Page 108 of The Space Between Stars

“On this ship, we have a little game. You catch someone unaware and kick them in the ass, yell ‘fuck you’, and run away.”

His squint deepened. “A twelve-year-old should not do these things.”

She shrugged, hands steady at the wheel.

“How do you win?”

“You don’t.”

Drogus’s chin lowered, as if he were chewing over the concept. “How do you lose?”

“You don’t. You just keep kicking people in the ass.”

“Hmmm.”

The thought struck her that Drogus’s intellect might raise him above such things. His loss.

“Watch, though. I can figure out where he scurried off to. And when I get him, I’ll kick him twice.”

Fankalo closed her eyes, feeling out with her Luck while meditating on Mitek clenching his backside. An impression assaulted her with hurricane force. Her hands slipped from the wheel, and she stumbled several steps backward.

Calver.

She could sense him: a deep, endless pool, brighter than any celestial body. He was close—practically on top of her. Just out of sight. Her eyes scraped desperately at the northern horizon, void of anything but the space where sky met sea and the first phantom stars of dusk glowed.

“Drogus. I need you to get my father,” she commanded.

Drogus, unaware of what she’d sensed, clicked his tongue and laughed. The enormous sound coming from his wine cask of a chest would have been contagious in any other circumstance. “You want me to wake Captain Keane just so you can kick the idiot in the ass? You may be a little queen, but I will do no such thing.”

She shook her head. “I can’t explain. But it’s urgent. Please, hurry.”

Drogus gave her a searching look before dipping his chin and proceeding below deck.

Fankalo turned from their trajectory for the Rollard Isles to sail northeast. She whistled, gaining eyes from the deckhands—Kairo, Vamar, and Marni—and old Zeb in the crow’s nest to signal their new destination. They moved without question. The crew had long since taken her word as law.

“Hang on,” she whispered, opening herself to her brother’s impression, which grew stronger with every passing breath. “Don’t disappear on me.”

Tension coiled in her stomach as the bad Luck destination darkened. Drogus returned with her father begrudgingly in tow.

“What’s this then, lad?” he asked, blinking away the lingering harrows of sleep.

She relinquished the wheel to Drogus, then dug into a pouch at her waist for a bundle of warrior’s plume and kanna rolled in paper. Her father took the stimulant with a grateful tousle of her hair and stuck its tip in his teeth. He lit it with a match.

“There’s a ship ahead.” Any ship in northern waters was a danger.

“You’ve redirected?” he asked, shading his face against the last clawing rays of light from the west.

“My brother’s on it.”

For the time it took to hoist a flag, they were both wordless. All her hopes and fears passed between them in a glance.

He pulled air through the paper, and smoke curled around his head. “You’re certain?”

It was suddenly difficult to swallow. In the weeks before their sabbatical in Chira’na, the Rapture had encountered another crew of raiders in the isles strung about northern Chori: their insides turned outwards, their bodies on stakes—skewers for the birds that set to feasting. The mark of the Shadewalker had been left in char on the beach.

“Positive.”

“I’ll try to catch sight of it before we lose daylight,” he said, pulling up a scope.