Honor Among Thieves

by Rachel Caine

It was exactly half a day until we detected the white dwarf star’s radiation. I put it on audio for Bea, and together, we listened to the starsong. A strange, eerie chorus, full of rising and falling hums and hisses, clicks and ticks. An alien choir singing in keys humanity had never imagined, but there was something organized and beautiful about it too. It felt more vibrant than the atonal hiss we’d heard coming off the red giant. This seemed . . . younger, somehow. More vital.

  “Well,” I said, “it doesn’t have much of a hook, but maybe we can jazz it up with some samba beats.”

  “That isn’t funny.” Beatriz was holding my still-healing hand—which, to be fair, EMITU had done a fabulous job of repairing. The caulk was mostly absorbed now, and the swelling had gone down. “What if that thing had killed you?”

  I had been trying not to think about that, or what the consequences might be for making unauthorized first contact. I did my best. My best had ended up violent, and I had to think hard about that for the future. Fear and action, back in the Zone, had been a survival trait. But here? Maybe I had to learn a whole new set of rules and instincts.

  “It didn’t,” I said. “I admit, that encounter could’ve gone better, but I’m pretty sure nobody picked me for my diplomatic skills. Maybe next time, you do the talking. I’ll be the badass in the background.”

  Beatriz drew in a steadying breath. “Is Nadim—”

  “Awake?” I shook my head. I couldn’t feel any difference, not yet, and the lights were still down to a faint, eerie glow. “I checked to make sure that the beating the other ship gave him didn’t do more damage. Just bruises. He’ll probably be sore when he wakes up.”

  If he wakes up, I thought, but I didn’t say it because Beatriz was already on the glassy edge of panic.

  “They never told us,” she said softly.

  “What?”

  “That the Leviathan hurt each other. They always seemed so benevolent, you know, the way they talk about them back home? But first Typhon, and now this one beat Nadim up when he was down and then just left us to fend for ourselves!”

  Call me cynical, but I’d always assumed that everything they taught us about Leviathan back on Earth had been propaganda. Candy coated for sure, if any of it was even true. “Nadim told us they’re not social, really. They don’t seem to harbor much affection for one another, that’s for sure.”

  With a sigh, she made a gesture that said she was tabling the question because talking would burn more energy than we could spare.

  It felt cold. I checked the temperature on the console readout, and our baseline environmental had slipped down by almost twenty degrees. Still falling. He was withdrawing power from our section to keep himself alive.

  Wake up, Nadim. We don’t have long.

  “I’m afraid,” Bea said simply.

  I couldn’t blame her.

  The radiation from this star roared and sang, plenty strong and loud, and if it was the kind he needed, then why was he still drifting?

  We had to drag him back, somehow. I’d pretended I wasn’t scared to the best of my ability to keep Bea from freaking out, but there was so much weight on me, I could hardly breathe. This whole thing might be my fault, mine and Nadim’s together.

  In that dizzy metal darkness, something the alien had said came back to me. Soothe. Sing. He’d been talking about calling off his own Leviathan, but if Nadim heard starsong, maybe he heard human music more strongly.

  The epiphany sparked like a Roman candle.

  I turned to Beatriz and said, “Do you trust me?”

  From the archives of the A’Thon, amended from mathematical song for human translation.

  Bright the stars always, dark the space between. We fear. But we trust the Vessel to carry, one bright to the next. Trade ensue peace. But Vessel tell us not of Other. This break bright, sorrow sing, trust drown. Many generations spin. Vessel comes again. Trust again.

  But now comes war.

  And death.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Breaking Off

  BEA DIDN’T HESITATE at all. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Sing,” I said. “That first song you did for Nadim. He loved it. I think he might—”

  “Come back for it?” Her face lit with understanding. “I’d been wondering why the Honors had so many musical talents. I thought it was to make us more compatible, but maybe it’s something else. Maybe this could reach him. That’s what you’re thinking?”

  “It might not work.”

  “But it could.” She bounced up and ran toward the media room. I followed. By the time I reached the door, she was already on the stage, taking in a deep, slow breath.

