Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(47)

“I expected you would ask me about it.”

I stayed quiet for a moment, idly drawing patterns on the silky bedcover, before I said, “You should have told Marko and Chao-Xing I cheated.”

“You had no intention of cheating,” he said, and he sounded sure about it. “This is part of the same objection to creating my alarm. You want to know how something is to be used before you build it. You don’t like being kept in the dark.”

“Yeah,” I said. “It’s what I hated about the whole world, back on Earth. All the rules you had to follow without knowing why, and if you asked, you got branded difficult and damaged. Well, I am difficult. I am damaged. And I’m going to ask why.”

“Why didn’t you ask me?”

I debated that. I looked down at the patterns I was drawing. They looked like stars. “I wasn’t sure you would tell me the truth, and I don’t want you to lie to me.”

“I would not, Zara,” he said, and there was something in that voice that vibrated warm inside me. How had he put it? Strings tuned to the same frequency. I knew he meant it. “Please don’t lie to me. I know it’s something humans do naturally, but—”

“I won’t,” I told him. I wasn’t sure it was a promise I could keep, but I wanted it to be true. “Why am I building you a weapon?”

The silence felt like forever, stretching and pulling and, finally, ripping when he said, “Because not everything in the universe is kind.”

“Meaning what, exactly?” I raised my head and looked at a space on the wall like I was staring at him, even though there was no focus point. “Meaning you have enemies?”

“I—” He started, faltered, and started again. “I don’t know everything about the universe, Zara. I’m still learning, just as you are. But I know one thing, from all these years of interacting with humans.”

“Which is what?”

“Even the kindest of creatures has predators.”

That rang so true that I felt it inside me. “So you don’t know why I’m building it, either. They haven’t told you, have they?”

“Elder Typhon required us all to be provisioned with protective armor and at least one weapon,” Nadim said immediately. “I did ask why. He didn’t answer me.”

“They never do.”

“Are you going to build it?”

I leaned back against the bulkhead wall. Put my hand flat against the warm surface of his skin. “What do you want me to do?”

“I don’t want weapons,” Nadim said. “But I want to protect you and Beatriz. So would you please assemble it? As a favor to me?”

“I’m all for a good defense. And since you asked, yes. But if I find out you’re hiding something from me, Nadim—”

“I’m not,” he said. “If—if you want to look inside my mind and make certain of that, you can.”

I thought about it for a moment. That felt like a cliff I wasn’t ready to plunge off, not yet at least. I said, “Just don’t let me down.”

I went to assembly and worked for a few hours—good, detailed, sweaty work that took my mind off what Beatriz might be doing, or failing to do. I had a hundred asks for Marko, which was probably why he’d retreated to Typhon. He must know I’d never shuttle over to grill him, even if the giant Leviathan Elder would allow me to come aboard. Marko’s parting rhetorical question burned a circle in the center of my brain. It made me think he was going through something, not entirely of his volition, and that heralded bad shit down the line. For me and maybe for everybody.

In frustration, I finally slammed into the combat simulation room. Each punch, each kick carried weight, and I experienced the visceral satisfaction of smashing somebody’s nose. Even the crunch of cartilage and blood spray seemed right. I went straight up to expert-level street fighting, no rules. There were ranks. I started at one. Too easy, so I scaled up. Six opponents this time, a mix of bare-knuckle and melee weapons. If you could get a degree in street fighting, I’d have a PhD. I’m with you, Bea. I’m fighting too. The VR learned my style, adapted, and eventually, I got my ass handed to me at rank five. Not bad, considering I was up against fifteen foes.

When I emerged at last, drenched and exhausted, the view on Nadim’s transparent wall revealed that we’d arrived back home. The sight of the giant blue-green ball of Earth came as a shock. I’d gotten used to seeing Mars, and Saturn, and Jupiter, and Venus as Nadim cruised by them, but now we were home. Ready, I realized, to kick any unsuitable crew back down to the surface and take on an alternate. There were a few silvery, sleek Leviathan orbiting too . . . young ones, like Nadim, each escorted by what must have been Elders twice their size. Adults. All of those bigger ships looked scarred, their skin dull and rough where it wasn’t plated in metal.

I’d rather give myself a lobotomy with a rehab shiv than travel on a ship like Typhon. I tried to imagine touching the Elder’s emotions up close, and a cold shudder rolled over me so that my skin prickled with goose bumps.

I leaned closer to the clear skin of the viewscreen and put my palms flat on his skin on either side to brace myself. Ahhh. That felt better. We snapped together like magnets, and I breathed a long sigh of relief. I preferred it when we weren’t at odds.