Page 95 of The Space Between Stars

He’d escaped, only to find Kaidech in ruins.

Then he was captured a second time by Cul’Mon.

She didn’t reread what happened after that—didn’t need to. It had been burned into her mind eight years ago, and she could still see its char against her eyelids when she tried to sleep at night. Besides, her Luck told her that she’d already found her query. The passage concerning Thyatira.

All her life, she’d been focused on Cul’Mon. The atrocities he’d committed to her only blood. One could only harbor so much hate. Thyatira had kidnapped Calver to be an experiment; Cul’Mon had enslaved him as a genetic weapon. Cul’Mon’s damage made Thyatira’s tongue removal look like child’s play.

But what if—what if—

She reread the first, horrendously written passage.

‘Thyatira wanted to silence me.’

Calver didn’t say why. And she’d never asked. She’d just assumed that it didn’t look good for generals to kidnap shratten children for pharmaceutical schemes. Why pry deeper into the things that, when mentioned, made Calver start stabbing?

But the Kaidechi scourge had occurred only three days after Calver’s disappearance. And Thyatira could have found far easier prey than a dowagian prodigy if all he’d wanted was a guinea pig.

“Kretch,” she whispered, voice trembling. Fourteen years. Thyatira’s game went back fourteen years. Maybe more.

They were so fucked.

Mitek chose that moment to reenter, holding a tin of topical anesthesia and a satchel of raw moss. He took one look at her and threw them to the floor. His hands shifted under her arms, as if to hoist her back into the hammock.

“Don’t treat me like a beached jelly, idiot!” She shoved him off and grabbed her crutch, pressing painstakingly to her feet. She shambled to the porthole and set her chin onto its frame.

His voice shook too. “Then don’t huddle on the floor like a beached jelly! What happened?”

Her heart was beating too hard to speak. She felt every throb of it in her toes.

“Get it together, Brat. Thyatira’s messengers arrive in two hours. Do you need me to take it alone?”

Mitek always played the part of the Hand for all matters Thyatira, a matter of image control, but she usually signaled to him from the emissary’s blindside. Hearing his name pushed her past her mental block.

“It was Thyatira,” she gasped.

“What was Thyatira?”

“All of it. The whole thing—the failed demolition, everything—was his set-up.”

“I don’t have magical intuition. I need you to draw me a picture.”

“Thyatira brought the Tera’thians to Kaidech. That’s why he silenced Calver. Thyatira is a Tera’thian agent.”

Mitek shook his head. “Take a moment to think about what you’re saying. Thyatira is a figurehead for the Groundling movement. He wants to revitalize Nelfindar, not destroy it.”

What better way to revitalize a nation than have an external threat crumple its oligarchy?

“And if Thyatira were working with the Tera’thians to thwart the demolition,” he continued, “then what was the point in feeding us the Aetech plans in the first place?” She didn’t have to say it out loud; Mitek worked it over on his own. He clapped a hand to his head. “He wanted us to lose everything.”

Fankalo swallowed. He hadn’t gifted them Aetech’s plans in hopes of a future alliance. It had been a parlor trick to cannibalize their budget. “We’re the largest threat to his takeover. Were, anyhow.” Her body shook. Her leg ached. She wanted to sink back to the floor, but wouldn’t in front of Mitek.

She’d wondered, these past weeks, how Thyatira would react to Seraphindo’s newfound heir stealing his bid for rule over Nelfindar out from under him. Of course, if he had been working directly with the Tera’thians all along to devise an ambush on the Red Wing in Steila, handing over a Ruxian during the event only sweetened the deal for him. Seraphindo’s heir would be a coveted part of Cul’Mon’s project. Fankalo’s skin prickled. Cul’Mon wasn’t a fate she would wish on anyone.

Mitek was still reeling. “How did he know we were working on anything related to distortion in the first place?”

A valid question. Thyatira’s information network must have perforated their ranks. “One of ours is feeding him intelligence. Someone close.”

They looked at each other, a million shared horrors and what-ifs darting between their eyes.