In Caly’s experience, most roads existed to connect two places together. A finite beginning, and a sensible end.

But sensible was not a word often used on New Nowhere. Here, some roads did not have a point B. Instead, they existed purely to drag you out into the endless desert under the angry glare of a winter sun, tempting you onward until you were so far away from civilization you started to believe it would be safer to just keep going instead of turning around.

This road, the one that lead from Blacktree to the Northern Wastes, was one such road.

The road was a line that bisected the expanse of pale, salty flats into two perfect halves. The line carved through windblown crags and coasted down the shoulders of hills, only to crawl back up and witness a hundred more hills, all the same. When they climbed up a particularly tall hilltop, Caly found herself hoping she’d see something, any landmark at all. There were only dry slopes and that gravel line running to a point somewhere between the next hill and eternity.

Nothing changed, except for that weightless, almost sickening feeling in Caly’s gut. Every klick was another klick further from civilization. Just the thought of the distance unsettled her nerves. What if the bike breaks down? It wasn’t like they could walk to the nearest mechanic … The Blacktree, and all those swaying bodies, might as well have been light years away.

The hills started to flatten, and the shrubs became little more than clumps of brownish green, like someone had scattered hundreds of abandoned bird nests across the desertside. The cacti were stringy, twisted things, little more than clumps of thorns, and the last “animal” they saw was a bleached-white boveer skull, half sunken in a dry riverbed.

At least the sunset was pretty; a bruised peach that set the skies ablaze with violet fire. Caly pulled short, and let the bike hum in place, giving the repulsors a break. Coolant pattered on the gravel as the three of them watched the Sun fall like a golden coin behind the hills.

Olm let out a satisfied sigh, “I wish I could bottle it up. Drink the warmth from my sunset cup.”

“Hm,” the human frowned appreciatively, “What’s that from?”

“I just thought of it,” Olm said.

“I thought it was from a book, or something.”

“A book?” Olm frowned at Caly, “Who reads books?”

Caly shrugged, too worn out to interpret the words that came from the human’s mind. Sometimes, the human seemed almost normal. And then, he’d say something like that, like he really was from another world. Books were meaningless, nonsense-filled things, millions of new books generated every minute by the Daedonic Order’s old and entirely useless AI. Nobody read them. Why would you?

A tail of dust stood tall on the horizon, at the furthest edge of the sun’s fading light. Caly lifted her scope and eyed it.

“Someone’s trail or just a dust devil?” Olm asked.

“Too dark to tell. Better get off the road to be safe.”

The repulsors kicked up sand and rocks, creating a small dust trail of their own. Caly spotted a reflective crack in the wrinkled landscape; a small frozen stream that glowed with the day’s last light. Here was as good a spot as any. They dismounted and made camp. Caly found a hammer and a tarp in one of the bike’s storage compartments, and was started pounding stakes into the frost-bitten ground. Olm went to gather stones to weight down the tarp.

And the human?

Somewhere by the stream, Taws hollered, “There’s fish under the ice!”

“They’re not fish,” Caly called back, opening and closing her gloved hand, trying to work warmth back into her fingers. She could barely grip stakes after a long day of riding.

“They look like fish. They’re all frozen.”

“Better leave them that way,” Olm warned as he passed by the human, a huge sack of rocks hoisted over his shoulder. He laid them out along the edge of the tarp to keep the wind from picking up its edges.

“Their eyes are so big,” the human said, all childish curiosity. No wonder the orphans loved him. “Do you think the fish can see me?”

“They’re not fish,” Caly said, and under her breath, she muttered, “Imbecile.”

“Admit it,” Olm said. “He’s got a certain charm.”

“My great aunt had a certain charm. Lovely woman. Brilliant smile, had a way of making you feel like you meant something to her. She put a knife in her daughter’s chest.”

“Did she deserve it?”

“That’s not the point,” Caly said.

“Take that as a yes.”

“You don’t trust someone after they do a thing like that.”

“Hm,” Olm said.

“What?”

“It’s just,” Olm sighed, “Not surprising.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s not surprising?”

