Wandering Star

Book 2: Zodiac

by Romina Russell

Genres: YA Fantasy; YA Romance; YA Science Fiction

Synopsis

Orphaned, disgraced, and stripped of her title, Rho is ready to live life quietly, as an aid worker in the Cancrian refugee camp on House Capricorn.

But news has spread that the Marad—an unbalanced terrorist group determined to overturn harmony in the Galaxy—could strike any House at any moment.

Then, unwelcome nightmare that he is, Ochus appears to Rho, bearing a cryptic message that leaves her with no choice but to fight.

Now Rho must embark on a high-stakes journey through an all-new set of Houses, where she discovers that there's much more to her Galaxy—and to herself—than she could have ever imagined.

Release date: December 8, 2015

Publisher: Razorbill

Print pages: 352

Sample

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Copyright © 2015 Penguin Random House LLC

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ISBN: 978-0-698-14615-0

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

The Constellations

The Houses of the Zodiac Galaxy

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Acknowledgments

PROLOGUE

WHEN I THINK OF MOM, I think of the day she abandoned us. There are dozens of memories that still haunt me, but that one always shoves its way to the surface first, submerging all other thoughts with its power.

I remember knowing something was wrong when Helios’s rays—and not Mom’s whistle—roused me. Every day, I’d awoken to the low-pitched call of the black seashell Dad had found for Mom on their first date; she kept it buried in her hair, pinning up her long locks, and plucked it out only for our daily drills.

But this morning dawned unannounced. I clambered out of bed, changed into my school uniform, and searched the bungalow for my parents.

The first person I spotted was Stanton. He was in his room across the hall, one side of his face glued to the wall. “Why are you—?”

“Shhh.” He pointed to the crack in the sand-and-seashell wall through which he could listen into our parents’ room. “Something’s up,” he mouthed.

I dutifully froze and awaited my big brother’s next cue. Stanton was ten, so he attended school on a pod city with our neighbor, Jewel Belger. Her mom would arrive any moment to pick him up, and Stanton was still in his nightclothes.

The seconds of silence were agony, during which I imagined every possible scenario, from Mom being diagnosed with a deadly disease to Dad discovering a priceless pearl that would make us rich. When at last Stan backed away from the crack, he pulled me into the hallway with him right as Mom barreled out from her bedroom.

“Stanton, come with me, please,” she said as she strode past. Lately whenever she and Dad fought, she sought solace in my brother. He eagerly bounded behind her, and though I longed to follow, I knew she wouldn’t approve. If she wanted me there, she would have said so.

I looked out through one of the bungalow’s many windows as Mom led Stan into the crystal reading room Dad had built for her on the banks of the inner lagoon near his nar-clams; a miniature version of the crystal dome on Elara, it fit three people at most. I’d watch Mom go in there every night, her figure blurring into misty shadow behind the thick walls as she read her Ephemeris in the starlight.

A small schooner pulled up to our dock, and Jewel jumped out, her frizzy curls blowing in the salty breeze. As she ran to our front door, Dad’s footsteps slapped down the stairs to meet her. I padded softly after him and hung on the staircase landing to listen.

Dad traded the hand touch with Jewel and waved to Mrs. Belger in the distance. “Stan isn’t going in today,” he said as Mrs. Belger honked back a greeting from her schooner.

“Oh,” said Jewel, sounding supremely disappointed. “Is he sick?”

I crept out a little farther from behind the banister, and Jewel’s piercing periwinkle eyes flashed to me. Her chestnut cheeks darkened, and she looked away, either from shyness or to keep Dad from noticing I was there.

“A little,” said Dad.

I nearly gasped in shock—I’d never heard one of my parents tell a lie before. Cancrians don’t deceive.

“Can I . . . can you tell him I hope he gets better?”

I stared at the back of Dad’s prematurely balding head as he nodded. “I will. Have a good day at school, Jewel.” As he waved again to Mrs. Belger, I soundlessly slipped behind him and went out a side door.

