THESE BURNING STARS Recap

In the Treble star systems, the Kindom rules with an iron fist. From childhood, Hands of the Kindom train in the kinschools to become either righteous clerics, clever secretaries, or brutal cloaksaan. In one such kinschool, a child known as Six dreams of becoming a Brutal Hand and shedding the legacy of their ancestor Lucos Alanye, a man who committed genocide against the Jeveni people. Six has the skill to succeed, but when the capricious Cleric Esek Nightfoot (the scion of a First Family and a woman of cruel impulses) forbids her kin Hands to train Six, she crushes the child’s future and provides them only one lifeline: if they can do something extraordinary, someday she will make them her novitiate.

Twenty years later, Cleric Chono of the Righteous Hand receives a summons from First Cleric Aver Paiye. The Nightfoot Family has fallen on disaster. Their matriarch Alisiana Nightfoot is dead, their family estate has been sacked by pirates, and strangest of all, Esek has been named the new matriarch. But that is not Aver Paiye’s biggest concern. Records indicate that a memory coin was stolen during the sacking of Verdant—a coin that threatens the Nightfoots and by extension the energy trade, which the Nightfoots control through the labor of Jeveni refugees. Wanting stability in the Treble, Paiye orders Esek and Chono to track down the coin. Chono, a one-time schoolkin of Six, and Esek’s former novitiate, suspects that Six may be involved, and is unnerved to be working with the volatile Esek once again.

In another star system, genius caster and con artist Jun Ironway purchases the memory coin from pirates, hoping she can sell it for enough money to reunite her family and escape to a frontier station. When Kindom marshals pursue her, she barely escapes with help from the pirate Masar Hawks, who has his own interest in the coin. But Esek and Chono are hot on their heels.

As the hunt for Jun, Masar, and Jun’s lover Liis Konye heats up, the narrative rotates between the present-day timeline and events over the past twenty years, narrated from Esek’s perspective. Esek’s impulsive actions against Six have created a problem. Six appears to be collecting damning evidence against the Nightfoots, with no doubt vengeful intent. Esek’s matriarch, Alisiana, orders her to find Six and kill them. Having taken a young Chono as her novitiate, Esek begins her mission, only to be repeatedly foiled by Six’s shadowy machinations. The cat and mouse chase takes them all over the Treble, with terrible consequences to many: the massacre of Six’s remaining relatives, the murder and displacement of Jun Ironway’s family, and the deaths of hundreds more. As Esek’s hatred and admiration for Six multiply in tandem, she discovers that Six has found evidence that Alisiana Nightfoot was herself responsible for the Jeveni genocide. Such information, if revealed, could destroy the Nightfoots forever. Leveraging this knowledge to force Alisiana to name Esek as her successor, Esek sets up a final showdown. She will lure Six to the Nightfoot estate at Verdant, and capture them once and for all.

In the present, Chono’s long-time guilt over her complicity in Esek’s actions grows as she and Esek zero in on Jun. To Chono’s unease, Esek seems changed since they last met, and her actions repeatedly defy the Kindom’s mission. Chono suspects that her former mentor is pursuing Six rather than Jun, and that this time, Six won’t escape. Compelled by childhood friendship with Six, Chono determines to protect them from Esek. She contacts the Kindom and reveals Esek’s renegade actions, hoping this will stop her from succeeding.  

Meanwhile, Jun, Masar and Liis have also discovered that the memory coin implicates the Nightfoots in genocide. Masar, revealing himself to be a Jeveni tasked with tracking down Jeveni survivors of the genocide, persuades Jun to meet with Nikkelo sen Rieve, who offers to buy the coin, and protect them from the Kindom and the Nightfoots. Yet far from being interested in the coin, Nikkelo reveals that he is a member of the Wheel, the secret government of the Jeveni, and that he wants Jun’s help in liberating the Jeveni from the oppression of the energy trade.

The Jeveni are currently flocking to the generation The Risen Wave, where they will celebrate Remembrance Day by orbiting Jeve and paying homage to those who died in the genocide. But once aboard the ship, both Jun and Esek discovers that the Kindom has thwarted them. In a final showdown, the cloaksaan Medisogo murders Nikkelo, Esek and Chono escape, and Jun, Liis and Masar flee toward a rendezvous with the remainder of the Wheel.

Abandoning her loyalty to the Kindom, Chono is shot trying to protect Liis Konye. She wakes in a train car speeding through The Risen Wave, as Esek desperately tries to save her life. When Jun appears, separated from Liis and Masar, she’s ready to kill Esek and avenge her murdered family members. But Esek’s reaction finally reveals to Chono that all is not as it seems.

In the near-past, Esek’s attempt to capture Six in Verdant collapses as pirates attack the estate. After years of hunt-and-be-hunted, Six finally confronts her, revealing that they have body-modded themself to look exactly like Esek. As they and Esek lock in hand-to-hand combat, their plan comes to light: they will replace Esek and give her fortune (and the energy trade) to the Jeveni people that the Nightfoots helped destroy.

In the present, the outcome of the fight is suddenly apparent. The person Chono has been traveling with over the past few days, the person with whom she has been hunting Jun Ironway, is her old schoolkin Six, victorious. But there is little time to process the truth. As Kindom forces threaten to eradicate the Jeveni who have gathered for Remembrance Day, as Chono sits at death’s door, as Medisogo tries to finish “Esek” off for good, Jun casts an escape route for the Jeveni, hooding them from the Kindom and jumping them to safety—location unknown.

Days later, Six is brought before the leader of the Jeveni Wheel, Effegen ten Crost. The Jeveni have finally accepted that Six is not Esek, but a Jeveni descendant themself. Effegen leads them to a gathering of all the story’s players, where she reveals that they have jumped to a distant star system and a planet called Capamame. A group of Jeveni spent the last eighty years traveling at standard speeds to this system in order to build a jump gate and a colony where the Jeveni could finally be free. In other words, they do not want the energy trade that Six has worked so hard to give to them. Six’s mission was ultimately fruitless.

Nonetheless, the Jeveni invite Six and Jun to remain on Capamame, safe from the Kindom—an invitation that extends to Jun’s surviving family members, with whom she can finally reunite. But Chono has a different goal. She and Six must return to the Treble and hold the Kindom to account for its crimes, including its participation in the Jeveni genocide. Six, haunted by the specter of Esek and processing the failure of their life’s work, is finally compelled by Chono’s appeal. They will return to the Treble together. Come what may.