She transferred the shell to the pocket of her clean fatigues and, two days later, happened on a village where a labor casteman, actually a specialist in etching designs on Jade Falcon medals, agreed to make a comb out of it for Joanna. She remembered the man—a squinty-eyed freeborn with the kind of rough skin common to such breeding—saying to her that a comb was a good idea to straighten out Joanna’s long unkempt hair. She pushed him against the wall of his Spartan, single room house, telling him never to talk to her, just do the job.
When she returned the next day, the man did not speak but merely handed her the shell, crafted into a comb whose teeth imitated the symmetry of the piece’s overall shape. For a reason Joanna chose not to ask about, he had neatly painted a diamond figure, as symmetrical as the rest of the shell, in the center of the upper portion of the comb. She paid for his work with work credit—eliciting a surprise she ignored, since a warrior simply commands and takes—without complimenting on the man’s impressive skills.
The next time she visited the town, she could not find his house and was told that he had died.
Sitting on the cot, listening to the springs squeak beneath her as she shifted her body, she recalled another day, one soon after their brawl, when she and Lyonor had been linked by the comb.
The comb
Lyonor’s arm was broken, in a fracture too delicate to be immediately fixed, so she wore it in a sling. When Joanna came upon her, she was running the fingers of her good hand through her dark hair. Joanna noted that the hair, which in Lyonor’s strange un-Clanlike vanity was worn longer than most, had lost some of its shine in the days since Lyonor had injured her arm in a simple fall off a ladder in a storage depot while searching for a new edition of the Clan epic, The Remembrance, to replace the one she had worn out; even more ironic, considering most considered the use of an actual hardcopy Remembrance superfluous.
“What are you doing?” Joanna asked, standing behind Lyonor.
Lyonor jumped, startled. “Do you always have to sneak up on people?” she asked.
“On the battlefield I will announce my presence. You, eyas, I watch with a Falcon’s stealth.”
Lyonor scoffed. “On the battlefield you have no choice, you mean. How in the name of Kerensky can you sneak up on someone while in a ’Mech which can be seen from kilometers away?”
“It can be done. Fog, snow, blinding rain. A sandstorm, perhaps.”
“Telemetry can still detect you.”
“Do not split hairs. And, speaking of hair, let me ask again, what are you doing?”
Lyonor held up the comb, one of the small fragile ones issued in the kit of all warriors. Nearly half of its teeth had broken off. One of its teeth dangled, ready to fall. “You ever try to operate one of these devices when you only have one good arm?”
“I do not try to, as you say, operate one of those much at all.”
“I can tell. But some of us believe in grooming even when it is not time for a ceremony or ritual.”
Joanna, resisting the urge to touch her own hair, shrugged.
“You want help? Operating, I mean.”
“You sure you know how?” Lyonor asked, handing her the comb.
Joanna waved it away, saying, “Not that one. Got my own.”
Lyonor’s eyebrows raised. She clearly was surprised that Joanna would even carry around a comb. Staring at it, she started to smile, then took a better look at the item. Light seemed to flash off it, even though the sky, filled with dark clouds, hid the sun. Impressed by the piece’s symmetry and its diamond symbol decoration, Lyonor allowed herself to do something Jade Falcon warriors rarely did—express an aesthetic opinion. “That is pretty,” she said. She touched the diamond design with her thumb. “Pretty. And strong, too. Looks unbreakable.”
Joanna held it up. “Yes, it probably is. Turn around.”
Lyonor took up her position, her back straight, her head slightly down. With her good hand, she fluffed out her hair so it hung down over her shoulders. Joanna smoothed its surface with her hand, noting that Lyonor’s hair, even in disarray, felt smoother than her own. Choosing some strands, Joanna slowly ran the comb through Lyonor’s hair, felt its strong smooth teeth disentangle strands of hair easily. The firmness of grip that the comb allowed and the unbreakable strength of its teeth made the process of combing effortless. Gathering bunches of Lyonor’s hair, she began creating order out of the mess.
As she was smoothing out the last strands, she hard a loud guffaw behind her. Whirling around, she saw Garvy, one of the most disagreeable warriors in her Star. He liked to provoke all the other warriors, said he did it to make them better fighters. Joanna could not deny that Garvy was skillful in his ’Mech cockpit. With his long thin neck and body he looked more like a seabird than a warrior, but in spite of his slim frame he could attack another with a special viciousness. His hawklike face was distorted into a gleeful sarcasm.
“Wipe that smirk off your face, Garvy,” Joanna said. “What is rattling your gyro, anyway?”
“You two. Such a
