Joel spoke to the AIs. “I’m unplugging you now.” That was all the ceremony he offered them, his face tight and worried as he glanced repeatedly at Ruby.
Aleesi would be able to talk to Onor but not to Ruby. The webling would have power for a few days.
She felt numb, as if she could slip away into mourning. Haric. Poor, good Haric who had only wanted to matter. Haric’s death pulled her away from herself. It sent her into a strange soft sadness that was like feeling and not feeling all at once. She hated it. She should be so full of anger that the only choice she had was to be strong, to feel strong. The best she could manage was to grip the arms of the chair hard and sit up as straight as she could.
There were still tangles in her hair. What a strange thing to worry about. Maybe people worried about little things when everything else felt big.
Joel bent in front of her, holding the webling. His hands slid beneath the fabric of the seat, pushing the big object into the pouch. It barely fit. “We need to cover it.”
“Here.” Lya stood beside Joel, holding out the white shawl that had been draped across her shoulders.
For a moment his tense shoulders suggested that he’d refuse to let Lya help even when he needed her, but instead he drew a deep breath and took the shawl and stuffed it around the cylinder. It would provide both covering and cushioning. When he was done, Joel touched Ruby’s knee and gave her a soft, tender smile.
“I’m ready,” she said. She looked over at SueAnne. “Thank you.”
The old woman smiled, and then settled back in the chair she had chosen to sit in and pulled out her slate.
It felt wrong to be wheeled out of the room instead of walking out. One of the wheels creaked each time around, giving a beat to her movement. They took an elevator she had passed but never taken, going down the two floors from the morning meeting room to the base floor of Ash. They passed one of the open areas where two mothers watched over four children playing with red balls. None of them looked her way, or noticed that it was Ruby and not SueAnne in the wheelchair.
The bar was empty when they got there, unless you counted a single robotic server that told them to sit wherever they wanted. “It’s never talked to me before,” Ruby said.
Joel said, “Allen usually turns that off. If the robot is talking to us, then Allen is off somewhere else. Maybe he left a note.” He wheeled Ruby to a seat and left her to check the board behind the bar. “Allen said he’s in the big kitchen. Let’s go find him.”
“I can stay here,” Ruby said.
Joel eyed Lya, clearly trying to figure out how to remind Ruby what he thought of Lya without telegraphing it loud enough for Lya to notice. He failed; concern painted his face tight.
“It’s okay,” Ruby told him. “It will only take you ten minutes. I’m safe enough.”
He truly looked torn.
“Go on,” she said. “You need Allen to find a truly hidden place.” The cargo bars had been full of clever hidey holes. Surely Allen had built some into this bar. “Besides, I really am safe enough. I’ve known Lya longer than I’ve known you.”
That decided him. “I’ll hurry.” He was gone almost before he finished saying it.
Ruby and Lya each ordered citrus-water from the serving robot. Ruby watched it trundle off, trying not to feel Haric’s death any more than she had to. She took the emergency pin that Satyana had given her and held it.
The bot squeaked back across the floor with its tray. Ruby took a tumbler and looked at Lya, struggling for words. “At least there are some good things here. We never had this kind of bitter-sweet in a drink.”
Lya took her own sip, and made a slight face. “I wish it were slightly sweeter.” Her voice dropped. “I’m sorry about Haric. I liked him. He was so earnest.”
“Yes.”
“I know about death, you know,” Lya said. “I know how it turns you around and gives you a different focus entirely.”
Ruby laughed. “What do you think drives me?”
Lya didn’t answer with any of the trite phrases she’d been spouting off to her followers. She waited Ruby out.
The awkward silence left Ruby thinking of Haric standing by her side so often, waiting to help her. “I had a friend once. Back when we were still in school and before the sky fell. Her name was Nona. I think I’ve mentioned her to you.” She trailed off, remembering how she and Nona used to sit side by side in common and make up stories about the people walking by. “We were always together. Onor knew her, and Marcelle had met her. If she had lived, there would have been four of us, except maybe if she were still here, I never would have wanted to fight badly enough to change anything.”
