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“I didn't have time. Besides, she did the same to me.” Rubio reaches up to touch the tender spot at the back of his head. “I didn't mean to hurt her so bad.”

“You killed her.” My lungs constrict. The words hurt coming out. “She's dead.”

“You don't know that,” Rubio says.

I step close, blood welling up in my chest again. “You bashed her head in.”

“'Ey, miss!” I feel a tug on my sleeve and look down. The rat boy scowls up at me. “You said you had food.”

I sigh, suddenly tired. “We do. In the ship.”

The rat boy eyes the hatch suspiciously. “I ain't going in there. There's blood, an' you said he was a murderer.”

Rubio looks pale.

“Wait here,” I tell the boy. I grab Rubio's arm and push him up the ramp. He doesn't resist, but when we reach the top, where Cassia's blood pools, he stops cold.

“What?” I say. “Afraid to look at what you've done?”

But then I move to step around him and see what he sees.

Cassia, sitting bloody-faced and dazed on the gurney. Alive.

“Cassia.” I run to her. I want to throw my arms around her and crush her against my body. I want to touch her and make sure she's real. I want to kiss her. Kiss her with relief and fear and giddy tears, because here she is, alive. But she's hurt, and I don't know if it's what she'd want,
so instead I hold her at arm's length.

“I'm okay.” She nods, and then catches sight of Rubio standing openmouthed at the top of the hatch. The flesh below his eye has already begun to puff up and bruise, and my scratch marks look more like gouges now. “Can't say the same for you.”

Rubio stares at her as if he's seen a ghost. “I didn't kill you.” Relief suffuses his voice.

She touches the open wound on her head. Her fingers come away bloody. “You'll have to try harder.” She grimaces and glares at him.

Out of nowhere, he giggles. I stare at him, horrified. I could slap him, except something about the noise he's making sounds so frightened.

“Let's get you cleaned up,” I say to Cassia. “Rubio—”

He interrupts me with a bout of hysterical laughter.

“Rubio,” I say more firmly. I don't have time for this. I point to one of Cassia's bags. “Look in there and find some rations for that boy.”

He makes his way to the bag, laughing so hard tears stream down his face. I ignore him and pull a disinfecting cloth from our medical supply box.

“Aren't you afraid he'll get away?” Cassia murmurs as I wipe the blood from her brow, careful of the laceration.
The bleeding has slowed, but it hasn't stopped yet. She was lucky.
We
were lucky.

I glance at Rubio as he teeters down the gangway, still laughing to himself. “At this point, I don't care. I'd like to see him survive on Ceres Station.”

I raise the cloth again, but Cassia catches my wrist. “Thank you.”

I look down, away, my face growing hot.

Her hand gently grazes my jaw. She raises my chin so we're staring into each other's eyes. Hers are aquamarine like the Pacific on a sunny day, ringed by lashes as gold as her hair. Her face is pale from blood loss, making her freckles look darker.

“Thank you,” she repeats.

I lean my forehead against hers and close my eyes. She works her fingers beneath what's left of my braid and traces my ear with her thumb. I hold her tight, tight, and a hot tear rolls down over my chin, onto my neck. I could have lost her today. My blood fizzes in my veins, and I know there's no going back.

Chapter 11

T
he barrels that Sweetie's minions stacked in the junker's hold stand four across and fifteen deep. I tilt one up on its rim experimentally. It's heavy, more so than a simple liquid should be, and yet I can make out sloshing inside. I let the barrel fall back on its base with a heavy
boom
.

“What the hell is that?” Rubio stops behind me, his arms full of thermal suits and jackets, his face a purpling mess. He moves stiffly, favoring his right ribs.

I plant my hands on my hips and blow out a lungful of air. I shake my head. “No telling.” I nod at his armload. “What about you?”

“Gifts from that man, the one with the tattoos.”

“Sweetie,” I say, and scowl.

