Survivors (Harmony Book 3)

by Margaret Ball

  “At a guess? Half of them are updating their timelines with Just got pinned down in a crossfire outside Romuela’s and the other half are checking for news holos that’ll give them the official story about what just happened.” Jillian bit into the dessert, some concoction of flaky pastry with nuts and honey. It tasted extremely good. Especially after the shooting. She commented on this to Ruven and he nodded.

  “There was a twentieth-century politician who said, “Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result.”

  Jillian washed the last bits of flaky sweetness down with a swallow of black kahve. “Um, I know that was a violent era, but did they really shoot at their politicians?”

  “Oh. Well, he had been in the army before going into politics. So I expect he knew what he was talking about.”

  “Probably an interesting story behind that, then.”

  “Speaking of stories….” Ruven’s voice trailed off for a moment. “Ah, there’s one I’ve been telling myself, but I don’t see how it has a happy ending.”

  “That’s not always necessary,” Jillian reassured him.

  “No, but in this particular case…” He fell silent again. “You see, it’s about this bloke – kind of a rough, uncultured sort – who gets sent to the city and meets a girl who normally wouldn’t look at him twice. A beautiful socialite with a career! Anyway, I keep trying to make a story of how they get together – she’s far too intelligent to judge him on first impressions, at least I hope she is. But what has me stumped is, I don’t see how this can end well for both of them. Her whole career depends on being in the city, and he – he wouldn’t be able to do this city thing. And eventually he needs to get back to the people who sacrificed to send him here, even though he hasn’t been able to do anything for them.” He gave her a questioning look.

  Jillian’s mouth was dry again. No one had ever looked at her quite like that. Oh, there had been plenty of men who were dazzled by her beauty, but they mostly just wanted her to sit in a good light and be beautiful for them, or to partner them at some public event and make them look good. Ruven’s blue eyes were steady on hers, asking… she wasn’t sure what, but certainly much, much more than anyone had ever wanted of her before.

  The only thing she was sure of was that she absolutely couldn’t tell him what had happened to her today. After that preamble, he’d be bound to misinterpret it.

  He lifted one big hand and laid it over hers. “Do you have any idea how this story ends?”

  “No – no, I don’t. Does she have a pregnant sister-in-law to care for?”

  “Aye, but that problem, by its nature, cannot last much longer. I’m guessing five more months?”

  “About that, yes.”

  “And afterwards?”

  “I – I really don’t know. I can’t just leave her with a newborn, you know.”

  “And there’s your career, too. Well… at least you didn’t say it was a totally ridiculous premise.”

  “No. Never that.” So what if she hadn’t realized it until three minutes ago? She lifted his hand and laid her cheek against it for the briefest of moments.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Jillian and Trisha watched the latest government-sponsored holocast in glum silence. Outside, the first rains of the short autumn season lashed down, providing an appropriately cold and depressing background.

  “Silly me,” Trisha sighed as the statement came to an end, “when they said they had a definitive statement about the food crisis, I thought they were actually going to do something useful.”

  Jillian tapped her CodeX and shut off the holocast. She didn’t want those people sitting in her living room any more. Not even virtually.

  As a response to the rioting and to the breakdown of most nanosludge processors, the Central Committee had closed the committee markets. Instead, citizens were told that they were to register with newly formed community councils made up of citizen volunteers. Everybody would be assigned one “shopping day” a week. On that day, you could go to the community council office and buy one bag of groceries at the price fixed by the council. You couldn’t choose what went in the bag or even look into it before paying.

  “Even if this works,” Jillian said, “it won’t be nearly enough.” And even if she could get away with using Trisha’s shopping day as well as her own, she had little hope that the pre-packed bags would contain many of the nutrient-rich foods that a pregnant woman should have. She sighed.

  “Oh, well. Even before this fiasco, Ruven had just about persuaded me that I’d have to rely on the black market. The community markets were just too dangerous. Of course, he thinks we’ve got plenty of money.”

