The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song)

by Brenda Cooper

  She swallowed, her throat dry. “The opportunity to learn.”

  “And what are you learning?”

  That there was this whole section of ship she had not even known existed. And more. “That I know very little.”

  He laughed again and glanced at Fox. “Perhaps you have bitten off more than I thought you had,” he said. “Or perhaps you are right, and she will save us.”

  Ruby kept a steady gaze, chin up. It was hard to stay here, seated, being appraised like a pretty doll. She should be running back down the stairs and pushing through the door of the club into the hallway she’d seen choked with grays. She should be searching for Onor or Marcelle.

  Colin watched her, as if noting the slightest move or change in her breath.

  She didn’t let herself blink. A child’s game, but something more here.

  “She has spine,” Colin said.

  Fox responded. “Ellis is after her, and Sylva. She’s with me until she learns how to get around here.”

  “You learn fast, don’t you?” Colin asked her.

  “Yes.” He had gone from appraising to flirting. She bent her head slightly, unsure how to react to the heat he drew up in her body.

  “I’ve collected some of the best people to teach her.” Fox rubbed her back in sharp nervous circles and she twisted a bit forward to get away from his knuckles. “But she is only part of our strategy.”

  A young man burst into the room and Colin waved him over. She could feel a sharp sliver of Colin’s attention on her even as he greeted the boy. Fox’s hand tightened on her shoulder as if he, too, felt Colin’s focus.

  The boy trembled in front of Colin, looking earnest and eager to please, if a bit frightened. His full lower lip hung out and he worried at it with sharp white teeth. His shoulders hadn’t yet grown out past his waist, and he stood on his right foot while his left foot toed the ground.

  “What do they want?” Colin asked him.

  “I spoke to one of them. A woman. Named Pix.” The boy gave Colin a chance to react before continuing. When he didn’t, he added, “She said they wanted us to know they’re there.” He stopped again for a moment, licking his lips. “She said it’s a message that they can go anywhere anytime and that there are more of them than of us.”

  Colin kept his gaze fixed tight on the boy. “And are they all workers?”

  The boy shook his head. “They all wore gray, but I saw one of my teachers and she’s one of us. Ms. Paulette, with the long hair.”

  Ruby leaned in. “They just came to frighten us and then went away?”

  “I am not frightened,” the boy said, although he smelled like fear.

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  He drew himself up so his spine was straight and his eyes even with hers. “Haric.”

  Colin had switched his look from Haric to Ruby. “What do you know about this tactic?”

  She shook her head. “Can’t you see I’m trying to find out?”

  “Fox?”

  “I’d be more subtle.”

  Par spoke. “No kidding. But you might be a subtle part of this. You and your lady.”

  Before Fox could answer, Ruby asked Haric, “Are the grays still outside? Are they okay?”

  “Pix said they were leaving. She wanted us to know they could have hurt us or stopped the train and trapped us here. She said they’d be in touch, and she told me to tell you that.”

  Ruby drew her brows together, trying to remember someone named Pix. No memories surfaced. Probably a fake name. “Me specifically?”

  “No, Colin.” Although Haric kept looking at her. “You’re Ruby, who sings.”

  She smiled. “Yes.”

  “I think that’s why they came.”

  Ruby glanced up at Fox. “Are they playing the new songs on the gray levels?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  She turned back to Haric. “Why do you think that?”

  “Because they weren’t all gray. And you make me like the grays better. I met a few today, just now.”

  Ruby smiled. “Thank you, Haric.”

  The boy looked at Colin, waiting.

  Colin nodded. “Good work. Tell Julie to give you a free treat.”

  Haric headed toward the group at the bar. Ruby asked, “Where did all the grays come from? Which pod? And how did they mix people?”

  Colin shook his head. “I don’t know. But I think Fox and I will go find out. You can stay. Jaliet has friends here.”

  It was a dismissal, but she’d learned more from a half hour with Colin than from weeks with Fox. So she nodded and said, “Thank you.”

  She lifted her face for a kiss from Fox. He smiled, touched her cheek, and said, “Go to the bar.” Then he was gone. When Par followed, Ruby let out a sigh of relief.

  Jali arranged them all at the bar so that Ruby was between her and Ani; apparently the women still felt a need to guard her here. Ruby leaned over the bar and requested a glass of orb wine. “Anybody know anything?” she asked. “What that was all about?”

  Haric appeared from behind the bar, where he had been rummaging, his eyes wide. Ruby winked at him, suggesting she wouldn’t give away any secrets he told her.

  The bartender handed her wine. “I wasn’t there, but I suspect it was the Freers.”

  The same group Lila Red had belonged to. The people who had almost succeeded in taking the ship once before. “I thought they had disbanded.”

  A tall, thin woman on the far side of Ani spoke. “There were always too many freers to kill them all. They just made examples.”

  Ruby took a long, slow sip of the wine, which was a tad sweeter than she liked. “I thought the Freers were murdered and left to rot in A-pod. That they never even got a good burial, so they can bring the bodies out and scare us if they ever need to.”

  “Children’s stories,” Ani said. “Nobody would do that.”

