“Captain,” Azarcon says, still calm. “That status can be readily changed.”
“Niko, let me talk to him.”
He looks at me. He’s doubtful. I convinced him to stay and now there are three Hub ships against him and Ash farther out of reach. But he motions me forward.
The jets in brig know. Now so will my captain.
I limp to Niko’s comm and lean on the chair arm.
“Captain Azarcon, it’s Private Musey.”
Dead silence. Brief but pointed. Then he asks: “Are you okay?”
He thinks I’m a prisoner. He thinks this is the Warboy’s show of good faith. He’s waiting for my duress code, so he’ll know I’m being coerced.
I don’t give it. My fingers dig into the arm of Niko’s chair. “Yes, sir, I’m fine. Please, stand down your battle stations. Captain S’tlian doesn’t want a fight with you. His brother, Ash, has been the one in trade alliance with Falcone and the other pirates. Captain S’tlian has been tracking his brother all this time, to arrest him.”
“And you know this how?” Dangerously temperate.
“Sir, I think you know.” I swallow and taste something sour. “Sir, the jets are safe. But Ash will run into a sinkhole in Hub space, with Falcone, if we don’t move.”
“I have no reason to believe a traitor. I want my jets back. Now. This is not negotiable.”
Damned suspicious people. The fact Niko doesn’t fire on Macedon isn’t answer enough?
“He’ll return the jets. If you escort the battle group through Hub space. Captain, he did stay on my suggestion until the battleships arrived.”
“I’m going to send over a Charger to pick up my crew. I advise you not to fire on it.”
The link breaks.
Niko looks at me. “You know this man. Is he agreeable?”
My grip on the chair sends shaking pain up through my arms. “I don’t know. But, kia’redann bae, if you fire on them this war won’t be over anytime soon. Return the jets and take what he offers. If you shoot them now in order to pursue Ash, the long-range outcome will destroy Aaian-na. Admiral Ashrafi will see to that.” I look him in the eyes. “You were right. Azarcon has a lot of rein in the Hub. If you work it with him, the rest might follow.”
“He seems disagreeable,” Niko says. “I haven’t shot at him once. If I intended to kill him, he would be dead.”
“He wants his crew back. That will convince him.”
Because Turundrlar never returned prisoners of war before.
Niko taps his comm. “Tkata, escort the jets to airlock two.”
“I want to go,” I say. “To see them off.”
I can’t go back with them. He looks at me. He nods, but doesn’t get up to take me. This is his bridge and he can’t leave it now.
So I go alone.
* * *
XVI.
The jets and pilots say nothing. It’s all in their eyes. Except for Evan, who stands a bit apart, looking at the deck. They mill in front the airlock, surrounded by armed strivs and symps. And me. Waiting.
Finally Aki looks at me. “Did you kill Kris?”
I meet her eyes. “No.”
Dorr snorts and looks at the ceiling. His smile has sharp edges.
Aki wants to believe me. But her doubt is thick. Like their derision. Like my guilt.
Like my guilt.
“That tat’s gonna come off,” Dorr says. “If I gotta hunt you six ways from the sun. You don’t wear Mac’s tat on your traitor skin.”
I breathe out. “I’ll remove it, sir.”
“Don’t sir me, you bastard!”
It’s the truth burrowing into every expression, like the pain of an old wound.
“What’d you tell Birdman, huh?” Dorr continues. He’s started and he won’t stop. “When he took you out, did you spill about Cap?”
“No. I didn’t tell him anything.”
“Yah. Yah, ’cept how you whored for the Warboy on our ship.”
I am speechless.
“What you tell the Warboy? You tell him all ’bout Mac and her armament? What’s it take, Muse? He do a little sign language in your pants? That all it takes to get you to roll on somebody, Musey? Damn if you ain’t the whore’s whore. Loyalty as long as you get your piece of ass.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“Yah? You didn’t feed info to the strits about us and our routes? About our missions?”
The strivs shift. Most of them might not understand the corporal, but they know the rage.
