What was wrong with me? I was no stranger to a little skin. I’d spoken not only to captains, but generals, kings, and even a few women without much clothing—some of them captains and generals themselves—alone in their quarters at night. There shouldn’t be anything to this. And yet I found myself dallying in her doorway like a nervous cadet, stubbing my toe while I was at it.
“I’m sorry,” she said right after. She rubbed her eyes with one hand, holding her robe closed with the other. “I’m just tired.”
“No apologies necessary.” I paused. “May I please have your permission to come in?”
She smirked at what had to be my formal tone and gave a hilariously incorrect, exaggerated curtsy before plopping herself down on her bed. The bed was a good size, mounded in soft-looking furs. “I can’t believe anyone actually takes the time to talk like that. Don’t you have better things to do?”
“Oh, it can get far more elaborate.” I bowed my most formal court bow, which was so ridiculously out of place she burst out laughing. The sound was just as incongruous in this room, high and lovely as it echoed off the cold alloy walls. “My lady, if it pleases you, might I request the honor of your presence for a few brief moments of pleasant conversation?”
“Lady?” She snorted, a sound that nearly, but not quite, ruined all memory of her laughter. “Only if you promise it’ll be pleasant.” Her eyes still glinted with unguarded mirth as she said, “Otherwise I might have to throw you out on your royal posterior.” She laughed again and suddenly looked as young as she was. Systems, she was only seventeen. I kept forgetting, and remembering made me flush. “Posterior—that’s the right word, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I said, blinking in surprise. “You know, your vocabulary is actually quite excellent for…erm…”
Her smile dropped from her face as if I’d shot it down with plasma missiles.
“No, I mean, you’re brilliant. It’s just that, without formal training, I wouldn’t expect…you know.” I found myself fumbling my words—practically unheard of—on top of flushing. “Anyway.” I cleared my throat. “Who painted that picture?”
Inwardly, I cringed at my obvious and awkward change of topic.
“Arjan,” she said, her voice as clipped as return gunfire.
“He paints?”
“Yes. Well, he did, when he had more time.”
“The photographs…are they of your family?”
Her face went still. “One of my parents, one of my grandfather.”
“Is this all…um…some sort of shrine?” I asked, pointing at the collection on her desk.
“Piece of the past,” she said shortly. “From my ancestors.”
“So, like ancestor worship?”
Her lips twisted in distaste. “I wouldn’t call it worship. We don’t believe in anything like the Great Unifier, some all-powerful presence who has it all figured out, sitting up in some perfect place watching us all screw up. We only believe in experience. In the people who came before us. They watch us, but not…not like that.”
“Ah,” I said inarticulately, trying to understand but not wanting to offend her by asking any more indelicate questions. I desperately wanted to go back to just hearing her laugh. “So you are like Scientists on this ship.”
She only stared in response to my poor attempt at a joke.
I hurried to explain, not wanting her to think I was further insulting her intelligence by referencing things she might not know. “Their version of a deity is Ismar Ravinye, the head scientist who gave his life trying to keep the universal portals from collapsing four hundred years ago. Not the best person to divinize, in my opinion, given that he failed catastrophically and civilization imploded…but talk about the ultimate form of experience to have.”
I was babbling, and failing in an equally catastrophic fashion to Ismar Ravinye. This conversation was becoming my own Great Collapse.
Qole finally sighed, saving me from my self-induced verbal torture. “Nev, what are you doing here?”
“I just wanted to thank you. You know, for agreeing to come with me.”
“I’m not exactly doing it for you.”
“I know,” I said quickly. “Of course not.”
“I’m doing it for me, and Arjan, and Telu…and Alaxak. And you’d better deliver on your promise to help us, and I don’t just mean financially.”
“I know,” I said, her tone worrying me. It was rapidly sliding into something distinctly dark. “I will. I promised then and I promise now. We’ll figure out your Shadow affinity…together.”
Qole’s laugh was suddenly bitter. “We’ve heard something like that before.”
“This time, it’s true,” I said, with the utmost sincerity.
“How can you be so sure? What do you really know about anything?” She met my eyes, but now with only sparks of anger. “You know why my people are on Alaxak, Nev?”
I straightened, blinking, trying to remember as much as I could, to prove to her that I understood whatever she might want me to. “Before the Great Collapse, portals enabled people to settle on planets spread across the galaxy, and they developed, or strengthened, their own cultures—”
“No. No, I don’t want you to spew up a general history lesson from one of your princely tutors or whatever. Why are my people on Alaxak?”
Her anger was as fierce as Shadow, flickering and then burning suddenly white hot. She had so many triggers, and I seemed to set off every one. “Um…”
“That’s right, you don’t know. And you know why you don’t know? We weren’t deemed important from the beginning. That’s how we got our planet, because no one else wanted it, and no one would give us anything else—”
A small measure of frustration entered my own voice. “The Galactic Union didn’t really dole out planets to different groups before the Great Collapse. It was a lot more complicated than—”
“Are you listening to me, or am I listening to you?”
I clamped my mouth shut. If she wanted me to be silent, then I would be silent.
“Thanks,” she said, brusquely. “Anyway, we carved something for ourselves out of that icy wasteland. It was brutal and rough and small, but it was ours. We Shadow fished, poisoning ourselves because we had nothing else. And do you know what happened then?”
I winced, because I knew where this was headed. “I can guess.”
“No, you know,” she said, her dark eyes boring into me. “The Dracortes sent their mining drones to Alaxak. They gutted our planet of precious metals and minerals that we could have used someday—”
“Your people sold the rights to those resources to—”
Her shout cut me off. “We didn’t know the worth!” Fury rose like toxic steam from one of those mines. “And since the galaxy was happy to leave us toiling ourselves to death in our frozen corner, no one bothered to tell us. We didn’t have the technology to know the extent or value of those deposits…or the damage they would cause.” She took a deep breath, as if trying to calm herself. She didn’t sound much calmer afterward. “Those drones ravaged Alaxak, Nev. And do you know what? They’re still doing it, hundreds of years later! Still mining underground for nothing, hollowing out the planet, and even sifting through our asteroid belt, blowing up any fishing vessels they decide have interfered with them.”