Page 29 of The Space Between Stars

Mitek looked at her as if her very existence was an affront. She’d learned from her father that he was three years older than she. Perhaps he would have been like a brother to her—if he didn’t pale in comparison to Calver on every front.

“Not a chance, brat.”

And then there was that. Most of the crew worshipped the planks she walked on. “Fate-touched,” they called her, after witnessing her predictions come true, steering them away from disasters and into victories.

Calver had never talked down to her. He’d always said she was smarter than any of the grown men he interacted with… but Calver had abandoned her. This boy was the only peer she had. It was best to stop comparing the two.

Mitek swatted the apple from her hand and laughed as it rolled across the deck. It took every ounce of her composure not to kick him in the teeth. She would have given anything in the world for that apple three weeks ago.

“Brat?” she asked, keeping her voice cool as she retrieved it.

“Yeah, it’s what you are. Getting whatever you want. Placing your demands. Telling everyone off, even if they’re older than you or better than you, when you ent hardly been here a moon cycle.”

She crossed her arms. “I’m afraid you’ve confused the term ‘brat’ with ‘person of superior station’.”

He scoffed. “What, you can’t even be seven years old?”

“I’ll be seven in a moon cycle.”

“Right. And I ent ever known a six-year-old who talks like you. You’re a brat, if ever I met one.”

What had her mother said about not saying the first angry thing which came to mind? “Can I have a go with the tanka? I’ve never tried before.”

“Fat. Fated. Chance.”

“Mitek, geeve et to ‘im,” came a voice from behind them.

That was Cam. They turned in unison to face the barrel-sized, pock-faced young man descending the ratlines. He was Mitek’s chaperone of sorts, who, despite the best intentions, could be trusted with little else. Most of his job was to boss Mitek around—have him scrub this and peel that and remind him what an idiot he was. The last bit never seemed to work; Mitek was entirely in denial of his idiocy. The pair were perfect for one another.

“She’s a girl! Can’t even shoot!” Mitek whined.

“He. He,” Cam hissed. “Sheet, if Cap’in ‘ears yeh talk like tha’ yeh’ll be tied ‘hind the dayum shiyp.” Cam’s speech was so poor, Fankalo could hardly interpret his words as Nelfinden proper. He was also a “rescue”, his indenture purchased from a Groundling labor exploitation district more rotten than his own teeth.

Fankalo had grown accustomed to the crew referring to her as “he”, or risk stern reprimand. There were no women among seafarers; having a girl aboard was supposed to bring ill fortune. As she understood it from Gelhard, her father had committed a crime severe enough that many of his smuggling connections or allied captains might disassociate themselves from him, were they to know. And a raider captain without a network fared as well as a hull full of holes.

Despite feeling like a “she”, Fankalo was glad enough to shed the term’s limitations. “She” had left her dead on the Kaidechi shore. “He” made her the captain’s adored son—or at least a stand-in to the boy recently departed. She brought a hand to the back of her neck where she’d cropped away once-cascading ringlets, looked down at her inherited tunic and sirwal, several inches too short in the arms and legs. The real Fankalo had been smaller than her.

Mitek stomped. “This is the stupidest—”

Cam smacked him on the back of the head. “An’ geeve ‘im the tanka. Teach ‘im.”

As if she had anything to learn from a boy who hit two out of seven.

“Fine!” Mitek wrestled with the fasteners clamping the tanka to his forearm and threw it on the deck. He stalked toward the balcony and reset the bottles with an additional two from his box, replacing those which had shattered. The ocean was glass-smooth today; this should be easy. The corners of her mouth rose.

Mother had never let her touch a weapon before. A stab of resentment reset her jaw—she was pretty sure Calver had tottered around with a dowaga since he was three. She lifted the tanka from the deck and pulled the leather ties through their buckles, as she’d watched the other raiders do. It was heavier than she’d expected, and so loose on her forearm there was hardly a point to buckling it at all. She pinched a sharpened pin from behind her ear and stabbed at the leather straps several fingers below the lowest notch until it wriggled through. Then she tried again.

Surly Mitek came back to stand beside her. “Your thumb’s supposed to go through this hole, not that one, brat.” His eyes widened as he looked at it on her arm. “Ay! What did you do there? Damaged it! This is Timbor’s tanka. He’ll—”

“He’ll have to take it up with my father.” She raised her eyebrows at him. “Just show me what to do.”

Mitek’s face scrunched up, but he spared her any useless, whining remark.

“This here,” he grumbled, pointing at a small metal circle at the base of her forearm. “It’s for aim. This,” he pointed to a lever at its side, “is your guard. You switch it on when you’re ready to fire, off any time you don’t want to shoot someone in the ballsack by mistake.”

Fankalo’s lips curled in over her teeth. It had taken her some time to grow accustomed to the crudeness of the Raiders’ speech.

Mitek rolled his eyes. “Flex your fingers against the holster like this, and the trigger will release a metal bit. The groove can hold up to seven from a strip. There’s a few lines of replacements here on the underside. Aim and shoot. Simple as that, eah?”