Their Fractured Light (Starbound #3)(43)

“You’re right,” I say hollowly, trying to ignore the way the lie cuts me. I can’t afford to let it. So instead, I tighten my hand, making it seem like I don’t want him to let go.

And the worst part is, I don’t.

We can’t risk staying in any legal lodging house, not when LRI’s bound to have surveillance looking for us in every corner of the sector. But it’s getting late, and both of us are beyond exhausted, and we need to find a place to sleep. Gideon has an idea of where we can hide for the next few days and swears it’s completely off the grid, no cameras, no people—which, down here, should be next to impossible. But he knows this place better than I do, and all the contacts I had here are long gone. I’ve got no choice but to trust him.

While Gideon heads into a secondhand store for some blankets and a few supplies, I start setting a few things in motion. Using one of his prepaid burner palm pads, I get one of my contacts to source invitations for us to the Daedalus gala, another to find us something to wear so we’ll fit in. By the time Gideon reemerges, I’m ready to dump the palm pad into the nearest trash bin.

Night in the undercity is not so very different from day as far as sunlight is concerned—not much makes it through the streets and parks and avenues of the middle and upper layers even on the sunniest days. Nightfall is merely a subtle tightening of the gloom, a shift in the light from dingy gray to true darkness.

But night in the undercity, where the people are concerned, is when the streets come alive.

Gideon leads me across streets and through alleys strung with lanterns of every kind and color—paper and fabric, so they can be easily replaced when the pollution discolors them—and bright like fire. The food vendors have tripled, and the smells of garlic and oil, coffee and allspice and yeast, fill the air and finally overpower the pollution. Somewhere in the distance I can hear music, with a thick rawness to the sound that tells me they’re playing live in the street. A fiddle and an erhu are dueling against the backdrop of a pair of cajóns, and for a moment I forget LaRoux, the Daedalus, the gun I left in my apartment. For a wild moment, all I can think of is how much I wish I could drop it all and just go dance to that music with Gideon.

A truck rumbles along the street and Gideon grabs for my hand, jerking my attention back to him. “Come on, let’s hitch a lift.”

“Wait, I don’t—”

But he’s not waiting, breaking into a jog and keeping hold of my hand so I have to jog as well or else be dragged along behind him. The truck’s not moving fast—it’s impossible to drive quickly through the clogged undercity streets—and as it passes us, Gideon reaches out to grab the bar beside the loading door and hauls me up after him.

Another day, I would make some cutting comment about him showing off, or using this as an excuse to keep an arm wrapped around me, pressing both of us close against the back of the truck. Another day, I’d have fought to keep my feet on the ground. But it’s not any other day, and once we make it to that gala everything could change—if I get the opportunity I’m hoping for on the Daedalus. When I get the opportunity.

So I let Gideon tighten his arm around my waist, and I tilt my head back. The lanterns go whizzing by overhead, shooting past us like meteors in the thick dark night. I’d forgotten, in the months since I exchanged my squalid walk-up for a penthouse suite, how beautiful it could be down here.

The truck stops at a light and Gideon gives my arm a squeeze before hopping down off the back of the truck. He keeps hold of my hand as he helps me down after him, but then releases me as soon as I’m on my feet.

“This way.” He tips his head toward a particularly dark side street, this one lacking entirely in lanterns.

I let him pull me along, staying behind him just close enough that I can make out his silhouette. I pull another of the burner palm pads he loaned me out of my pocket and click it on, using the faint blue-white glow of its display to light my path. Gideon heads a few meters farther into the darkness, then stops at a boarded-up door. I expect a growl of disappointment—obviously this isn’t where we were supposed to end up, a closed-up, abandoned building—but instead he starts feeling around the edge of the boards. I can’t see what he finds, but after a few moments the whole panel of boards swings outward, and the door with it.

“After you.” He offers up a bow that even the fanciest of the fancy at that party on the Daedalus would approve of—a bow that belongs to the guy who knew which art to admire on Kristina’s walls. I tuck that thought away for later.

“You’re not planning on murdering me, are you?” I murmur, shuffling into the space beyond the door. It feels large, my voice echoing slightly; the palm pad’s light is too dim to disperse the darkness more than a meter or so in front of me.

Gideon doesn’t reply—I hear only his footsteps, moving away and fading into the quiet. Just before I can start to panic at having been abandoned, a light flickers on in the darkness. Some distance off, a neon sign comes to life—LIVE MUSIC, it says in bright, green and blue letters. Then another light comes on, and another, and another, until they become a cascade of glowing storefronts and streetlamps.

It’s an entire arcade of abandoned shops and restaurants. The floor is polished stone tile, and the fine layer of dust coating everything turns its reflections of the neon lights foggy—like row-house lights reflected in a river.