Page 183 of The Space Between Stars

The woman didn’t reply but meandered down the hall, humming softly.

The front desk was vacant as Attilatia passed by to drop off the key. She looked at the ledger, displaying the list of visitors from that day. Her name sat at the bottom. She ripped the sheet free and crumpled it into a ball small enough to slip into her pocket.

The rain came again, and Attilatia caught a coach home. She had left Pinto a key. A part of her hoped he might be there. A part of her hoped she could be alone.

When she opened the door, there was a note on her table, stark white against the settling darkness. She opened it.

‘What do you make of this?’

Pinto’s handwriting accompanied a political report, ripped and yellowed with age. The date penned in its upper corner read 697 post-cataclysm. Her eyes scanned the report. Her hand found her throat.

Limtush’s father had been a diplomat. When visiting Azadonia before the Grey Period, Jenolavia’s mother had had him beheaded. It didn’t say why.

At least she had an understanding for Limtush’s motivation… If only she could say the same for Roskaad. She closed her eyes, breathing deeply and wishing she had just a pinch of moss for tea—or perhaps a few porcelain dolls to smash.

She could make it through this. Stress was easy. Stress was mathematical. It was the same as force, and force could be divided across a calculable surface area. Too much stress, and a system would fracture. So she had two options: find a way to lessen the stress… or find a better perspective to deal with it.

Things were far superior to what they could be. She could be dead. She could have been sold to the Kovathians, not Aetech, all those years ago. She could be trapped in this Fated country without Pinto. She could have ignored Roskaad’s advances and lost the protection he’d given her from Hashod and his Tera’thian friends.

Roskaad had been the one to make the advance, hadn’t he? Or had she come on to him first?

Thinking about him made everything suddenly seem alright. Like it was all a part of the plan. Like there was a warm gooey center buried beneath her cold, misanthropic—Kretch. She couldn’t possibly be interested in this subversive maniac. Could she?

Attilatia sucked at her teeth. Clenched and unclenched her hands. Tried to think about anything—quite literally anything—else.

She was just using him. Nothing more. The situation with Roskaad Thyatira had been damn near perfect. Her best manipulation to date.

But then he had had to ruin it: pretend to murder her, send her encryptions only she could ever solve, and lead her to the man responsible for the strategic collapse of her homeland and extermination of her people.

Why was that the most romantic fucking thing imaginable?

FORTY-TWO

FANKALO

Year: 746 Post Cataclysm: Twenty Months Previously

Location: North Sea

Fankalo sat on the mizzen deck, hair a meadow of dark tangles. Eyes closed, hands outstretched, she pulled at her Luck lines until they started to blur. Years of daily meditation had improved her ability to decipher them, but on days when she couldn’t think straight—days like today—the futures mingled in a dark cloud. She couldn’t determine which beginning led to which end. It was an answerless sea.

The ocean smelled the same before peace or war.

Hands slammed down on Fankalo’s shoulders. “Gotcha!”

She gasped and startled to her feet. Mitek beamed at her, sunlight glinting off his silver tooth. “Been out here a real minute, eah? I thought that, after an entire morning of focused boredom, you might enjoy one moment of abject terror.”

Fankalo fought to slow her hummingbird heart. “Wait here while I get my tanka so I can thank you properly.”

“There’s a storm coming in. I know you’re focused on this afternoon, so I thought you might miss the more imminent rain cloud.”

Their entire future depended on this afternoon and the meeting they had planned with Pazir’s king. She looked west, where the sky darkened. Of course she knew it was going to rain. That wasn’t what he had come here for.

“How’s Calver?”

She had tasked Mitek to check on him when she left. Over the last months, her brother had been better. Perhaps not his old self, but present. Sane. She’d employed Calver with altering the distortion cores they’d begun to manufacture in the Rollard Isles. He’d taken well to having something to do with his hands.

Then they’d left for Pazir, and suddenly he was on the verge of a psychotic breakdown.