by E J Frost
three-note whistle.
One of the kids spins around. When he
sees Kez, he detaches himself from the
cluster and approaches Kez. She holds out
her fist and the kid bangs it with his, then
gives her a hug.
“Kezzy.”
“Banks,” she says. “Which way’s the
wind blowing?”
“North-north-east, sass, and gusty.
What’re you doing on the SoBo?”
Kez hooks her thumb towards the water.
“Cloudlands. I need to be there by midnight.”
The kid snorts. “Good fuckin’ luck.”
“I heard there might be a route. You
know Shaker?”
The kid nods and gestures to a shop-front
about a quarter-klick down the long arcade
of shops set back from the beach. A
holographic skimmer hangs over the shop’s
façade. “It’ll be a Mirrormen route. Stay
away from that shit, sass.”
Kez shakes her head. Her dreadlocks
flutter in the breeze off the water. “Can’t. I
need to get out there tonight. You know any
other way?”
“No, but I got some biz on the Rock
tonight and that’ll be part of the route, so you
want to come with me that far, hey, there’s
safety in numbers.”
Kez nods. “It’d be good to run with you
again, Banks.” She turns slightly and gestures
to me. “This is Snow. He’s my pilot—”
I hold my hand out to the kid. I’m not
knocking fists with someone who doesn’t
look old enough to shave. “And her partner,”
I say.
The kid glances at Kez and when she
nods, shakes my hand gravely. “Nice to
meetcha, Mister Snow.”
“This is my sister, Erin,” Kez gestures
towards her sister, who is standing slightly
away from us, looking bored. Erin nods at
the kid but doesn’t offer hand or fist.
“Miz Erin,” the kid says in
acknowledgement. He may be a beach punk,
but he has manners. When Kez nods towards
the skimmer shop, the kid retrieves a float
board and a pullover that’s patterned to look
like the spotted and swirled hide of a
kemwar, one of the native desert predators.
He has style as well as manners.
He says hasty good-byes to his friends,
tangles tongues with one of the girls, and
falls into step with Kez as she starts towards
the skimmer shop. She glances back at me
and I move up on her other side. Take the
hand she offers to me.
“Hadn’t heard you’d taken on a partner,
sass,” the kid says with a glance at our
joined hands.
Kez lifts an eyebrow. “What have you
heard, Banks?”
He shrugs. “I heard about that thing with
Jax. People were saying you might not make
it.”
Kez’s expression hardens. “I made it.”
I don’t know who Jax is, but unless she’s
had multiple near-death experiences
recently, he must be behind the scar on her
back. I add his name to my ever-growing list.
“Yeah, you look good,” the kid says
appraisingly. I can’t fault the kid’s taste.
With her white-blonde hair shining in the
sunlight, her eyes sparkling in their circles of
kohl and warm pink color staining her
cheeks, Kez does look good. Her black tank
shows off her tight little curves, and in her
well-worn fatigues, her legs look endless.
Next to the baggy beach bums we’ve left
behind, she looks like a threedy star.
Kez laughs. “You’re still too young,
Banks.”
My kitten definitely prefers older men.
“Aww, sass!” The kid’s deeply tanned
cheeks darken. “You’ve been saying that for
years.”
“You’ve been too young for me for years.
Besides, weren’t you just swapping spit with
Reeva back there?”
The kid colors. “Yeah. We’ve had a thing
going for a couple of months. But, you know,
you were always my first and only.”
Kez laughs again and ruffles the kid’s
spiky black hair. In addition to being too
young for her, he’s about four centimeters
shorter than she is. “I’m pretty sure you said
that about Nevie and Tesha and everyone
else at the House who didn’t have a steady.”
“Nevie. Mmm, mmm, mmm.” The kid
snaps his fingers. “That girl is greener than
green.”
Kez chuckles and squeezes my hand. I
nod at her, enjoying the interplay, but I
understand the meaning behind that squeeze.
This is another boy who bypassed Kez to go
after the beautiful girl.
“How long have you been here, Banks?”
Kez asks. “I didn’t even know you’d gone
SoBo.”
“Just coming up on a year. My Aundy
opened up down here.” The kid points at a
shop a little further down the arcade from
our destination. Looks like some sort of
holistic health store. The front window is
crowded with crystals, plaz bulbs containing
bits of dried plants, and, curiously, the
complete jaws of an orclas, one of Kuseros’s
larger aquatic predators. What are the health
benefits of owning a giant set of teeth?
Maybe just a reminder that you’ve had the
good fortune not to get eaten. “She needed
someone to take care of things. That’s why I
gotta be out on the Rock tonight. I got a
delivery coming in.”