  Then she began, the notes rising like pure silver in the air, echoing and enveloping me in light. Oh God, she could sing, and right now, she sang like her life depended on it. I calmed myself because that was what the alien had emphasized. While Bea serenaded, I sank to the floor and made contact, first with my injured palms and then with my bare feet. This time, I was careful and deliberate.

  Nadim.

  I framed his name in the shape of music, thought-singing, in accompaniment to Beatriz, so that the notes floated out of me and into him. Every note, every echo my siren song, more relentless than any alarm. At first he gave back only low rumbles too inchoate to be called thoughts, so I followed the bass line and drummed with my hands and feet, until his rhythm shifted to follow mine. Hard to say if it came from Bea’s singing or our connection. I guessed it was some combination of the two. A rush filled my ears—no, my head—sort of like that eerie wind that Bea summoned back on Firstworld. The same flicker of lights flashed behind my eyes, and then I sensed the shift.

  I felt Nadim.

  He wasn’t quite awake, but he was stirring. We’d touched his dreams, and they were aching. The grumble of his pain whispered through me, reverb of loneliness spiked with something else—an unspeakable yearning. Realization dizzied me; dark sleep wasn’t the same as when humans winked out for a few hours. This was something else, more like he was lost, and he needed something to guide him back to the path.

  With that in mind, I painted a mental picture, so that each of Bea’s notes hung over the dark road that connected us, buoyant as Chinese lanterns set aloft carrying wishes for the future into the New Year. Music passed through Bea to me, down my hands and feet, and became a winding path framed in brightness.

  “Come to me, Nadim. Just a little farther.”

  “Zara?”

  The hesitant, desperate touch sent a shiver of pure relief through me. Even confused and in pain, he knew me. “I’m here. Take my hand and we’ll go.” Though the scale didn’t make any sense, I imagined leading him like a balloon on a string. As he grew stronger, more present, he leapt in bounds from pool to pool of liquid song. For the Leviathan, this was like being born. Intuitively I understood, probably from the DNA that linked us, dark sleep brought with it a kind of maturation, like going into the cocoon as larvae and coming out a butterfly. Now I couldn’t rid myself of the question of what Nadim might be when he woke up, if he’d be brutal like Typhon or furious like the kin we’d just met.

  It took a long time, and no time at all, inside my head. The only way I really knew that hours had passed was that Bea began to sound more and more ragged. She was hoarse and breathless now, but we were so close. With hands and feet, I renewed my percussion on the floor with a frenzy that I knew in some distant corner of my mind wasn’t good for me, but he was close, close enough to touch and hold and keep. When I pulled him out of shadow, Nadim’s great body vibrated, toppling me sideways, and I was too tired to get up. I let my cheek stay where it was, pressed against the warming floor. I’d lost feeling in my lower limbs again, from sitting in one place for so long, but sensation burned back in.

  “He’s awake!” My voice came out hoarse.

  Bea didn’t seem to have much volume left. By the way she was shaking, she had been performing that damned aria for hours, and my poor hands were swollen again, badly bruised
from all the drumming, and the fragile skin at the seam where my toes joined my foot had split in two places. She bent over, gasping, and collapsed on the stage, sprawled in an exhausted, dramatic X of limbs and a spreading pool of curls.

  “I’m sorry,” Nadim said quietly, and the warm, familiar voice washed over me like summer rain. “I didn’t mean to.”

  I was too tired to pretend to be okay. “I was so scared. That you were dying, that we would, and it would be all my fault. Thank you. For coming back to us.” Tears burned at the corner of my dry eyes, but I didn’t let them fall.

  “I’m sorry,” he said again. “It was my fault.”

  “Our fault.” Guilt and regret threatened to drown me.

  “Nadim, I’m glad you’re back,” Bea said. Croaked, really.

  “Your voice!” He sounded horrified. She weakly flopped a hand in the air.

  “I’ll be fine. My vó sang herself hoarse many times in her day.” She levered herself up to a sitting position with a groan. “Are you all right, Nadim?” She pressed her palms against the floor—an embrace. A connection.

