Page 200 of The Space Between Stars

A horn blared to the west, and they froze. A muster. The Red Wing had been sighted. Time’s well had run dry.

Dex peered around the entryway again, and immediately withdrew.

Calver and Niklaus slid against the wall beside Dex. First, they heard footsteps. Then two guards entered the tower’s ground chamber.

Calver moved before Niklaus fully understood what was happening. Never before had Niklaus seen a soul depart a body with such efficiency. There was no emotion: only motion and severance. It was art, what Calver did with the ease of a brush stroke, and it turned Niklaus’s stomach. The bloodied dowaga was already back in its holster like nothing had happened. Dex looked adamantly at the ground.

Calver was looking at Niklaus, who was doing his best not to fall over as his vision tunneled.

“The—the cliffs. Then a vacant storefront by the coast. I’ve been trying to get here for hours,” Niklaus stammered. There was too much to explain, but he couldn’t think past the bodies on the floor: two lives he’d attempted to spare a short minute ago.

“Y-yes. Yes. I’ll guide you there.”

Dex shook his head. “Fates, you’re a miracle. And to think that last week you were useless.”

Don’t look at the bodies. Don’t look at the bodies. Niklaus chuckled weakly. Useless. He’d forgotten he’d joined the military: where utility meant keeping your people alive at all costs—even life itself. He could either get over it quickly, or wind up in the dirt beside them. “From the bottom of a bottle, a hero has been born.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, you might trip on that ego.” The boy seemed just as desensitized as Calver. What was wrong with Niklaus?

Calver’s face pinched. It seemed like he was straining to breathe, though Niklaus couldn’t see an injury.

“Yes. But first—I think you should know—it’s Steila. I mean, it’s the civilians. They’re being held under guard there.”

“Right.” Niklaus swallowed back bile. “This way.”

CALVEROUS

The streets were vacant. No patrol. No sound. Just the sultry heat of the lowsun, dispersed by gusts of wind off the sea. The Tera’thians were staging their attack on the eastern perimeter. The Red Wing was doomed. And Calver was fleeing in the opposite direction.

Calver and Dex followed Niklaus for long minutes, darting from one vacant building to the next, until they reached Steila’s southwestern most point, where the city butted up to the obsidian cliffs of Thaligan. They ducked into a tucked-away storefront at the end of a row sided by cliff face. The interior was dark. Shattered glass littered the entryway and pottery the kitchen. A table had been overturned, scattering the remains of a meal gone sour.

The Tera’thians had come through two, perhaps three days ago. Long enough to corral or cull ten thousand citizens.

“Before we get too comfortable…” Niklaus nodded out the window at the building across from them: an adobe warehouse hunched atop a rise which threatened to spill into the sun-gilded Casowhatan. A single shuttered window sat along its face, and a metal ladder ascended to the roof. “That’s where we’re headed.”

Calver’s signals were mechanical. He became subtly aware of the way Niklaus looked at him—the same way Fankalo used to look at him, like he was a cobra posing to strike.

“Because thousands of Nelfindar’s civilians have been taken hostage there. Civilians that can bear arms. Civilians that can help us win.”

“We can’t get them out,” Dex said. “Not just the three of us. Even with the Tera’thian forces moving for the eastern city line, the front of the warehouse must be defended.”

“What if there was another explosion?”

Dex shook his head. “There will be collateral damage. The Tera’thians are keeping them alive in custody. If they try to run, I doubt they’ll be so generous.”

Calver argued. Assuming anyone in the Red Wing survived to fight back.

“We need to get them out before that becomes a possibility,” Niklaus said.

Which, by tradition, was at lowsun on the first day of spring.

“What was going to be your plan until then?” Niklaus asked, as though martyring themselves to the nearly impossible chances of rescuing Steila’s civilians was the obvious thing to do.

“Find the Tera’thian’s universal activator. Prevent the detonation,” Dex replied.