“You, not trusting someone. He’s our partner, now, Caly. We have to work with him.”

“You said it yourself, Olm. He’s beyond dangerous.”

“I judged too quickly. If the human wanted to hurt us, I think he would have by now. I’m thinking he’s harmless.”

“Stupid, maybe.” Caly said, “But not harmless. Especially not when he’s doing that.”

There was a sound like metal punching rock as the human hammered at the frozen stream with a small, silvery blade. It looked like a knife, only Caly couldn’t see the handle, and the blade looked like it had been made out of metal strings. Chunks of ice were flying everywhere.

“They’re alive!” He sounded like a child seeing snow for the first time. “One of them looked at me!” And the human went at his hammering with renewed zeal.

Olm grumbled as he got up to his feet. He shoved his hands under his armpits, the wind stealing the steam from his breath, and trudged over to the human. “They’re not fish. They’re called eye-worms. They’re carnivores so—”

The human’s knife sank into the ice. He heaved with both hands and pulled out a chunk off the surface. The icy water exploded as a mass of segmented, slimy bodies shot out of the water, grasping and flailing and sticking to his arm. He shrieked several pitches higher than Caly would’ve thought possible.

“—so that’s why we leave them alone,” Olm said, defeated.

“They’re not fish!” the human shrieked, viciously scraping at the eye-worms with his knife, which only allowed their sticky bodies to wrap around his other hand. Caly stifled a smile. Then she saw the human’s face—a perfect contortion of disgust and wide-eyed regret—and she had to stifle her smile even harder, which made it escape an undignified snort. That made her start laughing in earnest, and it was all just so funny, the way the human was rolling in the dirt and Olm was chasing him down, trying to catch his legs to make him stop moving, but the human kept squirming and slipping out of Olm’s grip.

“Quit wriggling!” Olm shouted. The hrutskuld flexed his arm and the Hammer crackled to life. Olm lined his arm up with the human’s (a difficult act, considering how much the human was flailing), and fried the worms in two quick pulses.

Caly only just got her laughter under control when Olm walked up to the tarp, holding a bundle of dead worms in his fist.

“See?” Olm said, “He’s not so useless. He even caught our dinner.”

Behind them, the human scrubbed the worm juice off his arm with fistfuls of dirt.

“I didn’t say he was useless. I said he was an idiot.”

“Powerful, too.”

“Powerful idiots are all the more dangerous.”

“Isn’t that why you want him?” Olm asked.

“I don’t want him,” Caly said, “I need him.”

Olm raised an eyebrow at her. Caly felt the blush creeping up her face. “I mean—I don’t need—shut up. You know what I mean.”

“Didn’t say anything,” Olm said. But there was a smugness lurking at the corner of his lips as he dug a hole for the pocket fire’s metal sphere.

Olm laid the worms in circles around the pocket fire, turning them and letting them cook to a slightly less unpleasant brown. He pulled one up and bit it cautiously. He grimaced. Pulled out a pouch, sprinkled salt on it, and tried again. Took another bite and shrugged.

“Better than eating dirt,” he said.

This is ridiculous, she thought, still hung up on their argument. There was no reason for her to blush at all. And yet, her visor was fogging up.

“Look,” Caly said, “The only reason we need him is to take down Yole, who just so happens to have a bounty big enough to get us out of Zyroc’s contract, so you don’t have to keep soaking up bullets in some star-forsaken arena in front of a crowd of half-drunk peanut eaters.”

“And what about you?” Olm asked. “What do you want from him?”

“You already know the answer, Olm.”

Olm raised one stony eyebrow, “The Cavaliers.”

“Not just the Cavaliers, Olm. I will make them see me.”

“Well, I saw the way you were looking at him, back at Scipio’s saloon.”

“And how was I lookin’ at him, then, Olm?” Caly asked, mad that she was getting so defensive over nothing.

He smirked and shook his head. “Didn’t mean it like that.”

“Then what did you mean?” Caly said, her whole face growing warm.

“I just meant… well, you saw it, didn’t you? He’s good, Caly. Look, I know you’re pretty decent yourself—”

“Damn straight.”

