, brought Jonr out behind a pile of rubble in an alleyway, a dead end that Serque Removal had not deigned to service, and that therefore would not be expanded any further.

This, then, was Jonr’s refuge when he was not in lessons of one sort or another, and his way in and out of the house unobserved. No one thought to ask—indeed, they did not care at all—where he was when he was not required to be anywhere in particular.

He knew that he would never be a woman. He never really entertained the possibility, beyond a few vague fantasies of having an unmistakably, overpoweringly prophetic vision, proving his superiority to his age-mates; of the matriarch of the Consorority apologizing abjectly for everyone’s treatment of him; of his gene mother displaying attentive pride. They were not fantasies of being a woman so much as fantasies of becoming someone important and valued. But he also had no realistic expectations of becoming a man. As the years went by and the date of his likely majority came closer he was seized with a vague foreboding that kept him from sleeping or eating well. He could not picture any sort of future beyond boyhood. Could not imagine a place for himself in the Consorority, nor a place for him outside it.

After much thought and anxiety, he decided that while clearly something was wrong with him that prevented him from fitting in, he would have to make up for it. He paid extra attention in lessons. Spent more of his free time running errands, cleaning, helping out where he saw a need. It was hard at first; he didn’t have a natural sense of what was needed or what he might be able to do unprompted, but as months went by he improved and thought that, maybe, a few of the adults appreciated his efforts.

So when, at about eighteen, he was called from lessons into a conference with the Consorority’s matriarch, he felt actually a mild sense of pleasurable anticipation. There would be an investiture soon, the wide, herb-smelling garden was nearly prepared for it, other boys Jonr’s age had been called in for conference and been told their role in the ceremony, and their fates. Jonr knew he wouldn’t be a woman, knew he would likely end up doing cleaning or maintenance, and that was fine, it was a place.

In the matriarch’s office he found not the matriarch but his gene mother. Who looked at him and made a vague gesture. “Well, there you are.” And nothing more.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Jonr. Was his gene mother actually going to take some sort of notice of him? Some boys’ gene mothers did, giving them small gifts or spending time with them, but his never had. He wasn’t sure how to interpret this.

“I don’t know why Mother is making me do this,” said Zaved petulantly. “It’s her job.”

Jonr automatically opened his mouth to say Yes, ma’am again, but closed it before the words could escape. Distress started through his veins. He had expected to meet the matriarch, expected to be told that upon his installation as an adult he would be cleaning floors, or something like that. Not this. Whatever this was.

Zaved sat and sighed, tapping her fingers on the side of her chair, staring somewhere to Jonr’s right. There was nothing for it but to wait patiently and keep his expression still. Zaved was an actual consoror, prone to visions, accustomed to waiting for the Star’s inspiration to strike. She would say what she had to say when she was ready.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, she said, “You don’t belong here.”

Jonr felt, suddenly, as though everything around him, everything that had been intimately familiar since birth, was unfamiliar. As though the floor beneath his feet had disappeared.

“A while ago,” his gene mother continued, “what, twenty years? It can’t be that long.” She frowned, thinking. Then she dismissed the thought. “It doesn’t matter. You were bred to be a servant for someone a long way away from here. They paid quite a lot of money for you and I’m glad to say your teachers have told me you’ve turned out fairly well, even if you did have a weak start, so the buyer will get their money’s worth, that’s good.”

“What,” began Jonr.

“So there’s no need,” said Zaved, “for you to go to all the trouble of an investiture. In fact, there’s a suspension pod waiting for you just down the hall. Isn’t that nice? You’ll go to sleep and wake up far, far away. Much better than traveling awake—it will take years for you to get where you’re going.”

Her words had ceased meaning anything to him. Dread overtook him. Betrayal. Despair. “You sold me.”

