All of Us Pirates Would Have Been Martyrs - Part Two

“You ever flown a little ship like this?” Iri asked Yan as they clambered aboard the small passenger shuttle that would take them away from Olar and up towards the First Star , waiting in orbit. It had been cold and windy as they crossed the tarmac and climbed the shivering metal stairs into the shuttle, but inside it was dark and cozy, and Yan felt something inside her relax. Despite everything, these cramped interiors, with the cockpit full of blinking lights, and the heavy acceleration seats, and the ultra-economical use of storage space still felt homey to her.

“In open space, I have,” Yan said. “I’ve never taken one down into the atmosphere except in simulators. Captain Pellon probably would have let me, except that you need a license to operate near planets, and I never had the time to take the tests.”

“I’m well aware that you need a license,” Iri said with a laugh. “That’s not an easy test to pass.”

Yan raised her eyebrows, but there was no more time to chat, because they had to shuffle through the narrow walking space and take their seats. Sandreas had finished speaking to the pilot and was climbing up the stairs. Sid and his minder were already in their seats, signing something to each other that Yan didn’t catch as she walked by. Out the window of the shuttle, Yan saw another larger vehicle, further down the tarmac, which was boarding the remainder of their party.

Yan sat down and buckled her seat. Sandreas ended up directly across from her, so that they could speak. He gave an annoyed glance at Iri, who moved away to sit with Sid and Hernan.

Sandreas didn’t say anything for a while as they waited to take off, closing his eyes and steepling his fingers, maybe meditating. Yan stretched out her power so that she could eavesdrop on what the pilots in the cockpit were doing, ‘listening’ to them perform the pre-flight checklist and make calls to the tower. It was exhausting to interpret the signals the power sent her— the puff-changes of pressure in the air that meant someone was speaking. She knew how to filter it through a simulacra of her own senses in order to make any sense of it at all, gaining an extra, ghostly perception, but every time she did, she realized anew just why Sid relied on his glasses, rather than using the power to listen to any conversations.

All the chatter in the cockpit and over the radio was mundane, but she was still so absorbed in listening and watching that she didn’t realize Sandreas was trying to get her attention until he reached out to tap her on her knee. Yan jumped in surprise and felt embarrassed. Sandreas didn’t comment on her startle, just offered her a thin smile.

“Are you excited to see the First Star ?” Sandreas asked.

Truthfully, Yan had barely even thought about it. She struggled to find something to say that wasn’t a lie. “It’s a lot faster than a regular ship, isn’t it?”

“I believe that’s only because it’s smaller,” Sandreas replied. “But you’d have to ask Halen to confirm that’s the case. It doesn’t ever have to carry cargo aside from myself.”

Yan nodded. “That’s useful. Pirate ships are smaller, too, aren’t they?”

“Most of them, I’m told.” Sandreas studied her. “You know, Halen built the First Star ’s drive.”

“Oh,” Yan said. “I guess that makes sense.”

“He’ll show it to you, if you want to see it.”

Yan shook her head. “It’s alright. I don’t want him to think I’m getting any bad ideas.”

Sandreas laughed. “I doubt he would think that. He showed it to Kino. I think he’s a little proud of it— it’s his baby, in a way.”

“I don’t think Kino would have that much temptation to try to build her own.”

“And you think you would? Under what circumstances?”

“I don’t,” Yan said.

“If you left this apprenticeship…” Sandreas said.

Yan looked up sharply, alarmed.

“I spoke with your uncle,” Sandreas said.

It was at this point that the announcement came from the shuttle’s pilot that they were cleared to take off, and, with a jolt, they started taxiing down towards the runway. Yan didn’t say anything until the shuttle had accelerated and leapt into the air. The ascent was quite steep, to clear the mountains, and Yan watched the city fall down below the view of the tiny window. They would still need to gain a lot of altitude before the shuttle’s much heavier second engines could kick in and send them up into orbit.

“I did think he might want to talk to you,” Yan said. She was still looking out the window, at the strings of clouds that they were passing through. The pilot was skilled, but it was a windy day, and they kept hitting jolts of turbulence that rocked her in her seat. Sandreas was unfazed by the bouncing of the shuttle, and kept his eyes trained on Yan, his posture relaxed. “I hope he didn’t say anything to offend you.”

