Page 199 of The Space Between Stars

Dex nodded. “At least I’m not on a horse.”

FORTY-FIVE

NIKLAUS

Year: 748 Post Cataclysm: Present Day

Location: Steila

Niklaus watched the soldiers pounding on the door to Steila’s central spire. He retracted his head into the abandoned storefront across the dusty road and slid, back against the wall, to the floor.

He’d traveled ten days, only to be too late.

Getting to them now would be suicide.

Niklaus dug through his pack, hand clasping the Aetech lamp Calver had given him weeks before. His glassy reflection stared back. A full beard covered his chin for the first time he could remember. Sweat and dust caked his hair, now grown past his ears, flat against his head. His eyes were older than they had any right to be, and he glared at them.

He was so tired of having no effect on the world but noise. The lamp did not offer sympathy. In fact, it suddenly seemed very heavy. He felt that the last ten years had led him to this very moment. He could not accept it as failure. But pressing the activator? Taking twenty lives to spare thousands? Watering the cycle of violence? Violence took less than one second.

Niklaus stood. He lifted the lamp, turned round the bend, and peered at the small crowd of Tera’thian soldiers at the tower’s base. He set his jaw.

No.

He’d lived a full life going against the grain. And that wouldn’t end now. It would never make sense to him to have enough love in his heart to bloody his hands. Violence was like moss: intoxicating at first taste, but then he’d never rid his tongue of it. There was no strength in that.

And he had no time for weakness.

Niklaus pressed the activator and tossed the lamp with all his might—not toward the enemy troops, but onto the roof of the neighboring building. As if a diversion had any likelihood of being useful.

Chaos, he was an idiot. But at least he was a pacific idiot.

Niklaus flinched as the lamp collided with the structure. Its glass shattered. Nothing happened. For a hair-splitting moment, he cursed himself, wondering how much time it would take him to scale the building and retrieve the broken core. What had he even been thinking? It was an Aetech lamp. What had he expected it to—

The thunder that cracked his eardrums was so forceful that he staggered. Blinding light clung to the back of his eyelids and he hurled behind the wall, seeking shelter. The ground rippled beneath him, chased by a whump of warm air. Screams rang out against the lowsun. When Niklaus gained his senses enough to glance around the corner, the men battering the tower had abandoned it to investigate the site of the explosion. The door had been knocked in… and left open. He scratched his head in disbelief. Either this was an act of horrific negligence, or a miracle.

Niklaus looked down either side of the street and then dashed across to the tower. He was rounding the entryway onto the first floor, heart pounding, ears still ringing, when a body slammed into his. Arms clutched him. Dex.

“Damn you, Meyernes.”

Even if the embrace hadn’t been rib-crushing, it would have stolen his words for its unexpectedness. Niklaus returned the gesture, patting Dex’s back. “Easy, wouldn’t want you to get your hands dirty, eah?”

Dex slowly let go with a sniff. The boy wore a too-large uniform, per the usual, but this one was Tera’thian. “Took you long enough.”

“Blue is not a good color on you,” Niklaus replied.

Dex smiled weakly. He squeezed Niklaus’s shoulder, then darted toward the door to peer into the street.

Niklaus’s attention flickered to Calver, descending the final stairs from the tower, brown eyes unreadable. Sweat and sand slicked his hair and beard. He looked very much the way Niklaus felt—like a fig left too long in the sun—but with more muscle and menace.

Niklaus’s apology spilled from his lips. “Cal. I messed up. Let me—”

Beautiful words, if not for the coldness in his posture. Niklaus winced, and what he had intended to finish saying somehow went missing, replaced by the cringe-worthy, “You’re damn near the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

Calver blinked. Something shook in his expression, but it seemed more a trick of the light than a phantom smile.

“We’re all going to be a lot more sorry if we don’t leave before they figure out we’re still here, not there,” Dex hissed.