“Oh, don’t look like that,” she scolded. “I didn’t sell you, you weren’t even born yet. I was traveling, and frankly I was running out of money, when I met someone very rich. And I was telling them about how beautifully trained our boys are, to sing and play the tzetar and serve dinner and clean things and dance, and they thought that sounded lovely and proposed my adding such a lovely thing to their collection. And of course I couldn’t just sell one of our own boys away, but they were willing to be patient while I trained you up. So, you see?” She smiled brightly.

“I see,” said Jonr. He saw that he was more alone than he had ever thought he was. He saw that it was, in fact, possible for him to feel worse than he ever had in his life.

“Good!” replied Zaved. “So you can just go down the hall to the blue sitting room and hop in the suspension pod, there’s a good boy.”

A number of thoughts, clear and sharp as broken glass, flashed into his mind. His gene mother cared nothing for his well-being. No one in the Consorority of the Translocation cared for him. Who else knew? The adults had to have known, all this time. This was the difference that had set him apart from the other boys. His fate might be anything at all. A very rich person, who lived somewhere terribly far away, wanted him as a possession, and might treat him well, but then again might not. They had certainly seemed to think nothing of just buying a person as though a person was… something you could buy. He saw… no he heard… no he smelled… something, a shape, a color, that said to him Don’t get in that suspension pod in cold, ringing tones that hurt his brain. A vision. Was he having a vision? Impossible. A plan blossomed in his mind, each action fully formed and vivid.

He turned and fled out of the office.

The matriarch, who knew Zaved well enough to guess she would not break this news in diplomatic fashion, and knowing how distressing the information would be even given gently, had been shrewd enough to set men to block any doors that would lead to the city outside. But she didn’t know about Jonr’s cave, and its alley exit.

He came out in the shadowed alleyway. Stopped, breathing heavily, listened for sounds of pursuit. The city was quiet. It was the afternoon before the Feast of the Desiccation, shops would close early, and people were at home preparing for the holiday, or on their way home. There would be very few people to see him flee, but also no crowds to hide in.

There was nothing for it. He stepped out from behind the rubble and walked—and then ran—to the physical and spiritual center of the city of Ooioiaa, the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star. No one stopped him, and he all but collapsed at the wide main entrance, nearly deserted at this hour. He stripped his shoes off, shoved himself up, and staggered into the vestibule, his feet slipping on the cold stone polished smooth by centuries of pilgrims’ steps. One or two Athphsid savants frowned at him as he passed, seeing from his bare feet that he was Chath. “Your pardon, Savant,” Jonr gasped, hand held to the stitch in his side. “I need a Chath savant.” The Athphsid savant pointed, wordlessly, to a door off in a shadowed corner.

The young savant who came to his pounding on the door was smiling and pleasant. Cheerful, even. Their name was Niranhin. They brought Jonr to the refectory, invited him to sit, and listened to Jonr’s story with sympathetic interest, many murmured I sees and go ons and oh dears. “A terrible shock for you, I’m sure. I see why you’re upset. But, Jonr. Your name is Jonr? Yes. Jonr, what is it you want from us?”

Jonr opened his mouth and found himself wordless. He swallowed, and managed to say, “I want to become a savant. They won’t be able to do anything to a savant in the Temporal Location. Or just… keep me here for a while. I can get a job. Something. Anything. I can work for you! Just, please help me!”

Savant Niranhin absolutely did not appreciate the trouble Jonr had just brought them. But they did always do their duty cheerfully. “Now, young man,” they said, smiling. “To begin with, you can’t just become a savant by wishing to. There’s months, even years of study and prayer and meditation.” Jonr opened his mouth to express his willingness to study and pray and meditate for however long it might take, but Niranhin continued to speak. “And we can’t keep you here without the permission of your guardians—you are still a minor, if I understand you correctly.”

“You won’t help me,” realized Jonr, despair overwhelming him, submerging him, drowning him. What could he do? Could he live in his cave behind the alley? How would he feed himself? Maybe he could eat the worms in the pool. But when they ran out?

“Now, now,” said Niranhin soothingly. “I will help you as much as I can. Remember, the light of the Star shines on us all. We each of us have an obligation to do the work that light requires of us. What are the six virtues, young man?”

