David Gunn - Death's head

“Lisa…”

“Yeah?”

Gesturing at the group around me, I say, “These are the Aux. As of now, they own this bar.”

“He owns it,” says Shil firmly.

“Ignore her,” I say, to Neen’s obvious amusement. “We own it among us, also the cafe next door and the lodging house beyond. You will be running this bar.”

Lisa looks like she wants to hug me.

Shil, on the other hand, looks cross. There’s something I’m missing about Shil’s unhappiness, but I can’t work out what it is. We got a bounty for killing Duza; this is what I’m spending it on. She ought to be pleased to have a base and somewhere to call home.

“Lisa…?” Someone calls from the street outside, and two girls come tumbling through the door, clutching a basket between them. It’s hot and damp out there, and Farlight’s heat has glued tendrils of hair to their faces and left their skin shiny with exhaustion.

“Sven,” says Angelique.

Sticky arms wrap themselves around me, and her kiss only just misses my mouth. And then she sees Shil’s scowl and disengages, although I suspect it’s too late. But I’ll deal with that later, because my eyes are on the girl standing frozen in the doorway.

“Won’t be a moment,” I tell the others.

Aptitude has grown up. It would be wrong to say she belongs here, but she’s no longer the spoiled child I dragged from a burning building, having just killed her entire family. Well, the bits of it that weren’t locked down on a prison planet.

“I didn’t think you were coming back.”

Her voice is quiet, so quiet that I have to strain to hear it myself, and I’m standing almost directly opposite.

She puts out a hand to shake.

I put out my own.

Her fingers are sticky with sweat and callused from hard work. A twist of gold circles one finger; her ring is cheap but pretty, something she bought for herself from a local market. “Sven,” she says.

“Aptitude.”

We look at each other.

“I will always come back,” I say. “I promised Debro and Anton that I’d look after you, and I will.”

And suddenly she’s crying in my arms, childlike sobs that shake her shoulders and rasp in her throat. “I didn’t think you were coming back.”

“And I’ve told you.”

“I know, but I didn’t think… ” She wipes her nose with the back of her hand, then sees the mess she’s made of my jacket and looks as if she’s about to burst into tears all over again.

It’s Shil who walks over to give the girl a tissue. “I’m Shil,” she says. “I take it you know this lunatic?”

Aptitude smiles despite herself.

Shil glances at the bar, at the dampness on my shoulder, and then at Aptitude. She’s putting things together. “That’s what the fuck this is about?”

I nod.

She sighs. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

SHIL AND I kill a bottle of cachaca that night, sitting under a pine tree in the yard out back. She asks if I’ve fucked Angelique and I admit I have. So she asks if I intend to do it again and I tell her that’s not the way I work, which ends up with me having to tell her how I do work. Something that is trickier than I thought, since I hadn’t put it into words before.

She doesn’t ask about Lisa, so I leave that confession well alone.

Shil’s so drunk I get to know more than I want about what happened to the boy she was meant to marry. Death in battle sounds a lot better to me by the end of it.

And then we talk about Aptitude.

Shil has her head on my shoulder, although that’s probably just the drink. The fan in the bar is chugging in a lazy swirl and the night noises of this strange city are distant enough to sound less threatening than they should.

“You haven’t…”

Turning, I look at her. “Aptitude’s a kid.”

“I know men who would.”

“Yeah, but that’s not the point.”

“You want to tell me what the point is?”

And so I end up telling Shil about being locked down on Paradise. I don’t tell her whose child Aptitude is, because she doesn’t need to know. But I make it clear that she’s the daughter of two people who matter to me and I’ve promised to protect her.

“This isn’t where she grew up, is it?”

My gaze takes in the darkened yard, the broken hover bike in the corner, and the bundle of fur and bone watching us from the top of the wall. Apparently Aptitude’s adopted a stray cat.

“No,” I say. “Where she grew up is a million miles from here.”

“Thought so.”

Before we finally fall asleep where we sit, Shil asks me one last question. It’s about my meeting with General Jaxx, which happened three days earlier.

“What did he want?”

“He wants us to take it easy and enjoy our vacation.”

She scowls at me.

“I’m serious,” I tell her.

“Maybe, but what does he actually want?”

This isn’t a conversation I’ve been planning to have, at least not until the end of next month, which is when we’re due to present ourselves at an elegant building in an area of Farlight that really is a million miles distant in every way that matters from the clapboard boardinghouse in which we now live. But I’m drunk and Shil’s leaning against my shoulder and I still can’t get over the answer myself.

“The Free want to borrow us.”

“They what?”

“You heard me. Apparently, Paper Osamu asked for us by name. We’ll be told why when we present ourselves at their embassy in five weeks’ time.”

“We’re working for the U/Free?”

“Yeah,” I say. “That’s the plan…” A request from the U/Free is as good as a command from anyone else. And they’re rich, filthy rich. Seems to me it won’t hurt if some of that wealth rolls in this direction. Taking another gulp of cachaca, I swallow the fiery spirit before passing Shil the bottle.

“Drink up,” I say.

She does as ordered.

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