I reached out to touch his face, to brush his sweat-damp hair back from his forehead. He leaned his head into my hand. His skin was clammy, far too cool. I couldn’t stop looking at him. The line of his jaw, his thick dark eyebrows, the thin scar on his chin from our first year at secondary school, when some swaggering upperclassman had shoved him down the school stairs. He had been defending me from some insult or another; all the petty cruelties had blurred together. Baqir had given himself the task of jumping between my cowering fears and the blows thrown by the world, and I had never thanked him for that, never told him how that day, when he lunged at that hulking teen and went sprawling onto the ground and jumped to his feet again with blood pouring from his nose and lips and his grin angry and fierce as he charged again, we might have been friends already, but never before had he so easily cracked through the numb cold that had enveloped me since my mother sent me away from House of Wisdom. It had been one of many ominous signs of a thunderous oncoming thaw, but I hadn’t known it then. All I had known was that this mad bleeding boy with a wasteland accent was laughing with blood on his mouth, and it felt like the first time in an eternity anybody had looked at me and smiled.

I brushed my thumb over his temple. There was blood splattered there, softened by his sweat. His eyes were still closed, my hand still cupping the side of his face. I kissed him.

It was barely a brush of lips. He let out a small, surprised gasp. I backed away quickly. Baqir’s eyes were open now, wide, his lips parted. I thought he might say something, so I moved out of reach. He reached up with his uninjured hand, then stopped with an abrupt hiss of pain. He dropped his head back against the seat, and without thinking I kissed him again, this time on his clammy forehead.

“It’s going to hurt a lot when the ship’s under acceleration,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

A beat of silence, then Baqir exhaled something like a laugh. “It already hurts a lot.”

“I’m sorry,” I said again.

“You’re coming right after us?”

“Yeah. Make sure they quarantine you. Just to be sure.”

“Promise me again.”

There were thorns in my throat, pressing outward.

“I promise,” I said.

I had been lying for half of my life. By now it came naturally to me.

•   •   •

I secured the door to Brahmin from the outside, then returned to the control room. Zahra was waiting. She could have fled, but where would she go? There was nothing in House of Wisdom except death.