Page 93 of The Space Between Stars

The barricade of a man nodded toward Niklaus’s pocket holding the wax cloth of tabs. Niklaus’s breath caught.

Niklaus looked at the door. His hand twitched. If he made a lunge for it, he could—

Like a storm front from the sea, the mute moved in on him. He had Niklaus restrained before his shock could blossom. Then he used his free hand to yank the tabs from Niklaus’s pocket. It was wrong. An atrocity, as if he’d buried his fist in Niklaus’s chest and pulled out something vital.

“Wait. Wait, don’t. I need that.” Niklaus knew the words were despicable as they poured from his mouth.

The mute unraveled the cloth and pressed the tabs through the mouth of the canteen at his waist. He shook the mixture and dumped more than half through the cracks in the floorboard.

“No no no. NO!” Niklaus was on his knees—he didn’t even remember the mute releasing him—splashing his fingers in the liquid. It was gone, wasted in the sands beneath them. His throat bulged. He might be sick on principle.

The mute crouched beside him. Niklaus eyed the canteen, now slung over the mute’s shoulder.

Niklaus shook his head. “You can’t be serious.” He was pleading now. He hated it more than he’d ever hated anything.

Used. Deceived. Again. “He—he told you this?”

“And—and you let him go?”

Niklaus did nothing to hide the pricking at his eyes.

Niklaus clutched his knees. “Don’t mention it.”

Over? Over how? Either he was going to die, or those days would be distorted into subjective weeks of agony. “Wait—we can talk this through like civil folk. Find a way to get what we both want out of this situation without violence.”

The mute’s eyes found the floor, and he shook his head.

Panic nearly bursting through his chest, Niklaus weighed his options and chose the brainless one. Boots grinding against wood, sinews taut, heart pounding, he lunged for the door. His fingers scraped at the handle before the mute grabbed his forearm and spun him around. A vein bulged in the brute’s neck as he muscled Niklaus’s arms behind his back. Niklaus panted, biting back the bile that coated his throat.

“Alright,” he gasped. “We’re choosing violence.”

The light in the wagon was the only indication of the passage of time. The sun rose and fell again. The tremors had become so bad Niklaus could barely make a swipe at the mute each time he forced Niklaus to drink.

“I hate you. Hate you.” The words soured his tongue.

The mass of muscle before him proffered no response. He sat as a sentinel in front of the door for unknown hours, unknown days. Niklaus was aware of him evaluating his symptoms. He hoped he was giving a valiant performance. Shratten bastard.

Niklaus lost consciousness several times. His tissues seized. His heart raced. Then he would wake from sleep to the mute spooning him fluid from the canteen like a sick child. And, like a child, he took it resentfully. “I hate you,” he rasped again. “They’ll come for me. When I don’t show up to my station.”

Of course he was. This was what Niklaus had wanted—to convert the boy. He had converted him straight into an intervention.

As the hours progressed, Niklaus began to wonder if he was worth the recovery. What was there to recover beneath the addiction he’d become? He didn’t remember that man. There was no one to see beyond the little death that sat on his shoulder.

Niklaus cried. His captor sat beside him in silence. Niklaus moaned. His captor brought a canteen to his mouth. Niklaus vomited. His captor cleared the mess. Niklaus shivered. His captor shifted him into a bedroll. The wagon settled into darkness. Darkness that could not be chased when the sun’s rays pierced through the crack of the door in the morning.

“I hate you,” he managed, head clearing to see beyond the moment’s agony: an agony that was beginning to lessen. “But I also might love you.” In the gloom beneath the canvas, he could have sworn the man’s mouth tilted, though it was hard to be sure. “But I hate you.”

Three full sunrises passed before the door to the wagon opened. Niklaus still felt ill, but not so violently that he couldn’t stand or speak. The mute half lifted him to his feet. His knees didn’t seem to know what to do with his weight—significantly less than it had been three days prior. Together, they made their way into the morning air. The mute stepped carefully away from Niklaus, leaving him to stand on his own. Niklaus fought to remain vertical.