She didn’t. Not about his defenses and supplies. He would deflect any question he deemed to be a threat to his people. She knew it because she would do the same thing. She had done the same thing, only she hadn’t been so kind. When Oran defected from his Bullet ship and asked for mercy from her crew, Caledonia had ordered him thrown overboard. Even after Oran promised to help find their brothers, she’d locked him away, mistrusted every word that came out of his mouth, and only slowly, reluctantly come to trust him. Now she was in the very same position: taken in by Bullets—Blades—just when she’d needed help the most, and the first thing they’d given her after ensuring she wouldn’t die was their trust.

“What about Silt?” she asked.

Sledge’s fists tightened. “What about it?”

“You don’t use it, that’s obvious. But you did.” She gestured to the camp. “How’d you get everyone to make that choice?”

“It wasn’t easy,” Sledge answered tightly, clearly unhappy to be sharing anything that felt intimate.

“I’ve seen it.” Caledonia’s voice carried the raw weave of recent memories. “More than once.”

This seemed to smooth the waters between them, and Sledge sat up with a sigh. “Silt is something that happened to us. It is Aric’s way of exerting complete control over his people. It is force, and soon it becomes compulsion. When we break the cycle, it also happens by force, by compulsion. But after that, everything we do, we do by choice.” He paused, everything about him becoming calm and stoic. When he next spoke, it was with the kind of gravity that created a steady orbit. “Consent is our most sacred possession.”

Caledonia understood what he was unwilling to say. He’d forced some, if not all, of the people in this camp to purge the Silt from their blood, and after that, they’d chosen to stay. These Blades weren’t just rejecting what Aric had turned them into; they were rebuilding themselves, creating a version of themselves that was better than anything Aric could have promised.

“When you’re more recovered, you’ll meet them,” Sledge continued. “They’re all excited to welcome the girl who attacked a Fiveson on his own ship.”

“What happened to that ship? The Fiveson’s vessel and his fleet?” she asked.

“They stayed in the bay for a day. Searching for you or your body, no doubt.” He smiled, lifting his eyebrows conspiratorially. “Obviously, they did not find you.”

She shuddered to think what Lir would have done if his men had been the ones to recover her. His delight in seeing her again, his dark joy at the thought of killing her again had been nothing short of terrifying. To be entirely vulnerable in his hands was an unbearable thought.