CHAPTER ELEVEN

1650

YEAR OF THE KINDLING

K-5 Station

Orbiting Kator

As far as Alisiana Nightfoot was concerned, all Esek’s clerical duties now came second to the mission of finding Six. Esek didn’t mind this, but such a mission required time and resources and information. In her current locale, the only information Esek had was that at some point the traitor Lucos Alanye had wandered his way into this little metalworking shop. What he’d wanted, what he’d bought, were a mystery to her, one of those details that Alisiana was keeping close. Yet somehow decades later Alanye’s descendants had led Esek here, to this cluttered space with its glass cabinets full of trinkets and its faded carpet and its overstuffed ottoman—and its proprietors cowering before her.

Esek regarded the Ironway family with the curious remove of a bird-watcher. What was their relationship to Lucos Alanye? But more importantly, what was their relationship to Six?

Hosek Ironway, the matriarch of the family, stood in the center of the shop, the others gathered behind her. Esek’s chief novitiate confirmed with a nod that it was all of them—all four generations, including the half-blind, arthritic Ricari Ironway. He was sitting on the ottoman. The youngest Ironway generation, three small children, sat around him. She gave them a long look, noticing how Hosek followed her gaze.

Esek tilted her head inquiringly. “What is it, Sa Ironway? You seem anxious.”

Hosek swallowed. She was a short, squat woman, with muscular forearms and delicate hands, befitting her trade. She still wore her shop apron, smeared with the shavings of metalwork, some of which she’d accidentally rubbed on her cheek. The gray-silver smudge glittered like a body mod.

She said, “No, Burning One. We are honored by your presence.”

“Are you? I had heard all your family were apostate.”

Tension crackled across the shop like an electric charge. Even station dwellers were expected to genuflect for some god. Esek thought of the old riddle, and considered asking it—Who is the Sixth God?—but she was more interested in the reactions of the various family members, and what those reactions might tell her. Directly behind Hosek was another older woman, probably Hosek’s wife. She looked pale and frightened. Then there were two men and a woman that must be Hosek’s children, their faces ranging from stoic to nervous to angry. Around Ricari (himself notably opaque) the grandchildren were wide-eyed and silent. Novitiates circled them all.

Hosek said, “We are devoted to the Godfire and the Six Gods, Burning One. And to Makala, of course, fecund and—”

“—lovely, yes,” interrupted Esek in a bored drawl. She looked around at the shop. “And what better place to celebrate that god than this sterile tomb of a station?”

Wisely, Hosek said nothing, but the son standing behind her had a face that gave all his feelings away. Esek zeroed in on him, curling her lip in pleasure. This one would misstep; she could feel the fury bubbling under his skin.

Hosek, no doubt sensing disaster, tried to divert Esek’s attention.

“Burning One, your novitiates tell me you have concerns about the political alliances of my family. I don’t know who has been lying about us, but we are Ma’kessn in origin, and the Nightfoots—”

“I’m not here as a Nightfoot,” lied Esek. “I’m here as a Hand of the Kindom. We believe you are harboring a descendant of Lucos Alanye.”

Suddenly Hosek was ashen. Her family, even the angry one, stood frozen behind her.

“Who would have said that about us?” asked Hosek, seeming amazed.

Esek smiled. “Perhaps I have received godly inspiration?”

No one said anything. Esek looked at her chief novitiate, nodding permission. He stepped up to Hosek and slammed his fist into her gut. She crumpled with a gagging sound. Her family cried out. Some moved to defend her and found themselves staring into the mouths of Kindom rifles. The small children were openly wailing now, and Esek spared a glance for them, watching old Ricari bury their faces against himself, murmuring comfort in their ears. Then she stepped forward, dropping into a squat beside Hosek, who was collapsed onto her knees and bent over, still choking.

“Breathe,” Esek advised her. “Take deep breaths. That’s right. In. Out. It will pass. Now, you must admit I’m being very reasonable. Usually when people lie to my face, I kill them. Or kill someone they love, at least. You have a lot of loved ones in this room, yes? How about, for every truth you tell me, I spare one of them. Doesn’t that sound generous to you?”

