Stormbreak (Seafire #3) - Natalie C. Parker Page 0,57

to break very soon.” She looked into the eastern horizon, toward the Holster. “If Lir has more than you, all he has to do is wait you out and attack when your fleet is in withdrawal. Do you think that’s a fight you can win? Maybe I should do the same. Wait and see which of you emerges as an actual threat. Which of you shrivels into something too weak to hold a gun.”

The ensuing silence stretched thin. Tassos studied her intently, searching for the lie that was not there.

“Can you say for certain it will be you?” Caledonia allowed herself a second to appreciate the way the muscles flashed in the Fiveson’s jaw. “I can tell you why it won’t be. You might be secure for the moment, but the only thing you really control is the factory on the other side of the Net. You have neither the existing blossoms nor the seeds to grow them, and you’ll need both very soon. Maybe you already do.”

When Tassos didn’t immediately refute her claims, she continued, emboldened.

“Lir has blossoms and seeds. All he needs to do is figure out how to produce those pills you rely on and he’ll have you. Your Bullets will figure that out sooner than you think.” She paused, noting the new flush in his cheeks. “Or, we can work together, and both get what we want.”

“How?” Suspicion clouded his voice. Suspicion and just a sliver of desperation.

Now Caledonia let a humorless smile bend her lips. “We combine our fleets and take the Holster. We win and whatever seeds and bale barges we find are yours.”

“And what do you get?” he asked.

“I keep the Holster,” she answered. “And Lir is mine.”

Tassos’s gaze grew distant as he considered the strategy, playing it through to ensure he could get what he wanted from the deal.

“Why do I need you to take the Holster?” he asked at last. “You and your . . . nineteen ships, is it? Not much of a fleet.”

“You need me because all you’ve ever done is protect that Net.” Caledonia had been prepared for this argument. Here, she was on solid footing. “You may be good with defense, but if you want to hit Lir where he lives, then you need an offensive strategy. And you won’t find better than me.”

Tassos almost smiled, considering her as though seeing her for the first time. Finally, he shook his head. “Even with the seeds, we still need the means to grow them. We need soil, and that’s kept in Slipmark. You can’t get me what I need. No deal.”

The wind gusted between them and the ships rocked steeply together as if even the ocean wanted them to join hands. Frustration gnawed at Caledonia’s throat, but she swallowed it down. She had one final card to play and no one was going to like it. No one except Tassos.

“Soiltech,” she said. “I have it and if you agree to fight, if you help me take the Holster, it’s yours. I’ll let you walk away with the means to produce your own Silt.”

Oran went rigid at her side. Tassos had also tensed, though for different reasons. Silt was at the root of every piece of this fight, the toxic center from which everything else bloomed. It was so powerful it controlled everyone it touched. Perhaps especially Lir and Tassos. They both held such power, but they were also terrified that without that poisoned powder, they’d have none.

“Show me.” Tassos was ready to call her bluff and walk away, but she could see he wanted her to be telling the truth almost as much as he wanted to deliver her fleet to the bottom of the ocean.

Caledonia turned to her waiting crew. They were stone-faced and tense, their hands resting near holstered weapons.

She nodded at Pisces. “Bring me the soiltech.”

The hesitation in Pisces’s expression was there and gone almost as quickly as the young woman herself. She returned in a minute, their only functioning soiltech device clutched in one hand and a canvas sack of bleached soil in the other as Nettle watched with a pinched expression.

“Show him.”

Pisces activated the device with the press of a button. It flared with pale green light as she emptied the contents of her sack over it. White soil filtered through the sieve and when it emerged on the other side, it was a dark, healthy brown scattering in the wind.

Not even Tassos could hide his pleasure, his mouth parted in delighted surprise.