“No, of course not. I wouldn’t do well in this job if I wasn’t immune to spacer frankness.” When Yan didn’t ask what it was that Maxes had said, Sandreas continued. “He made me make some promises, though.”

The heat rose to Yan’s cheeks. It was unfortunate that she was trapped in this shuttle, in this seat, unable to escape this conversation. “What did he ask you for?”

“He wanted me to promise that if you ever wanted to leave this apprenticeship, I would let you go.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Yan said. “I don’t know why he made you promise that.”

“If I had a family who loved me half as much as yours does, I would be a very different person,” Sandreas said flatly. “Regardless, I did promise him, and I will be equally frank with you. If there comes a time when you no longer wish to be my apprentice, you do not have to stay.”

“Where would I go?”

“I could not possibly answer that question for you.”

“I don’t want to leave, though,” Yan said. “I chose this. And now it’s too late to… I can’t go back to being someone who hasn’t been your apprentice.”

Sandreas nodded. “I’m glad you don’t want to leave. It would be a shame to lose you.”

Yan bit her lip and looked back out the window. “I hope I don’t disappoint you.”

“I do not think you will.” Sandreas fell silent for a while. The shuttle was rising higher and higher, and the curve of the planet was visible, all blanketed in white clouds. The space elevator was a spiderweb thread in the distance, reaching far up out of sight, tying the planet to heaven.

“I wanted to ask you,” Sandreas said. “How is Sid doing?”

Before she answered, Yan briefly flicked out her power to investigate Sid in the seat up ahead. He had his glasses tucked into the collar of his cassock, and his eyes were closed, arms crossed over his chest.

“He’s fine,” Yan said. “I’m sorry about earlier.”

“It’s nothing worse than I’ve come to expect from him,” Sandreas said, waving his hand dismissively. “I’m sure it will take some time for him to warm back up to me again.”

“He really wants to do well as your apprentice,” Yan said. “I think he’s very worried that you don’t think he’s good enough.”

Sandreas raised an eyebrow. “And do you think I give that impression?”

“You’re not happy with him now.”

“I’m quite pleased with him, actually. I like the way you both worked together, and I think he had an astute reading of the political situation on Olar, even if he didn’t resolve it in the way that I would have preferred. I like that he took initiative.”

“You should tell him that.”

“He’ll have to speak to me himself before I can,” Sandreas pointed out.

“I’ll tell him to.”

“No, don’t bother. It will be a few days on the First Star before we get home. I imagine there will be plenty of time for him to come to his senses.”

“I hope so.”

“Once we get back to Emerri, we will be back to work. You both have to be up for it.”

“I know.”

“Good.” Sandreas paused. “One other question I’ve been meaning to ask: why is he wearing that stupid hat indoors?”

Yan couldn’t suppress her grimace. “You’re going to kill him for that.”

----------------------------------------

The First Star was indeed a small ship. Unlike Guild ships, which were often oddly shaped, the First Star was perfectly round, like a tiny bauble hanging in space, glistening under its own running lights. Guild ships also had pitted rock surfaces that they inherited from the mined-out asteroids that they were built from, but this ship’s rock walls were unnaturally, mechanically smooth. Its single rotating ring was also built inside the rock, to give it an extra layer of protection, unlike Guild ships, where the multiple rotating rings banded them from the outside. It still bristled with the usual array of sensors, and its bay doors opened in the familiar camera-aperture way to let in the shuttles, but it was a very strange looking vessel to Yan’s eyes. There probably wasn’t another like it in the whole universe. Even Guildmaster Vaneik’s ship, which he used for his personal travel, was still a cargo vessel at heart, and not one man’s personal cruiser.

Yan wondered how many crew this ship would even need to operate. Certainly not the more than a hundred family members and assorted contracted spacers who called the Iron Dreams their home. Sandreas left the shuttle immediately after it finished docking, which left Iri to give Yan and Sid a quick tour.

The First Star was bright and clean inside, with decor that clearly suited Sandreas’s somewhat austere taste. It was not like there was a family constantly living here and making their marks on the walls— no worn floors or scratched walls, or electrical panels that someone had pulled open to do maintenance on. It wasn’t trying to disguise the fact that it was a ship, but it did announce its differences quietly. The gravity ring was running at a full standard gravity, which, to Yan, made the gently sloping corridors feel twice as long as they actually were, since she couldn’t bounce her way down them like she would have on any other vessel.