There are a number of large rocks in the
channel between the mainland and the
Cloudlands, but when the kid says he has a
delivery, I know he means just one rock.
Outniss. It’s a chain of tiny, rocky islands
north of the Cloudlands. Just outside the
defensive perimeter. A frequent meeting
place for smugglers. The atoll was formed
by a meteor-strike and the islands’ black
sand beaches are so rich in thorium and
uranium that they glow in the dark. The
ambient radiation, and the natural fission
going on under the sand, fucks with any kind
of scanning, even thermal imaging. So the
govvies are blind, deaf and dumb on Outniss.
But meetings there need to be kept short,
unless you want a rad dose worse than taking
a stroll around Zhonnys naked.
“Route runs through Outniss, we’re gonna
need a skimmer,” I observe to Kez.
“Shaker’ll rent ‘em to you,” the kid says.
“But you’ll need finboards past Outniss. No
way you can get a skimmer through the
Cloudline. I’ll bring the skimmer back, you
want me to. Save your deposit.”
Kez laughs. “Then you’re splitting the
rental.”
“Aww, sass.” The kid snaps his fingers
again, but it’s token resistance. He’s already
on-board.
Chapter 20
entrance to Shaker’s shop is dark and cool.
A pair of girls wearing too little for the early
spring weather lounge on a pseudo-wicker
couch. The kid trades insults with them, and
one of them trails us through the shop.
The shop’s empty. Tall holos show
different models of skimmer, but there’s no
sign of the owner. We move through the shop
to the back, where a long glaz counter
separates the show-space from a dark back
room. The mouthy girl brushes past and hops
up on the glaz counter. Crosses her bare legs
and swings a glitter-booted foot at us.
Behind her, an older man with a curly salt-
and-pepper beard down to his chest, a
graying crew cut and haylon-rimmed goggles
emerges from the depths of the room behind
the counter.
The girl says something else to the kid in
the teenage patois they speak. I’m not sure
exactly what it means, but it clearly calls his
manhood into question. The kid grabs his
nuts and gestures unequivocally at the girl.
“You think again, son,” the old man
growls. He puts down the mechanical part
he’s fiddling with and leans across the
counter. “That’s my daughter you’re wavin’
your little prick at.”
I chuckle. Extend my hand to him over the
counter. “Vazilly Vark sent us.”
He shakes my hand and pushes his
daughter off the counter. The heavy muscles
in his forearm flex under densely decorated
skin. Half-naked women and bearded
dragons. “Go put some clothes on, Trista.
Then little punks not shake their pricks at
you.”
The girl grumbles but slides around the
counter and disappears into the back.
“You Snow?” Shaker asks. I nod and his
goggled gaze shifts to Kez, casting skittering
green shadows across the counter. “You must
be Lightfoot. Zilly told me you’d be with
him. Let’s see it.”
Kez glances at me and when I nod, she
pulls off her left boot and sweeps her leg
high so her foot lands on the counter. I peer
around to see what the hell she’s showing
him.
It’s a tattoo. On the bottom of her foot. I
saw it the night I undressed her at my place,
but I couldn’t see anything beyond a dark
shape. Now in the light from Shaker’s
goggles I see a lightning bolt that zigzags
from just under her toes to her heel.
Lightfoot. Words spiral around the lightning
bolt, but I’m at the wrong angle to read them.
I lean over and whisper into her ear. “What’s
it say?”
She tilts her head. Looks up at me through
the wind-blown fringe of her bangs. “Kez
was here.”
I chuckle. Shaker echoes me. “You who
you say you are. No one else crazy enough to
lase that shit on their foot. Zilly said you
okay, so what you want?”
Kez slides her foot off the counter and
busies herself with her boot. Her voice is
muffled by her dreads, but clear enough to
hear when she says, “We need the route to
the Cloudlands. Tonight.”
Shaker sucks his lower lip into his mouth.
Chews on his chin-fur for a moment. “Not
tonight. Mirrormen dancin’ tonight.”
Kez straightens. Nods grimly. “It has to
be tonight. You got a route or not?”
“I got a route. You not gonna like it.
‘Specially you and her.” Shaker nods at Erin.
“They catch you—”
“We’re barbeque. I know. I’ve been to
one of their parties before.” She has the scar
to prove it. I run two fingers down her spine
and she leans into me. Rests her soft head on
my shoulder. “What’s the route?”
With a sigh, Shaker taps the counter and a
hologram rises from it. He fiddles with it for
a moment. Colors scroll across Kez’s
corneas as she watches the hologram and I
watch her. Gold, blue and black reflect in
her eyes when the colors stop whirling.
