Snowburn

by Frost, E J

  I nod in acknowledgement. That’s a name I don’t mind so much. It’s still not the real one, the right one, but it carries the same grudging respect as Kez’s street name.

  Holding Kez, who is chewing the last of her fritter, against my side, I watch the two rats disappear, retreating back into the shadows, away from the fingers of hard red light reaching into the tube. I feel its warmth on my back, a heated kiss across my skin.

  “I’m glad you’re not nocturnal,” I tell Kez. I like the darkness. It’s never held any terrors for me, even before I had the cat’s eye implanted. I learned early on that there are plenty of monsters abroad in the daytime, no matter what the stories say. But on mornings like this, the touch of daylight feels pretty friendly.

  She looks up at me and yawns. “We do a lot of night runs.”

  “Yeah.” I don’t mind that. She’s flexible, same as me. As long as she doesn’t have to run away from the light, I don’t mind what schedule she keeps. “C’mon.” I stand and pull her to her feet.

  “Where are we going? The hover doesn’t leave until ten.”

  “Then we got plenty of time for a walk on the beach.”

  Chapter 27

  Kez initially grumbles at being dragged out of our warm bed, away from the promise of sex, but the beauty of the beach at dawn silences her. She walks along beside me, her bare feet making narrow prints on the sand, dress fluttering around her calves and ankles, holding my hand. The morning light paints the quiet ocean brilliant gold; strokes silvery highlights across her hair and skin. She looks up at me occasionally, big blues glistening more brightly than the sea, and grins her kitten grin. But she doesn’t feel the need to yap, and I appreciate her silence.

  We wind our way around the volcanic rocks that dot the beach. Scrunch over dried kelp stranded by the night’s high tide. Pass two mech pickers collecting shells and seaweed. Otherwise the beach is empty, except for sea-birds and scuttling crustaceans who hide in the knots of kelp as we near.

  Finally we reach the far end of the beach and stand at the base of the cliffs, looking up at the houses of Tiv’s elite. There’s a ‘bot or two to be seen, moving around between villas, but no one else is up this early. Guess the cits of Tiv are late-sleepers.

  “The place I met Kimpler is up there,” Kez says quietly.

  If there was a murder in one of those villas last night, there’s no sign of it this morning. “Think she got him?”

  Kez shrugs. “I don’t know. She was pretty beat up.”

  “Would you have?”

  “If Tyng has something on her like he has on me? Yeah, I would have. Whatever it took.”

  “You ever think that what Tyng’s got on her is you?”

  Kez shakes her head. “You don’t know her. She doesn’t care about me and Ape. Never has.”

  I put my arm around her. Turn her back towards the port at the far end of the beach. “You’ve made yourself a better family than the one you were born with, kitten.”

  “That wouldn’t be hard,” she says, with quiet bitterness.

  “Couldn’t have been easy, either. All on your own.” Sometimes her silence is worse than her yap. When anger, or fear, is eating away her. Better to get her to talk about it than let it build to the kind of explosion I saw that night in her room. Explosive sex is fun. Explosive tears and snot, not so much. “Tell me,” I say.

  “About what?”

  “Your family. How’d you get your place?”

  “The Warren? Oh, it was my Granna’s. I bought it back when I turned seventeen. It was just a basic ColBox. I modified it so we could keep the rabbits. Livvy helped me to start. I paid her off two years ago.”

  “How’s your credit now?” I ask, thinking beyond tomorrow, beyond the next day, past the end-game with Tyng, to when Kez and I can go ship-shopping together.

  “Pretty good, why?”

  “Snow’s isn’t bad, either. With his prints, we should be able to swing a new ship.”

  “But you took your ship back.”

  “Kitten, if your sister’s smart, she’s a system away on it by now.”

  Kez leans against me. She doesn’t look up at me when she murmurs, “Snow’s knives. Snow’s ship.”

  I stop. Turn her to me and take her face in my hands. “Snow’s kitten.” I kiss her, slow and deep, so she knows I mean it.

  When we start walking again, I tuck her against my side. She puts her arm around my waist and leans into me. “Can I ask a question?”

