His gaze belies his words. March stares at me as if I stand across a chasm he has no hope of crossing. Maybe he can’t feel the warmth between us, but it exists. There must be a bridge, so I’ll take the first step toward finding it.

“I want you inside me.”

After a moment of silent resistance, his icy soul fills mine.

* * *

CHAPTER 55

lt’s not a fix, but a reminder of what we lost. By the time March pulls out, I’m shivering. I’ll never give up on him, but this will take time. We have to figure out how to repair what’s been broken, as Mair did.

Instead of walking away, I sit with him quietly in the dark.

Hours later, I locate my crew in the starboard lounge. They all seem to be in good shape, drinks in hand. Vel sits with his handheld, tapping away. The last vestige of fear dissipates, and that’s new, too.

I feel responsible for these people, not in the usual way, which involves making sure I get the jump right. In the past, that’s all the accountability I acknowledged. What befalls someone when I’m not in the nav chair, well, that’s not my fault. Right?

Wrong. For crazy misbegotten reasons, they follow me, so what happens to them, it’s on me. They call this leadership, I think, but it’s new. I crackle with it.

“Hell of a thing,” Dina says with a grin. She pushes from her chair and limps over to me, just about crushing my ribs in a hug.

“I am glad to see you recovered,” Constance tells me.

Is she glad? Can she be? For just a moment, I put aside my questions about her nature, or what she can learn, and accept what she says at face value.

“You did a helluva job,” I answer. “Without you, everyone would be dead, and I’d be captive to my mother’s warmongering.”

The PA pauses as if parsing my words. And then she says, delightfully, unintentionally modest: “I am here to help.”

We all snicker, and it doesn’t matter that Constance regards us with puzzlement. Each of us brings our own gifts to the mix. We stand together, or we fall. I get that now.

Once the chatter dies down, I cross to where Jael sits, slightly apart from the others. I drop down beside him. “What were you trying to tell me? On the skiff?”

He shakes his head with a bittersweet half smile. “It doesn’t matter. The moment’s passed.”

What did he think he needed to apologize for?

Before I can question him, Hit announces, “Planetfall in fifteen minutes, so bundle up in your winter clothes and strap in.”

Four planets in eight days.

For the first time, I don’t envy someone else the nav chair. If I were sitting up there, I’d be dead. I know it. I need to rest and recuperate while taking my daily injections, or I may never see grimspace again. And while the hunger hasn’t lessened—I still long to jump like I want nothing else in this world besides March—my ability to tune it out has improved.

I feel drunk with remembered wonder. First glimpse of the sun rising over the glaciers on Ielos, sunset at the Freeport falls, and an afternoon walk along the famed Avenida de Marquez on Axis V, where the bloodshed began so long ago. I tread along the paths where my predecessor Karl Fitzwilliam made his infamous missteps.

So many people waved and cheered when the convoy passed by, as if I deserved those accolades. What have I ever done to earn them? I’ve touched history this last week, seen and smelled it. Perhaps I’m even becoming part of it in ways I can’t comprehend. I imagine it like threads of a tapestry woven together with such expertise that I can’t see the separate pieces anymore.

Whole worlds fade like that beneath me. The towns become patchwork textures and then blur into misty colors. Finally, I can no longer see the people who believe in me, who seem to think I can step into the breach and persuade the Ithtorians to side with us in the coming war.

Because, make no mistake, I’ve seen the bodies in the first skirmish. Now more than ever, the Morgut see us as prey. And the only thing that might give them pause is an alliance with Ithiss-Tor.

I’m not ready. I don’t know enough. I’m terrified I’ll fuck this up, and humanity everywhere will pay the price. Maybe my mother’s still banking on that, and that’s another thorn in my side.

But I’ll step up.

My gut gurgles as if in answer. I’m bloated from heavy food, eaten at too many parties. And my right hand hurts from all the meet-and-greets. I wore the right clothes and smiled for the press, dandled unfortunate children on my knee, and played a politician for the vids. That was the easy part.

Now the last stop on our tour recedes beneath me. Seeing so many worlds rouses an odd sensation; I’d call it wanderlust, but it’s more like a fierce need to move on, because I don’t have anywhere like these folks do.

Whatever its faults, they have somewhere they call their own. One they’d fight for, die for. Home.

I don’t put down roots. I live for the next jump, even though the next might be my last. How did somebody like me wind up in charge of something so important?

A disembodied voice tells me, “Five minutes to jump.”

Once it would’ve bothered me to strap in with everyone else, but today I have far too much on my mind to make room for something so minor. I make my way to the hub and take a seat next to Vel, but this time I strap in without assistance. I’m an expert passenger now.

“Afterward,” he says in lieu of greeting, “we have work to do.”

