Stoneskin Page 12

  They kissed under a shop’s floating sign, slow and sweet. They had learned that if they took their time, she would start to feel Kalais’s lips against hers (and he could keep his skin intact). When they broke apart, he touched her lips.

  “Too rough?” she asked.

  “No,” he replied, as he ran his fingers across the curve of her face. “Your skin’s getting softer.”

  “Good.” She pulled him towards her—

  Behind them, Bayle coughed. Loudly.

  Tembi turned, and Kalais buried his face in her hair, laughing. “May we help you?” she asked Bayle.

  “I’m sorry, I thought you wanted to see this show.” Bayle was examining her manicure. “Was I wrong? I was obviously wrong.”

  The three of them set out to catch up with the others. The club was halfway across Hub, in the part of town that Tembi visited when she was missing home and Matindi wasn’t around for a quick jump to Adhama. Tembi took them through the streets until they bumped into some people with their faces painted up in wild patterns. They all formed a pack, moving ever-closer to the club.

  Most of the clubs in Hub played up the city’s connection to Lancaster. Face paint was a must; so were tricks using anti-grav units to make it seem like the Deep was present and willing to bend to the whims of the dancers. Off-worlders loved the idea that there might be Witches in the room; Tembi and her friends loved how no one would ever suspect there were.

  Music met them on the street: strong, powerful music set to a rainbow of near-blinding lights. They started dancing even before they got through the doors, catching the heavy beat and pushing forward with the rest of the crowd. Rabbit managed to talk the bouncers into letting Tembi and Kalais in, and the five of them danced their way into a room made of sound and light and the heady scents of alcohol and movement.

  This club was in an abandoned warehouse. The room was a cavern, the air filled with various ’bots and dancers. They had entered at the top of a tall metal staircase; below was a floor lit in glowing bronze, nearly lost beneath the dancers.

  Steven stood, eyes closed and taking in the layout of the room through his ears and nose, before he jumped over a railing and used the Deep to float gently downward, stopping just above the dance floor.

  “Watch this!” Tembi shouted to Kalais, and pointed at Steven.

  Steven began to dance. The colored lights from the ’bots overhead bounced off of his scales, turning him into a prism of moving color. He was riding the Deep, dancing a full two meters above the floor, moving above the heads of the other dancers. Hands reached up to grab him; he let two girls and a very pretty boy catch hold of his robes and pull him down to join them.

  “Do they know he’s a real Witch?” Kalais shouted at Tembi.

  “It doesn’t matter here!” she shouted back.

  The two of them found the stairs and pushed their way down to the dance floor. They found an anti-grav field and let it carry them up to a patch of empty air somewhere near the bar. For Tembi, dancing was a little like singing—not as close as sparring, but not too far apart, either—she gave herself over to it and let herself move.

  Kalais was self-conscious, holding himself rigidly tight as he stared at the dancers.

  Tembi found this adorable.

  “No one cares!” she called to him, turning a somersault in midair. She flew around him, put her arms around his waist, and pulled him into the dance.

  The Deep was happy; it held up Kalais as it did Tembi, and they soared higher than the anti-grav units allowed.

  Kalais finally let himself go.

  He was a good dancer, taking advantage of the Deep to soar through the air. She barely noticed when the show started: the music changed, a fast switch from channel to live, and the band started playing. There was more emotion in live music; she felt the Deep surge around her, dancing along with her and Kalais, moving and playing and (she was sure, although she couldn’t hear, not outside of its dreams) singing.

  “Should we be this high up?” Kalais asked, as he pushed himself away from the ceiling.

  Tembi shrugged and had the Deep take them a little closer to the floor.

  This turned out to be a good thing, as the law raided the club a minute later.

  “Scheisse,” Tembi muttered, as she and Kalais watched the law officers crash through the doors.

  The overhead lights went on. The false enchantments of the club were instantly dispelled; the reality that they were flying around a seedy abandoned warehouse blunted their good mood. The music stopped, and the anti-gravs slowly spun down so as to not dump the dancers onto the ground. Tembi asked the Deep to let her and Kalais down, slowly, and their feet touched down at the same time as the others.

