“I shouldn’t have... I mean...” I stopped and tried to come up with more than three words that went together, but they were crashing around inside my skull like a bunch of coked-up fighter jets. “That was a dick thing to say. I suck. Trust me, I know. I did just kill a guy...” I shrugged and tried to laugh, but it sounded more like somebody’d punched me in the solar plexus and I was gagging.
“So?” Kest shook off my hand. My fingertips stung as she pulled away, but neither of our skins tore. “Killing that Nameless isn’t a logical reason to get mad at me. I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
I felt like I’d just taken one of Warcry’s roundhouse kicks to the side of the head.
“You know what happened?” I said.
“Why do you think I kept messaging you to see if you needed any healing elixirs or for Rali to infuse some food for you?” She crossed her real and stick arm. “Warcry said you were upright and walking, but you weren’t acting right. He didn’t know how well the distiller’s emergency brew had fixed you up. He didn’t even know a brand name I could find on the hyperweb.”
“I didn’t...” My throat dried up. Didn’t what? Want her to find out? What had I thought would happen, that Warcry would keep it to himself and I could just pretend like nothing had ever happened? “I’m sorry.” My voice cracked on that, which would’ve been embarrassing enough by itself, but all of a sudden I was shaking again. I stared down at the concrete so I didn’t have to look her in the eyes. “Really, really sorry.”
A little at a time, the chill seeped out of the air. Kest took a deep breath and let it out.
“I’m not good at this, Hake. I don’t do intuitive like Rali does. If there’s something broken, you have to tell me or I can’t fix it.”
That anger flared up out of nowhere. “There’s nothing to fix! I’m fine!”
She smirked. “Yeah, you seem fine.”
“Crap.” I squeezed my eyes shut tight and dragged my hand through my hair. Why couldn’t I stop getting mad at her? She just wanted to help. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be yelling at you. I should probably be on the ground, apologizing like Rali did back in the boneyard. Is there something I can do to make this up to you? Like, threefold?”
The corner of her mouth turned up like she was trying not to smile.
“You’re such a fixer-upper.” She reached out with her real hand and gave me a soft shove. “At least we know the original framework is still good.”
I took a deep breath and focused on letting that go as the joke it was supposed to be.
“It doesn’t bother you that I killed that Ylef guy?” I asked her.
“Warcry said the Bailiff sent Sedryk to kill you guys. He tried, you stopped him.” She shrugged. “That’s how survival works. It’s no different than defending yourself from a feral.”
It was a million times different, but I didn’t say that.
What I said was, “Bet your brother doesn’t think so.”
Kest glanced at the door.
“No, he doesn’t,” she admitted. “Warcry and I tried to make him see reason, but Rali... He’s always wanted to believe in a place that’s not like this, where you don’t have to kill or hurt anyone to survive. I think that’s why he rejects everything normal so hard, because he wants the universe to be different and he doesn’t want to be a part of it if it won’t. When you showed up, you seemed like you came from the kind of place he’d always been hoping existed, so in his head, he set up all these grand ideas about you.”
“And now I’m crushing his dreams,” I said.
She leveled a flat stare at me. “If you have an idea of how you think a build is going to work and then you put it together and it doesn’t work like that, you can’t just keep going and hope it’ll work the way you thought it would. You’ve got to revise your original plan or you won’t get anywhere.”
“Don’t be too hard on Rali,” I said. “I kind of wanted to be that guy, too.”
She frowned. “The guy who buries his head in the sand so he can live in a fantasy world?”
“That’s pretty harsh. Rali’s good. Like really good. It’d be awesome if more people were like him.”
Lightning cracked across the clouds, and the rain picked up, hammering on the Heartchamber’s eaves.
“Well, they’re not,” Kest said, scooting in closer to the building so she wouldn’t get wet. “Statistically, on Van Diemann at least, more people are like the Bailiff and Sedryk Nameless. And considering that the Big Five run half of the Confederated worlds from behind the scenes, it’s a safe bet that most people in the galaxy aren’t like him, either.”
Her HUD buzzed, and she took a couple seconds to answer it. That reminded me of what she’d said earlier about the Technols’ offer.
“So, the Technols finally gave in to your demands?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Kest said. “They upped their offer after they heard Biggerstaff’s, though. Now I can jump straight to journeyman, and I’ll have a monthly allowance of components, so I won’t have to do my own scavenging or pay for it out of whatever I make unless I go over. No private workshop or salary until I move up through the ranks a little higher, but they did send along some details about the probationary mission I’d go on if I accepted.” She grinned at me, excitement sparkling in her lacy eyes. “It’s off-planet. Way over in the Shinotochi System.”
My stomach sank down to my heels at the thought of not being on the same planet as Kest. I
