Thistle in the Sky | #NONC2022 | ✔

Chapter Twenty-Three

Farah could not remember the last time she had spent longer than a handful of hours cut off from the mindspace. It was unexpectedly peaceful. Peaceful in a way that meant even her occasional reconnections quickly grew overwhelming: a crush of thoughts and emotions and impressions that weren't her own, and didn't matter anyway. Turning them off brought silence to the room she and Gemi shared. Farah struggled to recreate the mentality that had led her to stay so connected on board the Ariomma. Not because she wanted to return to it, but because it felt like a different world that she had left behind.

She turned over in her hammock. These were the only beds the Nectamia had been able to provide while keeping her and Gemi separate from the rest of the crew. It was a move Farah suspected was as much to placate the crew's fears of a telepath as it was for their own comfort, but she wasn't complaining. Gemi slumbered only paces away. It had been a day and a half now since they'd been rescued, and Gemi had spent most of that time asleep, between a growing list of interviews, questionings, and recorded testimonials in the captain's cabin. Farah was sure the same pent-up exhaustion would hit her, too, but that would only happen once Kaz was okay.

Farah unblocked and poked into the mindspace for the hundredth time today. She was met with a wave of human existence: numbers and charts from the navigation room, orders from the captain, meal plans from the cook, friendly banter about the shape of the Colony's fattest airships, and an argument over engine oil. She sifted through them in search of Kaz. He was still sleeping. She'd heard him briefly this morning, and spent more than an hour pushing silent prayers and recitations of health and comfort in his direction. Even if he couldn't hear her, she'd hoped he would feel her care. Then the medication he was on drew him under again. He'd yet to reappear.

Farah still wanted nothing more than to track him to the medical bay, install herself beside him, and refuse to leave. But the Nectamia was not a large ship by any stretch of the imagination, and there was unlikely to be much room for her beside her brother. She did not want to piss off the ship's doctor. She'd screened him and found no evidence that he meant Kaz harm, at least, which was enough of a reassurance for her to survive on, together with her brother's occasional reappearances.

Kaz also trusted the man. Not that that meant much when Kaz trusted almost everyone until proven otherwise, but if the doctor planned to let him die, it would have happened already. The captain had also promised not to turn them all over to the authorities, and she hadn't been lying from what Farah could tell. Gemi had said it was illegal to have them arrested without a fair trial anyway. Farah had never imagined such a thing: that there might be a way the Colony was safer than the outer city. Whether that would hold for a telepath was a question she harbored, but Gemi had promised to vouch for her, and Gemi's own powers gave her a lot of sway. Farah hadn't realized it until the Nectamia's crew started bowing and scraping once news got out that Gemi had hacked a tracking card. Skilled electropaths, it turned out, were both highly valued and vanishingly rare.

The noise of the mindspace began to creep over Farah's own thoughts again. She checked for Kaz one last time, and felt him flicker into wakefulness. He was still in a lot of pain, but otherwise comfortable. He drifted off again immediately. Satisfied, Farah cut her connection again. She was about to reach for the book Gemi had given her to keep her occupied when someone knocked on the door.

Farah froze. Gemi hadn't stirred, and Farah knew from experience that she did not wake easily. She connected to the mindspace again. The man who'd reached for his knife when he first heard she was a telepath was standing outside their door.

Farah slid to the floor and crouched there, gripping her own knife handle. Her lungs constricted. She would defend them both if he came for her, but the thought of another Esfandiar brought bile to her throat and made her hands shake. She didn't want more blood. She didn't want more fighting—not when it could get all three of them kicked off the Nectamia, arrested, or both. Not after what had happened aboard the Ariomma.