Cestabin
- 50 -
Check in.
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Turning over in my sleep. Sleeping on my back hurts. Sleeping on my side hurts. In the dead of night I feel my brain melting. I keep running. I am being held.
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I had a friend named Alves in school. She got me into baseball. It turns out if you get to playing a sport, you start to wake up a little. I don't play baseball anymore, Rhodes, I matured out of it. Nowadays it's stupid shit like poker and shooting people. We had a team called the Pairs. Or was it Pears?
-
I wake up and try to signal Rhodes. Check in. The sheets are bloody and heavy and smother me to death again.
-
You lost a lot of blood that one time, Pell, you got shot in the thigh. Within five seconds you were pretty much unconscious. What a shitshow! We had to retreat. I carried you. You seemed so frail. What's that? Speak up. I can't hear you. Speak up for a sec, Pell? Honey? Speak up, I can't hear you.
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Ceder tries to force me to eat. I cough and make a mess of soup everywhere. I'm sweating so bad.
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Rhodes?
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Check in.
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Please hold my hand so I know you're there.
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Ceder looms over me that night. "You're babbling," he says, babbling. "Rhodes is fine. She has gone to get you some more buprenorphine."
-
No, no, no, don't go. Don't run somewhere dangerous. I want to hold you in my hands forever. Don't you know you're on the run? I tried to hold you as they took you, but O'Dell held me back in my cabin and they came and shot Rita and then they took you and they were shouting so loud. Why'd they take you? What fucking came of it? When you died, did you say anything at all? Did you try and bullshit to get out of it? I hope so. I hope you escaped somehow. You're in the ventilation shafts sneaking around like in the movies. Here. I've got a little computer I can use to track your movements throughout the building. I can see the signal that is your arm moving around, and I'll open doors and disable turrets for you. Right?
-
I open my eyes, creaking with nausea, and see Rhodes holding her pocket cards close to her chest. She sees I'm awake. I feel like a kid again. No, no, Mom, I'm sleeping. I'm so sleepy. Can't you tell.
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Check in.
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"Hello, Nelly," says Ceder. I am so secretive. He doesn't know I'm awake. I've always been awake. "I'm taking the plunge. I'm selling the place to Cup, like I ought to have a while ago. Now's a good time." He is smiling.
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Rhodes? Why won't you say all clear?
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She's holding me. It feels like midnight. She is trembling and crying and asleep. I try to wake her up. She won't wake up though. She is sleeping deeply for the first time in her life. But I have so many questions, Rhodes, please. Please wake up.
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Check in.
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That's right. You died. I forgot that you died again. I keep telling you stories. I keep telling you about things here in Velnias like I'm sending letters. I try to ask questions but all I hear are your old words, your old and irrelevant words. Mostly, hey, Nelly, go shoot this person. Go shoot this person for the good of Stromm's Landing. Don't you care about what we're doing here? Yes, Nelly, I love you, of course I do. Did you ever say that? Did you ever? Why won't you talk to me? What'd I do to deserve this shit. Hey, Pell?
Pell, I think I found something else to do with my life. I don't know if... hah, I don't know if I'm going to be able to get my words straight, because I'm dying and very feverish, and this is a dream, and dreams make you talk funny. I know you're too far gone to talk back, but let me just rant for a second, okay? I forgive you. Whatever you're sorry for, I forgive you. If that means a thing to you. I'm waking up. Sorry. I can't stay. I can't stay long enough. I can only say, I forgive you. I think that I'm going to grow into somebody else, and you won't recognize me. Sorry. I have to go. I'm waking up.
Pell? Pelleratz Karinger, speak now, or forever remain a ghost.
I forgive you.
I'm going to stop talking now.
-
"Ceder," I say.
No. Rhodes is here with me. She is stood beside a cot in the back room of the Hang'd Knight. I am in that cot. Someone must have wheeled it in from elsewhere. I got an IV in my arm. She is holding some crackers she wants to feed me.
"Hey," she says, humming a little. "He said you've been waking up a little." Her eyes look so warm.
"Check in," I try to say, but I don't think I'm successful.
"I got us a spot on a boat," Rhodes says.
I shoot upright and then my head gets fuzzy.
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Where are we going?
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I hear the ruffling of cloth against the seaside wind.
