The Cyborg Tinkerer

by Meg LaTorre

  Reaching out, Abrecan mussed Rora’s hair. “You have a good night, now.”

  The wineglass in her cyborg hand cracked before shattering on the floor as her fingers curled into a fist.

  When Abrecan, Thaniel, and their other cronies settled at a table in the back of the King of the Damned and conversation in the pub had resumed, Marzanna exhaled heavily. “It’s so nice to make friends.”

  As though her hair were at fault for the direction the evening had taken, Rora pulled the tie out before shoving her curls back into a bun.

  “Why does the Mistress let him do whatever he wants?” Rora snapped. “It’s not fair.”

  Marzanna leveled sad, knowing eyes on Rora. “This world isn’t fair—least of all for cyborgs. And you, my darling, just made an unfortunate enemy.”

  No kidding.

  But she’d also made an important discovery.

  Despite Gaius’s words earlier, Abrecan—and likely the rest of the circus—thought Gwen and Rora were together.

  Which meant there was still a chance to go through with her plan.

  Chapter 14

  Striding down long hallways toward the mess hall, Gwen passed glassless windows and stone archways leading to the gardens. Several resilient bushes sprouted from the earth, but very few flowers bloomed.

  Damn bushes are just like this circus, she thought. Stubbornly clinging to life.

  As she walked, her usual watchmen in tow, a flash of movement in the gardens caught her eye, and she paused. Turning, she spotted Bastian sitting on a stone bench in the gardens, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees, intently studying something in his hands.

  Was Bastian Kabir reading?

  Gwen hesitated.

  Besides this morning, they’d hardly spoken after the first competition when they’d teamed up to harvest cyborgs. What was there to say?

  Hey, how are you? Still traumatized as fuck from slicing apart perfectly healthy cyborgs? Me, too.

  More than that, she was eager for time to eat and finish up the secret project she’d been working on.

  Before she could move, Bastian looked up.

  Not sure what else to do, she waggled her fingers in a halfhearted wave.

  He rose to his feet, pocketing the book. “Ms. Grimm.”

  Taking a step back toward the hallway, she said, “Is there something you need? I really should get going.”

  He gestured to the stone bench. “Sit with me.”

  With a resigned sigh, she strode into the garden, noting the coarse shrubbery’s hues of brown and green as they stubbornly clung to life.

  The watchmen didn’t follow her into the garden but remained in the hallway—out of hearing distance, for once.

  When she moved to sit beside Bastian, a faint flash of color caught her eye. The bush opposite the stone bench hadn’t been visible from the open hallway, tucked away as it was behind a wall with gargoyles.

  She gaped. “Is that a—?”

  He nodded to a single red rose, smiling at it as though it were a newborn babe. “I tend this bush every day I’m here, and I hire servants to oversee it while I travel. In all the years I’ve been a part of this circus, only a single rose blooms each year.”

  She hadn’t seen a rose in person since she lived on Orthodocks. Many planets no longer had flowers after the industrialization period. Hundreds of factories had been built in years, and the resulting pollution had killed many of the pollinating insects. The owners of the factories and the governments that supported them argued space travel had never been so accessible or convenient as it was now.

  Without space travel, ship tinkerers like Gwen would be out of a job—as would most people working in interplanetary trade.

  “It’s beautiful,” she murmured.

  Bastian smiled, and for a moment, she could have sworn he was a different man. Perhaps it was the way his eyes rounded or that he actually showed affection—even if it was for a flower.

  Mesmerized by the deep scarlet petals, she reached out to the rose. Before her fingers touched the petals, a hand clamped over her wrist.

  “I would appreciate it if you didn’t disturb the flower.”

  Just like that, the temporary connection between them evaporated, replaced by rigid formality. “Is there something I can do for you, Mr. Kabir?”

  Again, he gestured to the stone bench, and she flopped onto it.

  “It’s not what you can do for me, but what I can do for you.”

  You sound like Abrecan.

  “Can you stop this ridiculous competition and allow the cyborgs to go free with their implants intact?”

  It was the first time she’d dared voice the most obvious thing this circus needed—to be disbanded.

  “No.”

  “Then there’s nothing I want from you.”

  As she stood, he caught her elbow.

  “I know what happened during the first competition was… trying. It was for me as well.”

  “It’s traumatic as fuck is what it is.” Slowly, she lowered herself back onto the bench. “How have you dealt with it?”

  “With sleepless nights, mostly,” he said, surprising her. “But I’ve come to terms with a single fact. For the circus to survive in the Crescent Star System, hurting the few to save the many is a necessary evil.”

  Anger bubbled in her veins.

  Just when I thought he wasn’t an imbecile.

  “Your math sucks,” she snapped. “Because if forty out of fifty acts are going to be eliminated over the course of this competition, that means eighty percent of the performers will have terminated contracts. That’s not hurting the few. That’s butchering the many.”

  Heat flared behind his eyes. “What would you have me do?”

  “Stop the competition.”

  “You know I can’t.”

  “Then get me access to books.”

  “What?” His gaze strayed to the hallway where Gwen had just come from—where the watchmen waited.

