CHAPTER SEVEN

1664

YEAR OF THE CRUX

Lo-Meek

Bei Continent

The Planet Teros

Bei continent, and the city of Lo-Meek itself, are nothing like the southern coastal cliffs where Chono grew up. Life on Trini-so was full of wide-open spaces, torrential rains, and watching eyes. In Lo-Meek, even at eight o’clock in the morning, the air is hot and fetid, funneling between close-set, rickety buildings. And Chono is the watcher now.

When she was a novitiate, she learned to take every opportunity to study Esek, observing her, anticipating her desires and demands. Confronted by the endless cyclone of Esek’s energy, that was a useful gift. Other novitiates had other gifts—they were investigative masterminds, or efficient killers, or otherwise predisposed for the Cloaksaan career Esek was training them to enter. Chono never wanted to be a cloaksaan, never viewed herself as talented in those ways. Since taking her cleric’s coat, she’s told herself she has no more use for the brutal lessons Esek taught her. But as she and her former mentor survey the narrow alley where they’re standing now (squeezed between a bar and a warehouse in the sweltering backstreets) she realizes she retained those lessons, after all. Crouched beside a waste can, she plucks at a barely visible edge of fabric, then pulls a full-length scarf into view.

Chono stands up, taking in the unfurled piece of muslin. It’s soiled, but not so much she can’t see the clean blue color underneath, and that the stains aren’t dirt or muck—they’re blood.

She holds it up for Esek to see, and Esek clucks her tongue.

“These marshals are shit. The least of my novitiates could have found that.”

Esek’s novitiates are back on their ship—an unusual choice. She usually prefers them to follow her like the train of a gown.

“In defense of the marshals, they’ve had quite a lot to manage with Saxis Foxer’s crew.”

Esek chuckles darkly. “Yeah, and they botched that royally, didn’t they? Wait till Seti Moonback finds out!”

Chono says nothing, still perturbed by the mess they inherited when they arrived in Lo-Meek two hours ago. The meeting between pirate and caster had come and gone the afternoon before. The marshals were now trying to make up for losing Sunstep by pummeling their captives into pulp. None of this was helped by the overall unrest in the city, by the raucousness of local crowds, hundreds of Terons gathered to the marshals’ headquarters and the city docks in protest of the jump gate closure.

Then, last night, the Secretaries released a bulletin officially announcing that the Jeveni would be permitted jump gate access in order to proceed with their Remembrance Day ceremonies. In Lo-Meek, this announcement corresponded with the marshals unleashing the sirens, which confined everyone to their homes as they searched for Sunstep. The combination of perceived Jeveni fortune with non-Jeveni hardship has pushed the city to the edge.

Esek insisted that Chono carry a weapon.

And, strange and unwelcome as the handgun feels on her hip, Chono has to admit it’s not Esek’s worst idea. There’s a dark energy in the streets, heightened by the heat and close air. It’s the energy of a match flickering near a slick of oil. Teros, a mostly nonarable planet that relies on other parts of the Treble for the majority of its food supply, is especially vulnerable to these gate closures. Chono has seen that vulnerability on the faces of the people in Lo-Meek. Anger and despair and entreaty, so many of their fortunes in peril, until they can use the gates again. Somewhere in the distance, gathered crowds are chanting their anger and demands. Esek must know her own power to end or perpetuate the limbo…

For the third time since their reunion, Chono nearly broaches the issue of the Nightfoot matriarchy, but then a trio of marshals come into the alley. The first of them, by his appliqués, is the commander of the city garrison, the one responsible for the aforementioned mess with the pirates. He looks harried, which is no surprise. A smell comes off of him, possibly praevi liquor, possibly perfume. His head is shaved, which Terons only do to signal mourning.

“Burning Ones.” He bows over his hands with minimum deference. “You are welcome in our beloved city. I am Chief Marshal Vine Oovine Norun—”

“Yes, yes, shut up. Now tell me, is this really all you have?”

