26. The Prophecy and The Fortune #2
And I do want dinner. I feel as though I’ve never been hungrier – which can’t be right, as I’ve now found out I spent time going hungry in both Rhavna and Hevalla.
I take a step – but Drake bends down to me.
“This conversation isn’t over. Be ready for when I come to you.”
My heart thuds.
What does that mean?
And is that something I should go along with, or avoid like a plague?
The Wardroom is as ornate as I remember it from the Captain’s Dinner. We take our seats at one of the two mahogany tables, and a menu is brought to us. There are only two options, but they do look far more appetising than anything I’ve seen served in the Mess Hall.
“The bone broth is better than the fish chowder. If you needed help choosing,” Meg says.
I’d been planning to choose the fish chowder. It was a dish we often had in the Palace.
Hevalla or Rhavna. Again.
I drop the menu.
“Is this another Integration test I have to pass?”
She rolls her deep-set eyes. “Not everything is about you, Ara.”
I go for the fish chowder after all.
A soldier in an apron – no more than a boy – brings out our bowls and silver spoons quickly, and we eat in silence.
I decide I don’t like being here alone with her. I still can’t place her. If Dezeeves is a traitor, does that mean she is, too? Is that why she’s helping to remove the blood magic on me?
Yet she so viciously fought me when I could have grabbed the gun in The Bridge.
She’d been the one to put the mask over my head. She’d even looked humoured during the Swan Test. Those things don’t make her, in my eyes, loyal to Rhavna. Or an ally, to me. And Cosmer doesn’t trust her either.
But she could still be useful.
“Meg,” I say. “As a first officer, you have access to certain places. Don’t you? Like this deck.”
“Obviously.”
I glimpse the side panel the soldier had entered from. It’s still shut.
“Do you have access to the brig?”
She licks her spoon neatly, the way the palace cat used to lap at bits of cream on its paw.
Lowering it, she says, “I’m not taking you to see Cosmer.”
The chowder is threatening to come right back up my throat.
“Meg. Please. I just want to see him. Know he’s okay.”
She swills her spoon in her bowl. “He probably won’t be. It’s the brig. Not the Captain’s Quarters.”
“I love him.”
“So you keep telling everyone.” She peers down at me through the thick strands of hair that have fallen over her face. “And yet, I’m certain I just saw you and Drake looking longingly into each other’s eyes. While your hands were touching—”
“Meg,” I say, craning my head. As if expecting, suddenly, to see Cosmer right here. The look of disappointment and hurt on his face.
She leans back. “That’s why I stepped in, before anyone saw you.”
“It’s my magic,” I say to her, steadily. “It… draws me to him. For some reason.”
She seems intrigued by that. “Draws you to him, how?”
I push my bowl away. “I don’t know.”
“Describe it,” she prompts. “Is it like a crane fly to a flame, for example?”
“No. No, I don’t think that’s right. It’s like… a crane fly, to another crane fly. And…” I swallow. “And the flame is inside them.”
“Are you not just describing love?” she asks. Poised. Like she really is trying to understand.
“No,” I say. “No. It’s—”
“A powerful love,” she continues. “The kind of love in Rhavnan fairy-tales.”
A soulmate kind of love.
“Rike…” I start to say, my voice strangled.
She stabs her spoon in my direction. “Now, him, I can take you to see.”
The Training Room is busy with pilots and soldiers. It doesn’t seem to matter that many of them have just been flying – if anything, they’re training even harder than usual, like they’re running on the adrenaline from that. Sleep really isn’t something that is done a lot of here.
Meg spots Rike straight away. He’s near the far wall, bent over a contraption that another pilot is lying beneath while pushing against a bar loaded with weights. I guess Rike’s on watch to make sure the pilot doesn’t drop it.
Meg cuts through the room like she’s been here a million times before. Her curvy hips sort of sway as she walks, her every step silent over the wooden floor, despite the fact she’s tall and wears the same boots we all do.
I trail behind her, trying to ignore the many eyes drifting to us.
“Can we borrow you, Rike?” she asks.
Her voice, or maybe her presence itself, makes the other pilot drop the weight. He’s centimetres from a crushed skull. But Rike lunges forwards, catching the bar and bringing it up back into place, his bicep flexing.
“Cosmos. Thanks, Rike,” the pilot gushes.
“No problem, brother.” Now looking up, he says, “Borrow me? What would the reason be?”
“I misspoke. We will be borrowing you. It wasn’t a question.” When he doesn’t immediately move, she says, “Are you causing an OTI, Pilot?”
That seems to change things. Rike bows his head slightly, the way one would in Rhavna to someone who was their senior. Custom is harder to shift than loyalty, clearly.
As Rike steps around the equipment, a soldier on the equipment to the left of us sits up.
“Three Rhavnans together? It’s like a circus in here.”
Meg turns her gaze on him. It’s penetrating.
“Sorry? I didn’t catch that.” The threat in her voice is clearly there.
But the man seems to miss it.
“I’m just saying. Good job Chapp was executed really, isn’t it? He’d be raving about how we’ll all be murdered in our beds tonight.”
She saunters to him. Flashes him her turned-up collar, indicating the embroidery there. It’s more detailed than that on Riss and Cosmer’s collars.
“Do you know what this means?”
The man sneers. “That you slept your way to the top?”
It’s instant. Meg slaps him, hard enough to leave a red mark across his cheek.
Then she straightens up, looking calm. She dips her hand into the pocket of her long coat and extracts a small book and a pen. She pulls the lid off the pen with her mouth and scrawls something.
Removing the lid from her teeth, she says, “You’re Duncan, aren’t you?”
She doesn’t wait for him to answer. Just says to me, softly, almost playfully, “Ara. Let’s make this fun. Choose a number between one and one thousand. Hint – make it a big one.”
I really don’t want to be part of this. Especially as the man’s attention is now on me.
“Go ahead,” she prompts.
“A thousand,” I say, shrugging. She did say to pick a high number.
“Good,” she says, rounding on him again. “Ara chose the number one thousand. That’s the number of days you’ll go without Sky Provision on this ship, Duncan, for Disrespect against a first officer.” She smiles, sweetly. “Hope you ate well at dinner.”
He calls her a vulgar name.
But then he seems to realise what he’s just subjected himself to, and starts apologising to her, profusely. He’s begging her.
But she’s already stalking off, her long hair falling back behind her. Rike and I have to step quickly to keep up with her. I grab Rike’s arm, and we speed up even more, because the man is lumbering after us now. I honestly think he might attack us.
Would I be able to fight him off, if he did? I wish I’d had more training sessions with Riss.
Out in the hallway, Rike says, “My pod’s just up here.”
We head into a curving corridor of hatch doors. Rike yanks the large lever outside one, which releases the mechanism with a hiss. A wheel on the floor turns and clicks, and he gets the door up.
Once we’re inside, the door shut behind us, I look at them properly. Rike’s clearly as concerned as I was.
Meg is calm as ever.
“He wouldn’t have attacked us,” she states.
“How do you know that?”
“Because then I’d have had grounds for IES. Instant Execution for Self-Saviour.” She smiles to herself. “Although – at one thousand days of no food privileges – I’m sure he’ll start to wish he was dead.”
“Do you not get scared? Issuing sentences like that?”
“Why should I be? They’re certainly not scared of insulting me. I’m like their Provision Day. Give back what I receive.”