Page 143 of The Space Between Stars

She flicked it back at him. “Stop fucking around.”

Mitek chased it across the floor and pocketed it. “You remember Shanlea?”

How could she ever forget the Chira’nanian girl with bigger tits than any fourteen-year-old had a right to? Mitek had disappeared with her every hour of their final week in port.

“Her father was an alchemist. She said he took a daily encapsulation to build up a tolerance to certain poisons in case of accidental exposure.” Amazing that he’d heard a single word that had come out of her mouth, considering the distracting factors. “And I’ve seen you lately.”

Her stomach clenched. She was aware of the way her skin had started to cling to bone with little in between. She wasn’t sure if it was because food turned to ash in her mouth or because she was terrified everything had been tainted again.

“I’m listening.”

“My tutor and I rounded out the most common list of poisons and abstracted their non-toxic doses. Thirteen in all. Take this every day for two months and you’ll resist damaging doses of any of them. Then you can keep the same effect with one every ten-day.”

That was a lot of alchemy for Mitek to digest. He would have needed to gather those ingredients during their last landfall—nearly a full moon ago.

“You’ve tested this?”

“Nope.”

“Who were you planning on using as a subject?”

His face screwed up as he looked up at his fresh dents in the woodwork. “Hadn’t thought that far yet.”

Of course he hadn’t. She clucked her tongue. “Let me see it.”

Pill back in hand, she settled into a meditative state and followed the tendrils of her Luck. She focused on the encapsulation. The impression twitched, warning her away, but… it wasn’t lethal. The longer she focused on it, the longer she saw the negative impression solidifying into a positive thread.

The first week or two would have some unpleasant side-effects, but compared to living in fear of eating, it was well worth the cost.

“This… this is good.”

Mitek’s arms punched skyward. “Fucking brilliant, yeah? I’m going to take them too.”

She held the pill up to the light from the porthole to get a better look at the powder inside. “What’s the expense in synthesizing them?”

Mitek rubbed at his neck .“Ah, costly.”

“How costly?”

“Ten silver notes apiece. Less if we make them in bulk.”

Fankalo swore. They’d have to rob the Blue Wing’s armada to afford them for the entire crew.

Mitek seemed to read her mind. “I intended them for us, and to keep quiet about it. Just so we could stay in the clear.”

“Hmm. Agreed. Better that potential threats don’t know we take them.”

“My thoughts exactly. There’s something else I wanted to show you.” He pulled a vial of a burnt-orange liquid from his pocket and set it on the table between them. “I’ve invented something. This is veilstrike.”

Mitek was usually excited about something, but this restrained, confident enthusiasm was new. She inadvertently leaned in closer.

“It stays dormant in the bloodstream until it metabolizes and is pulled into the liver. As the body tries to detoxify it, it releases components that will slowly coagulate the blood until it stops the heart. I haven’t tested it on a person, but based on what we’ve done in practice and with what I’ve learned of human circulation, I’d guess it would result in fatality within ten minutes from detoxification.”

“And how long is its dormancy?”

“As long as three days.”

Unholy Chaos. She remembered seeing bruises and bandages on his forearms the whole week before. He’d been letting his own blood for this.