Esek flicks her wrist, projecting an image into the air. It’s a sketch, a composite from a few marshals’ rough memories of chasing Sunstep through the alleys. Chono was shocked by its uselessness, by how obviously the marshals depended on their oculars to make observations for them. The hair is dark. The skin is a common brown. The accompanying details predict someone between five and six feet tall, between 130 and 180 pounds. Someone possibly carrying a gun. The only distinct characteristic of the sketch is the bright blue scarf around their neck. Marshal Norun grimaces.

“Did they see a gendermark, at least?” Esek sneers.

“My marshals only got a glimpse. Whoever they were didn’t appear on ocular recordings.”

“Which you should have expected, given our warning that you were dealing with a Hood. I assume the surviving crew members have been useless, too?”

“They all claim not to have seen the caster, Sa. We pressed them hard.”

“Tortured them, you mean,” says Chono.

Norun looks at her for the first time, a scathing look that takes her off guard.

Esek doesn’t appear to notice. “Yes, we saw how effective that was. Your main prison is a travesty, by the way; it stank worse than this alley. What about Foxer? Foxer saw them, whoever they are. Where is he? I sent for him half an hour ago.”

The marshal clearly wasn’t expecting this reception, nor that he’d have to grovel for the Kindom. His resentful glance at Chono turns to a resentful glance at Esek. If he’s not careful Chono fears what Esek will do to him.

“We placed Foxer in a different brig from the crew. Better to keep them separated from their leaders, we find. He’s uptown. I must say, it’s… unusual to question a prisoner outside of the prison. With all the unrest in the streets today, I worry that—”

“Does that mean he’s not coming?” Esek interrupts.

Chief Marshal Norun retorts, “We’re bringing him now.”

“Good.” Esek reaches toward Chono, snapping, and Chono hands over the muslin scarf. Esek balls it up and flings it at Norun. He barely catches it. “Test that. It’s got blood on it.”

He looks at it skeptically for a moment, then passes it to one of his party, who rushes off. Esek turns her back on the chief marshal, an obvious dismissal, and faces Chono.

Chono says, “The blood won’t lead us to Sunstep. They can’t have avoided detection all these years if their medical signature is on file somewhere.”

She would like to have enough faith in Kindom casters to believe it’s impossible to erase one’s medical identifiers. But Six proved otherwise, long ago.

Esek says, “But the blood will still tell us useful things. Sex, if not gender. Birth origins. Transfusion type.”

That’s true. One of the only medical facts they have about Six is their universal donor status—Sunstep’s blood could rule certain things out. Chono expects Esek to berate her for not thinking of it, but Esek turns from her as well, looking distant. Distracted.

She’s different.

Chono didn’t want to think so at first, but it’s true. The first time she saw Esek Nightfoot, the young cleric roiled with energy, with humor, with poison. She was like a walking lightning strike. Later, as her novitiate, Chono saw a new side to her: caprice, but also, fortitude. She trained all her little fish to be unstoppable. She trained them as if she always hoped they would be someone else, and would torture them until they satisfied her. But they never satisfied her. Not even Chono, who may have come the closest. Yet even in their failure, all Esek’s novitiates worshipped her. It was terrifying to be around Esek, but also inspiring. How could you live in that orbit and not be inspired?

But in the hours they’ve spent together since leaving Riin Cosas, Chono has realized that Esek’s energy is deeper now. Colder. Throughout the brief trip from Ma’kess to Teros, she chattered restlessly, and yet, at the same time, seemed quiet. It’s as if some living, breathing darkness perches on her shoulder now, whispering in her ruined ear, and she is too absorbed by the passenger to fully pay attention to anything else. What happened to her, at Verdant? Was it Six? Could anything else impact her so?

Chono turns to Chief Marshal Norun. “What about the missing pirate?”

He hesitates, lips twisting into a moue of distaste, as if it offends him to talk to her. He grits out, “We’re looking for him. We found some children who watched his stuff for him. They said he went north, and someone was with him.”

Esek chuckles, incisors gleaming in the dark alley. “The Teron scrap kids say their employer went north. Well then. I suppose he’s practically ours, isn’t he?”

