Novels by Vespond Nicot

The Expanse did not announce itself.The next mile it was still a road but something about it was wrong in a way nobody could name immediately. Reth said the ground felt hollow. Sael said the wind was coming from a direction that did not exist. Xavha said nothing but moved her hand away from the blade at her hip and then put it back and then took it away again."Stop touching the blade," I said."I am not touching it.""You keep almost touching it.""That is different.""It will not help here," I said. "Nothing you can cut will help here. Leave it alone."She left it alone.Moira walked beside me and said nothing for a long time. Then she said: "My memory is doing something strange.""Tell me.""I keep almost remembering things I have not experienced. Not false memories. Not hallucinations. The shape of a memory without the content. Like —" She paused. "Like reaching for a book on a shelf and finding the shelf where the book should be and the book is not there.""That is the Expanse,"

They broke camp in the dark.No fire, no breakfast, no discussion. Moira had them moving by the fourth bell with the efficiency of someone who had spent three days counting minutes and knew exactly how many were left. Vael moved with them — not visible in the usual sense, but present in the way of a cold current that kept pace with the group and made Kosmos fly closer to Moira's shoulder than he usually did."Direction," Xavha said, falling in beside me."North then east. We need to clear the quarantine boundary before it goes active.""How far to the boundary.""Elpida," I said."Fourteen miles north," Elpida said. From the rear, where she always was on a moving group, watching what was behind them. "At current pace, nine hours.""And the quarantine activation.""Seventy-two hours from the filing. The filing was yesterday at the sixth bell.""So we have…""Forty-seven hours," Elpida said. "The nine hours is fine. The problem is what happens after the boundary.""Tell me.""He anticip

She came back to the camp at the third hour.Past the fire, past the supply packs, past Dara on watch who did not see her coming and only knew she had arrived when the temperature dropped and Kosmos launched off the tent pole with a sharp sound and circled twice and landed again facing her direction.Elpida woke Moira.Moira came out of her tent and looked at the shape that was not quite a shape standing at the camp's center and said: "You came back early."No response."That is not a complaint," Moira said. "I am noting it."She went to wake me.I came out of the tent pulling my coat on and Vael was there, center of the camp, three feet from the fire, and the fire was doing something it did not do in Moira's presence or Xavha's or Reth's — it was burning lower. Not extinguished. Respectful. The way a sound got quieter when something more significant entered the room."You came back," I said.Nothing."Last night you touched the marks," I said. "You read the network. You know what I a

Nobody slept well.Reth fed the fire through the night. Xavha sharpened her blade twice, which meant she had run out of things to do with her hands and was doing it again. Sael sat at the camp's southern edge and watched the wrong-light move across the territory and said nothing to anyone until the second hour when she said to nobody specifically: "She is closer tonight.""How do you know," Dara asked."The air pressure changed. She is not watching from a distance anymore.""She is watching from nearby," Elpida said."She is watching from right outside the camp," Sael said. "She has been there since midnight."The camp went quiet."She cannot enter," Moira said, from the workbench. "Not while everyone here is alive and uninjured. This territory responds to death events. We are not a death event.""Yet," Xavha said."Yet," Moira agreed.Third dose at dawn.Moira held it out and I took it and she said: "Same position, same stillness. But this time when she touches you — respond.""How."

Reth went to Moira before dawn.The camp was still dark, everyone asleep except Reth on watch and Moira, who was never fully asleep, sitting at the workbench with the second dose laid out in front of her.Reth sat across from her and said: "Your hand shook yesterday.""I know.""You have been doing this for four hundred years. Your hand does not shake.""No.""So."Moira did not look up from the dose. "What do you want me to say.""Nothing," Reth said. "I want you to know that I saw it. And that it is not a weakness. And that if your hand shakes today I will be beside you while it does."Moira was quiet for a moment."You have known me for six days," she said."Yes," Reth said. "Six days is enough to know when someone is holding something too tightly."Moira set down the instrument she was using."He is going deeper today," she said."Yes.""Five minutes. The window is five minutes and the dose is stronger and if I miscalculate by a fraction—""You won't.""You don't know that.""No,"

"I need to understand what almost dying actually means," Xavha said. "Walk me through it.""The threshold between life and death is where Vael exists," I said. "She cannot be found any other way, I have to get close enough to the threshold that she can see me. Then I have to stay there long enough for her to decide whether to pull me back.""Stay there how.""Poison," Moira said. She was at the workbench she had set up at the edge of camp. "Controlled. Precisely dosed. It suppresses the body's systems incrementally — breathing, heartbeat, temperature — bringing him to the threshold without crossing it.""And if you miscalculate," Xavha said."I do not miscalculate," Moira said."You have never done this before.""I have been a physician and a plague-bearer for four hundred years," Moira said. "I know what threshold looks like from both sides."Xavha looked at me. "And you are comfortable with this.""Comfortable is not the word," I said. "Willing is the word.""There is a difference."