- 51 -
Check in. Check in. Check in.
Check in. Check in.
Come on, lady, you know I hate when you don't reply to check in. We had a whole fucking thing about this, we had a tiff. I slowly sit upward.
I'm not in the back room anymore. I don't have an IV in my arm anymore, and the gauze wrapped around my shoulder feels dry. My head feels very clear and I've got this incredible lightness in my chest and stomach like I am invincible. I look around.
A cabin. I recognize this as a ship cabin for crew members. Metal walls, one circular window, thin but heavy covers over me. A poster of a pretty woman in the corner. The lights gently swaying with the slight bounce of waves.
No shit. It's actually happening?
Check in. Check in. Come on, Rhodes, don't fuck with me. Don't freak me out like this.
I try to lift up my metal arm and it's still limp, and doesn't seem to reply to anything I try, and has in fact been broken for days now.
-
Trying to stand up is a process. Whoa, Nelly, there's not enough blood in your body to be lifting so suddenly. I get dizzy and my head throbs, but I've been resting a long time, and I am coming to realize, slowly, that I might very well be in perfect health.
But that doesn't track, does it? My body still hurts.
-
I find a water bottle set out for me, and some packaged cookies in a drawer, and eat good. Actually I eat kind of irresponsibly and consume an entire sleeve of chocolate chip cookies in about five minutes. Whatever. It's my prerogative. I'm having a little trouble, because—
Right. I got my ring finger shot off.
Well, it could be worse.
There's other stuff in the room. I found a box of all of Ceder's little figurines, placed carefully in layered platforms of cardboard. Then the two datapads we bought at different points, both out of battery. I find one box with a couple of my possessions under my bed. Someone's folded up my fishing rod to fit in the cardboard box, and my old shotgun is here, too. But the bolt is missing. And the trigger assembly. And the pistol grip. Actually it's pretty much just a hollow box with no more shooting parts.
Huh.
The mattress itself is wet with sweat, but I finally feel free from it, free from the fever. Fucking hell it got bad for a while. I don't like fever dreams.
Someone has put out some tight cotton clothes in pastel blue, maybe to make me look like a sailor. I unfold them and put them on but it takes a lot of effort. I got a big anchor on my body, this useless metal arm, and get the inclination to take it off, but Pell wired it in pretty good and did nothing but further secure it to my musculature as we got older. Guess I'll just live with it for a little while.
I head onto the deck.
We're on a superfreighter, I can figure that out right away, with all the cabins accessible on a high deck overlooking the sea. The Cestabin Sea smells like dreams. I can't help but step out towards the railing. Everything's made of metal and my mouth tastes slightly like rust, but the railing is solid enough to lean on.
Sun overhead casting glitter-light on the entirety of the green sea. Nothing in sight either way I look, no land, no city. The enormous million-ton boat just gently creaking in the breeze, which itself isn't too intense this time of day. Warm like a good memory.
"Good morning," Ceder says. I see him also leaning against the railing to my right.
I run over to go hug him.
-
We settle there to watch the waves for a while. Ceder is in his white-and-gold robes again, speckled with the cosmos of the dimly-lit Dust Sector, and as the wind floats his clothes in the wind, he looks happy to finally be headed somewhere.
"How long's it been?" I ask.
He hums thoughtfully. "Eight days." It looks like they have taken their toll on him, but he doesn't look tired right this second. "It has been a bit chaotic."
So he catches me up.
-
For us, for the militia, things could have gone worse. Of course we lost people, but we did make it out, apparently; I was too far gone to move myself, but Ceder made it work, and Rhodes, equipped with a subservient MONITOR, was able to make the escape a foregone conclusion for us and the rest of Mini. She fulfilled her end of the bargain, melted all those cameras and the MONITORs in Baultriel when she was done with them, and Ceder is pretty confident it'll at least help. The news didn't necessarily like that we injured a lot of civilians, but the lack of fatalities became a point of pride for Ceder especially. Nobody died. Nobody who we were targeting, anyway.
Some people did get assassinated. The snake-killers did what they wanted, and we provided willing cover for them. Guess that'll be a pain point for a while.
And half of team Seesee is dead. The Peacekeepers didn't show much mercy.