Cowed, the marshal says nothing. There isn’t much north of Lo-Meek besides cliffs and ocean. Certainly nowhere to run.

“They said he had a warhorse. That would explain how he got out of the city.”

“A warhorse?” Esek tilts her head, raising her eyebrows at Chono. Chono gives a slight headshake; this part of the story is probably a fabrication, too. Nevertheless, Esek hums. “A pirate with a warhorse. That is interesting.”

The marshal puffs up. “Yes, and it’s possible he—”

“Never mind. Here comes the captain.”

Two marshals march into the alley, each holding the arm of their shackled charge. Trussed up though he is, Saxis Foxer looks relatively unperturbed, observing his surroundings with interest. Bruises and small cuts add texture to the geometric tattoos on his face, and he’s favoring one leg. He meets Chono’s stare for a moment, before settling on Esek. She is the unmistakable center of gravity in this close space. Unlike most, he shows no terror in her presence, and despite a night in the brig, his braids are cleanly woven.

“Captain Foxer,” Esek greets him. The marshals have not let go of him, but at one quelling look from her, they step back. Only then does Saxis Foxer lift his manacled hands, bowing shortly over them. Esek gestures at Chono. “This is my kin cleric.”

He bows again, with no hint of irony. When he tries to turn back to Esek, she’s staring up at a patch of orangish sky between the buildings, as if suddenly forgetting she was talking to someone.

“Tell us about the caster,” Chono says.

Foxer gives her a narrow look. “I talked to the marshals for three hours last night.”

“But you didn’t give them a description,” Chono replies.

“I gave a… rough description. I said they were a caster.”

Esek, still gazing at the sky, lets out a laugh of genuine amusement. Chief Marshal Norun glowers. Chono says, “In that case, perhaps you’d like to be more specific now.”

He shrugs. “A woman.”

“They had a gendermark?”

“How else can I say she was a woman?”

Chono considers this. Six has taken many identities these twenty years, but never a female gendermark. And yet, Chono has developed a sense for when Six is involved in something. Everything about this mission makes those senses catch fire. Perhaps this Sunstep works for Six? Gods know they have employed plenty of criminals over the years.

“What else?” Chono asks.

“She said she worked for a consortium of archivists, though she clearly wasn’t one herself. She called herself Junian Graylore, but that had to be a lie. She was no Ma’kessn. I’ll bet she grew up on a station. She had that half-starved hustler look.”

So, not six feet tall. Not 180 pounds.

Saxis Foxer pauses, looking between Esek and Chono, then arches his eyebrows. “I don’t know what you want me to say about her. Average height. Average looking. You know. Brown eyes, brown hair, brown skin. She spoke Teron pretty well. She seemed… eager.”

Back still turned, Esek repeats, “Eager?”

“Eager to sell the coin cache, yes.”

So he claims that Junian Graylore was the seller.

“Of course,” says Chono. “And you were eager to buy it, I’m sure?”

He smiles. He doesn’t look remotely nervous.

“You know I didn’t buy it. It’s nowhere on my ship, is it?”

“Your ship has a back door overhanging a canyon.”

“What kind of businessaan would I be? Buying something and throwing it overboard?”

“Yet you did agree to the sale in the first place?”

“I thought it would be trade secrets, something like that. Soon as I realized it came from Verdant?” He shakes his head. “I was done with it. That whole business went too far. I didn’t even look at the cache—just sent her packing.”

Some people struggle to keep their expressions neutral in the face of blatant lies, but not Chono. Her gift for complete expressionlessness has sometimes unsettled even cloaksaan. “That’s very pious,” she says, voice as flat as her stare.

“Not really. I’m a survivalist. If I’d gone the other way, you’d be coming after me, not her.”

Esek faces them again. “We’d be coming after both of you.”

Foxer is silent, but the comment lands like a stone on water, leaving a ripple behind.

“Archivists don’t usually sell,” Chono says. “They buy.”

