by Essa Hansen
En steered Caiden onto a raised seat at the bar between Taitn and Laythan. The two men faced away from each other, with a generous gap between. Ksiñe sat outside Laythan, and En considered the arrangement a moment before choosing the seat next to the scientist.
Caiden was too fatigued to unravel family dynamics.
“You all right?” Taitn asked. “You did a good thing. Soon enough everyone will know what the ‘overseers’ are responsible for.”
Caiden’s head swam with daze, but he nodded, grateful.
Laythan slicked a hand through the wild waves of his marbled hair. Guilt or worry dug furrows in his brow as he preoccupied himself with a smoking golden drink. Ksiñe fussed with everyone’s food, pushing ingredients to the side of plates or dabbing on seasonings and supplements from a little array of vials.
“Eat something.” Taitn slid a dish in front of Caiden. The meal was a dense cylinder with a thin, velvety skin.
Caiden bit into it, savoring the rush of flavor as something juicy melted and another part crunched. His bite revealed at least a dozen different layers.
En laughed. “It’s a ramia.”
Crisp, salty flakes tore away, letting a layer of spicy orange sauce drip out. Long strips of vibrant meat lay inside and looked raw but melted on his tongue as no meat did. He wolfed it down and picked at the crumbs. “Can I have another one?”
“As many as you like,” En said. “The ones Ksiñe makes are even better; I’ll buy ingredients in Emporia so you can try his.”
Ksiñe said nothing, but self-conscious red shivered up his neck.
“Emporia?” Caiden asked.
“A passager hub in Unity,” En said, “right across the universe border. It’s sort of like a Cartographer Den but much, much bigger, and all the factions are there. We’ll sell the gloss, buy a new vessel, help you through your acceleration—”
Laythan interjected, “Then figure out what to do about the Azura after it’s repaired.”
Caiden bristled. “It’s mine.”
“You won’t be able to pilot a sophisticated vessel until after your acceleration and some training. And if the Dynast finds out your ship contains unprecedented Graven technology, it and you will become targets.” Laythan finally looked at him, expression softening. “You have an altruistic heart, and that’ll get you nothing but trouble. I picked up four pieces of trouble, if you haven’t noticed.”
“Hey!” En exaggerated a scowl.
Laythan chuckled. “We need a new vessel in Emporia, and since your acceleration credits need to be redeemed there anyway we might as well—”
Ksiñe stiffened and cut in, “You said—”
“We might as well go all together,” Laythan finished with force.
“And I won’t let Winn accelerate alone,” Taitn muttered.
“And I,” Ksiñe enunciated carefully, “told you we need to be done with the whelp.” He continued in a different language, one that felt liquid and layered, the syllables crashing into rapids. Caiden’s only hint at the emotion of the argument was Laythan’s boisterous volume, Ksiñe’s reddening skin, and the little whipkin’s agitated pacing in his lap.
Caiden tried to ignore them, diving into another ramia on his plate.
The Andalvian finally shoved off his seat and stalked away. The whipkin’s cries muffled as she burrowed into his clothes.
“Go after him?” Taitn suggested, swirling his drink. “He could cause more trouble than En. On top of everything, we don’t need a whole Den murdered in a fit of pique.”
“No,” Laythan said. “He’ll sulk back to the ship and Panca will take care of him.”
They ate and drank in silence for a while. Caiden unraveled the tension and concluded the obvious: he was the wrench in this machine. He’d strummed all the latent tension built up between the crew. He didn’t belong.
Caiden munched on the second ramia and got halfway through before Taitn’s hand crept to the back of his neck and squeezed.
“What are—” Caiden cut off as a group of Casthen sauntered up to the bar beside him.
Half of them took a seat while the other half clumped nearby. They wore the dark metallic plates, mismatched weapons, and featureless blue masks that were lodged forever in Caiden’s memory.
He quivered, jerking against Taitn’s restraining hand.
“You’ve done enough,” the pilot whispered. He punched a fist lightly into Caiden’s chest. “Keep it in here. Breathe.”
