Page 185 of The Space Between Stars

Where was Fankalo?

The Survivor shifted forward to regain control.

No.

He was on his feet, dowaga and holster slung across his back. Cupboard to hatch, hatch to deck, deck to railing he stumbled, bumping against walls and ladders, boots feeling like weights at the end of his legs. The screaming amplified as wind whipped his dark curls across his eyes. The boat was at anchor in port. Palms and lush vegetation dotted the skyline up to the taupe-walled city ahead. Yalusa. Pazir.

It took far too long for his sluggish mind to discern what was happening. He pried into the Survivor’s memories and pieced it together from their shared memories. Fankalo had been planning this farce for months. Years. A presentation of every able body she could muster, in uniform, to appeal to the Pazirians for a loan: sums to fund their growth, in return for their protection from northern invasion.

He lumbered forward, down the gangplank and onto the dock. He trudged to the beach where bodies collided in a frenzy, seeking a flash of wild dark hair. The breath of a tanka bit feathered his ear as it zipped by, its relentless path stopped only by a body behind him. Nothing stopped a bit quite like human flesh.

“Calver!” Her shriek might have split the sky.

Fankalo’s bodyguards lay dead in the sand beside her. A dozen encroaching enemies surrounded her. Her brown eyes found his through the haze. He bolted to her side, dowaga in hand—though he’d be lucky not to cut her in half in this state.

He lifted his blade, but perhaps didn’t need to: Fankalo’s shot was impeccable. She took out each of the men moving in on them with a bit placed carefully between their eyes.

“Calver, help them!”

The words fished his laggard mind to the surface. He’d never heard her beg like that.

His eyes flashed over the battle. Bits swarmed, a cloud of biting flies. Cosalts were branches swaying in unseen wind. Deadly force, all around. One by one, Fankalo’s forces fell to the beach. She didn’t need him to rescue her—she could do that herself. But the enemy had identified her as a commander, and she was too overwhelmed by their onslaught to defend her own bodies.

Calver swept the dowaga, gutting a Pazirian soldier in a clean stroke. The motion seemed to take hours. The sky overhead was still grey with the dregs of a passing storm. Moisture hung in the air, saturating the world around them in sweat and smoke and blood. Through the mist of his mind, he understood. An ambush. He scanned the beach and the rise—a couple hundred men, perhaps, to Fankalo’s hundred, and the enemy had better ground. He looked over his shoulder to see. As many ships as there were men waited offshore, bearing the Ratka. Fankalo’s fleet for hire. They were just there for show.

“Calver!” Her back was to his as bits continued to fly from the tanka latched to her arm. She stopped to load another bit strip into the launch. “Calver!” Her voice was so shrill, it was hard to distinguish from the clanging of steel.

The Survivor blossomed.

Calver saw what was to come: the phantom of a bit striking true. His weapon moved before he put thought to it—good, considering his thoughts had the consistency of mud. The dowaga came to a stop inches from Fankalo’s face, the bit ricocheting off it. He’d been wrong. She couldn’t help herself. There were too many.

A soldier clad in the tan ensemble of Pazir’s royal guard assaulted them from the left.

{Let me.}

He couldn’t trust it near his sister.

{Your mind has been altered. You will not be fast enough. You will not be strong enough. And she will die for your obstinacy. Inhibitors have no effect on me. Submit.}

Around him, Fankalo’s crew dropped like heavy rain. They would lose. Calver looked at his sister, whose teeth were bared, eyes alight with determination and fury. She could not see it: they would not make it out alive. He would not witness her taken from him twice.

Calver submitted.

The void became victory.

“Calver!”

So different, the sound of her voice now.

“Stop!”

He knew the sound of hatred well. The Survivor fell. Calver rose.

Excruciating heat ripped through his arm. A bit. He whipped around to face the threat and stumbled. Fankalo stood before him, calf-deep in a river of runoff rushing into the sea. It was like a bone bent at the wrong angle, like an insect’s lost appendage still moving, to see water that color. His mother had dyed a shawl once—festive for the Red Wing recruitment. The water was crimson, like their once-cooking-pot.

“Calver!”

There were tears in her eyes. Her tanka was leveled on him. He clapped a hand to his arm. Warm liquid gushed between his fingers from the wound she had put there.