Page 181 of The Space Between Stars

“Thank you for warning,” she grumbled, straightening her tipiana and crossing her arms tightly. She gave a wider berth to the other patients they passed.

They stopped outside the hallway’s final door. “Velinquash is not dangerous. But he hasn’t been allowed a visitor in some time.”

“Why?”

“Strict orders.”

And yet she had gotten in on simple request. Surely by Roskaad’s orchestration.

“Would you prefer me to go in with you?” the man offered, with an expression that said he had better things to do.

“Eah… No. I is fine alone, I think.”

He handed her the key. “Close the door behind you. Visitation ends at lowsun.”

Attilatia unlocked the door and creaked it open into a small room. A single bed with a colorful quilt sat to one side. At the far wall, a window overlooked the Casowhatan, green with frothing foam peaks from the storm settling in. Beside it, Tessel sat in a wooden chair, spine so rigid he looked like he might be carved from wood himself. He didn’t so much as glance in her direction when she entered and closed the door. He simply gazed out the window, cloud-strangled sunlight dappling salt-and-pepper hair.

“Mesu Velinquash, I presume?”

His head turned, and he blinked slowly. “I don’t often get visitors. And never lovely ones.” A laugh wheezed from his chest in three slow hacks. “You’re here for information, aren’t you?”

Why the assumption? “Do many come to you for information?”

“Not for many tides which have risen and fallen outside my window.” His gaze returned out the paneless frame, his hand running circles over the leg of his sirwal. “None of it really happened. None of it. They know that. They all know.”

There went any lingering suspicion that Tessel might have been wrongfully incarcerated.

“Tell me little more what you mean.”

He paused, like he was still deciding whether she was a figment of his imagination. “Answer me first. Where am I in this room, right now?”

“You sit in chair by window,” she answered quietly.

His mouth split into a smile, revealing a surprising array of shining, stark-white teeth. “Wrong. I am floating near the ceiling, above your turban.” The fit of giggles that followed made her hands clench and her stomach keel. “I don’t think it really happened either, it didn’t make sense, see? You don’t make sense. The ocean doesn’t make sense. It’s too loud and too quiet at the same time… All that water.” The laugh turned to a shudder. His voice fell to a whisper. His face crinkled in fear. “Too loud. Too quiet.”

“Mesu Velinquash,” she tried. “I come to speak with you about your work for Baem Limtush.”

“None of it really happened,” he chirped, rocking in his chair.

“You work for the corporal under the title of ‘Hand’ for three year, eah? Why is it you leave his service?”

“Saw things. Things that weren’t real.”

“While working for him?”

Velinquash nodded vigorously.

“What did you see?” she asked.

“Shadows. And brightness, so splendid I could drown in it. Everywhere. Even now. Everywhere. They murdered them. Murdered. Then I started floating… I never came back down. That’s how I know it’s not real. If it were real, I’d still be on the ground.”

The question was, had Tessel lost his own mind, or had it been taken from him? “What kind of work you do for Limtush before you have this episode?”

“None of it happened!” he snarled.

“You might have mention that already.” She sighed. Ask Tessel Velinquash. Roskaad hadn’t needed to be more specific, because Velinquash would start spilling conspiracies to any person who walked in the room. “I believe you, Mesu Velinquash. Is not real. But for research purposes, I must know what it is.”

“I… he…” Tessel scrunched his grey-strung brow as though it was a challenge to recall. He paused, eyes drooping as if disappointed in his answer. “We changed the moss.”