9. Ursa
URSA
The Blood Hall becomes sharper after I kill the skitterling.
Every color seems to deepen beneath the hanging fire baskets, from the black gleam of the long tables to the red lacquer of the ceremonial bowls and the pale flash of bone spurs rising from shoulders, jaws, and forearms around me.
Smoke blurs the banners overhead, softening the painted names of dead ships while the flames below keep catching on knives, cups, armor plates, and watching eyes.
The heat presses through my jacket and prickles along the back of my neck.
My hand still stings where the skitterling caught me, a thin line of pain beneath the cloth Rikka threw me, and the table under my palm vibrates with the pounding fists of Reapers who have decided my humiliation is entertaining enough to become approval.
The food in front of me steams with broth, spice, and something sharply mineral, and beneath it all lingers the copper tang of blood that makes every breath feel ceremonial.
The roar around me does not feel kind, exactly.
Kindness would be the wrong word for this room.
The sound feels like a door opening under heavy protest.
Rikka stands beside my bench with her arms folded and her mouth pulled into a savage grin. “You did not scream.”
“I thought about it.”
“Thinking is permitted.”
“That is generous.”
“Do not grow sentimental. Your cut was ugly.”
“My cut got the job done.”
Her grin widens, and several Reapers nearby hoot approval. Across from me, a gray-skinned warrior with carved beads woven through his beard pounds the table hard enough to jump the bowl beside his elbow.
“She speaks like dock iron,” he says.
“I have no idea what that means,” I say.
“It means ugly, useful, and hard to break.”
“I’m choosing to accept two-thirds of that as a compliment.”
The warriors around us laugh again, and the sound rolls outward in a way that still makes my instincts want to duck.
I do not duck. I sit straight, keep my hands visible, and remind myself that Professor Lorr, Vesk, and every piece of footage I studied agreed on one crucial point: laughter here is not always ridicule.
Sometimes it is testing the strength of what it lands on.
Cal Renner sits two seats down with his face arranged into professional disdain, though his eyes keep darting to the remains of his own untouched skitterling. “Congratulations, Ramone. You’ve managed to impress the dinner.”
I turn my head toward him slowly. “You’re still losing an argument with yours.”
A Reaper woman near him barks a laugh so loud Cal flinches.
Niva Stane, who has spent the last ten minutes pretending her sleeve stain is less horrifying than everyone else’s, leans away from the table. “Some of us have standards.”
Rikka looks at her. “Your standards appear hungry.”
“My standards do not involve murdering my meal at the table.”
“You already murdered your dignity,” the gray-bearded warrior says. “The meal would have been easier.”
The table erupts.
Niva’s face goes crimson. Cal mutters something into his hidden recorder, probably framing all of this as evidence of my reckless cultural pandering, but he has broth on his collar and fear in his hands, which weakens his authority somewhat.
I look away from them before the satisfaction becomes too obvious.
A serving youth places a new dish in front of me.
He is Reaper, adolescent by the look of his still-growing spurs, and his silver hair has been braided back from a face trying very hard to appear solemn.
The dish is a shallow black bowl containing strips of dark meat, root mash, and a glistening red sauce with seeds floating in it.
He gives me a measuring look. “Third bitter.”
I remember Vesk’s correction from the market alcove. Third bitter is not a course name. It is a warning that the sauce has three different heat profiles and one of them arrives late enough to make arrogant people regret confidence.
“Thank you,” I say. “Is the meat already dead?”
The youth’s solemn expression cracks. “Yes.”
“Excellent. We’re making progress.”
The nearby warriors laugh again, and the youth nearly beams before remembering he is supposed to be dignified. He moves down the table with the exaggerated severity of someone who has just discovered adulthood and intends to perform it aggressively.
I take a small bite.
For two seconds, I think I have handled it.
Then the sauce blooms across my tongue like a small controlled explosion. Heat fills my mouth, followed by bitterness, smoke, and an unexpected sweetness that vanishes almost immediately. My eyes water. My nose burns. The gray-bearded warrior watches me with naked delight.
“Breathe through it,” he advises.
“I am breathing.”
“You are negotiating with breathing.”
“That seems accurate.”
“Do not drink water.”