Caiden inhaled vigorously and held it.
En stared into his drink, eyes wide. He gripped the glass so hard it squeaked and his knuckles cracked.
Taitn glared at En and tapped the bar. “Keep it here.”
A tall Casthen in the center of their circle was the leader, judging from the others’ subservient and attentive body language. The man gestured to the chketin tending the bar, then he spun, leaned against the counter, and yanked his blue faceplate off. This Casthen had a human face, but his skin was too pale and fine, stretched over his sculpted bone structure. His eyes were bloodshot purple, and his irises were concealed in a blur of tiny, shifting hexagons.
Three others in the Casthen group removed their masks too. Their faces were as varied as their physiques, blending different features of the xenids Caiden had seen so far. Half this, half that.
“Keep it caged in the brig,” Purple Eyes said to his crew. “Hopefully Çy’s right about it. The second fleet bailed, got what they could.”
Caged? Caiden envisioned a smaller version of the packed transport cube, with someone crammed inside. He twisted to face the slavers.
En reached over and pulled him straight, then tapped one ear with a finger. “These are your best weapons. Sit and listen. Your memory jog will do the most damage to them once it’s released.”
Caiden devoured the rest of his food and pushed the crumbs around. The Casthen group bobbed in his peripheral vision.
“Does it need eat?” said one who looked at least half saavee, the gnarled skin and diamond-shaped pupils giving them away.
“Sure whines like it.” Purple Eyes surveyed the room. His gaze lingered over Caiden for a beat.
Caiden met the slaver’s gaze and stared after it left.
One of the masked Casthen grunted, sliding a drink off the bar. “Is it worth anything, after? Maybe we keep it for ourselves, split it up.” They ripped their faceplate off to reveal fine-furred wrinkles of skin. Their fleshy maw opened and consumed the whole drink in one pour.
“No fun and not worth nothin’ young,” the half saavee growled.
Caiden squirmed on his seat, imagining what they might be talking about.
I’m done running. I’ll tell Sina they have someone caged. He shot from his seat. Within three steps, an armored hand yanked his wrist.
One of the other Casthen gripped him, but it was the leader’s eyes he met.
Taitn leapt up, weapon drawn and pointed at the group. En swiveled and looked ready to lunge, hand on a knife at his hip and a smaller weapon raised. Laythan rose somberly, seat creaking. He stepped closer while the whole room noticed and shifted with him in a ripple, some brandishing weapons but unsure which direction to face.
“What’s your business?” Laythan asked calmly.
Purple Eyes smiled eerily, keeping his gaze on Caiden. “Looks like he has something to add to our conversation. Also looks familiar, doesn’t he, pack?”
The Casthen group shuffled with nods and grunts.
Caiden’s captor twisted his arm, forcing him to bend forward. He bit back a pained curse and snarled, “Let me go!”
Purple Eyes cocked his head, surveying the back of Caiden’s neck.
Where the slave brand was. The disguising material had wiped off.
The Casthen leader straightened and beamed. “Hi, Freckles.”
CHAPTER 12
PROPERTY
The Casthen group’s leader said, “Seems you’re the property we’ve been looking for.”
Caiden twisted free of h
is captor. “I’m not Casthen property.”
“Step back,” Laythan ordered.
Caiden couldn’t move. His morphcoat bristled into tiny spines. He rocked on his heels, brimming with pressure.
En said, “He’s a registered passager.”
“That brand says otherwise.” A wavy smile pasted across Purple Eyes’s face. “Property can’t be registered.”
“He is,” Laythan said, “so let’s—”
“So he can handle this himself.” Purple Eyes aimed the smile at Laythan before turning back to Caiden. “My name is Threi. And I think I know what you are, Freckles.” He drew a silvery weapon of bundled rods from his thigh and offered it to Caiden. “You look like you want to hurt me.”
“He’s cur like us,” the half saavee in the crew said.
