Page 25 of The Space Between Stars

Calver returned to his own routine, back turned. He didn’t watch to see whether Dex was successful. He didn’t need to. He heard a gritting—a shifting stance—and a soft landing in place of the usual body flopping against compact sand.

When the sun rose over the distant dunes, Calver slung his pack over his back to leave.

“Thank you,” the boy wheezed.

Calver was careful not to look at him, but as he made his way towards the encampment, the corners of his mouth twitched. It was a strange feeling—like it might crack open the hardened skin around his face. Certainly not comfortable, but somehow it made the morning seem a little brighter.

Another five suns passed. Calver returned to the desert earlier each day to train himself—as his usual training time had inexplicably disintegrated into coaching Dex. The boy was disciplined. Attentive. He didn’t speak much—that was preferable. When he did, it was usually to confirm the meaning of Calver’s pushes and prods: widening his stance, rolling with his body’s momentum, keeping his hands high, redistributing his weight. Good. Novice, yes, but not inept. His limbs were weak, but his core and control were strong. Time would correct the former.

When the sun rose, they parted ways, usually with little more than a word from Dex. Sometimes without words at all. Training then began for the rest of the encampment. Calver would make himself seen, then try to sleep for the short hours before the daily march began.

They walked from highsun to lowsun. The Red Wing could have walked at night, but the purpose of this traditional recruitment was not to do what was easy, but the opposite. As a boy, Calver had thought that was a grand thing. A challenge—one he would surely rise to meet. As a man, he’d seen enough in the way of challenge. As a man, he believed it weakened morale more than it strengthened resolve.

Walking gave him time to think—think for himself, as he hadn’t been able to for a long time. There were advantages to controlling his mind for what had become the longest stretch in the fourteen years since his union with the Survivor. Not ripping the spines from the backs of honest civilians and using them to flay their comrades, for one. But there were disadvantages too.

His thoughts were a jumbled mess. He thought about Fankalo. What he’d put her through, and how things might have been different if she had seen him like this all along: functional. All on his own, without spending every waking moment trying to hold back the Survivor for worry of what it might do.

And of course, against his every intention, he thought about Raimee. Raimee reading. Raimee on a boat, studying kelp. Raimee in a turban. Raimee with her hair down. Raimee in raider’s garb. Raimee in Skywalk attire… Raimee in nothing.

Laughing, arguing, questioning. Sometimes he ran away with her. Sometimes she walked up to him and told him how much happier she was in the company of Roskaad Thyatira. Those thoughts usually ended with a void mantra, which was superior to breaking his knuckles.

Calver knew not to go looking for her in the idle portions of the day, where he pretended to be present but compliant while the recruits went through training. He resisted it about as well as the tide resisted the moon. He did look for her, while simultaneously hoping not to find her. What he found was whispers. Whispers from the recruits that there was a Ruxian in their midst. That she had reduced the Red Wing courtyard in Chira’na to rubble. That she’d split a hole in the world and violence had erupted from it. That she would take the throne and oust the oligarchy and support the Groundlings in building a people’s empire.

Calver winced, thinking of the similarities between the two women he’d made promises to. Definitely a conflict of interest.

NIKLAUS

Niklaus had never welcomed the morning. In fact, the sun was usually on its path of descent before his body found vertical alignment, but between the rigorous schedule of the Red Wing and the worsening symptoms of his withdrawal, he found himself waking at indiscriminate hours. Darkness was still settled around him when his chills woke him. He’d sweated through his clothes and into his bedroll. The flaps of the tent beside his rustled as though someone had just left it.

Footsteps padded against the sand. West—but the encampment dug its shit-pits to the east. Niklaus bolted upright. The shratten kid was sneaking away. Where could he possibly be going before the rise of the sun?

Niklaus shed the frigid bedroll and stuffed his feet into boots. He might have done it quickly if his head wasn’t splitting in two. Then he tumbled through the tent flaps and into the open sands. The shadow had already slipped past the western perimeter of tents and into the open desert.

The desert.

It was only to be expected that the life Limtush had entrusted him with had a death wish. Niklaus would have yelled after him, were he not concerned about attracting the attention of several hundred physically exhausted and sleep-starved militia men.

Cursing silently, he followed the Azadonian into the sands. If the boy got bitten by a viper, Niklaus could consider his assets permanently gone. Nothing existed beyond the encampment but sure death. He imagined his pathetic explanation to Limtush: After spending a tenday with me, the kid decided he would rather be fried like an egg than continue to pitch a tent beside me.

He could still see the boy’s fast-walking silhouette—a black pinprick that nearly blended into murky grey sands—and considered screaming out. Niklaus was no survivalist, but that felt ill-advised as slicing open his wrist in the middle of the ocean. The desert was deeply silent, especially so with the encampment out of sight. He didn’t want to draw attention to himself, and he doubted the boy would listen.

Niklaus staggered, nausea threatening to spill the contents of his stomach across three mountainous dunes before he lost sight of the Azadonian completely, beyond the sunken impressions of footprints. He was too slow.

He paused to gasp for breath. The night was still at its darkest, alive with a myriad of stars in every hue, dusted by clouds of deep purple and red. They offered little sympathy. Judgment, more like. Niklaus glowered back at them. His cold sweats felt like needles against his skin. He couldn’t go on like this.

He palmed the tin in his breast pocket. Half of a tab. That was it. And he was going to use it to save a little shit that would gladly have seen him walk into the desert and never come back.

The tab made its way to his tongue. Ten minutes, and he’d be able to function. At least for long enough to get them both back in one piece. His eyes scraped the next rise.

One more.

He scrambled over the ridge on hands and knees, eyes searching the desert beyond: an endless sea of sandy hills, rocky crags and caves scattered among them. There. The boy stood, finally still… and he wasn’t alone.

Niklaus dropped to his stomach and slithered backwards until he wasn’t within eyesight. This was no longer a pitiful attempt at a rescue mission. This was an investigation.

Chest tight—it was hard to tell if it was from excitement, horror, or a genuine heart attack—he searched for a vantage point: a boulder, protruding from the ridge of the dune, some ten spans away. Moving to it on knees and elbows, he peered out from behind the stone.

The contrast between Thedexemore and his companion was nearly comical. He was two heads shorter than the man, and half as thick around. They stood, still as stones, opposite one another in a wide-legged stance. The wind whistled around Niklaus as he watched for long moments, suspended in his anticipation of some sort of interchange. Language. Contraband. Movement. Anything.