Fortune's Dance (The Fixers, book #4: A KarmaCorp Novel)

by Faye, Audrey

  That someone would have earned themselves the wrath of any Lightbody gardener worth their name. “That seems kind of extreme.”

  “I’ll plant another. We work hard here to keep everything looking nice for our visitors.”

  I took a seat, wanting to see her face—and to wiggle my fingers a little under the table. “It seems like that might come at some cost to the people who live here.” The lemon oregano had surely paid a steep price.

  She shrugged, not missing the question I was really asking. “We are what we are. I’ve lived places that didn’t even appreciate the value of growing their own food. It could be much worse.”

  It could be—and it gave me one reason that someone as competent as the woman in front of me might choose to work within the boundary lines, even if they sometimes chaffed.

  I had no idea why that bothered me so much. I was a dancer, and we understood deeply how to work within tightly disciplined structures to make beauty. Fixers, too, tried to keep the heavy lifting quiet—our power was far more effective when we could use it as lightly as possible.

  Thess was something lovely, even if it was a constant diet of sugary confection. A week ago, I’d stood in the boss lady’s office under fire for choosing the path of ease—so why was I all up in arms because a beautiful, artistic village was choosing to do the same?

  There were plenty of people willing to be galactic turbulence. Balance was a good thing.

  Greta lifted a plump wedge of soufflé onto my plate. “Perhaps it’s too bad you arrived when there aren’t many guests. We make sacrifices, yes—but you aren’t seeing the people who benefit from what we offer.”

  I smiled and took the small pitcher of syrup she held out. “I’m one of them. My last assignment was in the Etruscan sector.”

  “Ah.” She placed a fluted cup of mixed fruit beside my plate. “Then you know that art and music and a few nice meals can truly make a difference.”

  I knew that very well. “I imagine people leave here and dream of your cooking.”

  She laughed. “Wait until you see what I have out tomorrow. It’s a holiday on Devios, so we’ll have a full house for the weekend.”

  That would change the flavor of the village quite a bit, and maybe give me more to feed into the tangle of what I was seeing. “Anything I can do to help you get ready for the influx?”

  She smiled at me. “Are Dancers always so helpful?”

  I was well known for being the queen of ease and comfort back on Stardust Prime, but even queens helped with weeding and herded trainees and stray littles and rubbed tired shoulders and generally made themselves at least a little bit useful. “I can be paid in extra cookie rations.”

  She took one last look at the table and headed back behind her counter, eyes twinkling. “I have a list of things I need from the garden, if you’d like to do a bit of gathering.”

  I was a well-trained harvester of food supplies. “Done.”

  She looked over at me, the curiosity she’d kept well hidden finally showing on her face. “You’re not what I imagined. The brief information they gave me said your home planet was Athenia Major. I don’t imagine there are a lot of gardens there.”

  The briefing materials they gave local contacts weren’t usually that informative. I dug my spoon into the fruit cup, my mouth already watering. “I’ve lived on Stardust Prime for the last fifteen years. One of my best friends is from the family who grows the local food supply, and my roommate is from a wild planet.” Raven didn’t love that word for the tribal world she’d grown up on, but we’d all given up trying to change galactic shorthand.

  “Ah, and they’ve taught you to pick berries and dance in the kitchen and offer to be helpful.”

  I could feel my eyebrows raising at that list. I took a minute to chew a really sublime bite of fruit I didn’t recognize and then swallowed. “Are we inner-planet dwellers that obnoxious?”

  She laughed again. “Only someone who has lived on a world with different expectations would use that word. I see it as a cultural difference, nothing more. But generally when one of my guests offers to set the table or pick up groceries, they’re not from the core.”

  That was interesting. People on Stardust Prime still tended to see me as an inner-planet wimp, and for the most part, I embraced that identity. But maybe it wasn’t quite as true as I imagined it to be. “I’ve picked up a thing or two, but I’m still mostly a flatlander.”

