Kauri gave a triumphant little smile. “I rest,” she said. And she nodded to me.
Goro had been trying to bait us into something. And if we’d risen to the bait and fought his champion, we would have proven everyone right about us. Goro clearly wanted that. Was it because our presence weakened his power, or did he think he was doing his people a favor by trying to reveal our true intentions?
“Very well,” Adi said. “The argument is over. We will now hear from the senate.”
Kauri turned around and raised her fist at me, in a gesture I was coming to recognize as both a greeting and approval.
Goro floated closer, his champion standing beside him with her gauntleted arms crossed. “I don’t know what your game is, human,” he grumbled.
“I don’t have a game,” I said. “Except to bring our people home, make peace with you, and coordinate a resistance against the Superiority.”
Goro narrowed his beady little eyes at me. “Your people never looked at us as allies before.”
“And I’m sorry for that,” I told him. “But we aren’t them. We’re concerned about your welfare, and the welfare of all the species the Superiority claims are lesser.”
I looked over at FM and she nodded her approval. Stars, maybe I was getting some of this right at least.
“Hmph,” Goro said, crossing his arms to mirror his champion. “Well, we will see.”
Paws waved in the air all around the room, and Adi floated her microphone over to them, allowing the senators to speak.
The first few senators focused on Goro’s argument—his right to challenge newcomers to a trial by combat. Several felt there was no harm in granting his request—though they all seemed to regard it as odd—and suggested we should be obliged to appoint a champion or leave the planet in disgrace. The kitsen with the rings in his ears said that Goro had no authority over Dreamspring or the surrounding island, so his challenge was invalid. Goro would need to wait and reissue it if one of us set foot on his island, which had another long name I didn’t quite follow.
Stars, it was getting hot in here. We were inside the rock, where it should have been cooler, but the heat of so many bodies in one place was starting to make the room humid and stuffy.
I looked over at FM, who was listening to the kitsen speak with obvious and growing concern. “This isn’t going well,” she said to me.
She was right. Instead of focusing on what I’d said about peace, the conversation was getting bogged down in the disputed legality of Goro’s request. And in between, senators began to comment on the bigger issue—dare they defy the Superiority by working with us? That would mean throwing away all their progress toward primary citizenship. They gave up their monarchy for that, which they all seemed to consider a great sacrifice.
“Lord Hesho gave his life to try to further our cause with the Superiority,” one of the kitsen with a notched ear said. “How can we dishonor his sacrifice by abandoning his quest?”
Kauri squirmed like she dearly wanted to argue with that, but both she and Goro remained silent, which I gathered was the rule.
We had not been given permission to speak again, and we hadn’t interrupted. I simultaneously wished someone would ask our opinion and was unsure of what I would say.
If Spensa were here, she’d say something. She wouldn’t be able to sit here and listen to this without telling them how wrong they were. She wouldn’t worry about finding the right words—she’d trample forward on moxie alone, and it would work, because Spensa was amazing like that.
And somehow she had confidence in me. Stars, I could have used a little of that confidence right now. I let my mind slip into the nowhere, searching for her. Alanik was sitting right here, and while I didn’t hear her in the nowhere, I also didn’t want her to open her mind and hear me, so I stayed quiet, looking, listening.
The kitsen senators continued to argue, but I caught only snatches.
“—Superiority has the power. Who are these humans, that they think they can win—”
The nowhere was quiet as ever, devoid even of that strange raised texture I’d encountered on Platform Prime.
There was something though, there in the emptiness. Not Spensa, but…an image of her. She was…cleaning a part from a starfighter. I couldn’t see the area around her, but I could see her, and could sense…her loneliness. And a feeling of concern for her that wasn’t mine. It came from the image, from the nowhere.
Stars, was the nowhere concerned about Spensa? It was only a strange place, it couldn’t think or feel—
Could it?
The kitsen went on, the arguments getting more heated as they went.
“—threaten our way of life. We shouldn’t be working with any of them, unless we want—”
The image of Spensa faded. It hadn’t seemed like it came from Spensa herself, but I had no idea where—or who—it had come from. It was gone now, and I couldn’t find it again.
“—destruction for us and all our kin. If we aren’t careful—”
An image welled up in my mind—the Superiority ship where my parents died, cut to ribbons and expanding ever outward against the blackness of space.
I shoved it down, reaching through the nowhere again. Spensa was in here somewhere. I’d found that image, I should be able to find her. Even if we couldn’t talk, I wanted to know she was there—
That vibration I’d felt before grew stronger, a cytonic resonance from somewhere on the island. And then, loud in my mind, a voice cried, HELP US! and I visibly startled.
Other than Juno, who looked up at me in alarm, the other kitsen didn’t seem to notice. Both FM and Alanik did though, and they turned to me.
Are you okay? Alanik asked.
Fine, I said. I drew back into myself. That voice—it had come from the nowhere, but it wasn’t Spensa. I didn’t know who it was. Maybe Gran-Gran? But she was here on Evershore, not in the nowhere.
Scud, why was it so hot in here? The sandstone walls felt like they were closing in on me. I wanted to escape, but I couldn’t slip out. I’d have to crawl through the scudding doorway on my hands and knees again. What kind of message would that send?
I tried to focus on the words of the senator who was speaking, a very large kitsen with brown tufts at the ends of his ears.
“—if our most Honored One Who Was Not King were here, he would surely agree that—”
“Do not profane the name of the One Who Was Not King!” another interrupted. “In his wisdom, he would surely have said—”
Stars, they all seemed to have an opinion of what their not-king would do if he hadn’t died in the battle with the delver. Did we kill him? We very well might have.