So the visit was almost over. “You’ll like seeing Conroy. He looks good.”
“I already did. Go on.”
Onor stood up. “Thanks. For stopping by. I needed a friendly face.”
The Jackman’s voice came out a soft whisper. “Go on, now.”
Onor went.
34: Homecoming
Ruby stood in the studio, ready to start her first take on “Homecoming.” The wires down her cheeks felt like old friends now, she’d worn them for so many days. She glanced at Fox, who stood rather stiffly a seat away from her, his face painted in a frown.
She caught a quick, sardonic grin on Dayn’s face. He stood up against the video wall opposite them both, his arms crossed over his chest.
Fox counted down. “Three. Two. One.”
The music started.
She bobbed her head to the beat, tapping her right foot softly.
On cue, she launched into the first verse:
Long and dark is our night flight
No stars shine inside Fire’s skin, only
Me and you. And love. We’re going
Home
“Stop!” Fox interrupted her.
She let out a long sigh. “What’s wrong now?”
“You’re too high. And it should be a touch faster.”
Heat flushed her cheeks. “And you hate the song because I didn’t write what you wanted me to.”
He stared at her.
She didn’t blink.
“I brought you here to achieve specific goals.”
No kidding. “Did you ever think I might have a few of my own?”
“I understand these people!” He stopped, and when he started again the anger had gone out of his voice, although it still lingered in the set of his jaw. “There is nobody else that can help you like I can. Nobody else can make your voice as good, or get the word out about you the way I can. I’m creating you as a lever. And you know it’s for the same things you want. For freedom.”
“You want your freedom. Not mine. Or at least, not my people’s. You want to run things.”
“I’ll run them well.”
He wasn’t even denying it. “You’re not the only man on this ship. Nor are you the only person who can operate this equipment. I’ve heard singers you didn’t create.”
“But who else do you know who’s patient enough to deal with you?”
Fuming, she turned away from him, tapping her foot to try and collect herself. She didn’t turn around until she had slowed her anger. His blue-blue eyes looked cold to her. She hated that. She needed him to want her—no, to need her, but she wasn’t willing to be his slave to get his attention.
She loved him. She’d loved him since the day she saved him, but he could be intolerable. He loved her, too. She could see it on his face right beside the anger. But they felt too damned close. Love and anger, that is.
Neither of them moved, as if the argument had frozen them in place, glaring at each across a meter of space.
Dayn’s choked laughter broke her mood. She laughed, suddenly seeing the two of them facing off in this narrow room. Her own laughter drained the last of her tension.
“Look, what’s the harm in recording it? If it’s completely awful, it can be erased as a bad take.”
“We’ll lose momentum—”
“—if I have to take time off to write something else. We’ll also lose it if we put out crap. We’re entertaining, and my audience deserves a song for them. So what if it’s not dripping with politics? It’s got feeling. It will make them uneasy, and they need to be uneasy. They’re way too complacent. So are you.”
Fox’s eyes had narrowed. He smiled, although not like he meant it.
When she glanced over at Dayn, he nodded at her. She didn’t want him, not the way she lived with Fox, not in her bed. But it was a good thing to please him. She’d done this song because he told her to get a spine. Not that she’d tell him that. And no one was ever going to remind her she needed to be strong again, either. A song for the people here, about the people here. Well, about everybody on the ship. That’s what she meant it to be. For every single person in every part of The Creative Fire, from the mysterious command to the bowels of gray where Nona had died.
First, she had to get Fox to make it popular, like he had with her other work. “Look, I’ll go back and start something else if you really hate this.”
He stood still and took a moment to answer. “That could take a week.”
“I know. But I can do it, and make another revolutionary song. But then I’m a one-trick girl.”
“Oh, no, not that.” His frown was finally melting. He shook his head, laughing a little, and he looked like the old Fox, the one who adored her.
She’d won.
He whispered, “I guess I won’t know if I hate it or not until I hear it done.”
Good. She looked away from him and tapped her ear. She refused to look at Dayn, even though she knew he’d be smiling. The music started.
35: An Audience
Ruby stood in front of the mirror in her privy. She’d decorated the walls with pictures of the Fire. She’d asked for them, and Dayn had found them. She stared in the mirror and saw herself and the Fire behind her, a perfect tableau of what she meant to do.
A club. Finally. Fox was taking her to sing in a club. “Homecoming” had been out for a week, and people in KJ’s class had begun to try to work out near her, to greet her, to tell her their names. Except a few, led by Fox’s old girlfriend, Chance. They stayed as far away from her as they could. But if she had to draw a line down the room to indicate sides, more people liked her than not.
It would do.
The only thing that would make it better would be to get more support from KJ, make it clear he liked her. Except he never took sides. He was a rock that could shatter her ambition if she spent it flailing against him, so she didn’t.
But maybe he’d come tonight.
She brushed a clump of red hair back behind her ear and checked her skin by leaning in close to the mirror. She rubbed a few drops of sweet oil from an orbfruit tree on her wrists and dabbed more between her breasts and on her temples.
