Page 2 of The Space Between Stars

“Would you prefer to sit?” she asked, gesturing toward the unfinished stool at her desk.

“No, thank you.” The man’s eyes ran another lap of the dark, infinitesimal room. “Standing suits me fine.” His voice was as diminutive as the rest of him, but Fankalo did not take slightness for weakness. He cleared his throat. “I was told I would be meeting with the Shadewalker’s Hand. Do you know if he…?”

Fankalo clasped her hands together and affixed him with a level gaze.

The man’s face paled. “Ah. I see. Please excuse my misunderstanding.”

What had he expected, if not a woman half his age in a broom closet? She smiled without teeth. “Do you understand why you’re here?”

The doctor’s tongue darted over his lips. “You require a sustenance plan for your legions.”

Legions. That was certainly an inflation of their apocryphal numbers, but it meant they’d been weaving the right message. “Yes. I have an army to feed. You will be given headcounts for each location and their requirements.” And those would be exaggerated too. Mouths tended to move, regardless of whether trust or terror had been established. The larger threat her Ghosts—the name outsiders had affixed to those under her command—posed, the easier it was to recruit. “I want them to eat like kings.”

Incredulity crept into his expression. “Have you the chefs to—”

“You misunderstand me. No extravagance. Simply the highest quality foods in their most basic form.”

“Fortification tabs in gruel?”

“Better. I want herbs. Teas. Produce. ‘Basic’ is for its preparation.”

“And cost limitations?”

“There are none within the parameters you have already been given.” Nevermind their rapidly disintegrating budget.

“If I might advise you, my… queen,” he tested. She nodded in approval. “I have spent time in the Red Wing’s nutrition council. Such delegations are unheard of. To gain health and compliance, your armies can perform on—”

“I appreciate your wisdom, but the Red Wing has hardly established the model by which I wish to abide. Every Ghost in my employ is guaranteed conditions superior to any they could accomplish by their own means, and certainly superior to any presented by the fated Red Wing. Pay to use as they please. Three days of leisure per tenday. Education, should they want it. Advancement, should they prove themselves. Medical attention for their families, should it be needed. Sex workers, happy for the safety I ensure them."

“So I have heard.” His eyes were wide.

Nelfindar had spiraled into a nation of patricians who could hardly think past making their next dollar, and Groundlings who were too busy working sixteen-hour days to think past keeping food in their children’s stomachs. She needed eveyone to believe that Ghosts had risen beyond that.

“Allegiance is a mirror.” Perhaps if she could convince the doctor, she could convince herself, too. “Opportunity presented by those with allegiance only to their pockets will find opportunists with allegiance only to their pockets.” Drogus’s lines worked every time. The doctor’s hands were very deep in his pockets now, his spine pulled straighter than the riggings. When they were uncomfortable, it meant her delivery was just right. “I offer a lifestyle and an identity that doesn’t shift based on aesthetic martyrdom. I offer loyalty, and they crave it like mossers crave their high. True loyalty, Doctor. Do you know how much a man must pay for that?”

“A great deal, I am sure.”

Definitely a sellout. “Nothing.” She lifted her chin. “And yet, when a man returns to Creation’s fire, it is the only thing that matters. That is the culture I build among my Ghosts. They would die, unblinking, if I asked them to, and when their contracts end, they will stay.”

“And your Ghosts… will they strip the oligarchy from their seats?”

Why was it that those who sought revolution feared the steps to achieve it? Fankalo narrowed her eyes on Doctor Relna until he blinked. “That sounds like a conspiracy, Doctor. My Ghosts have far more important work to do.” Enough theatrics for one day. “For that, they require nutrition.”

He cleared his throat and nodded.

“As I understand it, fifty percent of our agreement has already been deposited into your accounts in Seraphinden.” She'd shelled out big money for him to betray them. That cost had felt reasonable before Calver’s demolition failed. “You will not release any proprietary information on the Ghosts or our objectives. You will remain an obedient servant to the Shadewalker and me, his Hand, and you will be provided for and treated with respect.” Disclosures had become so routine, she could do them in her sleep.

“I understand. Am I to… sign a contract?”

“Remove your shirt and kneel.”

The doctor stumbled as he removed his tunic—trimmed with more enamel and fringe than clothing had any right to be—to take a knee. She repressed a scowl.

“The Ghosts do not draw contracts on paper. Our bodies are our contracts.”

The doctor nodded.

Fankalo removed her knife and flipped it once in her hand. “Do you agree to serve as an obedient servant to the Shadewalker for the next seventeen moons?”