Tony didn't exactly know why he was telling everything to this woman he didn't know, Nova Dasilva.
All night, he supposed, or for the hours since the sun set at least, he had been drowning and he had been drowning long before that but now it was in the certainty that something was wrong with Cordelia that he was drowning.
An unfathomable ocean on a planet worlds away from him, her mind was a forest at the bottom of an ocean worlds away from him, and he would never reach her again. He couldn't reach her mind and he couldn't touch her, he reached for her shoulders and she slipped away before his fingers could land. "Everything is fine," she had said on the way to the link to Potestas Tower. She hadn't smiled.
"I'm happy," she said, but as soon as they came out of the elevator she lost him to talk to someone else, dissolved into an opening in the crowd that closed around her, and he was alone again, which didn't feel very different from when she had been there.
"She knows," he moaned to Nova Dasilva. "It's the only explanation. She already knows and she's pretending not to. We're both pretending."
Nova Aurelian nodded sweetly with wide eyes almost watering with tears. She was almost crying for him. A tiny hand patted his arm, understanding, encouraging.
"She already knows everything," said Tony.
Those wide teary eyes changed. She tossed her head like she was shaking off a mask and suddenly the face underneath was cold and sharp, like everybody else's. The round eyes narrowed to sharp slits and Tony had the instinct to lean away on his stool.
"Tony, you're not going to want to hear what I have to say," she said. "But she does know. She knows about the affair that never happened. And that's a good thing, because now no one can use it to control you. Your marriage may be ruined, but you can elect whoever you want for president of Constellation.Just relax, enjoy your drink and the—"
The party around him was melting together and away, the colors, lights and noises swirling together into his vision a kaleidoscope of moving patterns with Nova's face the only shape, an eye here, an ear there, and her disjointed words, "music" and "crepesculum" and "free" and "marriage."
Tony brought his hands to his face and fell into them, pressing his fingertips until the colors of the kaleidoscope melted together to brown. He wasn't sure if he could see or hear, but he could speak.
"How could you possibly know that," sputtered through his lips in a shout right over her quiet venomous voice. "How could you possibly know that. You don't know me and I don't know you. I'm not free to vote for who I want to be President of Constellation. You don't know anything. First them and now you. How do you know, how does anyone know? How does she know. Come to think of it, I want to know did you tell her? Answer me, are you the one who told her?"
"No," said Nova Dasilva. "I didn't tell her."
Tony's vision came back into focus, the muddled fog receded and Nova's face was back together, and he glared at it.
"Someone told her so no one could use it to manipulate you. It didn't happen to be me, but I would have. What happens to your marriage is your problem, but this election is important, and you should make your own choice. Carefully. I assume that the attempt to blackmail you and destroy your family will factor into your decision making process. Don't vote for Justin Marius. Don't you dare."
Tony started to laugh. He laughed in her face and she shrunk back, but he didn't bother to get himself under control until he was choking and sputtering.
Finally, chest heaving, he talked between chuckles. "You don't want me to vote for Justin Marius." He slapped the bar in front of him and sucked in air when he could. "Because he blackmailed me. That's hilarious." He broke out in more laughter. "You're a sweet girl. Fucking stupid, but sweet."
Nova Dasilva had a funny look on her face. Not laugh out loud funny, so he stopped laughing. It was a funny reaction to being called fucking stupid. On top of puzzlement blending with pensiveness and then something new, delight.
It was a more genuine smile than she had put on for him before. It said, I win.
With a gesture at the bartender, stabbing her index finger up through the air, she got his attention and ordered two celebratory double whiskeys. When the glasses touched down she lifted hers and waited for him to clink it. With a sinking feeling in his chest, he met her glass with his in the air and said, "Cheers."
After enjoying two sips, Nova asked him, "So, it wasn't Marius who destroyed your marriage? It was Alma Valerian. Now that's interesting. Let's talk about a candidate you can vote for who won't attempt to steal your vote while tearing your life to pieces." She touched his shoulder affectionately, as if she really cared about him, which he no longer believed for a second, but there was not much he could do about it anyways.
Warming my hands by the fireplace, I heaved another laugh at another joke the new boss of Casicaa made and waved a wordless refusal at the waiter who offered me a tray of low ball whiskey glasses.
The fire was nice on my face and hands, and I was enjoying my talk with Exequi Novus Fortunato, a peer my own age who until this morning had been of my own station as well. This morning when he woke up, Novus had been an Aurelian. We also shared an interest in magic and its research and development.