  I’m feeling generous this morning. Sun’s warm on my skin. Kitten’s warm at my side. Breakfast won’t be too long and then we’re on the way back to the mainland, where I can get on to the next thing, and the next and the next, until the moment when I can sink a shiv into Tyng’s throat or eye and end Kez’s woes. “Sure.”

  “What do you want from the Pack?”

  “Bone.”

  She looks up at me, those fine blonde brows drawn into a frown. “Bone?”

  “Yeah. You think Doc Gray is still open?”

  “Just about. Everything on the Night Market closes at dawn. Do you need a derm or something?”

  “Nope.” I’m sore everywhere, but nothing hurts. I’m healing. I’ll be fine for what I’ve got planned for this afternoon. And tonight. And tomorrow. “Got a favor to ask.”

  Together, we walk into the yawning Night Market.

  With a floppy hat donated by Doc Gray covering the stumps of her dreads and that god-awful purple bag over her shoulder, Kez looks like every other tourist boarding the hover to Jielt. The gate-guard doesn’t even glance at her, but he gives me the gimlet eye. I’ve ditched the knives with the chop doc, as a down-payment for my favor, and although it makes me twitchy to be unarmed, I know I won’t get on any public transport carrying them. Without any weapons, with my new fingerprints, no one has anything on me short of a DNA test. When the guard nods us through, I hide my smile in the bulb of klee tea I’m sipping from.

  I follow Kez as she explores the hover. Two decks and a canteen. Standard Colony issue. Top deck is open to the sun and spray. She picks seats at the front rail.

  I look down at her, at her expressive little face. At her agile hands as she clicks together her viewie. She can’t get any signal as long as we’re within the Cloudline, but that hasn’t stopped her from trying. I wrap my hand around one of hers and pull it to my mouth. Kiss her knuckles, since her fingernails are dirty.

  “We’ll be home soon,” I reassure her.

  She nods and stops fiddling with her tech. Brushes at the brim of her hat when a gust blows it down over her eyes. “Can we go to my place first? I need to make sure everything’s okay.”

  “Sure.” That magnanimous feeling is still carrying me along. I’m pretty much guaranteed to come down with a hard bump sooner or later, but for now I’ll enjoy it. “Don’t take any runs today or tomorrow, though.”

  “’Cause we need to meet with Tyng?” She looks down at our joined hands, which I’ve let fall into my lap.

  I lean into her. Crush the silly hat between us when I whisper into her ear, “’Cause you owe me noodles and a massage and a naked dance and a sunburn-free fuck. And I’m collecting.”

  She glances up; her pupils dilate despite the glare of sun and water. A hot flush spreads over her cheeks. I love that I can make her blush. For all that she wants and needs my edge, there’s still something just shy of innocent about my kitten. “And a shower? Was there a shower somewhere in there? I really need a shower.”

  And an ultrasonic tooth-brushing. “Lets make it a bath.” I’m not all that clean myself. My hands are dirtier than hers; black around the nail beds with what could be dried blood. And I have sand in places I’d rather not think about. Fucking skirt. “You got a way to get word to the Kuus rats?”

  Kez nods. “There’s a K-Net wall. I can try posting on there. That’s how Java and I used to arrange to meet up.”

  “Tell them I need four thigh bones. Human, or Mod, but close enough to pass a scan.”

&
nbsp; “Do I want to know why you want four human thigh bones?”

  “So I got two spare.” I haven’t carved human bone before. I don’t know how brittle it will be.

  Kez rolls her eyes. “The emphasis was not on the number.”

  I chuckle. Teasing her is too easy sometimes. “I got an idea, kitten.” A way to create the chance. I wrap my arm around her shoulders. “You trust me?”

  She tips her head back. Looks up at me from under the brim of her floppy hat. “With my life.”

  “It’s not gonna come to that.” I kiss the tip of her nose. It’s becoming one of my favorite spots. Particularly when she hasn’t cleaned her teeth.

  “That’s reassuring.” She wraps her arm around my neck and tries to pull me down for a longer kiss. I lean in and nip the tip of her nose instead. She yelps, much to the amusement of two blue-spectacled tourists who are vidding every angle of the routine departure for the K-Net.

  I wait until they walk by before I pull her close and give her the kiss she was angling for. Her breath really ain’t that bad after all.

