Women of War Page 2

  Even if there wasn’t work, there’d be coffeetoot, thick and bitter from havin’ been on the stove all day, and Trey was sure to give her a mug of the stuff, it bein’ his idea of what was—

  A shadow stepped out from behind the tavern’s garbage bin. Miri dodged, but her father had already grabbed her arm and twisted it behind her back. Agony screamed through her shoulder, and she bit her tongue, hard. Damned if she’d let him hear her yell. Damned if she would.

  “Here she is,” Robertson shouted over her head. “Gimme the cash!”

  Out of the tavern’s doorway came another man, tall and fat, his coat embroidered with posies and his beard trimmed and combed. He smiled when he saw her, and gold teeth gleamed.

  “Mornin’, Miri.”

  “Torbin,” she gasped—and bit her tongue again as her father twisted her arm.

  “That’s Mister Torbin, bitch.”

  Torbin shook his head. “I pay less for damaged goods,” he said.

  Robertson grunted. “You want my advice, keep her tied up and hungry. She’s bad as her ol’ lady for sneaking after a man and doin’ him harm.”

  Torbin frowned. “I know how to train my girls, thanks. Let ’er go.”

  Miri heard her father snort a laugh.

  “Gimme my money first. After she’s yours, you can chase her through every rat hole on Latimer’s turf.”

  “But she ain’t gonna run away, are you, Miri?” Torbin pulled his hand out of a pocket and showed her a gun. Not a homemade one-shot, neither, but a real gun, like the Boss’s security had.

  “Because,” Torbin was saying, “if you try an’ run away, I’ll shoot you in the leg. You don’t gotta walk good to work for me.”

  “Don’t wanna work for you,” she said, which was stupid, and Robertson yanked her arm up to let her know it.

  “That’s too bad,” said Torbin. “Cause your dad here’s gone to a lot a trouble an’ thought for you, an’ found you a steady job. But, hey, soon’s you make enough to pay off the loan an’ the interest, you can quit. I don’t hold no girl ’gainst her wants.”

  He grinned. “An’ you—you’re some lucky girl. Got me a man who pays a big bonus for a redhead, another one likes the youngers. You’re, what—’leven? Twelve, maybe?”

  “Sixteen,” Miri snarled. This time the pain caught her unawares, and a squeak got out before she ground her teeth together.

  “She’s thirteen,” Robertson said, and Torbin nodded.

  “That’ll do. Let ’er go, Chock.”

  “M’money,” her father said again, and her arm was gonna pop right outta the shoulder, if—

  “Right.” Torbin pulled his other hand out of its pocket, a fan of greasy bills between his fingers. “Twenty cash, like we agreed on.”

  Her father reached out a shaky hand and crumbled the notes in his fist.

  “Good,” said Torbin. “Miri, you ’member what I told you. Be a good girl and we’ll get on. Let ’er go, Chock.”

  He pushed her hard and let go her arm. Expected her to fall, prolly, and truth to tell, she expected it herself, but she managed to stay up and keep moving, head down, straight at Torbin.

  She rammed her head hard into his crotch, heard a high squeak. Torbin went down to his knees, got one arm around her; she twisted, dodged, was past, felt the grip on her shirt, and had time to yell before she was slammed into the side of the garbage bin. Her sight grayed, and out of the mist she saw a fist coming toward her. She dropped to the mud and rolled, sobbing, heard another shout and a hoarse cough, and above it all a third and unfamiliar voice, yelling—

  “Put the gun down and stand where you are or by the gods I’ll shoot your balls off, if you got any!”

  Miri froze where she was, belly flat to the ground, and turned her face a little to see—

  Chock Robertson standing still, hands up at belt level, fingers wide and empty.

  Torbin standing kinda half-bent, hands hanging empty, his gun on the ground next to his shoe.

  A rangy woman in neat gray shirt and neat gray trousers tucked tight into shiny black boots. She was holding a gun as shiny as the boots easy and businesslike in her right hand. Her hair was brown and her eyes were hard and the expression on her face was of a woman who’d just found rats in the larder.

  “Kick that over here,” she said to Torbin.

