If I were doing this for any other reason, her plea would have changed my mind.

“I’m not going to fraternize. I left something there, but I know where it is. I need to get it back. Please.”

I haven’t asked her for anything since the day Jean died. Even if she denies me now, I’ll still owe her for that. Because of her I was able to see him one last time. I couldn’t save him, but Dell gave me his goodbye.

“This place almost killed you.”

“I know. But that was because Nelline was still there. She’s…not there anymore.”

Another bit of loss, another senseless death. And if Dell doesn’t give in, it may all be for nothing. I’ve spent the two days since my meeting with Mr. Cheeks thinking of what would tempt an emperor, and I think I’ve finally got it.

“Fine.” She looks back at her desk. “Will you require a veil?”

“It’s too late for that.”

“You’ll have thirty minutes, and this time you will not lose your comm or turn it off. I need to be able to reach you directly.”

“Fine.”

“Swear it.”

“I’ll swear on my mother’s grave if it’ll get me to Earth 175.”

“Your mother isn’t dead.”

    She says it so quickly, I can’t quite hide my reaction. I flinch. She notices, her face falling as she realizes that just because Caramenta’s mother is still alive, it doesn’t mean mine is.

“Cara, I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago, long before I came here. Imagine my surprise to see her again,” I say. I try to keep my tone light, but her eyes are heavy on me. “So, 175?”

“Give me ten minutes to reset.”

“Thank you.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

When I land in the dirt banks of the dry river, the smell of hot sand and ash hits me like other people must be hit by the smell of their mother’s cooking. After a second I lick my lips and the salt and acid taste of the air settled there isn’t the shock it was last time.

I hit my earpiece. “I landed. There’s no nuclear wasteland, no raging fires. I’m alive.”

“Stay that way,” Dell says back.

I walk along the road that will, eventually, lead to the emperor’s palace. The sun is high and the wind is angry. Mr. Cheeks is the first person I see, hovering at the entrance of the palace. He takes a deep breath when he sees me. There’s surprise and irritation on his face, but no malice.

“Knew you’d be back. Trouble always comes twice.”

“You know you give me that same exasperated look in every world I see you?”

“Good. Means the other mes have a level head.”

He turns around and motions for me to follow him.

“Are you really off patrol now? Such a sellout.”

“That seems to be the general opinion,” he says. “The emperor wanted me close by, and it’s a hazardous post now with Adra’s holdouts waiting in the wastes. I wanted something more stable.”

    Because he’s in love, and he has someone who depends on him.

“Is Esther all right?”

“Almost,” he says.

“Was she burned badly? In the fire?”

He shakes his head. “She burned, but not bad. Her trouble’s not that. Adra tasked Mr. Cross with killing the wastelanders who were seeking refuge that night.”

I close my eyes, not just at the former emperor’s cruelty in sending a Ruralite runner to kill those he’d grown up learning how to protect, but because touching those from the deep wastes only ends one way.

“Tatik killed him?” I ask.

He nods.

“And Daniel didn’t make it?” I say it like a question, but I already know. The vehicle that hit him that night was too heavy to do anything but obliterate. Even if he’d survived the running, the condition he’d have been in after would have made a bullet a better remedy than a pod.

His nod is short. “She’ll be steady soon enough. She’s been throwing herself into setting up the new government.”

Nik Nik has taken the same office he had on my world, leaving the office of his brother and father alone. When we get to the door, I turn to Mr. Cheeks.

“Do me a favor? Don’t tell Esther I was here. I won’t be coming back and I can’t stay long. There’s no point.”

He nods, then opens the door. “I’ll be right outside.”

Nik Nik is staring out the window, looking like a man I’ve seen a thousand times, rather than just a dozen. My Nik Nik used to stare like that too. Anytime he needed to think I could find him at a window. Granted, mine would have died before doing it in a tunic, but still.

“Shouldn’t you be wearing your fancy coat?”