  The Cloudline looks like mist, but it’s not. It’s a sandwich. Three layers of aierogel. Two layers of insulation, the most effective insulation made by man. The insulation prevents any sort of signal from entering the Cloudlands. The third layer is charged by buoys that float in the middle of the mist, turning the insulator into a conductor. The high voltage prevents anything unauthorized from passing through the Cloudline. While we wait for the Cloudline’s security to recognize the hover’s passcode, we float over a raft of dead birds and sea-creatures, lit by the sickly glow of the Cloudline’s corona.

  Passing through the gel feels like a whisper of cotton over my bare skin. There’s none of the dampness I expect. But then, it’s not mist. We emerge on the other side of the barrier into bright sunlight, and the smell of ozone.

  Kez’s viewie begins its lightshow as soon as we clear the Cloudline. I sit back and let her take care of business. Watch the play of the sunlight on water, and the milling tourists still vidding each and every moment.

  “It’s still there!” Kez says suddenly. She holds her wrist out to me. I check her viewie, which holds an image of the Spinning Marie, and a red blinking string of code that tells me the ship will be impounded in two hours if today’s docking fees aren’t paid.

  “Unfriendly fuckers,” I say.

  “I’ll get Gig to pay it.” She hunches over her tech. I rub my hand over the back of her neck in thanks. “I’m deducting this from your cut,” she says.

  I squeeze her neck. My practical kitten. “You don’t fool me.”

  “I’m not fooling. That’s four hundred soft.”

  I don’t give a shit. She can have every credit. I’ll take my cut in minutes. In a bed. Or in a hammock.

  We exit the hover carefully in the middle of the pack. Hand in hand. Just another couple returning from a day in the Cloudlands. Gig is waiting on the other side of the holobarrier. He begins vibrating as soon as he spots us. Nearly hurdles the barrier until I wave him back. As soon as we’re passed through by the guard, he rushes us. Wraps Kez in a gangly hug.

  “You’re okay?” he asks.

  She pats his back until he calms down enough that she can fend him off. “Yeah, I’m okay. Thanks for coming to meet us.”

  Gig backs up a step and looks like he’s going to launch himself at me. Fitting in and playing nice with Kez’s crew does not include hugging. I hold out my hand, which he pumps enthusiastically. “Mister Snow,” he says. He’s grinning so wide his cheek muscles look ready to snap.

  “Good to see you, kid.”

  Gig hands Kez another of their never-ending supply of black nylar bags. “The stuff you asked for. And I, uh, brought some clothes for you, too, Mister Snow.” He scratches under his cap, a gesture he’s picked up from Kez. “They’re Ape’s but I think they’ll fit.” He eyes my skirt.

  “Not one word,” I warn him.

  He makes a locking gesture across his lips. I pat him on the shoulder. Smart kid.

  “Kez, your hair,” he begins, then looks uncertain and trails off.

  “It’s not a fashion statement,” she says. “Let’s get out of here. I’ve had enough of the SoBo to last me a couple of lifetimes.”

  Gig leads us to the little silver skimmer he was driving when we rescued the beautiful girl from Eddle. It’s a zippy craft, good for the city streets, but not as powerful as a hover. The trip back to Nock will be slow. Since the skimmer’s a four-seater, I climb into the back and hold out my hand for Kez to join me. She slides into the bench-seat next to me and opens the bag Gig brought.

  We whizz out of Jielt’s port in a stream of morning traffic: hovers, skimmers and floaters segregating into their different strata as we hit the airway. I’ve only flown in and out of Jielt a couple of times, so I keep one eye on the scenery. The rest of my attention is on Kez as she wriggles out of the dress and into a soft black unisuit. She’s too skilled at changing in public to flash me, but I get some nice glimpses of pale skin and one of side-boob as she tugs the straps of the unisuit over her shoulders. She pulls a long-sleeved vest over the unisuit and scowls at me. The scowl doesn’t conceal the furious heat in her cheeks. It really is too funny that I can make her blush.

  “Now you,” she grumbles.

  That I pull on a pair of soft trousers without a hint of what’s under the skirt just deepens her scowl. A slightly-too-tight red and black tank goes over the trousers and I rid myself of the fucking skirt. I toss it into the nylar bag, but the moment I get a chance, I’m burning that thing.