Ceder got us back to the Hang'd Knight, though he's light on the details as to how that worked out, and we've been laying low since, save for the times Rhodes ran through Corundum Town trying to scrounge together some more meds and liquid food for me. She disappeared a few days in, then came back dragging along an IV stand she had bartered for. So much for opsec, lady.
Then, as I remember him saying in my dreams, he sold the speakeasy to Cup, said his goodbyes to whoever was still alive, and we absconded.
I ask about the one loose end I was worried about. "Noss?"
"She was not doing too badly, last we spoke. She lost the leg, though."
"Shit. Sorry." Lucky to be alive at all, but I don't say that.
"Remains herself, though, and still as angry as ever at the snake-killers. Angrier still. Baultriel will be happy to have her." His voice warms up as we speak. "I was even more worried about you. You got shot three times."
I bend back and forth slightly, trying to feel it out. Where? Shoulder a couple times, and my finger? I guess. "I didn't notice at the time..."
That makes him laugh softly. "You have the right heart to pull that sort of stunt with the Boxer, Nelly, but humans are as fragile as ever."
"We're all fuckin' fragile," I say. We shed a lot of our own blood that day and I'm sure I don't know the half of it.
"I suppose." Ceder lays his arms on the railing and leans forward over it to catch the noon sun with his broad face. Then something funny strikes him, and he laughs. "Ah, wait, you would not even know the most important thing that happened," he says.
"Uh-huh?"
He is clearly amused by something I'm clueless about. "Nelly, you were aware that the Free Worlds election was scheduled two nights after our little raid, yes?"
I shake my head. "I don't follow that stuff."
"Kelly Markabo got elected President of the League."
"Oh." Got to rack my brain for a second. "The free arms initiative guy?"
Ceder laughs. "No, that was Kelly Tsabo." Then he stares at me. "Twenty years ago."
"I see."
"Markabo is good for us—he is with the Worlds Insubordinate, and he has a left-ish track record. I think there is some potential of things getting better."
I can't hide my confusion. To be honest I don't know who Markabo is and I've forgotten the goals of the Worlds Insubordinate. "Cool?" I say, hesitantly.
"Yes," Ceder says, nodding. "It is cool. Though... for us... in the here and now, it will not necessarily make things easy."
"I figured."
"The League is clearly upset over what happened. We did a decent job of concealing our identities, but Rhodes..." He grimaces slightly. "We will need to practice proper operational security, even in a quiet city like Haraad."
"So that is where we're headed?" I ask. I got a twinge of relief in my voice.
"Yes, Nelly," he says, and maybe I caught his cynicism off guard. "Rhodes was insistent, and I was happy to accept. I have come to like your company."
"You too."
"It won't be impossible. Just keep rumors to a minimum, and—" Then he stops himself, and laughs a little. "—actually, no, Rhodes has probably given you the whole spiel before, hasn't she."
I grin. "More than once."
-
From bartering with the sailors, Ceder has managed to get some meals for the trip, as well as a little bit of weed. He rolls us a joint there on the railing, and we smoke. "She's sleeping in a hammock downstairs," Ceder tells me of Rhodes. "You can go check in with her soon. I just know I won't be able to get a moment with you privately afterward."
"Ha, probably," I mutter. I take a little puff and pass it back to him. I'm letting the sun warm up my backside, which is still chilly from sitting in my own sweat. "How's she doing."
"Fantastic. I've never seen her so relaxed." He takes a modest—for him!—inhale, then lets the smoke pour out of his nostrils.
I take the joint back and let it settle in my fingers a bit. "Gonna be weird for her to be in someplace with so little tech."
"Ah," Ceder says, shrugging, "we will see. She is fairly young. Maybe she will change with time."
"Hey, I'm changing with time, too, asshat." I sock him on the shoulder a little. Or, no, wait. I don't succeed in doing that. Right. My arm is fucked. I look down sadly at it. "Ceder, why's my arm still off."
He nods. "That. Right. Yes. I think the ion fried it."
I grimace. "Well, that sucks."
"My apologies. I know you two used it to communicate, too."
"End of an era, is all," I say. "I had this since my twenties. Earlier, actually."
He pauses for a little while, taking a deep breath. I match. It's good to taste the sea air. I like how the Cestabin fixes my sinus problems, generally. Maybe why I liked fishing so much. Then Ceder speaks. "You remind me of my sister," he says. New tone. He has abandoned something gruff in his voice.