He turns quickly, and when he sees me his face passes through hope and joy before settling into the kind and welcoming expression of all Ruralites. He walks toward me slowly, hands clasped as always, like a man who is constantly keeping himself from doing something. Given his blood, it’s probably for the best that this is the type of man he is.

    “It didn’t agree with me,” he says. “I found it cumbersome.”

“You always do.”

“Do I?”

“I’ve never known a Nik Nik who wore the cloak for anything but ceremonies and very public appearances. You’ll find the hair adornments won’t agree with you either.”

“No, I didn’t think they would.”

He’s in front of me now, so close that if I don’t look up I’ll see only his neck.

“The braids look nice though.”

He has three rows on the side of his head, the ends of which are braided loose down his neck. It’s one more than the other Nik Niks I know, because he’s not the second in his family to rule, but the third.

“Why are you here? My first thought was that you’d come to stay. But now that I see your face, I think you must need something.”

“You’ve gotten good at this mind-reading thing.”

“They say the emperor is omniscient. What is it? You must know I can deny you nothing.”

I was going to dance around it, but there’s no point and I don’t have much time. I meet his eyes.

“I know you kept one. I need it.”

He doesn’t play dumb. He turns away and kneels by his desk. I can’t see him, but I know there is a small, hidden safe beneath the emperor’s chair. On 22, it held a fresh cache of poison. It could either be put into his rings, or, if the palace were ever overrun and the emperor saw defeat on the horizon, he could retreat to the office to rob his enemy of at least one victory.

I wonder if the contents here serve the same purpose.

When Nik Nik rises, the light catches on the object in his hand, held delicately between his palms like a wounded bird. A small gun. A pistol. Something I’ve only read about. He holds his hand out to me and I take it.

    “I melted the rest down, just like you said. It was Mr. Cheeks who thought this one should be saved. It belonged to my brother.”

Fitting, since it’s going to destroy him…just not in the way a weapon usually destroys.

“I’ll need to take this. Are there bullets?”

“Only six. We destroyed the means of production and I’ve…ordered that the knowledge be lost.”

Meaning anyone who attempts to pass the information along would be killed, and there’s a fat reward for whoever turns them in. There aren’t many willing to turn bloodrat in Ashtown, but there are enough.

He gives me the bullets. I hold them in one hand and the gun in the other.

“I thought they’d be heavier.”

I know metal. I know vehicle parts, and window blocks, and the thick clumps of it that get passed around as a rough currency. I’d expected something more like that. Not this fine work, this jewelry.

“It doesn’t seem like it’s enough to kill,” I say.

“It kills. Adra had been…practicing. That one will put a hole through an entire man. There were others. The runners say they could blow off limbs.”

A coward’s machete.

I put the gun in my largest pocket, but put the bullets in my vest. Technology that runs on electricity fritzes out during jumps—the more complicated the tech, the less chance of it surviving. I don’t know if this counts. It feels more mechanical than electrical, more like gears than circuits, but it doesn’t need to work to accomplish my purpose. It just needs to look like it does.

“You’ll be leaving now?” he asks, but it’s not really a question. When I nod, he continues. “I can’t help but think, with a request like this, you may be in trouble.”

“More often than not, these days.”

“You have no enemies here. Whatever ugliness has led you to need such a weapon…this can be your sanctuary from it.”

It’s a nice thought. Just step into the hatch and disappear forever. Earth Zero isn’t even my home. I’d just be leaving Caramenta’s world for Nelline’s. I could start over, never think about Maintenance or Adam Bosch again. Maybe this guilt belongs to Caramenta, too, and I can shed it when I shed her name.

    “It’s kind of you to offer. Kinder than I deserve. But I think this time I’ll stick around and see what I can do.”

“If you change your mind, we’re here. I’m here.”

“Don’t wait on me.”

He tilts his head, acknowledging the gentlest refusal I know how to give.

“Your Dell, did she miss you?”

I lower my head. “No, or if she did, she won’t anymore. You were right. I was judging her and I was wrong.”