  Maybe. But Ruby had believed it for a long time. She sighed. “Do you know if anyone was hurt tonight?”

  Jali answered. “Colin will find out and tell us.”

  Not Colin and Fox. People who deferred to Fox at home gave him less credit here, as if Colin outshone everyone else in this underground part of the ship.

  The talk turned to Ruby then, people asking about her songs and what she intended to do. She parried their simple questions easily while she tried to think about Colin and what it meant that there were people with so much more power than Fox. She watched the entrance, waiting for them to return. She missed Fox in spite of the way his moods toward her shifted one way and then another, and at the same time, she wanted to know Colin better.

  In the meantime, the wine helped her laugh and listen and not look as much in awe of this place as she felt.

  38: Consequences

  Ruby’s feet ached from standing. She held one at a time up behind her, the blood throbbing through her heels. The first glass of wine had taken an hour to drink. The second tasted even sweeter and took half an hour.

  Colin and Fox and Par had made no contact at all. Bodyguards paced the room. Their gazes seemed to scrape Ruby’s skin raw as they circled.

  Dayn paced. He watched everyone, including the guards. He watched Ruby most of all. She wanted to tell him it wasn’t her fault they were here, but he didn’t stop long enough for her to have a natural opportunity to talk to him.

  Maybe the grays hadn’t all gone home. Maybe something had happened to Fox. Maybe there was a fight going on somewhere as they stood here, talking awkwardly and sipping bad drinks.

  She eyed Haric. He was too young to be seriously deceitful, so he might give her some real information. He also looked a bit lost, like company might cheer him up. She detached herself from the bar and walked over to the boy. “Show me the game they were playing?”

  His eyes lit up. He led her back to the chairs the men had been in before they left. In front of him, a set of blue and gold pieces squared off against each other. After making sure she was settled, Haric sat where Colin
had been, pointing at the pieces one by one. “This one’s in command and has to be protected at all time.” He pointed at three others that didn’t look like protection to Ruby, but she nodded as if she understood and waved at him to keep going.

  Ani and Jali drifted over to flank her. Her ever-watchful bodyguards, there with smiles and support whether she wanted them or not. She ground her teeth and kept watching the boy. She wanted to ask him more about what he’d seen but sensed he wouldn’t offer anything he saw as betraying Colin. So she focused on the game.

  Waiting sucked.

  Apparently, Ani played, since she offered advice from time to time, complete with words like holding, feint, and tactic.

  Ruby struggled to understand without asking questions that would reveal how little she knew. She filed the name away to learn later. Planazate. She pointed, “Looks like Colin is winning.”

  Haric gave her an affronted stare. “Were you listening at all? Green is losing. Par can probably beat him in three moves.”

  One of the guards that was in Ruby’s line of sight straightened. She looked up, expecting to see Fox and Colin.

  The crowd at the door parted to let in one man. Colin. Alone. “Where are the others?” she blurted out.

  “They’ll be along. There was a message to send.”

  “To the grays?” she demanded. She stood to add emphasis. Her knee bumped the board and she almost knocked it over. Haric steadied it. “You aren’t hurting any of them, are you?”

  He laughed. “You are a little bit of heat, aren’t you? You didn’t even ask if any of my people are hurt. Or about Fox for that matter.”

  She stiffened.

  He came closer to her, but she didn’t move.

  Haric backed away, and Colin’s glance at Ani and Jali got them moving as well. Ani gave her a warning glare.

  Colin kept coming until he stood right in front of her, his hips and chest almost touching her, his chin close enough that her eyes couldn’t focus on it easily. His breath smelled like stim and his sweat was musky, almost like Fox’s when she aroused him. Ruby wanted to take a step back, but she stood her ground.

  “I’m not hurting any grays. I’m on your side,” he said.

  “Good.”

  Colin reached for her hand, took it in his lightly. “Let’s go have a drink.”

  She didn’t really want another one, but she followed him. As they approached the bar everyone else left it. The bartender gave her another wine and poured a dark, smooth drink into a flat-bottomed cup for Colin without waiting for an order. Then the bartender disappeared as well.

  Colin wasn’t touching her, but he bulked close enough to reach her if she moved. Her head came to his shoulder. She had to look up to see him watching her, his face impassive but curious and measuring.

  Clearly he expected her to feel his power—to be afraid or feel trapped or seduced or something else she couldn’t define. She didn’t like that in him, this assumption of attraction. Even if it was the only thing about him that wasn’t attractive. It was a big thing.

  She took the tiniest sip of the wine and managed not to choke on the sweetness. “You’re fighting the established order? This place,” she waved her hand around at the entire room, “isn’t okay, right? Not official?”

  He laughed. “It’s no secret.”

  “Well, but it’s not about the kind of power that hurts the grays.”

  He nodded, looking slightly amused.

  “So why would they attack you?”

  “They sent a warning for someone else.”

  She wished for a chair to sit in, going back to taking her weight off one foot and then the other. “Did they come here from gray? I heard they used the same train Fox brought me here on.”

  Colin was silent for a long while before his face softened into the seductive mask he’d worn when they sat around the game table earlier. “You pay close attention.” He set his drink down on the top of the bar and stretched.

