“You’d be surprised at what people can live in if they have to.”

—Priest of Byzon Olbifon Varius

As Fell and Leda led the lancers further into their settlement, bitter sorrow gnawed at Zaina’s chest. Seeing how these people lived was heartbreaking—children, unaware of their total poverty, ran about in the streets throwing a rubber ball at each other. It made Zaina grateful for everything she had growing up on Demelia.

A crying little girl ran away from her friends, and was embraced by her father. Shooting a glare at the town’s visitors, he ushered his daughter inside to comfort her. Zaina remembered plenty of times she’d cried to her father. Family was the only thing these people had.

A frown drifted over Zaina’s lips. I miss everyone. I hope they’re doing all right.

“So,” she said, “these people are free to leave whenever they want?”

Fell turned. With a coy grin he said, “No—they’re my hostages, remember? I rule them with an iron fist and lord over their lives with impunity. I thought Almada made that clear.”

Zaina didn’t humor his response, staring at him. This wasn’t the time for jokes—she wanted a serious answer.

After a deep sigh, Fell gestured behind him, sweeping his arm across the landscape. “Look around—do these look like hostages? These people live here. And as the warden, it’s my job to protect them.”

“Protect them from what?” she asked.

“Almada,” he said without a second of hesitation.

Not knowing how to respond, Zaina held her tongue. Fell continued, “All right, I suppose we ought to cut this tour a little short, considering how much there is to discuss. We’ll talk in my tent—right over here.”

Fell led them to a three-walled tent with a blanket for a roof. Inside were two strips of fabric and a bucket.

Zaina’s lips pulled back into a tight frown. He doesn’t live any better than his people.

“Sorry,” Fell said, “I don’t have many accommodations for guests. If you’d like to sit, it’ll have to be on the floor. Trust me, I know the sand sucks. You’ll be picking pieces of our world out of your hair and clothes for a year. Would you like any water, any food?”

“No need to dip into your supplies—we brought our own,” Xyrthe said as she sat, crossing her legs. Fell sat across from them, but Leda stayed standing. Zaina kept her eyes trained on the birifler, knowing this could still be a trap.

And if it is, they’ve got us right where they want us.

Fell leaned back and said, “I suppose the first thing I ought to tell you is a little about myself, how I ended up on Archava.”

“Archava?” Zaina asked. “What is that, exactly?”

“Name of the planet,” Fell replied. “Archavo Outpost was the military installation. Once the government pulled out, the people gave the world they stood on a name. Not an officially Synatorium-recognized one, mind you, but a name’s a name even if there’s no paperwork somewhere saying that’s what it is.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

“Anyway,” he continued, “I was a lawman once—a real, certified Galactic Detective, cracking cases across the Nova Rim. I was good, too—I brought down the Oligarch Cartel on Lensforn, saved a Dyarch, even busted up an offshoot of the Interplanetary Liberation Front after that whack-job Sundar Rygeros took over the main branch. But this here, this Freewater thing—this is my most important work yet.”

“Ondor told us you were a lawman,” Xyrthe said.

“Is that so? I’m not surprised. Really adds to the fallen-hero aspect of what he’s trying to sell me as, I guess. Plus, liars love to coat their deceptions in a film of truth to make it easier to swallow.

“Either way,” he went on, a distant frown slowly forming on his face, “I came here tracking a killer—he was one of the worst, I tell you. At least fifty bodies across twelve systems to his name, and that’s what we found out about, mind you. Cragranth Torzlan was the name of the son-of-a-bitch. He was a Hilgarrian. One of the proud ones, always went on about his species as, ‘the finest of the warrior races.’ Despite his bravado and my meager Cytomoid stock—per his opinion, at least—I got the jump on him over on Drelon, where he kept one of his hideouts; he escaped, but not before I put a bead in his back shoulder.

“So, he runs offworld, void skips over to a little hole-in-the-wall formerly known as Archavo Outpost. But he doesn’t want to tangle with the people living in the military installations—the folks who holed up there had all kinds of firepower—so he goes for the nearest terrestrial settlement, a little hub of civilian activity.”

“Freewater,” Xyrthe said.

“Correct,” Fell replied. “There, he decides to make his stand. I follow him, of course, and I come to find him lording over the town much like Almada says I do; he’s executing people left and right, and those were the lucky ones. As a man of Bor, I prefer not to utter, or even think on, what was done to some of them people. That was back when there were over a thousand living here, mind you, not quite like it is today.

“So, we make our play. He doesn’t want to tangle with me—thing about Hilgarrians that they won’t tell you is, they have a sense of self-preservation like most of the rest of us. They’ll tell stories about Duragaz’s Last Stand or the spirit of Eirgaza’s courage as she faced down the Synatorium’s invasion force alone, but they’ll never tell you about all the times in history they up and retreated—as any sane person would in those situations. Either way, I’d already proven myself the superior shot despite my inferior stock—again, in his eyes—and he still was reeling from the bead I’d put in him before. So, to draw him out, I planted myself in the middle of town, made sure everyone knew I was here and why.

“Sure enough, an hour passes, and the townsfolk get curious. Start coming out to ask me questions—was I really here to save them? Was I going to hurt them, too? I put all their minds at ease as best I could. Wasn’t long before I had a whole congregation of townsfolk waiting for Torzlan to stake his claim to Freewater proper. Soon the whole damn town was watching, waiting.

“See, Freewater had an armory once, but it’s inaccessible due to a tunnel collapse. So, the people didn’t have much in the way of defending themselves. Torzlan was able to come in and bully folks without a problem. See, but now that wasn’t the case anymore. Either way, before long he had to make an appearance. Not only could he not hide forever, but now the townsfolk were openly calling him out, telling him to come duel me. For him, it was getting out of hand.

“So,” Fell leaned forward, “he comes out, finally. I give him a chance in a proper duel, count and all. I knew one of us was about to be buried here—ain’t no other way about it. Well, I was still the better shot in the end. Took a few beads to do him in, but in he was done. Now, I was supposed to take my personal ship back to headquarters and go back into the pool for my next case; but something about Freewater—I don’t know, it got me. I knew as soon as Torzlan was dead, and the people all around were thanking me, that neither of us was ever leaving Freewater. The people asked me to be their warden, the head lawman in their town. Arbiter of disputes, keeper of peace, all that good stuff. Maybe it was them massaging my ego a bit, playing to a big head, but I wanted to stay. There’s a charm about this place, even today—a group of people who’ve come together to survive, making something beautiful out of a bunch of ugly pieces. I don’t know—seeing what they’d made for themselves, I figured it was something worth protecting. So that’s what I decided to do.”