Page 163 of The Space Between Stars

“Begging your pardon?”

“Curtaim told me he would help me dissolve Aetech in return for my aid. He’s hunting the Shadewalker. And he asked me if he could take the boy. Said he didn’t intend him any harm. Said he’d walk free when this was all over. He brought the boy to Steila to use him as bait.”

Thyatira turned away as though he was the one who had been struck. From Niklaus’s angled view, he worked his jaw before leveling his tone. “I would have thought you above falling for such a fanatical story.” He paced, hands deep in his pockets, before narrowing his gaze on Niklaus again. “We cannot let the Tera’thians set ransom on that boy. Tomorrow. You and Limtush will move ahead of our forces to head them down before our arrival.”

“Me? Why me?”

Thyatira stopped and brought a hand to his chin, assessing Niklaus all over again. “He will listen to you? He thinks you’re on his side.”

“Possibly. But what do you expect me to do? He would outmaneuver any assault I’m capable of.”

“You’re just going to talk to him.”

“How do you expect me to get the boy back?”

“Simply propose he returns the boy to my custody. In return, I’ll give him what he wants, undamaged and in one piece.”

“What does he want?”

“Don’t concern yourself with that. He’ll know exactly what I mean.”

THIRTY-EIGHT

FANKALO

Year: 748 Post Cataclysm: Present Day

Location: Casowhatan Sea

Fankalo stroked Killari at the Rogue’s Rapture’s helm. When it had become clear the Tera’thian fleet was not in pursuit, most of the crew had retreated below deck to eat. The ship was devoid of sound besides the flapping of sails and slapping of water against the hull. The bird regarded her warily, as though she were the cause for Fankalo’s sour expression.

It had been a very, very long day. Never mind getting up midway through the night to avoid decimation. The ensuing hours had been a logistical nightmare. Six ships lost to flame. Nearly two hundred fatalities to smoke or sea in the scramble to vacate the harbor.

The intention had always been to move into the new headquarters outside Casowhatan, but not for another moon cycle. The barracks were still under construction. As a result, two thousand heads needed shuffling and re-accommodating in the meantime. As compliant as the raider captains were in absorbing an extra twenty sailors apiece—levied by additional resources—she dreaded the next meeting with their arithmetist. Almost as much as her overused throat dreaded her next inevitable command.

But, of all the day’s insanity, Calver’s fucking note was by far the worst of it. She took a final glance at her response.

‘I’ll tell you everything. Abort Steila. Cul’Mon has weapons you’re not prepared for and I won’t risk you. I’ll send a skiff pick you up in Thaligan before we move to Dreiden warehouse south of Casowhatan. You can stay.’

She tucked it into Killari’s canister and popped the rosemary oil vial. The bird took off southeast over the Casowhatan, in the direction of the spark that was her blood brother. The moment was redolent of when he’d left to watch the Red Wing recruitment all those years ago. Back then, the midnight lines of bad Luck had felt like they might suffocate her. She’d begged him not to go.

They were nothing compared to what her trained mind could feel now.

Calver hadn’t listened then. Why would he listen now? Her mouth pressed into a line. Considering what Calver now knew and, in mocking parallel, what he didn’t, why would he?

Fankalo closed her eyes and reached out to the endless tendrils of Fate. Her foresight was obscured. There were too many futures around this, and many of them felt so foreboding they blotted out anything else she might have seen. She sifted for ones that felt auspicious, following their threads as far as they went. There was no pinprick of opportunity, like she often felt against overwhelming odds. Only a continual web of darkness.

Impossible. She refused to believe it: that in a world of infinite futures, not one held a lucky outcome for him. She sank deeper. Deeper still. Deeper than she’d dared to stay before when there were no positive options to explore, only varying shades of charcoal. She followed one that seemed neither positive nor negative. It curved beneath an obsidian curtain. And then…

The loose lines she followed formed more than impressions. They blurred into images. Calver reaping. Calver burning. Calver beheaded by Cul’Mon. Fankalo sucked in a breath. In all the years of training her power with Drogus through meditation, she’d never reached such depth. Never witnessed the possibilities. Her skin prickled, and she steadied herself before continuing to sort through thread after harrowing thread.

Calver captured. Calver forced back into genetic servitude. Calver bleeding out. Calver poisoned by veilstrike. Almost all showed Calver’s imminent doom, even the few where Calver had responded to her letter and arrived in the warehouse. And then—

Calver’s arms wrapped around a woman with long, raven-black hair and dark eyes. She pressed herself into him. She was—they were—

Fankalo took the mental equivalent of a trip into a mud puddle. Her eyes blinked open. Chaos’s unruly bush. How was she ever going to get that image unburned from her brain? She felt so filthy she had half a mind to jump overboard.

Calver had never once made use of her sex workers. He wouldn’t even let her set a hand on him, let alone embrace a person. But… the futures were infinite.