“Right,” Rubio agrees. “He says we'll stick out like rats at a tea party if we go around wearing our DSRI gear.”

I nod. He's right about the clothes, but I have a feeling Sweetie isn't the gift-giving kind. We're only adding more favors to his ledger.

I turn back to the barrels and work the tips of my fingers underneath the closest one's stopper. The seal is too tight. I only end up lifting one side of the barrel, and then losing my grip. The metal base crashes back down, nearly crushing my toe.

“You want help?” Rubio asks.

I look over my shoulder at him, incredulous. “You're offering?”

He shrugs and drops the pile of thermal clothes, then climbs on top of the barrel and holds it down with his weight while I try again to pry out the stopper. My fingertips pale with the effort, but I feel it giving, millimeter by millimeter. Suddenly, the seal comes free with a wet, sucking pop that sends me stumbling back. A sharp chemical odor floods the berth.

“Chaila.”
I shake the feeling back into my fingers and pull up my undershirt to cover my nose and mouth.

Rubio jumps down, and we both lean forward to peer inside.

“What is that?” I say through my shirt.

Rubio sticks his hand inside.

I try to catch his arm. “Don't!”

But it's too late. He draws up a runny handful of translucent yellow goop and sniffs it. “Cryatine.” He slops the handful back into the barrel. It rolls off his fingers as if he never touched it. “Antifreeze.”

“You've seen it before?” I make a face.

Rubio nods. “You probably have, too, but you didn't know it.” He looks at the pile of thermal clothes. “They use it in everything. Buildings, pressure suits, ships, anything that needs to withstand the cold. Smells like cat piss, but it'll keep you warm.”

I frown. “How do you know so much about it?” Mumbai is too warm to have any use for antifreeze, but I've been around ships my whole life and never heard of the stuff.

“My father.” Rubio shrugs and focuses on shoving the stopper back into the barrel. “He was a foreman at an Apex Group factory that made the stuff. Back on Earth.”

I study him. I never thought of Rubio having a father and mother before. I guess I thought he sprang fully formed from the ether to annoy me.

“Apex,” I say. “Isn't that one of the company-states?”

Rubio nods, eyes still on the barrel, even though he's done replacing the seal.

“How'd you get out?” I've heard about the company-
states before. Almost everyone born there ends up working for them their whole lives.

Rubio looks at me for the first time. “We had overages in my year. My mom knew someone on the board, and she convinced them Apex ought to be represented on DSRI missions.”

We stand in silence for a moment. “I guess they're going to be pretty pissed when you don't come back, huh?” I finally say.

“Who knows?” He looks away, his face unreadable. “I'm sure DSRI will find a way to compensate them.”

A shiver of pity moves through my stomach. Something about the way he says “compensate” makes me think he means exactly that. As if he's a commodity—a valuable one, but still something with a price.

“Wait . . . so this stuff, it's legal?” What's going on here? “Why are we transporting it all secretively, then? Why not contract with a licensed freight captain?” Unless the issue isn't so much what we're shipping as who we're shipping it to. That might explain why Sweetie doesn't want to give us port coordinates yet. If we're stopped along the way, we can't tell what we don't know.

Rubio raises his hands in surrender. “It's your boat. I'm only the hostage here.”

I nod. But it's not my boat. It's Sweetie's, and the only one of us who knows enough about him to guess what's going on in his head is lying in a bunk, recovering from head trauma.

I make for the gangway leading out of the cargo hold.

“Hey,” Rubio calls after me. “Don't you want your new gear?” He holds up one of the thermal jackets.

“I'll get it later,” I shout over my shoulder. For now, I have some things to straighten out with Cassia. Like who the hell needs cryatine smuggled to them on Enceladus? And what else is Sweetie going to ask of us before he finally lets us go?

