Chapter 06
I blink my eyes open to find Lament hovering over me, his expression a strange mix of anger and … relief? I can’t be sure. My head is spinning, my limbs sluggish and heavy. I try to push upright, but Lament’s hand comes to my chest to keep me in place. “What in Romothrida’s name were you thinking?”
This might be a rhetorical question, but I’m compelled to say, “Shoot its eye. Hit the brain.”
“Yeah, I got that bit.” His face sways in my vision, his features twisting like they’re being sucked down a drain.
I blink and squint to make the world stop turning.
I must have blacked out, but I can’t have been unconscious for that long.
The sky looks no darker than before, and behind Lament, the sand cephalopod is flopped over like a beached whale.
Still, something about the air feels different, something besides my throbbing head.
A heaviness. I shift again, my thoughts going to things like atmospheric pressure and planetary gravity until I realize it’s not the atmosphere that’s changed. It’s me.
I’m buried in sand.
It must have happened when the cephalopod crashed down beside me, disrupting enough earth to blanket my legs and torso and—judging by the grit in my mouth—my head and neck, too. For the second time, I try to sit upright, and for the second time, Lament holds me down.
“Let me up,” I complain.
“No.”
There it is again, his favorite word. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve been buried under a mound of earth.”
“It’s just sand.”
“You were unconscious.”
“Well, I’m not anymore.”
“You could have suffocated.”
It’s only then that I notice his voice, which is scraping its lowest register, and his hands, which are raw and red in the evening light. Some of his nails are bleeding.
My thoughts scatter. “You dug me out?”
He ignores this. “How’s your head?”
“You dug me out,” I emphasize, “with your hands.”
“Your head?” he presses.
“It’s fine.” (It’s not fine.)
“What about your vision? Any dizziness? Bright spots?”
I frown. “Are you a medic now, too?”
“You should be glad I care to study beyond my required field,” he snaps, then looks sharply away. “I’ve never seen anyone take down a sand cephalopod,” he continues in more controlled tones. “Not with a ray gun.”
“You’ve underestimated the ray gun.”
“I’ve underestimated you.”
Silence. I can’t tell if it’s my head injury that’s causing the air to thicken around us, or something else.
Lament opens his mouth, and I have the oddest thought he’s about to say my name again, but he only goes, “I got the radio working.” He breaks our gaze once more, and I swear I can feel it: the harsh, swift cut of that connection. “I’ve called for help.”
It isn’t long before a broad fixed-wing medicraft touches down beside us and a host of medics emerge, including an ethereal being with six knobby horns adorning her skull and a rash of glowing white freckles across her face. This is Illiviamona, the Sixth’s chief medic.
“I did not plan on meeting you like this,” Illiviamona says in a distant, watery voice.
“Me either,” I mumble.
“I had thought the circumstances would be much worse,” she continues wistfully, turning her enormous black eyes skyward. “More blood. And fire.”
“Ah.”
“Not to fear.” Her mouth splits in what I can only assume is a smile. “There is still time.”
Illiviamona checks me over with calm efficiency, asking many of the same questions Lament asked, laying her hand on my arm, my head. My body grows numb at the places she touches, and I get an unbalanced feeling in my stomach, like I’ve descended a flight of stairs and missed the last step.
“Nothing is broken,” she concludes, “but you have a concussion and a torn labrum, which will require surgery.”
“But it doesn’t hurt,” I complain.
She gives another one of her strange, open-mouthed smiles. “Yet.”
We take the medicraft back to Skyhub Space Station (with me strapped to a stretcher while Lament gets to ride passenger, damn him).
The craft zips us over the giant suspended ring of identical detachments before coming to land on The Hub’s centermost flight deck.
From there, I’m carted past rows of visiting spacecraft, under the noses of curious onlookers, and toward the space station’s general hospital.
As the team of medics rolls me under an aropolymer awning and up a frankly precarious ramp, I lose sight of Lament.
Which is fine, it’s fine, except I can’t stop craning my neck to look for him, even as I’m wheeled into one of the inpatient rooms and Illiviamona injects my arm with something that makes me feel both marvelously clearheaded and sharply aware of what hurts.
Which is everything. The pounding in my skull has seemingly spread to the rest of me, making it feel as though my body is ten times its normal size, and my shoulder has begun to ache in earnest, the pain of the injury lancing down my arm whenever I move.