  I pat the seat beside me. “C’mere, kitten.”

  She immediately gives up the pretense of being irritated and scoots across the bench to sit next to me. Relaxes against my side when I put my arm around her. Gig begins to fill her in on business details that I don’t try to follow, until he says, “Another of those black boxes arrived for you this morning.”

  Tyng. I turn my head to whisper to her. “Promise me somethin’.”

  She looks up at me. “Anything.”

  “No matter what he threatens, we stick together. United front. We need two days to take care of business before we meet with him. We set the meet on neutral ground. And I come with you. Non-negotiable.”

  She meets my eyes for a moment, and I can see the struggle there. She’s afraid of what Tyng might do if we delay, of what he might demand. But after just a second, she nods. “Deal.”

  “We gotta give Acker enough time to get the food to Nock. He won’t fuck around, but it could take him most of today. I need a couple of hours after we’ve done the run to Kuus. Maybe overnight.” Depending on how difficult the bone is to carve.

  “Okay,” she says. She raises her voice so Gig can hear her over the hum of the neg cells and the traffic. “Snow and I have a run we have to make to Kuus. We don’t know when the package is landing in Nock, so I need to stay loose.”

  “No problem. I’ll take your run this afternoon. I haven’t scheduled you for anything tomorrow. It’s sixday anyway. Only Dunk’s got a run.”

  “Thanks. How are Dunk and Ape taking the load?”

  I let them get back to their business while I watch the blocky buildings below us thin. Stretches of sand filter between gaps in the buildings, until there are only wide stretches of sand and the occasional structure. As we pass over the deep desert between Jielt and Golden Sands, gossamer mushrooms blossom amongst the dunes. Reflection farms, harvesting the wind and light that are plentiful in the desert, where everything else but sand is scarce.

  Kez’s attention is captured by the rows of the diaphanous collectors. Her conversation with Gig dwindles to grunts as she stares out the skimmer’s side window. She turns her head and looks up at me, her wide eyes full of wonder. “I had no idea,” she breathes.

  “You never been down this way before?”

  “No. Do you see this kind of stuff from your ship all the time?”

  “Not all the time.” I give her a squeeze.
Feel the aftertaste of her delight seep into me. “I’ll take you to all my favorite places after this is through.”

  “You will?”

  “Yeah, you’ve earned a vacation.”

  “That’s the truth,” Gig says from the front seat.

  “Comment?” Kez asks him.

  “Well, c’mon, when was the last time you took a day off?”

  She rolls her eyes. “Keeping you and Ape fed is more than a full time job.”

  “You could take six months off with what Ape brought back yesterday and what arrived this morning. Go on, Kezzy, take a break.”

  Kez scratches at the stubs of her dreadlocks. That gesture of uncertainty. “I was going to put those credits towards a ship.”

  “Now you don’t need to,” I say.

  She hunches a little under my arm. “But . . . when you said . . . I’d really like us to have a ship together.”

  I lean over, slip my finger under her chin and tilt her head back so she’s looking up at me. Kiss the tip of her nose. “Still can, if we find somethin’ better than the Marie. I got no problem trading her in. In the meanwhile, we can use a few of those credits to buy us a week on Yrillo.” I never did make it to the pleasure-planet after the crash. The idea of being alone in the middle of the system’s biggest party, after I’d just lost Marin, made the universe seem that much darker. I went to Cayster instead, and let the chop doc have his wicked way with me. I’d like to get to Yrillo, particularly if I can take my kitten with me.

  Kez’s eyes dilate so wide they look solidly black in the skimmer’s shaded interior. “You mean that?”

  “Absolutely. I’m ready for some time off. Only one rule.”

  “Dead puppies?” she mouths.

  I grin at her. “No, I get to pack your bag.” She won’t need more than a bikini. Yrillo’s one big beach. I want the space for accessories. Lots and lots of accessories.

  Chapter 28

  The reason the Marie is still sitting snugly on its platform becomes apparent as soon as we walk into the cockpit. I nearly trip over Erin. She’s sprawled on the floor between the pilot’s and co-pilot’s chairs. Her hand, clutching the ship’s master control, is stretched above her head. I pluck it out of her fingers while I feel under her jaw.