23. TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-THREE
NIKLAUS
Location: Jiradesh Desert
Another day passed moss-free. Niklaus knew he should feel fortunate that he hadn’t joined an overwhelming statistic, but he couldn’t help but wonder whether those who succumbed were the lucky ones.
Calver might have gotten him through the deadliest symptoms, but the desire remained, strong as it ever was.
Niklaus shifted a stack of trays sideways, groping for a bottle stashed in the wagon’s corner.
He tipped his head back for a drink that burned the whole way down.
This vice was nearly enough to lessen the want for the other. Nearly.
“Are you still going to the rally tonight?” he asked the mute, who’d assumed his usual space on the wagon floor, tinkering.
“Do you feel inclined to?”
Niklaus swirled the dwindling drink. It nearly made his headache manageable, but it wasn’t going to last much longer either. “We didn’t agree to that.”
“When?”
Niklaus still wasn’t sure about all that. The day was growing hot. He sipped anew. “Will there be anything left over?”
The mute stared at him for too long for comfort, and he was silently glad for the man’s lack of expression. Better to not know how he felt.
Niklaus held a hand over his heart in mock insult. “Are you saying you don’t want to spend another four days locked with me in the mess storage wagon?”
A vein in the man’s face twitched.
What struck Niklaus was that there was only one answer which would not result in his being struck. “I promise to behave. But it would be nice to have something to help me tolerate the headache.” Something being more whiskey.
the mute signaled from beneath his workstation, the plate above him disassembled a different way for the twentieth time.
“Water,” Niklaus rasped in agreement.
The mute kicked his canteen across the floor.
The request was not lost on Niklaus as he stumbled from the wagon, wincing against the valiant sun. He hadn’t seen the man drink anything he hadn’t prepared himself. He had even used Niklaus’s winnings to purchase simple poison detectors to use on the communal gruel he ate in the mess.
The walk to the central water wagon took only minutes.
No one was there—the recruits were in scheduled morning training.
Commands and responses sounded in the distance, carried by the incessant breeze that tousled Niklaus’s hair, stiff with sweat from sitting beneath that sweltering canvas.
He didn’t notice the water had overflowed his canteen until the pattering of fluid against sand made him stop.
He took a long sip, letting the lukewarm liquid slide down his raw throat.
Then he leaned his head against the water wagon.
Please let this day pass quickly. And the next.
And the next. Perhaps thwart the Tera’thian ambush, while you’re at it.
They had the rally to look forward to that night, but with the need for moss removed from the equation, the stakes had decreased.
“Psst. Aaay.”
Niklaus whirled, spilling water as he went.
His eyes focused on a tiny figure shrouded in white, blending into the canvas of the wagons.
It darted beneath a wagon. Then a warm brown hand beckoned him.
The form was feminine—not distinctly curvaceous, but after spending nearly two moons bombarded by testosterone from every angle… Niklaus’s face drew long.
He dipped beneath the wagon and shimmied onto his stomach beside her.
“Aaay indeed. How are you finding the desert? I can’t say I love it, but I’m sure I’m just seeing it under adverse circumstances, when it hasn’t rained in a while.”
“You—you what?” The woman pivoted to look at him, revealing a dotted face and silver irises.
He rolled to his back to stare at the wood of the wagon above him. Kretch. This hallucination was worse than any withdrawal had put him through before.
“You’re Meyernes? The match marshal, Trokus, told me I could find you here.”
Niklaus spewed a slew of curses, some which hadn’t graced his lips since his years at boarding school.
“Shh!” the Ruxian hissed. “I don’t want to be found here.”
Insanity. Niklaus rolled back to his stomach and glanced around.
He wormed his way toward her on knees and elbows.
“You want to find me, but don’t want to be found finding me.
Ah. Why are you looking at me—ah—for me?
” He was painfully aware of the slurring hitch in his words.
“Your… highness?” It made sense to address an imaginary Ruxian properly.
The woman was slender, her face so speckled he wasn’t sure where to look.
“Are you…” Her nose, too broad for her narrow face, wrinkled.
“Indisposed?” As though it was a shock a man could get himself inebriated in the middle of the day in the desert during a military drill.
She waved the air between them as if wafting away his breath.