“What happened?”
“Her mom needed pills—maybe now I can look back and see it was an addiction, but then we were young. Anyway, Nona earned stuff the way young girls could then, she sold herself to the reds. That’s why I hate prostitution so much. It was killing her—just doing it. Selling her soul. But I was worried that even worse would happen. I went to stop her, but I was too late.” Ruby felt tears at the edges of her eyes, and wiped at them. It wouldn’t do for Koren’s people to come in and find Ruby crying. She hadn’t cried about Nona for a long time. She’d thought about her a lot, turned her into a personal icon, her death into a whip she struck herself with over and over. But she hadn’t thought about the girl who wanted to succeed in school so bad she woke up an hour before the shift-change warning bell. The girl who told jokes that made Ruby giggle so hard she almost fell off a bench once. Ruby couldn’t remember the joke any more, but she did remember the explosion of laughter.
When it felt like she had some emotional control back, Ruby continued. “I found her. She had been stabbed. By reds. To this day, her death reminds me how awful too much power is. Maybe she didn’t give them good enough sex that night, maybe she said the wrong thing, maybe they just didn’t want to get caught.” Now she was angry all over again and tears were spilling down her face. “That’s why I did it.” Two deep breaths. She need to have more control. “I saw that we got free so no one else could die unnoticed that way.”
Lya knelt beside the chair and put an arm across Ruby’s back. “I’m sorry,” she said.
Ruby lifted her face. “I’m sorry about Hugh.”
“You never said that before.”
“I’m sorry about that, too.” And about Haric, and about herself. She was going to die. She could feel it, like an out-breath that thinking about Nona had made possible. Only she didn’t want to. She wanted to sing, she wanted to change the whole damned station here, and she wanted to hold Marcelle’s baby.
Most of all, she wanted to hold Marcelle’s baby.
As if thinking about her illness made it talk to her, a sharp pain stabbed up from her insides, as if it were reaching from her belly toward her heart. She bent over the pain. Its exquisite sharpness drove away other feelings and shrank her world to her physical reaction.
She counted her own heartbeats as the agony eased.
Footsteps made her look up. Joel coming in the interior door he had left through. Allen followed. Joel must not have liked what he saw on her face since he rushed to her side. “Are you okay?”
No. She nodded. “Of course. “ Her voice sounded hoarse and just louder than a whisper.
Before she could ask if he’d found a hiding place, four men in uniform came through the door from the outside hallway. “Ruby Martin and Joel North?”
Joel stood up. “Yes?”
“You are required to come with us. You have been accused of violating one of the three primal Deeping Rules and are accused of causing harm to the station.”
Joel asked. “Who are we accused of harming?”
“That will be explained to you.”
Ruby opened the pin and pushed the button.
“According to who?” Lya asked. “Can’t you see that Ruby’s sick? She needs to stay here.”
The man who had spoken looked down at Ruby. “Can you walk?”
; She couldn’t. Not very far. But Ix and Aleesi were under her chair, and now they couldn’t move them.
“No.” Joel took the decision away from her. “She needs to use the chair or she’ll be too tired. I’ll push her.”
The man was staring at Ruby. “So it’s true? You really are sick? I heard about your fall, but I didn’t think it was real.”
Ruby nodded. She couldn’t speak, not and keep her temper and her tears both away.
“Very well. You can keep the chair.” With no more ceremony that that, the leader turned around and started walking for the door. The other three stood and waited. Joel pulled Ruby away from the table.
“I’ll go with you,” Lya said.
“Only these two,” one of the uniformed men told her.
Lya looked sincerely regretful, almost frightened. Allen glared at the two men, looking a bit helpless. Not a look she was used to seeing on his face; it looked odd on him.