I glance at him. "Yeah?"
"She is also missing an arm." He smiles faintly. "Left. Left instead of right, but also at the same place, near the shoulder. It was from a blast."
"Mine was just some cuts that got festering," I explain, nodding. "Blast from what?"
Ceder shakes his head. "The War too. See, there are some parallels." He is amused, but only a little. "Your side, er—when the side of the Confederacy killed the Emperor, it incensed some of the Haraadi."
"I heard," I caution.
"Not myself. I have little connection to the Third Empire, spiritually, emotionally..." Then something strikes him and he has to grimace. "My sister ran off. She fought in New Tibor, with the militia there. I have never seen her like that, and never again, and it left a big hole in the family for a while. Even when she was back. Even when she got a prosthetic." He motions at my dead arm.
"Like mine?"
"Eh." I take a drag as he speaks. "Mm. You know how Imperials are about cybernetics, and... and it's a little like that here, so... a simple prosthetic. Give that here."
I hand him the joint, and he's trembling a little. Needs a little respite, and takes a big drag to match mine. "Simple's better than nothing, I guess."
He waves the joint around aimlessly. "Yes, I suppose. It's just... gah." Shakes his head again. "I made... we made Noss lose her leg, nearly her life. I wish I had more control over these things. I wish my sister had not lost the arm." Then he swallows, and I am starting to feel a pit in my stomach. Why did I go to Stromm's Landing? "I wish she hadn't gone at all," Ceder says. "It tore up the family so badly." Like you're tearing apart yours. Fuck, Ceder, why are we like this?
"You think we're stupid for shooting and dying all the time."
"I know I am." Some helplessness in his voice.
"It's what we got told to do, isn't it?"
"Ha. You have a way of putting things, Nelly."
Guess so. I feel stupid now and kind of red in the face and I get him to give me the joint back. Trying to savor it. "She's alive, at least," I murmur.
To that he very solidly nods. "I won't drag you or her into these messes again."
"Mm." I grimace. "But you'll go into 'em again."
"I hope not."
"Then don't."
"Alright." And he laughs, weakly at first, and then a little more, and then I hear that he is choked up, and crying a little in his Neriak way, and so we embrace.
-
I hope not, too. But I got no control over this man and his whims and his long, long life. When he holds me there I feel like crying, too, and I look over at the long stretch of sea, and the glistening waves touched by sunlight, and the lightness in me, I get no impression, or reminder, of anything I've ever seen before.
It kind of hit me all at once.
I'm going somewhere new.
- 52 -
I head to go find the stairs. The ship sways a little unpleasantly for my poor sea legs, and I've got to clutch the railing to be stable. After it passes, and I gain my footing again, I get to the rear-facing bit of the tower, which overlooks the enormous and endless array of cargo containers gridded and stacked atop the back of the ship—the POCHTLI—in multicolored pastel. Ceder says we're welcome to chat with the sailors a bit, since there aren't many and they're all bribed well and kind enough to passengers, but I don't see any from here. Just a ghost ship. I go to the stairwell to the lower cabin level.
Like Ceder said, Rhodes is resting in a hammock inside of a small niche between two cabins, with a fuzzy skull cap over her head to keep out the wind and hide her cybernetic. Gonna need to get used to wearing things like that, or else come up with some other solution. We'll see.
I watch her sleep for a little while, and after contenting myself that she's actually able to sleep, having cut off the backdoor, I wake her up.
"Hey," I say.
"Oh, shit," she mumbles, and sits up, and leaps into my embrace.
-
The roach is still alight, and there's still a little left, so we share it as we sit on the hammock together.
Rhodes does most of the talking at first. "I watched the thread fucking explode," she giggles. "The message I sent went kind of viral. I saw Jean Jacket posting about it, even. It was a fucking hell of a play."
"You get lumped in with the Baultriel militia?"
"Kinda. I mean, I hope I took the spotlight." Then I squint at her, and she giggles. "I mean, like, away from the militia, so they don't get so much heat."
"Suuure."
"They're calling it the night of fireworks, or bata palatosita in Vasthi," she explains. She takes a big inhale of the joint and nearly hacks up. "Auh—ah—b-because of all the cameras getting overvolted. A lot of 'em sparked. No fires though. I should've been more careful."