“Nevermind. Trokus said you spend time with the man who won the last rally. I need you to give him a message.”
This could be a trick. A trap. Only… the light left her eyes when Niklaus hesitated.
“Do you know who I mean?” she asked.
“The mute?”
Her face broke into a smile. “Yes.”
His mouth twisted mischievously. “Why? What’s your interest in him?” She fell short of a response, cheeks growing dark. “I mean, besides the fact that he is scorching: mind-numbingly hot. Gorgeous man, honestly. If you’re into the strong, silent type.”
The Ruxian’s blush was on a mission to conquer any and all territory. Niklaus half expected the silver wisps of hair poking out from beneath her hood to turn maroon.
He raised his eyebrows. “And you think I’ve got problems.” He took another sip from his canteen.
“I didn’t say anything.”
“And yet you’ve told me everything I need to know.”
She scoffed. “Will you just pass on a message for me?”
“If I didn’t, wouldn’t that technically be treason?”
“You… you can’t tell anyone else about this.”
It wasn’t wise to speak about hallucinations. But in that moment of her distress, he noticed the ashen tone beneath her skin. The way her face pulled too tightly around her cheekbones.
“I have no one to tell,” he said truthfully.
The woman sucked a nervous breath through her teeth.
She pulled a tiny, rolled slip of paper from an unseen pocket.
“Give this to him.” She pressed it into his hand.
Her fingers were dry and frail. “Tell him Killari’s been apprehended by command and they suspect external surveillance.
I slipped the note from them. I don’t think they deciphered it. I set Killari free.”
“I… yes. Alright.”
Her forehead wrinkled. “You seem confused.”
“I am confused. And I think you could be confused as well.”
“How long have you been interacting with Calver?”
Calver? That sounded distinctly unlike ‘Dallard Friyal’. “A moon cycle.”
“He… he hasn’t said anything about me? At all?”
“Are we talking about the same person? Because the mute I’m referring to doesn’t say anything.”
She tsked. “You’ll give him the message?”
“Niklaus Meyernes, at your service.”
“Niklaus…?” He watched it click together in her mind. It had only been a matter of time before what should be Nelfinden royalty discovered the smudge on his reputation. “You couldn’t happen to be the Niklaus Meyernes associated with research endowment at Tennca'Pui?”
It was all he could do to keep his jaw from dropping. “I am.” He’d nearly forgotten what it felt like to be appreciated.
She pointed an accusatory finger. “You pulled my funding.”
Ah, how quickly sweetness soured. “I… what?”
“I prepared for months for an expedition to study Casowhatan sea kelp, and you pulled my funding.”
He’d never pulled any of his endowments, as far as he was aware. Certainly none to Tennca'Pui. Unable to provide a definitive contrary, he could only manage, “It sounds like I might have rescued you?”
She shot him a withering look before scrambling from beneath the wagon, hood pulled low, and moving toward the caravan’s center.
Niklaus turned onto his back once more, studying the striations in the wood.
The world spun—in more ways than one. He remembered to sip water.
A drink as disappointing as it was refreshing.
He held the piece of paper up to verify that he had not just imagined a Ruxian passing a covert message along to his co-conspirator. “Eah…” he sighed. “At least things aren’t boring.”
Niklaus pushed his way back into the wagon and set the mute’s canteen on the floor beside him. He didn’t seem to have moved since Niklaus had left.
he gestured around the tools in his hands, but didn’t pause in his work to drink.
“So, Calver.”
Calver, now confirmed, tensed.
“Funny thing. I casually bumped into Seraphindo’s heir while sitting at the water station.”
Calver sat upright so quickly he slammed his head into the tray above him, grunted, and fell back to the planking. Cute, really. Rubbing at his head, the mute wormed his way out and watched Niklaus like a jackal.
Niklaus leaned against the shelving with his best impression of bastardly nonchalance. “I was disappointed. Here I was, honored she was speaking to me, but all she wanted to talk about was you.”
The signals were urgent.
“Aye.”
“Ahm. Shiny, for one. How you might imagine a Ruxian is supposed to look, but more speckled.”
“She…” He considered the way her body hugged bone, how… “Not great.”
Calver aged visibly; his hands found his hair. He looked like he hadn’t slept in weeks. Perhaps he hadn’t.
“For me to give you a message.”