Page 224 of The Space Between Stars

“Everything we’ve done has been dishonest.”

“Except for the right people. For the good guys. For the people who fight for freedom.” He shook his head. “You’re not going to accept the proposal? Why did you even ask me up here?”

She’d needed to verbalize her thoughts to someone. It had helped to solidify her decision. “This all started because I wanted to save him.”

“Calver again?”

“Now I’m sentencing him to exile, just until I force him to martyr himself.” The words sounded even worse coming from her mouth than they had in her mind. How had she fallen so far astray? “I’m not going to go right into allying myself with his enemies.”

Stillness settled between them. Mitek’s nose wrinkled, and his hands tightened on the rail. “Sometimes when all the world’s on fire, you have to let go of the things you want and focus on the things you don’t want to lose… and what you’re willing to sacrifice to keep them.”

She nearly opened her mouth to tell him that was why empires fell, that was how good men abandoned their principles. But a thrum of bad Luck stilled her tongue and threw her stomach. It was gone in a flash, but Mitek had never felt like bad Luck before. Mitek had only ever…

She realized then that he hadn’t been speaking to her. He’d been speaking for himself.

“What—what do you want, Mitek?”

He wanted this. He wanted the freedom and power she’d handed to him without reservation.

Didn’t he?

Mitek was still for a moment, then turned for the hatch. “It doesn’t really matter.”

FORTY-NINE

ATTILATIA

Year: 748 Post Cataclysm: Three weeks later

Location: Seraphinden

The suns grew higher, the rainstorms grew shorter, and three weeks passed in tropical Seraphinden without incident. Neither dagger-bearing assassin nor foul-tempered patrician disturbed Attilatia at Aethertech Mechanics during her nightly shifts. She took tea with Pinto on her off-days and listened to his gossip about the Groundling whispers of revolution, while the trade guilds and the oligarchy continued business as usual. She made a bed for Toronoff which went unused, as he’d taken to curling behind her knees when she slept.

When the repercussions from Aetech’s total failure finally wore off, Hashod kept Attilatia busy with an expansion project: redirecting Seraphinden’s distortion locomotive around its current route through the lower districts. The expanding slums had traipsed over it, and the guiderail was often defaced—strewn with trash and human excrement—or blocked by slumlings pulling stunts.

Hashod had determined it would be more cost-effective to reroute than continue to service it where it was. She dove into the project, grateful to set her mind to something that averted someone else’s disaster.

Attilatia finished the blueprints shortly after highmoon the night before Thedexemore’s anticipated return. She slouched at her workstation on Aetech’s production floor, taking a rare moment to let her hands fall idle as she dragged through her thoughts. So much had happened in the last few months, there were times she’d nearly forgotten how much she missed Thedexemore. Now, he was all she could think about.

She resolved to tell him everything: to come clean, to explain. The Nelfinden legal system did not treat Azadonians kindly. He’d narrowly helped them avoid internment—possibly execution. Thedexemore had earned the truth. He was old enough, and the world was dangerous enough, and she’d learned there was more to be lost than gained in doing everything alone.

Moonlight ghosted through the skylights arcing overhead, but the corners of the lab were raven dark. Something moved in her peripheral vision and she startled, reaching for the dagger tucked into her jumpsuit.

Roskaad’s voice was warm to her ears. “I never pinned you as one to slack off on the job.”

Relief washed through her. She spun to find him at a shadowed workstation three down from her own. Only after she’d stood and dashed several paces toward him did her inner skeptic catch up to her irrational happiness.

Attilatia rooted her feet into the marble floor and forced her best glower. “You!”

Roskaad beamed, face so unfatedly handsome it made her want to rearrange it. “After long months of responding to titles, it is so refreshing to hear your snarl.”

“You have much explain to give.”

“Did you get my message?”

“Yes!”

“And?”