SWEET COIN

1544 4D

The relief train arrived at Abridor the next day. The replacements from the City jogged past Andrew‘s group, taking up stations on the northern and eastern perimeters of the deck’s surrounding area, their barkers calling out terse commands. They were well-trained; they ignored the bloodstained patches of planking on the deck itself, and posted squads at vantage points above the deck. Their officers summoned Yuss and the barkers of Andrew‘s group into a conference in the paved area.

The word came quickly. Mentrius returned to his unit. “You Gees, listen. We’re moving west. There’s an experienced company coming to reinforce these guys here, so we’re going to take on some plains duty. Should be more your speed. Get your things. Train leaves in a half-hour.”

“We’re not going home?” A man’s voice from the rear of the group.

“No.” Mentrius turned and walked away.

Andrew packed up, shouldered his bag, and got in line for the stairs. Bloodstained boards browned deeper in the sun’s radiance. On that spot Bermarin had been standing, looking at the little man who killed him.

The new officers didn’t talk with the soldiers themselves; they left that to the leads, and kept a distance that seemed to underline the losses the soldiers had just suffered. The replacement units kept apart also. Andrew felt as if the deaths here had tainted him and the others somehow, in a way that lethal fights in the City had never done; he and the other survivors had acquired an illness, the disease of the defeated, and it isolated them.

They were heading west. Ti’Ann‘s datasheet bumped against Andrew‘s thigh as he moved two steps closer to the stair. He thought of his street life in the City, and of Linderus.

Andrew pondered. Enemies in the City changed every day. Except for the colls and their jealous young cocks, your enemies were just whoever had an edge with you over something, and the next thing they’d be your brothers and giving you spare skin. It was fluid; you had to keep checking to find out who today’s friends and enemies were.

Andrew moved two steps forward, stopped again on the deck to wait. Where he now stood, Nurumin had died. A twinkle of metal flashed from a crack between boards; Andrew stooped to pick it up. It was sharp-edged: a piece of scythewire, dark-gray and heavy, shiny at its razor edges, mottled with dark stains.

It had to be the same here as in the City. You had to do business — fighting was just doing business in extra-hard money. And when it came to nouess, the spirit, the thing that made you go, that was the sweet coin.

At that moment, Andrew decided he would try to find Linderus and give him the datasheet. It would save the memory of Ti’Ann for Linderus, and that was really the sweetest coin.

He folded the scythewire, avoiding its edges, in a scrap of flexarmor lying nearby, and tucked it away in his buttpack. This would remind him of Nurumin, and of the stars.