Fox waited for her in her living room. He wore a soft blue shirt trimmed in gray, something she’d never seen before. He lifted the shirt a bit to show her a red belt. “I borrowed it,” he said.
She kissed his cheek in approval, her stomach light and her feet itching to move. She gave him a long, searching look. “You’re not mad at me anymore?”
“For?”
“For ‘Homecoming’?”
“I seldom argue with success.” He leaned in and gave her a kiss so strong and demanding that she stepped back. “This is like a first date,” he whispered into her ear.
“Good. Maybe we’ll get to know each other better.”
He startled a little.
She smiled. “A tease. And you’re right. I’m looking forward to it.”
“So let’s go.”
Not only had he apparently stopped being mad, but he felt more like he had when she first came up here, a little in awe of her and a little unsure. It gave her confidence. As they worked through the corridors, her soft boots were nearly silenced by his lightly heeled black ones, something else new. He’d taken extra care with his dress.
“Where is the club?”
“I should blindfold you,” he teased.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“We’re picking up Jali and Ani on the way.”
“And Dayn?”
“Dayn will be there already.”
Fox led her to a transportation hub and they boarded a train. As if that weren’t surprise enough, either she’d failed to figure out the ship’s geography entirely, or they were heading outward rather than inward.
When they stopped outside of cargo, Fox leaned down and whispered, “There’s no access to this from gray. You’ve never seen the train used for people, never been on the train, and you’ve never seen the bars.”
> She blinked at him. “We like to drink, too.”
“You’re not that we anymore.”
Of course she was! But he could believe what he wanted. “Still, how did you get a bar in cargo?”
“It’s post-mutiny. Gave us a way to get anything we needed from cargo without having to go through the gray habs.”
The gray levels were surrounded, and she’d never known, even though she’d been to the cargo pods before. The audacity of it worried her.
They stepped off the train into a transportation station much like the one they’d boarded in, except that the walls here were bright with posters and signs all written in light and competing for attention, and music spilled from outside. All of the neatness of the logistics level was gone, replaced with a discordant chaos she hadn’t expected. She almost flinched.
He started leading her across the wide-open vestibule of the transportation hub. Jali and Ani went ahead of them, lost in their own conversation. Ruby marveled yet again at how smoothly they moved. But then, she walked differently now, too. Something about KJ’s class. “Stay near me tonight,” he whispered. “It’s not safe here.”
“I’ve never been safer.”
“You know better,” he said. “You of all people.”
And then they were across the floor and through the door. Behind it, a hallway. Colored lights spilled from three doors, and people chatted in small groups in the corridor. She squinted, thinking. “This used to be storage.”
He nodded. “Not for generations. It lay empty until the mutiny, and then we took it for a peacer outpost, and they turned it into a few bars and a few gaming havens and a few places for love, and then word got out.” He was grinning.
“You’ve been here a lot, haven’t you?”
“Since I was a teenager. Met my first girl here.”
She grimaced. “Have you been here since I came in?”
“Only to prepare the way for you.”
They threaded through a small crowd in the hall, still following Ani and Jali, mostly passing faces she didn’t recognize, a few she’d seen in KJ’s class. As they walked, it grew quiet, as if her and Fox passing sent a shiver through the party atmosphere. Ruby looked down to make sure she hadn’t spilled anything. “Do I look okay?”
“You look perfect.”
She took a deep breath and tried to relax.
Ani and Jali had disappeared in front of her. They were almost at a door, so that was probably where they’d gone. Inside the door.
Deep drum-laden notes shook the walls and floor as she and Fox entered. The room was black except for a strange white light that strobed around the largely open space, illuminating sets of dancers just long enough for Ruby to glimpse sweaty faces before it moved on, changing targets over and over again. The floor had been covered in something scuffed but soft underfoot. Walls and floor were dark with strings of colored lights at odd angles that illuminated the bones of the room: metal beams that supported a high ceiling and tall, squared-off walls.
Ruby thought she recognized Dayn at the edge of the light for a second, and then the light moved on.
Everything about the room made her twitch with the need to move.
Fox took her hands in his and spun her around, rotating in place while she whirled in a wide circle, and then he pulled her to him and they spun together, her face buried in his coat. They separated, and he gestured to make it clear she should hang on to him and reverse the roles. She leaned back, throwing her head back, and let his weight counterbalance and spin her.
Her heart matched the drumbeat.
Just as she began to feel breathless and slightly dizzy, he stopped her short and held her an arms-length away. He began to side step slowly across the floor, expertly keeping her from being jostled. Two different women came up to kiss him, one on the cheek and one on the lips.
Ruby spotted Ani and Dayn (for sure this time) in a spot of light just in front of them, and then it was dark and smelled of sweat and spirits, and then the light landed on her face, making her blink.
She expected it to move on, but it didn’t, bathing her in attention.
Jali was at her other side, whispering. “Listen for your notes.”
She blinked again, nodded.
