Ch 8

Rasalas jerked awake with a snort. He could have sworn someone had switched the sky from black to pink in the two ticks his eyes were closed. He threw his arms over his bandaged face with a groan, slowly realizing what had broken into the uneasy sleep. Raw frustration rattled through his skull and clenched up his teeth, and because it came out of nowhere – and from past occurrences – he recognized it as Coming From Challis.

He tried to think past it, to be rational.

"What now?" he snapped, then sighed. So much for that.

Rasalas opened an eye the moment Challis' boots swung over his head to step over him. Their tiny rooftop wasn't choice location for pacing. Challis knew it too, and sat down hard on the parapet.

"He's gone, mic frascato," she said in a rigidly serene voice. "Still gone. You said you were going to wait up for him."

"I…" he mumbled stupidly. "What?"

Challis' cheek still had sleep lines but she was fully dressed and staring at him. The staring turned into glaring. And the voice turned into a blow-torch that struck him in the face, repeatedly.

"Raffar. Gone. You idiot."

"Oh no. Oh, crud." Rasalas started to get up, but stopped to rip the bandages off his face. He was sweating them off anyway.

Challis watched him. "Tell me you didn't forget."

"I didn't forget. I fell asleep."

"We have to go. Now." She rolled up her blanket. "Why haven't you told us, Ras?"

He unstuck a piece of gauze. It tried to take a chunk of his eyelid with it. "Urg. Told you what."

"About that wire." Her voice was soft. "What you've been doing with the Haskes."

"Does that really matter now?"

"You tell me."

Rasalas didn't answer until the last of the tape was gone. Somewhere below, a pushcart wheeled over the pathway with a continuous clatter that made the silence even more prominent. Finally, he balled the pieces in his hands and wondered how much trouble he'd get in if he stuffed it into someone's mouth to shut her up.

He refrained, like a good brother, and looked inquisitively at Challis' boots.

"How much do you know?"

An odd sound escaped her, almost a sob. But then Challis just placed her forehead carefully down into both hands and stayed there, slumped and silent and passively making Rasalas as miserable as if she had shouted. A wave of disappointment from her slid into him, jagged-edged and heavy as a brick in his stomach.

At last, she asked, "You? Really?"

"Yes, me," he growled. "How much do you know, Chall?"

She kicked something to him. "Shirt. We had a deal. Your shady night project with the Haskes has opportunity written all over it, and you've made everything worse. Don't tell me this was the only way to get information out of them."

"Um…"

"And now look what they've done. All this under our noses."

Rasalas sat holding a boot. It was still crusty with mud. One perk of being fired, he wouldn't be slogging about in the mud barns anymore.

"Not your problem, Chall. I'll handle it."

"How is this not my problem? You are my problem."

"Well. Thanks."

"So just tell me. What does that wire do to you? Is it an upper of some kind? Or the reason why your black eye is almost back to normal?"

"Maybe." He stood and hefted the ladder over the side to lean it against the edge. She was right, they had to move. A quick breakfast first, in the name of all things commonsensical. Challis followed him down.

"Say, is that why you've been so forgetful lately?" she went on. "If that thing affects your biological flux, I could understand why –"

Her throat jumped when Rasalas appeared behind the ladder, looking at her between the rungs. His hands closed around hers to prevent her from taking the last step down.

"Alright, fine," he whispered, almost a hiss. "If you're not going to let it go, I'll tell you. If you promise to shut up."

She just smiled.

Rasalas glanced around, his eyes pausing where the pathway curved around a corner before locking back onto hers. Both faces in Challis' vision melded into one until her brother's mask of bruises became hers.

"Yes, I've been taking a few extra steps while working with them," he said acidly. "That thing Jak showed you, it hikes up my metabolic muscle activity. Like a flux tonic."

"Flux tonic."

"That's not the right word. I don't know what to call it. But that's all it is, I swear. Just once, maybe twice a night for the last six cycles or so. In exchange for a season contract. You know that whole flux shortage plan Drunnel was talking about? They're going to blow part of the cliff to make room for a reservoir and reroute the river, right? I've been helping them set that up, and I'm getting what I can out of them. I didn't know about the maccotons, or the expedition. And no, you and Raffar didn't need to know about the wire. Hell, you know what he'd say if he found out I was –"

He stopped, but only by clamping his teeth together. Challis raised her eyebrows.

"You were what?"

Something told her he hadn't been going to say, 'lying'. Rasalas shrugged.

"Nothing. That's it. Well, the legal side of it, I suppose." He gave her a smile that was meant to be reassuring. "It's not a big deal. It's no different than these stupid circunets we can't live without. Now no more questions, I'm starving." He released her hands and came around the ladder, rapping his knuckles on her shoulder as he passed.

Challis could have peppered him into sneezing fits, but she shut the box on her questions and did some thinking instead.

She didn't like what she'd heard. The thought of Rasalas working all this time in secret to learn what he could about those two Cormellican agents – just to get sucked into bionic flux conductors in return – shook her into a mindset she hadn't had for years: her brother hiding something from her.

