Page 221 of The Space Between Stars

FORTY-EIGHT

FANKALO

Year: 746 Post Cataclysm: Nineteen Months Previously

Location: South Sea

Fankalo stepped quickly through the passage from the resource room to her quarters. It was too much to hope for: that she could steal away again, musky old book in hand, without being spotted. A call came from around the corner.

“Braaaaaat.”

And by the last person she had hoped would spot her. Chaos’s unruly bush.

A ten-day had passed since the incident on the beach in Yalusa. A ten-day spent without Calver’s soundless form pressed against the door while she slept. A ten-day during which Fankalo hadn’t shown face, but for the most essential duties. Looking Mitek in the eye was harder than the rest of them. He’d warned her for years, and she hadn’t listened. And then she hadn’t listened, again, when he told her that exile was too light a sentence.

Fankalo sucked in through her teeth before pivoting. She would have to face him soon enough: they had a meeting with Thyatira’s emissaries before the day’s end. Mitek sat with Cam, Nalil, and Samad, a stackers board open on the table. The tilted slash of his mouth wasn’t entirely genuine, but it wasn’t forced either. “Give us a game?”

Mitek hadn’t willingly entered a game of stackers with her in years. She saw right through his tactics, and he usually sought easier prey for a game of wits. As much as she would love to publicly humiliate him, she imagined he was only attempting to lure her from her closet. That was good of him. A legend could not hide behind closed doors.

“But no Luck allowed, eah?” he said, twirling one of the board’s black rings between two fingers. “I want a game that’s fair and square.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” Cam quipped. Mitek shot him a heavy-lidded, drawn-mouthed expression Fankalo was certain he’d learned from her.

“No Luck allowed,” she agreed, taking the seat across from them.

Mitek began to sort their rings into piles by color. “While we’re here, I think we should chat before Thyatira’s emissaries arrive, and reconsider incorporating Seraphinden’s Groundling movement into our resource allocation.”

Kretch. This wasn’t his way of cheering her up. This was a poorly planned intervention, designed for his favorite lackeys to witness her judgement call before the afternoon’s meeting.

She chose her words carefully. “While my heart resides with the common people of Nelfindar, I am wary of supporting the Groundling movement.”

Mitek lifted his chin. His voice was a command and a challenge all in one. “Why?”

In truth, she’d never been able to articulate the gut feeling her Luck had pinned her with: that Thyatira was bad news. But she had recently been able to pull cases from military texts to support her argument.

“Because I fear to do so is to support the Tera’thians.”

“And that I do not track. So you’re going to need to draw me a map, before I write off your reasoning as crazy or reckless.”

Surprising she could even hear him over the sound of his bullshit. What was this facade for? His friends? Fankalo flashed her teeth at him, and he frowned. “Fates, I hate when you look at me like that. Like a hyena that’s just spotted its next meal limping along the grasslands.”

Her smile broadened. “Let’s chat on the concept of ideological subversion, Mitek.” She placed her first ring on the board’s centermost peg—a terrible move, by all means.

Mitek twisted his mouth and placed his ring in his closest corner. “Let’s.”

She set her second ring beside the first. Mitek continued to play prudently, claiming space along the border.

“Cul’Mon studies the pre-cataclysmic runes of the Tera’thian Tohatus before him. He looks to history to prepare flawless strategy, where Nelfindar’s oligarchs can’t seem to see past the polished tips of their fingernails.” One by one she stacked her rings around the center, like she was giving him an easy win. Mitek’s hand hovered over the board, before he finally placed a ring away from the rim and beside her growing hoard. “Through the Groundling movement, he is enacting an age-old tactic of psychological warfare. It’s designed to change the perceived reality of every Nelfinden citizen, Groundling or not, to such an extent that, even with truthful information present, no one is able to come to sensible conclusions in the interest of defending themselves. He’s done so so slowly, it’s taken two generations to take root.”

Mitek began to divide his rings into both a border and a central defensive grouping that could move against her stash.

“There are three stages to this tactic.” She ticked up a finger. “Stage one: discountenance and disinformation.” She set her first ring behind Mitek’s central cluster.

Mitek crossed his arms. “I’m thinking I’m not fond of practical lessons.”

Better than not thinking at all.

Fankalo continued the pattern of playing the less-strategic center. “Since the end of the Grey Period, they’ve slowly manipulated the Groundling populace to conform to Tera'thian ideals. First through miseducation—then from a lack of education. No one, Groundling, merchant, or oligarch, will believe the Tera’thians are controlling their every move. Until, of course, it is too late.”