Would he never come home?
Corbinye stirred in the wall-niche, went through the Hemvil sequence to ease her cramped muscles and wondered for the eighth time whether she should leave her post across from Anjemalti's house and seek him UpTown.
As seven times before, she decided to stay where she was. It was so late, a mere hour from Primus Watch, which the Grounders called First Dawn—surely he was even now coming down the outer walk, and would turn the corner in a moment.
But the moment passed, and a handful of others, and still he did not come.
To pass the time, she began to plan what she might say to him. It was true that he had infuriated her with his stubbornness and—she allowed herself to know it—terrified her by crying out "Damn the Ship!" as if he were merely a couthless Grounder. But there was some justice in what he did, if one only gave a little thought to how matters must look to him. Sold, made into a thief by a Grounder of the same trade, abandoned, he must think, by Ship and Crew; he enters adulthood, at last his own master—and comes Corbinye Faztherot, her head so full of the Tomorrow Log and Ship's need that she takes no time to speak from the heart, kin-to-kin, and tell him how he had been missed, and grieved over, and sought after.
She stumbled here in her thoughts, because it was equally true that she had the barest memory of him—a fuzzy vision of a playmate half-a-head shorter than she, inexplicably clumsy in the dim halls and ductways that were the kingdom of children aboard Gardenspot, but very merry for all that, and given to laughter.
It was him laughing that she best remembered, so the lash of his anger now was more keenly felt. She nodded to herself in the wall-niche and resolved to take care with him this time, and show grace for his hurts.
She froze, ears catching again the slight scrape of boot heel upon walkstone.
At last! she thought and leaned forward—and froze, trusting that their poor Grounder eyes would not see her, though her hair must shine like a beacon in the dark, even to them.
For it was not Anjemalti, but a man and a woman—bulky, as Grounders often are, and moving with a care that screamed of stealth and the intent of deeds best not performed.
They passed, neither glancing aside, and Corbinye ducked into deeper shadow, watching them down the court.
Straight up to Anjemalti's door they went, as if they had a right to be there. The woman bent, probing with an instrument so light-gaudy that Corbinye winced in the distance, and strained to see through the multicolored glare. The man grunted audibly, fiddling with the darker machine he carried—and Anjemalti's door swung open to admit them.
Corbinye hesitated a heartbeat. Then, silent as a shadow, with all the stealth of Worldwalker and Seeker, she slipped down the court and followed them inside.
* * *
"Look at 'em fly!" Remee hissed, dancing back as the voltmeter crackled and sparked and fused. She swept a handful of fragile electronic spiders to the floor, laughing as they scrambled for safety; stamping them to bits under her boots. Chel was systematically smashing the instruments, and Remee left the rubble of spiders and began ripping cables loose and yanking various gauges and electronic junk off the wall.
She dropped a particularly delicate something on the floor and kicked it to bits, destruction-drunk and loving it.
The woman was on her before she could yell, slamming her head hard against the wall and putting a vicious elbow into her throat. The padding saved her life, but the blow was wicked enough to send her retching to her knees.
By the time she had groped the infraglasses back onto her face, Chel was swinging his bar at the woman—two-handed, so quick Remee heard it whistle through the air as she anticipated the soggy mess it would make of the woman's head—
Except the woman's head was no longer where it had been a heartbeat before. She dove for the floor, landed on her hands and continued the roll, space boots in a line with Chel's face.
He ducked at the last second, bringing the bar around to block the blow—and lost it as the woman twisted and kicked, impossibly sideways, and was back on her feet, blade out, half-crouched in a way that said she knew the worst of knife-fighting.
Chel dove, even as Remee yelled and launched herself clumsily at the woman's knees.
Corbinye leapt, used the momentum of the leap to twist—painfully slow in this gravity, though she knew the move as well as the sound of her own heartbeat—hit the floor with both hands, rolled and came up with the jack bar in one hand and the knife in the other.
The man hesitated; the woman licked her lips.
Corbinye grinned, beckoned with the knife; tested the weight of the bar. "Can it be you Grounders do not wish to die?"
"Look—" started the man, and Corbinye let the grin go, slashed air with the bar and yelled, with all the command of one born to be First.
"You motley pair of roaches! How dare you come into my cousin's house, destroy his works—you should die for that alone! But I feel pity for you, in your stupidity." She paused, filled her lungs to capacity and spent it in a roar. "GET OUT!"
They got out, running and stumbling as if the dark-seeing glasses they wore were insufficient against the comfortable dimness that pervaded Anjemalti's house. Corbinye tracked them by ear; slipped through the outer rooms to the door—in time to see both intruders turning the corner from the court to the thoroughfare.
Corbinye shook her head. "So, cousin," she whispered to the lightening gloom, "you had some cause to stay away last night."
She slipped her knife out of sight and stepped into the court, taking care to lock the door behind her. Frowning, she considered what she knew of his habits and haunts, before carefully going down the court and out into the thoroughfare, across DownTown and into UpTown, to find him.