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“Why not.”
The sadness was dulling her emotions. She would’ve smacked a human or mauleon if they said she was moping.
Chapter Twenty-Two
They ducked through the fence and crawled, then walked along the paths she knew from her prior explorations. The deserted spaceport at night was both morbid in its graveyard feel—so many dead ships—and uplifting in how beautiful the stars and moon overhead looked framed by broken metal ceilings.
Whatever spaceship this had been, it was a mess now. Cables dangled, wrapped in rotted plastic and cobweb. Dirt had drifted in or been washed in and covered much of what must have been the ship’s decking. The decking had subsided into ditches and holes but what was left seemed solid.
Besides, if she fell, she deserved it.
Calli lowered herself to the floor at the edge of a wall. With her legs stretched to the front, she slumped. Cradling her head on her arms, she brought her knees up, and turned herself into a self-enclosed ball of nothing. She’d blocked out the little she might see if she looked about.
What was she to do?
She’d betrayed him utterly, caused death, misery. Distrusted the one man who had paid her any real attention. She thought she kind of loved him. Yeah, she did. It hurt her heart to think of being away, of leaving him, of making him hurt. That attack could have killed him. That made her sob. Made fresh tears leak.
He didn’t need her.
Sniffing, she tried to think past the thickness in her thoughts.
Maybe Sassi was right, maybe she was moping.
“What else can I do, Sassi? Was I bad?” She peeked out through a gap between her dangling hair and her fingers.
He was still inside that assassin body. He gleamed. Her Sassi did not gleam.
“A simplistic question for a complex situation. I heard your discussion inside the coach. I will try to summarize simply.”
She grunted. “Go ahead.” Old Sassi had not been so judgmental.
Sassi paced back and forth before her as he spoke.
“You lied by omission after making a deal with Drake not to lie. You did it because you thought it was your brother, which is justifiable perhaps, to some. You failed to do the sensible fact checking. The body of your brother was undeniably him. Without knowing that fact, the threat was less obvious. The second letter you gave to Drake almost immediately.”
Sassi halted a short distance away. “So, you were dumb and you did mistrust but there was an extenuating circumstance.”
