“Now, hold on—” I start, but it’s too late. Wen’s eyes light up as she launches into her side of the story. She spins it for maximum sympathy, of course, casting herself as a poor orphan out on the streets. Only sixteen, trying to escape the mob, trying to earn enough money to get off-world and out of the Cutters’ clutches forever. All she needed was a fast sale, but Ettian—a cruel, nightmarish knave—came along and insisted on inspecting the ship, unwittingly trapping her inside when the Cutters came calling.
I know it’s pointless to interrupt as she moves to the explosion—the backup plan she’d rigged in case the worst happened. Only, she had to change it around to work so she could survive it in the safety of the ship’s engine mounts, because she never anticipated being inside the skipship when it blew. But Ettian—unthinking, dim-witted Ettian—forced her to improvise. Even worse, he tried to run and drew the Cutters’ attention, pulling Wen into an all-out brawl in the middle of the dealers’ alley.
“It was one guy,” I mutter under my breath, but Wen ignores me.
She skips the part where I saved her life and moves right along into graciously sharing her hiding place—“A trash bin,” I insist—with ungrateful, careless Ettian, who ignored her advice and ran off. She saw the Cutters on his tail and knew she had to warn him, so she followed—and good thing, too, because there was a lieutenant in the lobby of his building.
“That woman didn’t know me,” I snap. “There would have been no trouble if you and your recognizable face hadn’t followed me in.”
“You know that for sure?” Wen asks, smirking. “I’d bet everything in my pockets that she was waiting for you to settle in and drop your guard.”
“How much is in your pockets?”
Wen reaches into them, roots around, and pulls out a few pieces of gravel and a hairpin. “Good point.” She coils her finished braid at the base of her neck and fixes it there.
“Unbelievable.”
“You guys wouldn’t have made it out if it weren’t for me. You owe me.”
“Gal, don’t nod—don’t encourage her.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. My head is woozy from the blows I took, and I don’t even want to think about how high up we are or how we’re supposed to get off this roof. Or, even worse, how we’re supposed to get a ship and get off-world with the local mob on our tail. At this point, getting Wen off our case would rank as a minor miracle.
“Hypothetically,” Gal says, his voice dropping low and smooth and charming, “what would we owe you for your trouble?”
“All three of us seem to have a mutual interest in getting off this rock,” Wen says, leaning in. “Take me on.”
“Take you on?”
“As your pilot.”
Gal snorts. And because he snorts, I scoff, and because I scoff, he breaks completely, collapsing into laughter that echoes across the rooftops. I jam my fist against my lips as if that will keep the giggle trapped inside me.
For maybe the first time in the hours I’ve known her, Wen looks thrown. She frowns, waiting for Gal’s mirth to die down, her eyes flicking back and forth between us.
“You’re so far off the mark that it’s almost adorable,” Gal says at last and chuckles.
“You guys wanted to buy a ship for 6K. I’m the best junker pilot in Isla. I’m not that off the mark.”
I run a hand over my scalp. I think I might be close to crying. “Wen, we’re pilots. Both of us could probably fly any junker better than you—you should have seen the thing we came here in.”
“And where did you come from?” she asks. If she was thrown before, she’s back on track now, all demands and fire, with a voice just as exacting as Gal’s.
We glance at each other, neither one of us sure exactly how much we’re supposed to give her. But I’m not the one with the most at risk, so I tilt my palm up at Gal and let him tell the story.
“We’re deserters,” he starts. All the best lies are grounded in an easy truth. “We fled the military academy on Rana and crossed out of the Umber Empire’s borders to escape the people on our tail. We sold the ship we came here in, and we’re looking for a way to get back to—” His voice breaks, and I pray Wen doesn’t pick up on the uncertainty that nearly unmoors him. “Back to our families,” he concludes.
A knife twists in my stomach, and I notice the way Wen’s lips twitch taut. A family to go back to is a luxury only one kid on this roof possesses. But then that tautness turns into a slow smile, and suddenly Wen Iffan looks like we’ve delivered her the best news she’s heard all day. A cold shard of fear replaces the twist of the knife. She can’t be planning on turning us in to the authorities—Wen’s probably as disenfranchised as we are in the eyes of the Corinthian Empire. Even if she tried, who’d believe that?
No, she has something else. Something that makes her wicked and devious, far more terrifying than any tiny sixteen-year-old should be. “You guys are Umber ex-military? Trained on Rana?”
I don’t like where this is going one bit, but Gal is already nodding.
Wen’s smile gets wider, her lovely eyes sparkling. I’m going to have nightmares about the victory in her expression. “Like I said, we want the same thing here. Or close enough to the same thing. You guys want to get back to the Umber Empire, and I want to get off this planet—doesn’t matter where I end up, as long as it’s out of Dago Korsa’s reach.”
“I’m listening,” Gal says.
“So we join the Archon resistance.”
The hunger and hope in Gal’s expression evaporates in an instant. My hands start to tremble. I try not to let it show, but Wen’s clued into something. Her confidence slips, and she blinks. “You’re going to have to explain exactly what that is,” Gal says, and I swear there’s an edge of menace in his voice.
“When the Archon Empire fell, people ran here. You know that, right?”
We nod. I remember the night after the surrender, when blockade-runners tried to escape Rana’s atmosphere and the guns of the dreadnoughts long enough to go superluminal. Few slipped past the cityships. The darkness shone with the rain of broken ships reentering, shredding as they fell, and the skies echoed with the distant thunderclap of heavy boltfire slamming into the atmosphere. There was no chance I’d go on one of them. I was stuck on Rana, doomed to the occupation along with most of the population. But that night, I looked up at the sky and wished that I could take the risk.
I glance at Gal. To him, those were his rightful subjects, mandated by the power of his blood, fleeing his eventual rule. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to tell him how much I wanted to be one of them.