  “So why would you get the warning? Why not Ellis or Sylva? Or command?”

  He leaned down and clasped his hands around her waist the way Dayn had earlier and deposited her on the bar. “Because your feet hurt. I pay attention, too.”

  “You could have asked.”

  “Doesn’t that feel better?”

  It did. It also meant she was at his eye level. “Why did they come here?”

  “What do you think?”

  She swung her legs back and forth, her heels hitting the back of the bar softly. “Does it scare you that they came here? Because you’re not working?”

  “I am working. Just not for anyone else.”

  That wasn’t the part of her comment she’d expected him to react to. “Did I get the rest right?”

  “No.” He sipped his drink. “What’s going to happen to them?”

  She felt as lost as she had when Haric tried explaining the subtle nuances of Planazate. “That’s what I need to know. These are my family, and whatever they just did, it was brave. But I don’t understand what they wanted or why they came here of all places.”

  “This is the best place on the ship.”

  “And you’re the most infuriating man on the ship?”

  “And I want to know if you can think.” His voice had actually gone up a little. One of the guards gave him a look, but he shook his head. “Look. Let’s keep this simple. Assume they had three choices. Do nothing. Come here. Go to the logistics level.”

  “And they were tired of doing nothing. I get that. I got that way, too. But they aren’t movers down there, most of them. You keep them scared and compliant. So something made them act . . .”

  “Like a handful of songs and a few rumors?”

  “It would be nice if that was enough,” she snapped. “But a few good beatings might have done it.” She stared into his eyes. “And it wasn’t me. I would love for it to have been me. But it wasn’t.”

  Colin raised an eyebrow. “Not Fox and his entertainment skills?”

  She hesitated. “I don’t think so.” They wouldn’t do this without more provocation than a song from me, would they?

  “Maybe partly. But I’m glad you don’t see yourself as the only catalyst.”

  “Of course not.” She sipped her drink. “The problems on this ship started before I was born. Whatever got my people moving, they could have come here or gone inward to logistics. This is closer. There’s fewer weapons here.”

  Colin didn’t respond, although a slight shine in his eyes encouraged her. She didn’t know what to say next. “Well, it’s not closer. Not if they used the train. I guess they didn’t really want a fight.”

  “Very good.” Now his voice had dropped to just above a whisper. “And so it’s not quite mutiny.”

  “I still don’t understand that word.”

  “The Fire has a command structure. Mutiny is overthrowing command.”

  “I thought it was fighting the reds.”

  He nodded. “It is. But why matters. It’s one thing to fight to change something and another thing entirely to fight to destroy that thing. The Fire needs structure, and destroying that structure completely could cripple the ship. Especially if it’s destroyed by people who know nothing of flying or fixing an old ship destined to die in the next generation if we don’t get home first.”

  She hadn’t heard the danger framed so bluntly before. “And the sky falling was a warning of that.”

  “The sky falling?”

  “The rift between blue and gray, abandoning C-pod.”

  “That was less a warning than an underscore.”

  “So what about before? Before Lila Red, before we couldn’t move around. When the Fire left home? What did we have then? Do you know?”

  “Think of things in a hierarchy. That’s how it is now. Command tells logistics and the peacers what to do, and they tell the workers what to do.”

  “Right.”

  “It used to be more like lines. Command at the middle, but part of command was a worker. Not th
e top, but there. Decisions were . . . more shared.”

  Damn. “Why did it change?”

  He leaned in even closer to her. “I don’t know. It happened before I was born. Long before. Ask The Jackman.”

  “He hates me.”

  “Oh.” Colin stood close to her, but he hadn’t touched her except to boost her up onto the bar. He still wasn’t touching her, but the way he looked at her felt like he was touching her. “What do you want, Ruby?”

  “Fairness.”

  “Is that all?”

  The energy between them felt electric, and scary. She leaned back away from him a little, bracing herself with her palms down. Then she held one of them up. “I wouldn’t mind having full access to my own house.”

  She was rewarded with what looked like the barest bit of surprise in his eyes. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Or better yet, real freedom of movement for the grays?”

  He remained silent, one eyebrow cocked. He really was infuriating. She choked down another sip of wine. “I still don’t know what they wanted here.”

  “Is anything secret on this ship?”

  “Of course not. Ix knows everything.”

  “So I think you should figure out who and what the message was. You have enough information.” He reached a hand out and cupped her cheek. His fingers were cool from holding his glass. She almost expected him to kiss her and found she did and didn’t want that, as if her head and her insides fought each other. This was a dangerous man. He could hurt her, but he also had power, and he was less secretive than Fox.

  She didn’t have to decide whether or not to return his kiss, since he didn’t offer it. “I have other things to do. But I will see you again. Figure it out by then.”

  He let go of her and stepped away, leaving her sitting on the bar alone.

  39: New Plans

  Onor’s feet pounded alongside many other feet, his breath ragged and his side hurting. Conroy had herded them all off the train, followed them down here below the park, and made them run. Swore at them to work out the kinks from all that standing. Onor could smell the spent adrenaline left from being on high alert as sweat poured down his neck and the middle of his back.