  “You didn’t tell him—“

  “That the studio had been closed indefinitely? Trisha, I couldn’t. He was too busy explaining how he understood that my career was in the city and that he didn’t expect me to take his courtship seriously. If I’d told him my glorious career just went bust, it would have been like jumping into his arms and saying, ‘Here I am, take me home with you!’”

  Trisha squeaked. “Jilli! You never told me he was courting you!”

  “I didn’t know it until the night we went out to dinner. The man’s style is so reserved I’m not even sure he knew it himself. In any case, he’s still right. Sooner or later, he’s bound to head back to his cooperative.”

  “You – are you thinking of going with him?”

  Jillian hugged Trisha. “Of course not, silly! Would I drag you on a rough and probably dangerous journey at the beginning of winter? We’re staying right here until the baby’s born, and probably afterwards too.”

  If a pregnant woman shouldn’t make the journey, neither should a newborn. But Trisha interpreted the comment differently.

  “Of course we can’t leave. This is where Tomas knows to find us.”

  Jillian looked down at her hands to hide her expression. “Yes – of course.” Trisha was so sensitive; facing the probability that Tomas was dead would probably send her into hysterics, and that wouldn’t be good for her or the baby.

  “Now,” she said, more to change the subject than for any other reason, “let’s brainstorm about how we’re going to get money to buy black market food.”

  It was a real problem. Jillian had been well paid ever since she got cast in Love for Living, but she’d spent as lavishly as she was paid. It cost a lot to keep up with the Inner Circle, and socializing with them was part of her job. Now she wished she’d been content to look like the poor relation, instead of throwing her money away on facials and hairdressers and the second-latest smartcloth innovations. Well, the beauty treatments were money thrown to the winds, but maybe she could sell off the best pieces in her wardrobe? It wasn’t like she was going to need a form-fitting evening dress with shifting waves of color any time soon, or an evening cloak bordered with FutureGen self-lighting smartcloth, or high-heeled sandals of clear plastic with embedded bioluminescent algae. She’d never even worn the hideously uncomfortable sandals. They’d been a mistaken purchase made when she was trying to follow Galen’s advice on footwear. She should have listened to her own feet, instead.

  Liya DelPrato, of all people, was able to put her in contact with a dealer who would buy her high-fashion clothes. It seemed the young wives of the Hill made a practice of supplementing their allowances by buying the latest fashions on credit supplied by their husbands, and then selling them for cash in the amount of less than half the price that had been paid.

  “I knew the politicians were corrupt,” she told Trisha, “but I never realized their wives were just as bad!”

  “They aren’t,” Trisha claimed. “The Inner Circle steals from us; their wives only steal from them. And I do hope you didn’t tell Liya she was corrupt!”

  “Good concord, no!” Jillian laughed. “Unlike Ruven, I do have some tact! And she might be useful later.”

  The clothes didn’t bring in nearly as much as she’d hoped: the dealer claimed there was a glut of used finery on
the market right now, and a shortage of customers. She might even have been telling the truth. In any case, between that disappointment and the meteoric rise in black-market prices, the best Jillian could do was to keep herself and Trisha inadequately fed for the best part of a week.

  “I wish I’d bought real jewelry instead of this costume stuff,” she mourned, picking through a pile of sparkling stones and rainbow-colored chains. “Tell you what, when this is over I’m going to invest in lumps of precious metals studded with real diamonds.”

  There were only a few ‘Ditani Stavros’ dresses left – Jillian had been selling off her better costumes as well as her own clothes – and Trisha adamantly refused to let her take the last ones to the dealer. “You might need one some day,” she insisted. “We might need it.”

  “Whatever for?”

  Trisha had that particular mulish expression that meant there was no arguing with her. “Jillian Lisadel still has a lot of fans in this city, even if you’re not making new holos right now. They might come in useful.”

  Jillian conceded the point. Three more dresses wouldn’t even feed them for a week, and she did want to look good when she went out tomorrow.

  Looking for a job.