  “You’ve seen the Etruscan sector. Not many here could do that comfortably.”

  That was exactly what worried me.

  Because real life happened everywhere—even on cosseted inner-planet moons.

  12

  I swung out of a late-afternoon visit to the community garden and screeched to a halt just in time to avoid mowing down an elderly couple and their retinue, the whole group dressed in bright yellow. I nestled the basket of green beans and fresh herbs in my arms and waited until the last of the ducklings paraded past.

  That didn’t happen quickly. The last two days had been a reminder of just how thoroughly hundreds of bodies could jam up a street or a hallway or even a little path in the forest. Thess in full holiday-weekend mode. Every single place I’d been since breakfast had been stuffed to the gills. Even the community garden was flooded with people passing through to sneak a berry or two and take photographs of actual green, growing things.

  A reminder of what it had been like on my home planet, where personal space was at a very high premium and people didn’t offer to set the table because there were likely already three people assigned to a job that only needed one.

  I’d been holding Greta’s comments close, trying to see the village for what it was this weekend instead of judging it by my Stardust Prime measuring stick. There were reasons the villagers here didn’t take a whole lot of risks, and this mash of bodies was one of them.

  I tucked a little farther back under a convenient trellis and watched the flow of humanity. I’d been doing a lot of that over the weekend. It amused me that most of the visitors were dressed in something they thought of as artistic—lots of loud colors and odd hats and flowing clothing on people who were clearly uncomfortable in their temporary outfits.

  Most artists I knew lived in denims and t-shirts.

  I grinned at a young girl dressed in her mother’s idea of ballerina gear, all soft pinks and frills, paired with screaming green knee-boots that were the latest fashion in the tadpole set. She grinned back and blew a rainbow bubble with her chewing gum. I made a mental note to find out where that had come from. Bean always needed new material to bribe trainees—and the occasional immature Fixer.

  A trio of middle-aged women made their way by me next, having an impassioned conversation about the meaning of some painting they had just seen. I eavesdropped shamelessly from my trellis alcove, amused by their high-brow obnoxiousness. I should introduce them to my orange bear splotches and see if they thought those were “radiantly intuitive” too.

  The traffic finally thinned enough for me to dart to the other side of the street, glad I wasn’t carrying berries this time—I’d probably smear raspberry juice on some innocent bystander. Green beans were hardier things. My basket got some interesting looks, and more than one shiver. If the street had been a little less busy, I’d have done my duty as a Lightbody adoptee and introduced the most skeptical faces to a taste of real food, but doing that right now would probably just get us all trampled underfoot.

  I smiled, amused, as someone jostled me from behind, and imagined myself as a ping-pong ball in a very crowded game. There was no point in getting grumpy—I wasn’t truly in a hurry, and the mood of the crowd was good. People had been here long enough to relax a little without getting frazzled around the edges.

  I let my Talent scan the threads and chuckled wryly. Same story as most of the last two days—thick as pea soup. I added filters that faded most of the threads into background noise and left me looking at the ones that were particularly vibrant or active.

&nb
sp; I jerked as a stern tangle nearly touched my nose, and stayed out of the way of the man it was attached to. He didn’t look any different from anyone else on the street, but if someone didn’t feed him soon, he was going to throw an impressive temper tantrum.

  I let him pass and then continued my slow drift in the direction of Greta’s house. The next thread shimmer I followed led me to a young couple kissing under an overhang. He was happy and oblivious. She was a little nervous and practically sparking with something I couldn’t quite figure out—until I saw the promise chain she slid out of her pocket.

  I paused long enough to feel him shift to astonished joy.

  A little farther down, an old woman touched a flower, her eyes full of delight. Her clothes, and those of the elderly man beside her, were simple and well worn, and their hands spoke of years of hard labor.

  The trip of a lifetime, maybe. The chance to smell and touch an actual flower.