“Burning One,” Hosek gasped. “Please. I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. My family has been loyal to the Kindom for generations. We would never—”

“Careful,” Esek interrupted. “For every lie you tell, I’ll take one of them from you.”

“I don’t want to lie to you, Sa, I swear. Ask me anything.”

“Lucos Alanye had a son who lived on this station. Yes?”

Hosek nodded urgently. “Yes. Yes. But he left, decades ago. He took his daughter and granddaughters with him.”

“All those are dead,” said Esek. “I killed the granddaughters two months ago, on the To’sos Isles on Braemin. They were about the same age as your children.”

Hosek breathed hard and stared at the ground. But Esek didn’t have to look at her face or look around at the other faces in the room to see the impact of her words.

“They told me about you, about your family. You were friends with them, weren’t you? Don’t lie. I will kill the youngest one if you lie.”

“She doesn’t know anything about it!”

Esek looked up at the outcry. It was the angry son, grown desperate.

“Please, she never had anything to do with them!”

“Shut up, Coz!” the other man hissed.

Esek rose from her crouch. “Oh, no, Coz. Don’t shut up. Not as you hope to live.”

“My mother never had anything to do with the Alanyes. It was us.” He gestured at himself and his siblings. “We were friends with his granddaughters. But we were just kids! We didn’t know who they were. They changed their names. It was years after they left the station before anybody realized they were Alanyes. I swear we haven’t spoken to them since! I—” His voice broke. “I didn’t even know they were dead.”

Esek approached the young man, taking him in from head to foot. He was small, but muscular. He was handsome. He had passion and courage in his eyes. She drew her gun and shot him in the head.

The shop filled with screams. Hosek’s wife fainted. Their other son sprang to his brother, gathering the body up against him. The blood was everywhere. Hosek had sat up and was staring between Esek and her dead son, stunned and spattered red. She made a choked sound of denial.

“He—he obeyed you! He told you what he knew! He—”

“He lied,” said Esek plainly, ignoring the cries around her, the sobbing of the small children and the man cradling his brother. “He said he hadn’t spoken to the Alanyes since childhood, but they told me themselves how they kept in touch with him, for years. He lied. He knew. You all knew.”

“But—”

“There is another Alanye descendant.” Esek raised her voice above the sounds in the shop. “I don’t know its name, or even what it looks like. I do know it visited its cousins on Braemin six months ago. I know the cousins gave it the names of family friends who might help it. A pious station family, with Ma’kessn origins, no less. Ironway.” She tutted reproachfully. “Imagine my surprise, that such a family would harbor it. You must know that is forbidden, by the terms of Alanye’s sentencing.”

Hosek trembled all over. She stared up at Esek with an arresting combination of shock, horror, and utter bafflement. It was the bafflement that intrigued Esek. It looked so… genuine.

Then a new voice broke the silence. “My grandson told you the truth. Hosek does not know anything about the Alanyes.”

Esek turned, watching as Ricari Ironway got slowly to his feet. The old man was gray, yet Esek detected no fear in him as he stepped forward. Two of her novitiates made to block him, but she waved them off, meeting the eldest Ironway halfway. When they were face-to-face, she observed the rheumy eyes, pale with cataracts. Ricari Ironway, unlike his descendants, was tall, and the arthritis that had clearly gnarled his hands had not, somehow, bent his back. He looked proud, standing before her, and while Esek knew her novitiates would gladly break his legs to humble him, she gave no command.

“Ricari.” She drew the name out in a purr. “I researched you. Bit of an agitator in your youth, weren’t you? But you also made all the jewelry for Alisiana Nightfoot’s wedding.”

“She wanted only metalwork. No jewels.”

“An independent spirit.” Esek smiled. “And not your only famous client. I’m told Lucos Alanye himself visited you once. What did he want?”

“He wanted to know how Caskori Nightfoot bought a jevite sphere from my mother.”