“I know.”
He raises his brows. “You know?”
“Fermented root liquor cuts the oil better.”
His smile turns genuinely approving. “Who taught you?”
“A security officer who hates embarrassment.”
“Vesk.”
“Apparently his reputation precedes him.”
“His scowl arrives first and sends word back.”
I reach for the small cup of root liquor, take a careful sip, and manage not to cough until after I lower it.
That restraint earns another round of table pounding from my immediate neighbors.
The heat still claws down my throat and into my chest, but the burn has shape now, less like punishment and more like something the dish expects me to understand.
Rikka watches from a few steps away. “Better.”
“I’m honored by your avalanche of praise.”
“You should be.”
The fourth ceremony begins before I can ask whether my taste buds are permanently altered.
Musicians at the center of the hall shift from drums and horns to a low multi-voiced chant, the notes rough but layered in a way that seems to pull at the metal beneath us.
Reaper elders rise from seats along the middle tables, each carrying a blade or tool: a boarding hook, a welding hammer, a cracked pistol, a surgeon’s saw, a child’s learning slate with a broken corner.
One by one, they hold the objects up while the chant deepens.
Vesk told me this part was remembrance, but he did not give the whole of it. I understand why now. Explaining it would have thinned the force of seeing it.
An elderly Reaper woman with dark gray skin and silver scars crossing her throat lifts the surgeon’s saw. Her voice cuts through the chant.
“This fed the wounded when the hold was burning.”
A warrior with only one arm raises the boarding hook. “This opened the ship that carried our children out.”
Another elder raises the learning slate. His voice cracks, but he does not hide it. “This belonged to my sister’s son. He knew six engine glyphs before hunger took him.”
The hall answers with a low sound that is not grief alone. It is recognition, anger, reverence, and a promise built from voices too proud to weep politely.
My throat tightens.
Around me, the outsiders grow still. Even Cal stops performing for his recorder.
Even Niva lowers her gaze. Gobold, farther up the table, sits with his massive hands clasped, his face stern and unreadable.
Theryki watches with immaculate composure, but her fingers rest too tightly against the stem of her glass.
Wilcox looks like she understands too much.
The learning slate passes down our table.
When it reaches me, my hands hesitate above it.
The gray-bearded warrior speaks softly. “Touch with the right hand. Do not lift unless kin.”
I nod and place my fingertips against the broken corner.
The slate is cool beneath my skin.
For an instant, the Blood Hall and Horus IV exist too close together inside me.
Children and smoke. Lessons interrupted.
Names preserved because there is nothing left to save but evidence.
The old familiar pressure rises behind my breastbone, the one that tells me the past has decided to sit on my lungs for a while.
I breathe through it, but not around it. Around it would be dishonest.
“I’m sorry,” I say, because anything more elaborate would be indecent.
The warrior studies me. His expression remains hard, but his voice softens. “He would have liked your red hair. He stole bright things.”
I let out a small breath that is almost a laugh and almost not. “Then I’m sorry for that too. He would have gotten caught.”
“He always did.”
The slate moves on.
Rikka appears beside me again, though I did not see her approach. “You listened to the name.”
“Yes.”
“Most outsiders listen to the object.”
“The object mattered because he did.”
Her eyes narrow, and for one uncomfortable second I wonder whether I have overstepped. Then she strikes the table once with the flat of her hand. It is not loud enough to startle the whole hall, but every Reaper within ten seats hears it and looks over.
“Good,” she says.
That single word carries more force than all of Dawson’s ratings praise ever did.
The next challenge comes in the form of a shared blade and a slab of meat so tough it looks less cooked than defeated.
The elder across from me offers the blade handle first. I accept with the angle Vesk drilled into me, keeping my grip low, edge turned away from my neighbors.
The gray-bearded warrior watches closely enough that I can feel the assessment.
“Cut along the grain,” he says.
“That feels wrong.”
“For human meat, perhaps.”
“For meat humans eat, definitely.”
He makes a thoughtful rumble. “This animal fought storms by locking its fibers. Across the grain, you tear. Along the grain, you persuade.”
“Your food has political metaphors.”
“All food has political metaphors. Most species are too cowardly to admit it.”