“Niko has no intention of hurting Macedon.”
“Who’s Niko?”
“The Warboy. The Warboy—he has no intention of doing anything to Mac. He put me on her to scope out a peace—”
“You sick bastard. You’re on a first-name basis with him.”
“Peace through spying?” Hartman asks. “That’s novel.”
I can’t explain. There’s no point. Their hatred just builds.
Aki’s eyes are hard and shining.
“He saved me from Falcone,” I tell her.
But she doesn’t answer.
Dorr says, in a tone I can’t decipher, “So that justifies you?”
All my words are withered.
One of the strivs gets a comm. He says, “They’re ready,” and motions to another. We hear the clang and grate of the Charger locking on. The strivs motion the jets to face the airlock.
Evan stares at me.
He doesn’t want to go. I see it in his eyes and I can’t believe it. He would stay on an alien ship. He asks it, with his eyes, as the lock cycles open and a gust of cold air surrounds us.
But this isn’t his place. He didn’t survive Mukudori and Shiva to end up on an alien ship.
I shake my head at him, one movement of denial.
My vision blurs. Maybe it’s better that way. I just watch his back, all of them in their black uniforms, as they walk from Turundrlar to the Charger. Evan looks back but I can’t see his face clearly.
All of them blur and then they are gone.
* * *
XVII.
I sit on the deck, in the corridor, because I don’t know where to go. Maybe back to the bridge, except it’s a long way and my legs don’t work. One of the strivs stays, but only one. The rest leave. The striv doesn’t talk to me. I want to sleep, but it’s so urgent to sleep that I don’t think even if I could lie down that I would. I’m too tired to sleep.
I don’t know how long I’m there, but the deck gets warm where I sit.
Then footsteps approach. Soft, padding footsteps. The shadow of the striv goes away and another replaces it. I look up against the lights and Niko is there, tall and clean in those white, coiled strips. He holds out his hand to help me stand.
I still have Falcone’s scent on my skin. Not even the cold can take it away.
I let Niko grip my hand and pull me up.
On my feet I try to balance. But he doesn’t let me. He tugs me into his arms and holds me. A long time. He is warm and I feel his heart, even through the layers of clothing.
There isn’t a word in my head to say.
I remember he’s human. I feel his arms around me, crushing me breathless. I close my eyes against what I see. I try to make it all black. But I can’t and be this close.
I realize my arms are still at my sides. He realizes it too.
“Jos-na.” Finally he lets me go. Then he holds my face in his hands, staring into me. I can’t say anything. I can’t feel anything. He’s a face from a dream that I forget when I awake.
He looks down, picking up one of my hands, gently. He runs his finger along the crusted blood around my wrists, where the cuffs bit. “This needs help,” he says.
I can’t breathe. It rolls in me like nausea. But it’s something else.
I step back, almost stumble, but he holds my arm, anchoring me. He cups a hand under my chin. My world dissolves and he catches it all, everything that pours out of me that I can’t control anymore.
* * *
XVIII.
I fall asleep in his quarters out of sheer exhaustion, in clean clothes like the loose black garments I used to wear on Aaian-na. He made me change after he treated my cuts. He put me on his pallet. He cut the lights and let me lie there, alone, because he has to be on the bridge.
The darkness is filled by his scent. I drift and awaken and drift again. More than once I wake up shouting, but nobody hears me.
So I lie there and the sound of the drives is not Macedon’s sound.
He comes back. I don’t know how long it’s been. He brings food and sets it down by the pallet, and sits beside me. For a moment it’s almost like no time has passed, and I could be back in my room on Aaian-na.
But it’s only a moment.
“What’s happened?” I ask him. I can’t touch the food. My stomach refuses to unroll.
“Macedon is escorting us through Hub space.”
I look at him. “Then it’s all right?”
He steals some of the cold vegetables. “No. But they are escorting us. I think he’s waiting for a wrong move so he has an excuse to shoot at us.”
“Has he said anything—asked anything?” About me?