Esek fell silent, amazed. Caskori? Alisiana’s beloved uncle? What did he have to do with the mission on Jeve? Apparently a great deal—and now Esek understood one of the secrets Alisiana was trying to keep.

Esek asked, “Were you able to answer that question?”

“My mother had the sphere from a Jeveni, but she was a gambler. She sold it to Caskori so she could pay her debts. She was wrong to sell it. But she never knew its origins on Jeve. When Lucos Alanye came to ask her about it, she had no help for him.”

“And you?” asked Esek. “Did you help him, Ricari?”

“I told him who gave her the jevite. That was the only information I had. If I could have helped him more, I wouldn’t have. He had something bad in him. Ambition, but also, rot.”

Esek snickered. “How poetic. I quite like a bit of rot, personally. But if you disliked him so much, why have you helped his progeny?” Esek pressed him. “That’s what you’re trying to tell me, isn’t it? That your dear daughter knows nothing about the Alanyes, but you do? This latest Alanye, this young one—what do you know?”

This time Ricari’s silence was confirmation. She stepped closer, whispering to him. “Tell me its name. Tell me its gender. Tell me if it’s still on the station. I’ll spare the rest of your family if you do.”

To her amazement, Ricari chuckled. It was grim, and unafraid. “You don’t intend to spare us. I know how it was, for the Alanye girls on Braemin. How you gathered them and their children up in one place, questioned them, and slaughtered them afterward.”

Esek shrugged. “They were Alanyes. The Alanye name must not survive. You are an Ironway. Perhaps your family can do better. But only if you tell me where I can find who I’m looking for.”

“The Alanyes had no friends to defend them on Braemin,” said Ricari. “That is not the case, for my family. Our ghosts will come after you.”

Esek’s brows shot to her hairline. “You are reckless. I think I’ll have to kill all the children, to teach you manners.”

A cry went up from every corner. Only Ricari didn’t make a sound, half-blind eyes fixed upon her. Esek looked toward the ottoman where the children still cowered, wondering where to start. But then her gaze slipped past them, landing on the workshop door at the back of the room. The workshop that she knew her novitiates had cleared before she came in. Yet there, half in shadow, stood a figure.

Time stopped. Esek couldn’t make out the figure’s face. But she knew. In that moment, she knew, and the knowledge went through her like a lightning strike, like the gods themselves had spoken.

The figure darted out of sight. And Esek followed.

“Burning One—” her chief novitiate said, startled.

“Keep them here. Kill anyone that moves!”

She burst into the workshop. Benches and tools were everywhere, the rough materials of the Ironway trade, crates and chairs and other detritus, but no sign of Six. She spun in a circle, looking around, desperate, and that’s when she saw it: the curtain. It parted for her with a snap of fabric, spilling her into one of the long, narrow hallways that wended their way through the station. There, not thirty feet ahead of her, was the figure from the shop. She sprinted after it. She watched it run, memorizing its stride, its shaven head, its shape. She memorized its clothes—simple trousers and a sleeveless red shirt. Red. Perfect. Esek threw off her cumbersome coat, threw aside two stationers who got in her way, leapt over an overturned crate, certain its owner had deliberately tried to slow her down.

The hallway curved. For a moment she lost sight of Six, her heart stuttering. Then she saw it again, darting left, down a new hallway. Behind her, Esek heard gunfire, and wondered if the Ironways had tried to escape. She didn’t care about that now. She turned left.

It was not a new hallway, after all, but an open square full of people. Esek cursed, but the space was not so dense that she couldn’t spot her quarry. That red shirt was like a homing beacon. Six had not looked back once. She still hadn’t seen its face, something she craved now with feral hunger. She watched Six flee the square through an open archway, and when she reached it, there were stairs, plummeting down into a lower level of the station.

Six had already reached the bottom, turning left again. But when Esek, too, reached the landing, she saw two paths, not one. They both branched left, but ran parallel to each other, sheathed in darkness. She heard a faint echo, and took the first hallway at a run.