“I’m not like you.” Caiden snatched the weapon by its spongy grip. It resembled a smaller version of the weapons the slavers had dropped when they found Caiden in the ship. When they had called in, “Not worth the gloss ’less he’s Graven.”
Worthless. Property.
He pointed the weapon at Threi’s face.
“Leave it be,” Taitn whispered. “You’ve done enough.”
En’s grip creaked on his knife’s hilt. “Violence fixes many things, but it can’t change what’s already happened.”
The tiny hexagons covering Threi’s corneas resolved into ice-blue irises. “Sometimes it’s all about just feeling better. Go ahead, fire. Fast as you can.”
Caiden’s grip quaked. En had been right. He did need to hit something. Everything in him screamed to bash, to maim— to not be a coward this time. Everything he had gone through was fresh from the memory jog. The sky opening. The transport. The stench. Bodies opened with screams. And the voice: Sand worm, wriggle out.
Caiden squeezed. The weapon vibrated and fired a thin, blinding beam. It connected with Threi’s face and burst into ripples of green-black smoke. An explosive pressure thrust Caiden back.
When the shivering iridescence of an energy shield settled, Threi’s perfect face was still smiling.
“What.” Caiden froze.
“You!” Thudding footsteps marked the huge chketin Cartographer lumbering around the bar. They grabbed Caiden’s wrist with the weapon and hauled upward, lifting Caiden to his tiptoes. “Fights prohibited in this district. Take it to the ring.”
Cartographer Sina called from across the room as she marched over, “A Casthen Enforcer should know better.”
Threi waved his hands. “Guilty is the one who fired. Guess we’ll have to have a talk about him.”
Caiden had taken Threi’s bait. The adrenaline washed out and left him cold. He wriggled in the chketin’s grip, but five rough fingers each as thick as his wrist held him tight.
Sina took the situation in carefully, while patterns strobed across her skin. “Apprehend the Enforcer too.”
The chketin obliged, grasping the man’s upper arm, holding Caiden and Threi like caught rabbits. Threi shot Sina a perplexed look.
At that moment, a display in the bar’s back wall switched footage to green pastures, bovine, gray skies: Caiden’s memory jog footage. The imagery he’d experienced in the chamber had been reproduced in chronological snippets, both moving and static images. Some features blurry, others crisp.
Caiden’s free hand curled around the back of his neck, body caving in. The chketin held him, he couldn’t flee the sight, but some part of his mind detached anyway.
Murmurs carried through the crowded bar. More wall displays illuminated with his memory jog footage: the sky opening up orange, the transport descending on the Flat Docks. Then Casthen overseers ushering the population in.
Threi’s smile withered as he stared, and his crew bristled as they watched their faction represented on the screens. The crowd reoriented at them, mutters rising as the gathered xenids realized that what they were watching had a Casthen source.
Fresh energy filled Caiden, and he blurted, “Now everyone will see what you did with your property.”
Threi’s head swiveled to look at him. Snarl lines gathered on the bridge of his nose.
“Passagers.” Sina addressed the tense crowd. “We have acquired memory jog footage that will enlighten the situation in CWN82. The broadcast of it, as well as proof of authenticity, will be available here and through your personal databases.” She turned to the chketin Cartographer who held Caiden and Threi in both meaty fists. “Take them.”
“Sina,” Laythan cut in, deploying his hard, fatherly tone. “The boy’s with us.”
“I am sorry, Captain. Even if we ignore a fired weapon on neutral ground, the fact of his Casthen brand must be addressed.”
Terror skated through Caiden. He hadn’t survived then doubled his trauma in the memory jog chamber just to be sent right back to the Casthen. His wrist bones creaked as he twisted in the chketin’s grip.
En straightened, forming a strong line with Laythan and Taitn. “We’ll come with him.”
Sina frowned, spots flocking on her cheekbones. “If he is not property, then you are not his guardians, and he is a passager who can handle his own business. If he is one of the Casthen by—”
“I’m not,” Caiden said, the pressure inside him corkscrewing the words into a squeak. “You saw …” He cut that thought right off. The memory jog’s source was anonymous, unless he blurted it out. On the walls, the footage continued, showing the nophek and the slaughter, and if he had to watch it all again so soon he would shatter. He was already hot with sweat. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Winn,” En warned.
