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“No, I don’t know that much. She’s a human. He might not have told her anything. You know how he is. She only had my name as an emergency contact, it seems.”
The second voice becomes louder as the speaker seems annoyed.
“He’s a rutting pain, that one. All this time, and if such things never happened to him, we wouldn’t see him. You know? I say the spirit cursed him to this fate just to send him home!”
“Don’t be rude,” someone snaps, an older female voice. “You sound like an ungrateful fool. Here, take him to his room. It has been untouched.”
Niko’s arm is draped over me, but I manage to lift my head and catch a glimpse of the night sky blurred by a glassy barrier. Is it another station? One with a dome?
“I’m ungrateful? I should hardly recognize this space scum if not for his unsightly nose that no one could miss with a—” A Kar’Kali man’s head swings into my line of vision. “She’s awake.”
The stars above disappear as we enter a room with a vaulted ceiling. It’s covered with shiny metal piping and painted over with alien floral motifs in tones of jade green, rose red, and black. Could this be a palace after all?
As the swaying of our movement picks up speed, I close my eyes to soothe the slight nausea until the trip is over.
The hammock is lowered onto a large bed, and as soon as Niko and I are free of the restraint, I crawl out and take a look at the people who carried us here.
“Um, hi,” I say.
There are two Kar’Kali males letting go of the poles that held our hammock. Lakkavi is there, too, standing next to an elderly Kar’Kali female. She has long black braids tied up in practical hoops beside her ears and she’s wearing a robe of floaty gray silk that ties at her neck and brushes the floor. Her smile is warm, and she bends to help me down from the bed. As she leans closer, I notice it at once—a speck of a mole on her eyelid.
“Are you Lalo?” I blurt.
Damn. Niko had me imagining a Halloween-style witchy grandmother. Meanwhile, the real thing is a beautiful woman with stately wrinkles and twinkling teal-blue eyes.
“Yes, that is what Niko calls me,” she replies, amused. I finally get to my feet, and she looks me over with maternal attention to detail. “My name is Analla. But you may also call me Lalo, since you are mated to my sweet Niko.”
“Nice to meet you. He told me about you. My name is Raina.”
She pulls me into the tightest hug. My eyes fall on Niko, who the other two Kar’Kali are stripping of his blood-soaked clothing. They set a towel under his body. It makes sense to imagine him as a sweet boy when he was younger. She lets me go and thanks her helpers before sending them away.
“There’s a doctor coming now,” she tells me. “But I can find you a quiet place to sleep if you need rest. This room will soon be filled with equipment and medbots, and you might not want to see what they must do to your mate . . . Understand?”
I nod.
Niko’s chest barely rises and falls, the shallow breathing the only indication that he’s not a corpse. I hate to leave him, but if I see them cut into him, I don’t think I could handle it. I went my whole life thinking that I was this pillar of strength, that nothing could faze me, not backbreaking work or physical pain. I used to think it was mind over matter. Now that I find myself here? I think it’s better I turn away. I can’t watch him suffer anymore.
“I’ve been sleeping for hours,” I say. “I need to stretch my legs.”
Lakkavi offers his arm. “I’ll show you around before I leave. I can’t stay long.”
“Thank you, Lakka. Tell my Banna that I miss her.”
We leave the darkened room, and I’m led down the same hallway where I arrived in the hammock.
“Lalo is Banna’s mother,” Lakkavi explains. “That’s why she calls him little Niko even though he’s grown. I don’t know what he’s told you, but this is where he grew up. He came here not long after Banna moved out and joined me on Station City.”
“What is this place?” I whisper the question. We step into the massive room with the fancy vaulted ceiling, and I realize now that my feet are on the ground, that it’s a circular hallway juncture with ten different doorways. Opposite where we’re standing is a balconette with light shining through. It hits a sparkling floor made of glazed tiles.
“We’re in the Palace Quarter. The area we’ve come from is the Servant’s Turn. Anyone you find could help you back there if you decide you’d like to return. Most still know it as Niko’s old room because no one’s taken it over.” Lakkavi shrugs. “If there were more of the House at home, it would have been snatched up.”
“The House?” I repeat.
We approach the balconette, and I squint at the sudden brightness.
“The House of Makiva. Niko is still a member, by technicality, and Lalo has long served the great family . . .”
He says more, but I’m too distracted by the view to hear it. When I lean over the railing, I almost get vertigo. When my vision reels itself in from the shock, I try to determine what I’m looking at. It feels like I’m standing on the top deck of a cruise ship that goes on forever. I can hardly see where this ship ends, if it is a ship at all. Immediately below me are gardens and more balconies that protrude from the extravagant structure that must constitute the palace. Like a medieval town on a hill, the palace walls continue past the bounds of the gardens to encircle a charming mingling of buildings and twisty little roads. Farther off, I see a long landing strip that reminds me of an aircraft carrier.