“—but he’s something else.” The hrutskuld’s voice was almost reverent, now, his fist gripped to the gear on his chest. “The Old Prophets used to speak of an ideal. A kind of warrior, who could … I don’t know, Caly. But I wonder.”

“Just because he danced a little better than that alcoholic ogre? You think that makes him better than me?”

“You saw it.”

She hesitated. Went quiet, while she thought about the way the human had brought down the kell. Taws didn’t shoot a single bullet, nor had he taken one either. She shook her head, “Everyone gets lucky. Just because something works once doesn’t mean it will again.”

“Well,” Olm said, chewing thoughtfully on an eye worm. “It’s like you said. We are desperate.”

“Your point?”

“We do need him. And if you want him to work with us—”

“For us.”

“—you can’t be as thorny as you always are.”

“Thorny? What are you talking about, ‘thorny?’”

“If you had any more thorns on you,” Olm said flatly. “You’d start growing roses.”

“I was trained at the House of Iocalta and Marse. I graduated, top of my class, with honors bestowed only once in a decade, my hrutskuld friend. On this Synod-forsaken world, my diplomacy skills are unmatched.”

“Then maybe you should start using them.”

The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Caly opened her mouth to argue and shut it again. Part of her, the part that was stiff and sore from riding all day and hungry and didn’t want to eat eye worms for dinner, that part of her wanted to storm off. But it didn’t take ten years of diplomacy and guile training from the most masterful political Houses in the Synod to understand that Olm, as usual, was right.

They were desperate. For the last two years, it had been nothing but the worst luck. Falling deeper into debt, getting sucked down on this tarpit of a planet. All she ever wanted was a chance to prove how good she could be. She would be a Cavalier, oh yes. Her people would sing songs about her, horns be damned. How much time had she wasted, trying to earn her sponsorship? Trying, and failing …

And whose fault is that? Caly cursed herself, for being a fool. For being so good, and yet still coming out short. And here she was, snarling like a wolf at the first bit of luck that came their way. Who’s the imbecile now?

Another voice joined her spiraling thoughts, dredging itself up from her buried past: Being clever doesn’t make you smart, dear sister. It doesn’t make you anything. She could her sisters’ laughter. Could feel the cold way her mother ignored her, even when she was the only one in the room. Even at the end.

And just like that, the spiral became a free fall, and Caly was lost in awful thoughts about all the things she didn’t deserve to have, and all the things she hated about herself, and—

“Worm?”

Caly opened her eyes. A tendril of cooked meat dangled from Olm’s hand.

Her stomach rumbled. How does he always know? And took it. “Thanks Olm,” she said, “Thanks for… For…”

“Eat.”

Caly started to turn away, so she could open up her visor in private. Then, she caught Olm’s eye, and saw none of her sisters’ judgment in his gaze.

He doesn’t care. Then why should I?

Caly clicked open her visor, letting the cold wind rush in and suck out the stale air. And she started to eat, with her bare face warmed by the heat of the pocket fire.

Horns be damned.

At least, until the human came back.

***

Olm had to admit, when Caly wanted someone to talk, she could make the cagiest bird sing.

Only the human was no bird. And he wasn’t exactly cagey, either. More like … slippery. Caly had asked him three times how he’d gotten stuck on New Nowhere, and though the human talked up a storm, he avoided the question so smoothly, Olm kept forgetting it had been asked at all.

“You know it’s funny,” Taws said, “You say couranoids, we say humanoid. Two arms, two legs, a head on top. Skin color doesn’t matter to us, either, as long as it’s skin like ours. Scales and feathers are considered abnormal. And whatever Olm’s got going on. Olm, do you consider yourself to be couranoid? You’ve got the right body shape, but your skin is … well, it’s like armor.”

Olm was about to answer—almost hadn’t noticed the human had changed the topic once again—when Caly cleared her throat.

“It’s not a hard question, human, but the fact that you’re not answering it makes me a little uneasy. New Nowhere. What brought you out here?”