Of course, his memory had been getting worse. Not his factual knowledge or patterns of thinking, but episodic memory: how certain events happened, or if they happened at all, or his interactions with people. These were more and more easily fuzzed around the edges, if not erased completely. Was that all because of Jakko's wire? Even without that, if anyone else ran on as little sleep as Rasalas had for this long, episodic memory would be the least of their problems. Challis remembered the surprising alertness when she'd tried Jakko's wire last night. It had been a stimulant. Was that the word Rasalas couldn't remember?

No wonder he'd been smoking like a stack - it probably soothed all that extra flux action. Challis frowned at the back of his head. The idiot. The absolute jackhole. It was all coming together.

Something else he'd said still bothered her, a little light blinking at the back of her mind that she couldn't quite remember.

They sat alone at a side table in the eatery, where any discussion would be muffled by the nearby chopping and hissing of vegetables on open grills. The cracking of nuts being shelled sent powder raining onto the platform. The cooks tossed them together with roasted seeds, herbs, and onions to stuff the fish filets, while platters of stuffed baked pompano and scaled mullet were emptied as quickly as they were set out.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

Eyes strayed to the Gannagens. Challis was picking pitifully at a mango.

"Chall?" Rasalas asked, mouth full. "Whu's up?"

"Hm?"

He shrugged. "You've just got your thinking face on, is all."

"You should too. What are we going to do?"

"About Raffar?" Palm oil dribbled orange down his chin. "He probably just went out early. And… got home late last night."

She shook her head. "We got home late last night. He was gone. Just… remember what the FHF agents said. Something's off."

"Tell you what." Rasalas pushed his tray away. "We go register for the expedition. Then we track him down, or find the Haskes again if we can't."

"We can't register!" Challis squeaked, then dropped her voice. "They're going on mules. Hell to that. And then the thrikes – there's nothing we can do there, partner. No way around that, Rib-eye will lash us to ribbons if we show up at the grounds."

Rasalas rubbed his brows gingerly. "We've still got twenty-four bells to figure that out. But if we at least register first, get our names on the list, then we have that leverage when we get in the Haskes' faces."

He knew it was a good plan. Challis-worthy rationale. But for some reason, Challis was shifting her gaze around the table, her eyes unfocused in the way that made people uncomfortable talking to her. Rasalas just kept watching the people around them to give her something to look at.

"Fine," Challis said. "We'll register. It does all sound amazing, if there's any way we can do it. If maccotons really are real. The training, the very idea of them throwing money at us to join them and enroll into the FHF, it's a sign from above. Even if we're being forced into it. He said they need us. And maybe they can pull some strings for us concerning Rib-eye, and we can really make it work. But only if we do it as a team."

"I know, and of –"

"Listen," she said firmly. "We'd have to work together. But you've already jeopardized that."

His smile disappeared. Challis leaned forward and waited until he was really listening.

"Whatever agreement you made with those men," she whispered carefully, "has already gone off-road. You've been in close contact with them this whole time, and for what? A couple of flux jumper shots instead of actually helping with our debt payments? And look at you: even I can tell you've muscled up in six cycles more than in five years of stable work. But you can't remember a single thing you did yesterday. And you didn't keep your side of the deal for Corvin's racing gear. I know, I messed up too." Challis sat back, not taking her eyes off him. "But I set it right with him. You, though, you're letting your memory get worse and worse by depending on this flux stimulant. That's what it is, Ras. A narcotic. I saw you with it yesterday. It's addictive, isn't it, and dangerous. Am I wrong?"

He just stared down at the table, grinding one fist into the other.

"Well?"

He shrugged tiredly. "What do you want me to say."

"Say that you'll drop it." Challis' voice went hard. "Or else we're not registering."

At that, his hand slammed down.

"Gierdammt, Challis, that's not fair!"

Challis was aware of twenty pairs of eyes on them. She wanted to keep talking, but enough had been said. In a beat of clarity she'd learned from her father's expertise, she sat there and waited. Eye contact when he was ready for it, but until then, let the words sink in.

Except they didn't. Rasalas had shut down. Challis inhaled slowly and concentrated on the flux inside him until she was seeing through his eyes, but he wasn't focusing on anything in front of him. The soft tissue in his brain that could have sponged up Challis' words was hardening into serious anger. In fact, he was having difficulty keeping it in.

A bright voice broke the silence and scattered it like woodchips.

"How's the food?"

Rasalas jumped with a clatter and dashed a hand over his chin.

Through his eyes, Challis recognized the bouncy brown updo and rather plump build of Onaya Derrick, youngest of the twelve children of old Rib-eye himself. She carried a jubilant, confident air about her as infectious as a fresh flux wave.

"Looking really good today," Onaya went on. "Messy, too." She eyed the mango and Rasalas' empty tray. "I'm surprised there's anything left. Typical." Her gaze landed on Rasalas, whose wits had scattered woodchiplike as well.

