But he was torn between the promise of settling down and the old adventuring buddy that talked him into job after job with her. Goaded him into an easy smuggling run. And while they were off transporting ridiculous harlequin rag dolls stuffed with contraband across the border into Rakkar skies, a Cutter raid left his town in smoldering ashes. Everything they’d found out since pointed to the Veritors.
He lost Inda. His son. Their home. His future. And in a drunken, grief-fueled rage, he’d destroyed much of what remained of his town. Talis had pulled him down from the stockade where they’d left him to be picked clean by the ravens, and he’d been bound to her fate ever since. That weighed hard on every decision she made.
She couldn’t give him back the future he’d lost, but she never stopped trying to make a new one for him.
“Worrying about a growling stomach, busted engines, and an empty cargo hold? It isn’t a life, Dug.”
He didn’t reply, just stared down into the swirls of spice circling in his mug.
“Cutter skies are cramped. You knew we’d go back someday.”
A small nod to that.
“Oh, come on, Dug. Talk to me. Yell at me. Something.”
“Captain, what do you expect me to say? The contract is taken, agreed upon. The job is good. Sure to be as simple as you say it will be. Onaya Bone won’t like it, but as you pointed out, her pleasure is not one of the terms of the arrangement.”
He still wouldn’t look at her. Whatever he had in his sights was far away and long ago. The tea was almost out of steam.
“Say what’s on your mind. Get it out. Let’s have it and move on, all right?”
“You know what thoughts I have on my mind, Captain.”
“Enough with the ‘Captain’ scrap, Dug. This is me. Do I have to take you drinking to get you to talk?”
He turned to her, and she saw that his eyes were reddened around the edges. His lips were parted but he had no words.
The docking bay doors rumbled into life, a complex system of chain winches and worn-tooth gears connected to a control panel outside the dock manager’s office. The enormous hatch panels clattered in protest, making an obscene amount of noise as they rolled out of the way for some new arrival outside. While she waited for the din to subside, she lost herself to the same memories that were haunting her friend.
She slumped her shoulders. “Dug, I’m sorry. I’m sorry for what happened. If I hadn’t—”
“That is not what this is about.”
“Isn’t it? Maybe going home will be good for you.”
“It is no longer home for me. What might have been left for me there, I destroyed myself.”
He put a hand on his knee, stretched the elbow straight, and rotated the arm. The old scars crisscrossed from forearm to shoulder, obscuring the tattoo that had been there first. The crossing scars extended down his back, too. Unlike the parallel marks over his eye, they had not been earned in combat.
He’d been tied up, flayed. Punished for the havoc he’d caused, the dishonor of it. If he’d gone off and found the actual killers, he’d have been a hero. But he was on that run with Talis, and the ashes had cooled before he even learned of the attack. The only force to fight was the entirety of the Cutter Imperial Service, and he wasn’t going to win that one all on his own.
Talis had cut him down off the scaffold in the middle of the night, half-dragged him back to their ship. She didn’t give a rusted coin about letting him stay on public display to redeem his honor via a silent death. Her friend was hurting, inside and out. So she took him with her, patched him up, and now he lived among his enemies. Any Cutter might be a Veritor. Might be responsible for his family’s death. Every fight was an outlet for his old pain.
After that night, he hadn’t spoken for weeks. She didn’t blame him for having nothing to say to her. The violence near Dug’s home island had been threatening to burst for years, and she told him the war he wanted would still be waiting for him when he got home.
Gods-rotted rag dolls stuffed with gods-rotted alchemical powders for gods-rotted Rakkar scientists in a rush to blow themselves up practicing their gods-rotted forbidden experiments.
Talis had been trying to make it up to him ever since. How didn’t matter. She got a new ship with different contours so he’d never have to see the same bulkheads or the lift balloons that had taken him away from his family that last time. New crew. Anything she could think of was worth trying.
And now she was taking him back to that world. Fall Island was far from his old home, but he’d be among his own people for the first time in years. Those old scars were long healed but would forever mark him as a pariah. They were a death sentence among any tribe.
“You’ll keep watch over Wind Sabre while we’re at Fall Island,” she said, deciding. “Anyone tries anything, you’re the only one who can hold them off.”
He exhaled a cold, quick breath of mirthless laughter. “True. None will approach me.”
She cursed herself with an exasperated chuff. “I didn’t mean it like that.”
He took a gulp of the tea, swished it in his cheeks before swallowing, then ran his tongue over his teeth to clear the undissolved spices. When he spoke, there was a strain to his voice that was unlikely to have been caused by any dregs of tea in his throat. “I
