Page 53 of The Space Between Stars

“That’s different. Calver’s a Destruction Conduit. I’m not.” Though that didn’t make her any less terrified of Cul’Mon finding her. Surely he’d love to have her help complete his set. Moving towards Solutium was risky. Too risky.

The feeling came in another swell, pushing her towards the door. She would not—could not—ignore it. “See you tonight, Mitek.”

He grabbed her arm. “Do you remember when you asked me to serve as your Hand? I told you I would follow you across any ocean. That includes oceans divided by a fated ‘hunch’.”

She chopped at his elbow to break his grip. “And I warned you then what I had planned. So stop trying to stop me.”

Mitek released her, but jogged around to place his hands on her shoulders. “I won’t stop you. Just take me with you. I’ll make sure you’re safe.”

The statement was absurd: as if Mitek could fight off Cul’Mon any better than she. Still, her lips twitched. “Then who will be in charge?”

Mitek shrugged. “Leave Cam to it. He never gets to be in charge of anything.”

She laughed. It felt good, breaking the knot of tension in her chest. “Yeah, with damn good reason.”

A note of ease returned to Mitek’s voice. “A front’s about to come through. I’ll prepare the pinnace?” The safer vessel for choppy water, but slow.

She could see his reasoning—twice, now, superior to her own. But preparing a squad was already going to take more time than she was willing to give. “I want to move quickly. You can source a squad, but we’re taking the gig.”

THIRTEEN

FANKALO

Year: 748 Post Cataclysm: Present Day

Location: Rollard Isles

Astorm drove the gig toward Solutium faster than Fankalo had anticipated. The rain cascading from the gray wash of cloud overhead was so dense, it nearly blended with the sea. Beneath it, the water writhed and crashed in a violent, frothing dance. The gig pivoted and fell so erratically that, in a rare instance, she looked forward to bringing the vessel ashore. Several from their squad gave the contents of their stomach in tithing to the sea.

Solutium was a spattering of dark ink flicked across the western Casowhatan by Creation’s pen: a string of uninhabitable, obsidian isles lacing the neck of an underwater volcano. Their jagged rock formations varied from the size of the Rogue’s Rapture to the size of a mountain. Some clung low to the sea; others jutted toward the heavens.

Fankalo’s insides spun like the tempest overhead. There. A small isle rose from the depths. Hollow caverns and crags pockmarked its ebony stone, carved by the lapping of waves over centuries. Whatever beckoned her was there.

The gale and rain would wash out her words, so she raised a fist and signaled,

The squad’s first, a man named Kershee, responded.

As the squad removed excess clothing to move through the water unhindered, Fankalo closed her eyes and honed into the void where she usually found her Luck. It remained as it had since the morning’s meeting: like a sail without wind. Neither a good path nor a dangerous one became apparent, but the overwhelming summons had grown stronger the closer they came. For the first time, she had misgivings. Whatever this was, it handicapped her.

“Ready?” Mitek shouted, bare chest slick and prickled with gooseflesh.

Fear would not make decisions for her.

she instructed.

They left a ship watch and swam through the torrents, crashing awkwardly into the rock with the storm’s wake and scrambling to find purchase on its slimy surface. Rain was a riot of percussion against volcanic stone. They moved wordlessly through it, splashing through shallow pools until they were so close to the source that it vibrated in her bones.

Fankalo pulled the group to a halt, squatting behind a man-high boulder. She gestured for Mitek, behind her, to wait. Water assaulted her face in rivers. She squinted through it as she crept around the stone, tanka-bearing forearm raised.

Her quarry was there: a child.

Not four body-lengths away, the boy faced her, sitting cross-legged, knuckles pressed together in meditation. He might have been eight, maybe ten. The rain parted around him as though he was encapsulated by a bubble.

His eyes opened. Like his crop of hair, they were stark, shining silver. Those moonlit irises locked on Fankalo, and her body went cold.

Winds of Chaos. It was everything she’d feared. Calver had told her what had been done to him, but he’d never known the extent of Cul’Mon’s intentions like she had. His project’s success sat before her.

A Ruxian under Tera’thian control.