Excerpt

Oyārun closed her eyes to concentrate on the video she was viewing through her neural interface. She wanted to finish her civics homework assignment fast. Just a few more hours, and then she would be done with everything that wasn't on the pre-engineering track. She could get back to what actually interested her, lose herself in that . . .

Not now, she wrenched her thoughts back to her assignment. The attention shift was almost painful.

Pick a high-importance political event in recent history. List three major stakeholders, and present their viewpoints with special attention to conflicts. It sounded hard. She was a math person, not even sure where to begin. She picked this event because it had happened shortly after Independence.

The recording was three-dimensional but relatively low resolution. Oyārun watched, trying to recall some context that she could use for the assignment. At the time of the recording, beat-up space transports carrying refugees from the Empire were still streaming to the small planetoid of Eren, and a vote had just been passed to increase ambient gravity in living areas. People were still hammering out the political details of the new state; the High Council was yet unformed, existing only as an informal social conglomerate of like-minded leaders.

These leaders were standing at a podium, surrounded by a vast crowd. Oyārun only recognized some of them from her previous studies, and the person now moving toward the front to speak was unfamiliar to her.

She pulled up the annotations for the video, cross-referenced them with the Eren-wide social network. Aramīn, also known as Armyn, formerly of the Imperial House of Gubhas on the High Plains of Emek. Male, living alone, not interested in—she shooed away the panel. It was helpful to know he was still alive. He wasn't in his elder years yet, but people had died in all sorts of accidents in the early days. She wasn't interested in his personal circumstances beyond that. Something clicked: wasn't he one of the very few Imperial nobles who'd supported independence?

Aramīn looked mixed, Imperial and Plainsfolk, possibly also Northerner. She couldn't make out the details of his face beyond the pale skin and long black hair, carefully braided with thinner braids joining into three larger ones, hanging well past his shoulders on both sides, and—she'd seen when he turned around—also along his back. A symbol of nobility. The video did not allow her to zoom in further, and she resisted requesting an interpolation; she could pull up his profile again later.

She missed the first few sentences.

"Denounce oppression. Denounce subjugation. And take a firm stand." The crowd seemed restless, murmuring, pulling at their scarves, scratching their heads under their caps. Aramīn went on, speaking firmly and loudly, his voice carrying even past the amplification. "Imperial Seers were subjugated and forced to labor for the Court, the very same Court that declared a major cognotype to be Undesirable, its bearers to be eradicated from the gene pool. The same attitude undergirds both: a greediness to prescribe value. A greediness to be the only source of truth and justice. A greed."

The crowd was quieting down. Paying attention? Oyārun leaned forward, even though that wouldn't help her see better. She was intrigued.

"We are all here together now. Undesirables and Seers, from all peoples of the Empire of the Three Stars, the Empire of Emek: Imperials, Worowans, Northerners, Plainsfolk, and more. And the people who have stood with Undesirables and Seers in solidarity."

Aramīn paused. Took a deep breath.

"You all know that I am neither a Seer nor an Undesirable. Yet I chose to stand by the cause of independence. I am Armyn, formerly the head of a noble house and currently head of the High Plains Research Institute. A surgeon, a medical scientist. I come from a high position. And more—I supplied young Seers for the noble houses. I trained them and let them be eaten alive by the insatiable hunger of the Court, always desperate for more magic, until those young Seers said no more. Until I said no more. Until we said no more. They rose up, and I rose up. They spoke, and I listened."

A chill ran along Oyārun's spine. Aramīn spoke in an even tone, but he was brutally direct. People wouldn't speak of the war in such a straightforward way anymore. He went on, not backing down: "I cannot claim to know what it is like to be a Seer. I never had to wear Seer's robes. I never had my head shaved, treated with a poison so that my hair would never grow out again, so that I would stand out in a crowd, so that I would not be able to escape, would not be able to hide.

"But now we stand all together. On this land, this planetoid deemed uninhabitable by the Empire, we are equal."

Oyārun watched, entirely breathless, not even daring to fidget for fear that the magic of the moment would pass. Aramīn went on.

"Yet whenever you look at me, you see me—and you see a symbol of Imperial might. You see my hair past my shoulders. You see a man who was never tortured. And you remember your pain." His voice lifted higher and higher, working itself into a crescendo. "I say we are equal, and my actions shall mirror my words. We shall all be equal, and I am willing to take the first step. We are not just Seer and not just Undesirable and not just anyone else. We are all this and more. We are a people—a people arising from murder and bloodshed, a people arising from genocide, a people who have fought hard for our freedom." He dropped his voice abruptly, continuing in a quiet, calm tone: "And I shall be just like anyone else."

Aramīn raised a hand, a blade glinting into the camera for a moment. He cut off his thick braids, one by one, with motions that seemed impossibly practiced. With an economy of gesture. He turned to one of his fellow councilpeople, someone Oyārun recognized: Esokaruwe, a former Imperial Seer and a leader of resistance fighters. A fearsome warrior.

"Esteemed Esokaruwe, if you please." He handed the blade to her. Esokaruwe seemed stunned, but began to cut his hair, confused, hands moving slowly, jaggedly. Oyārun thought she must not have been privy to Aramīn's plan.

It took a while. Esokaruwe steeled herself, tensed her muscles as she worked, hacking away at the remaining hair, shaving Aramīn's scalp. Then Aramīn turned to her and said something in an undertone, too quiet for the camera to pick up. She gestured for him to turn around and passed her hands slowly over his scalp. Oyārun could not sense it through the recording, but she knew that Esokaruwe was using the māwal to scour Aramīn's head. He would not grow hair again. Oyārun ran a hand along her own hairless scalp in an attempt to ground herself in physical reality. But she wouldn't pause the recording. She had to see it all for herself.

The other councilpeople who hadn't been Seers were already lining up, dazed and shocked, milling in place. Limbs twitched as they waited for their turn. Aramīn had not run this by them, Oyārun thought. But she knew this had been the moment when Ereni became Ereni; from the disparate groups of Seers and Undesirables and whoever else had escaped to the planetoid with them, one united people began forming at this very instant. Blades flashed here and there among the crowd, and slowly, people removed their head coverings. Some were bald former Seers, stunned by the sudden turn of events, wrenched out of their course that even their precognition had not foreseen. Others were Undesirables of various ethnicities, uncomfortable but willing to join the Seers. Cutting their hair in silence, only the low murmurs of people asking each other for help. Making a point of solidarity. With all the weapons in the crowd, there was not a moment of violence. Oyārun watched, breathless, until the video finished.

It had to happen. Oyārun had read a lot about the tensions between the two groups, threatening to drive apart the newly founded Free State of Eren. But she'd never before realized that it was someone who was neither a Seer nor an Undesirable who'd forced the issue.

An Imperial noble who felt entitled enough to do so.

Who shaped history.

This was not the history Oyārun had been taught. And she needed, desperately needed, to know more.