Honor Among Thieves (The Honors #1)(75)

“Understood, Zara.”

“And what was it that Tenty said about a bond-name?”

“Tenty . . . ?”

“Octopus tentacle thing from the other Leviathan. Answer the question.”

“When we are accepted as worthy to undertake the Journey, we are renamed. I think you might understand it as . . . a baptism. Some choose a name formed of ship and pilot.”

“So we’d be like . . . Zadim or Nara?” I was mostly joking with that, but he seemed to be considering it seriously.

“I would prefer Zadim.” He wasn’t joking. He also seemed sad. “But it is unlikely I will be able to choose my final pilot and starsinger. The Elders choose who we are most compatible with.”

That reminded me of Elder Typhon, and the momentary distraction of humor burned away. I got serious again. “Right. Next, you’re going to tell me what the hell was going on with Marko and Chao-Xing and Typhon. He was using them. Is that some kind of . . . deep bond?”

He didn’t want to answer this one, I could tell. “An imperfect one,” he finally said. “Imbalanced. Typhon takes what he needs from them. Commands. Controls. It is very difficult to find the ideal bond. Typhon had that, once. But he lost them. Since, he has not been—not been the same.”

Suddenly I understood the look that Marko and Chao-Xing had, all pupils and dead man’s stare. “You lied to us.” The words came out quieter than I meant, but they had hard, cutting edges. I pushed off from the wall and limped the rest of the way toward my room. Not far now. “About what the Honors program really is. It isn’t just cultural exchange and learning, is it?”

“No,” Nadim said. “But at the same time, it is those things too. We are beneficial to humans, and humans to us. That isn’t a lie.”

“You don’t tell people about the bond. About how it can take away our minds! Our humanity!” Fury crackled through me, realizing that Marko and Chao-Xing had gone off to their new ship expecting another voyage like what they had with Nadim. Instead, they’d gotten jumped. “You sure as shit should have said something about that!”

He went silent, though he didn’t draw back from me; he just didn’t seem to know what to say. I didn’t want to sleep anymore. I wanted to pace, even though it hurt, but common sense took over; I opened the door to my room and sat on the bed. I felt Nadim come in with me—a sense of him right beside me, an almost physical presence, so strong that I fixed my gaze on the space where I felt he stood.

“I can’t change what Typhon does,” he said. “One human is not responsible for the actions of all humans, isn’t that true?”

“Sure.”

“Then please understand. Typhon is not . . .”

“What, they’re all like you and he’s the outlier? Is that what you’re telling me?”

“No,” Nadim said. “I’m saying that we are all different. Please don’t think I would ever do that to one of my Honors!”

“What’s the Journey, Nadim?”

“I don’t—”

“You know. Don’t try to tell me you don’t! I can give you a pass on the shock device, but the weapons? That isn’t just shit you come up with because it looks cool. You develop it to protect yourself!”

“I never said the Journey would be safe,” he said. “No one has ever promised that. We’re taking precautions—”

“Shut up!” I yelled, and stood up. “Come on, you know better than this! Something is wrong and if you don’t know what it is, then you’re being lied to just as much as we are!”

I felt him draw back that time, as if I’d slapped him. I wasn’t sorry, either. Sometimes a wake-up call was necessary. “Stop shouting at me!” Now he had lost his temper too. Good. “I haven’t done anything wrong! I’m not responsible for what Typhon does, any more than you were responsible for your father—”

The rage bubble burst inside of me and drowned me in a flood of fire and ice. “Get the hell out of my room.”

It was impossible for a living ship to slam a door on himself, but Nadim did his best to try. He disappeared, and the sudden chill of his absence was breathtaking. I froze in place, struggling for breath. It physically hurt to lose him in this way. I wondered if it hurt him too. I couldn’t tell, because there was absolutely no way I was going to check on him. I hadn’t told him about my father. About any of that. Angry as hell, I slammed out of my room, blocking him from my mind as I rushed back to the console. Called up my own personnel file, which I hadn’t done before because why would I?

It was full of my sealed treatment records. Everything from my therapists. Everything that I’d thought would never be revealed to anyone else. Not even Camp Kuna had seen these things, but here they were.

It was all in the files that the Honors Selection Committee had sent to the Leviathan. All my damage, all my violence, all my wounds, laid bare.

Nadim knew.

The anger rushed out of me as if someone had pulled a plug. I staggered and instinctively reached for a wall, flinching when I felt the warmth of it, but I stayed in contact anyway, because I needed the support.

When I breathed in again, I had to take a convulsive gulp of air to clear spots from my eyes.

“Zara?” Nadim’s voice came from all around me, and it was sharp with alarm. “Zara, what’s wrong?”