Imbra tapered off as Paloma leaned in and took him by his shirt collar and clocked him across the cheekbone. Calmer this time. Aim’s improving, too, thought Imbra, as the Darwood twins called out “Pal, you coming or what?” and Paloma, dropping his mother’s killer and shaking his hand out, stepped over Imbra’s body and said, “Yeah, hold up, I’m done.” But Imbra, watching the kid not so much as glance back as he stalked off, knew that Paloma would return, and sooner rather than later.
And next time, he’d come alone.
Stev Biggs, the court-appointed adjustment counselor, squinted sideways at the shiner turning Imbra’s right cheekbone into a spray of nebula-purples and dusky grey-pinks.
“You oughta be more careful around the tow trucks,” said Biggs. “Rough business, walking into a hook and chain like that.”
“Comes with the territory.” Imbra offered Biggs a cup of roast. “How’s the war?”
“Which one.” Biggs settled at Imbra’s bench and scratched under his wide-brimmed hat, surveying the lay of the garage—graffiti across the walls, tool cases in disarray, more than a little blood spatter on the concrete floor. “Seen plenty of action yourself, it seems.”
“Gulch rats. Big ones.”
“No kidding.” Biggs took a long, loud slurp of brew, eyeing his charge over the mug. “They’ll settle eventually, you know. There’s not much sport in it, and soon they’ll feel ashamed with themselves for doing it at all. That’s usually how it goes.”
“Or they’ll take that shame out on me, too, for making them feel something in the first place. Starting to think we could all do with a declaw, in the valley at least.”
Biggs set down his mug. “That kinda attitude, might as well hand everything over to the Allegiance. We need more fight, you ask me, if we’re going to get through it all.”
“That bad?”
“You tell me. General Asarus has the shipyards working all hours, trying to double the fleet by the equinox. Ask me, she’s not gonna make deadline, but at least the attempt’ll improve foot traffic around these parts—open up the mines, drive recruitment, see more money in bridgeworks again. Might even be good for your business. Who knows.”
Imbra’s answering snort nudged Biggs into a bit of a smile. “Looks like we didn’t take all the fight out of you, did we?”
But that we gave Imbra pause, the sudden schism of it. Biggs as old friend. Biggs as brother’s keeper. He studied the calluses on Biggs’s hands, only a little darker than his own. One creation story going that the sun had scorched their ancestors in a fit of rage. Others saying that the sun loved them so much it tried to get too close, until its children cried out Mother, you’re hurting me! and the sun, ashamed when she saw what she had done, blushed a livid red-brown forever. Both tales as good as true: all life on Novun a matter of dualities.
“I’ve heard the stories,” said Imbra. “About the ones who walk out of surgery and right off a cliff. Some for what they’d done to deserve the declaw in the first place. Some for what they were afraid everyone else would do, once the law was through.”
“But not you.”
“No, not me.” Imbra’s eyes gleamed hard. “Sitting in the courts those last few weeks, while they cleaned all that shit from my system to prep for surgery, I found religion instead.”
“I’m afraid to ask which.”
Imbra nodded. “Good.”
Biggs didn’t press. They sat and drank quietly as a long-haul rig rumbled into view, kicking up dust coming past Esrin’s Gulch, then slipping into oblivion around the next hill.
“Could always use more men in the shipyards,” said Biggs at last.
“Sure. The first place the Allegiance’ll target when their fleets arrive.”
“You don’t know that.” Biggs sounded almost chipper. “Could go for the lasers first. Then take out the outer moon defenses. Hop skip and a jump to Novun Prime after that. Seed a solar flare and take off running. You never know what the Allegiance has in mind.”
“Or what they want, exactly. The people? The resources?”
“Our guesses get even weirder, up at the courts. There’s one woman in archives who thinks—” Biggs seemed about to start on a longer spiel, but one glance at Imbra’s ring of bruises gave him pause and softened the sudden heat in his face. “Anyway, all I’m saying is, it’d be quicker, if it happened up in orbit. Down here, with the locals, and your past …” “All life’s a risk,” said Imbra. “You know that.”
“Not everyone gets to pick where they make a last stand, though.” Biggs adjusted his hat and stood. “But I guess you’re sure you’ve chosen yours.”
The statement grew into a question after Biggs set off, and after Imbra returned to cleaning up the shop. The next run of settlement boys came at dusk, mostly to try to rattle him a little on their way out to some pile-on party in the valley. Paloma wasn’t among them.
Paloma came in the night, halfway to dawn—and not, after all, alone. Imbra saw the revolver before the whites of the kid’s eyes at the end of the drive.
Imbra watched him awhile, then put the kettle on.
Paloma’s hands shook around the firearm as he stepped into the light of the garage, so Imbra moved nice and slow, setting two mugs on a table between them.
“Would’ve been easier if I’d been in bed, I guess,” said Imbra. “Sorry, kid. I’m not sleeping so well these days.”
“You think this is a joke? This isn’t a joke.”
Imbra nodded twice, the second time at the revolver. “That thing registered?” Paloma hesitated.
“Registered is no good. They’ll track you and declaw you. Then you’ll end up like me. You think I shouldn’t’ve been done in earlier? All the shit I did for valley mobsters, all the things I did while high—but it took a real slip up, the wrong keypass in the wrong place, for the courts to catch me. You wanna do this, kid, you gotta move in
