Page 150 of The Space Between Stars

“And the scrap cook needs a cheer up, a rub down, and a pension.” Niklaus shook his head. “Cal, I like you, but the situation has escalated. I want out.”

Niklaus looked away. “I can’t do anything for you.”

“And you can tell me what you haven’t.” Niklaus huffed, words slurring, face drooping. “What are you? Are you a Tera’thian? Have you been manipulating me all along? You’re here on restrictions. I shouldn’t have expected anything different. And certainly not from a Curtaim.”

Fourteen years since Calver had been judged by his father’s name. Fourteen years, and those words still stung. Luckily for him, letting them slide from him was still muscle memory.

Niklaus’s eyes rolled like a petulant child’s. “Of course, who gives a Shrokan shrat what I think. It’s what command thinks that’s important. They’re the ones you’re after. Manipulating them. Manipulating me. Manipulating the Ruxian.” He let out the laugh of a man who knows he’s not funny. “For weeks, I’ve stuck my neck out for you. No more. Tell me how you know what you know about distortion technology and who you’re working for, or you’ll not hear me sing another note.”

Sharing details about himself was one thing, but he wouldn’t disclose anything about Fankalo. Niklaus sniffed at Calver’s silence and turned to rummage behind the dull trays on the shelves for another bottle—black ceramic. Calver snatched that one too.

Niklaus gave him a pleading look. “Now hear me out—”

Calver smashed it. A waste of pottery really—tinkering across the floor, dark fluid sloshing in every direction—but Creation’s fire, did it feel good to break something.

Niklaus threw up his arms. “Bad! No! Brooding, bloody mongrel!”

That was exactly what he was. When Calver left, Niklaus was the only one who could keep trying to turn Mastico and the rest of the Red Wing against Thyatira. The only one he could trust to keep Raimee safe.

“No. You’ll tell me because we’re shratten friends and you owe that to me!”

Calver regretted the words before he’d finished signaling them. They sat between them, stinking like piss in the sun.

Niklaus’s nose twitched. “Well. That’s that.”

He should have signaled sorry. He should have signaled let me explain, but somehow his fingers wrote out instead.

“You really think that’s appealing to me?” Niklaus sucked at his teeth. “Listen, you don’t want me to have any part of this. Any time I try to help anyone, it makes things worse.”

Fates help them: a couple of suicidal pariahs convincing each other of their worth.

“I do.”

Maybe Niklaus would respond to reason.

“You can’t speak,” Niklaus snapped. “Can you not hear either?”

Calver wasn’t sure what was happening to his throat. He tried to swallow. It hurt him. The Survivor shifted somewhere in the Void, and Calver vanquished it before it could pull him under. He couldn’t look Niklaus in the eye. He couldn’t do anything, really, worthless idiot that he was. He stepped out of the wagon and nearly stumbled into the sand. He had hoped…

He shouldn’t have hoped for anything. Not from Niklaus. He had no time to focus on the things he couldn’t save. Finally, for the first time in a very long time, there were other things he could.

Calver returned to Dex’s tent, pitched late in the afternoon after the day’s march. He pulled off his sliced shirt and exchanged it for his spare. He packed up his supplies: what was left of his canteen, the bedroll. Then Dex’s hushed voice rasped outside the tent.

“Nameless.”

Calver poked his head into the open air, glanced around, grabbed the boy at the nape of his neck, and pulled him into the confined space.

“I got everything you asked.” Dex rubbed at his neck. “Loaded into wagon horses at the western rim.”

Calver couldn’t help but notice the plural.

“Quick. We won’t have a better chance to go than now.”