  “Yes.” That, at least, sounded decisive. Then his voice turned hesitant. “You—you saved me. Both of you.”

  I raised my head, finally, and exchanged a look with Beatriz. We were exhausted, sweaty, trembling with the aftermath, but that made it worthwhile. Bea fairly glowed.

  It gave me the strength to push myself to a sitting position with my back to the wall. Ow. My body was starting to protest, and it had a lot to complain about.

  “I’m glad to hear your voice, Nadim,” Bea said softly. “Don’t go again. Please.”

  “I won’t,” he said. “I’m sorry I distressed you. I am bringing all your life-support functions to optimal levels.”

  The lights were coming up now, and I could feel the warm air pouring in to diffuse the bitter chill. Life, returning.

  “Can you manage now?” I asked.

  “Yes. I’m in some pain, but the damage will heal.” He paused. “I feel that things happened while I was away. Will you tell me?”

  Beatriz sighed. “Later. If you don’t mind, I desperately want a shower. And a few hours of sleep.”

  “You must be burnt.” I reached up to grasp her hand as she got up. “Maybe see EMITU for the backache and the throat?”

  She shook her head. “Sleep will fix me. I’d rather not be fuzzy.” She bent to whisper, “You’re staying awake?” I nodded. “Good. Don’t let him go out again, okay?”

  “I won’t.”

  She hurried off to her room for privacy, maybe to sob in relief in the shower that we’d survived this challenge. She wouldn’t want me to see that, much less Nadim.

  I wanted to feel victorious. It was like winning the Olympic gold in space hurdles, only there would be no fancy ceremony, no medals. Our only reward was currently performing some kind of self-inventory, with little purrs of curiosity.

  “Fascinating,” Nadim said.

  “What is?”

  “I can dark run now.” Together, those words made no particular sense, though I understood each of them separately.

  “Which means?” I studied the damage I’d done to my feet. Blood trickled from the splits in the skin between my toes. Ow.

  “I told you that I go into deep sleep—dark sleep—unexpectedly.”

  “Which is why you need the alarm, which by the way doesn’t do a damn thing until it’s installed.”

  “Yes,” he said, and sounded chagrined. “I’m aware of that. I never thought I would need it on the Tour. That was my error.”

  “Pretty sure it was our error.”

  “Yes.” There was something both warm and regretful in that word. “That’s true. And we must be careful.”

  “You were saying . . . ?”

  “Dark sleep is a natural process that allows our bodies to rapidly develop and mature. It’s similar to a . . . human growth spurt, but normally, we control it and enter that stasis when it’s safe.”

  As analogies went, it wasn’t bad. “So what does ‘dark run’ do?” Sounds ominous.

  “I can vanish from sensors. Hide myself.”

  “You have a stealth mode? Cool. But . . . you feel conflicted about it?” His ambivalence whistled through me, jarring as a train signal that just wouldn’t stop.

  “I went into dark sleep before I should have,” he told me. “This was different than before. It seemed . . . deeper. I haven’t just slept. I’ve . . . changed.”

  “And that’s bad?”

  “It’s . . . unusual,” he said. “It’s not supposed to happen until I am on the Journey. I think . . . I think this is why there are rules about sharing deep bonds with others before the Journey. It triggers . . . changes.”

  Lord, this was starting to sound a hell of a lot more complicated than I’d thought. Maybe deep bonding was like sex: while it felt great, you needed a certain level of maturity to handle the consequences. And the consequences changed you.

  “I don’t want to . . . mess up your development, Nadim. Or hurt you.” I took a deep breath. “You almost died. We almost died. That shouldn’t happen, no matter how good it felt in the moment.”

  “I know.” He was regretful, that ambivalence in full force. The wanting was still there, but so was a new, quelling caution. “The Tours . . . the Tours are supposed to accustom me to light bonds. But it didn’t work. I didn’t. I will know better now.”

  “Hey, maybe share a little of that knowledge too? Because lack of it nearly got me and Bea killed.”

  I felt his contrition in waves of sad blues. “Yes. I will make more information available to you. I am sorry, Zara.”

