37. THIRTY-SEVEN
THIRTY-SEVEN
NIKLAUS
Location: Jiradesh Desert
The sunrise was the color of piss.
When Niklaus woke and rolled back the canvas of his tent, the space where Dex usually set his tent was vacant. An empty square of gritty sand that sat too bright, too yellow for the likes of his throbbing head, was all that stared back. That made the morning taste like piss, too.
The day following the rally and the meeting with the Masticos slipped by in a blur.
The hours were both long and short, passed without conversation, without company, but ripe with self-loathing.
Niklaus made it through them without moss or liquor.
The itch was there at the corner of his mind, but he could finally tolerate it.
He hadn’t been clear of the moss in two years.
He returned to his station during the evening mess, feet throbbing and mouth dry from a day of walking. He scrubbed in silence for nearly an hour, wishing time were a needle he could turn. This was how the rest of the journey would go for him: wake, clean, walk, clean, sleep.
Only another moon, and this would all be over. If he didn’t die in a horrific, contrived explosion he couldn’t prevent, if it had all been a lie, he could go back to life as it was before. Back to the same old misery of people who weren’t present. He…
He had made a mistake and there wasn’t any fixing it. Calver had believed him. He’d endangered himself, trying to help him. And Niklaus had been a pissing idiot—so sure he was being deceived again, he couldn’t separate fact from fiction.
“Meyernes.” It was the chef. Niklaus blinked at the obtuse man, hardly believing he’d addressed him. “You, ah. You’ve already finished those.” He pointed at Niklaus’s stack, which he’d started for a second time. “Those are clean.”
“Right.”
“Someone’s here. Been asking for you.” The chef jerked his chin over his shoulder.
Niklaus followed the motion until he came gaze to gaze with the same hard-eyed recruit from after the first rally. Chevek Balfida.
“Meyernes.” Chevek nodded.
The chef lumbered away, past a now-empty mess tent in the direction of the merchant’s quarter.
Silence pressed down in his wake until Niklaus sighed. “I don’t think I can help you.”
“Neither can anyone else. So here we stand.”
“I, ahm, take it you want to talk to the mute?”
“He and I can help one another.”
A subtle pinprick of realization quickly compounded into a yawning gap of opportunity.
Niklaus’s chest inflated with it. Chevek might be the linchpin they needed to prevent disaster.
He might still have agency to do something.
“Your brother. He’s the founder of the Groundling movement in Seraphinden, eah? ”
Chevek’s head swiveled, and he gave Niklaus a glare that might have turned sand into glass. “That he is.”
“I know more than one oligarch who’d love to see his head on a plate.” Chevek stiffened, but Niklaus waved a hand. “Easy. It would only be as a garnish after eating me alive.”
“Why?”
“Because you have some influence here, don’t you?”
Chevek’s face was stone. “I’m entry level. Same as you.”
A lie Niklaus could see clean through. “I don’t mean in the Red Wing.
I mean with the Groundlings. I knew Latouda.
I know how deep your people run.” Not to mention the team of other recruits that seemed to hover around Chevek, just out of reach whenever they spoke.
“How many men are here under your command?”
“None.”
Niklaus gave him a pointed look that Chevek met without blinking. “If you can work with me, I’ll connect you with Friyal, like you asked, given he allows it.”
Again, Chevek’s head swiveled from side to side.
They were alone. The southern mess was empty, so far as Niklaus could tell.
Still, he stepped in close and lowered his voice.
“A few hundred here, given the right incentives and lack of repercussions.” That was the power to make a difference.
“But perhaps only fifty loyal to me, rather than the Groundling movement alone.”
Niklaus had only recently learned what loyalty was, given that when everything was on the line, he’d found his life woefully absent of it. Loyalty paid nothing. It couldn’t build a house. It couldn’t fill a stomach. But it could build an empire. And possibly… topple one.
“Friyal is gone. He deserted, because this encampment is about to experience an ambush, and he’s trying to prevent it. With your help, he might not be alone.”
Chevek’s arms crossed. “I hardly consider that connecting me to him.”
“Well, by my calculus, your chances of connecting with him are better if we all stay alive.”
Chevek seemed to chew over Niklaus’s words for long moments. “An ambush… by the Shadewalker?”
“I’m not really sure. I’m speaking on faith alone.”
“That’s thin broth to risk my men and the exposure of my station on.”
“The alternative being that you don’t have any men.”
Chevek’s eyes narrowed. “Tell me what you know before I stop listening.”