He flicks his eyes back and forth between the two of them, perhaps unsure who he should focus on: Chono, a point of stillness, or Esek, a roving flame.

He says, “I’ve purchased from more archivists than you’d think. Sometimes they come into a record that will make them a fortune. Forgive my bluntness, Saan, but those are the times when the elite are grateful they’ve got people like me to sell to.”

The chief marshal growls, “You lying trash—”

“Now, now,” interrupts Esek, lowly. “There’s no need for that. Every actor has a place in the worlds—even pirates play their role. Captain Foxer is speaking frankly with us. Frankness is holy. Disobedience is not.”

Norun scowls. Foxer watches Esek for a moment, then looks at Chono again. Chono has not taken her eyes off of him.

Esek says, “Forgive our passions, Captain. Everyone is very touchy about pirates, since Verdant. Oh, don’t worry. We know you were nowhere near it.”

He gives a cool nod, as if to say of course he wasn’t, but there is something different in his face now. A subtle tightness around the mouth.

“The trouble is…” Esek gazes at the ground. She waves a hand, looks up, and says brightly, “Well, let’s lay our cards on the table. No need to flirt around the bitch. See, while Chief Norun here was interrogating some local street brats, I was at the downtown prison. I spoke to your second-in-command an hour ago.”

Foxer’s very expressionlessness is the surest sign of the words’ impact.

“You ought to keep disloyal people out of leadership positions. Let me guess, family deal, right? Somebody’s worthless cousin? You give him a good spot on your ship, and his ma funds your next expedition? Well, I guess I can’t berate you for nepotism. I mean, kettle meet pot, right? Still, you made a pretty bad call with this one. He was actually naive enough to think he’d gain the ship by telling us the truth.”

Foxer doesn’t respond, doesn’t move, but in his eyes, a shovel digs a grave.

Chono doesn’t have her mentor’s appetite for playing with her food. “According to your first mate, one of your crew members convinced you to buy the cache at a Braemish bazaar last month. He says you arranged the resale with Junian Graylore. You were delighted about it. She was offering good money. Then, three days ago, your tune changed. He says you realized there was only one coin she actually wanted. That you were determined to get rid of it as quickly as possible. You erased some of your sales records so the cache couldn’t be traced to you. Yet you insist you never looked at the coin she wanted?”

Foxer says nothing, clearly considering his options. In the silence, Chono becomes aware of a distant clamor, somewhere beyond the alley’s closeting walls. It’s the rumble of many voices, raised in shouts and chants. The protests, getting closer. Esek appears to hear it, too, for she cocks her head, putting the mangled ear on stark display. She laughs.

“Ah. So, they’ve decided to form a parade, have they? We saw the crowds when we arrived. It seems they’re very upset about losing access to the jump gates. Something about being cut off from the rest of the Treble, reduced data floods, et cetera, et cetera. Things are bad all over.”

Her smile is razor-edged, as if to say she holds Saxis Foxer personally responsible for the disruption to the sevite trade.

He asks, “If you’re convinced of what my first mate told you, why the interrogation?”

Esek laughs. “Theater, of course!”

“There’s information we don’t have,” interjects Chono. “The crewsaan who convinced you to buy the cache in the first place—Masar Hawks. He appears to be missing.”

“That boy is barely crew at all. He’s not even a pureblood Braem.” Foxer spits on the ground. “I took him on six months ago because I needed extra labor, and he’s worked on half the ships in the Black. I don’t know him or trust him.”

“Someone saw him leave Lo-Meek on a warhorse,” Esek says. Chono, not realizing they had decided this story was reliable, keeps her expression cloistered. “They say there was a woman with him. This would have been the same time your Junian Graylore evaded our highly trained and celebrated marshals.” Esek’s voice bleeds disdain. “And if he was the one who found the coin cache to begin with, I have to say, I smell a collaboration.”

The sound of the clamoring protesters is growing louder. Chono suspects they are marching down Ton Street, parallel to both the ship docks and this alley. Someone must have a bullhorn, for she distinctly hears a voice cry out:

“And where are the Khens? Where is Khen Ookhen Obair? We work and slave to build his ships! Does he protect us?! Does he advocate for us?! No!”