“Where are you taking us?” Ruby asked.
“To the Court of the Deeping Rules.”
Onor kept looking for any other immediate threats.
Naveen’s lips moved as he spoke to someone through his slate, probably the mysterious Satyana. He looked pale and slightly scared; shaken. Onor couldn’t tell if he was affected by the enforcers or the crowd or Haric’s body or whatever the person on the other side of the line was telling him.
Evie’s fists clenched at her side. She stared at the broken metal body of the enforcer she had just been pummeling with her bare hands. Blood dripped from a cut on the outside of her right fist, leaving a trail of glistening red droplets on the hard floor of the Brawl. At the moment she occupied the middle of an open space, although the crowd was closing in a step at a time. Onor came up behind her and put his arms around her, pulling her in close to him. “I’m so sorry,” he whispered as softly as he could, as if he were trying to calm a child. “I’m so sorry. But we need to go now. He saved you; don’t waste that. He would be so angry if you die.”
She shook her head as if denying his words.
“I have to keep you safe, and I have to get us all home safe.”
She put her hands up between her body and his arms, breaking his hold on her and standing still, staring at Haric’s body.
“Come on,” he whispered.
“I don’t believe he’s dead.”
“Of course you don’t.” He had known death since his parents died, and almost every year he had lost someone, and then more in times of fighting, a staccato beat to his life. Death didn’t change what the living had to do, and they needed to move. “We can mourn later, when we’re safe. You don’t think so now, but you’ll be okay. If we get out of here.”
“All right,” she said, standing still and staring at Haric’s face as if love alone could will him to stand up and breathe.
She didn’t move until Naveen came up on her other side and took her bleeding hand. “Now. To the door.”
The door was fairly close, maybe five minutes walking away.
Naveen gestured to the men who had first caught them and brought them all together. They joined up and created a silent wedge that Onor, Evie and Naveen walked in the center of. Evie stumbled a little, but refused help or hands from either of them, clutching herself tightly with her shoulders pulled in over her.
The crowd that had refused to part for Evie and Haric to help them get away from the enforcer parted for these men, stepping aside quickly.
In just a few moments, they stood in front of the doors out of the Brawl. Onor glanced at Naveen, who gave him a nod. “I’ve got it.”
Sure enough, the doors opened as if an unseen hand pulled them apart.
A small brown-skinned woman stood on the other side in front of about ten guards wearing the same uniform as the guard who had reluctantly let them in here. Onor, Evie, and Naveen walked through and the doors closed behind them.
Onor looked for the guard they had talked to and found him on the far right side of the line.
“I’m sorry,” the man mouthed from his place in the line around the woman, who could only be Satyana.
Onor appreciated the small touch of humanity.
Satyana stood, taking stock of them. She looked small and fierce, and very well-dressed in a flight suit that embodied comfort and fashion all at once. Nothing like anyone from Ash. Her voice was strong and quick. “Are you okay? Can you run?”
“Yes,” Onor said, echoed by Evie, who still seemed to be hugging herself, or maybe hugging her hurt hand. Satyana didn’t wait for Naveen to answer, but just turned and took off at a steady jog. They followed, Evie in front, Naveen and Onor behind and next to each other. The uniformed guards followed until they came out again in the same vestibule that Onor and Evie had come in through.
Satyana led the four of them up and to the observation window level and along the corridor toward the train station. Onor glanced through the window, but he couldn’t see if anyone had come for Haric’s body yet. From here, he could see the divisions between groups more clearly, especially now that they had been among them.
He needed to be sure that no one he loved ever went back there. He missed Marcelle fiercely in that moment, and the unborn baby, and everyone else back in Ash.
Instead of crossing into the train station, Satyana led them through two corridors Onor had never seen and into a suiting room next to an airlock. “Have you ever been in a pressure suit?” Onor asked Evie quietly.
