“I don’t get it.”
“Sometimes,” Falconi said, “everything just turns to crap, and there’s nothing we can do about it.” He looked at her. “No one’s to blame. Or maybe everyone’s to blame.”
Kira chewed over the story in her mind, searching for the kernel of truth at the center. She felt Falconi had offered it up in the spirit of understanding, if not absolution, and for that, she was grateful. But it wasn’t enough to soothe her heart.
She said, “Maybe. I bet the boy still felt responsible.”
Falconi inclined his head. “Of course. I think he did. But you can’t let the guilt from something like that consume your life.”
“Sure you can.”
“Kira.”
She pressed her eyes shut again, unable to block out the image of Alan slumped against her. “What happened can’t be changed. I killed the man I loved, Falconi. You’d think that was the worst thing ever, but no, I had to go and start a war—a goddamn interstellar war, and it is my fault. There’s no fixing something like that.”
A long silence came from Falconi. Then he sighed and put his cup down on the deck. “When I was nineteen—”
“Nothing you can say is going to make this any better.”
“Just listen; it’s another story.” He fiddled with the handle of the mug, and as she didn’t interrupt again, continued: “When I was nineteen, my parents left me to watch my sister while they went out for dinner. The last thing I wanted was to be stuck babysitting, especially on a weekend. I got pretty angry, but it didn’t matter. My parents left, and that was that.”
Falconi rapped the mug against the deck. “Only it wasn’t. My sister was six years younger than me, but I figured she was old enough to take care of herself, so I snuck out and went to hang with some of my friends, same as I would any other Saturday. Next thing I knew—” Falconi’s voice caught, and his hands opened and closed as if crushing something invisible. “There was an explosion. By the time I got back to our rooms, they’d half caved in.”
He shook his head. “I went in after her, but it was already too late. Smoke inhalation.… That’s how I got burned. We found out later my sister had been cooking, and somehow a fire started. If I’d been with her, where I was supposed to be, she would have been fine.”
“You can’t know that,” said Kira.
Falconi cocked his head. “Oh can’t I?…” He picked up the deck of cards, worked the free ones into the middle, and shuffled them twice. “You didn’t kill Alan or anyone else on your team.”
“I did. I—”
“Stop,” Falconi said, stabbing a middle finger at her. “Maybe you are responsible, but it wasn’t a conscious decision on your part. You wouldn’t have killed them any more than I would have killed my sister. As for this goddamn war, you’re not all-powerful, Kira. The Jellies made their own choices. So did the League and this Maw. In the end, they’re the only ones who can answer for themselves. So stop blaming yourself.”
“I can’t seem to help it.”
“Bullshit. The truth is you don’t want to. It makes you feel good to blame yourself. You know why?” Kira shook her head, mute. “Because it gives you a sense of control. The hardest lesson in life is learning to accept that there are some things we can’t change.” Falconi paused, his eyes hard and glittering. “Blaming yourself is perfectly normal, but it doesn’t do you any good. Until you stop, unless you can stop, you’ll never be able to fully recover.”
Then he unbuttoned the cuffs on his shirt, and rolled back his sleeves to expose the melted surface of his forearms. He held them up for Kira to see. “Why do you think I keep these scars?”
“Because … you feel guilty over—”
“No,” Falconi said harshly. Then, in a gentler tone: “No. I keep them to remind me of what I can survive. Of what I have survived. If I’m having a rough time, I look at my arms, and I know I’ll get through whatever problem I’m dealing with. Life’s not going to break me. It can’t break me. It might kill me, but nothing it throws at me is going to make me give up.”
“What if I’m not that strong?”
He smiled without humor. “Then you’ll crawl through life with this monkey sitting on your back, and it’ll tear at you until it kills you. Trust me on that.”
“… How did you manage to get rid of it?”
“I drank a lot. Got in a bunch of fights. Nearly ended up dead a few times. After a while, I realized that I was just punishing myself for no good reason. Plus, I knew my sister wouldn’t have wanted me to end up like that, so I forgave myself. Even though it wasn’t my direct fault—just like it’s not your fault—I forgave myself. And that’s when I was finally able to move on and make something of my life.”
Kira made her decision then. She couldn’t see a path clear from the mire she was stuck in, but she could at least try to fight free. That much she could do: try.
“Okay,” she said.
“Okay,” Falconi repeated softly, and at that moment, Kira felt a bone-deep sense of connection with him: a bond born of shared sorrows.
“What was your sister’s name?”
“Beatrice, but we always called her Bea.”
Kira stared at the oily surface of the chell, studying her dark reflection. “What do you want, Falconi?”
“Salvo.… Call me Salvo.”
“What do you really want, Salvo? Out of all the universe?”
“I want,” he said, drawing the words out, “to be free. Free from debt. Free from governments and corporations telling me how to live my life. If that means I spend the rest of my years as captain of the Wallfish, well then—” He lifted his mug in mock salute. “—I accept my fate willingly.”
She mirrored his gesture. “A worthy goal. To freedom.”
“To freedom.”
The chell made the back of her throat tingle as she took another sip, and right then, the terrors of the day no longer seemed quite so immediate.
“Are you from Farrugia’s Landing?” she asked.
A small nod from Falconi. “Born on a ship thereabouts, but I grew up at the outpost itself.”
A half-forgotten memory stirred in the back of Kira’s brain. “Wasn’t there an uprising there?” she said. “Some sort of corporate rebellion? I remember seeing an article about it. Most of the workers went on strike, and a lot of people ended up hurt or in prison.”
Falconi took a drink of chell. “You remember correctly. It got real bloody, real fast.”
“Did you fight?”
He snorted. “What do you think?” Then he glanced at her from the corners of his eyes, and for a moment it seemed as if he were trying to decide something. “What does it feel like?”
“What?”
“The Soft Blade.”
“It feels like … like this.” She reached out and touched Falconi on the wrist. He watched with caution, surprised. “It feels like nothing at all. It feels like my skin.”
Then Kira willed a row of razor-sharp edges to rise from the back of her hand. The xeno had become such a part of herself, willing the blades into existence took hardly any effort.
After a moment, she allowed them to subside.
Falconi placed his hand over hers. She shivered and nearly flinched as he traced the tips of his fingers across her palm, sending cold sparks shooting up her arm. “Like this?”
“Exactly.”
He lingered a moment more, the pads of his fingers just touching hers. Then he pulled his hand back and picked up the cards. “Another round?”
The last of the chell didn’t taste quite so good as Kira downed it. What the hell was she doing? Alan … “I think I’ve had enough.”