Tracing the outer walls of our bungalow, I found Jewel waiting for me by a small pond of water lilies that Mom tended to so much, she always smelled of them.

“Is Stanton okay?” she blurted as I came closer. Her skin flushed darker in embarrassment again.

“Yeah,” I said, shrugging.

“He told me your parents are fighting a lot. . . .” She let her sentence hang gently between us, an invitation to talk to her as a friend, even though I was only seven and she was Stanton’s age. Her attention made me feel important, so I wanted to share something special—a secret.

“Stanton’s not really sick. He’s with my mom. She and my dad just fought.”

This seemed to mean more to Jewel than me, because her chestnut features pulled together with concern, and she said, “I don’t think it’s good for him . . . being brought into their arguments. I think it’s making him old.”

Then she ran off to her mom’s schooner, and as they sailed away, Jewel’s face pressed into the glass window, staring back longingly at our bungalow. Her words worried me, even if I didn’t fully get their meaning, and I looked toward the crystal reading room, wondering.

I found myself moving closer to the place, the thick sparkly walls reflecting me in the sunlight instead of illuminating what was going on inside. I edged around it, careful to stay low in case Mom or Stanton looked out, and then I peeked in, cupping my eyes and squinting so I could see.

Stanton had just received his first Wave at school, and he was sitting on the reading room’s floor, recording information into it. Mom had switched on her Ephemeris, and she was orbiting the space while rattling words off to Stanton, words I couldn’t hear.

I took a chance and opened the door a crack, as slowly and carefully as possible.

“After you’ve cleaned the three changelings, toss them on the griller with a sprinkling of sea salt and sweet-water honeysuckles from the garden. I think that should be plenty of recipes. Let’s move on to Rho’s morning drills.”

“Mom, but why are you telling me this?” Stanton spoke in the whiny tone of repetition. Even though he sounded unhappy, his fingers obediently ticked away on his Wave’s holographic screen, logging the information.

“I like to wake Rho three hours early with rapid-fire drills about the Houses,” continued Mom, as though Stanton hadn’t interrupted. “After cycling through all twelve Yarrot poses, she must Center herself and commune with the stars for at least one hour—”

Mom stopped speaking suddenly, and every molecule of my being liquefied beneath her glacial glare. Through the sliver of a gap in the doorway, she was staring straight at me.

The door swept inward, and I nearly fell inside. Scrambling upright, I snuck a quick glance at my brother, who was looking from Mom to me with bated breath. I braced myself for Mom’s fury at my eavesdropping—only she didn’t look upset.

“You should be on your way to class, Rho.” She searched behind me for a sign of Dad. I turned, too, but he was still inside the bungalow. When I looked back at Mom, she wore the same intense stare I’d seen on her face a week ago, when she warned me my fears were real.

They certainly felt real in that moment. Every fearful possibility I’d dreaded earlier swam in my head once more, and I wondered what could have made Mom decide to dictate the details of her daily life to Stanton. Something was happening—something awful. My gut churned and sizzled, like I’d eaten too much sugared seaweed at once, and I couldn’t stand the not-knowing.

Mom reached out and caressed my face, her touch more whisper than words. “Your teachers are wrong, you know.” It was one of her favorite phrases. “There aren’t twelve types of people in the universe—there are two.” She stared at the pearl necklace on my chest, which I hadn’t taken off all week. Cancer’s pearl wasn’t centered, but for the first time, she didn’t reach out to adjust it. “The ones that stand still and try to fit in . . . and the ones that go seek out where they belong.”

That’s the last thing my mother ever said to me. When Dad sailed me to school that morning on the Strider—late—neither of us knew he would return to find Mom gone.

Dad lived life mostly inside his head, so he wasn’t a big talker. But that morning he broke our usual silence by saying, “Rho . . . your mom and I love you very much. If we argue, it has nothing to do with you or your brother. You know that?”

