LITMIR.BIZ

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writhing just out of reach, or like Akos, whose emotions glitter in his eyes like precious metal caught in the bottom of a pan. Isae is just blank.

      “My friend—the one I told you about—will be here soon,” she says, her voice rough. “He wasn’t far from here when I called.”

      She’d commandeered the nav deck for a while when the patrol ship first picked us up, saying she needed to make a call to an old friend, one she grew up with. Ast was his name. She said she could use someone’s help, someone who wasn’t tied to the Assembly or Thuvhe or Shotet. Ast was “brim spawn,” as some people liked to call it, born out on some broken moon beyond the currentstream barrier.

      “I’m glad,” I say.

      I try one of my favorite feelings on her now, to calm her—water, which is odd, since I don’t know much about water, having grown up on an ice planet. But there was a hot spring in the basement of the temple in Hessa, to enhance the visions of the oracle, and Mom had taken me there once to learn to tread water. It was dark as a tomb down there, but the hot water had surrounded me, all soft, like silk, only heavier. I let that heavy silk fold around Isae now, watch that tension in her shoulders ebb away. I’m learning her, slowly, and it’s easier, now that we’re not on that little Shotet ship anymore.

      “He was the mechanic’s son, on the ship where I was raised,” she says, rubbing her eyes with the back of a hand. Her trade vessel was always adrift, never staying anywhere for long. The perfect place for someone who needed to stay hidden. “He was there, too, during the attack. He lost his father. Some of his friends, too.”

      “What does he do now? Still a mechanic?”

      “Yeah,” she says. “He was just finishing up a job on a fueling station near here, though. Good timing.”

      Maybe it’s the idea that she needs somebody else, even though I’m here, or maybe it’s just plain jealousy, but I don’t feel good about Ast. And I don’t know what he’ll make of me.

      It’s like thinking about him summons him, because the door buzzes right then. When Isae opens it, there’s an Assembly-type standing right there, his eyes sliding down her bare legs. Behind him is a broad-shouldered man holding two big canvas bags. He puts the side of his hand against the Assembly man’s shoulder, and what looks like a flying beetle whizzes out of his sleeve.

      “Pazha!” Isae exclaims as the beetle lands on her outstretched hand. It’s not a real bug—it’s made of metal, and emits a constant clicking. It’s a guide bot, meant to help the blind maneuver. Ast tilts his head toward it, following the sound, and drops his bags just inside the doorway. Isae, with the beetle perched on her knuckles, throws her arms around him.

      Her currentgift is tied to memory—she can’t take a person’s memories, the way Ryzek could, but she can see their memories. Sometimes she sees them even when she doesn’t want to. So I understand when she tucks her nose into his shoulder, taking a sniff of him. She told me once that because smells are so tied to memory, they’re special to her; they turn the tide of memory she sees when she touches somebody into a little trickle. Controlled, for once.

      It’s not until Ast blinks that I notice his eyes. His irises are ringed with pale green light, and his pupils are circled with white. They’re mechanical implants. They only move by shifting, incremental. I know they likely don’t show him much—enough to help him, maybe, but they’re just supplements, like the beetle Isae called Pazha.

      “Nice new tech,” Isae says to him.

      “Yeah, they’re the new fashion in Othyr,” he drawls in a brim lilt. “Everybody who’s anybody is cutting out their eyes with butter knives and replacing them with tech.”

      “Always with the sarcasm,” Isae says. “Do they actually help?”

      “Some. Depends on the light.” Ast shrugs. “Seems like a nice setup in here.” He flicks his fingers, sending Pazha away from Isae’s fist and into the room. It flies the perimeter of the room, whistling at each corner. “Big. Smells clean. Surprised you’re not wearing a crown, Chancellor.”

      “Didn’t go with my outfit,” Isae says. “Come on, meet my friend Cisi.”

      The beetle is whizzing toward me now, turning fast circles around my head, shoulders, stomach, legs. I try to hear the clicking like he does, how it reveals the shape and size of me to him, but my ears aren’t trained for it.

      He’s dressed in so many layers I don’t know what piece of clothing is what. Does the hood belong to his jacket, or the sweatshirt under it? How many T-shirts is he wearing, two or three? There’s a screwdriver at his hip where a knife ought to be.

      “Ast,” he says to me, in almost a grunt. He holds out his hand, waiting for me to step forward and take it, and I do.

      “Cisi,” I say. His skin is warm, and he has a good grip, not too tight. By instinct I pick a currentgift feeling for him—waves of warmth, like ripples in the air.

      Most of my textures work for people who aren’t in some kind of turmoil, at least a little, but the ones I like to use are the ones people don’t detect. But judging by his little frown, he knows something isn’t right.

      “Whoa,” he says to me. “What’s that all about?”

      “Oh, sorry,” I say. “My currentgift is hard for me to control.”

      I always lie about that. Makes people less wary.

      “Cisi is the daughter of the oracle of Thuvhe,” Isae says.

      “Sitting oracle,” I correct automatically.

      “There are different kinds?” Ast shrugs. “Didn’t know that. We don’t have oracles out there in the brim. Or fated nobility.”

      “Fated families aren’t nobility on Thuvhe,” I say. “Just unlucky.”

      “Unlucky.” Ast raises his eyebrows. “I take it your fate doesn’t meet with your approval?”

      “No, it doesn’t,” I say softly.

      He fusses at his lower lip. One of his fingernails is so bruised it looks painted.

      “Sorry,” he says after a beat. “Didn’t mean to touch on a sore subject.”

      “It’s fine.”

      It’s not true, and I get the sense we both know that, but he doesn’t press me.

      Isae searches out her gown from the floor and pulls it over her shoulders, fastening it in front so the skirt is closed, though she doesn’t bother with the dozen or so buttons that go up over her undershirt.

      “You might have guessed that I didn’t ask you here to bring me my old stuff,” Isae says, folding her hands in front of her. She’s switching into her formal speech, her chancellor posture. I can tell Ast notices something’s different. He looks almost alarmed, his eyes twitching from side to side.

      “I want to ask for your assistance. For a longer period,” she says. “I don’t know what you’re doing, what you’re leaving behind. But there aren’t many people left I can trust—maybe just the people in this room, and—”

      He puts up a hand to stop her.

      “Quit it,” he says. “Of course I’ll stay. As long as you need.”

      “Really?”

      He holds out his hand, and when she takes it, he shifts their grip, grasping her at the thumb, the way soldiers do. He brings their joined hands to his heart, like he’s swearing an oath, but brim spawn don’t swear oaths except by spitting, rumor has it.

      “I’m sorry about your sister,” he says. “I only met her once, I know, but I liked her.”

      It’s beautiful, in its way. Straightforward and honest. I can tell why she likes him. I try another feeling, for him—an embrace of arms, locked around the chest. Firm but bracing.

      “Now

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