Page 89 of Cage of Starlight
Riese sighs. “Judge, stop.”
“But he—”
“Go. No negotiation. You’ve done enough here.”
Judge’s scowl slips off his face and he stalks away.
“The rest of you, too. Keep your distance from him. I’ll handle this.”
Just like that, the taut rope of tension slackens. The crowd disperses without complaint.
All these people, they trust Riese.
Tory relaxes as soon as Judge is out of sight, and maybe that’s why he only notices the boxes then.
While they were talking, Travin ’ported in with a few more precarious stacks. The damaged ones sit at the front, the wooden crates splintered to disgorge their contents onto the ground in chunks of translucent crystal. The shiver that scales Tory’s spine and sharpens his senses is not just adrenaline. It’s stellite. Riese’s people intercepted a stellite shipment. A few of the boxes have charred corners. It clearly wasn’t an easy theft. And the nearest mine to the border—
Tory catches the letters HLV stamped in black on the side of each crate, and his breath seizes in his chest.
“Hulven.”
When Tory first met Riese that day he tried to escape, Riese was doing reconnaissance in Hulven.
The boxes areburned.
Tory’s chest won’t expand. He can only think of Thatcher and the huge hands he only ever uses to fix things, of the asshole miners who risked everything, over and over, to save their own. “Where’d you get that?”
A ridiculous question. He knows.
Riese blinks over at Tory. “I’m sorry?”
“Those boxes are from Hulven. They’re burned. What did youdo?The people in that town, they’re innocent.”
“We didn’t harm the townspeople. We intercepted the shipment after it left Hulven’s gates.”
“Then why—how—”
Riese shakes his head. “You need to calm down. I’ll explain everything, but your friend is unwell. Iri, we’ll have words later, but for now—” he jerks his chin toward Sena. “Yized just arrived. Take him to her.”
Sena grabs Tory’s pant leg and pulls with strength he shouldn’t have. “Help me up.”
Tory blinks, bemused, and extends a hand that Sena grasps to lift himself.
Halfway upright, he stumbles against Tory’s shoulder, close enough to his ear that Tory hears it loud and clear when he murmurs, “Get him to agree to a supply run, remember? Weneeda communicator.”
“What?” Tory hisses. “How do you expect me to—”
“Tory!” Riese’s voice. “Iri’s got Sena from here.”
Riese turns to Tory with a fatherly grin as Iri leads Sena away. “I don’t mean for my people to assault you before every conversation. It’s hardly conducive to meaningful discourse.” His lips purse. “I won’t let it happen again. My people have reasons for their angerand distrust, and Judge more than most. He lost his little sister in our recent attempt to infiltrate the Box.”
Tory remembers, with a terrible sinking in his gut, red light and a fine spray of blood on Sena’s face and smears of it on the floor.One of them went for my gun, he said. Tory swallows hard.
“So, uh, who’s Yized?”
Riese laughs. “A pain in my ass, but she’s useful. She’ll take care of your friend. Come on. I’ll explain everything, including why we had to hit up that little mining town. I think you’ll like the sound of the ending we’ve planned for Vantaras’ ambitions—and the part you’ll be playing in tearing it all down.”
Like last night around the fire, his words spread warmth through Tory’s bones.Purpose.