I nodded. He was speaking softly, in the comforting tone he always adopted post-fight. So I took a chance. “Dad . . . why did you lie to Jewel? What’s really happening with Stanton and Mom?”

I could see from Dad’s face he would rather not answer, but he was always more forthcoming post-fight. With a slight sigh, he said, “I shouldn’t have lied, Rho. I’m sorry you heard that. I’m also sorry I can’t give you an answer, because I don’t have one. You know how your mom is . . . she’s having a spell. She’ll be fine when you get home.”

It was then I understood what Jewel meant about too much information making someone old. I wanted to believe Dad—to push off the doubt and worry and the queasiness in my stomach that still hadn’t gone away. But the absence of the black seashell’s song that morning felt more like an omen.

Mom was right.

(She usually was.)

Fears are real.

1

TWELVE FLAGS, EACH BEARING THE symbol of a Zodiac House, lie in tatters before me, on a barren field that extends endlessly in every direction.

I can just make out a crest neatly sewn beneath each House name—a dark blue Crab, a royal purple Lion, an inky black Scorpion. Caked in blood and grime, the defeated fabrics sprawl across the lifeless land like corpses from a forgotten battle.

There are no sounds; nothing moves in the dusty distance. Even the sky is devoid of expression—it’s just a constant colorless expanse. But the stillness in the air is far from calm. It feels like the day is holding its breath.

I turn in a small circle to survey my surroundings, and in the eastern distance I see a steep hill that’s the only disruption to the flat landscape. I concentrate hard on the hill, envisioning myself cresting it to survey the valley below, and soon my view begins to transform. As the vast valley sharpens into focus, I choke on a horrified gasp—

Thousands of dead bodies litter the powdery earth below, their uniforms a rainbow of colors. Like a gruesome quilt made from people parts.

I slump to the floor, nearly crushing the glass orb in my hand, and shut my eyes, forgetting that nightmares thrive in darkness. Corpses crowd my view in here, too.

Hundreds of frozen Cancrian teens in flashy suits float through the black space of my mind, forever suspended there. I shake my head, and the vision flips to Virgo’s ships going up in flames, the air almost thick with the stench of burning flesh and metal.

Then the tiny burned bodies of the once-lively Geminin people.

The wreckage of vessels from what was once our united armada.

I suck in a ragged breath as the next picture forms: the familiar wavy black locks, alabaster face, indigo blue—

My eyes snap open, and I squeeze the glowing glass orb in my fist. The valley of bodies vanishes as the sights and sounds of reality rush into my head, as if I’ve just broken the sea’s surface after a deep dive.

The barren field has transformed back into a large, sterile room lined with floor-to-ceiling shelves that house hundreds of thousands of identical glass orbs. They’re called Snow Globes, and each one stores a re-creation of a moment in time.

I replace the memory I was just reviewing in its spot on the shelf:

House Capricorn

Trinary Axis

Sage Huxler’s recollections

After a moment, the orb’s white light dims out.

I’ve been coming to Membrex 1206 for two weeks, combing through House Capricorn’s memories of the Trinary Axis, searching for answers to any of my millions of questions. I’m desperate for any signs that could lead me to Ophiuchus, or help us defeat the Marad, or bring back hope to the Zodiac.

So far, I’ve found none of the above.

My Wave buzzes on the table, and I snap it open, anxious for news. A twenty-year-old guy with my identical blond curls, sun-kissed skin, and pale green eyes beams his hologram into the room.

“Rho—where are you?”

Stanton looks confusedly at the Membrex (a room outfitted with the technology to unlock Snow Globes) surrounding us. He’s wearing his wet suit and squinting against Helios’s rays, so he must still be at the beach helping out.

“I’m in the Zodiax . . . just looking something up.”

I haven’t told my brother what I’m really up to here—deep within the earth of House Capricorn’s sole planet, Tierre—while he volunteers at the Cancrian settlement on the surface. “Any sign of his ship yet?” I ask before I can stop myself.

