by Faye, Audrey
I tried to imagine loving someone and never letting it show.
That would be a life about as far away from comfort and ease as you could get.
Tee handed me a beaker swirling with colors that matched my hair. “Strawberry juice and a few other things that taste good together.”
I took a sip—it was pretty much the grown-up version of summer in a glass. “It’s yummy.”
“Only the best for you.”
I smiled at the sentiment, even if her facts were screwy. She made fancy concoctions for all of our send-offs, and for anyone else who asked for them too. Easy generosity was just part of the way Tee moved through time and space. “I’m amazed you could save any strawberries from the raiders in your family.” Little Lightbodies stole them off my plate as fast as I could load them on.
Kish laughed. “They know your plate will always have fruit on it.”
It was a weakness. On the inner planet where I’d grown up, I’d felt like royalty when I got even a taste of fresh fruit. Here, the Lightbodies kept me permanently spoiled. I needed to go Dance for the gardens again soon. They swore it helped, and I’d been banned from weeding long ago—I left too many pretty things growing.
“Your head’s in the clouds.” Raven tugged on one of my curls and settled a bowl of grapes in my lap.
I grinned. “That’s not unusual.” I was fairly famous for being lost in space, even when my feet were on the ground. Sometimes I was following the threads, but often I was just lost in daydreams.
She scanned me briskly. “You don’t seem stressed about this assignment.”
We’d all been keeping pretty careful tabs on each other on that front—the Etruscan sector had strained all of us. I shrugged. “This one seems like it should be pretty lightweight.” I’d done my homework. Thessalonia was an arts colony like I’d thought, one of the pocket cultures that flourished in the inner-planet systems, often on an island or amenable moon. Small communities with the veneer of isolation, fostering artists and other creatives who found themselves choked by the crowding of most inner-planet environments.
A way for the core systems to keep their more offbeat personalities close, but happy.
I’d visited a couple of similar communities as a child, but none since becoming a Fixer. Creatives tended to need our skills less than most. They had their own ways of shifting into alignment with the energies of the universe, especially in a galaxy where art in all its forms was revered.
Kish leaned over, swiped one of my grapes, and popped it in her mouth. “Your fingers are wiggling. Spill.”
It wasn’t hard to tell when I was lost in thought—not if you knew how to read my body language, anyhow, and my best friends for the last fifteen years had known how to do that right from the start. “Nothing to spill. I’m going to sit here and eat chocolate and grapes and then go pack pretty, swirly outfits for my vacation.”
Tee snorted and handed over a monster bowl of chocolate mousse.
I squealed and stuck my finger straight into the middle.
“Eww.” Kish handed me a spoon. “Have some manners, would you?”
I laughed at her—she’d barely known how to use cutlery when we’d landed in tadpole school, and she liked chocolate almost as much as I did. “You’re just jealous because you can’t use your fingers as fast as I can.” I took the spoon she’d handed me and carefully scooped out my finger mark, along with a very big dollop of chocolate mousse, which I promptly ate. “There. Fixed it.”
She took the bowl and settled it in her own lap. I let her. She had an absentee lover to cope with.
Tee stuck her spoon into the bowl and licked contemplatively. “My last assignment that sounded like it was going to be a cakewalk didn’t end up being one.”
Kish frowned. “Mine either.”
There had been some hard assignments all around lately, but I knew exactly which ones they meant. A few months back, Kish had gone off to the boondocks to play matchmaker and fallen for Devan instead. Shortly after, Tee had been sent to calm down a jittery experimental species biome and committed what she was still calling tree murder, no matter how hard the rest of us were trying to get her to see it a little differently.
Definitely not cakewalks. I looked at Kish and Tee, and then all three of our heads swiveled Raven’s direction. If there were patterns afoot, our resident Shaman would be the one to see them best.
She picked up one of the stuffed baby chilies and popped it into her mouth whole.
I winced—if I did that, my ears would bleed. Those things were fiercely hot, and whatever Tee had stuffed them with was probably used as fire starter on most worlds.
She grinned at me and popped in another one. “The woo says you always leave your packing until way too late.”
I snorted. Tossing a couple of dresses and skinsuits into a bag along with my emergency chocolate stash never took long, and my vaunted procrastination skills weren’t something we needed a Shaman to discover. “Do you think this assignment is connected to Kish’s and Tee’s?”
She shrugged. “Why do you think this is a blow-off assignment?”
She would ask that. “Punishment. Yesenia’s mad at me.”
Raven’s eyebrows went up. “Oh, really?”
She knew how to pack a lot of punch into two words. I sighed and leaned back into my chair. Time for group therapy, even if they probably weren’t going to be gentle with me. “She thinks I’m turning into some kind of lazy puppet master who messes with threads from the shadows and picks the easy way instead of the right one.”
I flounced a little as I spoke. Fixers didn’t get to throw temper tantrums very often, and I was feeling this one.
Tee chuckled. “What’s the slightly less dramatic version?”
I grinned at her—they knew me too well to actually believe the drama. “She’s displeased that I’m not worried enough about how close I get to those lines.”