“Do you remember the explosion in the southern rim?”
“Your doing. Word travels fast.”
“It will happen to every plate the moment we cross the ridge into Steila. Unless you think you can do something about it.”
Something shifted in Chevek’s face. Then his demeanor changed entirely. Kretch. Of course he didn’t believe Niklaus.
“Sounds like you have your own agenda,” Chevek said abruptly and dismissively.
“You want to help the mute, this is the only way you—”
“Meyernes.” Chevek fisted the front of Niklaus’s tunic and pulled him close to whisper.
“Trust me when I say it’s not safe for you to talk about this here and now, when I’ve been conscripted to talk to you about something else, here and now.
Let’s discuss. Two hours. I’ll search for you on the southern rim. I swear it.”
Chevek shoved him away and veered toward the western quarter. The shadows of two others slipped out from behind wagons to either side of the mess tent to fall into step behind him.
Heartbeat thrashing, Niklaus slowly tidied his station, and emptied his wash bins, wondering who might have conscripted Chevek to speak with him about Calver. Covern Balfida? The Ruxian? Mastico? Only one answer seemed probable: General Prime Thyatira.
He started toward the mess wagon to put away the day’s trays. He nearly expected to see an orange glow around the door. To sit and debate something stupid with Dex after he finished putting everything away, while Calver worked silently beside them.
But they were gone.
Niklaus finished loading the countless trays and utensils into the wagon. He closed the door. He even locked it, before moving toward the southern rim to wait for Chevek to hear his case.
Maybe working with Chevek would make amends. Maybe…
Too late, Niklaus registered the whistling of air behind him, the sound of shifting sand.
Arms wrapped around his torso from his rear.
A hand stuffed a rag into his mouth, stifling him before he even thought to scream.
A black sack slid over his head and cinched around his neck.
His arms were forced behind him and a set of cold metal bracers clinked around his wrists.
Of course. An ambush.
A deep rasp was hot in his ear. “Cooperate and this will be easy. Resist, and you’re going to fucking hurt.”
Niklaus had always imagined he would be brave, should his life be threatened. He was not. His whole body locked up with throat-occluding terror. Sucking oxygen through suddenly too-small nostrils, he nodded.
Multiple sets of hands lifted him. His body collided with the hard wooden floor of what must have been a wagon.
It silently moved across the gritty sand, turning one way then the next until Niklaus had no idea whether he was still in the encampment or halfway across the sands.
After agonizing minutes, the wagon came to a stop.
Its door creaked open, and someone jostled him to stand.
“Walk,” spat the voice, prodding him in the spine. Nikalus moved, guided at the elbow, until they turned him around and ordered, “Sit.”
A hard stool connected with his backside. Niklaus stiffened as fingers worked at the ties around his neck and ripped the sack from his head. He turned his face from the blare of Aetech lamps, blinking to adjust.
Niklaus realized in this moment that he had a choice. He could face whatever this was—most likely death—with dignity, or cowardice. Or perhaps, he could face it as he had everything else: with obstinacy.
He turned his head back toward his captors and forced a laugh. “It’s not even my birthday.”
The laugh died in his throat. Roskaad Thyatira stood an arm’s length away, stooped so that his face was eye-level with Niklaus’s, clean-shaven down to the cleft in his chin.
“I think a meeting between the two of us is long overdue, Mesu Meyernes.”
Niklaus looked into his dark, unblinking eyes. “I could hold out for a few more decades.”
The hit came from his blind side, slugging into his gut.
Lights blossomed behind Niklaus’s eyes. He gasped, doubling over.
Someone grabbed his shoulders to hold him in place so he wouldn’t slide from the stool.
Thyatira said nothing. The only sound was Niklaus’s blood pounding in his ears and his lungs struggling as his diaphragm failed to expand. Seconds stretched. Minutes.
Then: “I would have thought, as General Prime, you might have the means to hire some muscle.” Curse his unruly tongue. Maybe they’d take his off, too. “Not this…” For lack of hands, Niklaus rolled his head on his shoulders. “…Biscuit-level brawn. You deserve better.”
Another hit came. As with the first, it wasn’t damaging—just excruciating. It could have been deadly. They were choosing to keep him intact. This was the prelude to an interrogation.
When Niklaus composed himself enough to lift his head again, Thyatira was still staring, as though he hadn’t flinched in the minutes Niklaus writhed.
“If you’re ready to be civil?” the General Prime suggested.
Niklaus nodded. His voice was a rasp. “Proceed.”