I shrug. "You saw the buildings. They're all concrete there."
"Nah. There's wood parts of the slums. I guess not where the cams were though."
Now I give her a hopeful grin. "...You figure we did well by Baultriel?"
She doesn't know, by the way she's looking at me now. "I hope so," she mutters. "People were conflicted. I don't know how to do the right thing. It's a fucking mess."
"Eh." I shrug. I get the inclination to kiss her on the cheek. "We did what was asked of us, and did our best."
"I guess." Rhodes settles against me, and hands me the little stub of what's left of the joint, which I let burn a little. "Taking a break from the intranet now," she says.
"Good. How's that treating you?"
"I am, to be honest, kind of out of shit to do." She leans back with me, and the hammock posts creak. "But my head doesn't hurt, and it's pretty. I wanna be the kind of person who can live with that."
I smirk. "You don't gotta be some old-timer like me. I'll buy you books and a laptop and shit. We'll listen to music. I'll watch you, uh, program, or whatever."
"You gotta take me fishing at least once to see if I like it."
"Okay, nerd."
We settle there for a little while. The superfreighter has a resident population of birds; Gritch glasseyes and multicolored Gritch soarers and horrible Gritch crawlerbugs who like to nibble at the algae along the sides and hunt the fish that get stunned in the gigantic wake, and they're all pretty fun to watch. Brave around people, too. One of the glasseyes settles on the railing and looks at us funny for a while. Big beak. Colored like blood.
Rhodes says, "Buzz off, dude! Whaddya want!"
"Fuckin' silly-looking bird," I laugh.
I try to settle against her a little more and then the hammock posts creak harder, and then I realize they're creaking too hard, and then it falls.
-
My ass hurts. I caught Rhodes, though, with my one good arm. At least the posts weren't nailed into the wall, just tied to some poles, but it did break a little metal flange in half. Whatever. The glasseye buzzed off like Rhodes asked it to, so we go stand by the railing.
"Welp," I say, suddenly.
"It's OK," Rhodes assures me, laughing. "I'll sleep in your bed next time."
I grin. "Good by me."
It's gonna be a while until we see land again, so this view of the Cestabin Sea is going to be normal for a while. Doubt I'll get bored of it. The sparkling of the sun and the whitecaps are enough for me. We're port-side looking north, so I can't see the Kesh Band except for hints, and it leaves the whole view completely immaculate. I guess I might get seasick if we hit some bad weather, but I'm not nauseous yet, not like I expected. I lean against the railing with my good arm and let the wind take my hair up.
"Hey," says Rhodes. "Is your arm still not working?"
"Yeah. Ceder says it got fried."
"Tshhh, prob'ly..." She squints slightly, staring at it hanging by my side. "Maybe it's fixable, though."
"You think?"
"I could give it a try."
I don't know why, but that sudden thing hits me with a wave of emotion, and I smile at her, and my throat feels tight again. "Okay," I stammer.
"Owe it to you, I think," she says.
"I mean, fuck, don't be thinking like that. You'll go crazy."
"And!" Rhodes suddenly shouts, laughing. "And I miss tapping shit to you!"
"Okay, okay..."
She steps up to be beside me, and I feel her arm around my lower back. "I worry," she says, "all the time, that things will never actually be... fixed, like, after what I did."
"It is what it is."
"What if we just start over from scratch?"
She looks, and sounds, like a moron saying that. And I think she knows it. She immediately clutches her mandibles like she's trying to take it back, but I already heard it. "That's just running away again, lady."
"Oh." And she trembles. "...Yeah. Sorry. I'm getting used to this."
My stomach sinks a little. "Don't give up on it, either," I tell her, practically begging. "Just let it sit. Make it up to Ceder like you said. You got time."
Rhodes grips me tighter, and I wrap my good arm around her. "Won't give up on it. Fuck that. I promise. You'll let me try?"
I nod. "Part of being in a relationship is... I don't know. Fucking up and trying again, I guess. Had to do it before." I toss the roach into the Cestabin.
"Yeah?" She tightens her mandibles a little. "...yeah." Then, after a moment, she loosens her grip on me a bit, and tilts her head to peer out at the Cestabin, peeking just over a bit of railing at her height. "Shit, hah, you called it a relationship. We're official now, I guess."
