Lois Bujold - Cryoburn

Well, Tetsu had got in the habit of teasing Gyre, till Gyre had, naturally, bit him. Then there’d been the trip to emergency care, and the surgical glue and antibiotics, and Aunt Lorna screeching more than Tetsu, though mostly about the bill. Tetsu had shown off his battle scar at school the next day pretty smugly, Jin thought.

Jin slipped over and tried the door, turning the latch as silently as he could. Still locked. There had been another big argument about whether people had to get up in the night to let Jin go to the bathroom, which Uncle Hikaru had settled, in a very practical way, by providing Jin with a bucket, which had scandalized Aunt Lorna and made Tetsu and Ken make fun of him, till Uncle had thumped them. That had been after the squabble over where Jin was to sleep, since his sister was now judged too big to share a bed with him, or maybe it was the other way around. Tetsu and Ken, already dividing a cramped room, complained about having yet a third boy shoved in atop their clutter, and had also objected to being made Jin’s watchers. Jin had endured much in silence, last night and today, in anticipation of a timely escape. He hadn’t expected to be locked in .

“Just till the boy settles down,” Uncle Hikaru had said—as if Jin would abandon his creatures. As if he would ever stay here .

Was Miles-san taking care of his charges properly? What must he think, when Jin never came back with his money? Would he think Jin had stolen it? The police had stolen it, really, but would even that extraordinary off-worlder believe Jin over the grownups? He swallowed a lump in his throat, determined not to cry again, because maybe letting go like that was why he’d fallen asleep, earlier. Although what was the point in forcing himself to stay awake when he couldn’t get out? He returned to the futon and sank down in despair.

Maybe tomorrow night he could hide a screwdriver or some other tools in the room, and try to take the window or the door lock apart from the inside. Tenbury would have known how, Jin was sure. He didn’t think he could pretend to be all settled down so quickly and thus lull his captors into relaxing their guard, not when he was growing more and more frantic inside. Aunt Lorna had threatened she was going to sign him right up tomorrow for Tetsu and Ken’s school, because she couldn’t afford to lose any more work days over him. School, he recalled, had seemed even less easy to escape from than—Jin refused to think of this narrow rented row-house as home .

The door lock clicked. Aunt Lorna, checking up on him? He could still hear Uncle Hikaru’s snores. He rolled over to face the wall, hitched his covers up over his shoulder, and scrunched his eyes shut.

“Jin?” a shy voice whispered. “Are you asleep?”

Jin rolled back, both relieved and annoyed. It was only Mina. “Yes,” he growled.

A short silence. “No, you’re not.”

“What do you want?” Some forgotten doll or stuffed toy, he supposed, although she’d taken a basket of them with her to her temporary bed on the couch downstairs.

The door rumbled, sliding into its slot, and small feet padded to the side of his futon. He rolled over onto his elbow again and stared up at her, staring down at him. She shared Jin’s brown eyes and tousled mop of black hair, but she was taller and less chubby than he remembered from fourteen months ago. Then, she hadn’t even started school yet—now she was in her second year. She seemed less… bewildered-looking, somehow.

“If I let you out,” she said, “will you take me with you?”

“Huh?” Startled, Jin sat up and hugged his knees. What, she wasn’t just lost on the way to the bathroom? “No, of course not. Are you crazy?”

Her face fell. “Oh.” She retreated to the door and started to pull it shut behind her.

“No, wait!” Jin hissed, lumbering up.

Next door, the snores stopped. They both froze. After a moment, there came a creaking and a sort of gurgling-drain noise, and the snores started up again.

“We can’t talk here,” Jin whispered. “Let’s go downstairs.”

She seemed to think this over, then nodded, waiting in the hallway while he wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and trailed after her. Jin shoved the door closed again very slowly and quietly. The stairs squeaked under their tiptoeing feet, but no one came after them.

“Don’t turn the light on,” Jin said, keeping his voice low. There was enough light leaking from what Uncle Hikaru called the one-butt kitchen, in a niche off the living-dining room, to keep from tripping on things.

Mina settled back in her twisted nest of covers on the couch. Jin sat on the edge of Uncle Hikaru’s chair and stared around.

Mina asked, “Do you remember Daddy?”

“Sort of. Some.”

“I don’t. Just his picture in the family shrine Mommy set up.”

“You were three.” Jin had been seven when their father had died. Four years ago—it seemed half a lifetime. He remembered his mother’s extravagant grief and anger rather better, and how seldom he’d seen her after that—as if one death had stolen both parents, even before the policewomen had come for her. “Doesn’t Aunt Lorna keep the family shrine anymore?”

“She let me keep it in my room for a while, but then we ran out of space when I needed a desk for school, so she boxed it up and put it away. I wasn’t sure if to set your picture in it or not.”

Mina was putting on her shoes, a determined look on her face.

“You can’t go with me,” Jin repeated uneasily. “Not where I’m going.”

“Where are you going?”

“A long walk. Too far for you. Why do you want to come anyway?” She’d been Aunt and Uncle’s pet, he thought.

“Tetsu and Ken are horrid to me. Teasing and bedeviling. Uncle Hikaru yells at them, but he never gets up and does anything.”

Jin didn’t quite see the problem with this. Well, he had a dim sense that maybe it was his job to heckle his own sister, but if somebody else wanted to take up the slack, he had no objection. “They’re probably just jealous because you get all the girl stuff. Plus if you weren’t here, Ken would have your room,” he added in a fair-minded fashion.

“Uncle and Aunt were talking about ’dopting me, before you came back. But I don’t want Tetsu and Ken for my brothers. I want my real brother.”

“How can they adopt you when Mom’s still…” He trailed off. Alive? The word choked in his throat, a wad of uncertainty. He swallowed it and went on: “You can’t stay where I’m going. I—they wouldn’t want you. You’d just get in the way.” While Suze-san and the people at her place might be willing to treat a stray boy as casually as a stray cat, he had a queasy sense that a stray girl, and younger at that, might be another story. And while the police, not to mention Uncle Hikaru and Aunt Lorna, might be less excited about him running away a second time, would that boredom extend to Mina? “You couldn’t keep up.”

“Yes, I could!”

“Sh! Keep your voice down!”

Her mouth went mulish. “If you don’t take me along, I’ll set up a screech, and they’ll catch you and put you back in my room! And I won’t let you out again, so there!”

He tried to decide if she was bluffing. No, probably not. Could he hit her on the head with something and knock her out while he made his getaway? He had a feeling that worked better in holovids than in real life. And if he hit her with one of Aunt Lorna’s pots or pans, the only blunt instruments immediately available, it would make a hellish bong and wake everybody up anyway, defeating his purpose.

She interrupted his hostile mulling, in a practical tone that reminded him of Uncle Hikaru: “Besides, I have money and you don’t.”