  There were strict warnings, but mostly the law just wanted the club to be emptied and the dancers to go home. Tembi and Kalais almost managed to make it through the door, but just as they had reached the end of the traffic jam, a heavy hand dropped down upon her shoulder.

  She turned. The law was there, an Earth-normal man with light skin and light brown eyes.

  “You look a little young to be here, kid,” the lawman said.

  “I’m eighteen,” she said automatically.

  “Sure you are.” The lawman spotted Kalais. “You, too, right? C’mon.”

  The lawman began to steer Tembi away, expecting Kalais to follow. Tembi motioned him to fall back—she had no problems slipping the law in a busy club—but there was a harsh, “Kal!” and Rabbit was there.

  “Oh, Kal, what are you doing here?!” Rabbit said, sweeping between the lawman and Kalais. He turned to the lawman. “I’m so sorry, officer! What did he do?!”

  The lawman had seen this before. “His big brother, no doubt? Here to yell at him for following you to the club?”

  “No, I’m his boss,” Rabbit said. “We’re not related. See?”

  Rabbit flared his gills. It was sudden; the lawman wasn’t expecting a man who looked Earth-normal to have an exploding neck. He dropped his hold on Tembi’s shoulder; she grabbed Kalais’s hand and started running.

  The lawman shouted and started after them, but Rabbit was there, saying he wanted to help, he could give the officer their names, why wouldn’t the officer just allow him to help?

  Tembi ducked another lawman and dropped into the crowd of dancers leaving through a side door, pulling Kalais behind her. They broke into the evening air; two more of the law were standing outside, checking each face with a screener ’bot as the people left the building. She didn’t stop to learn if they were waiting for her and Kalais. Instead, she reached out to the Deep, and the two of them began gliding up the outside of the warehouse as if they could run up walls.

  Because with the Deep around them, they could!

  “Tembi—”

  “Don’t look down,” she told him, and ignored how the people below were gasping and pointing at them.

  They didn’t stop running when they hit the roof. Tembi and the Deep took Kalais in long leaping strides across the streets and rooftops, putting distance between them and the warehouse. She was laughing; Kalais was on the verge of screaming, but from terror or delight? She couldn’t tell.

  (Probably terror, at first. Delight was slower and always took some time to catch up.)

  She stopped when they reached a giant floating sign advertising a popular brand of self-cleaning diapers for infants. She dropped into a quiet niche and pulled Kalais down beside her, still laughing.

  Kalais was laughing, too: the terror had burned off and he was riding the adrenaline rush of their escape across the city. “We didn’t have to run,” he managed. “They didn’t care about us! We’ll never find the others—”

  “Shut up,” she said, and grabbed his shirt to pull him into a kiss. And then they were laughing and kissing at the same time, and he was making little “ow!” sounds until they slowed down enough to leave the skin on his lips.

  “Oh, that was fun,” she said.

  “The kissing or the chase?”

/>   “All of it!” she shouted, and fell across his legs to look up at the stars. It was late enough so Hub’s lights had dimmed across the city; even the diaper sign had stopped glowing. The sky was alive and brilliant.

  “How are nights like tonight going to help your stress?” he asked. “I mean, I’m okay with taking things slow, but I thought you wanted to get yourself back to Earth-normal?”

  Tembi started laughing again. “Why wouldn’t tonight help?” she asked, and showed him her prize: the lawman’s badge glittered against her open palm.

  His eyes went wide, the dark lenses flipping up beneath his eyelids so he could see in the low light. “Tembi,” he said. “The lawman must have missed it by now! You’ve got to give that back!”

  “Why?” she asked, half-serious. “If it’s the last time I steal something—”

  —a push of colors against the back of her mind, like a very stern nudge, followed by the tap-tap-tapping of a multicolored many-taloned foot—

  “—oh, fine,” she sighed.