So I don’t move. I lie there on the crinkly hospital bed like a dead fish, staring up at the diffuse overhead lights and trying not to wonder where Lament went, or how badly I’m injured, or how much trouble we’re in.
Illiviamona calls for assistance and a new pair of medics arrive, both of whom are horn-headed and freckle-faced like her.
I try to remember the name of their species.
Are they Lellinas? Lellenials? Would I be able to remember this piece of information if I didn’t have a concussion? What even is a concussion?
I’m starting to spiral a little, my pulse picking up, my breath coming short and quick.
One of the medics must notice, because she comes to lay her hand on my shoulder.
As before, the limb goes numb. It’s unpleasant, but not entirely unwelcome.
The sudden absence of pain is enough to settle me from catapulting into a full-blown panic attack.
“We will use a cartilage regrowth solution to repair your labrum,” Illiviamona informs me, producing a long, threatening-looking needle. “It is minimally invasive and should only take a few minutes. But it is uncomfortable.”
How uncomfortable? is what I mean to ask, but what comes out is, “Where’s Lament?”
“He has already been discharged.”
“Is he—?”
“Uninjured,” says the helper medic.
“Besides a few scrapes,” Illiviamona corrects, “which we tended on the medicraft.”
“He is lucky his injuries were not worse,” the helper medic bemoans.
Illiviamona gives a sympathetic nod. “There is always next time.”
I blink back up at the ceiling. Lament is uninjured.
There’s a part of me that wants to be irritated by this information, especially with Illiviamona standing over me brandishing a needle the size of a saber, but what I mostly feel is relief …
mingling with that reedy, unwanted pinch of abandonment.
Lament is unhurt, and that’s good, but shouldn’t he want to stay, at least until he knows I’m all right?
Or … at least until the surgery is over?
Illiviamona said it wouldn’t take long. A few minutes.
I know we aren’t partners, he doesn’t want to be partners, but …
couldn’t he spare at least a few minutes?
I grind my teeth and tell myself to get it together.
Why would Lament stay? Why would I even want that?
He’s been nothing but awful to me since the moment I arrived.
He hates me on principle, because I’m here to replace someone he lost. Someone he clearly loved.
Which, yes, if the roles were reversed, I’d feel similarly reluctant to open up to my new partner, but at least I’d be professional about it. Lament isn’t professional. He’s—he’s—
Complicated. And grappling with grief. And … unexpectedly caring, sometimes? Like in a really begrudging way.
One of the medics cuts my shirt away from my body, hesitating briefly when she sees my lifestone.
It’s not glowing anymore, but I’m used to this—how it tends to draw the eye.
I clench the stone with my free hand and look away, tracing the ceiling panels with my gaze.
I try not to watch the medics as they bustle around.
I try not to think about anything, not sand creatures or surgeries or men with blue-green eyes.
My heart is starting to race again. I remember, belatedly, that I hate needles.
“There will be a pinch,” Illiviamona says.
She slides the needle in. There’s a hot rush of pain, and everything goes black.
I dream. A distant part of me understands this isn’t normal. You’re not supposed to dream when you’ve fainted. I think maybe the dream has something to do with the first medicine Illiviamona gave me, the one to clear my head. Then again, it’s not really a dream, is it? It’s a memory.
I’m standing in the entryway of Master Ira’s School for Children.
The Master himself is there, looking patiently bemused.
His skin is leathery, weatherworn from the years he spent earning his title on Mount Kilmon.
Like many Masters, he keeps his head shaved except for a small ring of hair at the crown, which is looped into a bun.
Once, one of the older kids hatched a prank to cut off the bun while the Master slept, but the other children rose up against the idea with such ferociousness that the boy ended up assigning himself lavatory duty for the rest of the month.
That was the power of the Master. Or the power of a bunch of ten-year-olds. Maybe both.
Master Ira peers down at me. “What have you got there, apata?”
I hoist a glass jar filled with fireflies.
“Did you capture those yourself?”
I nod. “They’re a gift.”
“For whom?”
“For you.” I scuff my toe against the stripped wooden floor. “You can keep them in your room. They’ll be your night-light.”
“That’s thoughtful.” He taps the top of the jar. “I do wonder, though, how the fireflies will breathe. This canister is sealed tight.”
“I’ll poke holes in the lid.”
“And what if they want space to fly?”
“They can fly around your room.”