“You know we would reprogram them if we could,” I said quietly, maybe in the hopes that if I softened my voice, hers would follow.
“I know, I know, poor Dracortes, confounded by the Great Collapse,” she said with a sneer. “As if that excuses you for everything your family did before that, for the people you were…or for what’s still happening, for the people you still are. You’re still profiting from the drones.”
“But we’re not still trying to extract minerals from Alaxak—it’s by and large mined out. It’s programming gone wrong, a worthless endeavor.”
“My planet is not worthless,” she practically spat. “My people are not worthless.”
“I didn’t say that!” Frustration rose higher within me before I could quash it. I took a deep breath of my own. “There’s always been the value of Shadow as a high-risk energy source, a niche market to be sure, but now…there’s what your people can do with it.”
“Right. Now that our Shadow affinity is more than just a crazy rumor from a crazy planet, suddenly everyone in the systems is interested in us when they never bothered before. Now my people are worth something, because we’re something you can use. But I’ve always known our worth. This is my history.” She slapped the furs underneath her, kicking up some dust. “My people. My family. Kaitan means family, in our nearly dead tongue, if you didn’t know that. My grandfather named the ship the Kaitan Heritage. I never even knew him.” She gestured at the pictures on the desk. Her gaze followed, and the heat faded from her eyes. “He died young.”
The anger also seeped out of her voice as she finished, leaving her looking deflated. She had to be exhausted. I’d come to thank her, but all I’d done was remind her she should be furious with me and make her miserable. For systems’ sake. And I actually claimed to be skilled in diplomacy?
Maybe she was right. Maybe I knew nothing.
“Qole,” I said, feeling an inadequacy I was entirely unaccustomed to. “I want to help you.”
She sighed, preferring to look at the riveted wall rather than at me. “Wrong. You want to help your family.”
“I want both,” I insisted. “They’re not mutually exclusive.”
“I don’t think there could be two more opposite families with different needs than yours and mine.”
“My family may have wealth and power, but they believe in the greater good. I promise you that.”
“Greater good.” She scoffed, ignoring me. “I mean, I try to imagine what growing up must have been like for you. Did you eat off crystal platters for every meal, command servants to carry you around your palace, spend every day lying in the warm sunlight with maids fanning you?”
I felt my face harden. I was tired, I had nearly been killed at least twice today, and everyone seemed to forget that in favor of their own hard times. If I didn’t know anything about her and her family, she didn’t know anything about me and mine.
“As a matter of fact, our platters are starlesian crystal,” I said, trying to keep my voice from adopting its own crystalline edge without succeeding. “But turbolifts took me around the citadel, not servants. I’ve spent every waking moment practically from the day I was born in grueling training. My father didn’t allow for much leisure time, let alone lying about.”
She stood bolt upright. “Oh, am I supposed to feel sorry for you? Poor you, because your father, the blasted king of the system, was hard on you. Guess what? I don’t have a father, or a mother, or an older brother, because most of my family is dead, hey?”
She’d said as much on the destroyer, but I hadn’t had time to process it. I still couldn’t grasp it, couldn’t understand what that would be like. Which was probably why I heard myself snap, “I didn’t kill them. I know you’d like to blame me and my family for everything that has befallen you, but you can’t put all your troubles at the feet of others. Some you have to bear yourself.”
For a second, Qole looked as if she would slap me. She didn’t, miraculously.
I groaned. My anger was doing nothing for my case, and I tried to force it down with yet another deep breath. “That was callous. Forgive me. I understand why you’re mad at me, I really do. We’re hugely different, but that doesn’t mean we can’t find common ground. Or at least I’d like to think that.”
She only stared at me like I was insane. Maybe understanding each other was impossible. Maybe our worlds were just too far apart—literally and figuratively.
But then something gave way inside her, and her shoulders slumped. “All I have is Arjan…and Telu, Eton, and Basra.” Her voice cracked, but she pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes before tears could show. She spoke from behind her wrists, set like a barricade against me. “And now you come and put them all at risk.”
“True, but what’s the greater risk?” I asked tiredly. “Me or Shadow? I thought we had that conversation.”
“We have. You’re right.” She dropped her hands but turned away at the same time, before I could see her face. “That’s the only reason I haven’t put you out the airlock.”
It was obvious that this conversation was now over, as well, and that I had been as good as dismissed. I ducked out without saying anything and closed the door as quietly as possible behind me. It felt as if I’d lost a sparring match, failed a vital test, and disappointed someone whose opinion I valued, all without knowing quite how.
By and large, the Kaitan was utilitarian. But the crew’s quarters had two modifications from your typical freighter that were surprisingly comfortable. The floors were covered in slatted wood that had been worn and polished to a shine over time by many feet. I wasn’t sure if they were made from the driftwood on Alaxak or from one of the forests closer to the equator that had so far managed to survive the ice age, but the result was that they were much warmer than the bare metal would have been. Second, each bed, not only Qole’s, had an abundance of furs that were heavy, deliciously warm, and liable to make you enter an impenetrable sleep after a solid day of mayhem and victories that felt like failures. When I reached the room that had been assigned to me, I shucked off everything but my underwear, crawled under the furs, and did exactly that.
I woke up to a choke hold. If I hadn’t been partially shaken awake by arms sweeping up under my shoulders, I would have been unconscious in seconds. As it was, my sleep-addled brain somehow managed to remember basic training: shoulders up, chin down with everything you have. Both fighting back and panicking, my brain informed me, were excellent options.
I split the difference. I thrashed my body to the side, placed both feet on the wall, and heaved as hard as I could. It took every ounce of strength I had to move the mountain that was hanging on to me, so it didn’t take much guessing to know who had come back for a rematch.