Jali’s palm stayed on her waist. Fox held one of her hands and reached for something with the other hand, his hand and half of his arm passing out of the light, her vision too far gone in the brightness to see anything outside of the circle she stood in.
She swallowed, sure something was about to happen.
The room silenced.
Fox’s hand returned to the light, cupping something small. He fastened half a headset on her and one of the wires he used for recordings, his movements deft. He clipped a small microphone to her shirt.
A note sounded, a single drum beat.
Then another, and then a third.
Everything else was silent.
The fourth beat told her this was “Homecoming.” She had never sung it to drums. She sucked in a long wavering breath, as much air as she could take, and then, exactly on cue, she launched into the first verse of the song.
The first line came out a little shivery.
She drew her next breath deeper and sang louder, stronger.
It grew easier with every line until there was nothing but her voice and the music. Although blinded by the bright circle of white light, she felt the crowd around her on every side. She made a slow circle, her feet and hips reflecting the drum automatically, unstoppably. Her voice bounced back from the high ceiling.
She made the words her gift. These were the people she’d written this song for. The logistics people, the reds and the blues, everyone going home and nervous.
Her people now. In this moment, they were all her people.
On the last long note, noise rose all around her.
Hands reached into the circle of light and figures stepped between her and the ones who wanted to touch her. Fox behind her, Dayn at her right, Ani in front, Jali to her left.
Applause rose, filling the room and echoing off the walls and ceilings. Yips. Catcalls. “More!”
She couldn’t stop smiling. The crowd made her light, as if she could float to the ceiling.
“More!” “‘Gray Matters’!” “Ruby!”
Fox leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “You had to wait until they were ready for this.”
“Can I sing another song?”
“Wait for it.” His hands drummed on her shoulders.
“More!” “‘The Owl’s Song’!” Whistles, a catcall.
Fox’s hands slid from her shoulders, and she glanced behind her to see his hands raised.
This time, she knew what to do after two notes. “The Owl’s Song.”
Then “Gray Matters.”
Then they wanted “Homecoming” again.
“Last time,” Fox called out.
Silence fell and then the drums filled it.
She started again, the song pulling her feelings out of her like energy waves attached to the notes, like the words pulled her very soul from her and offered it out. She loved this. It felt like what she had been born for—the silence of a rapt audience, the beat of the drum, the sound of her voice filling space and echoing back, her words meant to galvanize, to change.
Someone screamed.
Ruby kept singing, standing on tiptoe and trying to see what was happening.
The light slid from her, questing for a landing place.
A hand reached around her shoulder, Fox’s hand, pulling the microphone from her shirt. He spoke into it, “Stay calm,” his voice drowned by the rising sounds of panic sweeping into the room.
Dayn’s voice, loud in her ear, “Let’s go! Move to the back.”
“Is there a door?” she whispered.
“We’ll have to climb for it.” The pressure of his hand on her shoulder pulled her back, Fox and Ani and Jali all staying, a knot of them. Others were doing the same, moving back from the noise.
The circle of light stopped moving near the door they’d come in. Ruby tried to see, stood on tiptoe, her view blocked as the crowd crushed back toward them. Dayn was the tallest of them. His eyes narrowed as he squinted at the doorway.
A stranger bumped back against her, pushing her into Fox.
Ani pushed the man to the side, sliding in closer to Ruby, her breath fast.
“Grays,” Dayn murmured. “Grays everywhere.”
36: The Cargo Bay
As he stumbled out of the train car behind Conroy, Onor gaped at the crowded transport station full of grays and, here and there, a red. One flash of blue twenty people away from him. There was no time to count or look for people he might recognize; his job was to follow Conroy and to keep Penny and another man, Hal, with him. It had been a hard ride, the train car swaying and smelling of scared and excited people, so crowded most people stood. Penny clung to him and Hal clung to Penny.
Now, across the floor, they threaded behind Conroy in the same way, a line of four clutching each other, Onor and Penny hand in hand and Hal behind her. Conroy led them to the desk where travelers checked in, handled this time by grays. A young woman recognized Conroy, nodded briefly at the other three, as if counting. She made a mark on a slate and stepped aside.
Another group approached from the other side of the bench. The Jackman, Marcelle, Jinn, and an older man Onor didn’t know. Marcelle. Marcelle appeared to be a small group leader just like Onor was.
The Jackman hadn’t emphasized the changes in her enough. She’d lost every bit of fat she’d ever had, replacing it with defined muscle. Her hair had been cut short, and her cheekbones and chin had grown prominent. She had a hard look about her until she saw him, and then her face collapsed into a broad smile and softened.
He was so happy to see her that he almost let go of Penny. Marcelle’s smile looked like he felt, warm and excited and nervous all at once, and seeing her made him a touch less alone in this crazy drill.
If it was a drill. He didn’t think so anymore.
The Jackman and Conroy moved warily, their eyes excited, edgy. They went together through a door. He and Marcelle joined up, and he dropped Penny’s hand for a moment, holding Marcelle tighter than he ever had.
The Creative Fire: 1 (Ruby's Song) Page 23