The three of them were sitting under the tarp, with the bike propping it up. A chill wind cut in through a gap, and stirred his long black hair, catching it on his ear and jaw. When Caly pressed him, his eyes hardened, and it looked like he might not answer at all.

Caly leaned forward over the wavering heat of the pocket fire, “We just want to get to know you a little. That’s all. We’re not trying to hurt you.”

Taws’ jaw unclenched. He blew out a deep breath, and said simply. “I ran.”

Olm said, “All of us did.”

“I went far. Figured if I went further than anyone else had ever been, they’d leave me alone.”

“Well, you just about made it,” Caly said, “New Nowhere is the ass-end of the Synod. The Council claims to own these stars, but that’s only because they waved their hands and said, ‘all this is ours,’ and whose gonna stop the Synod? Took them a few hundred years to bother sending settlers out here. By the time people got out here, the Synod realized they didn’t want this planet anyway.”

“Problem is,” Taws said. He stared down at his hands. “I didn’t go far enough. They’ll find me.”

“Who is they?”

The human threw back his head, and swallowed. Olm couldn’t help but study him: the long muscles of his neck, the dark contours of his collar bones, the way the apple of his throat moved when he swallowed; he seemed too gentle. He wasn’t the most fragile xeno he’d ever seen, but Olm couldn’t align this slender xeno with the one that grabbed the ogre’s fist mid-punch. Those dark, sharp eyes and a crooked smile he couldn’t seem to wipe away, even when he was so obviously in pain.

“I guess it doesn’t matter if I tell you,” he said. “There’s nothing you can do to stop it.”

Olm looked at Caly. She made a face, as if to say, he’s lost his mind, hasn’t he?

“I was a soldier,” the human said. “Weapons of human destiny, they called us. But we were different than your soldiers, because our wars were different.”

“If your wars were so special,” Olm said doubtfully, “I would have heard of your kind.”

“We learned the hard way to make our wars as small as possible. We learned to make our soldiers as effective as possible. As quiet as possible. Unseen. Unknown. And then, your people came to us. That’s how we discovered we were not alone.”

“Wait,” Caly held up her hands, “Who came to you? The Synod doesn’t send explorers into Gray Lakes. Not anymore.”

Olm grunted his agreement.

“And yet,” the human continued, “Over the centuries, a few of your kind did come through. We know now they were mad or obsessed with discovery. One flew an enormous ship that she could barely control. Destroyed one of our greatest cities. Our first contacts changed us.”

“How?”

“Unconditional unification. It’s hard to explain, but almost overnight, thousands of human factions became aligned. Together, we found renewed purpose. To become a soldier, a champion of humanity, was an honor and the ranks swelled a thousandfold. Even those who could not join pushed themselves to higher callings within the civilian spheres. Everyone was invested in our growth. Our dominion. It was the closest to paradise we have ever achieved.”

“Then why run?”

“Our dominion knows no bounds.”

“Uh … Huh.”

Olm nudged her in the ribs with an elbow, “Sounds a little familiar, doesn’t it?”

“Courans don’t do anything like that.”

Olm blinked at her.

“Well,” she said, “Not in public, at least. Well, we don’t call it a dominion. We’re very careful with our public image.”

“Is that so?” Olm sniffed, frowning at her. “So all those moves in the Rings and Crowns don’t seem a little hungry to you? Everyone has been watching the couran ascension these last decades. How much of the Council do your people own now?”

“The Council ebbs and flows as the Synod changes. We’ve been a part of the Council for thousands of years, without ever holding a majority. Should we not take the chance when it presents itself?”

“I’m just saying, never before has any one species risen so quickly.”

“And that’s our fault? We should refrain from greatness, because nobody else has earned it?”

Olm’s nostrils flared. He couldn’t out talk her and, worse, she was right. It was the nature of things: the strong take what they can. And the strongest learn to shepherd the weak, to use them. It was how the Synod had come into being in the first place, ten thousand years past, when the Daedonic Order rose up within the ranks of their dying slave masters, devouring the old government from the inside.