  He grunted, but gave the gun a kick that put next it to the woman’s foot. She put her shiny boot on it and nodded slightly. “Obliged.”

  “You all right, girl?” she asked then, but not like it mattered much.

  Miri swallowed. Her arm hurt, and her head did, and her back where she’d caught the metal side of the container. Near’s she could tell, though, everything that ought to moved. And she was breathing.

  “I’m okay,” she said.

  “Then let’s see you stand up and walk over here,” the woman said.

  She pushed herself up onto her knees, keeping a wary eye on Robertson and Torbin, got her feet under her, and walked up to the woman, making sure she kept outta the stare of her weapon.

  The brown eyes flicked to her face, the hard mouth frowning.

  “I know you?”

  “Don’t think so,” Miri answered. “Ma’am.”

  One side of the mouth twisted up a little, then the eyes moved and the gun, too.

  “Stay right there until I tell you otherwise,” she snapped, and her father sank back flat on his feet, hands held away from his sides.

  “Get behind me, girl,” the woman said, and Miri ducked around and stood facing that straight, gray-clad back.

  She oughta run, she thought; get to one of her hiding places before Torbin and her father figured out that the two of them together could take a single woman, but curiosity and some stupid idea that if it came down to it, she oughta help the person who’d helped her kept her there and watching.

  “Now,” the woman said briskly. “You gents can take yourselves peaceably off, or I can shoot the pair of you. It really don’t matter to me which it is.”

  “The girl belongs to me!” Torbin said. “Her daddy pledged her for twenty cash.”

  “Nice of him,” the woman with the gun said.

  “Girl,” she snapped over her shoulder. “If you’re keen on going for whore, you go ahead with him. I won’t stop you.”

  “I ain’t,” Miri said, and was ashamed to hear her voice shake.

  “That’s settled then.” The woman moved her gun in a easy nod at Torbin. “Seems to me you oughta get your money back from her daddy and buy yourself another girl.”

  “She’s mine to see settled!” roared Robertson, leaning forward—and then leaning back as the gun turned its stare on him.

  “Girl says she ain’t going for whore,” the woman said lazily. “Girl’s got a say in what she will and won’t do to feed herself. Girl!”

  Miri’s shoulders jerked. “Ma’am?”

  “You find yourself some work to do, you make sure your daddy gets his piece, hear?”

  “No’m,” Miri said, hotly. “When I find work I’ll make sure my mother gets her piece. She threw him out and denied him. He’s no lookout of ours.”

  There was a small pause, and Miri thought she saw a twitch along one level shoulder.

  “That a fact?” the woman murmured, but didn’t wait for any answer before rapping out, “You gents got places to be. Go there.”

  Amazingly, they went, Torbin not even askin’ for his gun back.

  “You still there, girl?”

  Miri blinked at the straight back “Yes’m.”

  The woman turned and looked down her.

  “Now the question is, why?” she said. “You coulda been next turf over by now.”

  “Thought I might could help,” Miri said, feeling stupid now for thinking it. “If things got ugly.”

  The hard eyes didn’t change and the mouth didn’t smile. “Ready to wade right in, were you?” she murmured, and just like before didn’t wait for an answer.

  “What’s your n
ame, girl?”

  “Miri Robertson.”

  “Huh. What’s your momma’s name?”

  Miri looked up into the woman’s face, but there wasn’t no reading it, one way or the other.

  “Katy Tayzin,” she said.

  The face did change then, though Miri couldn’t’ve said exactly how, and the level shoulders looked to lose a little of their starch.

  “You’re the spit of her,” the woman said, and put her fingers against her neat gray chest. “Name’s Lizardi. You call me Liz.”

  Miri blinked up at her. “You know my mother?”

  “Used to,” Liz said, sliding her gun away neat into its belt-holder. “Years ago that’d be. How’s she fare?”

  “She’s sick,” Miri said, and hesitated, then blurted. “You know anybody’s got work—steady work? I can do some mechanical repair, and duct work and chimney clearing and—”

  Liz held up a broad hand. Miri stopped, swallowing, and met the brown eyes steady as she could.

  “Happens I have work,” Liz said slowly. “It’s hard and it’s dangerous, but I’m proof it can be good to you. If you want to hear more, come on inside and take a sup with me. Grover does a decent stew, still.”