  Next came a woman walking out of one of the pocket galleries that lined the street, holding a neatly wrapped painting, her eyes full of pleasure.

  The human river was getting denser now, and my dancer wasn’t all that happy with the lack of space. But my Talent couldn’t avoid the message squished tight all around me.

  Thess made people happy.

  -o0o-

  I ducked into Persephone, inhaling the smell of paint and lemonade and slightly sweaty tourists.

  It looked very different from the last time I’d been in. There were still easels set up, but fewer of them, little islands in a sea of ribbons and blooming flowers that made the studio beautiful and effectively cordoned off the artists at work. Visitors traveled in a river very similar to the outdoor one, although in here there were some benches tucked into temporary nooks that offered tired or particularly interested travelers a chance to pause and take in an artist more deeply.

  I stayed in the river as it flowed by a couple of painters hard at work. The first ignored the crowd entirely. The second waved and blew kisses so often that I had no idea when she had time to paint, but several of the visitors scanned her discreetly positioned marketing code as they went by. Evidently air kisses helped create potential customers, and I couldn’t begrudge her that.

  The river had a longer approach to the next artist, and I watched him work with quite some interest, as did the people around me. He had a flamboyant style, one that almost threw paint on the canvas. I could feel the small sparks of excitement in some of the people I traveled with—and a few who thought him yummy enough to take home with them.

  I grinned—maybe there were good reasons for tucking the artists away behind beribboned barriers.

  Several people gravitated to his benches, and I noted that not all of them were doing it to ogle the sexy painter. Two faces down on the end practically twitched with the desire to hold a brush in their hands. I looked around, but I didn’t see any evidence that such a thing was happening anywhere in the studio. I had a sudden urge to find my canvas of dancing bears and let them go wild, or to perch it on an easel in the middle of the river along with my pots of orange paint and hold out brushes to people as they swam by.

  I shook my head as I caught up with my own thoughts. That was something Kish might do if you got her riled, but it was wildly out of character for me. I wasn’t a rebel Fixer—not even close.

  We moved past the sexy, paint-flinging artist, the river around me a mix of people looking backward and those craning their necks to see what lay ahead. I wasn’t tall enough to do either very effectively, so I just shuffled my feet and stayed patient. Whoever came next had some interesting shoes to fill.

  It somehow didn’t surprise me that it was Elena, adding microscopic finishing touches to her window overlooking the hazy garden. The murmurs in the audience reinforced my impression that she was the biggest talent in the studio, or at least the most well-known one. A Thess fixture, and one who had positioned herself for maximum impact.

  I couldn’t fault her strategy or her painting or anything else, and the threads flowing around me said that this was an entirely satisfactory trip through art and beauty for most of the people here.

  But I couldn’t let go of the other threads I could see. The small, discordant minority. A few disappointed that seeing a real artist at work hadn’t been quite what they expected. Some yearnings to hold a paintbrush, or to choose a daring life or even a moment off the beaten path. A couple of people who, like me, were fighting odd urges to turn and swim upstream for no better reason than because we could.

  The outliers, the odd data points who were seeking a deeper connection, a truer one, a riskier one—and had found Thess lacking.

  I felt kinship with those nameless faces, and then an entirely discomfiting spark of realization. If Yesenia had told me to stand on the edges of this river and fix it, those were the threads I would have smoothed. The ones disturbing the harmonious whole, the bits of turbulence marring the greater ease.

  I took a deep breath, fighting for space in a crowded river I no longer wanted to be swimming in.

  How often had I smoothed the small rebel fish simply because my heart hadn’t understood them?

  How often had I been Thess?

  -o0o-

  The street was livelier now, clusters of visitors forming around performances that, thanks to my stunted height, I mostly couldn’t see.

  It didn’t matter—I could feel the wakening energy. I grinned and beelined for the nearest group. It might not be Carnivale or a New Orleania parade, but this was what I’d been seeking for four days. Artists, mingling with the people.