She and Sid had their own bedrooms, and while Sid wanted to cloister himself inside his as soon as they were shown which ones were assigned to them, Yan grabbed his arm and stopped him. “We should say hi to Kino,” Yan said.

“Why?” Sid asked.

Yan just glared at him, and he rolled his eyes and let himself be led along. Kino was in one of the ship’s several lounges, sitting on a couch with her knees pulled up to her chest, eating potato chips and paging through some document on her tablet. She wasn’t wearing her cassock, just a tee shirt and shorts, and neither was she wearing shoes or socks. She looked up at Yan and Sid as they entered.

“Sandreas lets you walk around his ship undressed like that?” Sid asked, then flopped down on the couch across from her.

“It doesn’t snow in space,” Kino said, pointing at Sid’s knitted hat, which he was still wearing. When she moved her arm, it revealed a mass of ugly but healing bruises that made Yan wince. She sat down next to Kino, who shifted to give her room on the couch.

“I heard you broke your arm,” Yan said.

“It’s fine.”

“Did you miss us?” Sid asked.

Kino shrugged. Sid pulled off his hat and threw it at her. She didn’t react at all, and it hit her knee then fell to the floor. She did look at Sid’s tattoo, but she made no comment.

“Well, I’m glad to see you again,” Yan said. Clearly, Sid’s abrasiveness was going to extend to more than just Sandreas. It was annoying— all the camaraderie and trust that she had with Sid seemed to be spiraling down the drain, now that they were back in the company of other people. He was harmless, but it didn’t make communicating any easier.

Kino nodded at that. She put her tablet down on the side table and wrapped her arms around her knees. Yan noticed that she was sweating, although the room they were in was quite cool. “Are you feeling well, Kino?”

“Sandreas took away my vena,” she said.

Involuntarily, Yan’s eyes went to Sid, and his hand ghosted over the pocket of his cassock, where his small stash was hiding. “Why?” Yan asked.

“He was always going to.”

“That was obvious to anyone with eyes,” Sid said. “Why now, though?”

“Because I took too much, when we were at the front,” Kino said. “Halen said it ruined my situational awareness.” She spoke everything in her usual, flat tone. She could have been reading a grocery list. Kino’s simple honesty never ceased to amaze Yan— she would directly answer questions that Yan would have done anything to squirm away from, if their roles had been reversed. She never seemed to be self conscious about any of it.

“Really? You always seemed to be, um, aware to me,” Yan said.

Kino gave her a look. “I usually took it at night, to sleep. On Tyx, I had to take it during the day. Halen thinks that put me in danger.”

Yan forced herself not to look at Sid, who was very pointedly remaining silent. “Why were you taking it during the day, then?” She looked at Kino’s arm, instead. “Especially if it did… make you get hurt.”

Kino just shook her head.

This, for some reason, made Sid angry. He leaned forward and said bitterly, “The front was that bad, hunh?”

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

“Yes,” Kino said, voice still flat.

“Then what the fuck are you gonna do next time you go there, and you don’t have vena to use?”

“Sid!” Yan said, alarmed.

Kino closed her eyes. Her fingernails dug into her knees. Usually, Yan remembered, she would ripping the buttons off her cassock sleeves, but she wasn’t wearing her cassock now. Yan noticed places on her kneecaps now where she had scratched in the past hard enough to leave a light wound.

“I’m right,” Sid said. “It’s not like—”

“How many pirates did you kill?” Kino asked, interrupting whatever diatribe Sid had been about to start.

“Why does it matter?” Sid asked.

Kino’s eyes were still closed. “The front is worse,” Kino said. “There were hundreds of millions of people on that planet. You don’t know what it’s like yet. You don’t know what Sandreas is really going to make you do.”

“He didn’t make you kill anyone there, did he?” Yan asked, suddenly very alarmed.

“No,” Kino said. “But he knows it will be our duty someday, one of us. It doesn’t matter if it’s in person, or giving orders. It’s the same blood.”

“You didn’t answer my question,” Sid said. “What are you going to do when you can’t take vena and still have to be there?”

Kino opened her eyes and looked directly at Sid. “What would you do, if you were at the front? Would you do better?” she asked.

