Page 145 of The Space Between Stars

Mitek moved for the door. “I’ve got grappling with Naru. See you in the galley later.” He nodded towards the pill, still in her hand. “You’re going to want to take that with something already in your stomach.” He tromped from the room, door clacking heavily behind him.

Fankalo brought her fingers to her temples. Mitek had come a long way in very little time since his promotion—he’d progressed through studies faster than she’d anticipated—but he’d struggled to drop the habit of giving her hell at every turn.

Calver asked, picking up right where he’d left off.

“Using the Shadewalker to build a following?”

His nod was stiff. He was angry. She’d filled him in on this plan for months; he’d been catatonic. Now, struck with a lightning bolt of perception, he suddenly wanted to argue?

“I’m building a resistance. We’re going to avenge all of Kaidech,” she lied. “Our mother.”

If she didn’t plot against the Tera’thians, no one would. They already controlled half of Kath. With a Ruxian at their command, they would be invincible. She had two options: find Kotar Avelius—and by extension, Methu’su—and learn how to distort herself, or gain enough support to cut off the Tera’thians before they achieved their goal.

“What better cause could we possibly have? Who could do this, if not you and I?”

Fankalo’s fingers flexed along the handle of her father’s dagger, sheathed at her waist. “Want is not an adequate word.” She didn’t want any of this. But she didn’t want the Tera’thians to raise a Ruxian that would lay scourge to the rest of Nelfindar, either.

His hand clenched his tunic over the mark on his chest.

“He is not your master any more.” She hadn’t told him that Cul’Mon had sent assassins to retrieve him twice since they’d escaped the Tera’thian charter ship. “And we’re just using the notoriety as a fear tactic. Building a reputation. All words, no punch. Fear becomes power.”

She wouldn’t have believed that broken signals could be so riddled with skepticism.

“We’ll only be pretending until we’ve built it. It’s already begun. We don’t need to outnumber them. We need to outsmart them.” Time and time again, she’d led the Rogue’s Rapture to a bounty using that very method. “That starts by making ourselves out to be bigger than we are until the lie attracts bodies that turn us into the very thing we claim to be.”

Calver shook his head. Something twitched in his face before he gave up on signaling and turned to scribbling furiously on the paper pad. ‘This is war against Kath’s most powerful empire. We can’t just lead a clever attack on their borders. The Tera’thians can only be taken out from the inside. Even if you somehow recruited hundreds of thousands. You would need to destroy their internal command before leading an attack.’

For the first time, her confidence took on water. She felt out the subject with her Luck. The threads of future could only stretch so far with any clarity, but sometimes vague concepts would still provide impressions. Taking down the Tera’thians felt lucky, so she would find a way to make it happen: it was as simple as that.

Wasn’t it?

Calver’s gaze went distant, and for a moment she thought she’d lost him to his standard state of blankness. Until he crossed his arms and paced a lap of the room. The way his eyes darted and his brow furrowed… he almost seemed like his old self. Except—the boy she remembered had always believed in her. But the boy she remembered also liked cuddling, and singing, and games, and had a handful of friends she’d been jealous of, and—

“You’ll do what?”

It seemed whatever he had to say was too important to be lost in translation. He pulled out the paper again. ‘I can take out their command. The emperor. The prince, his only named successor. Cul’Mon. I can do it in one blow.’

And he thought she was overconfident? Fankalo circled her wrist. “Give me a hint, here.”

He scribbled again. ‘Does your ship have an Aetech lamp?’

She gestured to the oil lantern hanging by the door which cast a soft glow over the darkening space. “We don’t use that garbage. The sheer principle that the Nelfinden nobility pay a thousand silver for something fire can do for free makes me want to burn something down.”

‘What about the bounty from your latest conquest?’

Fankalo wouldn’t have thought it possible for an expressionless, silent man to have a disapproving tone. And yet, older brothers were made for proving their siblings wrong, weren’t they? “You have a lot of gall to judge the way I make a living.”

‘Just check the crates. It was a Skywalk trade vessel. I guarantee it has at least a dozen.’

She struggled to hold on to anger. This was the first true conversation she’d had with Calver in the months since they’d found him. The note proved that even when he was so deeply despondent he seemed more animal than human, he was still processing some of what was going on.