But Caly was also wrong. The rise of the courans among the council was unprecedented in the long history of the Synod. It was more than their species hitting some critical mass … He just couldn’t say what it was.

“What if you didn’t earn it?” Taws asked.

Caly’s head snapped to the human. “Explain.”

“What if victory was given to you?”

The pocket fire’s glow reflected in the steel of his eyes. His brow was furrowed with a look Olm knew all too well: a smoldering anger, directed inward.

“Human,” Olm said. “Tell us.”

“The Couran Unity is gathering strength in the Crown Council, and in the Rings. But courans do not control couran society. Humanity does.”

Caly made a weird, strangled sound inside her helmet. A cough, or a sneeze, or something.

Olm ignored her. “Nobody has even heard of a human.”

“Exactly,” Taws said. “If the Synod’s Councils knew what we were doing, it wouldn’t work. You would fight us instead of—”

But by now, Caly’s whole body was shaking with barely contained laughter and unladylike snorts spilled from her helmet’s speakers as she clutched her stomach, trying—failing—to contain herself.

Taws stood up, his hands balled into fists. “Everything is in motion. It can’t be stopped.”

“You think—” Caly said, between peals of laughter, “You really think—that you control the whole couran alliance—?”

Olm was only smirking because Caly was laughing so hard, but, to be fair, the human had a knack for saying absurd things like he truly believed them. Caly’s visor was so fogged up from her laughing breath, she had to wipe it with her suit’s sleeve just to see. “Oh, stars, I’m glad we brought him with us, Olm. I really needed that.”

But Olm’s smirk slid when he saw the human’s face. Taws’ cheeks burned the angry color of red sand, and his jaw was set like stone.

“All right,” Caly sat up, stifling another chuckle, “I’m all right. I’m listening. What were you saying?”

The human only shook his head, and kept his lips tight. Maybe Caly didn’t see the hardness in his eyes, or maybe she didn’t know what it meant. But Olm did. It was the weight of knowing that something is wrong, and being able to do nothing about it.

“So what?” Caly pressed, “Your humans are going to puppet the sharpest, most cunning diplomatic minds in the entire Synod, so you can, what? Overthrow us? Make the Synod dance to your whims? And how many of you are there, exactly?”

Taws pushed himself up, and wiped the dirt off his poncho and the seat of his pants.

“Hey,” Caly said, “Where are you going? We were just talking!”

But the human was already melting into the night. The last they saw was his red and white poncho, whipping in the wind. A gust of frost-bitten air blew through the tarp in his absence.

“Thorny as a rose,” Olm said, watching the human go.

“He was making shit up!”

“The man’s in pain.”

“And that’s supposed to be my problem?”

“You tore open the wound.”

Caly cleared her visor, so Olm could see the incredulity on her face. She really couldn’t see how she was making it worse.

“You want this to work out?” Olm said, “Come down to our level. Courans have problems too, you especially, but you don’t see me rubbing your nose in it. All this high and might nonsense, it doesn’t bother me. I’ve been around. I know what matters, and I know what color your heart is. It ain’t gold, but it’s sure as stars brighter than most of the courans I’ve met, and by no small amount.”

He could see her bristling, but this was important. Caly was his partner, but with strangers, she couldn’t seem to turn off that arrogance. That disdain. “You want to know what I think?” Olm said, “You courans are just as small and ugly and helpless as the rest of us. You only pretend to be more than you are. But you might be the only couran in the universe who knows it. And that sets you apart. Only, you won’t admit it to anyone but yourself.”

Olm lifted his chin, and set his jaw. Not backing down from her challenge.

The acid hurt in her eyes didn’t melt, so much as shifted in a new direction. “I didn’t mean—”

“Ain’t my forgiveness you need.”

She sighed, and looked in the direction the human had gone. “He makes me nervous. Worse, he believes what he says. I’m just trying to figure him out.”

“By digging your claws into his heart?”

“It’s called espionage.”

“Why does it always have to be some operation?” Olm rumbled, sitting forward over the warm heat of the pocket fire.

