BARROW IRON WING

1560 4D

Drasstar, Rashua, Naudi and I got to Caladrina‘s. We all wore capes over our stage makeup. The crowded understreets slammed the noise and rhythms of the festival into the domed arena of Aswar Tyrae, making every sound echo and tangle in a sonic sea-storm. People danced here, in ones and twos and groups, holding one hand high with a tambourine-like panpan, circling in chain-steps, shouting fest greetings and barbs at each other.

“Thringe! Usual table?” Caladrina himself had come over. He was an olive-tan man with a broad face and a thin, braided mustache, and he smiled warmly. Not like when I’d been Lejina, looking for work.

“Yah,” I said, trying to look as annoyed as I thought I should. It was easy.

“Don’t act pissed off with him,” Drasstar whispered as we followed Caladrina, “He’s always coming by Joovlies and leaving little animals for you in gold cages. He likes you.”

Little animals. “Pets?” I whispered back.

“No. To eat. You prefer them— ah. Here we are.” Drasstar nodded.

Caladrina gestured to our table, his lips compressed, holding back hurt feelings.

My mind buzzed: what to do? Something outrageous. I remembered Thringe‘s moves on stage, and sidled past Caladrina toward the chair next to Drasstar. As I went by, I moved my shoulder against Caladrina‘s solid chest just enough to dislodge my cape and reveal the gaudy smartgel on my breast, my nipple, and everything below it.

I hadn’t meant it to show quite that much. Part of me shuddered at my own boldness, but the rest of me enjoyed Caladrina‘s eyes popping wide. He fumbled with the cafe datasheets he had brought for us. Going back to the front of the cafe, he looked back at me, smiled, and tripped over a chair.

“You idiot!” Drasstar hissed at me. “She’d never do that!”

Rashua laughed out loud. “After this, I can’t wait until Win sees him again. That’ll be fun to watch.” She crooked a finger at an andro server for some brewtanks.

I decided to look pissed.

The four of us sat and sipped our brews. Other patrons passed our table. Two or three people stopped, but I ignored them and stared into my brewtank. They moved on. The tiny bit of brew I’d sipped was making me wobble inside. The Fest roared on outside.

“So how do I like the… animals he sends me? What are they?” I asked Drasstar.

“Beetles. Newly-killed, with a dash of devilberry and a raw lizard egg.” Drasstar scanned the crossing from our table deep inside the cafe. Bushes hid the view outward. He tilted his chair a little to see more, then plopped it back down.

I felt nauseated, then annoyed with his teasing, and said defiantly, “I prefer furry ones, with the fur matted in honey, all cooked with a beam gun. Males only, taken in rut.”

All three of them turned to stare at me, then broke out laughing.

“You’re a fast learner, Baby,” said Naudi. “I can almost hear Win making a lyric out of that.”

“Ho,” rumbled Drasstar, holding up a warning hand. “Things banging. Grioskin‘s here.”

A lean-muscled, puff-haired young man in green slid between tables to ours, and sat down. He crooked a finger, got a brewtank, and said, “It’s bad. They sussed her on the way, and she hasn’t contacted me, like she should have. The blues were running a dig, just off Barrow Arc, and—" He looked over at me, and said, “You shouldn’t hear this. Who are you, anyway?” His pale-blue eyes dilated.

“That’s Baby,” said Rashua, “and Thringe likes her.”

“Damn. Nice makeup job. Hi, Baby.” He drew the other three apart and started whispering to them.

I turned my back and studied my steel brewtank. The brew, its fine froth now only edging its shimmering brown surface, reflected the pinpoint gold lights in the Aswar Tyrae dome some distance from where I sat. Things were going unwell for Thringe. That made two of us. What if Thringe couldn’t pay me, and--

“You Thringe.”

A warm male voice almost made me look up, startled. I curled one hand around the brewtank handle, stared hard at the brew, raised it to my mouth, and took a big swallow. “Buurp,” I said, scowling.

“Barrow Iron Wing,” the man said, his voice low and musical with a Gellin Sintherou accent. Moving air tickled my ear. He was gone.

I looked around at the nearby tables for Drasstar. The others watched me expectantly.

“Who was that? What did he say to you?” Drasstar asked me.

I repeated the words.

“What? That’s all? Did you know who he was?”

“No. Didn’t you?”

They shook their heads. Drasstar said, “Grioskin went after him.”

Grioskin returned, shaking his head. “Lost him.”

“You sov Barrow?” Drasstar asked Grioskin.

“Barrow Arc, where the blues are working a case. Iron Wing’s one of Win’s old songs, about the City shafts, the little ones with the conduits.”

“Shit!” Drasstar was on his feet, and drawing his knife. “I know where she is! Let’s get there.” The others jumped up. “And we’d better get Masinarin and that beamer of his.”

I started to get up, but Drasstar held up a hand. “Not you,” he said, “Not if you want to keep living. Stay here until midnight, and if we’re not back here, you forget us and get back to your dad.” The four of them fled the cafe, leaving me with a stack of coin and a cluster of brewtanks.