Sid scowled. He used the power to retrieve his discarded hat from the floor, and stomped out of the room, leaving Yan and Kino in an awkward silence.

“I’m sorry,” Yan said. “We’ve both been having… a bad time.”

“I know,” Kino said. “Sandreas told me.”

“What did actually happen at the front, if you don’t mind me asking?”

Kino shrugged, then gave a short, choppy explanation of how she had gone on a tour, and then had the tunnel cave in on her and her group. The telling was fragmented, probably partially due to Kino’s usual storytelling style, and partially from the way vena, and withdrawal from it, had muddled her memories of the event. In exchange, Yan described their trip on the Sky Boat and their time on Olar. She left out Sid’s use of vena, but gave a pretty comprehensive report of everything else. Kino listened very patiently, and then was silent for a while.

Yan helped herself to Kino’s chips after she had finished talking, and Kino rested her chin on her hands. They could sit in companionable silence for a while. Yan decided that she had missed Kino, no matter how odd she was, and how badly she got along with Sid. It seemed like whatever friendship they had between them before they had split up to go their separate ways had been strained. It would probably take some time, and some shared experiences, to get back on the same page.

“I’m sorry that Sid and I sort of left you behind,” Yan said. “I mean, I’m glad you didn’t have to be with us on the Sky Boat , but I missed you.”

Kino tilted her head. “It’s alright. I volunteered to go to the front. And Sandreas would have split us up somehow. I’m okay on my own. You don’t have to worry about me.”

“Why did you volunteer to go to the front?” Yan asked. “I…” She hesitated. “Sandreas wanted me to volunteer to go— we had talked about it a while beforehand. But I don’t think… I would have hated going. Did you think it was going to be different than it was?”

“No,” Kino said. “I knew what it was going to be like.”

“You knew that you would need to take vena to” — she searched her memory for the phrase that Kino had used once— “take the edges off?”

Kino looked away again. “I always do that.”

“Well, more than usual.”

“I had hoped I wouldn’t need to. But I did.” She dug her fingers into her knees again, and Yan reached out and put her hand on Kino’s, trying to stop her from hurting herself. Kino flinched, then pulled her hands away and looked away from Yan, towards the wall. But she let Yan’s hand stay on her knee.

“You think I’m weak,” Kino said.

“No,” Yan said. “I think I am.”

Kino was silent for a long time. “I needed to see it for myself,” she said. “I think I needed to know.”

“Why?”

“Because…” She turned back to look at Yan. The feeling of their eyes meeting was strangely electric, since Kino rarely chose to look directly in anyone’s face. Yan had to look away. “I needed to know what my real responsibilities are. And know what I have to be able to make myself do.”

“When you’re First—”

“You think I’ll be First, Yan?”

“Good money’s on you,” Yan said, trying to joke, but there was no humor really in it.

“Will I be able to do what Sandreas does, is that what you’re asking?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you think you’ll be able to?” Kino asked.

“Sandreas told me I shouldn’t even try to answer that question, because there’s no way to actually answer it honestly.”

“Maybe he’s right,” Kino said.

“Do you think Sandreas knew what he was capable of, when he was an apprentice?”

“Yes,” Kino said. “He and I are alike that way. He said that to me.”

“Oh. The good money on you is right, then.”

“Do you not want Sandreas’s position?” Kino asked.

“I don’t want to think about it,” Yan said.

“You have to.”

“I can’t just ‘take the edge off’ and ignore it?”

“I wasn’t ignoring it,” Kino said. “I wasn’t.” For once, the flatness of Kino’s voice was broken, cracking in protest.

“I know.” She squeezed Kino’s knee. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“When you’re First…” Kino said.

Yan shook her head and stood. “Let’s not predict the future. Maybe it’ll be Sid.”

Kino looked up at her, eyes wide and dark, and Yan couldn’t understand what her expression was saying. “I hope you’ll know what to do,” Kino said.

Yan wanted to say that she didn’t even know what to do now, but she just nodded. Kino looked away, back down at the floor, and Yan hurried out of the room.

----------------------------------------

Yan didn’t see Halen or Sandreas all evening, and Yan suspected that while the former was waiting for the opportune moment to ambush her, the latter was just busy with whatever his usual work was. Admittedly, she was glad for a bit of a respite, and tried to get some sleep. Unfortunately for her, the First Star being a faster ship meant that its intervals between jumps were shorter than on any other ship Yan had been on, and the feeling of it jumping woke her up in the middle of the night.