Damn right. Constance doesn’t ever let up on the customs—I half suspect she recites the list to me in my sleep—but I need to know the rest. By the time we reach Ithiss-Tor, I need to be the foremost human expert in native customs.

I nod. “I’d like to start with religion.”

I give my safety gear one last tug. The helmet feels strange, but as the ship trembles, it can’t block out my awareness of the beacons entirely. As if through a veil of water, I feel the jumper scanning grimspace. She’s better than the Syndicate navigator, more confident, and she takes us right there.

My skin prickles, the hair standing up on the back of my neck. Though I can’t see what she sees, the wildfire and the glorious, cascading colors pouring over the hull, I sense it. Grimspace runs through my blood and bones, boiling inside my cells. What that means, I can’t begin to guess.

But a tiny part of me withers and dies when we make the jump back. Yearning sears me like a live wire. I wish I could stay there, utterly unfettered.

Beside me, Vel unbuckles and holds out a hand. “Shall we?”

It takes me another moment to get out of the chair, and then I accept his help. If only things come this easy on Ithiss-Tor. But I know better. He’s warned me about the reception I’ll receive—and given the shame of his profession, they won’t be ecstatic to see him either. I just count us lucky to have gained their initial agreement to take the matter under advisement and permit the arrival of our delegation.

Ten minutes later, we settle in my quarters. The room is a little larger than the space I enjoyed when I worked for the Corp, but nothing like Keller offered on the Syndicate yacht. I guess piracy doesn’t pay quite as well as being a crime lord.

“I am going to molt,” Vel warns me. “If you are to function on my homeworld, you must accustom yourself to the way we look.”

“No problem. I’m used to you.” I hope that’s not an overstatement.

But there are no surprises this time when his faux-human skin drops away. A boxy little cleaning bot activates and whirs into action at his feet, but I don’t break eye contact. I’m not uncomfortable gazing into his faceted eyes. He’s still Velith, the person who’s saved my ass more times than I can count.

Maybe I can do this after all.

“Religion,” he says. “We revere something called the Iglogth. Not God as you understand it, but rather vitality that gives life to everything in the universe. My people believe everything is cyclical, and that the spark which makes you unique returns to the Iglogth, only to be reused at a later time.”

“Sort of like reincarnation?” Primitive humans put faith in that, before we proved the soul doesn’t exist. When I remember everyone I’ve lost, my father foremost among them, I wish that wasn’t true. I wish I believed we might be together again. I left too many words unsaid.

His mandible moves, clicking sounds result, and then his vocalizer translates. It’s funny how much I miss beneath that false skin. “In a manner of speaking.”

“Is there anything else I should know?”

“Only as relates to death customs,” Vel answers. “We burn our dead and scatter the ashes to the four winds in a formal ceremony. It symbolizes the return of the spirit to the great Iglogth.”

“No other religious rituals?”

He turns his head from side to side, a learned human gesture for the negative. It sits strangely on his alien face.

“Moving on then.”

We work for hours, covering art, architecture, and world history. By the time Constance interrupts us—what a PA, she even reminds me to eat—my head feels like an overripe melon. If there’s another human being who knows more about Ithtorian physiology, mating habits, or customs, well—the Conglomerate should’ve hired him. Because I don’t think I can learn another fact before we put down. I eat with one hand and rub my temples with the other.

Vel watches me, his side-set eyes studying me with what I take to be concern. “Are you well, Sirantha?”

“I’m not sure it’ll be enough. I can’t do more, but what if—” No, I won’t give my fears credence by speaking them aloud. I’ll bear this by myself. “Can you work with Constance and download everything we’ve talked about to her database? That way, if I’m about to make a dire mistake, she can nudge me or something.”

“Yes, I believe I can.”

I need insurance, but that’s the best I can do. Shortly thereafter, the bounty hunter and the droid head for his quarters to fulfill my request. I appreciate that, too; I’m sure Vel sensed I need some time alone.

For at least an hour, I wander the ship, trying to calm my ragged nerves. Fear threatens to choke me from the inside out. If I fuck up here, the whole civilized world will suffer. The Conglomerate needs an alliance with Ithiss-Tor—a rebuff at this juncture would be catastrophic. I battle back my doubt, shove it into the dark place where it can’t touch my conscious mind. It will return in the form of nightmares, but I can pay the cost later.

If it lets me function, do what I need to do, then that’s enough. I wind up in the observation lounge, where the wall has been replaced with a cunning electronic screen that mirrors what’s right outside the ship. It mirrors a window, down to the last shimmer of smoky glass.

Even before they make the announcement, I recognize Ithiss-Tor beneath us. From up here, it’s a beautiful world, all pale whorls and dark curls that must be land. My fists clench.

I can’t do this without you, love. But March is shut away in his quarters, fighting his own demons, so I can’t lean. I have to be strong for him now.

He needs me.