Page 197 of The Space Between Stars

The cold shock of the Casowatan struck all misery from her. A gradient of deep, resplendent blue engulfed her. She hovered several body lengths below the water, letting her eyes adjust to the sting of salt. When her lungs began to burn, she undulated and pulled with atrophied limbs towards the surface.

How long had it been since she’d felt this way? One could not limp in water. Her twisted leg moved without pain. There was no one awaiting her next order; the ocean was its own queen. Her every fear had been left behind on the Rapture.

For at least a couple hours, she was completely free.

CALVEROUS

Sweat beaded at Calver’s brow as he worked at the remote activator. Half a day passed as he dismantled the orb piece by piece, with painstaking care so as not to activate anything in the process. By the time he finished, Dex confirmed that the streets below them were occupied.

No escape.

He’d known this was a trap. He’d known it in his bones. But he hadn’t known what else to do. Their only hope now was a distraction. Or a miracle. His eyes flicked to the window for the tenth time that hour, and he wondered on the last note he had left in Killari’s care. The highsun had long since passed.

She’ll come.

Calver ignored the knotting in his throat. He couldn’t focus on Fankalo’s job. He had his own and it wasn’t going well. He’d searched a hundred times for the same stratum that the tampered plate he’d worked on in Niklaus’s wagon had been attuned to. It wasn’t there. What was he missing?

His hands stilled as a darkness rippled at the center of his mind: his paltry version of second sight. It was a warning he couldn’t ignore. The Survivor uncoiled like a serpent at the smell of his fear. He let the mind-djinn wash through him, masking his presence, numbing his worry.

Dex, who had been cycling his dowaga through the warm-up Calver taught him weeks before, paused. His dark eyes narrowed at Calver’s expression, and he holstered the weapon. “What is it?”

Fifteen years without a tongue, and Calver had never learned to resist the futile impulse to swallow.

FANKALO

Fankalo gasped as her head broke into open air. Mitek had already surfaced, black hair billowing out behind him, and he lobbed her a smirk before paddling towards shore. She swam after him. They matched one another stroke for stroke for the long minutes it took to reach the coastline. Her leg dragged behind her, unhindered.

The waves were low, lapping gently against the pebbles of the small beach bordered by cliffs. She stopped to float in the ankle-deep shallows, letting the tide push and pull her with it. Mitek floated beside her. Every so often their limbs grazed. It was the tide’s doing, not his. She couldn’t blame it—it didn’t know she’d given up on him years and years ago.

Suddenly, Mitek sat up. Fankalo followed suit.

“Hungry?”

“Starving,” she admitted.

Mitek pulled a distortion orb from his waist belt, tossed it into the air, and caught it like he was still a boy who took nothing seriously. Fankalo matched his grin as he pulled out his dagger.

“First octopus kill gets to watch the other try to make a fire with soggy kinder?”

“Deal.”

CALVEROUS

Slit windows lined the circumference of Steila’s central tower. Calver peered out one—not at the still-empty ocean where the fast-sinking sun met the sky, but at the street below. A dozen Tera’thians moved toward the base of the spire. Something heavy pounded against the tower door below them.

Calver and Dex’s approach had been soundless, their scuffle discreet. The Survivor was masking his impression from Cul’Mon. They shouldn’t have found them. Invisible spiders skittered up Calver’s neck and over his limbs.

Not unless Cul’Mon had expected him there.

“I’ll always be two steps ahead of you.” But how would he have known?

The sounds of wood splintering echoed up the spiral stair. There had to be a way out of this mess. He looked out to sea again.

The Survivor pressed down on what little of Calver held on. {Think. Who told you where the activator would be?}

Calver gritted his teeth as he looked at the activator: the one didn’t seem to have been tampered with, any additional stratum applied to it—because there wasn’t one.

Fankalo.