“Equanimity,” said Jonr automatically. Dully. “Beneficence. Obedience, prayerfulness…”

“Obedience,” interjected Savant Niranhin, gently. “And prayerfulness. Those are your help now. Put your faith in the Star and its purpose for you. Pray, and resolve to obey your guardians. Cheerfully.” They smiled.

“You won’t help me,” said Jonr again. “Why won’t you help me?”

Savant Niranhin sighed. They felt sincere sympathy for this boy. The situation was deeply unfortunate. Consoror Zaved’s actions twenty years ago had been irresponsible and terribly immoral. Her continuing to indulge in that same irresponsibility and immorality was shocking and distressing. But they knew that one had to be realistic, and perhaps the best service they could do for Jonr was help him see just why obedience and prayerfulness was his best refuge. “No one in Ooioiaa will help you escape your fate,” they said. Gently. “No one who cares about this city, in any event. The Consorority of the Translocation is wealthy and influential. The Serques, for instance, consult them far more often than they consult our own speaking savants here in the Temporal Location. And no one can afford to earn the enmity of the Serques because it’s Serque who gets to say who does or doesn’t build. All the consorors have to do is demand you back, and every power in Ooioiaa will bend itself to give you to them. Even if you hide in the Athphsid Precinct, or the Ylec. Either whoever you go to will hand you right back, or they will risk open conflict. Over you. People might die. Similar things have happened before.”

“I could leave Ooioiaa,” suggested Jonr. “I could leave Aaa.”

“Well, now,” said Niranhin. “Do you have money for passage? No? I didn’t think so. And, after all, isn’t that what you’ll be doing anyway?” They smiled, cheerful. “You see? It’s all right. Have faith.”

That, of course, was the moment when Jonr lost every last shattered fragment of it.

It was also two days before the Radchaai dropped out of gate-space and began their occupation of Ooioiaa.

When seventeen-year-old Charak Svo had entered the Radchaai military as a lieutenant, she had fondly imagined a career full of glorious conquests and promotions. She’d known her dreams to be just that—dreams. Mostly fantasy. But if, when she distinguished herself on the battlefield, her deeds did not exactly rise to the heights she had imagined, still her superiors took notice, and she rose to the rank of captain, and her life was not too dramatically different from what she had dreamed of.

Some years into Charak Svo’s captaincy, Anaander Mianaai, Lord of the Radch, decided that the best interests of the Radchaai involved taking control of the planet Aaa as it moved slowly (so, so slowly) toward a system of potential military importance. Accordingly ships and soldiers had been sent to Aaa with orders to establish Radchaai rule in Ooioiaa, the planet’s single city. These orders they carried out. And when the fleet captain who had governed Aaa since its capture found it convenient to retire, Charak Svo had been made a fleet captain and sent to be governor in her stead.

And that was how, thirty years after Jonr’s unhelpful conference with Savant Niranhin, Charak Svo found herself standing in the dining room of the Sodality of the Radiant Star, staring at half a dozen bruised and bloody savants.

The savants were of two distinct parties—six of them wore the gray monastic coveralls of the Chath Chenala and were barefoot, and six of them wore the long, sleeveless blue-and-yellow coats of the Athphsid Chenala, and thin shoes that clacked on the stone floor as they shifted and shuffled. One of each—the respective hierarchs—stood straight and frowning, uninjured. One of the coveralled savants held their arms across their chest, breathing shallowly. One Athphsid savant held a hand to their nose, which bled freely, leaving a wide red-purple smear on their blue coat. The rest were in various stages of dishevelment and incipient bruising.

“Governor,” began the Chath hierarch, Biven.

“Silence,” said Governor Charak, gently, and the hierarch subsided, almost despite themself.