“No, Jos-na. I think he’s too angry for that.”
He eats in silence for a while. I just sit.
“You’ll want to debrief me,” I say eventually.
He hesitates. His eyes haven’t left my face. “Not now. You need rest.”
“Now, Niko.” It’s strange saying his name like that. It’s strange to be speaking this language. It feels like an extra skin over my words. “Give me a slate. I’ll write it.”
His hesitation goes a beat too long. But he finally rises and goes to his desk in the corner. It’s a small quarters, bare compared to Azarcon’s. Just the pallet and a desk and a washing place, obscured by a curtain. He comes back and hands me the slate. He pauses, caught looking at me. As if I’m a face he’s trying to remember. Or memorize.
The deskcomm beeps. He goes to it, answers. His co-captain Tkata aon Tul says they are in attack distance from Ash. He taps off and goes to the hatch.
“Stay here, Jos-na.”
He doesn’t want me underfoot. Not when he has to capture his brother.
“Are you going over there?” I know how assassins think.
“He is my brother.”
“I want to go with you, Niko. Falcone is there.”
“You’re unwell.”
“I’m well enough.”
“No.”
I stare at him. He let me go for three years on an EarthHub carrier. But he won’t let me go two meters onto his brother’s ship.
He leaves. I know it’s just his way, but for some reason it stings.
I look at the slate. It’s faulty. The screen blurs and the image shakes. It’s impossible to write. There’s nowhere to put my thoughts. They all just collide and break in my mind.
* * *
XIX.
I walk around the ship while the attack wears on. The aliens look at me with their black eyes and bold faces, colorful, tattooed faces that I haven’t seen in the past three years except at the end of my rifle sight. But those were different strivs. Those were Ash’s partisans. The symps I killed were his symps, not like Niko. Not like me.
Except those times Macedon caught strivs near stations or depots and attacked, and pirates were probably not involved, they were just strivs and just symps. Like Niko and like me. Maybe some of them that I killed were related to the ones that pass me in the corridors. It’s hard to say. The caste colors and tattoos obscure features. And they don’t speak to me. I’m a ghost in their way, moving through the Warboy’s place.
Tkata aon Tul announces on shipwide that Niko is on his way back. I go to the hangar bay. It’s cold and deep and nobody stops me here either. Nobody speaks to me. Ter’tlo isn’t around; she probably went with Niko. It’s oddly quiet, not like the ruckus in a bay filled by jets and pilots. Equipment moves here, fuel lines lock and scrape across the deckplates, but the people are well tempered, dutiful, purposeful. I stand behind protective plexpane as the APCs lower into the bay on lit platforms. When the lights start to blink green I head down to the deck.
Niko emerges first, holding Ash’s arm. Ash is cuffed and there are two strivs behind him with guns aimed. His face is blank.
Behind Niko come more strivs and symps, with others under guard. Streams of them.
One of them is Mra o Hadu. Under gun. He is older, like I am, with the white cold face of an assassin-priest. I remember our spars in the inidrla-na. I almost step forward but it is a line of assassins and they are all silent. No taunts, no coercion in violence. The prisoners can’t fight or they will die running like game. I stay where I am, off to the side near the bulkhead. Watching.
No Falcone.
Niko’s face does not invite questions. He doesn’t see me. He walks past with Ash, straight out of the bay.
I follow them.
They don’t go to the brig. Instead Niko takes Ash into a wide, clear room. Like a gymnasium, except there is no equipment. Just clean flooring. Like the inidrla-na. Except there are no windows and no swords on the walls.
It’s just as cold here as in the hangar bay.
“Line them up,” Niko orders.
His crew positions the prisoners in a line side by side in the middle of the room, with Ash at the head of them.
I catch Mra o Hadu’s black eyes. He stares through me as if he doesn’t recognize me. Maybe he doesn’t. It’s been years. We are two different people. Two different beings.
