Aftermath - Ann Aguirre [113]
All around me, they’re trying to set the café to rights, servo-bots sweeping up the wreckage. I wish I could be fixed so easily. New flowers are placed on the tables, and the remaining patrons resume their meals. My hot choclaste has spilled across the remainder of my sweet sliced kavi, leaving a pink and brown mess on my plate.
The manager or owner touches my shoulder, likely worried that I intend to blame his establishment. “Are you injured?”
How funny. It’s been long enough that they no longer remember my face. I’m not famous or infamous any longer. I’m not the Butcher of Venice Minor or the legendary Sirantha Jax. I’m just a wounded woman in a random café on Gehenna. I marvel at the anonymity of it. There’s a clean and lovely symmetry in it. I feared Vel’s discovery would put me center stage again, but at my request, he has managed to keep all but a few whispers of my involvement from all but the most dogged bounce stations, and even then it’s just speculation. On one feed, I was amused as hell to hear them refer to Vel as my “longtime Ithtorian companion.” Idiots. He’s so much more to me than that. There are no words for it.
“Not badly.” Answering him belatedly—and I’m sure he now thinks I’m concussed—I pull the cloth from my temple and check it with my fingertips; the cut has already clotted, thanks to the nanites that render me not-quite-human.
“Your son’s adorable,” a woman says as I pass by. “But he doesn’t look much like you or your husband.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to deny the connection; instead, I merely accept the compliment with a mute nod and join the throng. Today, I face an unpleasant truth; March has family, and I do not. I am adrift, cut free from my moorings. I walk aimlessly, needing to get my emotions under control before I face the others.
My path takes me through the market and into the poor quarter, where I spent so many peaceful hours with Adele. I wish she were here; Gehenna is painful now that she’s gone, but I come to stand outside her building anyway and gaze up at the window that used to be hers. Did she live here when she was with Vel? It’s so hard to imagine him settled, spending quiet evenings with her when she was young. Even he has his secrets. Boiling with pain, I move on.
Eventually, I make the meeting at Carvati’s, where I find my “longtime Ithtorian companion” waiting on the platform. It’s an amazing view from the aerie, breathtaking even.
Vel knows me too well to accept the assurance that I’m fine. “He hurt you?”
He’s not talking about the wound on my head, either. “No more than he had to. His nephew comes first.”
He offers a mute nod, then changes the subject, more of his quiet perception. “The implant went well.”
I watch as he flexes his claws. “It doesn’t show.”
“Carvati is good. And it appears that Zeeka does, indeed, possess the J-gene.”
I wonder if the fact that we jumped while he was a tiny hatchling has anything to do with his yen for grimspace. If he’d been a human child, we wouldn’t have done it. Long ago, I discriminated against Loras because he’s not human. Frag, I hope I don’t do that to Vel.
“That’s good news for Z. He’d be crushed to fail his test.”
Vel tilts his head toward the clinic. “Shall we go talk to the man?”
The bot in reception is different from the one Carvati used the last time we visited. Not surprising, I suppose, that he would upgrade in five turns, but it’s another reminder of how long we were gone. Vel shares a look with me that tells me he feels it, too, that sense of being unconnected to the right time stream. Maybe it’s a side effect of gate travel and will wear off soon. I hope.
Once he hears we’ve arrived, Carvati comes to greet us personally. “So good to see both of you. I’d heard you were lost.”
“It’s a long story,” I say, not that I’m eager to tell it again.
But he’s a businessman and respects my reticence. “Understandable, and