“Because something’s off here, and you know it. And I’m not going to drag dead weight around on what might be the hardest job we’ve ever pulled. Not to mention dangerous.”

“He’s off, I’ll grant you that. But he’s not all dead weight.”

“I don’t trust him. Nobody this naive survives out here for long. At least, not in one piece.”

“You think he’s deceiving us somehow?”

“He said he didn’t want any of the money from Yole’s bounty.”

Olm swallowed. “You don’t think…”

“Why not? It’s something we would do, if we were desperate enough. For all we know, he’s working with Yole.”

Olm chewed his lip, pondering it over. The human had been fearless, back in the Blacktree. Acted as if he already knew nobody was around. But what about the eye-worms? Was that an act?

And dancing on the tables back at Scipio’s? And the kids and Old Gran? It didn’t all add up.

Was Caly being perceptive, or paranoid? Two sides of the same coin. He didn’t blame her, though. He knew enough about Caly to see why she’d get so upset. Getting cut out of your family—by your own family—can do things to a person. The courans were ruthless, even to their own kind.

Especially to their own kind.

“He obviously wants something from us,” Caly was saying, “Maybe not money, but … I don’t know. Maybe he wants to sell us to Yole, somehow.”

“And how’s he going to do that?”

She thought about it for a moment. “The last watch. That’s when I’d do it. I’d volunteer for the last watch, the one that nobody wants. I’d wait until you’re all asleep. Then, I’d call her out here.”

“I don’t know, Cal,” Olm said, “That’s a dark line of thought, right there. You don’t think it would’ve been easier to ambush us back in Blacktree?”

“You’re right,” Caly said. “I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”

Olm scratched at his neck, not saying anything. No sense in hanging someone who was already busy doing it for you. For all her imperious nature, Caly was always the hardest on herself.

She looked around at the darkening landscape beyond their meager shelter. At the hills, carving pleasant little shapes along the deep bruise of the horizon. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe I’ve been on this planet for too long.”

Olm grunted his agreement.

“I mean, first there was that trouble in Yonder, and not two days after we landed. And then, there was the long walk.”

Olm grunted his disgust. Maybe the longest weeks of his life. Swore he’d never walk again, after they reached the city. Not even from the bed to the bathroom.

“And then,” Caly said, “There’s Zyroc. Fucking Zyroc. Practically holding us hostage, and what are we supposed to do? We need him. Everywhere we turn, someone is trying to shake us down. Gets to the point where you kinda expect it. I don’t know. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I need to get the human to see what’s in it for him.”

“Not everyone thinks like a couran, Caly.”

She looked at him, her helmet cocked in confusion.

“I’m saying it doesn’t always have to be a transaction. Maybe he’ll come along, just because he likes us.”

“You think?” Caly asked. There was a softness in her voice, and for a moment Olm could see the young, sweet woman she might’ve been, had she been given a different family, or a different past. That sharp mind, that raw talent, nurtured into something more.

“Yeah,” Olm said. “I think.”

“I’m just not used to this. Traveling with someone new.”

“I know.”

“You want to know the worst part? The human was half right. Couran diplomacy, the way we do things, it’s working. Every year, my people get a little bit stronger. We take a little bit more of the Synod, and we think that justifies the way we act. Power is always right. I hate it. And here I am, still chasing it.”

But Olm didn’t agree with that last part. Caly did things differently. There was a fairness in her actions. A dignity that not even she knew she had. Olm was still trying to figure out how to tell her that, when a pair of boots crunched on the gravel behind them.

The hrutskuld’s blood spiked, and he found himself tensing his hand in the Hammer’s glove. It was just the human, wandering back in from the dark.

“I was wondering,” Taws said, “Don’t know how you normally handle it, but I’m an early riser. Do you mind if I take the last watch?”

Caly’s eyes went wide as she strangled a scream. Olm quickly looked away and cleared his throat, awkwardly. “Sure. Yeah. You can take last watch.”

“Good,” Taws yawned, “Because I could kill for some sleep right now.” He flopped down, arranged his poncho into a makeshift pillow, and started snoring like a buzzsaw chewing through solid stone.