“Still haven’t told me why you plan on taking my ship,” he said.
“Do you know what I was planning on doing with it, when Tibal found me on the Smokestack?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“I was debating the merits of shoving it down the throat of a sel pipeline.”
Silence held between them, heavy and tense, while Detan imagined the ramifications. If the line backed up, it could have triggered an eruption.
“You wouldn’t really have…”
Pelkaia tilted her head and looked at him. There was no smile on her lips, no sheen of amusement in her eyes. Just placid, determined calm. The same fierce light she’d had in her eyes when she’d dragged him all the way out to the Hub, knowing a whitecoat was waiting for her to slip and land in her clutches. Pelkaia was willing to burn the world and herself with it if it meant she’d take down those she’d believed wronged her. He believed she would have shoved it down the pipeline. He really did. Worse of all, he didn’t blame her for wanting to. Not one bit.
“I can’t let you take it. Not for that.” His fingers closed tight around the knife handle. If she would just look away…
“I’m past that. I plan on using this ship against Valathea, but not in such a literal fashion.”
“Any particular reason you don’t want us,” he gestured to their drugged companions, “a part of it?”
She looked away, studying the limp-doll figures, and drummed the fingers of her other hand against her thigh, a habit she’d picked up from imitating Ripka. He wondered just how much of Pelkaia was Pelkaia, and just how much were little pieces of all the others she’d mimicked melded together. But was that fair, really? How many people were entirely themselves, anyway?
“This stretch of time I’ve been given, this little extension of life. I’ve been thinking I should do something with it, since it was given to me.” She glanced sideways at him, and he looked straight to the deck boards, unmoving. “I believe I’ll go find others like us. Maybe even pull them together.”
“Like us.”
Pelkaia cocked her head, and smiled. “You’re a good man, Detan Honding. It’s your biggest flaw.”
“Could be I make you the first step on my downward spiral.”
She bit her lip as she regarded him, and for a moment she seemed at ease, the lines around her eyes softening.
“You’re not ready for this, Detan. You scrape across the Scorched ruffling the feathers of those vaguely related to the ones who wronged you, but never really biting deep. Never staying in one place too long. With the flier, you can do that. You won’t raise eyebrows skating into any backwash town on that old thing… I don’t know why you won’t take up the real fight.
“Maybe you’re afraid you’ll get yourself killed. Probably you’re afraid you’ll get others killed in your name. I’ve got none of those compunctions. I’ve paid my blood price. What I want now is war. Maybe you’ll come see me when it’s what you want, too.”
His fingers trembled as he reached up to rake one hand through his hair. His head throbbed as if the center of his forehead had its own, tiny heartbeat. Hot and angry and beat-beating away at his skull. Pelkaia had walked him through some of her meditation techniques, and that had been the only thing to ease his discomfort. That, and time. Time he was running short on now, it seemed.
She stood, and he stood beside her, grabbing her arm.
“Got one more question for you, before we part ways.”
“As you like.”
“Something’s been kicking around the back of my mind these weeks. Your boy, Pelkaia. How old at the end?”
The hard muscles of her arm went stiff beneath his fingers, her eyes narrowing just a touch. “If you saw the fi–”
“No good. You think I wouldn’t notice an older number scratched off and replaced with seventeen? I could still feel the dents the ink made in the paper. Funny thing, those little dents. Felt like they wrote out two-and-seven, not one-and-seven. But here you are, face bare to the sky, not looking a day over thirty-five. Not possible, that, unless I’m deeply mistaken on certain matters of anatomy.”
She closed her eyes, bending her head in sorrow, and spoke in such a low hiss Detan almost missed it. “He was supposed to last.”
Ah, there it was.
“How many? How many sons and daughters have you outlived?”
With a subtle twist of her shoulder she freed her arm from his grasp and turned, stepping up close enough that the scent of the oil she used to tame her hair nearly overwhelmed his senses. Hot breath wafted against his throat. He shivered.
“Enough,” she said.
“That’s fair. Stay out of their hands, Pelkaia, whatever you do. You’ve no idea what they’ll do to carve the secret of your longevity out of you.”
Detan settled back down on the deck and stretched his legs out with a contented groan.
“What are you doing, Honding? Aren’t you going to help me prep the flier?”
He tipped his head up to watch the stars pass above. Up this close, they were as bright as a lamp in the dark and as large as his own two hands laced together. Even at night he could see little sparks of sel catching and snuffing out high above the cloud line. What he’d started at Aransa was having a hard time finishing. He shivered under their knowing glare and pulled the blanket tighter around his shoulders.
“Not having it, Pelkaia. You want my ship, you’re going to have to do the work and carry my sorry hide off it.”
The tea was cold and bitter, but he got it down in one go.
Acknowledgments
This book may bear one name on the cover, but there are so many others without whom it would not exist.
First and foremost, thank you to EA Foley, Earl T Roske, Trish Henry, Amanda Forrest, and Sheatiel Sarao for reading and critiquing the whole, messy first draft. And thank you to Andrea G Stewart who read the first chunk of the second draft and assured me that, yes, I was making sense.
Thank you to my agent, Sam Morgan, who saw a spark of potential in me back in 2013 and believed in this book right from the first line. To Joshua Bilmes for his excellent advice, and for soothing this newbie’s nerves with piles of pancakes.
Thank you to Michael R Underwood, who encouraged me to submit the book to Angry Robot, and to Wesley Chu, who made me press “send”. And thank you to my editor, Phil Jourdan, who helped me polish this book up to a high shine.
Thank you to David Farland, Tim Powers, Kevin J Anderson, Joni Labaqui, and all of the Writers of the Future team. You guys made being an author feel real. Thank you, too, to Jude and Alan and the staff at Borderlands Books. Your support and insight has been invaluable.
And thank you to Steve Drew and all of /r/fantasy for your community and support.
Most of all, thank you to my partner in all things, Joey Hewitt, who scarcely raised an eyebrow when I declared a wish to be an author. That man would believe in me even if I said I wanted to become a space panda.
To all those who’ve come with me along this madcap journey to becoming an author: thank you. We’re just getting started.