"Wanna get married?"
She laughs. "Now you're moving too fast."
I grin. "Just trying to tie you down, Rhodes."
"Hey," Rhodes says, "you know, you can't call me Rhodes anymore. I'm notorious."
"Okay. What's your new name."
"Ahhh, Rose?"
What. "That's the exact same," I explain.
"No, no! It's Rose. Not Rhodes."
"Nobody in the world is going to fall for that."
"The League is stupid enough."
"No," I say. "They are not."
"Okay," she admits. "But we are very slightly smarter."
"I'll believe it when I see it."
We banter over this for a little while, and we try to come up with new names for each other, but we fail for now, and we remain just Nelly, and just Rhodes.
-
Don't take my memories from me. Don't take your mistakes back. I want to make new memories and new mistakes. I want a future.
- 53 -
Rhodes and I head back to go get Ceder and play some poker.
Nice day out. She says the wind picks up a lot, which is alright by me, since wind cools me off in the sun, and it isn't raining at least. Then she says it rains sometimes at sea, too, and gets her laughs in.
Ceder's where I left him. Him and Rhodes embrace briefly and go inside to get some cards while I take a breath. Not loving all the stairs everywhere. Don't tell me I'm gonna end up like Rhodes. Then again... if I'm not running around shooting people the rest of my life, I guess I could live with aches and pains like this.
Anyway her and Ceder are laughing in the room and seem to have their own cadence of bantering, but I can't hear the words. Once they come out with a little box of stuff, I try to imagine how things might go in Haraad. I don't think, even now, that Ceder has forgiven her. It would be silly to forgive someone so quick for something like that.
Have I forgiven her, even? We lock eyes as she comes out of the cabin, and I don't know. I suppose it doesn't matter. I hope she can put up with us giving her shit. That's part of not running away.
We head down.
-
The main deck, the bit with all the containers, has a small corner devoted to R&R for the crew and stowaways, with folding tables and umbrellas and lots of cigarette smoke from the sailors. There are a couple other Haraadi who are playing chess, and some humans who seem... maybe Tiborian, by their accents, and then the sailors, who are overwhelmingly Vasthi, come by on break. Ceder has his own table set up for us in a bit of shade, just beside a pink storage container. "Come," he says.
Him and Rhodes start to unpack our cards as I sit down, and then I realize they aren't unpacking cards at all.
They're unpacking mahjong tiles.
"Okay," says Rhodes, "time to play!"
I guess Ceder noticed my horror because he laughs his ass off.
"Kidding!" Rhodes assures me, after waiting just long enough for me to accept that I'm about to have a shit time. "I'm kidding, we're just fucking with you!"
"Good," I say, teeth out.
Ceder sits, and starts to immediately put the tiles back in their bag. "But it is a nice game," he says. "Rhodes has been teaching me the basics."
"I am not going to play mahjong."
"Come on," she begs. "Sometime. One time."
I give her a look.
But Ceder is pretty playful about the whole thing. He gets the cardboard box of cards we've used in the past and starts to shuffle. "Don't be so afraid of learning new things, Nelly. Remember that you both will need to learn Dronhas."
Rhodes looks back. "Ah, yeah, right."
"Hey," I snap, starting to laugh, "it'll be easy for you, whiner, you already know Vasthi."
"It's a pidgin! All the tenses and shit are mixed up!"
"You will learn," Ceder says. "You will learn together. Do your homework together and whatnot. Else you will stick out even more than usual in Haraad, and that is a security risk."
Nice. Good way to get to Rhodes is to use her language. "True," she says. She's giving us all some fake chips again—we've gotten pretty good at this whole routine, as I count them out to be sure.
"Whatever you think is best, Ceder, you just tell us," I say.
He dips his head down thoughtfully. "I don't mean to make things too stressful. I simply remembered that my Bloom is monolingual, and it'd be nice if you could actually communicate with him."
"Course we will, yeah. What's he like?" I ask.
"Oh," he says, quieting slightly, "I don't know how to begin. He's very special to me, he's... brash, and complicated, and he loves his books. You will have no shortage of reading material for your learning, and... and he will surely have to grill you to make sure you are not trouble..."
Then I give him a longer look, and a smile. "You're excited."
