Page 173 of The Space Between Stars

The corner of his mouth rose again, but not enough to remove the sorrow in his eyes. “Young rogue?” he corrected.

Fankalo searched his face as she listened to her Luck for the right words to change his mind. There were none. She bit into her lip, wondering if tears might make a difference, but she answered the question for herself only a moment later: they never did.

“Stay alive.”

Fankalo tried to quash the burning in her throat as Kotar Avelius escorted her to the stairwell to leave in the way allies did, as thieves did not. With his parting, she was more utterly alone in her journey than she had ever been.

She mentally kicked herself. How could she have expected anything different? A person who sought uncharted waters as she did would always be an island.

Now, she could choose to sink beneath the waves.

Or she could choose to rise.

FORTY

FANKALO

Year: 743 Post Cataclysm: Five Years Previously

Location: Shrokan District, Seraphinden

Fankalo exited Avelius’s echoing stone stairwell onto the street-level floor. Zeb and Cam were inside, pilfering everything they could get their dirty hands on. A guard had been tied and gagged in the corner.

“Are you fucked in the head?!” she hissed at a volume she hoped wouldn’t carry.

The two crewmen froze, staring at her, jaws slack. Cam dropped the tiny golden lion he’d been holding. Zeb stuffed something into the already bulging pockets of his sirwal before raising his hands in surrender. Fankalo clapped a hand to her forehead. What was so difficult to understand about ‘stand guard’? And where the four bloody Fates was Mitek? He was supposed to be the one to translate civil explanation into greedy-fucking-raider.

“This was an attempt at coalition, not a hustle!”

“Do you want us to put it back?”

She sighed. Avelius couldn’t get her to Methu’su. As an ‘aider of conduits,’ the least he could do was contribute to her cause. Besides, if a person would willingly hoard their wealth just to showcase it in the form of shiny trinkets, they didn’t deserve to have it.

Wealth was meant to be ammunition.

“Just move out.”

They exited through the front door like proper party guests, shuffling down the street as if they didn’t have two bags of priceless treasure slung over their shoulders. After a minute spent holding her breath, she spotted Mitek moving in their direction, weaving between pedestrians from the opposite end of the avenue. When Fankalo showed no sign of stopping to greet him, he pivoted to fall into step with them. She shot him a sideways look she hoped would gouge him straight through.

He brushed shoulders with her. “Sorry,” he muttered.

She didn’t dignify him with a response.

“I take it you didn’t receive good news or you might have been there a tad longer?”

“Oh, so now I’m the one with poor timing?”

He shrugged. “You clearly didn’t need me, seeing as I didn’t have to shoot anybody to find you walking freely down the street.”

“You’re damn right I didn’t.” And it was her own fault for expecting him to keep the others in line. For assuming that, knowing what this meant to her, he would be there to catch her should her expectations fall asunder. She was a greater idiot than any of them.

“Brat…”

She presented him with a choice digit and lengthened her stride.

They filed from Korshuva’s colorful streets down a sloping cobbled sideroad back into Shrokan, where the scent of flower boxes turned to the comforting smells of industry. As they stepped through ever-narrowing alleyways, Fankalo’s Luck began to churn in warning. She breathed deeply to open her senses—and encountered the telltale prickles of eyes at her back. She stopped. Turned.

Cam, Zeb, and Mitek stopped beside her. With a hand gesture, they fell into formation at her back. She peered down the mostly empty side street before looking up through the summer haze between multi-story adobe apartment balconies. A pallet of cracked mud hung from a rope three crumbling stories overhead: what looked to be a long-since abandoned construction project. Muted linens and rugs were hung on ropes spanning the narrow outlet below to dry in the sun.