Novus was taking his father's death very well, something else I could relate to. More than I would ever tell anyone.
He was now the head of Constellation's division in Casicaa. From everything he had told me over the past half hour, his plans for the company couldn't possibly flourish under Senator Marius's direction. Therefore, it wouldn't be hard to convince him how important it was to vote for Sunyin Aura.
The only hard part so far was breaking into the conversation for more than a single consecutive sentence. "My father's life's work was to make sure nothing ever got done at Constellation. The greatest legacy he could possibly leave behind was that nothing ever change in his time at the company, no project ever completed, no work accomplished. He took pride in his ability to stand in Solin's way. You should have heard the stories of his exploits the way he told them at dinner parties.
"One time, the boss had the entire board attend and unanimously vote down a routine referendum for increased router licensing quotas. It was a trivial annual measure to permit some negligibly small increase in the number of families that can apply for router licenses. The referendum had never failed to pass in fifteen years, but Dad orchestrated it so that every single voter said nay that evening except for the president, just to prove he could.
"That may have been his crowning achievement, although when links were in development he was also proud of his ability to find new ways to delay their progress every day. In the end his estimate was that he delayed the release of links to the public for two and a half years. He was a great man." Novus grinned. "Some of his concerns led to important safety features; he had all kinds of objections to magic in the hands of the common customer, letting just about anyone pop around the country on a whim the way Constellation executives can. It's because of my father alone that customers need to register for each individual exit point separately instead of linking the way Constellation employees do: wherever the hell they want, whenever the hell they want.
"But if just anyone could link anywhere they wanted, crime statistics would rise. Burglary and trespassing, murder. Or so he argued. Never mind that Constellation's security systems make crime impossible. Safety features are winning the arms race, and always will. If my father cared about the bottom line he would have pushed universal linking so that he could sell amped up security systems, but like I said, nothing was more important to Dad than halting development.
"I want to design universal links that lead to every registered exit point and can be used by any registered customer, even those who don't have magic licenses or access to star dial routers. Everyone in the empire could have instant teleportation, the only restriction being where exit points exist.
"I won't pretend my dad hadn't thought of that, an easy solution to the problem of burglary, which, I'll add, is easier for fully-licensed router-owning Constellation executives and their employees to commit than it ever would be for the common customer.
"But my dad believed that magic in all its forms was dangerous. Maybe he was right, but I love the stuff.
"So the occasional limb gets separated from its owner when a link closes too soon and leaves it behind on the other side, miles away. So the occasional floating tower falls out of the sky, and every so often an important executive is murdered with a barely traceable and completely unstoppable weapon. So the sun's rising and setting early and we have no way of knowing whether it'll ever rise again. Is a world without magic even worth living in?
"I don't think so. Imagine the struggle of trying to get by day after day without magic. Squabbling over limited resources, wasting time dealing with the simplest daily routines, hours lost commuting from one place to another. Imagine how boring it would be. Everything would be so hard and take so long. It's worth the risk I might lose my leg or my penthouse. Or that the sun may never rise again. I hope it does, though, because I have plans.
"I want every house in the empire to have links. I want gun-proof shielding on the arm of every citizen. I want two or three or ten times higher enrollment in magic schools. And I want to have children, and I want to be immortal, and I want my children to be immortal too."
Novus finally stopped speaking and looked into his rocks glass, peering down at the melted ice and watery whisky for a second before daring a sip.
I had my chance. "You won't get any of those things with Justin Marius as president," I said. Novus had swallowed and was already responding over top of the second persuasive sentence I was trying to get out.
"You know, you're right," he said. "That's the first thing your father said to me tonight, the second I arrived. Ilan persuaded me to vote for Exequi Sunyin Aura. If I didn't know better I'd think father and son were teaming up to score votes for her. Your old man didn't waste any time converting me to her side, he knew exactly what to say to convince me.
"Did you ever hear my dad tell the story of how he personally secured an altitude maximum on all architectural levitation in residential zones? I can't possibly tell it like he did."
The first thing my father said. Ilan didn't waste any time. Exequi Potestas knew exactly what to say.
I did nothing, almost an hour and I have done nothing, almost an hour I thought I was convincing, but the boss convinced Novus, not me. The old man didn't waste any time. I wasted all of it.
Thank you for reading Stars Rise. More soon! Please leave a star if you enjoyed it!