Skyglass: Chapter 6

PHOENIX

I plucked a dried bonfire pepper from the bouquet of spicy edibles I’d purchased a moment ago and popped it in my mouth, just to keep it busy, as Zinn and I strolled through the Abyss’ submarket. I liked the place’s buzz–the glittery smoke zipping around the ramshackle stalls and precarious cloth towers sprawled beneath the toothy ceiling of a giant cave–but inside, I fizzled, my nerves pounding like rapids. I scarfed another pepper and sought calm in its juicy scorch.

“Moss said you need my help,” Zinn said, peering at me as we turned a corner and climbed into one of the towers, following the smell of sour delectables burbling in oil. I swallowed my pepper viciously. The corners of my mouth were tight.

I hated asking for help.

I turned the tense energy straining at my lips into a smile. “No,” I amended. “I need your complicity.”

The copper sparks in his eyes dulled. I wrinkled my nose in disappointment. “How so?” he asked.

“If I tell you, you’ll refuse.” We reached the top of the tower; I halted. There was a giant pot of wrinkle-faced citroberries boiling away in the middle of the floor, tended by a child barely taller than the pot.

Zinn looked at me instead of the pot. “I’ll refuse if you don’t.”

The child had turned away from the berries for a moment, so I scooped my hand through the oil, threw back my head, and tossed the handful of greasy, heat-popping berries straight down my gullet. I grinned at Zinn with steam creeping out between my teeth, puffing from beneath the edge of my hood, and was pleased to see his eyes widen ever so slightly.

“I’m not human,” I said.

“No, you aren’t,” Zinn replied thoughtfully. His surprise had already sunk back into unflappable serenity. A shiver thrilled in my belly; someday, I’d break his peace all the way.

“Shall we go someplace more private?” he asked.

“Are you asking me to come home with you?” I bit my bottom lip, mouth wide and hungry. I preferred the chaotic market for my secret-telling, but I wasn’t going to decline an invitation to his abode.

“Yes, but not for fucking. I just want to see your face while we talk.” He tugged at the edge of my silky hood. “If I’m going to help you, there needs to be trust between us, and I can’t trust you if I can’t see your eyes.”

I choked back a scoff. Trust! Ha. He was human, and humans were as trustworthy as a gang of repo-sharks teetering on the edge of starvation. But living with humans for years had made me good at lying, so I tipped back my hood the tiniest bit, just enough to let the market’s lights illuminate my eyes. “Let’s go home, then,” I said.

In his flat, we knelt across from each other, our knees just kissing. Zinn lived in a single, simple room–nothing more than a small cube. He had a pallet for sleeping in one corner, a chest for clothing nearby, a stand for his bass, and not much else. I glanced out the wide window on the far wall; though winter was showing its rainy teeth outside, the inside of Zinn’s place was humid and warm, draped as it was in the curly tangle of biomass that clung to the walls and ceiling.

Zinn took a drink of his nut-brew. The corner of his mouth twitched as it went down; he’d spiked it with apple brandy that smelled of hazelnut and caramel.

When he finished his sip, I took it from his hands and gulped down the remainder, wishing for a moment that alcohol could mellow me like it did regular humans. Telling Moss had been so easy–but only because Moss was Moss. I could tell him anything because he just didn’t give a piss.

“So,” Zinn began, reclaiming the empty cup. “You aren’t human. Then what are you? And how does it relate to the help you need from me?”

I studied him for a moment. His hair was the same color as his plants, but his eyebrows were golden. I wondered if they were naturally so, and–if they were–why he hadn’t matched them to the color sprouting from his scalp.

I sighed. “To be true, I don’t even know if you can help me. All Moss said was that I should talk to you.” I pursed my lips. “I’ll say this much: I’m looking for someone. A very nasty someone.” I shook my hood off my head and mussed my hair into feathery spikes of candle flame. “Your turn now: I want to know how you’re gonna help me.”

He shrugged. “I have a little business on the side. Well, in here mostly,” he said, brushing a finger over his temple. “I have two coms. Not many know about the second.” He closed the space between us, lifting his face a bit so our foreheads met gently. “I’m a needle, Phoenix. I rip apart the seams and serge the digital fabric that connects everyone to everyone–except you, of course.”

