Rainbird (3 page)

Petrus had been exhausted and coughing by the time Rainbird got him home. Only Turnworth’s intervention had saved him from an extended interview with the Morality League woman. Miss Levine had promised him another opportunity, though. Rainbird had tried to hustle Petrus past the bulletin board, but as bad luck would have it, he’d stopped right there for a brief rest. He’d got an eyeful of his own daughter’s face on a wanted poster. He’d gone even grayer, a tic spasming at the side of his mouth, while Rainbird stood there, wishing she could sink into the floor.

The last thing she wanted was for him to look at her and see a murderer.

The damned dracine had stood there, saying nothing, just watching out of its deep-set black eyes.

Could she really trust it to keep her identity to itself?

Back in their egg, Petrus had squeezed her shoulder with his thin, long-fingered hand before going to the wire to warn the other inspectors about Miss Levine. Words, the soul-scouring, heart-baring kind, didn’t come easily to either of them. Petrus still loved her, in spite of what she’d done. And that was enough.

Both of them were restless, Petrus coughing fitfully. Rainbird tipped the last of his medicine into him and then stared at the empty cup, worrying. Hoping that Kasir would advance her another twist of the powder. Hoping that she’d be able to get that sunmoss soon. Worrying that whatever she did was not going to be enough.

Worrying that she’d be captured, Petrus would die, the sunway would fall.

And behind it all, a crushing sense of being watched.

Petrus had slept, finally. Rainbird was too wound up, so she crept out onto the nightside and let the stars sing to her in their cold, white voices.

It helped, a little, but it didn’t quite alleviate the feeling of doom pressing in from all sides. She avoided looking at the red wanderer in the sky.

Had it spoken to her? Had it really said
am coming
? If stars could sing, could they not also talk?

The sunway quivered and Rainbird froze, desperately hoping that no one had noticed, that it hadn’t registered on the wizzes’ instruments in the Hub.

“Be still,” she whispered, laying her hand on the bone. “Hush, there. Everyone needs their rest, even you. Tired inspectors are stupid inspectors. Let everyone sleep, all right?”

A sharp crack sounded, not through bone, but through the air. Rainbird jerked her head up. The sunway itself was still.
Not
a tremor.

Someone else on the sunway? In Deep Night?

A muffled grating noise came to her ears. Rainbird ran towards the sound, then stopped on top of a rounded protrusion. There were no inspections scheduled for this section of the sunway—and who would be out in the thin air and bitter cold, this long from sunpass, when the heat from the Day Sun had long dissipated? She was used to being the only person up here at night, a dancing spark among white mountains of bone and deep valleys of shadow.

A midnight rodent, nuzzling around for bone maggots and whitefrill?

“You’re out of luck, little one,” Rainbird’s whisper didn’t extend much past her mouth. “We sweep the area clean. No food for you here.”

A shaking of the shadows, a flash of light.

Not a rodent.

Rainbird leapt off her peak, bounded down into the valley, ran-tiptoed up to the next summit. There. A figure, potbellied and thick-handed with layers, face elephantine with the oxygen mask, wrestling with cables at the edge of the sunway.

Smugglers?
On the sunway? Oh, you heard rumors, but why bother to smuggle onto Company land when Third Rib was free, forgiving, and so much easier to get to?

A wrenching sound ripped the air, ropes whipped, the figure grabbed for them and caught.

And the whole mess of person and wire and whatever was weighing it down went sliding over the edge.

Rainbird was running before she’d even registered what had happened. She twitched her shoulders. Her coat fell behind her. Unfettered by its folds, she sprinted towards the stranger.

Smuggler or not, plummeting several markers to the ground was not a pretty way to die.

She jumped over a contraption—
sled!—
, dodged a dark shape—
wire cutters!
—and snagged one hand into the collar of a Company-issued insulated coat.

She’d been prepared for weight, but not this much. She nearly lost her balance but managed to grab the stranger’s arm, brace herself against bone, and pull. The tangle stopped its mad slide for the edge, but her muscles screamed with strain.

She couldn’t do it.

A real eiree could’ve.

The stranger flailed and kicked off the ropes from around his boots. His feet found purchase. Rainbird let go off his collar and lunged for a cable instead. Hanging over the edge of the sunway, sagging between the pincers of a balloon catcher, was a flabby envelope of canvas. A resupply balloon, clumsily caught, its fabric pierced. Now its burden dangled from ropes off the sunway itself.

