“That woman didn’t know me,” I snap. “There would have been no trouble if you and your recognizable face hadn’t followed me in.”
“You know that for sure?” Wen asks, smirking. “I’d bet everything in my pockets that she was waiting for you to settle in and drop your guard.”
“How much is in your pockets?”
Wen reaches into them, roots around, and pulls out a few pieces of gravel and a hairpin. “Good point.” She coils her finished braid at the base of her neck and fixes it there.
“Unbelievable.”
“You guys wouldn’t have made it out if it weren’t for me. You owe me.”
“Gal, don’t nod—don’t encourage her.” I pinch the bridge of my nose. My head is woozy from the blows I took, and I don’t even want to think about how high up we are or how we’re supposed to get off this roof. Or, even worse, how we’re supposed to get a ship and get off-world with the local mob on our tail. At this point, getting Wen off our case would rank as a minor miracle.
“Hypothetically,” Gal says, his voice dropping low and smooth and charming, “what would we owe you for your trouble?”
“All three of us seem to have a mutual interest in getting off this rock,” Wen says, leaning in. “Take me on.”
“Take you on?”
“As your pilot.”
Gal snorts. And because he snorts, I scoff, and because I scoff, he breaks completely, collapsing into laughter that echoes across the rooftops. I jam my fist against my lips as if that will keep the giggle trapped inside me.
For maybe the first time in the hours I’ve known her, Wen looks thrown. She frowns, waiting for Gal’s mirth to die down, her eyes flicking back and forth between us.
“You’re so far off the mark that it’s almost adorable,” Gal says at last and chuckles.
“You guys wanted to buy a ship for 6K. I’m the best junker pilot in Isla. I’m not that off the mark.”
I run a hand over my scalp. I think I might be close to crying. “Wen, we’re pilots. Both of us could probably fly any junker better than you—you should have seen the thing we came here in.”
“And where did you come from?” she asks. If she was thrown before, she’s back on track now, all demands and fire, with a voice just as exacting as Gal’s.
We glance at each other, neither one of us sure exactly how much we’re supposed to give her. But I’m not the one with the most at risk, so I tilt my palm up at Gal and let him tell the story.
“We’re deserters,” he starts. All the best lies are grounded in an easy truth. “We fled the military academy on Rana and crossed out of the Umber Empire’s borders to escape the people on our tail. We sold the ship we came here in, and we’re looking for a way to get back to—” His voice breaks, and I pray Wen doesn’t pick up on the uncertainty that nearly unmoors him. “Back to our families,” he concludes.
A knife twists in my stomach, and I notice the way Wen’s lips twitch taut. A family to go back to is a luxury only one kid on this roof possesses. But then that tautness turns into a slow smile, and suddenly Wen Iffan looks like we’ve delivered her the best news she’s heard all day. A cold shard of fear replaces the twist of the knife. She can’t be planning on turning us in to the authorities—Wen’s probably as disenfranchised as we are in the eyes of the Corinthian Empire. Even if she tried, who’d believe that?
No, she has something else. Something that makes her wicked and devious, far more terrifying than any tiny sixteen-year-old should be. “You guys are Umber ex-military? Trained on Rana?”
I don’t like where this is going one bit, but Gal is already nodding.
Wen’s smile gets wider, her lovely eyes sparkling. I’m going to have nightmares about the victory in her expression. “Like I said, we want the same thing here. Or