Chapter 13

“Do you like scantily clad members of the same and/or opposite genders of the same and/or other species? Do you like games of chance with a greater than 1 in 97560 odds? Do you enjoy drinking and/or consuming various narcotic substances until your judgment is impaired and you believe that you are having fun? Then come on down to the greatest casino/bar/drugstore/hotel/establishment in the known universe!”

—Glamrock Advertising Copy, First Draft

“Right, so I’m thinking we take off in the morning, giving our virgin here some time to find his space legs and get used to piloting before someone’s shooting at us,” Hector said.

Malachai raised an eyebrow at the statement. “Are people usually shooting at you?”

Kaya rolled her eyes. “Everyone’s shooting at everyone all the time.”

That brought Malachai up short, and he stared down at Kaya for a moment. “I do wonder what world you inhabit that is so different from our own.”

Hector pulled a slate out of his cold storage and manifested an illusory star map up above the curry pan. “These are the shipping routes we know the Thesulan  Consortium uses, and these are the systems in range of those routes if you’re operating without jump gates to avoid detection.”

Kaya reached right through the map to grab more food. “That’s a lot of planets.”

“Too many,” Hector agreed. “So we need to start narrowing it down.”

He highlighted a few entirely different star systems on his map in red. “Here’s the start of the trails. Black markets, illicit trade ports…”

Malachai looked aghast. “Why does the Empyrean allow such business to be conducted?”

“Well…” Hector rubbed the back of his neck, trying to compose an answer.

Kaya just shrugged. “Because sometimes you need to buy something illegal.”

“Because it is better to know where to look than drive it underground where you can’t find it,” Sylvas suggested.

Hector chuckled. “I was going to say, ‘because the amount of actual harm they’re doing is pretty small compared to how much it would cost to clean up.’ But their answers are pretty good, too.”

Malachai’s ire was as restrained as every emotion he showed, but it seemed to be entirely reserved for Kaya. “In what scenario might you want it to be possible to buy something illegal?”

“When you need something illegal?” Kaya said as if it were obvious.

Malachai had been looking as close to relaxed as Sylvas had ever seen him, but he stiffened again now. “If it is illegal, you do not need it.”

Sylvas opened his mouth to intervene but was stopped by a touch of Hector’s knee under the table and a glance that told him to let it play out. He shrugged and settled back in his chair.

“Says who?” Kaya snapped back.

“The law!” Malachai looked to Hector and Sylvas for support and found them both intensely interested in looking at the map, the food, anywhere but at him.

“And who wrote the law?” Kaya snarled. “Some culgh that’s never bled for a day’s pay?”

Malachai was looking genuinely perplexed. “I don’t understand the relevance of the law writer’s professional risks.”

“No, you don’t. And neither do they. If I hit a vein of Klyshtar ore when I’m mining, the law says I stop operations, contact the Empyrean, and hand it over.” 

Sylvas tried not to groan as Malachai leapt onto the bait. “Because it is a radioactive substance that will kill you!”

“Except it won’t!” Kaya had a predatory glint in her eye now. Sylvas had never met anyone in all of his life who enjoyed arguing as much as Kaya, and that included the disembodied voice of his dead girlfriend, who basically only existed in his head to continue making sarcastic comments about his life choices. “Aye, if I spend a year hugging it, I’ll get sick, but you can isolate Klyshtar, work around it, and nobody’s any worse off.”

“But why on earth would you when the Empyrean would come and make it safe for you?”

Even Hector flinched when Malachai leapt onto that next bit of bait.

“Because while we’re waiting for them to make it safe, we can’t work. We can’t work, we don’t get paid, and we don’t eat.” She punctuated each sentence by hammering a finger down into the table, making the curry wobble.

Finally seeing the trap he’d been strolling into with a jaunty bounce in his step, Malachai tried to backpedal. “I hardly think that a slightly over-restrictive mineral ruling justifies throwing all laws out!”

Kaya held up a finger, and all conversation stopped for a moment as she lifted her cup to her lips, drained out a little wine, wet her lips, set it down, and then started over. 

“Drill breaks when you’re splitting an asteroid open. Not the bit, the alignment casing. What do you do?”

Malachai seemed to have been taken unaware by this sudden change in direction, but this time he was at least aware that he was stumbling through the conversational equivalent of a minefield. “You buy a new one?”

Kay threw up her hands and rolled her eyes. “A whole new drill costs more than you’ll make on the expedition.”

“Just the replacement part then,” Malachai corrected, quickly.

“Aye, easy fix, right?” She waited for him to nod. “Except that’s illegal. Bosses of the manufacturers told the Empyrean that us dumb culghs can’t be trusted to make repairs ourselves. For the safety of the miners, we’ve got to buy a whole new drill every time anything breaks.”

The necromancer’s brows furrowed. “But that’s ridiculous.”

“So you buy the part, you fix the drill. You break the law. The job gets done. Everyone eats. Except the bosses, who only get to buy two pleasure moons this year instead of three. Poor them.”

“But you are suggesting that we should feel free to ignore all laws, not only the unjust ones.” Malachai really thought he was making a point. “What you’re describing is when some powerful individuals have undue control over the passing of laws that they’re manipulating for their own benefit.” 

“What you’re describing is how every law gets made.” Kaya’s eyes gleamed as Malachai was forced to pause in making his rebuttal to tackle the foundations of his worldview shaking.

Finally, Hector raised his hands. “Either way, you’re both going to have to get used to operating in gray areas. Our job isn’t exactly legal. It isn’t exactly illegal either. We just… operate outside the red tape that slows other agencies down.”