Evie’s eyes grew wide and she stopped shaking. “No.” She watched Naveen and Satyana slide their suits on and check seals. Then Naveen helped Onor, and Satyana explained the whole process to Evie. Onor finished before Evie, and heard Satyana murmur in a voice that Onor couldn’t imagine disobeying. “There. Now slide the arms up so you can move your elbows. Next time, wear pants. Dresses are almost impossible in these suits.”
Indeed, Evie’s dress bunched oddly, but modestly, against her hips and thighs. Even though the suit looked strange on her, she looked calmer than he’d seen her since before they left to hunt Haric down. For that alone, Onor was grateful to Satyana.
They dogged helmets and went through the airlock into a small ship that Satyana introduced as Honey. Naveen and Evie ended up in seats that faced backwards, with barely enough room to strap in and tuck their feet around boxes and bags of things. The clutter seemed wrong for Satyana, who looked as neat and perfectly put-together as Jali, if somewhat undecorated compared to most people from the space station.
He strapped in and let the view of the Diamond Deep entrance him, barely noticing as Satyana held a conversation with the ship with her hands and soft, whispered commands. Living inside of the station, and mostly inside of Ash which had no windows to the outer world, had reminded him of living inside the Fire. Now he was out, sitting in a spaceship on the skin of the station, and he could see stars with his naked eye.
He stared.
The stars dwarfed his pain and losses, and even his fear of the Court of the Deeping Rules. Only a little, but it was enough that he began to feel like himself and the sharp ache no longer took over all of him.
The ship gave a brief lurch and then settled into a steady trajectory. Satyana stripped off her helmet, so the rest of them did the same. The Honey smelled like grease and stale food and sweat. Naveen and Evie twisted in their seats so they could see out the window as well. “I’m sorry I wasn’t faster,” Satyana said.
“I lost it,” Naveen told her. “I had them, the enforcers. A perfect hack. But Koren must have found out we were there.”
“What did the boy know?” Satyana asked. “Why him?”
“He heard recorded conversations with some merchants. They identified the people who sold them stolen goods from the Fire. Then I traced that back to Koren.”
“Can you make the case that they’re stolen yet?” Satyana asked.
“I can. I have a copy of the ship’s AI. Ix. I know what it saw, what it thought.”
“I hope you’re right.” Satyana said.
Naveen narrowed his eyes. “Not physically. But I have all of its recordings, and they’re spread through a series of databases.”
“Tell me about this court,” Onor asked. “We have no such thing on the Fire. Whoever had the most power made the decisions.”
Satyana laughed. “Then you will not find this so different. Any meeting of the Court of the Deeping Rules is overseen by the Councilor who has power in the area the meeting is about. There is an audience, and so they must dance a careful line, but we stand little chance of winning.”
“Do we speak for ourselves?” Onor asked. He didn’t like talking in large groups, and he wasn’t very good at it. “Will Ruby or Joel be there? They are good at talking in front of people.”
“I will do it,” Satyana said.
“Why you?”
Naveen answered. “Because you need someone who understands the intricacies of our world to defend you. Satyana has respect.”
Onor glanced at Satyana, trying to read the expression on her face. Guarded. He felt unwilling to voice a fear that was beginning to grow inside of him. Perhaps they were merely being used for something bigger. Perhaps no one really cared what happened to them, and they didn’t know enough themselves to stay safe. Surely he was just tired and heartsick, and his brain wasn’t working right.
Evie had watched the conversation in silence, but now she put a hand up, as if waiting to be acknowledged in class.
“Yes, Evie?” Satyana asked.
“Haric sent me some notes he asked me to keep secret.”
“What’s in them?”
Evie looked offended. “I didn’t read them. He told me to save them.”
“Can I see?” Satyana asked.
“Aren’t you driving?” Evie asked.
“No. The ship flies itself out here.” She held out her hand, and looked pleased when Evie dropped her journal into it.
The Diamond Deep Page 41