Niko’s crew stands behind him, a mirror line to the prisoners, all of them symps and strivs, similarly clothed, similarly colored and tattooed. All of them expressionless. They might not even be breathing, they are so still.
Niko says, “Begin recording.”
The striv nearest to him hooks an optic around her ear and tilts the eye toward the line of prisoners. A small red light turns on near the eye.
“Recording, kia’redan bae,” she says.
Niko says into his brother’s face, standing directly in front of him and only a hand apart: “Speak.”
“I have nothing to say,” Ash says.
“You have something to say to me. You choose not to. You choose instead to say it to pirates.”
“What can I say that will make a difference to the kia’redan bae?’ His voice is the same weary mockery. “Eja, you will make treaty with the captains who have killed our people, our father, and look to persecute our mother if given the opportunity. They speak of protectorates in the halls of their government, even as we stand here. Do you think a peace will last, or mean anything?”
“I don’t know,” Niko says. “Because nobody has yet tried. And don’t speak of our mother. This will hurt her more than anything EarthHub can do.”
“What do you want me to say, Niko? I’m not sorry.”
I see it. I see that Niko is more sorry. I see his profile, how unmoving it is and how carefully he keeps his hands at his sides.
He takes one stride and stops in front of Mra o Hadu.
“You slept in our house,” he says to the striv.
Hadu doesn’t blink. “Kii’redan Ash-dan is my teacher,” he says.
“Ki’redan-na D’antan o Anil is your leader.”
Hadu doesn’t answer. But Ash-dan looks at his student and there is pride in his eyes.
“You failed,” Niko says.
The blade is in his hand. He stabs Mra o Hadu where the striv heart is, in the center of his chest. He pulls the blade before Hadu crumples to the deck.
The transparent, diamond-specked wings flutter just a little, settling last on the deck. Deep amber blood begins to stain them, spreading out from under his chest.
Ash breathes heavily, staring at his brother. His entire body takes in those breaths and expels them, like he is trying to get rid of something inside that refuses to go. Hadu’s blood touches his boots. But he doesn’t look down. I don’t
breathe. I want to stop it. But there’s no stopping it. Niko steps back to Ash.
“I curse you,” Ash says. Suddenly there are tears in his eyes and his voice is unsteady. “I curse you for what you’re doing.”
“It’s already begun,” Niko says. “You carried it too long, Ash. You became it. And sacrificed children.”
“Because this war won’t end any other way,” Ash says. “You’re fooling yourself.” He settles. I can’t hear his breaths. I can’t see his eyes or what they look at. Only Niko sees.
Once Ash was my teacher too.
Niko says, “I do what I have to do.”
He raises the knife. He doesn’t hesitate. And yet it’s not so quick that I don’t see the blade. I see it. It’s in his hand and it comes down.
* * *
XX.
Niko leaves the rest of the prisoners. He holds that knife and walks toward the doors. He doesn’t see me. I walk beside him. My booted steps are heavy compared to his light stride.
But his face is hard.
“Niko.”
The corridors change as we leave them and enter others. But his eyes don’t change, fixed on a point ahead of him. Far ahead of him.
Maybe he’s a stranger now. But I grab his arm.
He whirls on me. I step back.
“Go away, Jos-na.”
“If you didn’t want to do it—”
“Go away, Jos-na!”
“Why? Why did you do it if you didn’t want to?”
“Stop asking questions. I’m not your teacher now.”
No, he isn’t. He is an assassin and I never truly realized it until now.
But I say quietly, “You’ll always be my teacher, Nikolas-dan.”
Even when we no longer understand each other.
The dark stones of his eyes turn to me. They shine like they have been smoothed and polished by hundreds of years of rivers.
“He betrayed me,” he says. “He betrayed himself.”
I take the knife from him and he lets me. I take his hand and he doesn’t stop me. Then I drop the knife and take his face in my hands. I touch the dark tattoo around his eye, trace it with my fingers. It’s everything he is, a complicated knot of meaning, perfect in its intricacy. Alien and immediate. His skin is warm under my hands.
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