My roommate’s eyes had hazed in the way they do when she’s checking the ether, chasing something down in the woo. When she looked up again, it took three chilies before she spoke. “She’s worried about the right thing, but for the wrong reason.”
Only Raven could get away with that kind of arrogance. The thing is, after fifteen years, I know better than to disagree with her. I stuck out my tongue instead.
She threatened it with a chili, and I retracted, fast.
“The problem isn’t that you walk too close to the lines,” she said, chewing thoughtfully. “It’s that you believe the side of the line you’re on is better. That the gentle solution is the right one.”
“Pretty much.” Her words made me cranky again. “Not all Fixers need to break things to make them better. Lots of us work with quiet nudges and smoothing things.”
“Totally.” My roommate’s eyes were full of compassion—and her unswerving dedication to truth. “But you have the Talent to break things and do it right, and yet you rarely choose that path.”
I knew that—and I’d always thought of it as one of my strengths. I looked at my friend who loved me well and knew me deeply and would still be honest. “Do I worry you?”
“Always.” Her eyes never wavered—they never did when you asked her the hard questions. “But not for that. Not yet. You know more about staying on the right side of lines than she thinks you do. And you feel more deeply than she understands.”
She’s been saying stuff like that since we were ten years old—Raven sees more clearly than anyone I know. It makes some people squirm, but Dancers are more comfortable being naked than most, especially in the right company. I let her answer soothe some of the nerves the boss lady had frayed.
And reconsidered the possibility that the drama in the director’s office might be about more than just me. I picked up a grape and started to peel it slowly, eating the small strips of skin as I pulled them off. “Any guesses on why Yesenia’s suddenly yanking our chains?”
The boss lady was a puppet-master extraordinaire. One who never flinched from
breaking things if it would serve the highest good.
“It’s not just the assignments,” said Tee quietly. “You worked with some of the trainees today, right?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Do you miss anything that goes on around here?”
“Nope.” Tee helped herself to a couple of my grapes and started peeling them, making her own eyeballs. “But I bet Tatiana was in your group.”
I watched her and Raven exchange glances, well aware they were suddenly seeing something I wasn’t.
Raven nodded slowly. “She plays the long game.”
Kish scowled. “Any idea what it is?”
“No. Whatever it is, she’s keeping the energy tracks really clean.”
I’d seen that. The threads running between Yesenia and her daughter had been negligible. Almost like someone was keeping them that way.
Raven reached for another chili, her eyes deep in thought. “But that’s three of you now that she’s managed to land in a room with the golden child right before an assignment that sounds like it’s going to be a vacation.”
For very different reasons, Kish and Tee had both been wrecks after those assignments. And of the four of us, I definitely rolled least gracefully with my world getting shaken up. I cuddled the bowl of grapes and felt my insides curdle, just like they’d done in the boss lady’s office.
Raven leaned into my shoulder. “You’re ready for whatever this is.”
That wasn’t exactly comforting.
“Something’s moving, but I can’t tell what it is.” My best friend shrugged and leaned a little deeper into our contact. Helping my body to settle. “Keep your eyes open. The ether’s not saying much, but I say it smells like she’s up to something.”
I couldn’t see those threads—but if anyone could keep them hidden, it was the boss lady. And if anyone could see them anyhow, it was my Shaman sister.
I sighed and reached for more grapes. “Anyone got some spare body armor I can pack?”
Tee laughed. “No, but I know where my dad keeps his stash of Venusian extra dark.”
Best chocolate in the galaxy. That was even better than body armor. I grinned at my three favorite people in the universe. “I think I smell a night raid coming on.”
They laughed, but I knew they would come with me. It had been a while since we’d snuck around in the dark together, but I was pretty sure the Lightbodies hid chocolate for the express purpose of encouraging trainees to leave their pods and break a rule or two.
And probably the grown-up Fixers, too.
5
I checked the departure schedule for the next leg of my travel and sighed. Still running late. While I’d been happily peeling grapes and packing on Stardust Prime, I’d somehow managed to overlook the fact that the normal route to the Arcurius system was straight through the Etruscan sector, and nobody smart was traveling that way on purpose just yet.
Which meant I was on hop number four of eight on my way to Thessalonia. I’d spent the first three layovers eating, sleeping, and trying to get a decent haircut, but this time I was on a station big enough to have an excellent retail hub.
Therapeutic shopping, coming right up.
I made my way through the first stretch of stalls and small shops catering to the most immediate needs of galactic travelers. Ads and signs and professionally friendly faces hawked everything from shoulder massages to anti-nausea remedies to having your skinsuit cleaned on the spot with your body still in it.
Personally, I preferred not being laundered along with my clothes, but I understood the urge. A week in a cubecraft can make anybody stink, no matter what they tell you. I’d paid for ten minutes in a refresher tube before I disembarked, so I was clean and wearing one of my favorite sundresses. It was covered in flowers in every shade of purple imaginable and traveled like nobody’s business, and it made me feel human enough to skip the immediate enticements on offer.
