Women. She logged it the way she logged everything — fast, flat, filed for later when she could afford to think. What women? Which women? Why?
Then the wave hit.
It came from nowhere, or from the sea, which was the same thing. A full cold slap of water across her back that soaked her to the skin in one instant and drove the air from her chest in the next.
The sound she made was small and involuntary and completely unavoidable.
Even as she dropped flat against the plasteele and pressed her cheek to the cold dock surface, that it had been heard.
The dock went quiet.
The kind of quiet that isn't silence. The kind that means something very large is paying attention.
Panic started to overtake her.
Focus.
She stared at the base of the cargo container and thought about her father, which was what she always did when things went genuinely wrong. Not in a dramatic way. Just — his face. The particular expression he made when she called him late. The way he always answered anyway.
Hi Dad. I'm about to be killed by a Fraluma. I wanted you to know I was thinking of you.
He was all she had in the galaxy, and she was all he had. Now he was going to be alone.
She felt like an idiot. She was going to blame the water and Amir. Oh, she was going to haunt him for the rest of eternity.
Footsteps. Not heavy — the Fraluma didn't move heavily, which was somehow worse. Light and fast and absolutely certain of where they were going.
The container above her shuddered as something landed on it. Correction, someone.
Here it comes.
She made herself look up.
He was crouched on the edge of the container, looking down at her. His cloak pooled around him. His face was in shadow except for his eyes, which were not — blue-green and very clear and completely focused on her, the way things that were built to find and eliminate targets focused on targets.
She had one thought left, which was not particularly useful: He's young.
He didn't move.
She didn't move.
The wind moved between them, and the water moved beneath them, and the rest of the dock held its breath.
Something happened in his face. She couldn't name it. It passed through his expression the way weather passed — present for a moment, then gone, leaving the landscape altered in some small way she couldn't immediately account for. He raised his head and looked toward the other Fraluma.
She heard the Chancellor's voice, distant now: "What is it?"
The Fraluma above her dropped from the container in a single fluid motion, landing on the platform beside her without a sound — not the sound of boots on plasteele, not the sound of a cloak settling, nothing — and crouched there for one moment at her eye level, close enough that she could see the texture of the fabric at his shoulder.
Then he stood and walked back toward the Chancellor, each step as quiet as the last.
Words she couldn’t quite make out over the water’s noise. The waves quieted just enough so she could make out a tiny bit.
An urchin, she pieced together from the response. Just an urchin.
The words started to process.
Wait. Did he just hide her?
