Coins sounded faintly as Trina dropped the purse on the metal table, their noise dampened by a scarf she’d twisted between them. Fence, the shafter big man, paid a good sum for what she could steal from the polit houses up in the sun, enough to feed them and pay for Mother’s medicine.
Trina turned to smile at her sister, but her expression faded when she met Katie’s gaze.
Her sister’s round face bore lines from fatigue. Even her curls, carrot-red to Trina’s blond, hung lank. Dark shadows gave her translucent skin an almost haunted cast. For a moment, Trina saw a reflection of Big Man Fence in her sister’s pale features. Neither he nor Katie ever left the tunnels below First City.
Without smiling, her sister took the pouch and spilled its contents on the table, shaking the coins free of the scarf. “Twelve silvers, a half silver and three copper?” If anything, her haunted look deepened. “What did you do? How did you get the money?”
Trina felt her jaw tighten but forced the muscles to relax under her sister’s pleading look. “It’s from the find I told you about. I got the necklace and some earrings. Bargained well for them too.” She could not keep the pride from her voice after beating Fence at his own game.
“Nothing more?”
Trina pulled Katie into a tight hug. “Nothing more. The necklace held pure gems. Almost had to walk away from Fence to get a good deal.” She launched into the tale of her latest encounter with the trader, trying her best to make it amusing.
Katie didn’t need another excuse to worry. Trina could manage Fence as long as Katie watched over their mother.
“I could work. Like Mother did. I already bring in some when I sell my patchwork blankets.”
Trina choked on the next part of her story, but her sister ignored the sound as she continued, “Then you wouldn’t have to go out on the surface, and especially not into polit houses. It’s too dangerous. You could stay with Mother, and I’d go do nursing in one of the shafter hostels. They’d never know Mother was part of the experiments.”
“Mother needs you.”
Trina left no room for argument, but Katie argued anyway. “You can watch her as well as I can. We’d do okay. Like before Mother fell sick. You wouldn’t have to take chances. You’d be safe.”
Trina jerked away. She walked to the back wall, tracing her fingers along the embedded tunnel map that hung beneath their timekeeper as she often did. “Mother kept us on the remains of what our father left her and you know it. No shafter would work with a victim of the experiments. Besides, shafter jobs don’t pay enough to cover her meds.” She looked away, unable to face her sister when she’d deliberately kept the costs hidden.
“How much?” The strangled words sounded forced as they passed Katie’s lips.
Trina gave her head a mute shake.
“I need to know. You tell me everything or I’ll go seek a job. You’ll have to choose between abandoning Mother and thieving. Maybe you enjoy it too much.”
Trina stared at the wall as she answered, “Nine silvers.”
Her sister sank to the floor as if shock removed the ability to support her limbs. “Nine silvers,” she repeated blindly. “So much.”
Trina wrapped thin arms around Katie’s stout form, rocking her sister back and forth. “Hush. It’ll be okay. I’ll make it okay.”
Their mother had called Trina “My Protector” and she swore to live up to the name.
Katie swiveled and pulled Trina into her arms, as though she were the one needing comfort. “It will be okay,” she promised, tears tightening her voice. “We’ll make it work somehow. We always do.”
TRINA KNEW KATIE HADN’T wanted her to leave so quickly, but Mother needed the medicine and that meant a trip back to the surface.
She peered through the tiny opening and blinked against the bright sunlight before she could check for anyone in the alleyway. Though going to a surface apothecary was dangerous, shafters believed any who were foolish enough to be trapped by polits deserved what they got. Shafter doctors wouldn’t treat those who escaped the experiments because the scientists poisoned their subjects with fatal viruses, and no shafter wanted to risk infection.
The apothecary Trina went to charged a steep price, but she didn’t hide behind fancy lies. She was honest about their mother’s state.
If their polit father had stayed true to his promise, their mother would have been treated by the best of doctors with no thought to the cost. Instead, the tales about him had no more substance than the fairy dust in the books he’d left behind. His money ran out, and their mother bartered as many of the books as she could with Fence, who liked to collect polit treasures even though he couldn’t read. Then, when all but the most battered books were gone, Trina took up stealing to feed her family and keep their mother alive.
She wriggled free, stopping long enough to dust her clothes and rub the fabric over her face so she could pretend to come from one of the buildings. Once metal worms raced between the cities, carrying the polits and laborers. Now only shafters came from below, a world nestled in the bones of ancient times.
When reasonably clean, Trina could still pass for a child thanks to her slight build instead of being marked a shafter.
She glanced at the sun, surprised to see it hanging so low in the sky. She’d lost more time to arguing with Katie than she’d expected. If enforcers caught her, the extra coin would not keep Katie for long.
Trina could speak like a surface dweller and so might be able to convince the patrol they had the wrong person, but she didn’t want to test that theory. Her father taught Mother to read and use proper speech before leaving on a colony ship with the promise to send for her. The twins would have been born into the protected life of a polit had he claimed her from the start. As it was, he didn’t even know his daughters existed, but their mother had spent every moment she could spare preparing them for when their father’s courier arrived. She’d believed that he would send for them until she became too sick to care.
