The Cloudship Trader by Kate Diamond

Author:Kate Diamond [Diamond, Kate]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2019-04-12T22:00:00+00:00

People assumed a great deal about fliers. Some distrusted them. Most revered them. People meeting them for the first time expected them to be as capricious as the Winds, demanding courtesy and luxury wherever they landed. Expected them to hear no arguments and care little for their earthbound brethren. So Miris should be honored and feared, simply because Seres let nem share the sky? Ney couldn’t deny having found that respect useful, or having leaned on it countless times to nir advantage. But to be feared, and thought vindictive? That was too much. It sickened nem to consider it.

Ney unpacked another of the Tilsa blankets, spread it on the deck and sat on it, thinking. Had Belest truly believed Miris might leave him in the middle of the wilderness if he displeased nem? Or return him to Terthe, or his marriage? He’d suffered more than enough already, from Kela and Terthe and probably still others Miris didn’t know. Guilt crept up on nem, for allowing Seres to frighten him at Tilsa, and for the history ney had learned without his consent, the history he likely did not want nem to know.

Had he spent the past days thinking himself worthless, indebted to Miris’s mercy and at risk every moment of nem deciding he was no longer of use? No wonder, then, how he ducked his head and kept quiet and shrank into corners. And perhaps Miris had even encouraged that thought, in a way. For had it not been useful to nem for Belest to believe that he should be grateful to be allowed to sleep on the floor and go where he was told and eat what he was given? To obey when he was needed and be silent otherwise?

This could not be allowed to continue. Not Belest’s fear, nor Miris’s use of it. It was unjust, and it was unkind, and the tensions that it created could only hamper their mission. There would be time enough to mend this before they reached Dawning Crest, if Miris cared enough to try. Cared enough to treat Belest as a fellow and a friend, rather than as a burden borne in pursuit of a goal.

Ney vowed to remember that, even when the morning light and all the practical considerations that came with it threatened to banish such sentimental thoughts.

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