my relief, there was no obvious resentment in his behaviour.
I watched him shoot a brief glance her way as she left the table now. He then calmly returned to eating his breakfast—vasai eggs and dark bread rolls Svetlana had brought from the kitchen.
Vrateus laid his food utensil down the moment Svetlana moved away, his eyes focused on the door behind which she’d disappeared.
Overall, the captain had exchanged only a handful of sentences with me since the move. He always appeared to be lost in thought, an expression of severe concentration on his face. I could almost hear the wheels spinning in his head, whirring and humming as daily plans constantly rolled through his mind. Running the life of hundreds of people on the Dark Anomaly couldn’t be easy. As focused as he seemed to be on that, though, he also appeared to be aware of Svetlana’s whereabouts at all times.
“Here.” She came back into the room, carrying a large bejewelled pot.
It looked like a kettle, with four ornately curved spouts spread out equally around it. Made from gold-tone metal, it was decorated with swirls of green and blue enamel, the intricate designs inlaid with shimmering crystals.
“A housewarming gift, kind of.” She smiled setting the kettle on the table in front of me. “Thank you for having us here.”
“Wow, thank you. It looks so pretty.” I trailed my finger along the relief of the design on its surface. “What is it?”
“According to an article I found, it’s a family tea pot. I’m sure you could use it for coffee, too. It works like this.”
She lifted the kettle by its ornate handle then placed all of our mugs under it, on the table. Rotating each of the four spouts to point down, she positioned the kettle so that each spout ended up directly over one of the cups.
“See? You can pour a cup of coffee for all of us at the same time, and it all comes from the same source. It eliminates a chance of poisoning each other,” she added abruptly.
“Poisoning?” I asked, confused.
She winced and scratched her ear.
“Sorry, that last part has absolutely nothing to do with the four of us. I’m not even sure why I said it. Vrateus has been poisoned once, but it has nothing to do with this gift, of course.” She awkwardly thrust the kettle to me. “Anyway. I’m not good at this social...um, friends and family stuff. Vrateus found this pot in one of the storage rooms a while back. I thought about you and the coffee as I was packing things for the move. I looked it up. It comes from the planet Hexol, the errocks’ world. It seemed a fitting gift...”
She cast a quick glance at Wyck, who stared at the pot in my arms with a new interest.
“It belonged to the Roohala dynasty, which ruled around the same time your ship crashed here,” Svetlana said to him.
“It came from my planet?” He took the kettle from me, turning it in his hands. “An errock made this?”
“Probably more than one errock.” Svetlana stepped closer. “After the metal had been forged and shaped, a more delicate hand would’ve been required to paint all these designs, you see?” She leaned over his shoulder, tracing the delicate curve of one of the lines with her fingers. “And to lay these tiny crystals, too. Your nation has always excelled at producing items that require high precision and craftmanship.”
“All of this was made by hand?” Wyck asked, continuing to inspect the ornate surface of the piece.
“Most of it. The Roohala dynasty era marks a unique time in Hexol’s history when space travel on some parts of the planet happened alongside a relatively simple lifestyle of manual labor and low-technology in the others. I can give you the slate with the article I read about it,” she offered. “It’s written in Universal. Can you read in that language?”
“Yes, I can.” Wyck met her gaze.
I simply loved the confidence and the pride in his voice when he said that. I felt so proud of him, too.
Vrateus lifted one of his thick eyebrows.
“Really? You can read Universal?” he asked. “A while back, Crux told me not to give you any written instructions. He said it wasn’t possible to teach you anything, including reading.”
Wyck’s jaw tightened. Blood rushed hot to my face with a stab of indignation for him through my heart.
“Crux just didn’t want to bother with teaching Wyck anything good or useful,” I snapped. “Wyck is an incredibly capable