  Miri hesitated. “I don’t—”

  Liz shook her head. “Tradition. Recruiting officer always buys.”

  Whatever that meant, Miri thought, and then thought again about Torbin and her father being on the loose.

  “Your momma all right where she is?” Liz asked and Miri nodded.

  “Staying with Braken and Kale,” she said. “Won’t nobody get through Kale.”

  “Good. You come with me.”

  “Grew up here,” Liz said in her lazy way, while Miri worked through her second bowl of stew. “Boss Peterman’s territory it was then. Wasn’t much by way of work then, neither. Me, I was little bit older’n you, workin’ pick-up and on the side. Your momma, she was baker over—well, it ain’t here now, but there used to be a big bake shop over on Light Street. It was that kept us, but we was looking to do better. One day, come Commander Feriola, recruitin’, just like I’m doin’ now. I signed up for to be a soldier. Your momma ...” She paused, and took a couple minutes to kinda look around the room. Miri finished her stew and regretfully pushed the bowl away.

  “Your momma,” Liz said, “she wouldn’t go off-world. Her momma had told her there was bad things waitin’ for her if she did, and there wasn’t nothin’ I could say would move her. So I went myself, and learned my trade, and rose up through the rank, and now here I’m back, looking for a few bold ones to fill in my own command.”

  Miri bit her lip. “What’s the pay?”

  Liz shook her head. “That was my first question, too. It don’t pay enough, some ways. It pays better’n whorin’, pays better’n odd jobs. You stand a good chance of gettin’ dead from it, but you’ll have a fightin’ chance. And if you come out on the livin’ side of that chance, and you’re smart, you’ll have some money to retire on and not have to come back to Surebleak never again.”

  “And my pay,” Miri persisted, thinking about the drug Braken thought might be had, over to Boss Abram’s turf, that might stop the blood and heal her mother’s lungs. “I can send that home?”

  Liz’s mouth tightened. “You can, if that’s what you want. It’s your pay, girl. And believe me, you’ll earn it.”

  Braken and Kale, they’d look after her mother while she was gone. Specially if she was to promise them a piece. And it couldn’t be no worse off-world than here, she thought—could it?

  “I’ll do it,” she said, sounded maybe too eager, because the woman laughed. Miri frowned.

  “No, don’t you spit at me,” Liz said, raising a hand. “I seen temper.”

  “I thought—”

  “No, you didn’t,” Liz snapped. “All you saw was the money. Happens I got some questions of my own. I ain’t looking to take you off-world and get you killed for sure. If I want to see you dead, I can shoot you right here and now and save us both the fare.

  “And that’s my first question, a soldier’s work being what it is. You think you can kill somebody?”

  Miri blinked, remembering the feel of the gun in her hand—and blinked again, pushing the memory back away.

  “I can,” she said, slow, “because I have.”

  Liz pursed her lips, like she tasted something sour. “Have, huh? Mind sharing the particulars?”

  Miri shrugged. “Bout a year ago. They was kid slavers an’ thought they’d take me. I got hold of one of their guns and—” she swallowed, remembering the smell and the woman’s voice, not steady: Easy, kid ...

  “... and I shot both of ’em,” she finished up, meeting Liz’s eyes.

  “Yeah? You like it?”

  Like it? Miri shook her head. “Threw up.”

  “Huh. Would you do it again?”

  “If I had to,” Miri said, and meant it.

  “Huh,” Liz said again. “Your momma know about it?”

  “No.” She hesitated, then added. “I took their money. Told her I found the purse out behind the bar.”

  Liz nodded.

  “I heard two different ages out there on the street. You want to own one of ’em?”

  Miri opened her mouth—Liz held up her hand.

  “It’d be good if it was your real age. I can see you’re small. Remember I knew your momma. I seen what small can do.”

  Like waling a man half again as tall as her and twice as heavy across a room and out into the hall ...

  “Almost fourteen.”

  “How close an almost?”

  “Just shy a Standard Month.”

  Liz closed her eyes, and Miri froze.

  “I can read,” she said.

