Page 114 of The Space Between Stars

“Leave them! All of them. We will have a trial.”

He stepped backward, then turned to face her, chest heaving, bare torso splattered in gore. He did not lower the weapon.

“Calverous,” Fankalo growled. “Stand down.”

He stared at her through a mask of indifference.

She tried to imagine the boy she once knew behind it. Her eyes narrowed. “Cut me down.” She fought to assert dominance in her voice when terror threatened to turn her into a sniveling sack like Mitek. “And then stand down. I command it.”

Seconds ticked by until she was positive he was about to turn the dowaga against her. As if summoned by the very thought, Calver stalked toward her, dowaga raised. She flinched—and then her gut wrenched as she dropped to the deck. Her elbows rammed into the wooden planking, sending a jolt of pain into her arms.

Unable to look Calver in the eye, she ran towards Gelhard, still lying where he’d fallen on the deck. She pulled his knife from the still grasping fingers of his severed arm and held it between her boots so she could cut her hands apart. She didn’t spare the suffering traitor so much as a glance when she moved to Mitek, who had scuttled from the scene on knees and elbows.

“Brat,” he gasped. “I’m sorry. I smell like—”

“I don’t care what you shratten smell like,” she snapped. Of all things to focus on. “Who was in on the mutiny?”

“Those four, far as I can tell.”

“Where are the rest?”

“Taken ill.”

Her hands hardly functioned. She worried she might injure herself or Mitek as she worked to bream his ties with several clumsy pulls of the knife. Then she handed him its handle.

“Free the others.”

Mitek obeyed. The remaining tied crewmen watched wordlessly, trapped in a communal bubble of shock. Calver stood like a gargoyle in the spot where he’d cut her down, imposing and silent as stone.

No one stopped her as she ran to her father. She raised her swollen hands to help him before realizing it was futile. Each of his labored breaths forced a rumble from his throat. Blood pooled at their feet; too much blood. His eyes found her, and in them she saw relief. She brought her hands to his face, wiping tears away from his cheeks.

“We’re going to be alright,” she whispered. But as she caressed him, his chest stilled.

Surely her own heart had stopped beating, not his. Surely she’d gone mad. Life could not continue without Captain Keane at its center. The sun could not shine if it didn’t glint golden off his skin when he threw back his head to laugh. Who would throw her over their shoulder to steal her from the harshness of life now?

“Father—”

Her word did not pass between realms.

Fankalo made mindlessly for the weapons crate. Pulled a tanka from within. Strapped it to her fisted forearm. Sailed to Gelhard like her boots had caught flame. His insides had spilled out, slicking the deck around him. He ran his fingers through them, as though fascinated by his own cooling entrails.

Her rage was enough to fuel a storm. “Do you know why I never miss a shot, quartermaster?”

Gelhard said nothing. His chest twitched with shallow spasms.

“I don’t take one, unless I am positive it will land where I intend.”

The codex said to never kill, unless it was in self-defense. It didn’t say anything about killing to put someone out of their misery. That was fortunate. A mercy killing was more than he deserved. She fired the tanka. Its bit wedged into the deck, inches from Gelhard’s head.

Many of the crewmen Mitek had freed stepped forward from the ends of the ship to attend to her father’s body. More appeared from below deck, bedraggled faces and soiled clothing betraying their condition. None came within striking distance of the gargantuan form over her shoulder. Fankalo moved two steps closer to Calver, though he didn’t seem to notice or care.

She cleared her throat and projected her voice the way her father always had. “The Rogue’s Rapture belongs to me now.” He’d told them all she would be the one to fill his boots—only he had expected two decades to pass before the succession, not two days. “Any who disagrees gets a free trip to the bottom of the sea.”

There was no dissent.

“Deckhands, ready the sails. Drogus, man the helm.”

Fankalo watched as they shambled about their duties. Stomachs and bowels let loose as they went, choking the air with the smells of their sickness. All the while, the shell of her blood brother stood behind her, ever watching, never seeing.