Page 186 of The Space Between Stars

“Don’t make me test my aim.”

The whole shore held still, the eye of a hurricane. No wave dared to crash. No voice dared to call. No salt dared to sting.

They used to scour the coastline after a rain like this, his sister and him, looking for flotsam and debris, yearning for treasure. Like mounds of kelp brought in by the storm, the bodies lay face down around him, taken in the back. None bore the uniform of Pazir’s royal guard.

Ice struck his veins as his vision tunneled. He dropped the dowaga. It sploshed into the rusty waters pooling around his feet. His knees hit the sand.

Kill him. She should kill him, right now. What was she waiting for?

Fankalo trained her weapon on him for long seconds. The smoke smell heightened, the bird calls amplified, as he waited for her to flex her wrist.

She disengaged, eyes narrowed, lip curled. She turned and dashed past him. He would have rather his forehead had made a soft landing for her bit.

Somewhere behind him, Fankalo barked out, “Stand ready!”

Dozens on the beach, all far from his reach, moved at her command. Behind him, a chorus of screams of “At ready” came in reply, one after the next in a spine-chilling roar. Calver fell from knees to backside, pain, vertigo, and nausea in fierce competition.

The silhouettes of at least fifty figures still stood on the mainland rise. Fankalo leapt forward, her body like a switch: long, lean, and corded with muscle. She projected to them, “Your dissenting ‘prince’ is dead.” Was he? “Stand down and permit our assembly before the king.”

She suddenly had the posturing of a fox catching a scent on the wind. Her eyes closed. Her chin lifted. Like she was listening for something. Moments later, she pulled the canteen from her waist and dipped it low beneath the still-red-running stream. She brought it to her lips, made a show of wiping her mouth on her sleeve, and cast it to the side. “Should any other dissent occur, they should know that this is only the tip of my wrath!” The words tore from her throat like the voice of Chaos: fury, power, and majesty in one vibration.

One by one, the silhouettes on the rise raised their arms toward the smoke-screened sky.

Calver’s stomach roiled as his mind showed him what came next: an enemy from behind. He possessed no will to stop it. An arm locked around his head. A needle plunged into his neck. A dark hue quickly saturated his vision. His body spasmed, kicking up sand.

Mitek’s voice in his ear, cut with ice. “Easy, Reaper,” and then aloud for others, “Ay! Get ’im under the arms. Brig ’im quick. We’ve got places to be.”

Fankalo paced the narrow passageway between the hull of the Rogue’s Rapture and the brig where Calver sat. He couldn’t know how long had passed since he had been put to sleep on the beach in Pazir. The waves had been under him for what seemed like days, but he hadn’t eaten, and hunger had yet to hit. His eyes traced his sister’s movement. He offered nothing in the way of signaling. What could he say? It was a miracle he was still breathing, after what he’d done. He pulled the Survivor’s memories into focus: he’d killed the Pazirian prince. His explosives had taken out half of the dissenting envoy. And then he’d killed… with the dowaga, five Ghosts? With the Aetech lamps… It was hard to say.

“Cal.” Fankalo’s fingers caught in her hair. “I don’t even know how to say this.” She stomped a foot, face screwed up, and he was briefly reminded of a petulant child he once knew, not wearing the skin of the queen of the raiders. “You’ve put me in a difficult position.”

A difficult position. Definitely not the words of the girl he knew. He’d rarely had a moment in his own mind in years. In that time, she had learned to speak diplomatically. It must have been the Chori man’s—Drogus’s—influence.

He lifted his eyes to the bars.

“You and I both know nothing can keep you here. You could have broken free at any point. You are choosing to stay.” She swallowed, face sallow, with no hint of its usual spark. “I appreciate your gesture of good faith, but it is too late.”

“Fuck!” she screamed. There she was, his sister. “You’re sorry?” Her words picked up force like a rogue wave. “You’re sorry?!”

He flinched.

“But you did, Cal. There’s no fixing this. They’re calling for your blood. Begging for it. And I don’t blame them.” A tear plummeting toward the floor. “Twenty-six. Husbands. Fathers. Friends. Zeb… fucking Zeb, Cal.” Seal broken, her eyes were streams. “I can’t protect you any more.”

Katlas Dreiden had written that, while the cost of victory was blood, blood’s value was subjective to the commander. It mattered not that Calver had won his sister the battle. He would never argue against where she placed her worth.

The Survivor pressed against him. He pressed back. It was what had gotten him into this situation. He had to resist. Had to. Its pressure worsened. He grabbed his hair, tried to clear his mind. It didn’t help. The creature’s desire to take hold was excruciating. He screamed.

A part of him registered that Fankalo had backed away.

He flicked his hands with a frantic fervor.

“I tried, Cal. Preservation knows I did. I can’t help you any more. I have to let you go. You can’t be here anymore.”

Exile. She was exiling him. Why not eliminate him? Fankalo did not need his protection. She had a literal army at her disposal. Friends. Allies.