Charak waited a few more moments. She was angry. She had been woken in the middle of her night’s rest. She was disgusted with the hall of the Sodality of the Radiant Star, which had never been built with the aim of housing a city’s government, but that had been the best the previous governor could find for her purposes, since the city itself had no actual government that she could determine, only a few precinct councils that squabbled among themselves. She was disgusted with the city of Ooioiaa, which her predecessor had found easy enough to occupy but difficult to actually take charge of. Radchaai news had stopped arriving two months ago, and she’d received no official messages in that time, when for as long as she’d been governor—a bit more than a year, as Radchaai calculated them—something had come once a week at least. Yesterday the captain of a dilapidated freighter had presented her with a severely injured distant cousin, someone Charak had never liked but whose well-being would certainly be of deep concern to numerous aunts. Her long-ago regrown lower back hurt, against all reason, against all medical assurances that it couldn’t possibly do such a thing. And now this.

“In the last month,” Charak observed, “this is the third time this has happened.”

The Athphsid savant with the nosebleed inhaled, and choked briefly on their own blood. No one else made any sound or movement.

“I am not interested in explanations or excuses,” continued Governor Charak. “I don’t care who goes where in your Temporal Location of the Radiant Star.” Hierarch Biven opened their mouth—they too were tired, angry, and disgusted, and furthermore had small practice in keeping their thoughts to themself—and Charak said, sharply, “Say one word and I’ll have all of you, every one, out of the Temporal Location, and I’ll take it over for myself.”

Hierarch Biven took one indignant gasp to ready themself for an exclamation, thought better of it, and closed their mouth firmly. The Athphsid hierarch, Osifo, was equally shocked, but determined that if the faithful were to be cast out of the Temporal Location, it would not be on their account. They closed their mouth tightly and cast a quelling look at their own savants. Even the one with the nosebleed didn’t miss that look’s significance.

“Citizen Senely,” said Charak.

Senely Kover, citizen adviser to the fleet captain, had been waiting just behind her. She, too, had been awakened from sleep, but her wealthy, moderately aristocratic upbringing had taught her to seem collected and polished in nearly any situation. “Governor,” she said.

“Report.”

“Governor,” Senely acknowledged, smoothly, knowing that Charak would read in that one, calm word the recognition of the fact that Charak had already received her report. Senely had an appointment to meet with the fleet captain in the morning to discuss it. “The Site of the Temporal Location of the Radiant Star has been the focus of several disputes over the last few centuries. Up until last year, there were three factions that claimed jurisdiction over the shrine: the Chath, the Athphsid, and the Ylec. Over time they had worked out a division of territory, and a schedule determining when each faction was allowed in the sanctuary itself. But in recent years the Ylec had declined, and some months ago the last Ylec savant died, leaving their quarters—and their part in the attendance schedule—empty. This led to disputes between the Chath and Athphsid factions over who will take over what. Some of those disputes have been quite serious and required the intervention of our own forces.”

This speech was a terrible trial to all of the savants. To hear their orders reduced to “factions.” The very idea that arguments within the Temporal Location were liable to any sort of intervention, let alone that it might be required! It was too much to bear. Osifo tightened their teeth. Biven made a small noise, but managed not to actually say anything.

Charak asked, “Will resolving this dispute mean these disturbances will cease?” She already knew the answer. So did Biven and Osifo, who both managed to keep that answer more or less out of their expressions.

“No, Governor,” said Senely. “But it will reduce them greatly, in both frequency and severity.”

“Right,” said Charak. “This is how it will be. No one gets what the Ylec left behind.” It had not been part of her plan, not originally. Before she’d gone to bed that night she’d intended to meet with Senely and draw up a proposal that would equitably divide the territory in question. But she was feeling vicious. “Not their quarters, not their time in the schedule, nothing.”

Biven and Osifo both felt shock and dismay at the governor’s words. Both wanted to point out to the governor the rightness of their own claim to the disputed territory, the obvious faults in the claim of their rival. The folly of leaving so much empty space in that holy place, of leaving the true Temporal Location of the Radiant Star unattended for any length of time. But both also recognized the danger of the governor’s current mood.

Someone behin. . .