  I heaved myself upright, and my sore feet left smears of blood. It was so little in comparison to his massive bulk that he shouldn’t have sensed it, so it startled me when he said, with an urgent edge, “You’re wounded. Please seek medical assistance.”

  “How can you recognize that? Blood, I mean?”

  “It’s—” He seemed to consider that for a moment. “It’s mixed with mine, but I don’t know how that happened.” I did. I’d been wounded and bleeding while inside his body, fixing him. “I can sense it now. How odd. Are you badly injured, Zara?”

  “Nope. I’m fine.” I immediately winced when I took a step, and slipped my shoes on. It didn’t help, but at least I didn’t leave bloody footprints limping to the med bay.

  I got a sarcastic lecture from EMITU and flesh caulk on my hands and beneath my toes, plus some kind sticky balm for my bruised palms. The treatment left me walking weird, trying to balance on my heels, and it also left me realizing how bone tired I was. I couldn’t wait to lie down.

  I was heading for the data consoles, though, when Nadim said, gently, “You don’t need to keep watch. I won’t slip away again. Please. Go and rest.”

  I trailed my fingertips over the wall in silent thanks. As I hobbled to my quarters, Nadim asked, “Is now a good time to share what I missed?”

  I did—in general terms, at least. He listened in silence until I got to the part where I’d gone deep-Nadim-diving. His startled reaction nearly knocked me flat. “You went . . . to the heart of me?”

  Putting it that way made it seem so intimate when I hadn’t been thinking like that at the time. Nothing sexy about crawling through waste and getting my hands sliced to ribbons in the process. “I guess. It was the only solution we could come up with to keep you safe.”

  “I don’t know how you survived that.” He sounded dazed again.

  “Skinsuit, a little luck, a laser scalpel, and a lot of running. And Bea talking me through it. She was brilliant.”

  “You both are. You keep doing the impossible, Zara.” An unidentifiable sound escaped him. “Now that I’m searching, I can feel the path you carved into me. Like a physical reminder of you.”

  “Oh God, did I damage something?” If so, I wondered how the hell I’d get up the courage for another repair run. I didn’t have the stamina at the moment.

  “No. But . .
. it is . . . unprecedented?” He seemed to struggle to find the words, and though I wasn’t trying to feel what he did, it was more like I couldn’t help feeling it, as if we’d turned some corner, and that yearning loneliness I’d sensed in the dream swept over me, heavier this time and more irresistible. Sometimes it felt as if the more I gave him, the more he would absorb, and I should have been frightened.

  But I wasn’t.

  I paused in my walk and leaned against the wall. My feet needed the rest. “Unprecedented?” The little prompt slipped out before I could stop it. After all the terrifying silence, I was so hungry for Nadim’s words.

  “Without more training, neither of you should have been able to wake me. That is what the shock device is designed to do. Yet somehow, you did.”

  “Because we are just that good. There was no way we were losing you.”

  His response was grave. “This is why there are always two Honors, one starsinger and one pilot. Both of you were well chosen. I have no right to say this, but . . . thank you. For staying alive.”

  Beatriz had to be the starsinger, so that meant I was the pilot—but I was nowhere near as good as Bea at that, either, so how did that track? I had so many questions, and this time, Nadim would address them. While he might still be healing, that was no excuse for avoidance.

  “You’re welcome. But you owe me all the answers, got me?”

  “That is fair,” Nadim said.

  “Okay, first off, I want all your databases unlocked. Everything. Including files on alien races. I don’t want to be caught like that again.”

  “Understood, Zara.”

  “And what was it that Tenty said about a bond-name?”

  “Tenty . . . ?”

  “Octopus tentacle thing from the other Leviathan. Answer the question.”

  “When we are accepted as worthy to undertake the Journey, we are renamed. I think you might understand it as . . . a baptism. Some choose a name formed of ship and pilot.”

  “So we’d be like . . . Zadim or Nara?” I was mostly joking with that, but he seemed to be considering it seriously.

  “I would prefer Zadim.” He wasn’t joking. He also seemed sad. “But it is unlikely I will be able to choose my final pilot and starsinger. The Elders choose who we are most compatible with.”