Cress (27 page)

“What do you think?” asked Jina.

Cress beamed. “It’s breathtaking.”

Jina scanned the surrounding market stalls and building fronts as if she’d never really looked at them before. “This has always been one of my favorite stops along our route, but you would hardly recognize it from a couple decades ago. When I was first learning the trade, Kufra was one of the most beautiful cities in the Sahara … but then the plague struck. Nearly two-thirds of the population was annihilated in only a few years, and many more fled to other towns, or left Africa altogether. Homes and businesses were abandoned, crops left to burn beneath the sun. They’ve been trying to recover ever since.”

Cress blinked, and looked again, past the beautiful ornamentation and vibrantly painted walls, trying to see the town that Jina described, but she couldn’t. “It doesn’t seem abandoned.”

“Not here, on the main square. But if you head out to the northern or eastern neighborhoods, it’s practically a ghost town. Very sad.”

“It was very wealthy, then?” said Thorne, cocking his head. “Before the plague?”

“Oh, yes. Kufra was on many of the trade routes between the uranium mines in central Africa and the Mediterranean. One of Earth’s most valuable resources, and we nearly have a monopoly on it. Excepting Australia, but there’s plenty of demand to share.”

“Uranium,” Thorne said. “For nuclear power.”

“It also powers most of today’s spaceship engines.”

Thorne whistled, sounding impressed, though Cress thought he had probably already known that.

“Follow me,” said Jina. “There’s a hotel around the corner.”

Jina led them through the cramped maze of market stalls, passing everything from crates overflowing with dark sugar dates to tables lined with fresh goat cheeses to a med-droid clinic offering free blood scans.

Leaving the market lanes behind, they passed through a worn gate into a courtyard garden, filled with more palms and a tree with big yellow fruits hanging from its branches. Cress beamed when she recognized them and ached to tell Thorne about the lemons, but managed to smother her excitement.

They stepped into a small lobby, with an arched doorway that led into a dining area where some people were crowded around a table playing cards. The room smelled sweetly perfumed and heady, almost intoxicating.

Jina approached a girl who sat behind the desk and they spoke in their other language, before she turned back to them. “They’re going to keep your room on our tab. They have a small kitchen here—order whatever you need. I have work to do, but I will ask about some shoes for you when I have a chance.”

Cress thanked her repeatedly until Jina trotted off to complete her business.

“Room eight, upstairs,” said the clerk, handing Cress a small tag embedded with a sensor key. “And please do join us for our nightly Royals competition in the lobby restaurant to your left. The first three hands are complimentary to guests.”

Thorne cocked his head toward the dining area. “You don’t say.”

Cress eyed the players gathered around the table. “Do you want to go see?”

“No, not right now. Let’s find our room.”

On the second floor, Cress found the door marked with a black-painted 8. As she swiped the tag and opened the door, her attention landed first on a bed set against the wall, draped with cream-colored netting that hung from four tall posts. Pillows and blankets with gold embroidery and tassels were more elaborate by far than the linens she’d had on the satellite, and infinitely more inviting.

“Describe,” said Thorne, shutting the door behind them.

She gulped. “Um. Well. There’s … a bed.”

Thorne gasped. “What? This hotel room comes with a
bed
?”

She scowled. “I mean, there’s only one.”

“We are married, darling.” He wandered around the room until his cane struck the writing desk.

“That’s a little desk,” she said. “There’s a netscreen above it. And over here’s a window.” She pulled back the curtains. The angled sunlight cut across the floor. “We can see the whole main street from here.”

She heard a thud and spun around. Thorne had kicked off his shoes and collapsed spread-eagle on the mattress. She smiled, wanting little more than to crawl up beside him and rest her head on his shoulder and sleep for a long, long time.

But there was
one
thing she wanted even more.

Through the room’s only other door, she could make out a tiny porcelain sink and an old-fashioned claw-foot tub. “I’m going to take a bath.”

“Good idea. I’ll be right behind you.”

Her eyes widened, but Thorne was already laughing. He propped himself up on his elbows. “I mean,” he said, flicking his fingers through the air, “I’ll take one when you’re done.”

“Right,” she murmured, and slipped into the washroom.