The man freed his arm—Rainbird immediately put both hands on the ropes—and hurried off.

Rainbird glared at his back.
Why is he leaving me and why am I still holding on?
She thought about letting the cargo drop—it was no concern of hers—but the man was back with the sled, a winching machine atop it.

Together, they got the cables attached. Together, they pulled on the crank, though halfway through, the man stopped, hands on his knees, breath harsh and gasping through his mask. His goggles had steamed up.

Humans in high altitude. The cold, the lack of pressure, the thin air—it got to them all.

Rainbird cranked the wheel one more time. “Almost got…THERE!” The cargo came up over the edge. Rainbird kicked the wheel-stopper in place and dragged on the ropes to get it safely up on the sunway.

And then noticed the man was staring at her from behind his goggles. “Eiree.” The word, even muffled behind his mask, was unmistakable.

Rainbird gasped, spun, and fled. Panic roared in her ears and her useless wings hammered against her back. Behind her, the man shouted—something—but all she heard was the bludgeoning of her own blood against her brain, beating out
Stupid, stupid, stupid!

The Up-High Market on Third Rib was halfway between the sunway and downside and reached by elevator. If any of the eiree-grown cheris gum could be bought or bartered for, it would be here. Petrus was convinced the cheris gum would help heal the bonerot. Rainbird was not so sure, but she knew that if she didn’t make the trip, Petrus would, lungsickness or no.

She swayed on the wooden platform as it creaked slowly downwards. The air felt dense, humid, cloyingly rich with oxygen, with a hint of sea-brine. The warmth sank into her bones in a deep-seated fatigue. She propped herself against a railpost, relaxing into a grey half-drowse, mind expanding like mist.

And in the edges beyond herself, movement, stirring. A reddish tinge in the dim light. Diamond hardness, star brilliance, volcano heat arrowed in on her. A great pressure against her skull, a not-voice swelled in her head.
I am coming.

For you.

Rainbird jerked upright with a gasp. Several of the people she shared the elevator with glanced incuriously at her, then their gazes slid away. The elevator ground to a halt. The metal grill squealed aside and they trickled onto Third Rib.

Rainbird, cheeks flushed, tucked her coat tight around herself.

Guilty conscience. Only that.
But she forced herself to alertness as she stepped into the market. Even in this crowd of freaks, undesirables, and people whose past it was best not to inquire into, she felt unsafe.

And she thought she’d escaped all that by coming onto the sunway.

Third Rib ran by its own rules, anchored as it was in the seafloor. Scallop-shaped platforms jutted from the gnarled bone of the rib at various intervals. They’d been induced to grow in the early days of sunway habitation, before so much of the dragon’s remaining soft tissue had been destroyed in the construction. The market took up the largest one, while hotels, warehouses, and elevator machinery took up the rest.

Rainbird wound through the various stalls. Priests officiated one of the eight different types of marriages legal on Third Rib. Transvestite oracles with painted faces and falsettos chanted garbled messages from the aether. Hundreds of different mosses could be found here, the most popular being the ones with hallucinogenic properties.

Rainbird stopped longingly by the vitality elixirs, pure jolts of energy that some inspectors swore by, but moved on when the stall keeper’s hard gaze flicked at her.

There were fewer wares and less chatter than usual. A palpable layer of strain overlaid the market. Rainbird’s shoulders twitched against it.

There was a lot of yellow. Yellow ribbons on women’s hats, yellow armbands, yellow pennants on stalls.

The Morality League.

Rainbird’s stomach clenched as she glanced at the news posts, many-armed metal poles sunk into bone. Information sheets fluttered from those. Today most of them were the thick stiff paper of Miss Levine’s wanted posters.

Her face, plastered on every news post for all to see. There was no trench coat big enough in all the world to hide herself in, no hat big enough to cover all of her dandelion-white-and-wild hair and ears and face. She wanted to rip all the posters off, not just for her own sake, but for Petrus’ as well. She didn’t want it rubbed into his face that his daughter had killed someone. She didn’t want him to feel guilty that it had taken him fifteen years to find her after her eiree mother abandoned her. That he had been unable to protect her when she needed it most.