"More than even you can imagine, Nelly." Ceder has a complicated expression, and it sits there for a while on his face. He is a complicated person, and he is right—even in all my years I cannot imagine what it is like to live so long and so many places. Then he returns to the world as Rhodes finishes passing out chips. "Five card," he says, and we play some poker.
We're having a pretty good time. I'm winning most hands and Ceder's too excited to see me alive, it seems, and so his poker face is shit. At one point in a holdem game I have pocket aces and I'm pretty confident in my own lying, so I ask Rhodes to guess what I have, but she says I have a pair, and then breaks out laughing. "Knew it," she giggles. I guess I'm not as good at hiding when it's her looking at me.
The wind is gentle, but we do still have to be careful not to let our cards blow away. And it's a little hard to play poker one-handed, but not impossible, and I've done it before.
-
"Hey, Ceder," I say, after one particularly tense game of seven-two-up, "why's my gun all fucked up, by the way?"
"Oh," he mutters. "Yes. Ah. The internals... fell into the ocean."
I squint at him. "Did they now."
"That's right." Then he smiles at me, though it is faint, or maybe just a different kind of smile meant to communicate something oblique. "It is merely a walking stick now."
Uh-huh. "Fits," I say, and then I cough some. Sea air is still humid and salty even though it tastes good. "Ah, shit, I didn't bring water."
Rhodes, who hasn't won a hand in half an hour, pipes up. "I'll go get us some."
"No, no, I will," Ceder says, and he's already stood up. "Don't overdo it, friend."
"Sure," she laughs. "Thanks."
"Thanks, Ceder." And he heads off, with long strides, back to our cabin.
-
Once he gets back with water, and after we've eaten some packed sandwiches, we play a last few hands of whatever games we hadn't played yet, like baseball and Rhodes poker, and make huge bets and bluffs and completely ruin the delicate balance of chips between the three of us, but I'll mostly leave that to the imagination, because it tends to always go the same way, and that's how I like it.
We talk about Haraad at last, the city itself. It's a big place. Bigger than just the main town, with a split-up countryside all under the city-state banner, and with integrated non-Neriak populations further north. The little neighborhood where Ceder lives, or used to live anyway, is right by the Naf river inlet from the Cestabin Sea. Naf is a Dronhas word meaning glass, but Cestabin is a Yontazzi word, it turns out. None of us know what Cestabin means.
Anyway the neighborhood, Pitul, has a lot of tailors and painters and bookbinders, and other little specialty occupations that lend themselves to tiny shops along the river walk, which I'm already excited to explore. The plaza where he lives is home to many an old-timer who likes to sit and sunbathe, and there tend to be kids playing in the courtyard, and the grocer is just down the street. It's everything, I guess, that Rhodes and I have been avoiding—repeated interactions with familiar faces. Can she get used to that? I hope so. That's reality.
Then again the reality she has lived for so long is as near to normal for her as anything else. Velnias is so big you could get by never meeting the same person twice, no problem at all.
That's an addicting concept. I see where she got the tendency to stay on the run. You get to live as your own little world, with just whatever you carry.
-
I remember, a long time ago, when I was in my twenties, I ran away. I'd sworn allegiance to you, Pell, or to Stromm's Landing, I don't remember which. Then I got scared and angry and wanted to gun it on my own, so I ran away. I lived in the swamps for two months. I traveled north. I robbed a traveler, this young girl with a pearl necklace—was probably fake—and fished for carp, but carp is a fucking nightmare to catch, so eventually I was so behind on calories that I was skin and bones. Tried hunting one of those ail striders, the ones that look like rocks, but they don't seem much bothered by bullets and run too fast in the water to catch.
Then I got far enough north to reach the plains city of Wafburg, and I tried buying food, and I got arrested for trying to peddle my stolen shit, and then there you were, like you knew what was happening all across the outlands. You got me out and we went home.
I don't have the right words for it, but I think Rhodes should know by now that I am not great at being on the run. Is she any good at staying put?
I would like her to stay with me in Haraad. But if she needs to run—if she has not changed—I need her to take me with her. Why's it so hard to say this shit to people still living, Pell?
-
We wrap up the game, fold the table and umbrella and stash them safe from the coming rain, and head back to the cabin as a trio of strange runaways and soldiers. I am hoping, though it isn't a particularly reasonable hope, that I will have these two as companions the rest of my life.