  She thought that with her knowledge of Inner Circle politics and society, it should be fairly easy to get a job as some rich woman’s social secretary. She would be, if she did say so herself, a treasure: a definite social inferior who knew without explanation what invitations should be politely turned down and what guests would lure in the very important guests a hostess was really aiming for.

  For this excursion she put on the last good day dress, used her cosmetic sticks, and let Trisha dress her hair in the ‘Ditani Stavros’ style. With a hooded cloak to protect her from the rain, she hoped to present herself to any possible employers as someone beautiful enough to please their eyes but unimportant enough to be ordered around.

  The first part worked; the second, not so well. Her ‘friend’ Liya DelPrato gave a tiny, shocked scream at the suggestion that Jillian could work for her. “But, my dear, it would never do! I can’t have Ditani Stavros passing canapes and offering drinks! You’re one of the draws at my parties, not one of the servants!”

  Jillian suggested that it might be even more of a “draw” to let it be known that ‘Ditani Stavros’ was working for her, but Liya was not persuaded. Nor were any of her friends. And by the time Jillian had exhausted the list of her closest contacts on the Hill, the wind that came with the driving rain had blown her cloak open and left her drenched and shivering. She squelched home and reported to Trisha that being a holostar didn’t seem much use in the current crisis.

  “You should have asked one of the husbands for a secretarial job,” Trisha suggested.

  “And you know what they would have thought that meant.” Curled up in a quilt, warming her hands on a cup of weak kahve, Jillian had finally stopped shivering. “No, thank you! We’re not quite that desperate yet – or are we?” She had been leaving management of the kitchen and pantry to Trisha, who actually liked cooking once the nausea of the first couple of months had passed.

  “No… We have beans. And flour. And a lot of cooking oil, if you remember.”

  “Am I imagining things, or is this kahve so weak a nursing mother could drink it?”

  “We are running short of kahve,” Trisha acknowledged. “But that’s all right, I have a lot of herbal teas in the pantry – enough to last us through the winter.”

  Jillian swung her legs to the floor and squeaked in dismay as the quilt slipped off and left her exposed to the chilly air. She’d forgotten that Trisha had made her take off her soaked dress and underthings as soon as she came in. Retrieving the quilt in a desperate grab, she spilled the kahve in her cup.

  “You get to mop up that mess,” Trisha informed her. “I don’t get down on the floor any more.”

  “Fair enough,” Jillian said. “But you have inspired me. Somehow I am going to get money. I really cannot face the winter on infusions of dried grass.”

  That night she had an inspiration that got her up before dawn to rummage through the bags of costumes she’d dragged home from the studio. It took some time to find the one she was thinking of; it hadn’t been used since she was seventeen. She was pleased to find that it still fit her, and turned and preened a bit before the mirror.

  “Isn’t it… kind of early to play dressup?” Trisha yawned in the doorway.

  “Oh! Sorry I woke you, but I just had the most brilliant idea. Look at this!” Jillian twirled again, giving the drab, patched skirt a full airing. “Remember when I had that bit part as the heroine’s long-lost daughter, brought up in a thieves’ den?”

  “Before I knew you and Tomas,” Trisha said. “Um… was that The Beggar Beauty?”

  “No, in that one I was supposed to be beautiful. This was for Her Secret Sin, and the whole point was that I was this terribly unappealing little girl that the mother was ashamed of, so she never looked for me when the thieves stole me.”

  Trisha rubbed sleepy eyes. “Well, I hate to tell you, Jillian, but even in that ghastly dress you’re still beautiful.”

  “Oh, you’ll help me take care of that with hair and makeup,” Jillian said cheerfully. “This time, Trisha, I’m going out looking like the sort of person who’d want the kind of job I can get.” She sat down at her dressing table and began applying makeup that dimmed and appeared to coarsen her skin.

  “Here, let me get your hair out of the way first,” Trisha said automatically, and then, “You’re never going to the Hill like that?”

