Dragonfly (27 page)

Right after I realized he was a person, not an idea.

I ate in tense silence until the meal finished. We crowded into the little kitchen to clear the mess, saving the scraps and emptying the dishes into the stained sink. I avoided looking at him as he filled the tub with hot, frothing water, but I could feel his gaze on me. For once, he was transparent like a clearview window. He was about to ask me out—as far as “out” went on this forsaken rock—to help him crack some crypto, or check his group theory, or maybe even take a walk outside. What I didn’t understand was why. Lazuli wasn’t a nice girl. She wasn’t a good girl. She hadn’t even acted like a particularly smart girl.

Only one explanation fit the facts: he didn’t mean any of it. He was just trying to break down my defenses. And what maddened me the most was that I cared.

Soap suds dripped over his forearms as he stacked wet dishes, bubbles sliding on those elegant fingers. My palms sweated as I wiped the plates dry. I didn’t want to be alone with him. I could see our future too clearly. Glances, blushes, uncomfortable silences; excuses to brush past him, touch hands, sit too close. I’d start thinking about how he tasted, how his lips had tempted mine last night, how I’d wanted him. And then, no doubt, he’d come to his senses and humiliate me.

My stomach coiled, even as his smile warmed my heart. I’d been attracted to murderers before. In my line of work, I rarely meet a man who isn’t one. Mishka was an ice-blooded killer when it suited him, and I’ve done my share too. I just didn’t want to be attracted to
this
murderer. It was unconscionable.

He finished, and dried his hands on my tea towel, trapping me between him and the sink. I wanted to slide my fingers between his, tug him closer, meet his secret smile with my own. I wanted to wriggle away from him and run. My mouth parched, and I licked my sticky lips.

Isabel glanced from me to Dragonfly and back again, and came to my rescue. “You tired, miss? You sleep. I find you room.”

Gratitude washed over me like cool relief, and I faked a yawn. “
Gracias
. That’s kind of you.”

“You sleep,” she directed firmly, sending him a warning glare. “I find you room, away from man make awake on computer
toda la noche.
”

She pulled me aside before he could say anything, and I followed her down a glass-lined corridor that looked out over bare ground to the hardstand. Stupidly, I wanted to look back. Damn it if I didn’t feel bad about hurting him.

Whatever. Snap out of it, Aragon
. This was all a game. He didn’t care about me, not really. He just wanted me off my guard, and it was working.

I paused by an open window, the evening breeze fresh and cold. The shadows of
Ladrona
and the other ships made a lumpy line above the black tarmac. Stars emerged into the blackening sky, and the crescent planet had set halfway, shedding a pale pink path to the horizon. No traffic queues carved the sky, no glowing advertising, no garish beacons flashing to wreck your night vision. Beautiful.

I wondered if he saw beauty here, or merely another thing that needed protection. If he’d been here to share it with me, I’d have asked him. For a moment my heart ached that he wasn’t, and I huddled closer in his coat.

A scuffle pricked my ears, and I found Isabel in a tiny room lined with bookshelves, where she’d already arranged cushions on the floor for a mattress and a heap of fat blankets that looked dusty but warm. She flipped on an old incandescent light that buzzed and flickered.

“You want things, you ask me. My room
a la derecha
, bath also.”

“You live up here?” I knew his room was downstairs, and I couldn’t help asking, though it made me cringe and flush yet again. “You mean, you’re not …?”

Damn it. If I’d flirted with him in front of his woman, I wasn’t the only one who’d be sorry for it. If they were together, she deserved better than the act he put on.

Isabel laughed knowingly. “I wonder when you ask. No way. Is never here. No point, eh? No make sense too, machine, computer,
matemáticas. No entiendo
.” Her brown eyes glinted. “Jandro never bring a lady like you before. I say, good. Is too old soon.”

She winked, mischievous, and walked out.

I stood for a moment, bewildered. So what was his game? Lazuli had nothing to offer him except a poor talent for pure math, weak and stuttering compared to his own. Why waste his time with her?

Weariness ached my bones, and I arranged the blankets over the cushions to make a warm fluffy cocoon. I longed to curl up inside it and forget about everything; to lie there and think about what I could have been doing with him—crunching a set of vector spaces, or stripping some code, or even just kissing, slow and hot and delicious, my fingers in his hair … But I couldn’t yet. Instead I waited, listening, my hands stuffed into warm pockets, until I knew Isabel was gone, then slipped into the corridor.