Rainbird skirted a group of pipe-smokers, bumped against a couple whose guilty start made it clear that something illicit was involved, slunk and squeezed through narrow gaps to Kasir’s secondhand stall.

Even up here in the realm of the decadent, with the indulgence of every vice laid out like a feast, people still needed boots and pants and good stout coats that hid wings. Kasir’s stall was set far away from the usual haunts of pleasure-seekers and tourists, but his regulars knew where to find him.

Now he turned towards Rainbird, a bulky man with more girth than height, hairy and stout, with the powerful lungs developed by generations of high-altitude dwelling. His droopy mustache lifted in a smile. “Well, well, little Rainbird. What is it to be today? I have some pretty skirts that just came in from the estate sale of an opera singer.”

Rainbird shook her head. “I need cheris gum.”

“Cheris gum?” Kasir shot her a shrewd look. She didn’t elaborate further. “A specialty item, and the eiree aren’t much into trading it, either.”

“Please, Kasir, see if you can find me some,” begged Rainbird. “I can pay with sunmoss.”

“Eiree don’t care for sunmoss,” said Kasir, but he was already scribbling on a paper chit. Once he’d sealed it, he bellowed out, “Hey, boy!” His assistant, small and younger than even Rainbird pretended to be, came out from the backroom. “Take this around to Talar.” The boy took the chit and ran off on his errand.

Rainbird waited till he’d left. Then, low-voiced, she said, “I also need more
sima
for Petrus, Kasir.”

“Again?” Kasir’s mouth and mustache drooped. He shook his head. “Why couldn’t you ask for blueweed or sweetdust?” he grumbled. “There’s a dozen dealers out there who’d be happy to supply you.”

“Because I don’t fancy Petrus turning into a blank-eyed drooling druggie,” snapped Rainbird. “He needs to be healed.” The Company had plenty of
sima
in the Hub, but going to Company doctors would only reveal the extent of Petrus’ lungsickness. He’d be retired off the sunway for sure, and there was no way Rainbird was going to live downside ever again. Neither of them wanted to be separated.

Kasir heaved a sigh. “The only way he can be is if he gets off the sunway. You send him down, Rainbird.”

Glew, I have been so selfish.
“I will. In the meantime…?”

“I may have some. An advance on that sunmoss you mentioned.”

Rainbird nodded vigorously.

Kasir ducked into the back, where he lived and stashed all those sad discarded garments he peddled. Rainbird had been back there a time or two. At least he would always keep warm, pressed in among all those clothes!

Kasir thrust a twist of paper out to her. “That’s the last of it, and I won’t be able to get anymore.” Rainbird raised her eyebrows in question. Kasir grimaced. “Morality League’s brought the binneys up with them. Always eager to enforce the laws, they are. They’ll be looking at my books and supplies soon. I have to stay clean for a while. I’ll wire Petrus if I get any leads on that cheris gum.”

“I understand.” Rainbird tucked the
sima
into her belt-pouch, pecked Kasir on the cheek, and left.

Rainbird felt very exposed as she hurried back towards the elevators. A vacuum, like the marketplace collectively held its breath, alerted her. A space opened up, as people gave a wide berth to the group of binneys that strode down the middle. Rainbird bit her lip on her outraged gasp, turned to examine a pair of shoes. The downsider policemen wore pressed black uniforms with tin buttons doomed in the cold and carried truncheons.

“Hey, you!”

Don’t look. Don’t turn around. Don’t act guilty, even if you are.

A youth nearby started, turned pale. “Y-yes?”

The binneys grouped around him.

“Turn over that bag, son.”

“B-but…” The youth clutched a distinctive red-and-white-patterned bag close to his chest. “It’s Third Rib! I’m allowed to!”

“Not if you’re underage. And not if you’re going home tomorrow. You can’t bring that stuff downside, and you can’t consume it all yourself before then.”

Reluctantly, the youth gave up the bag of Palli’s Fairy Dust to the binney. Rainbird let her gaze travel the bazaar, noting the checkpoints at the exits, near the elevators that took downsiders back home.

She put down the shoe she’d been turning over and over in her hands, and looked away.

Right into the eyes of a stall keeper watching her narrowly.

Rainbird hunched, instinctively, and her wings rippled under the coat. The too-big hat slid to one side. Rainbird hastily straightened it.