“Like I told you twelve times this hour, I’ll let you know when he’s here. You shouldn’t worry so much.” Stanton looks like he wants to say more, but he glances off to the side, to something happening on the beach. “Gotta go; last ark of the day’s just dropped off more crates. When are you heading over?”

“On my way.” Capricorns have been shuttling our people back and forth from here to Cancer on their arks, braving the planet’s stormy surface to save our world’s wildlife. The Cancrians on the settlement have been helping our species adapt to Tierre’s smaller ocean.

Stanton’s hologram winks out, and I pull up the ledger on my Wave where I’ve been keeping track of the Snow Globes I’ve examined, and input today’s updates. To exit the room, I pass through a biometric body scan that ensures the only memories I’m taking with me are my own.

Out in the dimly lit passage, I brush my hand along the smooth stone wall until my fingers close on a square metal latch. I pull on it to open a hidden door, and when I slip through, the ground falls away.

My stomach tickles as I glide down a steep, narrow tube that shoots me out onto the springy floor of a train platform. Its bounciness reminds me of my drum mat, except this one’s riddled with rows of symmetrical circles that light up either red or green, depending on whether that spot on the train is available.

I stand inside one of the green circles, and almost immediately there’s a rush of wind and the hissing of pistons beneath my feet—then the circle I’m standing on opens.

A gust of air pressure sucks me down, and I’ve tapped into the Vein, the train system that tunnels through the Zodiax.

“Zodiac art from the first millennium,” announces a cool female voice. I grab onto the handrail above me as the wind changes direction, and a stray curl falls into my face as we shoot upward.

The Zodiax is an underground vault that contains what the Tenth House calls a treasure trove of truths: the collective wisdom of the Zodiac. Down here, there are museums, galleries, theaters, Membrexes, auditoriums, restaurants, reading rooms, research labs, hotels, shopping malls, and more. When Mom described it to me once, she said the Zodiax is like a brain, and the Vein is its neuron network, zooming people around as fast as firing synapses, its route mapped by subject matter rather than geography.

A couple of Capricorn women in black robes share my compartment—one is tall with dark features, the other short with a ruddy complexion. We slow down for half a moment at “Notable Zodai from this century,” and the smaller woman is sucked up to a train platform.

“Surface, Cancrian settlement.”

I click a button on the handrail and let go. I’m blown up to the bouncy bed of another train station, and biometric body scans search me again as I leave the Zodiax.

Outside, I instinctively raise a hand to shield my eyes from Helios’s light. Echoing silence is instantly replaced with the sounds of crashing waves and animal calls and distant conversations. As my vision adjusts, I make out herds of seagoats (House Capricorn’s sacred symbol) feeding and roughhousing at the water’s edge, and long-bodied terrasaurs flicking in and out of the rocks along the seashore, their scaly skin shiny in the daylight. High above us, horned hawks flap across the sun-bleached sky, circling the air in hopes of picking off the pocket pigs feeding in the weeds.

Tierre is the largest inhabited planet in our galaxy, and it has a single massive landmass, Verity. Up ahead, the planet’s pink sand beach spills into the blue of its ocean, and behind me, wild forests grow right up to the ridges of volcanoes, giving way in the distance to snowcapped mountains that pierce the sky. The view is occasionally interrupted by the long neck of a fluffy giraffe reaching up for a fresh tree leaf.

This place is a land lover’s paradise—which makes sense, given that Capricorn is a Cardinal House, representing the element Earth. People here live in modest homes on vast plots of land with multiple pets that live free-range.

Cancer’s colony is being built along Verity’s western coastline, our people predictably opting to settle near our preferred cardinal element, Water. As I walk into our settlement, clusters of Cancrians are working on their respective tasks. Some are building pink sand-and-seashell bungalows, some are chopping seafood for sushi on flat stones, and some—including Stanton—are knee-deep in the ocean wearing wet suits, tending to the newly arrived species. As I walk past each group of people, they don’t stare anymore. Not like they did at first.