Chono feels that name, Khen, like nerve pain. Chief Marshal Norun mutters something at one of his marshals, who darts off. When he faces them again, his eyes lock with Chono’s, cold and spiteful. Suddenly she remembers Ilius’s warning: Lo-Meek is teeming with Khen family loyalists. You murdered one of their own. You have to be careful.

Chono holds Norun’s stare, never buckling. The voice on the bullhorn shouts, “The Khens are Kindom puppets! The Khens are Kindom pets!”

“Ho-ho!” crows Esek. “Obair won’t like that!”

Captain Foxer snorts, and for a strange moment he and Esek seem to be in accord.

Chono, on the other hand, is thinking of the Khens and their iron grip on the ship manufacturing industry—itself as badly dependent on sevite production as any other business in the Treble. She is thinking of Khen Ookhen Obair, their family head. It was his uncle she killed on Quietus. And now Marshal Norun glares at her. Is his head shaved in mourning for a family he serves? Given half a chance, would he seek revenge for his Khen masters? Probably.

Then Esek snaps her fingers, breaking the impasse. Chono looks away from Norun and back to Esek. “What do you know about Masar Hawks, Captain? Besides his failure to be a pureblood.”

Foxer’s smirk disappears. He gazes balefully at Esek, not answering. He has been betrayed by at least one of his own, and yet the Braemish tradition for loyalty to one’s crew still beats in his breast.

“You are caught in a crime, Captain,” Chono says. “If you have a hope for your life, you’ll answer our questions.”

“My life?” laughs Foxer, a new fire in his eyes. “Is it so bad if you take my life? I’ve plundered the Black Ocean for thirty years; I’ve stolen from every great family in the Treble. I’ve hoarded up so much treasure, Great Som themself will herald me home.”

Unmoved, Chono asks, “What about your crew? What about their lives?”

He doesn’t answer, but the blow lands, tightening his mouth and the lines around his eyes. By the captain’s face, she knows he will make a deal. Esek knows it, too, for she’s on him again. “Tell us what you know about Hawks.”

Angrily he says, “There’s nothing to tell! Young and brash and ambitious. He’s a good fighter, trained, but not much for taking orders. Good at making friends. He was friends with everyone! The crew loved him. The ports loved him. He speaks all the languages, even Je. He—”

Esek steps suddenly forward, a javelin strike interrupting Captain Foxer’s angry account.

“He speaks Je?” She looks at Chono, demanding, “Who speaks Je anymore?”

“Some archivists,” says Chono. “And the Jeveni isolationists, of course. But he had no Jeveni markings, I assume?”

Foxer sneers. “I’d have never taken a Jeveni on my crew.”

“Deplorable,” hums Esek. “Are there Jeveni collectives on Bei continent?”

Chono remembers what Ilius said in his office. “South of here,” she offers, and looks at Norun. “Aren’t there?”

Norun grunts with distaste. “A hovel called Fezn. Nothing but paupers.”

“Excellent,” says Esek. “That’s where we’ll start.”

She seems to have suddenly forgotten Foxer altogether, pacing away from him with a pleased sound. She passes two gloved fingers over the stump of her ruined ear. Chono, at a loss for her sudden excitement, won’t let the Braemish captain disappear into Norun’s clutches yet.

“Captain, why did you decide to change your meeting with Sunstep? You moved it up an entire day. Why?”

Foxer hesitates, clearly debating whether or not to tell them. Finally he admits, “I got a warning. Someone sent me a message, saying the Kindom knew I was involved in the sale of an important coin. Saying the only way I’d get out alive is if I found a way to convince the Kindom I never had it.”

Chono glances between the captain and Esek, expecting to see some reaction from her. But she is still toying with her ear. Who would have sent such a message to Foxer? It smacks quite blatantly of Six, but if Six is aligned with Junian Graylore—

Foxer asks, “Will you spare my crew?”