The junker's cargo hold stands on the opposite side of the ship from the sleeping berth, so I have to cross the sad common room with its stained set of couches splitting at the seams. The mechanical access doors clang under my feet as I pass down the corridors. I'm so twisted up in my thoughts, I don't notice the armored sentry outside the sleeping berth until I'm nearly on top of her. Warning flares spark in the back of my head. Something is wrong.

“You can't go in.” The guard lowers her rifle.

Very wrong.

“Like hell I can't.” I shove the rifle up, grab the door handle, and roll it aside.

Cassia is propped up on pillows in the widest bunk, her hair tied back in a braid. An osmotic bandage hugs her temples, slowly leeching painkillers into her system at the same time it heals the gash on her forehead. Sweetie sits beside her, one arm across her body, trapping her in the bed. His free hand cradles her wrist. Cassia sits pillar straight, every muscle in her body tense. Her eyes find mine as I enter the room.

“. . . know it would be better for everyone.” He strokes the back of her hand with his thumb. “I only want to make life a little easier on you and your family.”

I bristle. Whatever it is he's offering Cassia, it's not sitting easy with her. A sickening mixture of anger and fear chokes me. I clear my throat.

Sweetie turns, his hand still clamped around Cassia's. “Ah, the government girl.” He smiles. “Come in, my dear. Cassia and I were just discussing some business.”

I clench my jaw. Sweetie still scares me more than anyone I've ever met, and I don't want him to see me shaking. I narrow my eyes at his hand.

Sweetie glances down, and then back and forth between us, confused. Suddenly he throws his head back and laughs.

“Oh, I
see
.” He winks at me, but his smile doesn't reach
his eyes. “Don't like me moving in on your territory, do you, my dear?”

“Cassia's not territory.” I ball my hands and dig my fingers into my palms.
Stress response in humans increases cortisol production and suppresses immune function.
“She doesn't belong to anyone.”

“Then you won't mind if I steal a small kiss.” He looks at Cassia. “Will she, little tinker?” His hand tightens around hers, and I remember the sensation of bones grinding together when he asked my name.

Cassia blanches. “I . . . no,” she says quietly. Her eyes are too wide when she looks at me again. Her chest moves fast and shallow.

Sweetie raises one inked hand, gently brushes his knuckles against Cassia's cheek, and grabs her by the back of the neck.

“Ow!” Cassia winces and tries to jerk her head back, but he only tightens his grip. His lips close in on hers.

“Stop!” I shout.

Sweetie stops. He swivels his head toward me, a grin spread out over his lips.

My whole body vibrates. “Let her go.”

“You see?” He points at me, that same cruel smile still in place. “Territory.”

I don't answer. Sweetie stands and straightens his shirt. He laughs again, but there's something dark in it.

“Best of luck to you, girls. Try not to get yourselves killed. And little tinker . . .” He smiles at Cassia. “If you change your mind, you know where to find me.” He saunters from the berth, letting the door roll closed behind him.

Relief floods Cassia's face. She pulls the hand Sweetie held up to her chest and closes it into a fist.

I hurry to her side. “Are you okay?”

She looks as if she's about to cry but draws a trembling breath and pulls herself together. “He wants to set me up as his go-to girl after we find Nethanel. He said he'd let my family keep this ship if I'll stay with him on Ceres.”

“Stay with him?” I say. “Like his mistress?” My voice squeaks on the word. I don't know if Cassia has any idea how I feel about her, but I'm too shaken up to do a good job of hiding it.

Cassia nods, then closes her eyes and leans her head back against the wall. “Maybe I should have said yes. We need the ship.”

I huff in exasperation. “Don't you think you're worth more than a
chirkut
junker?” I snap.

Cassia winces. “Don't yell, okay? I'm only talking it through.”

“Sorry.” I pick at the pilled woolen blanket covering Cassia's legs. “It's just . . . you don't want that either, do you?”

Cassia laughs, not bitter, simply tired. “I didn't
want
any of this. But here I am.”

“What, you'd do it?” I give her a look that says I think she's crazy.