  Liz laughed, soft and ghosty. “Can you, now?” she murmured, and opened her eyes, all business again.

  “There’s a signing bonus of fifty cash. You being on the light side of what the mercs consider legal age, we’ll need your momma’s hand on the papers.”

  Braken eyed Miri’s tall companion, and stepped back from the door.

  “She’s in her chair,” she said.

  Miri nodded and led the way.

  Braken’s room had a window, and Katy Tayzin’s chair was set square in front of it, so she’d get whatever sun could find its way through the grime.

  She was sewing—mending a tear in one of Kale’s shirts, Miri thought, and looked up slowly, gray eyes black with the juice.

  “Ma—” Miri began, but Katy’s eyes went past her, and she put her hands and the mending down flat on her lap.

  “Angela,” she said, and it was nothing like the tone she’d used to deny Robertson, but it gave Miri chills anyway.

  “Katy,” Liz said, in her lazy way, and stepped forward, till she stood lookin’ down into the chair.

  “I’m hoping that denial’s wore off by now,” she said, soft-like.

  Katy Tayzin smiled faintly. “I think it has,” she murmured. “You look fine, Angela. The soldiering treated you well.”

  “Just registered my own command with merc headquarters,” Liz answered. “I’m recruiting.”

  “And my daughter brings you here.” She moved her languid gaze. “Are you for a soldier, Miri?”

  “Yes’m,” she said and stood forward, marshaling her arguments: the money she’d send home, the signing cash, the—

  “Good,” her mother said, and smiled, slowly. “You’ll do well.”

  Liz cleared her throat. “There’s a paper you’ll need to sign.”

  “Of course.”

  There was a pause then. Liz’s shoulders rose—and fell.

  “Katy. There’s medics and drugs and transplants—offworld. For old times—”

  “My reasons remain,” Katy said, and extended a frail, translucent hand. “Sit with me, Angela. Tell me everything. Miri—Kale needs you to help him in the boiler room.”

  Miri blinked, then nodded. “Yes’m,” she said, and turned to go. She looked back before she got to
the door, and saw Liz sitting on the floor next to her mother’s chair, both broad, tan hands cupping one of her mother’s thin hands, brown head bent above red.

  Miri’d spent half her recruitment bonus on vacked coffee and tea, dry beans and vegetables for her mother, and some quality smokes for Braken and Kale. Half what was left after that went with Milt Boraneti into Boss Abram’s territory, with a paper spelling out the name of the drug Braken’d thought would help Katy’s lungs.

  She’d gone ’round to Kalhoon’s Repair, to say good-bye to Penn, and drop him off her hoard of paper and books, but he wasn’t there. Using one of the smaller pieces of paper, she wrote him a laborious note, borrowed a piece of twine and left the tied-together package with his dad.

  Liz’d told her she’d have a uniform when she got to merc headquarters, the cost to be deducted from her pay. For now, she wore her best clothes, and carried her new-signed papers in a bag over her shoulder. In the bag, too, wrapped up in a clean rag, was a smooth disk—intarsia work, her mother had murmured, barely able to hold the thing in her two hands.

  It was your grandmother’s, she whispered, and it came from off-world. It doesn’t belong here, and neither do you.

  “I’ll send money,” Miri said, looking into her mother’s drugged eyes. “As much as I can.”

  Katy smiled. “You’ll have expenses,” she said. “Don’t send all your money to me.”

  Miri bit her lip. “Will you come? Liz says—”

  Katy shook her head. “I won’t pass the physical at the port,” she said, and coughed. She turned her head aside and used a rag to wipe her mouth.

  She turned back with a smile, and reached out her thin hand to rest it on Miri’s arm. “You, my daughter. You’re about to begin the adventure of your life. Be bold, which I know you are. Be as honest as you can. Trust Angela. If you find love, embrace it.”

  The cough again, hard this time. Miri caught her shoulders and held her until it was done. Katy used the rag, and pushed it down beside her on the chair, but not before Miri saw it was dyed crimson.

  Katy turned back with another smile, wider this time, and held out arms out. Miri bent and hugged her, feeling the bones. Her mother’s lips brushed her cheek, and her voice whispered, “Go now.”