She glanced up at him. Suddenly clear-eyed and focused, she shook her head in the negative, and a frisson of apprehension skittered up Simon’s spine. Had she actually just read his thoughts? Could she see into his mind?
“Shh,” she said. She lowered her voice to just above a whisper. “You-know-who.” She tipped the teacup left, then right. “There.”
Simon’s hair stood on end. A sudden, chilling thought had occurred to him. What if Mal being taken was a distraction, and the real scheme centered on seizing River and him? With the Alliance’s near-infinite resources, faking some business contacts and ID papers was child’s play. Removing Mal from the equation left the remaining crew weakened and rudderless. What if there was an Alliance vessel hailing Serenity right now, ready to exercise boarding rights and exploit Mal’s absence? Had that been the plot all along, and the business about anti-Browncoat vigilantes nothing more than a red herring?
“Closer, closer,” River murmured.
Jayne appeared in the corridor, ducking through the doorway into the dining area.
River rolled her eyes meaningfully.
Ah, thought Simon. That’s what she meant by you-know-who.
Jayne strode past the table, directing a wary look at River and then a dismissive shrug at Simon. Simon and the big mercenary had arrived at an uneasy truce after Jayne sold out the Tams to the Alliance during a caper on Ariel. A remorseful Jayne had changed his mind at the last moment and saved them. His excuse for the lapse: the money had been too good. Since then, the bounty for River’s capture had increased many times over, and Simon knew Jayne was a simple, reactive man. He liked to think Jayne wouldn’t succumb to temptation a second time, but he wasn’t convinced that someone with such a thirst for lucre would be able to hold out forever.
“So that was bracing, huh, Jayne?” he said. “The near-collision.”
“Yeah, well, we were both in a hurry. Us and the liner.” Jayne glared at him. “Guess why we were.”
River stared intently at her tea leaves and whispered to herself, making a rhythmic swish-swish-swish, swish-swish-swish sound.
“If—when—the Alliance next comes after us,” Jayne went on, “and believe me they will, we gotta figure out where to stash you two. Feds’ll take the ship apart, bit by bit, looking. It might be best to have a couple of suits ready so’s you can go outside again, like that one time.”
Simon experienced a wave of vertigo as he recalled clinging to the hull of the ship, with no up or down, only the endless night. River had been enchanted by the vastness of space, the velvet black dotted with fields of stars. Simon had grappled with a low-grade panic that had threatened to paralyze him. Now, that same panic reared its head, building and nibbling at his carefully maintained composure.
Still, it was comforting to hear Jayne talking about helping them hide, as opposed to handing them over for the reward money. Unless, that was, Jayne was simply saying what he thought Simon wanted to hear. Lulling him into a false sense of security.
“It’s an experience I’d wish not to repeat if at all possible,” Simon said.
“Yeah, well, if wishes were horses, they’d ride beggars. No, wait, that ain’t it. Beggars would ride unicorns? No, that ain’t it either. Somethin’ about beggars, anyways.”
River looked up from her tea leaves again and gave Jayne a long, measured stare.
For second Jayne squinted at her, a look you could interpret either as kindly or as hostile. With Jayne, the two things weren’t that far removed from each other. Then he said, “Any more of that tea going, or did the pair of you hog it all?”
“Perish the thought,” Simon said. “The teapot is on the stove.”
“We used to put tamarind in it,” River said to her brother.
Simon smiled at her. “Yes, at home. I remember.”
“I miss home. Why did we leave?”
“Mother and Father thought it was best for us. You at the Academy, me at medical school. They… didn’t realize the consequences.”
“Yeah,” Jayne muttered. “The consequences being one of you’d end up with a stick up his butt, the other as mad as a gopher in goggles.”
“Jayne, that’s not helpful,” Simon said, which was about as stern as reproof as he dared give the much bigger and burlier man.
River made circles of her thumbs and forefingers and placed them over her eyes, like goggles, then stuck out her front teeth goofily.
In spite of himself, Simon laughed. River laughed too, a sound he didn’t hear often enough and yearned to hear more.
“Who made these cookies?” Jayne said as he rummaged in the galley’s cabinets. His cheeks were bulging, and cookie crumbs sprayed as he talked. “They’re powerful good.”
Simon didn’t reply. He didn’t know or care about the authorship of baked goods. As he turned back to River, he saw that she had stood up and was now rotating in a circle, gracefully waving her hands, and tilting her head in what appeared to be ancient, courtly poses. She slid a glance towards him, her eyes glittering like polished topaz.
“They dance like this there,” she said.
“Where?” Simon asked.
“In the crates. The busy crates.”
“The crates in the cargo bay?”
Jayne was happily munching away on cookies while pouring himself some tea, seemingly oblivious.
“Yes. The crystals inside. They dance in their hearts, getting faster and faster.”
River swayed back and forth, her arms swooping and diving as if she was holding two large folded fans. The she abruptly halted, holding a pose, her body still, only her head moving, winding sinuously from side to side like a snake’s.
“When the music stops, they’ll stop dancing,” she said. “Everyone will stop dancing, and we’ll all go into the light.” Then she melted back into her chair. “I’m so tired, Simon.”
Simon watched as his sister picked up a drawing pad and a charcoal stick and began sketching. He soon saw that it was a picture of him. It was amazing how fast she worked and how well she captured his likeness. He smiled and she frowned back.
“Don’t smile,” she said. “You weren’t smiling when I started.”
Humoring her, Simon reassumed a serious face.
River erased the left half of his mouth with her thumb and redrew his lips on that side into a scowl. She added lines across half his forehead and a tear welling in his left eye. One half happy, one half sad.
“You’re homesick, but you’re getting used to being here,” she announced.
“That’s true,” he said.
“You’re angry with me but you love me.”
“That’s not so true.”
“It is.”
“I could never be angry with you.”
“You saved me,” River said, working again on her drawing. She shaded his cheekbone and began adding his hair. Then, looking puzzled, she said, “Something’s missing. I know! Your mustache.”
“I don’t have a mustache,” Simon pointed out.
She leaned across and scribbled one under his nose with the charcoal. She giggled and pulled back.
“You are such a brat,” her brother chided, his voice breaking just a little. He ruffled her hair and she shook her head, pushing him away.
“You have no idea,” she said. Then, putting aside the drawing pad, she stretched and yawned.
“Do you want to rest?”
“Rest in peace,” she said. She closed her eyes and crossed her arms over her chest like a dead girl.
Unnerved, Simon rose. He looked down at her placid face and wished that for her — peace. For himself as well.
“Let’s get you to your bunk,” he said. “Okay?”