Page 26 of The Space Between Stars

Then, with unprecedented speed, the giant lashed out toward Thedexemore. The boy tried to leap away, but he wasn’t fast enough; the strike hurled him to his back in the sand. Niklaus’s gut plummeted. He nearly rushed to the boy’s defense, sure the man was about to finish what he’d started, when Thedexemore’s peal of laughter split the night.

Niklaus released a shuddering sigh. He’d somehow ended up on the opposite side of the rise in preparation to do something very, very stupid. He retreated behind the stone again to watch.

The game continued. Sometimes the large man waited a full minute or more before moving. Sometimes he only waited for moments. Sometimes he moved with a kick, sometimes with a slash of his forearm. Always fast enough to be deadly… but the hits never seemed to damage the boy beyond knocking him off balance.

It ended when Thedexemore dodged sideways fast enough for the man’s strike to miss him by what might have been a hair’s width—but missed him all the same. Thedexemore whooped with glee. The man across from him gave a stoic nod.

Exercises next, sparring with hands as blades. Sometimes Thedexemore asked questions. The giant never responded, but he guided the boy’s motions using jabs that were neither gentle nor unkind. Sometimes he nodded—correct. Sometimes he jabbed the boy anew—wrong.

Not deaf; he understood Thedexemore’s questioning. Mute?

The longer Niklaus watched, the more he felt a hole yawning somewhere inside him. His entire world had been built upon words. And yet this dance of fighting forms built on silence filled him with both longing and shame. It made the scrawny kid look like… well, it made him halfway look like he knew what he was doing. Given the option to mentor Thedexemore, Niklaus had only returned insults as fast as they were given.

In time, the night lightened and Thedexemore sat in the sand, chest heaving. “Done!” he shouted, before lying back and taking a long drink from a canteen.

The silent giant pressed on, shifting through a progression of movements, quicker now. His body sprinted and reversed, spun and twisted, lashed and rolled. Niklaus had attended his fair share of tournaments and dark market boxing in Shrokan, but he’d never seen a body move like that. Like it just might steer clear of sand in a windstorm.

The moss had kicked in. The world lightened; the pain faded. And just as Niklaus contemplated how little he wanted to be on the wrong side of the mute’s movements, an idea sparked: a seed of Chaos, really. It was so atrocious he nearly barked a laugh. His moss tin would be full by morning, and this man was the catalyst.

Lifting a prayer, Niklaus slid down the dune towards the pair. As he grew closer, the large man watched him with a too-bland expression and marble eyes. Knowingly—as if he’d seen him watching them all along. If Niklaus hadn’t observed the man tutor Thedexemore into worthiness seconds before, the look might have sent him scrambling back over the dune.

He lifted a hand in greeting. The motion elicited a scowl from Thedexemore.

“Bit crowded out here, eah?” the boy panted. He tilted his head to the tall man. “I’ll see you.”

As Thedexemore started toward the dunes, Niklaus jumped into his path. “Hold on. Introduce me to your friend?”

The boy maneuvered around him with a sidestep Niklaus was sure he’d just seen him learn. “Nope.”

Thedexemore might hate him, but he certainly felt differently about the mute. And what was a gamble without a little leverage?

“Can you signal?” Niklaus called to the man, signaling the message as he spoke. He would need to be a high-born or a sailor, which was unlikely. Nominal seafaring and excessive poverty had become Nelfinden standards. But the silent man’s impassive face moved ever so slightly.

Was it possible that, for once, the Fates favored his odds? Niklaus felt the first perfect inklings of hope ignite inside him.

Niklaus resisted the compulsion to dance a jig. Victory. Sweet Creation, victory.

“I’d think that, being stranded in a desert with a recruitment that’s clearly ostracized you, having a translator might be of value.”

Not that anything about the man suggested he would be a socialite, but the impassivity was a disappointment. Then again… if the mute hadn’t a need for a translator, why let on that he could signal at all?

Thedexemore halted in his retreat and loped back down the dune. “You can talk to him?”

“I can move my fingers at him comprehensively, sure.”

the giant signaled.

Niklaus couldn’t even call him a critic. Latouda had said as much, and he hadn’t signaled to her in over a year.

“Can you… help me to understand him?” The wince on the little brat’s face sparked joy.

Niklaus grinned. “Let’s start over. Won’t you introduce me to your friend?”

Thedexemore’s enormous pupils rolled back into his head as he squeezed his eyes shut. “This is Niklaus Meyernes,” he said to the man. “Meyernes, this is my…” He trailed off.