I pushed the window open further to get a clear view of the sky. A fat grey bat shuffled aside with a snort, folding rubbery wings as it swung upside down from the eaves. I took a slow still and date-time of the stars with my ESE, then I shut myself into my new bedroom and sat cross-legged on the bed to call Nikita.

“Aragon. I was just thinking about you.”

Languid pleasure glittered in his voice, a slick high I recognized. He was doing oblivion crystals again, likely out of boredom. It’s part of his curse that nothing keeps him interested for very long. The poor darling, left on Esperanza with a pile of cash, countless beautiful women and nothing else to do. Life was so much easier when you didn’t give a shit. For a moment, I envied him, which in turn made me angry.

I let the anger ring down the sub-ether line. In my current mood, I didn’t care what he thought. “I don’t have much time. Any update on the Surov situation?”

If black ops goons were after me, I’d prefer to know about it.

A short crackle of delay. “Nothing, sweetheart. Renko hasn’t figured it out yet. But if I were you, I’d get the Dragonfly thing done ASAP. What’s new?”

A dark shudder rippled my bones. and I knew it meant he was lying. But about what?

“We got off the battleship no problem. I’ll debrief the Spider situation later. But get this: Dragonfly’s taken me to his home planet.”

Nikita’s smile shivered over me like stardust. “The monster’s lair. I’m impressed. Get as much intel as you can. And do try not to fuck this one up.”

I flicked him the star shot I’d taken. “Here’s our location. It’s small, maybe not even a primary system satellite. Some abandoned mining op is my guess. Looks like colony level two infrastructure, just the basics, about fifty years old.”

“I’ll put it through charts. Anything else new?”

Soft tactile pleasure, a caress or a kiss at the other end. Of course, he wasn’t getting shattered alone. My skin tingled, eerily pleasant, and I shook it off.

“Nothing extraordinary.” A usefully opaque lie. The things I’d learned were all too ordinary—dangerously so—and I didn’t feel like sharing. I didn’t want Nikita to know that my enemy confused me. “My cover’s still good. I’ll see what I can get from his people here. Someone must know what he’s up to.”

“Any luck with that data you stole from Esperanza?”

I’d forgotten I hadn’t had time to update him. “Yes. He decrypted it like it was a baby’s jigsaw puzzle. It’s grav schematics for the station. I didn’t see what else.”

A gentle glow of surprise, maybe admiration. “Ambitious, for a thief.”

“That’s what I thought. I mentioned vault integrity and he practically laughed at me.” I hesitated. “What if it isn’t the vault he’s after? What if he’s thinking bigger?”

A few silent seconds, with nothing but cold sub-ether noise to warm them. “Like what?”

“I have no idea.” My nerves itched. “It’s just this feeling I have.”

“Think about it, Aragon. Why rob a casino if not for money?”

“He’s an insurrectionist and he’s clever. From the look of this place, the Empire has done him no favors.”

Nikita laughed, languid with oblivion. “There are plenty of easier places to play anarchist without taking on the Esperanza mob. Besides, the surrender negotiation is a done deal. The colony’s guy Alvarado and his administration are in it up to their greedy eyeballs, and your boyfriend General Shadrin’s just squeezing out the last drop of kickback. Even if the insurrectionists blow the entire station to static and splinters, the annexation will still go ahead.”

Sickness crawled cold in my guts. Static and splinters. Blow the entire station.
Too bad you think so small.
Shit. For all my supposed skills at subterfuge, I just couldn’t figure Dragonfly out from one day to the next. Had I let my attraction to him smear my judgment? He seemed so matter-of-fact and kind-hearted. Hard to believe he’d rip Esperanza open and kill thousands of people for sheer chaos’s sake.

Mishka and my murdered friends would disagree.

“Aragon? Something wrong?” A sour, cynical twinge ruined Nikita’s perfect concern.

“No. You’re right, there must be something else on that chip. I’ll see what I can find.”

I broke the connection and burrowed under the blankets, shivering.