Chono breathes out through her nostrils, feeling an unexpected twinge of compassion.

“We’ll spare your crew, Sa,” she promises.

But then, still half turned away from them, Esek says, “Well… we’ll spare what’s left of them. Some didn’t take well to arrest and had to be put down. But that was only about half.”

The look that sweeps across Captain Foxer’s face is terrible. Chono barely hides her own shock. This is reckless, even for Esek, who turns toward them abruptly.

“The others will be removed to a work colony. To reform and earn their freedom. You’ll share the same sentence.”

Foxer is silent, gray with horror and disbelief. Esek looks at him without pity, and Chono can only glance back and forth between them in mounting tension. A moment later, the fingers of the captain’s right hand start twitching. His lips barely move with soundless words. Chono recognizes the Braemish gesture. He’s counting the souls of his dead, commending them to Som’s tireless hunger—preparing his own soul, too.

“Captain Foxer,” Chono says, with a low note of caution. “Your people will need a leader in the colony. Someone to give them hope. To help them earn their freedom.”

Foxer stares unblinking at Esek, who stares back. There is something between them, now. A kind of understanding. Respect.

“No one earns their freedom in the colonies,” Foxer says.

Esek’s lip curls on one side. “‘Better dead than a slave,’ right, Captain?”

Chono’s stomach clenches at the pirate adage, offered in Braemish. Foxer’s fingers stop twitching. He has finished his count. Chono’s body draws up in preparation.

“For what it’s worth,” murmurs the pirate, “I wish I’d been at Verdant. Lots of great pillage that day. I know one man who stole the underwear right off Tunistia Nightfoot’s ass. He wears them as a scarf now. They slaughtered dozens, didn’t they? Why, even you ran off with your tail between your legs.”

Esek looks amused, even pleased. “Tunistia’s ass was very small. Your friend should be careful his pillage doesn’t strangle him.”

Foxer nods, the conversation over. He moves with whipcrack speed, even favoring the one leg. The small knife glints in the shadowy light. Chono and Esek draw at the same moment, their shots going off in tandem. When Saxis Foxer hits the ground, it reminds Chono of the Pippashap fishersaan, felling a sea elk that leapt right onto their decks. All that power and size and weight brought to a crush of stillness. The fishersaan sent up prayers to Capamame, singing in Qi—the Quietan language—their voices resonant with sorrow. They had killed the creature to defend themselves, but they hadn’t wanted to.

Esek wanted to.

The Teron protesters have moved far enough along that their cries are distant. It’s quiet in the alley now. Chief Marshal Norun looks stunned. Esek, holstering her gun, considers him pensively.

“The captain had a knife,” she remarks.

He doesn’t answer, his bluster and bravado disappearing as he realizes the import of letting an armed prisoner near a cleric. It’s reason enough to have him stripped of titles.

Esek shrugs. “That’s all right. I prefer a bit of sport. Tell your marshals to give him a Braemish burial, along with his dead. There are nine surviving crew. Transfer them to the custody of the Cloaksaan.” Then she looks at Norun, and her expression is suddenly so cold and merciless that the man hardly breathes. “If I learn that fewer than nine are delivered, I’ll drop you in the canyon myself.”

Before the marshal can respond, she is brushing past him, striding down the alley the way they first came. Chono goes after her, feeling slightly sick. It may not be Esek’s fault that the marshals overzealously killed half of Foxer’s crew last night, but it is her fault that there will be nine prisoners, instead of ten. This isn’t even the worst of the vicious things Esek has done, but it’s been years since Chono witnessed the carnage up close. She’s no more inured to it now than she was then.

They walk briskly, Chono a half step behind. When they leave the labyrinth of the back alleys and step out onto Ton Street, the evidence of the passing parade is everywhere, in rucked-up red dust and littered flyers and graffiti sprayed on shopfronts and walkways. There is no way Esek doesn’t know the factory unions are demanding her for their matriarch. There is no way her actions in the alley are less than calculated. But what is she trying to calculate?

