“Oh please.” Shy rolled her eyes. “We’re not children — especially me. Where do you get off? We’ve already overcome the impossible and we’ve faced the enemy head on. Don’t refuse the help out of pride, Locke.”
“It’s not out of pride. The war pack isn’t going to simply trust a group of outsiders to aid them in the most dire war in their history.”
“You can convince them. I know you can. You once convinced Edger to eat the tail of a rhinestone scorpion.”
He snorted. “Edger was drunk.”
“So were you.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Fine. I’ll speak with the pack leader, but I can’t promise he’ll let you in on their plans — much less replace me in the execution of them. I don’t know when they intend to launch the attack, but their planning session convenes in the morning. You’ll have time to rest, at least.”
“Thank you,” Tayel said.
“We’ll see how grateful you are if he lets you go.” He shook his head. “In any case, it looks like everyone’s finished. I can take you all to the home pack. They might be able to make you all new clothes. You’ll need them if you intend to be outside.”
“Sounds good,” Shy said.
Tayel helped clean up the mess from the meal, and followed Locke through the compound afterward.
The night went by in a blur, with her growing more and more tired as she was led from one task to the next. The home pack re-wrapped her burn, took her measurements for clothes, and assigned her, Fehn, and Jace cots in a vacant barrack. It was hard not to consider why it was empty in the first place.
When the checklist of things to do finally ended, she fell onto her cot and squeezed her eyes shut. But with the rattling walls and prospect of launching an attack on the Rokkir mothership, she doubted sleep would ever come.
Chapter 23
Tayel dreamed of long hallways in Castle Aishan, where dark portals flickered in the walls. Ruxbane reached out for her from within them. Each shadow she passed, his reach came closer. Every step, those hallways grew more and more narrow until a ship — Shy’s ship — flew overhead, a trail of fire and smoke eating at its wing. Tayel ground to a silent halt. The ship. The crash. Modnik. The vessel tore itself apart in the sky, and she started awake.
Heat radiated from a single torch perched on the wall above her cot. It cast the small room in blue. She placed her sweating palms against the fabric and pushed herself up, causing the metal poles to grate over the silence. She winced. Jace turned over under his furs in the cot beside her, and Tayel froze — waited. Her breathing was a rapid whisper of air in the quiet until a soft whistle left Jace, his snoring resumed.
She slid her legs over the side and settled her bare feet to the floor. Castle Aishan, exploding ships, dark portals; what a dream. It wasn’t bad enough she had to deal with everything while awake. She wiped her forehead with her hand. It came away slick.
On the opposite side of the room as Jace, Fehn’s cot lay empty, a bundle of furs left hanging over the edge. A twinge of worry pinched inside her. Maybe he’d gone to the bathroom, or maybe he was getting breakfast, if it was time for food at all. She had no concept of the hour, if it was night or day. There were no windows, no clocks.
She rubbed her temples, grinding the images of portals and Ruxbane out of her skull. After everything she’d been through, sleep should have come much easier.
A soft rap on the outer stone wall echoed in the room, and without waiting for answer, the furs hanging over the entrance split open. A feminine silhouette stood out against the orange backlight in the hall.
Tayel leaned forward. “Shy?”
“Hey,” Shy whispered back. She slipped through the opening and tiptoed to Tayel’s cot, carrying a strong scent of spice with her. “Can I sit?”
Tayel nodded and shifted to the side.
“How’d you sleep?” Shy asked.
Tayel closed her eyes and saw Ruxbane again. She remembered his angular face in the clouds of dust back in Castle Aishan, the quirk of a smile as he stepped toward her. She remembered the councilwoman, crazed and seething in the forest clearing, saying Ruxbane wanted Tayel alive. With everything that happened since, it seemed so trivial — so nonsensical — but alone, in the dark, with everyone asleep, and the quakes of combat rumbling through her cot, the idea of him haunted her.
“Not well,” she said finally.
“You’re stressed.”
Tayel nodded.
“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to, you know — to the mothership. Once it’s taken down, getting to the Delta shuttle will be easier.” Shy stared at the floor. “Safer.”
“But I have to help. I mean, I want to help.”
Tayel’s breath caught as Shy turned toward her. A long white bandage stood out against her face, from her ear to her chin.
“Are you okay?” Tayel asked. “I mean, after yesterday. I’m sorry — with everything happening last night I didn’t have time to…”
“Of course I’m okay.”
Tayel gave a short laugh. “Tch. Of course.” She sighed. “I guess I understand why you’d be hesitant about me storming the mothership. I want to help the Varg and your brother and Jace, but I’m not good at fighting, or sneaking, or any of this. I’m not like you.”
“I’m not suggesting you don’t go, Tayel. I only want you to know you have a choice.” Shy clasped her hands together. “And you’ve come far. Think about it. You’ve stolen fuel from a council-certified site, distracted an entire squad of armed guards so I could pluck an FTL drive out of a ship, endured an aether burn, fought off a Rokkir and her henchmen in the woodsin the dark, and took out a couple fighters in that dog fight last night. You’re better at this than you think.”
Tayel flicked her eyes to the other girl’s face, but Shy didn’t wear an inkling of jest. The vote of confidence caught her off guard.
“You think?” she asked.
“I do.” Shy’s thoughtful expression turned wry. “Although, your penchant for nobly sacrificing yourself for Jace is a mark against you. As far as survival odds go.”
“Oh come on. I’m sure you’d do the same for your best friend. Your brother, at least.”
“Locke — I’d do anything for Locke.” She frowned. “But I’ve never had any friends. Not really.”
“Uh-huh.”
Shy scowled. “I grew up royalty.”
“Gotta be lots of friends in that,” Tayel chided.
“Raider royalty. I was schooled privately every day of my life, raised out of the public, kept inside the den… The one friend other than Locke I had is” — she stiffened — “not important. Not in my life anymore. And that was a fluke. In those conditions, what real friends could I have possibly made? I was just stuck there. Alone. Never even left Sinos.”
Tayel’s disbelief evaporated at Shy’s distant stare.
“When a raider recruit turns sixteen, they’re supposed to join a mission. Earn your gear and stripes and some xite like that. It’s a rite of passage. Even if it’s something stupid — something small, like following up on a late payment or harassing ‘contributions’ out of Sandport’s merchants.
When Locke turned sixteen, he went to the Asgard system sixty light years away to negotiate supply chains with a core system corsair outlet. Didn’t come back for eight months. When I turned sixteen, I…” She groaned. “I was given access to the ship bay… so I could tinker on junkers. With supervision. Father didn’t let me do anything — go anywhere. I just sat in our base, training, fighting — for what? I remember staring at planets for hours on vidscreens because I thought I would never see them in person.” Shy snorted. “Pathetic isn’t it?”