  I managed to squeeze close enough to catch a glimpse of Gerhart, sweat gleaming off his forehead as he blew into his bassoon, part of a half-dozen musicians playing something that felt like it belonged at a folk dance festival.

  The dancer in me couldn’t understand why nobody was moving. I’d just started swaying to try to change that when the music shifted. I grimaced at the slow lullaby—this audience had just been getting ready to let loose. Whoever had put together the order of play had clearly dropped their music down a set of stairs first.

  “Very complex chromatics,” said a woman beside me approvingly. Her companion nodded, like he knew what that meant.

  I kept my reaction to some fast, annoyed finger twitches nobody could see, as the musicians very professionally tried to put their audience to sleep. It wasn’t a bad lullaby, but nobody on this sidewalk was looking for a nap.

  The lullaby segued into something jazzy that belonged under moonlight, not late-afternoon sun. Grumpy and not wanting to be contagious, I backed my way slowly out of that crowd and went looking for one that had managed to hold on to its energy. About half a block down, I could see hands tapping on legs and an enterprising child trying to twirl in the midst of heavy traffic.

  That looked promising. I worked my way closer, letting the beat catch me and flashing a grin at the young twirler. She spun faster, clearly inspired by the drumming I could hear, but not at all attached to its rhythm.

  No matter. Joy could be as beat-deaf as it wanted.

  I spied Euphoria’s curls, and a couple of other dancers I recognized, working through a piece that had a primal feel that suited street art down to the ground. I could also see that Euphoria had spied the young twirler, and I held my breath, hoping for the obvious need on both ends to meet in the middle.

  And then the piece truncated, just as it was truly getting going, and the dancers bowed briefly to their audience and made their way to the sidelines, others stepping in to fill their places. I recognized the blonde and groaned. She turned to the gathered crowd that was still trying to figure out where their drumbeat had gone. “That was a short excerpt from one of our more experimental works. We’re going to show you a more polished piece now, one we’ve performed here on Thess for more than ten years.”

  I watched, in pissed-off dismay, as she led her group of dancers into a slow, elegant, classical piece that didn’t belong on a street at all. Some art belonged on a
stage where people could see the story. This venue was all about intimacy and engagement and energy, and she’d just kicked the people who’d brought that in spades out of the way.

  My Talent pleaded to bust loose. There was so much here waiting for a chance. Assembled dreams that just needed a little space to twirl and catch fire and run rampant down the street. A party that wasn’t quite getting lit—but wanted to be.

  Willing, waiting tourists who had no idea what they were missing—and they weren’t the only ones losing out. Gerhart and his crew hadn’t gotten to see a polka erupt. Euphoria’s primal dancers hadn’t felt their drumbeat reverberating back at them. I hadn’t done a lot of street performances, but I knew there was no greater joy than watching what you were doing get contagious and sweep out into your audience.

  I swallowed. I was here to watch.

  I wasn’t the only one trapped in that prison. My eye caught a flash of red and looked up at a second-story balcony. Nate looked out between the railings, toy truck in one hand and juice bubble in the other, gazing down at the street with longing in his eyes. A little boy who, like some of the visitors here, wanted to be in the mix of things, in a village too carefully scripted to know how to give him what he needed.

  I could feel something in me rising up, and it wasn’t Talent this time, wasn’t professional responsibility, wasn’t artistic integrity. It was the spirit of five-year-old Iggy Glass and her constant need to dance.

  I’d twirled on so many toes as a child.

  I fiercely wanted to twirl on some now.

  There was nothing splashy wrong here, nothing about to explode, no obvious peril that required a Fixer on the next shuttle to deal with it. But I’d just come from a sector that had blown itself into hundreds of ugly pieces—and it hadn’t gotten that way because of a single big disaster. A thousand small things had gone wrong in the Etruscan sector, and by the time the StarReaders saw the writing on the wall, it had taken every pair of butterfly wings KarmaCorp could field to get things even partway back to whole.