  You stole a car for me, she thought, as loudly as she could. You don’t get to be judgey about this!

  Still, when she asked the Deep to take the badge to its rightful owner, the badge vanished from her hand.

  She snuggled against Kalais’s shoulder, her hands wrapped around his, and waited for the Deep to tell Bayle where to find them.

  _________________________________

  LISTEN

  Excerpt from “Notes from the Deep,” 6 November 3400 CE

  _________________________________

  Chapter Fourteen

  “They’re fighting again.”

  Kalais replied by snoring.

  They had been watching channels in Tembi’s room, but Tembi was exhausted from this new experience of multitasking her classwork and a boyfriend, and she had fallen asleep on the floor. Kalais had curled up against her, big spoon to her little spoon, and had fallen asleep as well.

  She had woken to the sound of voices. Matindi and Matthew had gotten home from work about an hour ago, and had launched straight into the cold point-counterpoint rhythm of their strongest disagreements. The walls blurred their words, but Tembi was able to move her ears without waking Kalais, and she had been able to follow most of the conversation through the airflow partitions.

  They were angry. They had been angry a lot recently; Matthew was spending more time than ever at Matindi’s house, but much of it was spent fighting with Matindi, or asking Tembi when she was going to stop her strange habit of talking out loud to the Deep.

  (Tembi didn’t like how Matthew kept asking her when she was going to stop. Stop talking to the Deep like it was a friend. Stop going out to Hub at night. Stop drawing eyebrows on the cat. Stop, stop, stop!)

  Tonight, they were angry about the Sabenta.

  Rabbit and Kalais were always willing to talk about the Sabenta, but while those conversations began easily enough, they turned into difficult ones very quickly. Tembi had decided to sidestep those conversations altogether, and, late one night after Matindi had gone to bed, had stolen her holo from the kitchen counter to read what Lancaster’s Tower Council thought.

  Lancaster’s reports were exhaustive. Tembi reaffirmed the basic details she already knew, such as how the Sabenta were a community of people in Sagittarius, and they had been targeted by the system’s government for eradication. There was a civil war throughout their system between those who wanted the Sabenta dead and those who didn’t. The Earth Assembly hadn’t put a stop to it because religion was a factor: under the codes of conduct followed by all members in the Assembly, a religious cause of conflict meant that the participants had to fight it out amongst themselves.

  She also learned new information—or at least she had learned information which was new to her—such as how the Sabenta were likely to be the first of many different peoples targeted by the Sagittarius Armed Forces. The SAF had been pushing a religious ideology that bioformed humans weren’t true humans and shouldn’t be allowed to interbreed with Earth-normal humans; this seemed to have been accepted by enough Earth-normals within the Sagittarius system to result in war. As the Sabenta had put up the most resistance to the SAF and its leaders, they had become the first to be targeted.

  (There was also one troubling report that Tembi wanted to talk about but couldn’t, as she had accessed it with Matindi’s personal passcodes and she didn’t want to admit she knew those. In this report, many members of the Earth Assembly appeared receptive to the SAF’s efforts to…uh…remove…bioformed humans. None of the delegates to the Assembly would come out and say that they were in favor of killing, oh no, but whoever had written the report had taken the time to note that they were Earth-normal themselves, and that fact alone had made many members of the Assembly willing to talk about possible futures.)

  These action reports had helped Tembi understand why Rabbit wanted Lancaster to get involved. It wasn’t just about convenience: if the Sabenta had access to the Deep, they could move in and out of the battleground more quickly than Sagittarius’ armed forces; they could evacuate planets, or move supplies behind trade blockades without anyone’s knowledge; and, since Lancaster would be opening transportation routes instead of joining the fighting, they could make the case to the Assembly that they weren’t directly involved in a religious conflict.

  All of this hinged on whether or not Lancaster decided they should help the Sabenta. And right now, Lancaster was staying out of it.

  Matindi and Matthew each had opinions about that: loud ones.

  “This is about your war,” Tembi whispered to Kalais. She was amazed he could sleep through the shouting.

