‘You put that stuff into him, knowing what it’d do. You bastards screwed up the rest of his life. And you think he should play by your rules?’
‘We haven’t arrested you for multiple hacking infringements,’ Kowalski told him, her voice creeping into a low and dangerous tone, ‘or for the smuggling ring. We gave you citizenship here. You want to keep it?’
‘You think I care about that?’ Grim snorted. ‘Vakov doesn’t owe you people anything. Least of all his brother.’
‘Of course.’ Kowalski clapped her hands around the nape of her neck. ‘This isn’t just about Vakov, or you. It’s about us, isn’t it?’
I was confused, right up until I saw her looking at Grim’s Harvest tribal tattoo and the dots connected. The tendons on Grim’s neck stood stark like bridge cords.
Oh.
There aren’t many taboos left when it comes to cultural prejudice, not even on colonies late to join the Common. But trying to paint Harvest immigrants as Harvester supporters – the same Harvesters who had tried to wipe out a good chunk of the human race – rarely ends well. I’d seen people get killed for it, even when it was meant as a joke. Only Kowalski wasn’t joking about Grim.
Grim raked in a breath and whispered something to himself in his own tongue. His shoulders shook not with rage, but pain. The anger in Kowalski’s eyes guttered out as she realised what she’d done.
‘I’m so sorry. Please, I—’ She shook her head. ‘Forget I said that. That was so terribly cruel.’
Grim gave a dark chuckle, masking the sob beneath it. I’d always known he kept a sensitive side buried beneath his jokes and infuriating cheer. Watching Katherine scrape it all back to expose the naked bedrock of his pain with such ease hurt. He was trying so hard not to look at me, but it was only making it worse. He swallowed, spread his arms. ‘Going to send your Sub Zero buddies to raid my place at midnight? Drug me, stick me on the next lungship out of here? Nothing stopped your folks from doing that before. Why not now?’
Katherine couldn’t meet his eye, but after a few seconds Grim backed away, wiping his face. I realised it was a strain for him just to share space with someone from Harmony. Kowalski couldn’t have been finding it easy, either. And here I was, caught in the middle.
‘You didn’t deserve that, Grim. Neither of you do.’ There was an ache in Katherine’s eyes, like she was barely holding herself together. ‘They want us divided, working against each other. We can’t let that happen. Which is why you can’t go off alone like this, Vakov.’ Her eyes met mine, pleading. Help me help you. ‘You can’t fight for this and pretend you’re working alone. You have to trust us to get this done together. Otherwise more Reapers die, the stormtech keeps flowing on the market, and this cult gets stronger. Do you understand that?’
I did. I dredged up an image of water flooding a cracked riverbed, cool wind filling up an airless room, as I’d been taught to do when the stormtech grew too strong. Kowalski was fighting to make Compass a better place for everyone, because this was her home, because she had family here, because it was the right thing to do.
She didn’t just need my help to do it. She wanted it. And in that thought came the guilt at betraying the trust she’d given me. Not Harmony. Her.
I wanted to regain that trust. I nodded. Katherine gave the tightest of smiles. ‘I’ve spoken with Kindosh already. Harmony is pouring resources into this. We’re launching undercover operations to hunt the House of Suns down. There’re SSC patrols and checkpoints at five Compass spaceports. We’re sending out a galaxy-wide transmission across the Common to all outposts, habitats and installations, in case they try and make a break for it.’
I nodded again, not trusting myself to speak.
‘It’s going to take a while to build a case against them. While we do, lie low for a bit, and I mean it this time.’ She threw one more apologetic look at Grim and left, leaving me wondering how the hell any of this happened.
Easy.
One step at a time.
26
Confessions and Gin
I’m a restless guy. Maybe it’s my size, maybe it’s the stormtech, maybe it’s my body chemistry, but I can’t sit around for long. When I’m worked up, I’ve got to get out of the house. Once Kowalski left, my apartment walls were pressing in on me like a prison cell and I had to find a bar someplace.
‘There’re some wicked bars around here,’ Grim told me. ‘You’d never find them on your own. Come on, there’s a very special place I know.’
Grim’s Very Special Place was on one of the top floors, near the edge of the asteroid. The whole thing was shaped like a giant egg or cylinder, running at least four or five kilometres tall. A conglomerate of bars, lounges and exclusive establishments had been built into the outer edges of the structure, looping around and around, each with its own specifically styled atmosphere and audience. The central bulk of the structure between the bars had been hollowed out, so it looked like you were staring down into a small canyon in the middle of space, with venues chiselled into the surface. Tubes at least five metres thick were grappled to the sides of the bulk, allowing various aquatic creatures to swim along the structure’s length in a winding loop. The bars and eateries narrowed as they reached the pinnacle, becoming more and more exclusive, before seeming to grow outside of the asteroid rock itself: offering a naked view into space. I craned my neck to stare at the endless floors honeycombed into the raw asteroid rock, drinking in the mind-boggling view as Grim dragged me up the various stairwells branching through the floors.
The first bar was drenched in gentle white light. Widescreen windows ran the full