So, the next morning, although she had technically slept, and was clean and presentable, she was very tired, and not happy when, after breakfast, she received a summons to meet with Halen and Sandreas, which said that they wanted to talk over the actual situation that Yan and Sid had been in on the Sky Boat . Kino, who was at breakfast with Yan, had also been invited. Sid, too, presumably, had received a summons, but there was no sign of him at breakfast, and when Yan arrived in the room where Sandreas and Halen were waiting, he wasn’t there either.

The room that they had been called to was not in the gravity section of the ship. It was in the empty center of the First Star , and although Yan was quite comfortable navigating the zero gravity hallways to get there, Kino had been clumsy, and now floated very uncomfortably in the space, one hand clinging to the handholds on the wall, like she was afraid she would drift away.

Halen looked the same as Yan remembered him, but in this space, his huge form looked much more natural. He was a pirate after all, and he was as at home in a ship as Yan was. Maybe even more so, a bitter part of her mind said. Halen just nodded at Yan and Kino when they arrived, and said nothing.

Sandreas looked as cool as ever, of course, though he was annoyed when the appointed time for Sid to arrive came and went. “Where is Sid?” he asked Yan.

Yan shrugged helplessly. “I haven’t seen him all morning,” Yan said.

Sandreas checked his watch again. “We should get started.”

“You don’t have anywhere else to be,” Halen pointed out, which surprised Yan. Halen almost never disagreed with Sandreas.

“But if he isn’t here by now, he isn’t coming,” Sandreas said. “Unless someone is going to drag him here.”

“I can go get him,” Yan offered.

“No,” Sandreas said. “I suspect it’s not a fight worth having, or a fight you would win. If he wants to hide in his room until we get to Emerri, let him.”

Yan shrugged, but as she looked around the room, wondering what exactly Halen had in store here, she wished Sid was there to give her the company. After all, if this was about the Sky Boat , he had been her companion there.

“So,” Halen said, “I’d like to walk through the incident on the Sky Boat and some of the decisions that you made. I don’t want to criticize you, but I do think having a better grasp of the situation would have helped. I’ve invited Kino because I think that it is a valuable learning experience, even if she wasn’t there. And it might help to have an outside pair of eyes. Are you alright with that?” His voice was very calm, low and intentionally soothing in that specific tone he had.

Yan glanced at Kino, who stared straight ahead. “Yeah,” Yan said. “Kino’s fine.”

It wasn’t Kino’s presence that was making her stomach flip, and it wasn’t the lack of gravity either. Yan didn’t want to think about the Sky Boat . She had been almost successful in pushing it out of her mind over the last few days, especially when she was busy with other things. She knew that Halen was going to have them go over this in excruciating detail. That was his style.

Halen nodded, and with a quick flick of his power, the lights in the room dimmed, and a 3D projection appeared in the center of the room, floating in the darkness. It was immaterial, and Yan followed the beams of light up towards the walls, revealing projectors she hadn’t noticed. This must be a specialized room Aymon used for grand-scale discussions of strategy, and other such things. She wondered how much use it got.

But this train of thought was just a way to avoid looking directly at the the projection that had appeared. It was the shuttle that Yan and Sid had been on, recreated in full scale, with the walls and ceiling cut away. Yan could see herself and Sid there in the darkness. She stared at her own face, seeing the terror written clearly across it, in the way her own eyes were squeezed shut, and the way her hands were white-knuckled as she clutched Sid’s hand on one side and Iri’s on the other. She hadn’t known she looked so horrible. She hadn’t realized that Sid did either. When she had looked at him in the shuttle, she hadn’t thought about how small and scared he looked.

“I was able to get the recorder footage of the whole shuttle trip,” Halen said, still in that calm voice. He could obviously feel the way that Yan was gripped by seeing her letter-perfect body double, and he was trying to keep her grounded. “And, while I’ve looked at it, it doesn’t tell me at all what your thought process was. I’d like to walk through it, and have you explain what you were doing, and why you did it at each point. If you can, Yan.”

She struggled to find her voice. “Yes,” she said, even if she felt her voice crack. “I can.”

“Good.”

