Page 191 of The Space Between Stars

{Cul’Mon may even sense you now. You are rash, clinging to your control. It will only weaken you.}

“And if we’re seen?”

Calver didn’t respond.

“Got it. Don’t be seen.”

They slid over the dune, sands whispering beneath their boots, and slipped into a ravine. Numerous palm trees buffered the town’s perimeter. They used them to take cover from the light of the Aetech lamps lining the city’s edge, first dipping from palm to palm, then from building to building. Calver moved along a narrow alley towards the abandoned storefront adjacent to Steila’s central tower. He stopped at a corner and peered around at the structure.

The street separating them from the tower was wide. Market stalls and carts lined either side, some broken, others overturned, others left untouched, their wares exposed to the empty night. Calver gauged the distance, whether the open street might be surveilled from above, and the likelihood of being seen. Bars gated the tower’s windows. A massive door, fit for a fortress, faced the main street.

Getting there would be risky. Getting in, riskier. He looked over his shoulder to survey Dex’s path and raised his fist to indicate clearance. Dex started forward to join him when a shifting of pebbles crunched around the corner. A soft clicking indicated the loading of a tanka bit strip.

If Calver could hear whomever it was, he and Dex could certainly be heard.

{Kill them.}

Suddenly, Dex’s footfalls cut through the night like a rockslide. There was no time to signal.

Calver whipped around the corner. Manipulated the surprised guard’s tanka-bearing arm until it snapped. Latched arms around his neck in a blood choke. Dragged him into the alley.

Dex’s eyes widened. He unlatched the dowaga from his back, but Calver shook his head. Seconds later, the flailing guard went limp.

{Break his neck.}

Calver laid the guard on the ground and averted his gaze. He breathed deeply to resist the Survivor’s urges.

The guard was not much taller than Dex. It was dark. It could buy them a few extra seconds.

Dex tilted his chin.

They took cover in an alley and recouped before their next move. Moonlight filtered into the narrow space. Dex peered at the tower, forehead lined with worry.

Calver asked.

Check the door… Right. Just check the door. Calver nodded and indicated for Dex to wait. Heart thumping, sure he was going to be shot at or assaulted from every direction, he dashed across the street and rattled the handle into the tower.

Open.

He slipped into the room at its base and pressed his back against the wall.

Wide fucking open. Why did that seem so wrong?

The moonlight filtering through barred windows was all he had to see by. Crates of half-unloaded weaponry sat innocently against the far wall. A desk, strewn with books and scrolls, sat against the curved stone adjacent to it. A storehouse for the town’s militia.

Calver waited for an assault that never came. Then, following the Survivor’s lack of urgency, he let his consciousness fan out into the void without slipping beneath it. The eddies of foresight awaited him there—the things that might go wrong. They were endless.

And they were weak.

{Because you are weak.}

Because there was nothing imminently perilous. Calver leveled his focus, keeping his hold, but exploring the boundaries of the void. Could he access this whenever he wanted? A second-sight that gave about a single heartbeat’s glean into the future? If he could stretch it… could he outmatch Cul’Mon?

{You would be taking a gamble over a certainty. Follow that question deeper into the void. You’ll understand.}

Directing attention to a hypothetical while keeping hold of his mind proved nearly impossible. Calver zeroed in on the question, following it deeper and deeper until the corners of his vision blackened. An all-consuming sense of doom struck him so hard he nearly collapsed.