A month ago, the Cancrians I met on Gemini insisted on my innocence and vowed the other Houses wouldn’t get away with this insult to Cancer. Then three weeks ago, we came to Capricorn, and the Cancrians here have barely spoken to me. Their glares and pointed silence have made it clear they’re not interested in my political failings—their sole concern is saving what’s left of our world.

I wade toward Stanton through a shallow sea of crawling hookcrabs, miniature sea horses, schools of flashing changelings (blue fish that turn red when they sense danger), and a few just-released baby crab-sharks. My brother is with Aryll, a seventeen-year-old Cancrian who came here with us from Gemini. They’re in the process of releasing another school of changelings into the ocean.

Rather than disturb them, I hang back and scour the sky for the telltale metallic glint of an approaching spaceship. It’s getting close to sunset. He should be here by now.

“You look nice today,” says Stanton, spotting me. Only he says it less like a compliment and more like a question. His gaze searches my turquoise dress for clues before landing back on the water.

Aryll turns, and his electric-blue eye roves over my outfit; a gray patch covers the spot where his left eye used to be. He flashes me a boyish smile before rearranging his expression into a Stanton-like look of disapproval. Even though I know he cares for us both, he takes my brother’s side on pretty much everything.

“It doesn’t matter, I can still help you guys.” I come closer, letting the bottom of my dress get wet to show Stanton I’m not fussy.

“Rho, don’t,” he says with a bite of impatience. “We’re nearly finished. Just hang back.”

I do as my brother says, watching as he and Aryll set the fish free. The changelings look radioactive, their fiery bodies staining the blue water red, but soon their coloring begins to cool, and they disappear into the ocean’s depths. Changelings, being small and low-maintenance, have had the easiest time adapting to Capricorn so far.

Stanton opens up the last closed crate floating beside him, and he and Aryll start releasing hookcrabs into the ocean. “That’s good, but watch for its pincers,” says Stanton, deftly taking the crab from Aryll before it snaps his finger off.

When he talks to Aryll, my brother sounds different than when he addresses me. With Aryll, his voice dips lower, adopting a comforting tone that’s painfully familiar. “See this part of the shell back here, where it curves in a little?” Aryll nods obediently. “That’s always the best place to grip them.”

Stanton’s words sweep me back to Kalymnos, where I learned how to handle the hookcrabs that constantly clawed at our nar-clams, and I realize who my brother is acting like. He’s being Dad.

It shouldn’t bother me. After all that’s happened, I should be mature and understanding and compassionate. I should be grateful my brother’s alive at all. Some people lost everything.

Aryll was at school on a Cancrian pod city when pieces of our moons started shooting through our planet’s atmosphere. The explosion took out his left eye. By the time he made it home, his whole family and house had drowned in the Cancer Sea. Like Stanton, he was herded together with other survivors and transported to House Gemini’s planet Hydragyr.

Then Ophiuchus attacked Gemini.

Earthquakes ransacked the rocky planet right as the Cancrian settlement was being built. Stanton was ushering a family to safety when he lost his balance and slipped off the rock face. Aryll caught him just as he was going over.

He saved my brother’s life.

“We’re going to change,” Stanton calls out as he and Aryll duck behind a privacy curtain to shed their wet suits.

I study the horizon again for a sign of the ship I’ve been anxiously awaiting all day. Ophiuchus hasn’t destroyed another planet since Argyr, but the Marad attacks a different House every week. The army has also been linked to pirate ships that have been intercepting travelers and inter-House supply shipments all across the galaxy. Zodai on every House are cautioning citizens to avoid Space travel, encouraging us to travel by holo-ghost whenever possible.

What if something’s happened? How will I know? Maybe I should try his Ring, just in case—

“There!” shouts Aryll, his red hair flickering like fire under Helios’s rays. He points to a dot in the sky.

My heart skips several beats as the dot zooms closer, sunlight catching its gleaming surface. The ship grows bigger on its approach, until the full form of the familiar bullet-shaped craft is visible.

