my credit is still good enough. The first shuttle that will take us back to Foursgate does not leave for a day and a half.
We eat a real meal at the port, ordering enough food to make the table creak. Song does not touch hers. As I
listen to my brothers' endless, whining attempts to change my mind about Our Treasure, my Page 171
own ravenous
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appetite shrivels and my stomach tightens around a lump of cold contempt. I pick at my food, ignoring them, until at last they stop speaking. Their eyes watch me with sullen speculation. They mutter to each other words I can't make out.
At last SB says, "Well, if you're going to get rid of her"
--gesturing at Song--"let's get it over with."
I nod, surprised, and we take her back into town. It is midmorning already; a hot mist clings to us as we walk.
I am filled with an eerie sense of deja vu as we walk the white, shuttered streets. Welcome to World's End. SB roams ahead impatiently, asking for the sibyl. Most people won't answer him; I can hardly blame them. I follow more slowly, burdened down by my beaten body, by Song's lack of will and HK's complaints about his leg.
SB reappears from around a corner, just when I think we've lost him completely. "Down here!"
he calls.
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"She's down here."
We follow him down the alleyway. We are in a part of the town I don't know at all, emptier and even more run-down than the rest of it. Unwholesome fungal life oozes out of cracks and crannies. SB leads us into a peeling courtyard. The buildings here look deserted. I can't believe Hahn is forced to live in a place like this.
The instincts of long experience begin to jangle inside me, and I try to force my brain to function. "SB, this doesn't--"
"In here," he insists, holding open a door. "She doesn't want anyone to know about this."
That makes a kind of painful sense, and I lead Song forward. HK shuffles behind me. I search the room with a glance as we enter it, but there is no one else here. "SB, what the hell--" I begin angrily.
He shrugs. "We needed a place to have one more little talk about our future. HK, get the globe and bring it to me."
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HK jerks the globe from my hand, and moves to SB's side. SB sits on the edge of a broken table. "Now, shall we go over the reasons why you're being an ass, again?"
he asks me.
"I already told you, nothing you can say to me is going to change anything." I take a deep breath, trying to keep my temper. "Listen, SB, we've all been through an ordeal.
I know what you must have suffered. You were out there a lot longer than I was. ..." The words feel as cloying as dust. "But you'll see things clearly again when you--"
"When we what?" he says bitterly. "What do we have to go back to? Nothing, unless we have this." He points at the globe.
"Have you considered honest work? I rather enjoy it, myself."
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HK sneers. "You hypocrite. You wanted the estates for yourself. You think we don't know that?
The only reason you left home was because Father put you in your place."
I feel my face flush. "You mean I should have stayed, and helped you suck our ancestors'
blood?" / would have killed you first. My hands turn into fists. I force them open again.
"That--that doesn't matter now/' I say weakly.
"It's past, it's gone. What matters is that we're all the family we have left. This is stupid--"
"Then why can't we be rich again together?" HK says.
"Why shouldn't we? Isn't there anything you want?
There's got to be something--something you want more than anything. Something you could never have, that you could have now--"
Moon. Her face fills my mind. "Moon. ..." I realize what I have not had time to realize until now--that the impossible has been made possible . . . that to see her again is possible, because of Fire Lake.
"You see?" SB says eagerly. "There is something! I
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knew you weren't so fucking pure. You can have anything you want; we'll share it, all of us--"
Naked greed fills his face, and HK's. "There's more than enough."
"No," I say flatly. "Never." I realize there is nothing that could make me willing to give them that kind of power. "You don't deserve it."
Their faces freeze. I glance at Song, still standing vacant-eyed beside me and gazing at the globe.
"Then let me give you one more reason why you should do this our way, little brother," SB says.
He reaches into his ragged coat, and brings out the beamer.
"Because you want to stay alive."
"Father of all our grandfathers!" I move forward angrily, not believing for a moment that he means it. "I've had enough of this shit, SB. Give me the globe, and the
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gun, damn it." I hold out my hand.
SB doesn't falter, the gun stays steady in his hand.
I stop, looking from his bleak stranger's face to HK's.
HK looks down, staring at the globe. My empty hands clench. "Come on!" I almost laugh. "You aren't going to use that gun. You aren't going to kill a police officer. You aren't going to kill a sibyl." I hold up the trefoil. "Damn it, you aren't going to murder your own brother--" I take another step.
SB fires.
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//^^ undhalinu cursed softly, slumping back against
II yj the clear window-wall as the shock of betrayal
^^-¿J doubled the agony of remembered pain. For a long moment he sat staring into the minutely familiar corners of his office, like an amnesiac who had suddenly recovered his memory. And at last he pushed himself stiffly to his feet, pressing his arm against his side as he
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made his way back to his desk. "Ossidge?"
"Sir." His sergeant's voice answered him in less than a heartbeat.
"I'm ready to see the prisoners now."
"Yes, sir."
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He sat down in his chair, listened to his heart still pounding. The adrenaline was flowing again, with the memories. . . .
The memory of his brothers standing over him as he lay, trying not to weep or moan, while they argued about whether to shoot him again. The memory of HK stealing the watch from his belt pouch before they abandoned him to die. . . . The memory of lying for hours on the floor while nameless, unspeakable things crept unseeing across his face; in too much pain even to move, but exquisitely conscious of every passing second, the blisters rising on his skin, the smell of charred flesh, his life's blood spreading out in a shining lake around him. . . .
Crying out for his brothers, for a passing stranger, for anyone in the universe but Song--
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