  “Nope. I tried trading on my looks and reputation, and it didn’t work. Today I’m going to disguise myself as somebody who might actually want to work at Romuela’s.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s a shabby little restaurant on the edge of Vista View. That’s where Ruven took me the other night. There was a Help Wanted sign on the wall, and I must say Romuela needs help; the service was terrible.”

  Trisha sank down on Jillian’s bed. “You told me about that place! There were people firing antique weapons right outside it! You can’t go back there, Jilli. It’s not safe.”

  “They weren’t firing them inside the café,” Jillian argued. “Anyway, I’m just going to start looking there. I doubt I’ll get the first job I apply for. But at least I know Romuela isn’t planning to fill the vacancy by having the Bureau for Labor assign somebody, or she wouldn’t have put up the sign.”

  “She probably wants to underpay whoever she gets, that’ll be why she’s bypassing the Bureau. Jilli, this is a really bad idea.”

  “Maybe. Now are you going to help me, or do I have to mess up my own hair?”

  After three cups of herbal tea and several more attempts to dissuade her, Trisha consented to work her magic on Jillian’s hair. A rinse of some exceedingly black and bad-smelling tea darkened the ash-blonde locks to an uneven light brown, and ruthless tight braiding back from Jillian’s face diminished the whole effect of her hair. The one thing Trisha refused to do was to cut ragged bangs.

  “Everything else can be fixed when you come home,” she said, “except maybe the color rinse; I’m not sure how fast that is. The bangs, though, would take forever to grow out.”

  “For concord’s sake, what difference does it make?”

  Trish gave her a sly grin. “What, don’t you want to be beautiful when Ruven comes over?”

  Even the heavy layers of makeup didn’t hide Jillian’s blush.

  ***

  She was ecstatic when Romuela hired her on the spot; somewhat less ecstatic after the lunch and dinner crowds.

  By the end of that first day, Jillian’s feet and head ached from taking orders and carrying plates, not to mention trying to memorize the names of Romuela’s exotic dishes. The café owner had dug up an old printed menu, from a less troubled period, and told Jilli to learn the names and descriptions of the dishes “in her spare time.”

  “Never mind the prices, they’ve all
changed and will change again. I keep them here,” and Romuela tapped her forehead. “A plate of sarma used to be two marks and a silver, and it would be a meal for one person. Now – if I can get the chopped meat, which I usually can’t - it’s twenty marks, and a family of four will buy one plate and divide it into four parts. Next week, who knows? Perhaps eighty marks.” But Jillian did have to learn that ladera was a dish of grilled vegetables in oil, and dolma a bit of flavored rice wrapped in grape leaves.

  Fortunately for her first day, the only customers were old friends of Romuela’s who knew exactly what they wanted; Jillian’s only problem was the number of people who grunted “The usual,” at her, and fortunately Romuela always knew what that was. But she tucked the menu into her bag to study that night. She might not be so lucky the next day.

  She also had a bag of lovely, lovely cooked food to take home. Romuela didn’t pay much in money, but she was generous with the food that was left over at closing time. “With the power cuts these days, who knows? It could all be stinking rotten tomorrow morning. Anyway, you’re too thin. Take, eat! And tomorrow,” Romuela added, “better bring your makeup. With the heat in the kitchen, and all the running around you’re doing, it wears off and you start to look like that glamorous little piece my Bad Boy brought in the other night.” She laughed at Jillian’s surprise.

  “I’m not stupid, little sparrow. I know what I see and when I saw it. You don’t want to be beautiful when you’re working as a waitress, that’s fine. Means you won’t get your bottom pinched so much. But with a face like yours, being plain requires regular upkeep.”

  From then on Jillian was “Sparrow,” just as Ruven was “Bad Boy,” and Romuela never explained either nickname.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The double pleasure of having landed a job and of bringing food home gave Jillian the necessary energy to push her aching feet and tired legs up the ten stories to the apartment. Only on the landing at the front door did she lose a little of her enthusiasm. The distinct smell of frying fish wafted out onto the stairs.