Caiden shook his head. Dizzy darkness swarmed his skull in the motion. He had to get away from the screens. The memories playing on them threatened to spill out and engulf the room, become real again all around him.
Sina gestured, and the chketin hauled Caiden and Threi toward the Cartographers’ main hall. They left the messy crowd, heading back through white warrens, into a naked room with only a circular white table in the middle. The chketin all but threw Threi and Caiden inside. “Sit, Passagers.” Snarling inhales accented the chketin’s speech. They had a face like a kicked bag of rocks, muscle bands bulging around eyes that were solid balls of black suspending orange pupils. The chketin was all brawn and rough skin, and Caiden shuddered at the size of their hand, big enough to engulf his skull and squeeze it like a fruit. He took an obedient seat. Threi slid into one chair and propped his feet on another.
The Cartographer grunted and took up station beside the door, crossing arms that were each two or three times as thick as Caiden’s leg.
No escape.
Caiden glared sideways at Threi, his temper hot and scratchy. Sensing his mood, the morphcoat fused into padded scale armor.
Threi’s own armor scraped and clinked as he propped an elbow on the table. He hard-blinked one eye and then the other, forcing out teardrops of the purple tech, which he plucked off and shoved in a pocket. “Let me guess, those captured memories were yours, Freckles? Figures you’d survive— skilled little Casthen pup.”
Skilled. The affirmation that Caiden’s heart quested for was rancid coming from Threi.
“I’m not one of you,” he said.
“Again, your brand says otherwise.”
Caiden’s temper snapped, he shot to his feet, and the chketin boomed, “No fights! You wait for Sina.”
Threi turned his ice-blue gaze to Caiden. His gloved fingers crawled through snarls of short, dark hair. “So, you’re a heroic and temperamental passager now. I’ve always found it best to confront what you hate head-on, work out all those weak little bits of you. You know … if you joined the Casthen you’d have the best chance to do just that.” Threi offered a gloved hand.
Caiden flinched as if a snake reared to strike him.
“I promise you’ll get more opportunities to shoot me. Besides, don’t you want to know where you’re from?”
The poison words seeped to his marrow. Caiden paced the length of the room, e
scaping the pressure in his body. “I’m free, and I have nothing to do with slavers like you. Right now, every passager is watching what you Casthen did. They’ll expose you. And I survived for vengeance, to free anyone else in Casthen claws.”
He was a firebrand adrift from a burned-out blaze, and he would catch all of the Casthen aflame.
Threi laughed so heartily his forehead buckled into his supporting hand, fingers mashing through his wavy hair. “You are a darling pup. Çydanza would adore you.”
Caiden stiffened.
Threi cocked his head up, chin resting in a palm that squished the edge of his smile. With his free hand he fished among his armor for something, then cast it across the tabletop toward Caiden.
He caught it: a marble-sized glass cube. When he picked it up, it unfurled in his palm and projected a small field of air dimples in a grid, like the devices Ksiñe used.
“That projects a holosplay for reading, and stores the Cartographers’ public database. You can enter verbal queries. Have a learn later and see just how integral the Casthen are to this multiverse. One person, as young as you, can do nothing from the outside. And your memories are a pebble drop that will ripple, but it’s rippling into a sea.”
Caiden closed his palm and the holosplay field dissolved, the device re-condensed into a cube. He squeezed until its corners cut his skin. The multiverse already appeared built of a web of relationships he had no idea how to navigate yet.
“Your rage needs focus,” Threi said, “and running amok as a passager flailing for justice won’t focus you. If you want to face up to the Casthen, then come with me right into the belly of the beast and do it. Accept where you belong.”
As guilty as Caiden felt about his temper, anger was the only way he could move forward and escape grief nipping at his heels. The brighter he burned, the less of sorrow he could see.