She shrugs. “I don't know. If it means my whole family can keep trading . . .”

“That's stupid,” I say. “You act like you're some bargaining chip.”

“Not a bargaining chip.” She shakes her head. “I'm the queen.”

“What?”

“The queen. Like in chess,” Cassia says. “Do you play that where you're from?”

“I guess.” I wobble my head from side to side. Some of Soraya's colleagues from the university used to come over to our house to play, but I only ever watched.

“The queen can move the farthest and the fastest, any direction she wants.” Cassia draws a diagonal line across the blanket. “But if winning means giving her up, you give her up.”

“I never got that,” I say. “Why can't you end the game with the queen in charge?”

“That's just the rules, Miyole.” Cassia sighs.

I poke her in the leg. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Cassia says. “But what's the point if you're all alone?”

I look away. This conversation is cutting too close. “Well, if you decide to take his offer, I'll have to get you a metric ton of breath mints for a wedding present.”

Cassia cracks a smile and whaps me with one of the pillows. “Stop it.”

“I'm serious. Have you seen his teeth? We could scrape some samples and use them as biological weapons.”

“Shut up,” Cassia says, but she doesn't stop smiling. “He'll hear you.”

“Not if we get out of here,” I say.

Cassia wrinkles her brow. “Are you sure you can fly this thing alone?”

“I was thinking Rubio could help me,” I say, trying to keep my tone light and carefully studying the chevron pattern of the blanket.

“Rubio?” She narrows her eyes. “Doesn't he want to stay behind and get rescued?”

“I think he's not too impressed with the hospitality on Ceres.” I remember the rat boy leaping on his back and smile to myself. Now I know Cassia's not dead, it's a little funny.

“Well, it's not my fault if he ends up getting himself killed.” Cassia folds her arms and hunches her shoulders.

“I think as long as you two stop trying to give each other concussions, he'll be safe.” I grin.

Cassia hits me with the pillow again.

“Rest,” I tell her. “I'm pretty sure Rubio has a healthy fear of me now.”

“You are terrifying,” Cassia agrees.

It isn't until later, when I'm up in the cockpit testing the systems, that I realize I never asked her who would want so much cryatine.

Cassia sleeps through takeoff, so it's Rubio and me in the cockpit when Sweetie's air lock rumbles open onto the dwarf planet's hundreds of abandoned mine shafts. Past the rough-hewn rock, a circle of stars waits for us.

“Good luck, Miss Guiteau.” Sweetie's voice crackles over the
Mendicant
's failing coms. “Tell Cassia my offer still stands. And remember, bring my ship back or don't come back at all.”

“Good riddance,” I say to myself. If we make it that far, if we find Nethanel, Sweetie can have our shuttle. Cassia is never crossing his threshold again if I have anything to say about it.

The coms aren't the only shoddy thing about the ship Sweetie's saddled us with. It's slow as a snake in summer, and instead of self-healing nacre, a collection of overlapping composite tiles makes up its skin. If one of them breaks, we'll have to put on pressure suits and climb outside to complete the repairs. There's rust in the water recycling system and mildew in the air scrubbers, not to mention the holes in the inner walls. Half of them look like mods or repairs abandoned midway, and the other half are clearly the work of rats and rust. Tibbet finds them endlessly fascinating. He's already brought us the carcass of one of Sweetie's spy-eyed rats.

We edge out into the black. I push the ship into the vector Sweetie recommended for us, the path out of the asteroid field with the least debris, and wish for the millionth time I was back in the
Ranganathan
's shuttle, or even Ava's tiny sloop.

“You sure you don't want me to fly?” Rubio glances over at me from the copilot's seat.

“No.” I make a show of checking the readouts so I don't have to look at him. Rubio may have stopped trying to brain us with things, but that doesn't mean I trust him to control the ship. We've come so far. I don't want to wake up one day to find us en route back to the
Ranganathan
.