Burning Bright

The cabin space was mostly bed, a thin mattress on top of a good-sized platform that probably concealed storage space. Lioe sat on the edge of the mattress—there was no room for two to stand in the narrow stairwell, and the arched ceiling kept her from standing upright except in the very center of the cabin—while Roscha secured the double-doored hatch behind them, and turned at last to face her. One hand was in her pocket still: the security system chimed again, resetting itself, and the red light strengthened slightly. In the comparative brightness, Lioe could see more details, the crumpled blankets and the cases of disks, Rulebooks and session supplements, mounted on the bulkhead just above the bed. Roscha slipped out of her jerkin, hung it on a hook mounted beside the hatch, and seated herself on the mattress beside the other woman. Lioe smiled and reached for her, and Roscha reached back. They kissed, lips meeting and parting, slow and awkward until they’d settled on who would lead. Lioe leaned into Roscha’s strong embrace, let herself be held and touched, Roscha’s callused fingers fumbling under her clothes to free her breasts, pinching her nipples into stiffness. And then they were scrambling with clasps and zippers and catchtape, struggling to get all the way onto the bed without letting go, either one of the other, until they were lying nearly face to face, legs tangled, thigh to crotch. Lioe leaned back a little to let Roscha’s hand between her legs, to let the deft fingers slide between her labia, circling and searching and teasing in the thick wetness until she found the right stroke. Lioe buried her face against the other woman’s shoulder, riding her hand and the rhythm of the boat until she came. Roscha came a few minutes later, driving her crotch against Lioe’s thigh, and they lay tangled, breathing hard, until finally Lioe shifted her shoulders so that she could lie flat, displacing most of Roscha’s weight sideways onto the mattress. Roscha mumbled something, already half asleep. Lioe craned her neck awkwardly to look at her, caught between amusement and chagrin— no particular sense of prowess, I didn’tdo anything—but it was late, and there was no place she needed to be. She shifted again, freeing herself from the uncomfortable parts of Roscha’s embrace, and let herself relax toward sleep.

Part Three

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Early Morning, Day 31

High Spring: The

Chrestil-Brisch

Palazze, Five Points

It was very late by the time Damian Chrestil came home to bed, a bored helio pilot lifting him from the Junction Pool helipad up and over the light-streaked mass of the Old Dike to the Chrestil-Brisch compound on the headland that was the third of the original Five Points. Most of the lights were out in the narrow buildings, only faint security lights glowing behind the arches of the first floor. The second and third stories, solid walls of dark stone broken by unlit slit windows, looked ungainly, top-heavy, without light to give them balance. Only the ring-and-cross of the landing pad glowed blue through the darkness, and the helio pilot landed them with the rotors barely moving, balancing the weight of the passenger pod against the gas in the lifting cells. Damian nodded his approval— no need to wake everyone in the house—and let himself in through the security ring, raising his hand in greeting to the single human being sitting sleepily at the center of the glowing banks of controls. Like all the Five Points families, and most of the other groups that dominated Burning Bright’s commerce, the Chrestil-Brisch had good reason to employ a private police force. It was a matter of pride that theirs was smaller than many. The guard nodded back, and said, “Na Damian, there’s a visitor waiting in your suite. She’s on your admit list.”

Damian lifted an eyebrow at him. The only woman the guard would describe as a visitor whom he would let into his rooms was Cella, and he couldn’t imagine what she would be doing here. Her regular nights were the fourth, fourteenth, and twenty-fourth. “Is there a message?” he asked, and the guard shook his head.

“No, sir. She just asked to be let in.”

“How charming.”