30

The cloudless sky glowed pale pink, fading to white overhead. The line of buildings cast long red shadows across the dirt, and smudge-faced kids chased each other around piles of rubble. A chill morning breeze tossed knots of dry grass along the street, and I huddled into my coat, glad I’d borrowed some trousers from Isabel. They ended a little short, but I’d tucked them into my boots. I had a warm scarf wrapped around my throat, and a fluffy sweater of hers beneath my coat. I’d taken a wonderful hot shower, once Isabel had showed me how to work the little electric heater on the wall. With that, a fresh tie for my clean hair, and a hot sweet chocolate drink for breakfast, I felt seriously human for the first time since the Esperanza neurospace.

Despite that, Dragonfly’s promise to show me around carved a tiny hollow in my stomach. Thinking of him prickled my nerves, and I flushed again that I’d nearly fallen for his tricks last night. I forced myself to concentrate on business. Would I find out what he was up to at last? Would he let me in on his secrets to convince me to give up thieving?

This colony didn’t act like a hotbed of insurrection, just ordinary people going about their dull little lives. But I knew from experience that the most innocent-looking people often proved the most dangerous. Maybe I should play on his sympathy, make him think me more stubborn and determined, so he’d show me everything in an effort to put me off.

My stomach twisted tighter. I didn’t like lying to him, even though he sure didn’t have any problem lying to me. Pretending he cared what I did, when he only wanted to get rid of me so he could get on with it, whatever it was.

The faint roar of rapid arcfuel descent attracted my attention. A broad wake shimmered in the sky, leading down toward the hardstand, and atmosphere buffers hissed and crackled as the craft landed out of sight. We had visitors. A supply ship? Friends? Or someone more interesting?

The school building’s door creaked open and the orange cat darted out, then sat on the doorstep in a weak sunny patch to wash its face. Dragonfly followed, tugging Isabel’s wrap around himself, his dark hair falling over the midnight folds. He’d changed clothes, I couldn’t help noticing, from hot-and-dirty rebel scumbag back to casual-but-stylish cyberthief. Clearly, he’d been absent the day they taught mild-mannered secret identities, because he looked way too sexy and mysterious in that simple blue shirt and pants.

Strain showed around his eyes, as if he hadn’t slept much, but he still managed a smile for me. I smiled back, my pulse glimmering uneasily. He wouldn’t look away. As if he didn’t care that I’d brushed him off last night, and the night before. Like he hadn’t given up. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or terrified.

He nodded toward the fading arcfuel wake. “That’s for us. Coming?”

“I’m wearing your overcoat.” I slipped from it and held it out to him, self-conscious. “Here.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, really. Take it.”

“Are you sure? I’ll swap with you.”

He folded the coat over his elbow, unfurled the wrap and arranged it around me, tugging my ponytail free and tucking in my scarf. I watched him but he didn’t meet my eye, and suddenly I didn’t know what to do, how to react. If Nikita did something like this, I’d assume he was trying to impress me with his manners. Mishka would do it because someone had told him that’s how he should treat a lady. Dragonfly seemed just to care that I might be cold.

Had I been with Axis so long I’d forgotten how to deal with real people?

He tucked in the last corner and stepped away. The wrap was warm from his body, fragrant, delightful.

“Thanks,” I said at last, because I needed to say something. I didn’t want him thinking me even more ungrateful and standoffish. Damn, when had this gotten so complicated?

He put his coat on, stuck his hands in the pockets and grinned. “It’s already warm. Thanks, yourself. We’ll walk, if it’s okay with you. I want to show you a few things along the way.”

“Sure.” I fell into step alongside him, glad to be moving. The cat trotted after us a short distance, then plopped its fluffy behind down in the dusty street to await his return. “Who’s the visitor?”

“You’ll see.”

He walked casually but with purpose, seeming not to mind the cold breeze that tossed his hair and swirled grit in his eyes. He looked as comfortable here as he had losing half a million sols at the tarocchi table, sweating in green plasmalight over a hostile neurospace, or dodging plasma rounds on Spider’s dirty battleship. Ease with yourself is either a talent or an act, and from the way he’d behaved with me I’d imagined the latter. I didn’t want to think about what it meant if I was wrong. If he believed all that stuff about killing my problems while they were still small, and not letting them take over my life. If he’d meant what he said and did last night, and I’d shaken it off like a lie.