Halen operated the projectors with his power, and the whole scene came to life. Yan watched herself from the outside as this mirror-Yan realized that the Sky Boat ’s dogfighters were going to lose the battle, watched as this Yan compelled Sid to threaten mutiny, watched as her double killed for the first time, and then again and again.

Halen paused the projection at regular intervals, and asked questions about Yan’s decisions. At first, Yan had stumbled through it, but it was strange— somehow watching from outside took the horror away, for the moment. She was floating away from herself— this double could experience it all over again, be trapped inside the shuttle forever, but Yan herself was somewhere far away. Her voice grew clearer, objective.

“That dogfighter was in the most danger. They were making too tight turns, and they wouldn’t be able to escape the pirate that was chasing them. So that was the first target,” she said at one point. It wasn’t exactly a conscious decision to phrase things in a way that didn’t involve herself, but she kept doing it.

Halen pointed out places where Yan and Sid had chosen the wrong targets. With a dispassionate tone, he complimented Yan’s choice of lethal method, and suggested a few others. If she had been facing a much larger target than a single shuttle, it might have been more difficult to grab and move the whole thing in the power, so she should not rely on one strategy to work all the time.

Sandreas often had questions or commentary, suggestions, but he deferred to Halen to lead the discussion. Halen would stop and ask Kino questions, too, asking her what she thought the best course of action was. Yan wasn’t sure if it was because Halen actually wanted to teach Kino something, or if it was simply to give Yan a moment’s rest.

Finally, they reached the end of the shuttle’s record, as the pirates began to retreat. Yan watched the last of the pirates departing, and she remembered feeling Sid reach out and almost crush it. She kept silent. There was no need to speak about that, and Halen didn’t mention doing anything further to the pirates after they had begun to flee.

There was an echoey silence in the room as Halen killed the projection, leaving them all in a dim twilight.

Sandreas broke the silence. “It’s a pity that Sid wasn’t here. I suspect he would have found it valuable.”

“If he isn’t ready to discuss it rationally, it’s better that he wasn’t,” Halen said.

“True.” Sandreas checked the time. “Kino,” he said. “Come have lunch with me.”

Kino glanced back at Yan, who was still drifting in space over where the projection of the shuttle had been. She was staring at the empty air, not really processing anything else. A sudden wave of exhaustion had passed over her, replacing the analytical feeling that had been keeping her moving through the past several hours.

“Just you, Kino,” Sandreas said. “I would like to discuss your thoughts on the state of Tyx as a whole. I think this discussion probably provided you some new angles.”

This was an excuse if Yan had ever heard one. She knew she was being set up by Sandreas and Halen to leave her alone with him. She felt suddenly trapped as Sandreas and Kino headed out.

Halen also went out the door for a moment, leaving Yan alone, but reappeared a moment later, carrying a typical spacer’s bag, from which he pulled drinks and wrapped sandwiches for the both of them.

“Here,” he said, batting a sandwich through the air towards her. “There’s more than one dining room in this ship, but I always enjoyed having a lunch in the bays away from everyone else. It’s a picnic.”

“Thanks,” Yan said. She unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite, not realizing how ravenous she was until she devoured the whole thing, and was still hungry for another. Halen tossed her a second, and she ate that one too, at a more reasonable pace.

Halen reclined in the air, casually eating his own meal and saying nothing. Despite all of her conflicting emotions towards Halen, and the fact that he had trapped her here, he did a very good job of projecting a companionable silence. He was obviously waiting for her to relax a little, before he said anything, and Yan didn’t really want to relax, but when she realized she was turning this all around in her head, she felt a flash of frustration, and that was the moment that Halen spoke.

“You did a good job today,” Halen said. “I know talking through all of that was asking a lot.”

“It’s fine,” Yan said, looking away. She crumpled up her sandwich wrappers and, having nowhere to put them, batted them away. Halen grabbed them out of the air as they sailed past him, and put them back in his canvas bag.

“I hope that you’re not lying to me,” Halen said.

“You should know if I am.”

He smiled. “That’s true. But it’s impossible for me to know everything.” He was silent for a while. “I’m not upset with you, you know.”

She engaged herself with opening one of the juice packs that Halen had brought, carefully manipulating it so that the liquid wouldn’t spill out everywhere. This kept her hands and eyes busy, so she wouldn’t have to look at him. “Why would you be?” she asked, though she knew the answer, and Halen knew that she knew.