Instantly, a door snapped shut behind her. She skidded to a halt, looking back at where the entrance had been. She looked forward, realizing with a plummet in her gut that this was not a hallway at all, but a long room. One wall, the wall that aligned with the second entryway, began to glow. It turned translucent—became a kind of screen. Esek knew where she was now: It was an interrogation box. She sucked her teeth, cursed, and spat onto the ground. Anyone on the outside would be able to see into the box, to see her—but all she would see were phantom shapes. A moment later, the figure appeared. Indistinct but unmistakable.

Neither of them moved. They watched each other through the wall. It had not been running from her, she realized, but leading her away. That red shirt. It had lured her into this trap, and though she had none of her novitiates with her, it might have a dozen friends nearby. Yet she wasn’t afraid. She felt… elation.

“Well done,” she said. The figure behind the wall did not answer, simply stared through at her. They were of a similar height. It was slender but not skinny. She imagined it was leanly muscular, like her. She tried to imagine its face but couldn’t think how to age the child she’d met into what must be a youth of eighteen.

“What a long time it’s been since we’ve seen each other,” said Esek. “I’ll admit, when I promised to forget you, I didn’t anticipate you making yourself so memorable. Alisiana intercepted your little note. She seems to consider you a serious threat. You, and whatever secrets the Alanyes hold. She won’t tell me what they are, but I’ve discovered this and that…”

The obvious invitation hung in the air, unanswered and unacknowledged. Was it a statue, on the other side of the partition? No, she could sense its life, its beating heart, its blood.

“I’ve had to go searching for you. I started at the Principes school—but all your records are lost. Strangest thing. No one even knows for sure where you were born. Some say Teros. Some say Kator. The secretary that sponsored you at school is dead. Indeed, anybody who might know of your past is dead, or at least missing. Granted, I killed some of them, but I didn’t expect you to erase yourself. An… impressive strategy.”

The figure still watched her, motionless. She imagined its eyes were locked on hers. She imagined a thread of tension, drawing tighter and tighter, that must eventually snap.

“I did find the pirate ship you escaped on. I even found the weapons merchant you worked for on North Avo. None of it was particularly useful. Maybe if you’d had the sense to stay away from your cousins, you’d still be in the wind. Not that you weren’t careful. Before I killed them, they told me you wouldn’t even give them a name. I’ve been calling you Six.” She paused. “Did you ever take a real name?”

This time there was a change, a shift that made her draw her breath in anticipation. When it spoke, its voice was low and steady and delicious. “Six is fine.”

She chuckled, as much from the delight of hearing it speak as from what it said.

“Did you ever pick a gender?”

It shifted again. “‘They’ will do.”

The Katish pronoun. The one Chono had used for them, years ago, when she told Esek that Six had fled the kinschool.

“Tell me something then, Six. Out of curiosity, was the old man lying? Did Hosek know you were back?”

Six paused so long, Esek wondered if they had decided to play statue again. Finally, they said, “He was honest. My cousins told me if I was ever on K-5 station, Ricari Ironway would help me. For the love he bore their grandfather, Lucos Alanye’s son. I came here to learn more. I was injured, and Coz was a doctor. He helped me, too. They did not involve Hosek, or anyone else.”

She absorbed this, curious about Six’s injury. What had happened? Were they injured, still? How hungry she felt, in that moment, to see the wound, the torn flesh, the bruising, and the blood.

“I did not think you would find my cousins.”

Esek shrugged. “It was easy.”

“It took you a year.”

Her nostrils flared, but she didn’t answer right away. Now that she had heard them say a few sentences, she was struck by the oddness of their voice. There was a… lilt to it. Something melodic. They spoke slowly. The consonants all dropped with a deliberate plink, like small stones into still water. Esek had traveled the entire Treble, and even beyond. She had heard many strange accents. Was this one a combination of all the places Six had lived? Or was it an affectation?