He settled back, breaking our contact, and sat cross-legged on the floor. “You don’t have a com. Not anymore, at least. You went to Removal a few weeks back and had yours extricated.”

My nails bit skin as I clenched my hands. How much did he already know? He looked so calm, yet I could feel danger spewing from his mouth with every word. I kept my lips zipped, though; I needed to know what he knew. About me. About my hunt.

“You were quite popular–once I saw your face and did a little searching, it was easy to find you out.” He laughed.

“What else do you know? What else did you find with your little pricker?”

Zinn frowned. “Sadly, not much. You like sex, though I didn’t need to be a needle to figure that one out.” The smile snuck back a little; I was almost surprised to see its shyness. “You seem to be partial to orgies–or at least, you have an obsession with them. Beyond all that, and your impressive fashion sense, I really have no idea. Your Blowups are all beautiful and steamy, sure, but I couldn’t use their narratives to learn much about you–finding the line between fiction and the rest of existence is difficult. Never trust a story.”

“Good job, sweetling,” I breathed. “Not the most impressive needlework, but still–you found me out.” I chuckled, and added, “In all the least important ways.”

He reached to his left and took his bass off its stand. “There was one other thing,” he added, as he rested his instrument across his legs and drifted his thumb lightly over its strings. “Something about fire, and revenge. Just a whisper I picked up from a far-off Intelligence in a backwater settlement, but it felt honest.” He met my eyes. I nearly shuddered; he was closer to the truth than expected. His green gaze had gone hard and shiny. The copper in it looked spiky, wicked.

“I know about revenge,” he murmured. “And I’d like to help you.” He bent his head then, and played a bouncy, cheerful tune shimmering over with high notes that pinged like sugarsparks in my teeth. “However,” he added, over his happy song, “I won’t help you for free. I want something in return.”

I pushed my hands forward to rest on his knees, wishing his bass would disappear so I could slide them farther up. Beneath my palms, I felt the faintest spasm of muscle. “What do you want?” I asked. I liked this new intensity of his. It was tempting enough that I felt inclined to pretend to trust him.

Zinn stopped playing. “Let me teach you how to meditate. Do that, and I’ll help you get revenge.”

I wrinkled up my nose. “Meditate. Ugh. Why?”

“Because it’s fun. And because I think you could do with a little peace of mind.”

I scrunched up my nose, putting on an air of deep thought. Meditation sounded dreadful and bland, but if he helped me find father number two, I’d do it. I could sit still and pretend my mind was an empty, boring place. And if I failed, I could always use the time to plot for a future of blood-ash and heat-cracked bones.

“Yes,” I agreed at last. “I’ll let you show me how to shut up my mind.”

Zinn leaned back on his hands, looking content. “Very good,” he said. “Now tell me.”

I rolled my eyes. Tell him? How boring. Why use words when blood would do?

I stuck my tongue out and drove my teeth deep into its flesh. “Give me your hand,” I said, as the syrupy fire of my blood welled up. He didn’t hesitate. I lolled my tongue out over his palm and let a droplet hot and bright as napalm splat onto his skin. It sizzled and danced there, but Zinn didn’t flinch.

I watched him stare at his newly blistered patch of skin. I didn’t trust him, but I was frustrated, and desperate, and bored with all the rotting dead ends–and maybe the tiniest, stupidest bit enamored.

“I’m not human,” I told him finally. “I’m fire–fire on a hunt for her father. I’ve done all right, tracking him down on my own, but I’ve reached a point where–as much as I loathe to admit it–I need help.”

Zinn smiled and nodded, like fire and father-hunting were the most common things in all the cosmos. Then he cocked his head to the side. “Anything else?”

I leveled my evilest glower in his direction. “No,” I said. I had to keep something to myself, which was why I’d left out my feline inclinations, as well as my murder plans. He wasn’t apathetic, like Moss; who knew how he’d react?

Even so, I didn’t doubt that Zinn might guess my hunt was a bloodthirsty one. Zinn was calm, according to the skin on his face–perhaps even in his deepest crypts and crevices, he was calm. But something about him was off-kilter. Bloody.

And, true to the whims of my curious cat-self, I wanted to burn the man up and find him out.

Proceed to Chapter 6, page 3–>