Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(72)

Beatriz drew in a steadying breath. “Is Nadim—”

“Awake?” I shook my head. I couldn’t feel any difference, not yet, and the lights were still down to a faint, eerie glow. “I checked to make sure that the beating the other ship gave him didn’t do more damage. Just bruises. He’ll probably be sore when he wakes up.”

If he wakes up, I thought, but I didn’t say it because Beatriz was already on the glassy edge of panic.

“They never told us,” she said softly.

“What?”

“That the Leviathan hurt each other. They always seemed so benevolent, you know, the way they talk about them back home? But first Typhon, and now this one beat Nadim up when he was down and then just left us to fend for ourselves!”

Call me cynical, but I’d always assumed that everything they taught us about Leviathan back on Earth had been propaganda. Candy coated for sure, if any of it was even true. “Nadim told us they’re not social, really. They don’t seem to harbor much affection for one another, that’s for sure.”

With a sigh, she made a gesture that said she was tabling the question because talking would burn more energy than we could spare.

It felt cold. I checked the temperature on the console readout, and our baseline environmental had slipped down by almost twenty degrees. Still falling. He was withdrawing power from our section to keep himself alive.

Wake up, Nadim. We don’t have long.

“I’m afraid,” Bea said simply.

I couldn’t blame her.

The radiation from this star roared and sang, plenty strong and loud, and if it was the kind he needed, then why was he still drifting?

We had to drag him back, somehow. I’d pretended I wasn’t scared to the best of my ability to keep Bea from freaking out, but there was so much weight on me, I could hardly breathe. This whole thing might be my fault, mine and Nadim’s together.

In that dizzy metal darkness, something the alien had said came back to me. Soothe. Sing. He’d been talking about calling off his own Leviathan, but if Nadim heard starsong, maybe he heard human music more strongly.

The epiphany sparked like a Roman candle.

I turned to Beatriz and said, “Do you trust me?”





From the archives of the A’Thon, amended from mathematical song for human translation.

Bright the stars always, dark the space between. We fear. But we trust the Vessel to carry, one bright to the next. Trade ensue peace. But Vessel tell us not of Other. This break bright, sorrow sing, trust drown. Many generations spin. Vessel comes again. Trust again.

But now comes war.

And death.





CHAPTER SIXTEEN


Breaking Off


BEA DIDN’T HESITATE at all. “What do you want me to do?”

“Sing,” I said. “That first song you did for Nadim. He loved it. I think he might—”

“Come back for it?” Her face lit with understanding. “I’d been wondering why the Honors had so many musical talents. I thought it was to make us more compatible, but maybe it’s something else. Maybe this could reach him. That’s what you’re thinking?”

“It might not work.”

“But it could.” She bounced up and ran toward the media room. I followed. By the time I reached the door, she was already on the stage, taking in a deep, slow breath.

Then she began, the notes rising like pure silver in the air, echoing and enveloping me in light. Oh God, she could sing, and right now, she sang like her life depended on it. I calmed myself because that was what the alien had emphasized. While Bea serenaded, I sank to the floor and made contact, first with my injured palms and then with my bare feet. This time, I was careful and deliberate.

Nadim.

I framed his name in the shape of music, thought-singing, in accompaniment to Beatriz, so that the notes floated out of me and into him. Every note, every echo my siren song, more relentless than any alarm. At first he gave back only low rumbles too inchoate to be called thoughts, so I followed the bass line and drummed with my hands and feet, until his rhythm shifted to follow mine. Hard to say if it came from Bea’s singing or our connection. I guessed it was some combination of the two. A rush filled my ears—no, my head—sort of like that eerie wind that Bea summoned back on Firstworld. The same flicker of lights flashed behind my eyes, and then I sensed the shift.

I felt Nadim.

He wasn’t quite awake, but he was stirring. We’d touched his dreams, and they were aching. The grumble of his pain whispered through me, reverb of loneliness spiked with something else—an unspeakable yearning. Realization dizzied me; dark sleep wasn’t the same as when humans winked out for a few hours. This was something else, more like he was lost, and he needed something to guide him back to the path.

With that in mind, I painted a mental picture, so that each of Bea’s notes hung over the dark road that connected us, buoyant as Chinese lanterns set aloft carrying wishes for the future into the New Year. Music passed through Bea to me, down my hands and feet, and became a winding path framed in brightness.

“Come to me, Nadim. Just a little farther.”

“Zara?”

The hesitant, desperate touch sent a shiver of pure relief through me. Even confused and in pain, he knew me. “I’m here. Take my hand and we’ll go.” Though the scale didn’t make any sense, I imagined leading him like a balloon on a string. As he grew stronger, more present, he leapt in bounds from pool to pool of liquid song. For the Leviathan, this was like being born. Intuitively I understood, probably from the DNA that linked us, dark sleep brought with it a kind of maturation, like going into the cocoon as larvae and coming out a butterfly. Now I couldn’t rid myself of the question of what Nadim might be when he woke up, if he’d be brutal like Typhon or furious like the kin we’d just met.