She said, “You’ve had a lead on me for some time, I grant you. But now you’ve brought disaster on your kin, and the Ironways—not to mention the four other families your cousins told you about. I’ve only visited the Ironways so far, but you must realize I’ll have to obliterate the others, too. When you sent that note, when you decided to provoke me—did you understand the cost? Was it worth getting my attention?”

Six was silent for a moment.

“Where is Chono?” they asked.

At first Esek wondered how Six could possibly know that name. Even though they had known each other at the Principes school, Chono had been called Four then. But of course, the answer was perfectly simple: Six had been studying Esek, and everyone around her. It was enough to spark a little jealousy in her heart.

Six waited, silent, patient.

“I left her with my warkite,” she said at last.

“From what I know, she is your best fighter. And very loyal. Why leave her behind?”

Esek stepped up to the wall. Six drifted a few steps. She followed them. They shadowed each other, pacing back and forth on either side. Esek wrestled with herself, so many excuses coming to mind. In the end, she found herself telling the truth.

“Chono wouldn’t have liked this.”

Six stopped. This time their strange, lilting voice held curiosity. “You shielded her.”

Esek shrugged. “Chono is devout. She wants to be a cleric, and I haven’t trained a cleric before. I can’t very well break her spirit, can I?”

“Then you think she is weak,” said Six. Esek did not think this, exactly—“sensitive” was the better word. “I remember her devotions. Does she still read prayers beautifully?”

“She does. It’s annoying.”

A low chuckle. “What a strange contrast she must be, to you.”

“You don’t think I’m devout, little fish? I am a cleric of the Godfire.”

“You are devoted to Alisiana,” Six corrected her. “You do not care about any of the rest of them. And your devotion to Alisiana is self-interested. You hope to take her place.”

Esek paused. No one had ever dared suggest this to her. To hear it tossed before her, so casually, felt like the sort of invasion she was used to visiting on others. It was a strange sensation. Brightly she said, “What nonsense! I’m not in the female line.”

“The female line is weak. Alisiana is the only strong one left. And she is old. Some say the family will not survive her death.”

“And this concerns you, how?”

The shape on the other side of the wall shrugged. “Perhaps I would also like to see you replace her.”

Esek felt a frisson of… something. Was it unease, or amazement?

“Why would you want that?”

A dramatic pause. Then—

“If I am to be your novitiate, how much better to serve the matriarch of a great family.”

Esek hesitated in surprise, and then blurted a laugh. “You’re telling me you still dream of being my novitiate?” When they didn’t respond, her voice grew colder. “You threatened the head of my house. You’re clearly seeking information that would hurt the Nightfoots. The families your cousins told you about—they aren’t just people willing to shelter you. They’re people who knew Lucos Alanye. Who know something about what happened when he was on Jeve. The Braemish ship you stowed away on? I know its captain was the jevite smuggler who got Alanye onto Jeve in the first place. That centenarian weapons merchant who you worked for on Kator? She was one of Alanye’s lieutenants.”

Six’s shape nodded. “Yes. And where were they, when you found them?”

She paused, surprised, before admitting, “In the ground.”

“Yes.” The figure nodded again, like mockery. “I put them in the ground. It has been sixty-one years since the Jeveni Genocide. There are few people left who worked for Alanye. And I have put them in the ground.”

Nonplussed, Esek’s voice turned soft and skeptical. “Are you telling me you’ve been unearthing Lucos Alanye’s secrets so you can… protect the Nightfoots?”

“I have done it to impress you. Is that not what you charged me to do?”

Esek could not remember the last time someone had surprised her like this. “You left your cousins alive. You left the Ironways alive. Does that mean they don’t know anything… impressive?”

Six didn’t respond. Esek licked her lips and spoke with a new urgency. “Your note shows Alisiana once favored Lucos Alanye. And I know now that he came here trying to find the source of a jevite sphere belonging to Caskori Nightfoot. What does that mean? Did Alisiana sponsor Alanye’s mission? Did she want him to go to Jeve?”