Hysan is here at last.

2

’NOX LANDS ON A PLOT of pink sand far enough away not to disturb our camp. Stanton, Aryll, and I march toward the ship, and in the distance, Hysan’s golden figure leaps onto the beach, carrying a black case with him.

I exhale in relief, realizing as I do that I’ve been holding my breath since Hysan and I parted. In a way, I’ve been lonelier these past few weeks than I was our whole time on Equinox.

Hysan’s lips twist into his centaur smile as he approaches, and my mouth mirrors the movement effortlessly. I’d forgotten how relaxing a real smile could feel.

He looks taller, and his golden hair has outgrown its Zodai cut. The white streaks are gone, and so are the expensive clothes—he’s dressed in a simple gray space suit that he’s filling out with more muscle than I remember.

“My lady.” His lively, leaf-green eyes rest on my face and travel to my turquoise dress. “Memory did not do you justice.”

“You should have been here hours ago,” I say, the flush in my cheeks undercutting my rebuke.

“I apologize if I worried you.” Hysan brings my hand to his lips, his kiss activating a million Snow Globes stored inside my body. My skin tingles as the ghosts of his touch echo tauntingly through me.

“Hysan. Thanks for coming. Hope all is well.”

The choppiness in Stanton’s speech means he’s still wary of Hysan. When they met on Gemini, I introduced him as a friend and nothing more. Even though that’s technically true, I’m still lying to my brother . . . and apparently not even well.

“Happy to be of service,” says Hysan, flashing Stanton one of his winning grins and bumping fists with him. After exchanging the hand touch with Aryll, he says, “I can’t stay long. I only came to deliver the Bobbler, then I must report to the Plenum on House Taurus. An emergency session has been called.”

“What’s happened?” I ask, the alarm in my chest going off.

“Nothing like that. I’ll explain later.” He opens the black case he’s been carrying and holds up what looks like a deflated hot-air balloon attached to a pump. “This is a Bobbler—it’s what our scientists use to explore Kythera’s surface. As soon as you hit Inflate, it will activate, and the navigational system will launch an instructional holographic feed. You can use it to send someone to explore the surface of Cancer—or even into the Cancer Sea, up to a pressure point—and it will withstand the harshest atmospheric conditions.”

The Bobbler looks like a person-sized version of the membranes surrounding Libra’s flying cities. “Transparent nanocarbon fused with silica,” I recite, recalling Hysan’s words.

He beams at me. “Exactly.”

“What about the species down in the Rift?” Being unpleasant isn’t in my brother’s nature, so the hardness in his tone is so slight that anyone but a Libran would miss it. “We don’t have watercraft that can penetrate deep enough to know how they’ve been affected or whether we need to move them.”

“I’ve reached out to my contacts on Scorpio,” says Hysan, his smile faltering but his manner still pleasant. “It’s the only House with ships that can descend to those depths. They’re not feeling particularly warm toward Cancer right now”—his eyes flit to mine but don’t quite connect—“still, I’m hopeful they’ll come through.”

Around us the sun is setting, and a few stars are already peeking out in the darkening sky. As Hysan stores the Bobbler back inside its case, the night glows suddenly white. We look up to see silver holographic letters forming high above Tierre:

DINNER.

“Can you stay?” I ask Hysan hopefully.

There’s a slight hesitation before he says, “It would be my pleasure, my lady.”

Though he’s smiling, I sensed something worrisome in his pause. Whatever’s going on, it’s worse than he’s letting on.

Dinner for the sector of Capricorn we’re residing in takes place in the vast valley of a steep hill—the same one from Sage Huxler’s recollections. Herds of black-robed Capricorns make their way there with us, each holding what looks like a magical wand. It’s their Wave-like device, a Sensethyser.

Since Capricorns believe in quantifying and containing knowledge, they use a Sensethyser to capture and create holographic versions of anything new they stumble across. When pointed at so