Esek breathes in deeply, as if the noxious air is refreshing. Chono stares at her profile, at her mutilated ear. After what seems like a very long time, the other cleric looks back at her.

“Yes?” she drawls.

Chono considers her words for several breaths. “You goaded him.”

There is no inflection in her voice. Esek’s eyebrow twitches. “I was honest with him. I’m always honest with those I respect.”

“We were ordered to deliver him to the Cloaksaan.”

Esek says unconcernedly, “Our kin made it very clear what they cared about was the memory coin, not the survival of the parties involved.”

In the past Chono might have backed down after that, but she surprises herself by pressing: “We didn’t get the memory coin. The captain might have helped us track down the people who have it. Killing him was premature. Now, everything he knows is lost to us.”

“Yes, of course, no one likes being left in the dark. Seti and Aver will hate it.” Esek’s musing tone is backlit with sarcasm. “Believe me, Chono, I feel for them.”

She must be referring to the First Cleric’s choice to hide the contents of the coin from her. Chono wants to think this is too petty for Esek, but of course it isn’t. Not for the first time she considers telling Esek about her conversation with Ilius, and his research into the contents of the coin. The possibility that it threatens not just the Nightfoots, but the very Kindom. She refrains. It’s not as if Ilius has sent her any conclusions yet.

But Esek must read something in her expression, for she makes a permissive gesture. “Don’t worry that you’ll be blamed, little fish. Show them your ocular. Show them what happened. The Six Gods themselves will stand you up.”

The use of “little fish” touches a fragile nerve. She asks, “Is this a test, Sa?”

Esek grins. She claps Chono on the shoulder, and Chono instinctively tenses.

“Oh, Chono. You’re definitely being tested. Now, if you want, we can fight about this some more, but let’s do it on the warkite, where it doesn’t smell so bad.”

She strides off, and Chono is forced to follow. Their ship is docked a half mile down Ton Street, and Chono is suddenly as eager to get there as Esek. She feels haunted by this ugly place, by this planet, by its memories, and by this new Esek-driven disaster, unfolding on its soil. A wind picks up, splattering them with thick red mud, and one of the flyers gets caught in Chono’s coat. She picks it free, startled by its message. The three-pointed star of the Kindom, anthropomorphized into a body with a face, is on its knees, sucking the penis of a figure with a Jeveni tattoo. Behind the Jeveni whirls a vibrant jump gate. No words adorn the flyer. They aren’t exactly needed. Esek leans over her shoulder.

“Oh, that’s good. Imagine how the Secretaries feel about that.” She chuckles.

“There will be attacks on the Jeveni. It’s not their fault we’re rationing jump gate travel.”

Esek hmms. “Not at all. It’s mine.”

Chono doesn’t know how to respond to this first acknowledgment of how Esek’s choices stand to impact the Treble. And apparently, that’s all the acknowledgment she intends to give, for a moment later she’s cracking her knuckles and heaving a sigh.

Chono starts to fold up the flyer. Esek demands, “What are you doing?”

“I’m going to put it in the waste—”

Esek snatches it from her, throws it on the ground, exasperated. Chono watches it slip away in a breeze. For a few moments they walk in silence, as if the flyer itself was a symbol of some greater rupture between them. Something that began years ago.

Chono, steeling herself, says, “We have neither Sunstep, nor the coin. We should ask the Cloaksaan to help us track them down.”

Esek’s irritation seems to evaporate. She huffs a laugh. “Aver set us on this task, if you’ll remember. Besides, we already have a lead. A Je-speaking, warhorse-stealing, pretend Braem won’t be too difficult to trace. And I’m convinced Sunstep will be with him.”

Chono is not convinced, but whether or not this is a good lead, it is their only lead. They’ve tracked Six on less reliable information before.

A siren goes up in the city west, the same direction the protesters traveled. Chono knows what those protesters will face as punishment for deriding the Khen family: a brutal crackdown, by marshals itching to fight. Even if Chono could stop it from happening, they have reached their ship. And Esek seems antsy now. The hunt is waiting.