Page 168 of The Space Between Stars

Niklaus couldn’t bring himself to look at the body. Peril and death surrounded him any way he looked in this wasteland, and yet he was terrified of the thing that could do him no harm.

Baem would have killed him. And he’d implied that he’d killed Niklaus’s father—as if Niklaus didn’t already have enough to process. Niklaus was better for the man’s death. He could get to Calver unimpeded now. Problem dealt with.

So why were tears streaming down his face?

After long minutes of doing nothing but feeding water to thirsty ground, Niklaus dragged Limtush’s body by the collar of his uniform to the edge of a crag between buttes. He looked into the dark chasm without a visible bottom. A scavenger might find him—it, no point conferring sentience on a bag of bones—there. That seemed wrong, but there was no way to bury it. He gave the body an unceremonious roll, and it tumbled into the gap.

Niklaus rubbed at the wetness on his cheeks with the backs of his hands, smearing it with the dust caking his face.

Now for the eulogy.

He removed his hat and held it to his chest. “Baem Limtush was…” he started, speaking only to the aether. “He was…” Chaos. What could be said? That he was a right sack of kretch? That he was notorious for corrupt business practices? That his friends were strategic?

A breeze cut through the air. Niklaus looked to the skyline. Golden grasslands shimmered in the distance. He replaced his hat. “Baem Limtush was,” he finished.

And now he was not.

Those words dislodged an unrecognized fear he had clung to for as long as he could remember. Limtush was: the worst that could become of a man. But Niklaus still had a chance at being more: at gaining the immortality that came with doing the right thing in one grand gesture or a thousand small ones. Niklaus had a future.

He had twice the supplies he needed to see him safely to the shore, a writ from the General Prime that would grant him a vessel in Thaligan, and—so long as he hadn’t thoroughly fucked up—an ally that depended on him.

THIRTY-NINE

FANKALO

Year: 743 Post Cataclysm: Five Years Previously

Location: Shrokan District, Seraphinden

Fankalo strode through Seraphinden’s Shrokan District toward the warehouse her crew had taken up for their two ten-days at port. A sheen of smog from the district’s various industries clung to the stagnant air, casting a shade of gray across everything out of spitting distance. The squat adobe buildings—which looked like Chaos had slung them onto the district in a drunken dice roll—had faded and cracked. The air tasted of cracked adobe, too. And it smelled like smoke and shit.

That was the smell of opportunity.

It had taken her three years to get to this moment: she had an address for Kotar Avelius, and Calver was sufficiently distracted.

Like a shadow, Fankalo bent her way around corners and into alleys, slipping through the slightly-ajar door into their warehouse. Azel, a recruited bodyguard, removed his hand from the hilt of his dagger and nodded to her as she entered. Darkness shrouded the windowless space. She pulled a distortion lamp Calver had made from her pocket and activated it. Hundreds of crates, doubling as scrap metal storage and an effective form of soundproofing, were stacked in tidy rows from floor to ceiling. She wound through them toward a door at the far side. Muffled shouting sounded from behind it.

She creaked the door open into a spine-crawling scene. Blood splattered the floor, the walls, inky black in the low light. A miasma of fear that stank worse than Shrokan’s lower wharf clung to the air. Mitek hunched over a squirming form tied to a table at the room’s center. Her Hand was so entrenched in his interrogation, he didn’t seem to have noticed her enter.

The man on the table loosed a shrill scream that sent chills over her skin. Good. That meant they had found Karack. She had expected it to take at least another day for Zeb and Mitek to track the gangster down.

Mitek’s knifepoint sat under the man’s chin. “Answer the fucking question if you don’t want to turn into scarlet art, like the last guy on the table.” Fates, he was getting a little too good at this act. “Where did you get the ruxechorin?”

Zeb and Cam stood in the room’s corner, arms crossed, faces unreadable. Fankalo skirted around the perimeter to stand beside them.

The man on the table blubbered, his dark hair smeared across his face, his words almost incoherent between sobs. “G-Greeny! You’ll need to talk to Greeny. Ask after him in Chira’na’s moss district.” His arms strained against his bindings, and his legs scrambled and slipped on the table’s surface. “I swear it! Just let me go. I-I have a family.”

Karak most certainly did not have a family. She’d researched him thoroughly. In fact, there were few who wouldn’t slice him open on this very table, presented with the opportunity, anonymity, and a sharp stick.

Mitek cupped his victim’s cheek. “Cheers, friend. That wasn’t so hard.” He spun his knife once over his knuckles—his favorite stupid trick—causing Karak to wince before he plunged it into the table a hair’s width from the man’s hip. It severed Karak’s belt. Mitek pulled it free and performed a brief audit of its purse’s contents as the gangster whimpered.

“You’re in luck. I’m going to let you leave this table with all of your limbs.”

Not true. They would let him go because they let everyone go. He would blab. They’d be gone by nightfall: signs of a struggle left on the floor, ratka charred against the wall. That would cause a splendid stir and gain them a free reputation.

Mitek’s face, dripping in shadow, was sheer malice. “I have a task for you. Tell that bastard at the messenger station that I’m dropping the package with Captain Tragvola.” Celestar was always delighted to play along with their games. “If I have to tell him myself, it’s going to get ugly, and I don’t have time for ugly. Got it?”

“Messenger station. Tragvola. I’ll tell him,” Karak stammered.