Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(104)

Chao-Xing was uncomfortable, somewhere behind that blank look. And I had so many questions. Not for Starcurrent; we’d probably end up repeating words back to each other in an endless loop. Not for Yusuf, who was clearly in no shape to talk.

Let us care for the weak and wounded, and then ask. Nadim seemed a bit different now, more assertive. Maybe Leviathan changed after their first battle too.

I helped Yusuf up. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you somewhere safe.”

There is no safe, Nadim whispered to me alone, and an instant later, Chao-Xing said, in precisely the same tone, “There is no safe. As you have seen.”

Much later, when everyone was tended, when we’d eaten, when we’d put light years between us and that awful carnage, untethered Typhon and Nadim and set them cruising around a nourishing star, we sat together in Nadim’s lounge. Starcurrent fidgeted, poking at this and that like he expected the furniture to poke back and fluttering tentacles when it didn’t. Marko, sedated and limping, got settled full-length on the comfortable couch.

I went over to him. “You okay?”

“Not really,” he said.

“Lot of that going around.”

“But . . . thank you for saving me.”

That wasn’t something I ever expected to hear from the polished person who hauled me out of Camp Kuna. “What can I say? Nadim made me do it.”

I should’ve known Nadim wouldn’t let that stand. “Untrue. I was wholly opposed to you risking your life.”

We touched silently, mind to mind. Nadim ached with the remembered misery of my reckless decision, and he still wasn’t healed from installing that damned alarm. He needed solid starlight and rest. Beatriz had already chewed me out, so he let me feel the aftermath—his fear cooling to a low hum of dread. In apology, I opened to him and filled him with all of the strength and reassurance I could muster. His delight swelled in response. A look from Beatriz said she knew, but she didn’t join us.

Chao-Xing paced, lost in her own thoughts. Yusuf sat silently in a chair, staring at his hands, his whole body slumped and loose.

Leaving Marko to rest, I sank down on the floor next to Beatriz. We were dirty and tired. I’d scrubbed the worst of the filthy alien blood off and changed clothes, but I still felt the ghost of it on me, cold and destructive. What if it can soak in? I wanted right then to scramble up and run to have EMITU check it out, but I was beyond exhausted. If I was infected, I’d still be infected in half an hour, and I’d be better able to deal with it.

“Well?” I asked. Nadim was silent, but his presence was everywhere around us. Typhon’s massive chill hung beyond him, almost comforting now. Sometimes, having the bully at your back could be an asset. You just kept him pointed away.

Chao-Xing gave us both a wry, shaded look, grim with a touch of graveyard humor. “Congratulations, Honors Cole and Teixeira. You’re the first humans in history to graduate to the Journey without first completing the Tour. You’ve met the enemy. We call them the Phage. And now, you are at war.”

I understood at last why I’d been chosen. Why I’d been plucked out of the grim and struggle.

I’d always been at war.