I shift my gaze from Kez’s determined
frown to the threedy map rising from the
counter. Golden Sands appears as a small
pile of buildings, marked by a miniature
version of the ornate seashell archway that
decorated the plaza. A tiny skimmer, no
larger than my thumbnail, shoots along the
coast from Golden Sands to Hot Sands, a
heavy industrial port ten klicks to the north. I
start to object – there aren’t any transports
from Hot Sands to the Cloudlands. Then big
black bowship, probably moving cargo to the
Eastern Colony, slides out of Hot Sands. The
skimmer disappears under the bowship, and I
shut my mouth. We’re hitchhiking.
The bowship moves across the rippling
blue of the bay, heading out to the deep
ocean. As the bowship passes the low green
atoll of Outniss, the skimmer reappears. It
drops out of the underside of the bowship
and settles on one of the small islands. Then
a tiny green finboard, the sliver of a
fingernail, shoots out of the skimmer and
across the waving blue to intersect with
another bowship, moving south towards the
green and brown humps of the Cloudlands.
This bowship appeared from off the northern
edge of the map. Probably from Ykimo.
There’s a regular run from Ykimo to Tiv, on
the North Island. Sure enough, the bowship
moves ponderously past the atoll and angles
toward a pile of ceramsteel and glaz
buildings that mark Tiv’s perch on the
Cloudlands’ north coast.
“How often do the ships run?” Kez asks.
“Twice a day. Morning and night. You
got about two hours to get to Hot Sands to
catch the next one.”
Kez nods.
“That’s fucked, sass,” the kid observes.
“No way you can hide on a bowship. They
got eyes everywhere.”
“Underneath,” Kez and I say at the same
time. She glances over her shoulder at me
and I smile at her. Let her take the lead.
“That’s the secret of the route. The
Mirrormen figured out a way to tuck a
skimmer under a bowship.”
“Without getting carved into chum,” I
add.
Shaker nods, his beard wagging. He taps
the counter a few more times and the map
dissolves. The formidable prongs of a
bowship rise from the counter. The ship
slowly rotates upside-down. Vents for the
ship’s huge airjets run down either side of
the split hull. Between the vents, there’s a
narrow cavity. When the ship is in the water,
anything tucked into that cavity will be out of
the slipstream of the jets. And out of sight,
sound and sensor.
But it’ll be a ti
ght fit, even for a skimmer.
The cavity is maybe six meters wide.
Shooting that groove while the ship is in
motion is going to be quite a trick.
Shaker holds out a bullet-shaped piece of
mech. “This is a transponder, synched to the
bowships’ frequency. It’ll guide you right
into that hole, and the bowship won’t register
anything other than an echo.”
Kez takes the transponder, turns it over in
her fingers, and hands it back to Shaker.
“The Mirrormen got the frequency.” At
Shaker’s nod, she asks, “Why do they let you
sell it?”
“They take seventy percent.”
“Knew I needed to renegotiate,” I
murmur. Kez shoots me a grin over her
shoulder.
“Can two skimmers fit under one of those
ships?” I ask.
Shaker nods. “But the Mirrormen catch
you, they take a hundred percent outta your
hide.”
“Yeah, I figured.” I glance at Banks.
“How were you plannin’ to get out to the
Rock tonight?”
“Night ferry from the Circus,” the kid
says. “But we can’t take the girls on it. Not
tonight.”
Not with the Mirrormen dancing,
whatever that means. I haven’t heard the
expression before, but I know the Mirrormen
frequently hold trance-parties. I thought they
were impromptu, but maybe they’re linked to
the cycle of Kuseros’s moons. I also know
that you don’t want to be a guest at a
Mirrormen party. They’ll rape you or eat
you, depending on their mood. Or both.
“So,” Kez says. “How much is this going
to cost?”
The holograms disappear and Shaker
leans forward across the counter. “Two
thousand hard. And two thousand deposit,
since I don’t see my skimmer comin’ back.”
Kez shakes her head and a couple of
beads woven into her dreads rattle
musically. “Get real, mister. Five hundred
for the skimmer, three finboards and three
suits. Five hundred deposit. Banks will bring
back the skimmer. Right, Banks?”
Before the kid can back her up, Shaker
snorts. “Not if the Mirrormen catch you.”
“They’ll sell you back the skimmer,” Kez
says, crossing her arms over her chest.
“At two hundred percent. Twenty-five
hundred all in, for friends of Zilly.”
“Zilly wouldn’t like his friends gettin’
ripped off,” I say slowly. Make sure I’ve got
his attention. Shaker doesn’t look like
someone who is easily intimidated. He’s soft
around the middle, but otherwise muscular
