8. The Assassin in the Night #3
“Cosmer—” I try to yell again, but there’s a hand over my mouth.
I try to scream through it – but stop, because I hear Cosmer’s voice in my ear.
“Get down. Under the bed. Now. Don’t leave the cabin.”
It’s an order.
I fumble in the dark. Twist out of the bed, my sheet still wrapped around me, and stumble.
Cosmer, now by the door, flings it open, letting in a pale light.
A woman yells.
“Riss!” he roars.
He flees the room, and I’m alone.
I’m already on the floor. I could go under the bed.
But…
Cosmer.
He didn’t even have a weapon.
I jump up off the floor, following in his footsteps. I keep my back to the door, using it as a shield.
I peer around it – and see Drake and Riss entering the hallway from their cabin. Drake has a blonde, bearded man in a chokehold.
Riss, in a silk sleep set, has a gun pointed at the man. Cosmer, in the clothes he was wearing earlier, is running to her side.
Relief is instant. Cosmer. Drake. Everyone is safe, and alive. I step out, into the hallway. More soldiers in sleepwear are also opening their cabin doors.
The man in Drake’s arms is still. Just observing us all.
“Let me go,” he spits.
And I realise I recognise him. He was one of the men in the Mess Hall.
Riss gives Cosmer the gun. “He had this.”
Cosmer briefly looks it over. “Forget to sign this back in, Chapp?”
“I was trying to do you all a favour.” The man sees me, hovering just beyond them all. Seems to speak directly to me, venom in his voice, when he says, “Just look at them. So different to us. You have no idea what’s coming if these prisoners of war stay alive. No idea at all.”
“The fate of our prisoners isn’t up to you,” Cosmer says.
“It’s not up to any of us, is it? And therein lies the problem. Dezeeves is going to be the end of the war, for Hevalla. And the end of all of us—”
“The charges, Riss?”
“Unapproved Use of a weapon. Attempted murder of a crew member. Out of Bed Out of Hours.” She shrugs. “Take your pick.”
Cosmer smirks. “Attempted murder seems to be the most pressing, I think?”
She smiles back. “I’ll tell Dezeeves he has an execution to plan.”
The man, Chapp, is spurred to action. “It’s a lie!” he shouts. “There are no ‘Integrated Rhavnans.’ Only Rhavnans! And you’re all too blind to see it!”
He hates us. Even those who have supposedly Integrated. We will never be accepted. Even if we wanted to be.
It makes me even more certain that I don’t.
Riss rounds on him, punching him square in the jaw. It shuts him up.
She speaks over his head, directly to Drake.
“Nice work, disarming him.”
Cosmer squints. “Drake disarmed him?”
Drake looks so calm, so above it all. I wouldn’t have known he’d had such a role in this.
Riss nods. “He was great. I could hear Chapp coming, but he was moving so fast, and it was so dark – and Drake got there first. I didn’t even see it when he got the weapon off him.”
Cosmer looks at him. “What a hero,” he bites.
“Someone had to be,” Drake bites back, as if what he really means is, since it wasn’t you.
Drake knees the man, which makes him keel over, then he shoves him forwards, as if presenting them with a sack of flour.
Riss stands over the body, and a couple of soldiers step in to help get him moved. Others are heading back into their cabins.
Cosmer turns and sees me in the doorway. He pads over to me with those bare feet. The same feet I’d seen upside down in water, or with sand in between the toes.
“Are you all right?” he asks.
“I’m fine,” I say, even though I’m shaking.
He looks pale. His fingers twitch at his sides, like he’s frustrated with someone. Or himself.
“When I heard the shot, I thought for a second—”
He casts a look around at the soldiers in the hallway. When he looks back at me, he’s glaring.
“I told you not to leave the cabin.”
I gape at him. “Cosmer. I thought—”
“Get back in there, and go to sleep. Before someone writes you up for being OBOH.”
He’s serious.
It’s another order. Hard as a blow.
But how did I think he was going to speak to me up here?
I’m just Rhavnan scum. Worse than that, I’m a prisoner.
I’ve never, until this moment, felt more like one.
It really is dark in here, from the lack of any natural light. I’m completely, aggravatingly, awake, and more aware than ever of the subtle movements of the ship beneath me. An almost imperceptible rise and fall, like a breath.
And I can still hear those gunshots. How they’d reverberated around the metal and wood around us. If it had been my cabin Chapp had gone to first, would I have been able to protect myself? Or would I have needed to rely on Cosmer?
Because the way he spoke to me just now, I’m not sure I can.
As if in answer to my thoughts, there’s a rustling sound at my side. Cosmer is rolling over in his sleep, in the bed that is so close to mine.
Cosmer. Who was my friend, once.
Cosmer, who seems different. Stricter. Neater.
Harder.
But he’s alive.
And he’s no more than an arm’s length away from me.
I let myself listen for a minute to the sound of his steady breaths.
Then I bury my head in my pillow to block them out. Like I should.