Page 63 of The Space Between Stars

“Yes, it’s finished.” She closed the lid over the core and screwed it into place.

Thacklore stepped away and flashed a hungry smile. “Wonderful.”

She triggered the mechanical drill’s activator. A heavy metal rod within its cylinder began to vibrate: quickly and with enough force to break up rock.

Thacklore’s glare was answer enough. “You make me out to be a fucking fool.”

Good. He was a fool. “A fool, Mesu?”

“An entire month of stalling, and this is all you’ve produced?”

That, and dozens of distortion lamps: technology Azadonia had held as proprietary until she’d folded for Thacklore like a cheap card.

She crossed her arms. “You asked for a distortion drill.”

“This is not what you used before. What you used destroyed an entire tunnel! This would destroy...”

“An entire rock?” she suggested.

His hand tightened around the nape of her neck. “I risked a lot, getting you out of Kovathian hands.”

And she might have preferred the Kovathians over him. If it weren’t for Thedexemore, she would have begged him to take her back. “I have given my end of the deal and more.”

“I don’t want this useless kretch!” Thacklore shoved her away from the workstation.

Attilatia hit the cold cobbled floor hard. Pain lanced through her wrists, her knees. She might have betrayed her people, but she would not give up her father’s creed. Thacklore would never have weaponized distortion. Not from her. She rose shakily to her feet.

“Surely there are those who would pay Nelfinden silver for this.”

“Yes. But you know what I’m looking for.”

Attilatia cast a glance at him for the first time that day. His short black curls had been slicked back with oil. He wore a deep blue sirwal and tunic with silk pleats down the front, covered by a vest with enamel buttons. He might have been handsome, had his lip not been pulled up in a snarl: like a carnivorous peacock.

“It has occurred to me, just now, that it is something beyond my area of expertise.” She gestured to the rudimentary drill. “If this is not satisfactory to you, then sell me.” As he had threatened to on several occasions. What had seemed like a threat was starting to sound like a hot meal. She stepped up to him and poked a finger into his too-shiny button. “Sell me to some Nelfinden businessman who would be overjoyed to have this ‘kretch’. I know what my people used to sell my work for, and that was before the Quarantine. Surely it’s worth thousands now.”

His hands clenched around her arms. “I want more than silver.”

The man was insatiable in more ways than one. Attilatia repressed a shiver. Instead, she licked her lips. Time to find out what flesh—the only other coin she could offer—was really worth. “I’ve given you more than silver.”

The resolve in Thacklore’s eyes was pure flame. “I’m putting the boy in the dungeon. We’ll see what a week’s worth of his isolation without food will motivate you to produce.”

Thedexemore would not survive it. Attilatia had long since learned how little regard Thacklore held for human lives. She’d seen how he extracted information. How he made his friends. How he did away with them.

She stepped in closer still and ran a finger along his ear. “You touch one hair on that child’s head, I will slit my throat on your white. Fated. Rug.” She dug her fingers into his neat curls. “If anything happens to him, you lose any leverage you have on me.” Like any mad dog, it was not anger that finally forced her to bite, but fear.

“Fine then.” He pressed so close to her she could taste his breath between them: tobacco and mint. He gave her a smile that raised the hairs on her arms. “Maybe after spending a night as the evening’s entertainment, you’ll change your mind.”

He poked his head out the door and called, “Jamad!”

Attilatia’s muscles hugged her bones. The heat fled her body. Thacklore’s bodyguard, a glossy term for torturer, was rarely called upon for kind gestures. The man had a perturbing skill for causing pain, outmatched only by his lust for it. Thacklore watched as Attilatia backed into the work counter behind her, carelessly knocking the near-finished drill to the floor.

Jamad lumbered into the room as though he’d been waiting just around the bend. Perhaps he had. The man looked like he could snap her in half if she gazed at him the wrong way.

Thacklore said something she couldn’t understand in Nelfinden. Then he turned to her, and her mouth went dry. “Jamad will escort you to my rooms.” He raised his eyebrows as if they were in on a joke. “He’ll see to it that you are comfortable.”

“No,” she began, wanting to charge him, kick him, wound him. But any move she made against him would only worsen their situation.

He turned to leave. “Perhaps tomorrow you might feel some inspiration. Expertise… it can evolve.”