Page 169 of Carousel

The End of an Alliance

Meg wakes me the next morning, and I’m almost surprised to find myself back in my body, and not still locked in my mind. As my eyes adjust to the light, I see she’s peering down at me. She’s fully dressed, her hair braided in Rhavnan fashion.

I think back to the conversation I’d overheard last night. She doesn’t look cruel or devious. She just looks like a normal, albeit beautiful, woman trying to do a job – and do it well.

“I can’t let you sleep anymore,” she says. “We’ve already missed breakfast. I can take you to the infirmary and tell them you’re ill, or you can do my Inspection round with me before you have your next corrective instruction session. You choose.”

I sit up. Other than a faint headache, my body feels surprisingly strong, like it’s been knitted anew.

It’s my emotions that feel unravelled.

I’d love to spend the day in the infirmary. But I’m learning there is no safe place to be on this ship. Why take the risk of going there, only to find out their way of curing me would be, oh, I don’t know, osimidite again, since that seems to be the answer for everything here.

“I’ll come with you.”

“Do you remember what happened last night?”

The words are hard for me to say, and harder for me to hear. “My magic didn’t work.”

She offers me a weak smile. “Try not to dwell on it,” she says, in a tone that isn’t kind, but could be, if I convinced myself it was. It’s a confusing thought about her, but it’s true. “Just take it as a lesson. You can’t ask your magic for things that aren’t in your scope to influence. Something as personal as what you tried to do, wouldn’t be.”

“So, that’s it?” I press. “There’s nothing I can do to stop Cosmer becoming an addict again?”

“Magic doesn’t fix everything,” she replies, simply.

I pull off the nightdress. I’d have felt embarrassed doing this in front of Meg a few days ago. Now, I feel nothing.

I open her dresser to put it away. My eyes immediately fall on the satchel with Cosmer’s things in, tucked on the bottom shelf.

Checking first that Meg’s distracted – she’s reading through my Integration notes on her bed, facing away from me – I look inside the satchel, for nothing but curiosity. The cord with the key to his ship is there – Meg must have taken it from around my neck and returned it there. His standard pocket watch. His leather belt. The holster of it is empty. So’s the sleeve for his radio. But his comb is fitted inside. Looking at it up close for the first time, I realise it’s made from bone, and has been engraved in a curling pattern that looks more Rhavnan than Hevallan.

The only other item in the bag is his silver flask.

I’d forgotten about that.

It really is beautiful. As is the comb. For Cosmer to have not one but two Rhavnan items...

It was a gift, he’d said about the flask. Was the comb a gift, too?

I take a last look at the items before I close the bag. They look so small in the space.

Are these the only possessions of his own he has in the world?

I should have left him my ribbon.

Doing an Inspection round ends up being somewhat entertaining, if a job up here can be described as that. Meg takes us down to the deck below and checks seven cabins at random, making notes in a book as she goes on cleanliness and how the bed has been made. She searches each room thoroughly for contraband, and marks down one of them because a comb was left out.

After, we head up to the Bridge. But Riss and Drake are already by the vaulted door.

Riss addresses Meg only. I can’t help but feel that’s deliberate. “Why are you here?”

“Ara has corrective instruction.”

“No, Drake does.”

They go over to each other to show each other their Integration books.

Eyes flitting between the two books, Riss says, “They want them in together?”