“I haven’t been a pirate for a very long time,” Halen said.

Yan stabbed the straw into the juice wrong, her earlier carefulness going to naught, and globules of cranberry juice floated out and escaped. Yan could have brought them back with the power, or like a small child made a game of rushing around to slurp them from the air, but instead she followed them with her eyes and watched them crash and splatter red on the white walls of the bay.

“Yeah,” Yan said. “I know.”

“Aymon told me about you and your uncle.”

“What did he say?”

“That he’s glad you’re choosing to remain his apprentice.” He paused. “If it matters to you, so am I.”

“I don’t know why.” It wasn’t meant to be a cutting remark— she was genuine.

“There are plenty of reasons,” Halen said. “The same ones I have for being glad that Kino didn’t die in a cave in on Tyx, and that Sid made it to Olar safely. But you remind me of myself, a long time ago. So I feel more responsible for you, in some ways.”

“You don’t have to.”

“No, I don’t have to. But I do anyway. I would like for us to be friends, Yan.”

She didn’t say anything for a long time, and he was very patient. “I’m not really a spacer anymore.”

“No,” he said. “Probably not.” His voice was painfully gentle.

Was it worse that he agreed, or was it worse that he was the only one who really understood, in the whole universe? He wasn’t agreeing because he hated her like the crew of the Sky Boat , or disagreeing because he loved her, like her uncle. She wished that he would have said something that gave her an excuse to hate him, but instead she just wanted to cry. She scrunched up her face and rubbed vainly at her nose, trying to forestall any tears. Her eyes were damp, but the grace of zero gravity meant that the tiny wetness just collected in the corner of her eyes, and she could rub it away at her leisure, rather than letting tears slide down her face.

“I don’t know how you do it,” Yan said, when she had gotten herself under control enough to speak again.

“Do what?”

She made a vain, sweeping gesture, one that caused her to spin in the empty air, and before she could kick her feet down to the floor to stop herself from moving, Halen steadied her with his hand on her shoulder and his own feet magnetically latched to the floor.

“I think you’ll figure out what you need to do, and feel comfortable where you are,” Halen said. “It will take time. But I believe in you.”

“Just because you figured it out?”

“No, because I know you’re very capable. And don’t sell yourself short.”

Yan shrugged.

“Do you have any plans for when we get back to Emerri?” Halen asked. “You can take some time off, if you want it. Aymon would let you.”

“No, I don’t need any time off. It’s better to be busy.”

“Sometimes that’s true.”

She was tempted to say that she wished everything could go back to normal, but there was really no such thing as normal anymore, and even if there was, she couldn’t go back to it. Shee decided to be honest, instead. It was as much of an actual gesture of friendship as she could give to Halen. “I’m going to talk to Sylva,” Yan said. “I hope, anyway.”

“Iri did say you wrote to her.”

“I wish Iri wasn’t reading my mail.”

“She isn’t.”

“But she sees who I’m sending mail to.”

“Well,” Halen said with a smile. “It all goes through the ansible anyway.”

Yan scowled. “You don’t make a very good member of the censorship bureau. You’re not supposed to talk about it.”

“If it’s any consolation, your letters are not read by the normal censorship bureau. If you’re telling people state secrets, only I have the privilege of knowing.”

Yan scowled, but Halen’s tone was joking enough that she couldn’t really be mad. Although he had distracted her from the topic of Sylva briefly, now that the subject was at the forefront of her mind, Yan couldn’t put it down.

“She will be happy to see you,” Halen said. “I’m sure of it.”

“How do you know?”

“I know many things,” Halen said. “And you’ve brought her to lunch at Stonecourt so many times, I feel like I know everything about her.”

Yan’s face burned. “I wish you wouldn’t spy on me.”

“Alright,” he said. “I won’t. At least in this.”

She didn’t really feel like that deserved a thank you, because it was basic human decency. “Good.”

“I hope it goes well for you.”

“I don’t really know—”

“You’ll figure it out.” He collected all the remaining trash from their lunch. “It won’t be the same as it was, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t make you happy.”

“What will make me happy?”

Halen laughed. “I don’t know, Yan. But I want you to be.”

“You’re happy, being here?”

“Yes,” Halen said. “Despite everything, I am.”