-
It's evening now.
Rhodes sits with me while Ceder snores inside. We are in plastic chairs outside our cabin, and we watch the sun called Kbir set behind the ship. Some clouds obscuring it. The sky turning pink and purple and orange in gradients, but then in flashes. Spikes across the stratosphere. Even if all these colors were coalesced together all at once it would not be one millionth as brilliant as the capabilities of the holograph projector in the fallen Supranendum, but then again it would be real, and it would be greater in scale and scope by that same million; but it is all subdued in the sea fog, and as Kbir dips toward the horizon she becomes ever-fainter, an inkling, like a life falling from a cradle. Or maybe she is simply running away.
"You ever seen pictures of the Milky Way?" she asks.
I turn over to Rhodes, and rest my head against my good hand. "Yeah. And, uh, Andromeda. And the other ones." All too far away in some unknown direction to see, now. Or long gone. Nobody knows which.
She chitters. "Galaxies are the prettiest shit there is."
"Eh." I liked the Rossberg exploding more. "Maybe in person they would've been."
"The Dust is pretty too," she admits, "even with so little stars. You'll see tonight, it gets bright. You can see the Eye of Norak, you can see Brigadine, you can see... you can kinda see some lights in the Blackpatch sometimes. There's no light pollution here."
I nod. Didn't often come above deck on the boat from Berith, so I've never seen the night sky at sea. "Wonder if it'll compare to nights on Stromm's."
"You'll have to compare."
"I'll tell ya which one I like better," I decide.
"Anyway, ah," Rhodes says, sitting up a little, "after tonight, after we stargaze and shit... I'll take a look at your arm. Tomorrow morning, first thing."
Lump in my throat all of a sudden. "Okay," I manage. Then something strikes me. Probably a memory of you, again. Like some words jostling around in my skull. Too ephemeral to recite. "Maybe we'll just take it off."
Rhodes squints slightly. Her doubled eyelids flitting. "If you can live without it."
"Probably can by now."
"Been with you a long time," she points out.
I groan, and I have to laugh. "Fuck, that's such a bad reason to do anything."
She chitters. "It's true! Maybe you'll feel really shitty being one-handed! I mean I already feel weird as hell without the backdoor, and I only had that a little while." A year is a little while for this woman.
"Just saying I probably can live without it." And I lean back, and I just want the sunset again. "Not would. Necessarily. I don't know."
"Okay," Rhodes says, resolute, "then I'll take a look tomorrow. How about it?"
Alright.
We can wait and see how I feel.
It's been more a weapon on me than anything and, since the day I got it, I have been feeling like it has never served me particularly well, but then again it is merely a thing I had attached to me, and I have served it more poorly than anything.
Been saying goodbye to a lot of parts of myself and maybe too eager to do so.
-
I didn't get to say an actual farewell to Velnias, not with my fever and the bullet holes in me, but I suppose that tracks. When Rhodes ran away I didn't get to say goodbye or please-don't-go. I didn't get to say goodbye to you either, except in my stupid dreams. I didn't say goodbye to Stromm's Landing—I really did think I'd go back at some point. Ditto for Old Tibor, and my parents. Just a few years of service and I'd come back home a hero, I was told. But that isn't how it works. You go where the waves take you and you accept, whether consciously or not, that everything valuable and important can suddenly disappear without letting you see it coming. Goodbyes are pretty worthless anyway. Either you meet again or you don't. Why bet on it either way?
I still have Rhodes. I still have enough fingers to play poker. And I still have Ceder, and these hopes in my head of a quiet life in Haraad. I have my memories, and until I die for real I'll take them along as long as I can. I only have the capacity to carry so many things with me, but I've grown to accept that fact after failing to hold onto so much else.
Besides that, there's always something new to find over the crest. Hard for someone, even bitter as I am, to ignore that fact. Guess I'm probably not out of the woods on that particular blessing. Someday Ceder will wake me up to say he is running to go aid some important cause somewhere, and I'll have to decide if I am really as committed to retiring as an old fisherwoman as I say I am right now.
No. There's no question.
I am. I am weak and unarmed and I want to be left alone.
If you could do one last thing for me, Pell, it would be to let me go.