“I don’t even know the laws of the Empyrean yet, so I think it is safe to say that will be fine by me.” Sylvas tried to move them all along from the dinner conversation trainwreck.

“That’s true.” Kaya chuckled, all antagonism instantly forgotten. “Number of times he’s ended up in the brig for breaking laws he didn’t know were laws…”

Hector’s wolfish grin was back now that the conversation had returned to being more conversational than confrontational. “I didn’t realize I was inviting a hardened criminal onto my ship.”

They all looked at Sylvas’ shocked expression and burst out laughing. Even Malachai couldn’t keep a straight face.

He crossed his arms over his chest and sank back in his seat.

Oh, darling, I’m sure you’d make a very dashing highwayman, but it is rather difficult to picture you deliberately choosing to break any rules.

Turning his grunt of frustration into a cough, Sylvas leaned back in. “Alright, which black market do we hit first?”

“My favorite would be Glamrock 9.” Hector highlighted the star on the map. “It’s close, it’s relatively safe, for what it is, the Consortium smugglers operate there, and don’t ask me about the name. Whoever finds a star gets to name it, so we’ve got some weird ones out there, folks.”

Just a glance at the map was all that Mira needed to synchronize their current position and the many star charts Sylvas had already committed to memory. “Glamrock 9. How long will it take us to get there?”

“We’re really just breezing past Glamrock?” Kaya asked.

“Well, that very much depends on you, kid. I’ve heard this ship’s got a top-of-the-line setup, with all the best enchantments embedded, but I’ve also heard that if you stick a gravity affinity mage in the pilot’s seat, they can get a ship moving faster than anybody has ever dreamed.”

Kaya looked distraught. “Seriously, just… leaving Glamrock on the table?”

Malachai cocked his head to the side, obviously trying to do some calculations based on the distances involved. “How long would it take you to get there on this ship?”

“Three days, give or take a pit stop somewhere along the line.”

“Glamrock? Nobody? Anybody?”

Malachai looked increasingly intrigued and seemed to be taking some small measure of pleasure in ignoring Kaya’s meltdown beside him. “And how long do you expect it to take Sylvas, who has never piloted anything before?”

Hector’s grin had a feral quality now. “Won’t it be fun finding out?”

The finding out that occupied the rest of the evening was considerably less fun. They went their separate ways, as much as you could while trapped in a tin can with one another, stripped down for bed, and then the complaining started.

The top bunk actually made a degree of sense for Sylvas since gravity had no effect on him, and he could just drift up into it without having to deal with the steps or the arguments raging below.

“I simply suggested that you selected the bottom bunk purely out of a desire to agitate me.”

Kaya grumbled. “Me? What, are you saying I look like some sort of agitator?”

“Of our assembled company, I would choose you as the most likely to deliberately make choices for the discomfort of the others.” Malachai did not relent.

“Look who’s talking! This culgh thinks everyone needs to be bending over and giving up whatever he says just because his daddy’s daddy’s daddy climbed the corpse heap for a shiny hat.”

There was a momentary pause as Malachai mentally translated what she was actually saying. “You have some issue with me being of royal blood?”

Kaya snapped back, instantly. “Kings is just another word for bosses.”

The door to their cabin swung open, and Hector yawned in. “Guys, I know I made a big deal saying I’m not in charge and all, but I am going to need you all to shut the hell up and go to sleep.”

“I’m trying to sleep!” Kaya growled back. “Little prissy princess is the one with the problem.”

“You don’t need to be royalty to consider these conditions uncomfortable.”

Sylvas stuck his head over the top of the bunk with a sigh, ignoring his squabbling friends to talk to Hector instead. “We’re still on Alvarhain. Couldn’t I just book us a hotel for the night, and we can start sleeping on board tomorrow?”

“So that we get to have the joy of the first massive brawl because you three can’t get along in close spaces out in deep space with no way to get out?” Hector backed out of the room. “There’s a reason we’re doing the dry run tonight.”

If Hector could have locked the door behind him, he probably would have.

“Barely on the man’s ship, and you’re already causing him trouble!” Kaya snapped at Malachai the moment Hector was gone.

Malachai had been tossing and turning from side to side with each volley of their argument, and this time, his flip over shook the whole rack of beds. “Better that than attempting to insinuate my way into his bedchambers on the first evening I met him!”

“Like you’d have a chance with him, with your po-face, stanzbuhr—”

Sylvas cut them both off. “Enough.”

Normally, just a word would not have been capable of bringing the relentless steamroller of Kaya’s arguing to a halt, but the anger Sylvas was feeling had come through in his voice. What should have been mild irritation that he was accustomed to shrugging off had intensified for reasons he couldn’t yet fully understand. He took a steadying breath.

“Kaya, Malachai has no control over who he was born to, and he’s never been demanding or pushy in any way. Let it go.”

Malachai sounded just a little smug to have Sylvas back him up. “There is no need for such antagonism.”

“And, Malachai, if you can’t think of a reason that a person with multiple prosthetic limbs might be more comfortable on the bottom bunk but doesn’t want to talk about why in great detail, you aren’t nearly as smart as you think you are.”

“Ah,” was the only response from the middle bunk.

Sylvas waited to see if there would be any apologies, any arguments, any issues with what he had said, but when nothing was forthcoming, he said, “Good night.”

There were mumbled replies from beneath him, and then they all settled in for their first night on the Folly.