Trina crossed the path and entered a side street, weaving in and out of the crowd without brushing or bumping anyone. Her smallest knife remained stowed despite the tempting items dangling a quick swipe away from her hands. She needed the medicine. Anything else just distracted from her purpose, thoughts of her father worst of all.
The deep blue doors of the shop rose before her. A traditional mortar and pestle symbol hung above the window, the sign that brought fear to her mother’s eyes when pressed on medicine bottles. The experiments may have ended years ago, but the disease kept those memories fresh.
Trina knocked once, twice, then waited three breaths before rapping her knuckles three times in quick succession. Their secret signal. The apothecary would only open the door to her if no one else stood within. Though Trina felt exposed out on the street, it held many opportunities for escape. Inside the store, she’d be an easier target.
The door swung open, its well-oiled hinges whispering against each other.
“I wondered when you’d get here. You are leaving it quite late, aren’t you?”
She followed the older woman into the darkened shop, happy when the door closed and its bulk protected her from prying eyes. “I came when I could. Last batch’s almost gone.”
“You’re lucky I put the ingredients aside for you. My polit customers like that medication, but you deserve it more.” The apothecary grimaced, pushing dark brown curls away from her face and revealing features better suited for joy than the mixture of guilt and pity they held.
“I came when I could,” Trina repeated stubbornly, placing her empty bottle on the counter. She tried not to give anything away, but the apothecary made it hard with her kind interest. Trina had already revealed her name even though she didn’t know what the apothecary was called. Laborers, like polits, had nonsense names. Shafters—real shafters at least—earned their names like her friend Piper whose metal pipe proved so effective as a weapon.
“Go have some crackers. I’m afraid I already ate the cheese, but it’s something. It will take me a little time to mix the potion. Go.” She made a shooing gesture, waving Trina toward the table.
Trina nibbled cracker after cracker, waiting until they softened in her mouth before sending them down her dry throat. She tried to make the treat last, but her stomach pressed against her spine.
The rhythmic sound of the pestle grinding the ingredients for her mother’s potion lulled Trina into a thoughtful state. She’d long grown used to the apothecary’s muttering, the subject always the same.
“Some cully root and betline. Not much to offer as penance for what they did.”
The noise stopped for a moment, and Trina looked up.
“She’d better not miss a day. A body can’t fight when overwhelmed, enhanced immune system or not. You’re much too young to be on your own. Keep her strong. It’s all you can do.”
Trina nodded, not bothering to reveal her true age of almost fifteen, or that her mother had been bedridden for more than three years now. The medicine kept some of the pain away, but it offered no cure. Maybe it would have if she’d found the apothecary in the beginning, but Piper hadn’t taught her how to navigate the surface back then.
She slipped another cracker into her mouth as the pounding started up again, but coughed when it dusted her throat.
“Get yourself a drink from the flask over there. It’s berry juice. The one you like so much.” The woman spoke without pausing as she ground the powders and herbs filling her mortar.
Trina found the flask with ease. She reached for a cup, a rare item down in the shafts, and watched the purple liquid splash into kiln-hardened clay.
The sweet-tart juice woke her senses, delighting them. Trina wished she could provide such treats for her sister even as she reminded herself to be grateful they had running water, something available to few shafters. The copper-stained liquid they drank at home had a strong flavor, but not a good one.
“There. That should hold for four weeks, more than usual, but I don’t want you running out if you come late again.” The woman’s face stretched into a pained smile as she held two bottles where Trina had expected only one. “If I can’t change what’s been done to your people in the past, the least I can do is suffer whining from polits to give you this much.”
A blush heated Trina’s cheeks as she stared at the bottles. “I don’t have enough,” she muttered. Something about the woman’s expression made her embarrassed to offer even the coin she could, but she paid her debts.
“You’ll bring extra next time. Two weeks. Don’t waste this gift unless you have to. Keep your mother comfortable.” The last made Trina wonder how much the apothecary suspected.
The woman brushed a hand against Trina’s straight hair but Trina jerked away from the touch. “Thanks. Nine silvers for the one?”
A frown crossed the apothecary’s face before she nodded. “Nine silvers.” She waited for Trina to pull out the coins from her hidden purse before handing over the bottles. “You take care of your family and keep safe.”
As soon as the silver rested in the woman’s hand and Trina had tucked the bottles into a hidden pocket under her tunic, she nodded, her smile more of a grimace. “As safe as I can.”
She pulled at the door without waiting for a reply, and with a quick glance up and down the street, Trina set off on a different path than she’d used to come here, a path that took her by the chain-link fence surrounding Ceric’s only spaceport.
Her feet slowed as if of their own will. She ran her fingers along the metal links. The faint tick made her smile, but the spaceship in the distance held her attention as it roared to life. A flash of light followed by a roll of thunder louder than the strongest summer storms transformed the ship into a backwards shooting star in the daytime sky.
She rose on tiptoe as though she could ride its tail, her fingers clenched around the metal links barring her from dreams of stars and joining the Spacer Guild.
No shafter ever crossed this fence. Trade with spacers was in polit hands, and the colony leaders pretended shafters didn’t exist.
The medicine said just what polits thought of those who lived in the shafts beneath the aging colony. She’d never live on the surface much less leave Ceric altogether.