Cress may not have ever been in an Earthen washroom before, but she knew enough to realize that this was not the top of latrine-technological advancement. The small overhead light functioned via an actual switch on the wall, rather than computer, and the sink faucet had two water-spotted handles for warm and cold. The shower was a giant metal disk positioned over the free-standing tub and a lot of the white porcelain had been damaged with time, revealing black cast iron underneath. A bar was hung with plush white towels, in far better shape than the towel Cress had used on the satellite.

She pulled her clothes off with more than one sigh of contentment. Her bottom layers clung to her with a layer of sweat and grime. The bandages on her feet were filled with sand and dried blood, but the blisters had been reduced to raw pinkish skin. She threw everything into a pile on the floor and turned on the water. It came on hard and cold. She got in as soon as she could stand it and found that it felt shockingly good against the sunburns on her face and legs.

The water heated fast and soon a cloud of steam was wafting up around her. She found a bar of soap, packaged in waxy paper. With a moan of ecstasy, Cress sat down in the water and lathered up her hair, amazed at how short and light and easy to clean it was.

As she soaked, she started to hum, imagining her favorite opera music blaring through the satellite speakers. Surrounding and uplifting her. Her quiet humming turned into singing, the words whimsical and foreign. She sang one of her slow Italian favorites, humming the melody when she forgot the words. By the time she reached the end of the song, she was beaming beneath the fall of water.

Cress opened her eyes. Thorne was leaning against the washroom’s doorway.

She pushed herself to the back of the tub and wrapped her arms over her chest. A cascade of water splashed onto the floor. “Captain!”

His grin widened. “Where did you learn to sing like that?”

Her face flamed. “I—I don’t—I’m not wearing any clothes!”

He raised an eyebrow. “Yes. I’m aware of that.” He pointed to his eyes. “No need to rub it in.”

Cress curled her toes against the bottom of the tub. “You shouldn’t have been … you shouldn’t…”

He held up his hands. “All right, fine, I’m sorry. But that was beautiful, Cress. Really. What language was it?”

She shivered, despite the steam. “Old Italian. I don’t know what all the words mean.”

“Huh.” He turned toward the sink. “Well … I liked it.”

Her mortification began slipping away as she watched him fumble around for the faucet.

“Do you see any washcloths?”

She told him where to find them and after knocking a second bar of soap onto the floor, he had found a clean cloth and was soaking it in the sink.

“I think I might go down to the lobby for a bit,” he said, swiping the cloth over his face and leaving streaks of clean amid the dirt.

“Why?”

“See if I can get more information on this place. If we can find one of those abandoned neighborhoods, that would be the best place for Cinder and the others to come get us … after we contact them.”

“If you give me a minute, I can…” She trailed off, gaping at Thorne as he peeled off his shirt. Her heart stuck in her throat as she watched him wring out the cloth, before washing off his arms and neck, chest and underarms. Setting the cloth aside, he cupped his hands beneath the faucet and slicked water through his hair.

Her fingers twitched with the sudden irrepressible desire to touch him.

“That’s all right,” he said, as if she hadn’t just lost the ability to form coherent sentences. “I’ll bring us back some food.”

Cress splashed herself with the water, willing her brain to focus. “But—you said there are things to trip over and that I shouldn’t leave you and … don’t you want me to come?”

His hand searched around the walls until it stumbled across one of the hanging towels. He pulled it off the rack and briskly rubbed it over his face and through his hair, making it stand on end. “No need. I won’t be long.”

“But how will you—”

“Really, Cress. I’ll be fine. Maybe you can take a look at that netscreen, see if you can figure out some way to contact the crew.” He grabbed his shirt from the counter and shook it out, sending dust and sand flying, before pulling it over his head. He retied the bandanna over his eyes. “Be honest. Do I look like a famous wanted criminal right now?”

He struck a pose, complete with dazzling smile. With the messy hair, filthy clothes, and bandanna, she had to admit that he was almost unrecognizable from his prison photo. Yet somehow still heart-throbbingly gorgeous.

She sighed. “No. You don’t.”

“Good. I’ll see about getting us some clean clothes while I’m down there too.”

“Are you sure you don’t need me?”

