Page 188 of The Space Between Stars

It was a small dock: three warships long with a single pier that jetted into the Casowhatan. Beneath it, rippling water glowed gold with the lowsun. At the far end of the pier, a small group had gathered—four men and a young girl—laughing at a story told by the man in the middle.

Closer to Niklaus, a sturdy fisherman stood in a skiff, unloading a net filled with the day’s catch. A seafaring hat smothered his mop of dark curls. Niklaus approached him and cleared his throat. The fisherman looked up with a close-mouthed smile that nearly became lost in his beard.

“Ho, traveler. Strange times to see three from the desert in one moon.”

Strange times indeed.

“I need passage to Steila.” Niklaus was surprised at the sound of his own voice: harsh, like an instrument fallen out of tune from lack of use. “I have a note here,” he fumbled through the bags at the horse’s side for the writ of passage from Thyatira, “from the General Prime. It will be on the Oligarch’s notes.”

“All ships held from Steila, I’m afraid.”

“Begging your pardon?”

The fisherman tossed a net brimming with silver fish over one shoulder. “Just going off hearsay.”

How was it that a Thaligan fisherman knew not to go to Steila when the Red Wing didn’t? “And what, precisely, did you hear said?”

Worry crept into the man’s eyes as they darted toward the writ. “I’m just following orders.” He cocked his head in the direction of the dock. “You’ll want to talk to that fellow. He gets good intelligence on these things—friends in high places and all that—and he says not to move towards Steila for the next moon, or until he sends someone to say otherwise.”

Niklaus looked to the group gathered at the edge of the dock. “That fellow”: a young man with long, dark hair, strewn with braids. Roughish sort. The kind who made a living from their hands and a life from their mouth.

Niklaus walked towards them, boots thunking against the planks, water slapping below him. As he approached their group, their voices settled.

He swallowed his nerves. “Hello.”

“Hello to you.” The seafarer’s lopsided smile reeked of confidence but wasn’t altogether uninviting. He reached out a hand, calloused and tanned from a life at sea. “Mitek. I was just about to say my goodbyes. Unless you are in need of something urgent?” His body language spelled nonchalance, but his gaze was tight on Niklaus’s paltry excuse for a uniform, faded and worn by the desert.

Might as well just skip the pleasantries.

“Niklaus. Why did you tell the dock to hold boats to Steila?”

Niklaus knew the answer the moment the words left his mouth. This wasn’t a fisherman. This was a raider, and he got his information because he didn’t follow the Blue Wing’s ordinances limiting seafaring to the coastline.

The raider only grinned wider. “The answer, friend, depends entirely on who is asking and why.”

“Leaving?” interjected the pre-teen. “When you only just got here?” Her mouth drew into a pout.

Mitek shot her a stern glance before asking Niklaus, “What can you tell me, soldier?”

Soldier. Said as both a challenge and a question. Despite protecting Nelfinden citizens, he was no national.

“I’m looking for two men who just sailed there. One Azadonian—short—one Nelfinden—tall, mute.”

The jovial aura from moments before evaporated. The men to either side of Mitek wore expressions like they’d just learned a serpent lurked beneath them. The salty air held still.

Mitek’s dark eyebrows shot upward. “You just became very interesting to me. Tell me more about this mute.”

Calver, too, seemed to have friends in high places, for an antisocial. Or perhaps, for a bounty hunter, an expected number of enemies.

“I’m not sure I have much to say about him. Depends on who is asking, and why.”

Mitek barked a laugh. “Let’s say it’s a brother.”

The man resembled Calver about as much as Dex did. That would be a very distant brother. Or a figure of speech. Or a certain enemy. Niklaus could tell the truth, without telling everything. The man’s reaction might determine where he stood.

“I have a writ from the General Prime for his capture.”

Mitek ran his fingers over his goatee. Niklaus squirmed, feeling very much like he’d just bet on a game of stones.