I shimmied a little, letting the skirt dance with my legs. I had a couple of skinsuits along in case the natives of Thessalonia couldn’t handle a Fixer with bare shoulders, but I didn’t expect to need them. Inner planets had pretty open minds on the whole, and arts colonies tended to live on the permissive edge of that.
Which meant I could buy something pretty and gauzy and frivolous while I waited for my next tin can, and probably even manage to wear it sometime soon.
I looked around, trying to get a read on the layout and where I might find the casual and funky apparel. Not all stations ran to funky, but this one was full of color and diversity, so I assumed it did.
I trailed my fingers over fabrics and textures as I walked, knowing I was seeking comfort in sensation. It was either that or start dancing around the spaceport waiting lounge, and that tended to get security personnel worried, especially if I wasn’t wearing my Fixer paraphernalia. My fingers paused on a particularly lush teal headscarf, the bold swath of color soothing to my general state of discombobulation.
I sighed, annoyed I was feeling that way at all. It wasn’t anything to do with my trip so far—I was an easy traveler, well used to dealing with detours and delays. It was the words I’d been sent off with that were chasing me through the galaxy. Yesenia’s displeasure, Camellia’s hard-nosed insight, Raven’s truth.
There wasn’t anything specific pushing me off kilter. Just the general sense that Imogene Glass was coming under scrutiny, and maybe fire, from forces unknown. Which was making me distinctly uncomfortable.
I rolled my eyes at the flamboyant headscarf I’d been fondling. “It’s possible I’m being a little bit melodramatic.” A few words from the boss lady shouldn’t be jittering me this much. But add them to Camellia’s finger flicks and Raven’s eyes, and I had myself a little tempest in a Dancer teapot. Or at least enough of one that I was seriously tempted to buy myself a teal headscarf, even if it wasn’t remotely my usual style.
It would probably have a catfight with my curls.
“That one suits your coloring,” said a musical voice behind me. “But I’m not sure it suits your mood.”
I ran my fingers under the jangly shiny bits that fringed the scarf. Shiny worked for me, but I wasn’t usually a fan of jangly.
Quick, competent hands reached into the basket to my left and pulled out an ethereal scarf in purples and oranges and reds. “This one, I think.”
I grinned at the opinionated shopkeeper, liking her already. She had shining brown eyes and apple cheeks to go along with the musical voice. “Most people don’t think redheads should wear red.”
She chuckled. “Most people shouldn’t be trusted with getting themselves dressed in the morning.”
I ran my eyes over her ensemble. A very fitted swirl dress in a shade of green that made me drool, iridescent leggings, purple boots, and a cape hanging over the back of the whole outfit that should have been ridiculous and totally wasn’t. “You’re not one of those people. I love the boots.”
“They’re new.” Her eyes danced, inviting me to join in her amusement. “I think I might have to sleep in them.”
I’d slept in mine often enough that I couldn’t recommend it. “I don’t think a cape is very practical for where I’m headed, but if you have more of those leggings in stock and you can fit my long, skinny self, I’m going to be a really happy customer.”
“If I can’t fit you from my stocks, Royo across the way can tailor them for you.” She was already steering me deeper into her shop. “I’m Serena. When’s your flight out?”
I grinned at her, delighted to have found an enabler. “Four hours. What else do you carry in that shade of green?” It wasn’t often that I took my cues from someone else’s style, but hers was a good match to what my chakras thought they needed to get centered again.
Serena tipped her chin at me. “It’s a slow day around here—will you let us have a little fun with you? I can send word down the aisle, have some of my friends bring over things you might like.”
I fluttered my fingers at the quick spurt of guilt. “You can ha
ve all the fun you want, but you should know that my budget is pretty limited.” I was aware how much credit some of the pampered inner-planet travelers walked around with, but I wasn’t one of them.
Serena was already tapping on her mini-tablet. “I know exactly how much a Fixer makes. Traya Jacks is my older sister.”
No one ever pegged me for a Fixer, not while I was walking around a market in a sundress. But I knew Serena’s sister. Kish had done an apprentice tour with her, and it had been in this general neighborhood. “Did Traya ever stop by with someone in big, black mining boots?”
“You know Kish?” Serena looked delighted. “Did she ever wear that hot red number I made her buy?”
I grinned. “Nope, but I did.” I pulled a small holo out of my bag and tapped up a picture of the four of us on the vacation we’d taken after we’d all survived our apprentice rotations. “This is us, not very sober, on Venetia about three years back.”
“That dress looks darling on you, but you need to make her wear it. Men will drop at her feet.” Serena was herding me into a chair and shuffling things on a low rack in front of me. “You sit right here. I’m going to get some more people and things for us to play with.”
I laughed—she was totally contagious, and exactly what I needed. “Budget, remember?”
She winked at me over her shoulder. “Friends-and-family discount, and my stuff isn’t as expensive as it looks.”
“Mine is,” said a serious voice from behind a rack.
“Tristan, be nice.”
A spritely voice snorted. “He’s never nice.”
A man dressed head to toe in black walked into view, trailed by two women who were clearly heckling him and enjoying themselves immensely in the process.
He ignored them entirely and walked over to me, holding out a hand.
I let him pull me to my feet, doing my best impression of an inner-planet princess.