  “The books in my office are useless and outdated.” She watched as more watchmen marched down the hallway on what must be a patrol route. “I need textbooks from before the prohibition, implantation instructions, cyborg implant manuals—anything that will help me figure out how to do more than a sloppy patch job.” She laughed humorlessly. Such things had been burned or confiscated by the feds long ago. “I might as well be asking for the stars.”

  A vein in his jaw bulged as his teeth clenched. “Follow me.”

  Unable to stop herself, her eyebrows rose. But she followed the ringleader in silence as he… led her to his chambers? He kept tinkering books in his chambers?

  Tell me that’s not how he gets women into bed.

  Like hers, his room wasn’t in the wing where the performers’ dormitories were, but in a different, more secluded part of the palace.

  The watchmen marched behind them. As they reached Bastian’s door, he twisted a key in his fingers, seeming to debate something.

  Then he turned to study her, his eyes tracing the scope of her face as though inspecting his precious rose. His hands came up, cupping her face gently.

  What the hell was going on? Was he sick or something? Drunk?

  Without preamble—or any warm-up—he pressed his lips to hers.

  She raised her hand to slap him. But oddly, her thoughts melded together as his lips moved gently across hers. Why was her heartbeat quickening?

  Bastian’s thin body pressed against her chest and stomach. He smelled of sage, shoe polish, and peppermint. His olive skin was soft, and the beginning of a beard scraped her lips as he pulled away.

  She couldn’t help herself.

  She gaped, chest heaving as though she’d been running from the feds.

  “You twatlips. What the hell was—”

  Before she could finish the sentiment, his lips were against hers a second time. He used his body to press her against the door as he nimbly unlocked it with his other hand. As he did, his lips roamed over hers hungrily—with as
much fervor as she’d seen him dedicate to the circus itself.

  As the door clicked open behind her, she had a single thought.

  This was quite enough.

  In a single motion, her hand cupped his balls in a vise grip. He groaned in pain as he hobbled into the room with her.

  The watchmen stood silently in the hallway, unmoving from their posts.

  Fucking perverts.

  It was only when he shoved the door shut that she looked around.

  Unlike Rora’s room, Bastian’s room was immaculate. There wasn’t a single article of clothing or speck of dirt on the ground. His closet doors and dresser drawers were neatly closed and his bed made.

  “What the fuck was that?” Despite herself, her voice was breathless.

  “Would you—” he grunted. “Would you unhand me, please?”

  Slowly, she let go, not taking her eyes off him as he removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, and gestured to the bed.

  “Whoa.” She held her hands up, backing toward the door. “This isn’t the kind of help I was asking for.”

  Rolling his eyes, he gestured again. This time, she realized he hadn’t been pointing at the bed, but toward the window.

  She frowned, still not understanding.

  Opening his closet, Bastian removed a rope, tying it to a stone pillar in his room near the window.

  “While I enjoy using restraints on occasion with my partners,” she began, “I think you have the wrong idea…”

  Once he completed tying the rope to the pillar, he went to the window and dropped it.

  Was he about to climb out?

  “Care to explain what the hell is going on?” she demanded. “Is assaulting women how you get off?”

  He held a finger to his lips, gesturing toward the door.

  Where the watchmen were listening. Of fucking course.

  “We needed a way to lose the watchmen and thus the Mistress’s eyes and ears,” he said in a voice so quiet she almost missed it. “If I’m going to help you with what you asked, they needed a reason to believe we wanted some time… alone.” He gestured to the rope he’d tossed out the window. “But what you seek isn’t in here, Ms. Grimm.”

  “It’s just Gwen. And ask a girl next time, aye? Otherwise, I might be tempted to hack your pretty beads off.”

  “Of course. You have my apologies. I would have never kissed you without permission under any other circumstances.”

  Outside the door, boots shuffled—as though someone leaned forward to listen. Both of them looked at the door and then at each other.

  He closed the distance between them, eyes laden with an intensity she’d yet to see from him. “So, Ms. Grimm—”

  “Yeah, yeah. Little late to be asking now. If you must do it, just fucking kiss me.”

  As Gwen’s gaze flicked back to the ringleader, she noted a distinct reddening to his lips and his chest rose and fell more quickly.

  This time, when he kissed her, she was ready for it.

  Rather than trying to go about foreplay quietly, she allowed her hands to roam the landscape of his body. His chest was hard beneath his clothes, his body lean and broad. It was the body of a man who wasn’t afraid of hard work. She gasped as the flesh between her legs awakened.

  This is all an act. This is to help the cyborgs. Rora will understand.

  After today, she’d never have to kiss Bastian again.

  But she couldn’t keep her thoughts on the acrobat for long as Bastian’s hands moved to her back, pulling her closely to him. Something hard pressed between her legs, and her thoughts swirled strangely, as though she’d been sucked into a black hole in space. It really had been too long since she’d bedded a man, or anyone for that matter.

  “That’s enough.” His breaths were ragged. “Let’s go before they suspect we aren’t in here… getting to know one another.”

  “You mean fucking.”

  Taking a breath, he waited for the tent in his pants to deflate.

