Page 129 of The Space Between Stars

“Be seated.”

“Yes, Mesu.”

Niklaus returned to the low-set table. Kian and his father sat across from him.

“I need honesty from you, if it is a virtue which you have ever possessed. What arrangement do you have with that man?”

“He doesn’t work for me. I hardly know anything about him,” Niklaus rambled. “But—but wherever he’s come from, whatever he’s doing here, I don’t think he’s trying to manipulate you.” Was it still honesty if he believed it to be true but also knew it not to be the truth?

“And he wasn’t involved in your defacement of Red Wing property this morning? Are those burns coincidental?” Kian demanded.

Niklaus had sworn he’d acted alone when they interrogated him at highsun, but denial would be pointless now. “No. No, the burns were from today. He created the explosion, not me. He’s been trying to convince me that the plates have been tampered with. He needed someone to listen. I was his only option.”

Doubt clouded the Major General’s face. Limtush had been right. No one would ever take Niklaus seriously again. And why should they? He was at the point in his lunacy where he wasn’t even sure if he was arguing for the right side.

“Please, if you would only—”

The Major General waved a hand, as if he was washing Niklaus from the things he had to deal with. “You are dismissed.” His eyes shone with wetness.

Niklaus opened his mouth to argue, but Kian shot him a stone-cracking stare. Argue further, and Niklaus would be put behind bars for treason—there were already bound to be accusations. Which made him ask himself the same question he always came back to: why did it do this, life? Cast him a glance over its shoulder and beckon him into its room, only to slam the door on his outstretched fingers?

He stood and left the tent, praying that somehow, miraculously, he hadn’t made a poor bet in deciding to ultimately trust Calver. He might as well have prayed for another shower token. Self-doubt, like his own desert stink, clung to him like a highsun shadow, and the relief of night seemed very far away.

THIRTY-ONE

FANKALO

Year: 740 Post Cataclysm: 8 Years Previously

Location: North Sea

When day broke, they threw the bodies into the sea. A funeral of water was the only one a raider ever dreamed of.

Zeb and Drogus conducted interviews with the crew. It took very little prying to uncover that a dash of colocynth had poisoned the galley pot. Because Fankalo had disappeared the evening before without eating, she was the only who had gone unafflicted.

She took the helm, sailing southwest under the gold-streaked sky towards the Rollard Isles. The wheel was the only thing which kept her upright. She clung to it like a raft in a storm.

Hang on. Hang on.

If she hit the deck, she didn’t think she’d be able to get back up. She would just stare at the clouds overhead. In the sun. In the rain. Until she starved, or someone mistook her corpse for driftwood and chucked her overboard.

They slipped through dawn-black water to freedom. Away from her father’s body, now rigid beneath the dark and pitiless fathoms, a feast for the ocean’s denizens. Away from the memories of wishing desperately to be something. Now she was something, and she had paid dearly for it.

Her father would have wanted her to press on as captain, not act like a ninny. If she was to ascend the throne that was her birthright as a conduit, she would have to be a captain first. To avenge what had been done to her brother, she had to be a captain first.

Captain to a crew that might murder her the moment she turned her back.

The bad Luck had diminished since Calver’s butchery, but darkness still twisted at her insides. How many among them still would have sided with Gelhard, had they their legs beneath them? Would they all have accepted his takeover, had he gutted her while they waited out their sickness? Not knowing was a scar that would itch for the rest of her life.

A throat cleared behind her. While her grip stayed firm on the wheel, she was sure her spine leaped into the sails.

“Little queen, will you accept an impromptu advisory session?” Drogus’s thick voice settled over her shoulders like a blanket.

She nodded stiffly.

He stepped beside her, words low and urgent. “You have done a bold thing and I applaud you. You have the brains and you have the technical authority to weather this succession. But you do not have the backbone.”

Her deepest fear, vocalized. In the eyes of the world, a twelve-year-old girl running a vessel of sixty-seven men could not stand. Capable or not, she possessed two undeniable limiting factors: she had not yet done it, and it simply was not done.