Then, in an unexpected move, Onaya swept one hand up the opposite circunet, the hum of the device quickly rising and falling. She stepped closer to Rasalas and reached toward his face, but then slid her fingers back into his greasy hair so that the circunet was pressing against his cheek. He stared at her. A hot flash broke over his skin.

Challis pulled out of his mind with a hard tug and shot to her feet, her hip banging the edge.

"What are you doing?"

Onaya had gone rock-still, her mouth open in a silent gasp before she snatched her hand back. She blinked at Challis with a quick, breathy smile.

"Grada lakas," she said, the Kelvidic expression rolling off her tongue. "So it is true. Just a touch…"

"Coming, 'Naya?"

Thax approached her side. Oblivious, he placed a hand around her waist and looked longingly over at the scaled mullet. "Even my bones are hungry."

Onaya rolled her eyes and winked at Challis. Then she went off with Thax toward the platforms.

Challis lifted eyebrows at Rasalas. His ears were red as parrots and he didn't seem to know what to do with his mouth. One hand was clamped over the patch on his neck.

"What was that?" he asked stupidly.

She gave the most noncommittal shrug she could. "Don't look at me. You remember her father was our boss, right?"

"No, I – yes, of course, I… I just want to know why her brothers let a string bean like Tofflar –" Rasalas pushed hard to his feet. "Forget it. Let's move."

Challis went to grab a handful of filet chips and jogged to catch up.

Along the canyon walls, rapidly warming air was rising. Small breezes funneled into rock formations to become gusts of wind that flapped the twins' clothing and set the windcatchers alive with color. A loaded donkey-cart squeezed past, then a cluster of children too young to be playing on the cliffside unsupervised.

Many of the balconies on this side of the canyon had fountains. The small raised pools sat at intervals down the cliff face in a slow trickle from the mountains above into the city's pipes below. The Gannagens stopped at one of these, hidden around a corner from the grounds but closest to the office where they would register – and pray that their names hadn't been crossed out of the system already since yesterday.

Challis scrubbed at her teeth and sat back to let her hair soak. The relief on her skull was almost enough to push away the stress of the morning, or perhaps it would have if the stress wasn't splashing around right next to her. Rasalas dunked his whole head in the water and shook it about before retying his sweatkerchief around his neck.

A returning patrol coasted into the sky above Oedolos and wheeled around to touch down out of sight in the grounds. Challis listened to the squalls of Polescos' finest and tried to relax.

"Will you hurry it up?" Rasalas said, glancing around as if expecting to see FHF agents closing in on them at any moment, jackers in hand.

"In a tick." Challis closed her eyes to send her awareness over into his head. The city sharpened into clear lines and shadows, a myriad of stonework dotted by puffs of dust. But then Rasalas' gaze fell on a single rooftop. Even from this distance, he could clearly see both Haskes sitting in the shade of an adjacent building. Or, Jakko was sitting – Drunnel was leaning against the wall, nodding while Jakko talked. The cord had slid out from under Jakko's collar to hang down on either side of his neck, knotted ends swinging slightly.

Rasalas was watching it.

"How much did they tell you about that thing?" he asked.

Challis frowned, unsure how much to tell him.

"Wait," Rasalas' voice came again.

Jakko had straightened to make a surreptitious glance around him. Unaware of those watching from high up the canyon wall, and unaware that even uncanny Gannagens could see him from that distance, he took hold of the wire with his hands. He arranged it to cross in front of his throat, one knot in each fist. Before Challis had time to wonder why, Jakko yanked hard on both ends. The wire stretched taut, then with a small spray of light it vanished into the back of his neck and out the front. The rope flung forward without leaving a mark on his skin, and whirled in the air between his fists. Jakko shuddered, the quiver barely visible. Then he nonchalantly tucked the cord behind his neck again.

Meanwhile, Drunnel had hardly bothered to look at him and acted as if nothing had happened. He was bent over, rubbing his knees like an old man.

Rasalas turned to see Challis sitting up with her mouth open, water dripping unnoticed into her eyes.

She tugged back into her own mind to see an odd expression on her brother's face.

"You saw that?" Rasalas whispered.

"What ni kirrne was that?" Challis asked at the same time. She tied her hair up in the sweatkerchief. "That's a mite more than he showed me."

"It's out of your – our – depth," Rasalas said. "Definitely something that shouldn't be, um…" He turned. "What are you looking at?"

A trio of thrikes had burst into view, coming at them from the grounds with alarming accuracy as if they were beacons in the cliff. Challis and Rasalas backed away as the thrikes flapped up, six batlike wings narrowly avoiding each other as they and their riders landed on either side where they would block the path. One thrike landed and clung to the rocks before lowering itself onto the walkway with scraping, gangly movements.

The first rider, a cadet, de-helmeted and tucked it under his arm, while the other two windworkers did the same. Those two were women. All three Vortesharken kept their thrikes' reins wrapped around their half-gloved fingers, while the animals themselves peered menacingly over their shoulders.

The Gannagens turned wary eyes down to the man in the middle. His red hair was even more helmet-flat than yesterday.