While Kest burned off the paralyzing poison, I got to work burning off the bog feral’s soul contamination with Corpse Fire. The Miasma should’ve frozen me out, but with the full blast heat coming from Kest’s Hot Metal Spirit, sweat soaked my shirt and rolled down my face. I wasn’t the only one overheating, either. The black lace of the capillaries in Rali’s and Kest’s cheeks started to show through.
The problem was there wasn’t a breeze to cool us off. I looked out into the swamp at the cypress-like trees crawling by at just over turtle speed.
“This boat can go pretty fast,” I told Warcry. “Like, even faster than we can walk.”
“We’ve got two full days before we meet Biggerstaff, don’t we?” he snapped, glancing down at the coordinates on his HUD. “No reason to crash and kill us all.”
“Okay, grandma, but we’re going to sink before we get anywhere,” I said, nodding at the slow seep through the patch in our hull.
Warcry scowled down at me from the driver’s platform and cranked the speed. A little. Enough that the airflow started to evaporate some of the sweat on my face, anyway.
“Hake,” Rali said, raising his voice to be heard over the fan. “You were going to kill that Raptrian.”
“The hawk guy?” I asked. When he nodded, I shrugged. “Well...yeah, man, I was. He was about to get away with your sister, and I didn’t have any other way to stop him.”
He frowned. “Warcry knocked that space moth out of the fight without killing him.”
“I didn’t have a boat hook,” I said, getting a little annoyed. “Look, I just wanted to make sure Kest didn’t get flown away with, because obviously none of us can fly to go get her back. I didn’t know what they wanted with her, but—”
“There’s one gal to every sixteen lads on Van Diemann, grav,” Warcry said from up in the driver’s seat. “What’d’ya think they wanted her for, the diverting conversation?”
I turned back to Rali. “You didn’t get mad at me when I took out those ferals.”
“Ferals are a gray area,” he said. “Even though I can’t prove that they’re totally sentient, I don’t take the chance because who am I to decide who’s alive enough to live and who’s dead enough to die? Being a Death cultivator, you’ve got a more direct line to knowing dead from living.”
“So, what’s your problem with me taking out the hawk guy?”
“Was he dead or alive, Hake?”
“He was flying away with your sister!”
“Hake made a split-second decision,” Kest said, making me jump a little. I hadn’t forgotten she was there, but the argument with Rali had taken some of the focus off the fact that the girl I liked was lying pretty much in my lap. “He did the best he could with the facts and abilities he had on hand.”
“Yeah, can you blame the grav that he’s a Death cultivator?” Warcry said. “Going crazy and killing people is what they do, ain’t it?”
I glared at him. “I wasn’t—”
“I’m not saying you’re crazy or accusing you of going for a power grab,” Rali said, putting his hands up like he didn’t want to fight. “You were trying to save my twin, and for that I sincerely thank you. But there’s a reason Death Spirit is the most feared affinity in the universe. The amount of self-restraint and careful tending it requires... Every time you justify deadly force to suit your own purposes, the balance tips a little more and makes it easier to justify next time. It’s like the old sword legends—none of those villains started out bad.”
I took a breath to say something, but Kest interrupted before I could, which was lucky. I don’t know what had been about to come out of my mouth, but based on the times I’d mouthed off to people in the past without thinking, it probably wouldn’t have helped strengthen my and Rali’s friendship.
“You’re being unreasonable, Rali,” Kest said, opening and closing her real hand experimentally. “You wouldn’t ask me not to use a Metal technique or Warcry not to use a Burning Hatred technique, especially if someone’s life was on the line. Hake did what he thought was right.”
The lace in Rali’s eyes shifted with uncertainty.
“Maybe I am being unfair,” he said. “I apologize, Hake. That wasn’t very Warm Heart of me.”
“No big deal,” I said, trying to sound like I meant it.
Up on the driver’s seat, Warcry scoffed. “I don’t think you’re being unfair, big man. If Stumpy goes power-hungry, the worst casualties we can expect is a couple junkyards. If I do, what’s the loss? I get moody? But when the grav does, we can say goodbye to half the planet, can’t we?”
“Okay, douchebag, so what’s the solution?” I snapped. “Head it off at the pass and kill me now?”
“I’m only sayin’ he’s got a point!”
“Which is strange,” Kest said, flexing her shoulders. The heat from her Hot Metal Spirit dropped off suddenly, and she sat up. She must’ve burned the last of the poison out of her system. “I’d have thought, of all people, another human would—”
“Would what?” Warcry leaned toward her, cocking his ear like he hadn’t quite heard her. “Humans get each other’s back, is that what you’re thinking? Even if one’s a grav like him and the other’s a bleedin’ powerhouse like me? Coz we’re all friends, yeah?”
“I doubt anybody can be friends with you.” Kest called a handful of welding rods out of the storage ring and crawled up to the crack in the hull. “What I mean was you’re talking like those people who want everyone born with certain affinities clipped at birth because they have the potential to become dangerous later in life. Since humans were treated that way before the wars, it seems like you’d be opposed to judging and sentencing someone based on possibilities rather than what they’ve done.”
“Hang on, guys.” I scrubbed my hand down my face. I couldn’t tell if it