Still silence. Esek raised her voice. “Tell me and I will make you my novitiate now. I’ll hide your true identity from my aunt. I’ll replace my chief novitiate with you.”

In the answering pause, Esek hoped they were considering her offer. But their answer was strange. “I am not done impressing you yet, Burning One. But you will need a new chief novitiate. Chono, I think, will make the best choice.”

Furious that they could deny her, she snapped, “What the fuck are you talking about?”

“Your current chief is dead. All the novitiates you brought into the Ironway shop are dead. My hired hands killed them as soon as I led you away.”

Esek held perfectly still. Her mind raced. She remembered the sounds of gunfire. No, it couldn’t be. No one would be so foolish as to attack a contingent of the Hand. And she had five novitiates in that room. They couldn’t possibly have been routed by a gang of station rats.

“You will see for yourself in a few minutes,” said Six. “I left the crew of your warkite alive. I wouldn’t want you to be stranded.”

Heat swept through Esek’s body, more potent than the Godfire itself.

“This is how you impress me?” she hissed.

Six cocked their head to one side. “Of course. You murdered my cousins, though they were harmless. This is my response. Righteousness. Cleverness. Brutality.”

Esek slammed her open palms on the translucent surface that divided them. She bared her teeth and snarled, “When I find you—”

“You are only angry because I have embarrassed you,” Six interrupted, voice still lilting, like a ship rocked on gentle waters. “You did not love those novitiates. You do not love anything. You will forgive me.”

“You took what is mine! You’ve stolen from me! I will never forgive that!”

“And how much did you steal from me?” Six asked.

Esek stepped back from the wall and sneered. “Good luck getting off this station. I’ll shut down the docks. I’ll have a battalion of cloaksaan here in two hours. All the Ironways’ lives are forfeit now, and those other families, too.”

Six cocked their head again. And then, to her furious amazement, they bowed.

“Please, Sa. Do your best. After all, you need to impress me, too.”

Esek’s mouth dropped open. But before she could think of a response, the lights in the ceiling and the wall ebbed, like a guttering candle. On impulse, she reached for her handgun, expecting an attack. But no. No attack. Instead, the lights blazed bright again. The door that had locked after her snicked open. And the wall, opaque once more, must mean Six had gone.

By the time she made it back to the Ironway shop, a troop of station patrolsaan had appeared, as well as the three novitiates she had left on her ship. Chono was there, and she stood amid the carnage with an expression as close to shock as Esek had seen her wear since the beginning. There were five dead novitiates on the shop floor, and two more Ironways: the second son, and Ricari. He had a bullet through the throat, and his cloudy eyes drifted to the side. Sometimes the dead wore expressions of disbelief or terror, but he did not, dignified even now.

With murder in her heart she shouted, “No one leaves this station! Find me every Ironway in the Treble. Distant relatives. Children gone at school. I want all of them.”

“Yes, Sa,” the novitiates answered, and broke apart to begin their work. Only Chono remained, watching Esek with those large gray eyes. All Esek could think was of her affiliation to Six, and it made her furious.

“What?!” she barked.

In the past, that tone had made Chono scatter. But her two years of training had already wrought a change in her, and now she absorbed the blunt force of Esek’s anger composedly. She explained, “I can’t leave the novitiates who have fallen, Sa. I have to wait vigil with them until the altarsaan arrive.”

Of course. More religious pretensions. Esek took an aggressive step toward her, intending—she wasn’t sure what. Maybe Six cared about Chono. Maybe if she killed Chono, it would hurt Six. But before she could follow this impulse, something crunched under her foot. She looked down. It was the sign that had hung over the shop, shot down in the carnage. The family glyph, a circle of gold with a footprint in the middle of it, had one of its toes shot off. This struck Esek as bizarrely funny, though she didn’t laugh. Instead, she looked up at Chono again, and found her novitiate gazing at her with an expression of understanding that Esek had not anticipated.

“Was it Six?” Chono asked, seeming older than eighteen.

Esek locked her jaw, but couldn’t contain it.

“Yes,” she growled. “It was Six.”