  No response. Not even a snore.

  Tembi listened until Matindi and Matthew changed and left, off to yet another fancy dinner for Lancaster’s Tower Council. Then, she let herself drift back to sleep.

  When she awoke, Kalais was gone. She stood and stretched, and went to find him. He was in the kitchen, standing by the table. The house was dark, and he was illuminated by the glow from the single worklight over Matindi’s cooking station. He was flipping through a holo projection, taking in each screen at a rapid pace before flipping to the next one.

  She moved quietly, bare feet padding across the warm wooden floors. When he heard her coming, he jerked away from the holos with an embarrassed grin, and flipped the display off.

  “Those are Matindi’s?” she asked. She didn’t really need an answer. She had read those reports herself; besides, he was squirming.

  “I don’t know,” he sighed. “You were sleeping and I wanted a snack, and the holo was on…”

  “Sure,” she said, as she plopped into one of the kitchen chairs. “Because Matindi always leaves her holo on.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “Caught.”

  “Yup. Reading reports about your war?”

  “Yeah.” Kalais pulled out the chair nearest to her and sat, head in his hands. He shot her a timid grin. “Moment of weakness. I won’t do that again.”

  “How’s it going?” she asked. “The war, I mean.”

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” he muttered.

  Tembi opened her mouth and closed it, once, twice… She was sure there was a way to address this…this hypocrisy of catching him snooping around in Matindi’s personal notes about the war, and then refusing to talk about that very topic!

  There was probably a way to do it without starting a fight.

  Maybe.

  He saw her gaping like an angry fish. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Listen, do you want to go for a walk? Drop me off at the hopper pad on the way back? It’s getting late.”

  The clock on the wall put the time at just after sundown, but she had been the one who had fallen asleep first. It wasn’t the first time he had taken pity on her and let her get to bed at a reasonable hour. She agreed, and they set out across the grounds.

  It was dark enough for him to flip his protective lenses up and gaze at Lancaster in the dim light. “This place is r
eally beautiful,” he said. “You’re lucky you live here.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “Some parts of Lancaster are nicer than the others, though. The gardens around the Tower and the Pavilion? Those are wonderful.”

  “Have you shown me the Pavilion yet?”

  “No,” she replied. “It’s usually occupied. I think that’s where the Council is having their dinner party tonight.”

  “Can we sneak in? You can show me around real quick—I’d love to see the building.”

  “What? Crash a fancy party?” She feigned shock, then said, “Yeah, sure. The students do it all the time for the leftovers.”

  “Free food?” Kalais’s eyes went dark as his lenses dropped down, and he offered Tembi his arm. “Lead on, Miss Stoneskin.”

  She took him across the grounds, to where the lawns blurred into tall grass and wildflowers. There was a path behind a tall rock wall, and they followed this until the sounds of chamber music began to reach them on the breeze.

  “I thought the old Witches hated music,” Kalais said softly.

  “They do, but everyone else expects it. Off-worlders especially,” she said. “C’mon, no need to whisper. They won’t notice us.”

  They turned the corner where the rock wall ended, and bumped into a wall of floating white cloth. Tembi lifted the edge to make a hole, and they entered the Pavilion.

  Kalais froze in his tracks with a quiet, “Oh, gods!”

  If the Tower was modeled after a shell, the Pavilion was modeled on a thicket of white roses. The dome of the Pavilion crested above them, made from strands of woven white and gold, and supported along the ground by crystal pedestals carved into the shape of leaves. Some of the branches were translucent, and light shone from within these as the Pavilion’s light source. The floor was white marble, and great sheets of heavy white cloth billowed across the entrances.

  Across the room were tables covered in more white cloth, set in crystal and gold. The only colors were the bright gemlike clothing of the Witches and their guests. Across the room, Matindi stood out: she was seated at the head table and wearing her silver dress robes, which made her green skin shine like an emerald in a ring. The woman she was sitting next to was equally as bright; she was tall, with dark skin and long curled hair dyed in all of the many prismatic colors of the Deep.