“I was overreacting before. We’re in civilization now. I’ve got this.”

He was all charisma as he blew her a kiss and left.

Twenty-Nine

Stepping back from the Rampion’s hulking side, Cinder shaded her eyes with one arm and peered up at their slipshod work. Jacin was still up on one of the squeaky metal ladders the townspeople had brought them, painting over all that remained of the ship’s signature decoration—the lounging naked lady, the mascot that Thorne had painted himself before Cinder had ever met him. Cinder had hated the painting from the moment she laid eyes on it, but now she was sad to see it covered up. Like she was erasing a part of Thorne, a part of his memory.

But word had gotten out through the media that the wanted ship had this very specific marking, and that was unacceptable.

Swiping a bead of sweat from her brow, Cinder surveyed the rest of their work. They didn’t have enough paint to cover the entire ship, so they’d opted to focus on the main ramp’s enormous side panel, so that it would at least look like that exterior piece had been fully replaced, which wasn’t uncommon, rather than looking like they had tried to cover something up, which would defeat the purpose.

Unfortunately, it seemed that as much black paint had ended up on the dusty ground and the townspeople, who had come out in droves to help them, than had actually ended up on the ship. Cinder herself had paint dried on her collarbone, her temple, clumped in her hair, and stuck in the joints of her metal hand, but she was relatively unscathed compared with some of their assistants. The children in particular, eager to be helpful at first, had soon made a game of seeing who could paint up their bodies to look the most cyborg.

It was a strange sort of honor. Since Cinder had arrived, she’d been seeing this mimicry more and more. The backs of T-shirts illustrated with bionic spines. Shoes decorated with bits of assorted metal. Necklaces hung with washers and vintage lug nuts.

One girl had even been proud to show Cinder her new, real tattoo—wires and robotic joints overtaking the skin of her left foot. Cinder had smiled awkwardly and resisted the urge to tell her that the tattoo wasn’t cybernetically accurate.

The attention made Cinder uncomfortable. Not because she wasn’t flattered, but because she wasn’t used to it. She wasn’t used to being accepted by strangers, even appreciated. She wasn’t used to being admired.

“Hey, mongrels, try to stay in the lines!”

Cinder looked up, just as Jacin flicked his paintbrush, sending a splatter of black paint at the three children beneath him. They all shrieked with laughter and ran for cover beneath the ship’s underside.

Wiping her hands on her cargo pants, Cinder went to look at the finger painting the kids had been doodling on the other side of the ramp’s plating. Simple stick figures depicted a family holding hands. Two adults. Three children of various heights. And at the end—Cinder. She knew it was her by the ponytail jutting out from the side of her head and how one of the stick figure’s legs was twice as wide as the other.

She shook her head, baffled.

The ladder shook beside her as Jacin clambered down. “You should wipe it off,” he said, unhooking a damp rag from his belt.

“It’s not hurting anything.”

Scoffing, Jacin draped the rag over her shoulder. “The whole point of this is to get rid of obvious markings.”

“But it’s so small.…”

“Since when are you so sentimental?”

She blew a strand of hair out of her face. “Fine.” Pulling the rag off her shoulder, she set to scrubbing the paint off before it could dry. “I thought I was the one giving the orders around here.”

“I hope you don’t really think I’m here just to be bossed around some more.” Jacin dropped his paintbrush into a bucket at the ladder’s base. “I’ve taken enough orders in my life.”

Cinder refolded the rag, searching for a spot that wasn’t already soaked through with paint. “You have a funny way of showing loyalty.”

Chuckling to himself, though Cinder wasn’t sure what he found so amusing, Jacin stepped back and peered up at the enormous black square that now made up the ship’s main ramp. “Good enough.”

Scrubbing away the last bit of the painting—her own amateur portrait—Cinder stepped back to join him. The ship no longer looked like the Rampion she’d come to think of as home. It no longer looked like the stolen ship of Captain Carswell Thorne.

She swallowed the lump in her throat.

All around her, strangers were helping to gather up the painting supplies, scrubbing paint off one another’s faces, pausing to take enormous drinks of water, and smiling. Smiling because they’d spent the morning together, accomplishing something.