Page 9 of The Space Between Stars

“That pompous fop just purchased your shipping business,” Niklaus spat. He couldn’t be the only one who saw reason. He looked at his mother, still transfixed by the window. Why wouldn’t she look at him? He rounded the table to kneel in front of her. “Mother. Think about what this is doing. Think about everything my father cared for. What I care for.”

Finally, her painted brown eyes found his, but only after running through every other pair at the table. She forced a smile. “Nikla, I can see you’re very upset, but there is no need for extremism. This ruling comes from a place of good intention. If you push too far in the opposite direction, it could harm our hard-fought relationships. A good businessman knows not to lean too far in any political direction.”

Niklaus was not above begging, but the woman before him had been pumped so full of kretch, it was stopping up her ears. She would never hear him. He swallowed and stood. “Walk that middle ground, eah? Halfway here, halfway there on any given opinion. It’s the guaranteed way to keep a third of your friends.”

“Nikla—”

“Violent revolts are sown when the distribution of information is as poor as the distribution of resources. And the distribution of information becomes poor when the general populace does not receive an education.” He scanned the room. “When this city is burning to the ground, I don’t think it will bode well for our profit shares.”

He left. He looked like a fool, leaving. But he would have been a fool to stay. Such was the way with battles that couldn’t be won.

Niklaus couldn’t stomach his breakfast, nor his studies, nor any conversation from the usual sycophants trying to catch his ear. Instead, he went for a walk, following his feet without any direction in mind. They brought him to the gardens, then to the balcony, and then to the front gates of Aethertech Mechanics all over again. By this time, the sun had arced high into the sky. The board meeting would be long over.

Back up the stairs. Back into the arching entry—only now he didn’t veer left into the meeting chamber. He strolled directly onto the work floor. Niklaus had only visited the space twice since production had begun a year ago. Now that he was here, he wondered why he didn’t come more often. The sounds and smells of industry tumbled around him. Dozens of workstations stretched beneath a ceiling lit by skylights. Workers passed through the aisles with stacks of papers and dollies carrying crates. Pipes capped by hissing silver valves stretched across the walls.

Niklaus watched a man blow glass into an orb the size of a melon. He stared as he walked until he was looking over his shoulder—and collided into another body.

A furious screech echoed around him. Paper scrolls tumbled in every direction. Niklaus crouched to retrieve one rolling beneath a workstation, only for another hand to fall on it. It was a girl’s—a young woman’s. A pretty young woman’s: long black hair braided away from her face, almond eyes with large black pupils, full lips, full… everything, really.

That beauty stopped at her expression.

“Ay! Fucking chikoto! Stumbling round, like lost puppy with no thing better to do,” she snarled, snatching the scroll.

“I—I’m sorry. I wasn’t looking.” He retracted his hand and stood abruptly, ramming his head into the workstation.

“And you should be! You has eyes.”

No one had ever spoken to him like that before. No honeyed formalities or passive aggression. No ‘Mesu’. No ‘apologies’. She spoke like a barking seal, and with an accent just as thick.

A strange laugh escaped his throat. “Trust me. If I could think of another excuse, I’d give it to you.”

The witticism was lost on her. Rather than ease her tension, it caused a string of unintelligible curses followed by, “I no trust you any more than you look where you going. Go find something useful to do.”

It was like she’d slapped him clean into the headspace one needed to outmaneuver an oligarchal ruling. He smiled at her. “Perhaps I will.”

Again, she seemed to misinterpret him—this time as innuendo. Another indignant shriek. Scrolls stuffed into her arms and obscuring most of her vision, she stomped away.

Niklaus returned to the Meyernes mansion with a mind to confront his mother. There were still a few hours before the Oligarchal vote, and she had connections with many of their seats. Away from the others, she might listen to him.

His mother had always been frugal with her laughter, with her touch, with her praise—but there was love there. She only scrutinized the things she loved. She was a resourceful woman, wasting nothing, not even attention, on the things that didn’t bear fruit. He’d always admired her for that.

Niklaus stopped short outside the double doors that led into her rooms. Voices sharp with strife flitted through the crack under the door. His mother rarely took visitors at home. He leaned his ear against the wood.

“I don’t understand.” The emotion behind his mother’s words rooted him in place. “How can they have been tracking the wrong boy for sixteen years?”

“The keeper took a bribe. Six thousand silver notes to replace him with another.” Niklaus’s heart plummeted into his stomach. That was the Prime speaking. The Oligarch’s Prime was in his mother’s room.

Niklaus peered through the keyhole. Odenous Taranil stood silhouetted beside the window. His mother sat in an armchair beside him, face in her hands. “But where did they take him?”

“They said it was a seafarer—possibly a raider. He’s long gone.”

“You don’t think he—”

“I can’t think anything else.”

Niklaus’s mother wrung her hands. Thick tears rolled down her cheeks. He’d never seen her cry. Not even when his father passed. He should have wished to comfort her, but something else burned within.

“The tip-off could have only come from the inner circle. My guess is it’s the same person who stole Methu’su’s logbook from the archives.”