  As he did, she couldn’t dispel a strange twinge in her chest. Was that disappointment? She certainly wasn’t bummed about not getting to bed Bastian Kabir. That was fucking ridiculous. This was a momentary act of necessity, and nothing more.

  Slowly, he climbed out the window and moved hand-over-hand down the rope. It was then she realized his rooms overlooked the garden he was so fond of.

  She followed him, far less graceful. Her boots scraped noisily as she struggled to climb down the rope. Bouncing off the wall several times, she eventually made it to the ground—crashing into some shrubbery.

  “You’re as graceful as you are lovely,” he said.

  Was that a smile on his lips?

  Standing and brushing her pants off, she made a very unladylike harrumph.

  He gestured to a hidden pathway through the gardens. “This way.”

  She trailed him in silence as he led her down secluded pathways outside and then back into the palace and down hallways with archways open to the elements. They had to stop and change route several times to avoid patrolling watchmen. The entire time, she couldn’t help but wonder where they were going. What secret did he keep that even the Mistress and her watchdogs couldn’t know? Eventually, they made it to the west-most section of the palace, where she assumed the show management and Mistress had their private quarters.

  Stopping before an unmarked door in an unremarkable hallway, he removed a brass key from his pocket. Unlocking it, he ushered her inside. He grabbed a portable electric lantern and lit it before closing and locking the door behind him. They descended a winding set of stairs into darkness, and she was forced to take his arm or else lose her footing and send them both crashing into whatever waited at the bottom.

  His touch sent the memory of their time in his chambers swirling through her thoughts, which she tried to shake off.

  What’s the matter with you? You’re acting like a fucking schoolgirl. It was just a kiss, and an act, at that.

  Besides, Bastian Kabir was a miserable fuck of a man. Even if he had lips of satin.

  At the base of the staircase, the man attached to the satin lips hung the lantern on the wall and flicked on a light switch. A series of electric light bulbs flickered on, illuminating a long hallway with several massive oak doors.

  “What is this place?” Gwen asked as she followed Bastian down the long hallway.

  “A secret.”

  “Thank you, Sir Obvious.”

  They stopped at the massive door at the end of the hallway. After unlocking it, Bastian hesitated.

  She crossed her arms. “You better not ask me to close my eyes. I’ve had quite enough surprises for one day, thank you. This whole endeavor has been cryptic enough.”

  Sparing a glare over his shoulder, he pushed the doors open.

  Like the hallway, the room beyond was darker than night. The light from the bulbs in the hallway only faintly illuminated an antique rug with swirling red and gold patterns.

  He disappeared behind the door. After a few muttered words, she heard the distinct sound of a light switch click. Rather than a few rickety old bulbs illuminating what she’d envisioned to be a dusty old cellar filled with outdated parchment, the light revealed something else entirely.

  Dozens—no, hundreds—of light bulbs flicked on. Some were attached to wall fixtures, and more filled the massive chandelier at the center of the room. Countless smaller bulbs lined the edges of the walls, twinkling like starlight. All of which illuminated one thing.

  They were in a massive library.

  “No fucking way.” Gaping, she studied the three-story walls filled with thousands of leather-bound books. The room stretched as far as the eye could see in either direction—perhaps as large as three ballrooms put together. “I’ve never seen so many books in one place.”

  “You like it?”

  “As much as a bookworm in a library.”

  Bastian rolled his eyes. “Don’t eat the parchment, please.”

  A thought occurred to her, and s
he turned. “You knew about this place, and you didn’t tell me? I could’ve used this knowledge weeks ago.”

  He patted the pocket where he’d stashed the key earlier. “I was recently promoted to honorary member of the show management team after my assistance in the first competition. It’s a promotion I’ve been working toward for some time. I’ve only just been granted keys.” He looked around, unable to disguise the wonder in his eyes. “I’d heard the Mistress kept a personal library. I just didn’t know where or quite how large.”

  He shook his head as his eyes grew distant.

  She eyed him. “Why do you want to be one of them?” When his gaze darkened, she pressed on. “The show management is a bunch of murderous pricks. And clearly, by showing me this place, you don’t share their same homicidal inclinations.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “It never is.” She sighed. “Any idea how books are organized?”

  “No,” he said. “I imagine the Mistress has a filing system, but I haven’t been made privy to it.”

  “Right.” She pointed at one bookshelf. “You start there. Anything you can find on cyborg part implantations or even the specific manuals, I want it. Textbooks on cybernetic surgery would be good, too. I’m going to start over there.” She pointed at the opposite wall, already walking toward it, eager to lose herself in work.

  Anything to keep her mind off whatever the hell had happened in Bastian’s room.

  “You’re welcome,” he called after her.

  There were dozens of ornate couches, armchairs, and small tables with matching chairs at the center of the room. She supposed it was intended to be a reading area since the room lacked window seating. They were too far underground for that.

  She exhaled slowly. The bookshelf before her spanned the length of several rooms and was taller than two inns stacked on top of each other.

  Start at the bottom and work your way up.

  Without further preamble, Gwen threw herself into her work. If there was a way to help save these cyborgs, she was going to find it.

  Chapter 15

  They were in the library for hours.