Boden punched her shoulder. Fi hit back harder, making him wince.
They broke into laughter together.
“Ice-hearted, Fi. I’ll have bruises tomorrow!” As Boden rubbed his shoulder, Aisinay nibbled his coat. An excellent judge ofcharacter. Their father had been a metallurgist, a craftsman of conduits and machinery parts, but Fi and Boden both preferred live beasts. He patted the horse’s muzzle. “How was the Autumn Plane?”
Fi puckered her lips. “I never said where I was going.”
He reached into the Void-and-rainbow swirls of her hair, plucking out a crimson leaf like a magic trick. Fi gasped.
“Ugh.Leaves.” She flurried her hands through her hair, dislodging several more hitchhikers.
“By all the Shattered Planes,” Boden said. “I thought I wouldn’t see you for a week, after what you did to that bottle of whiskey last night.”
“Birthdays are meant to be celebrated, Bodie.”
His nose scrunched. “Why doyouget to call me Bodie, but I can’t call you Fi-Fi?”
“Little sister rules. And mayor rules. You have to act professional. I don’t.”
He tilted his head, eyes dark as hers, warm in the tavern light. “What’s in the cart?”
Fi debated how to put it delicately.
“I think it’s a bomb.”
“What?”
Boden lurched to his feet. As if an extra meter would do him any good. Snickering, Fi grabbed a crowbar from her cart and slipped it beneath a crate lid, easing it open with apop.
The inside glowed silver. A low, staticky hum. Energy capsules sat in cardboard cups like volatile eggs—glass spheres with swirling magic inside, several times larger than the capsules on Fi’s gloves. Not uncommon for powering lights or larger weapons, but dangerous to pile so many in one box.
Boden peered into the crate with brows raised. “Where to?”
“Thomaskweld.”
“Thomaskweld?Who pays to smuggle energy into one of the biggest energy producing cities on the Winter Plane?”
“See Bodie, this is why you’re a mayor, and I’m but a lowly purveyor of illicit goods. You care about these things.” She closed the crate with a definitivethump. “I don’t.”
“Don’t sell yourself short, Fi-Fi. You also rob taverns.” He cast a dry look at the soup and cookies in her cart.
“I paid for it!” she returned, indignant. “Speaking of which. How much do I owe you in back taxes?”
“You think I keep a tally off the top of my head?”
“Iknowyou keep a tally off the top of your head.”
On principle, Fi would sooner throw herself into the bottomless pit of the Void than pay taxes of the income, import, or any variety. Boden was the exception. She’d fled their childhood home first. He’d left three years later, when their father died. They both wound up in Nyskya, away from the dust of that old house and the cooling ashes of their father’s funeral pyre, seeking a place to breathe. Not a bad trade, trusting the mayor to let Fi come and go, in exchange for a cut of her profits.
She tossed him the box with Cardigan’s down payment. “Will this cover it?”
Boden flipped the case open. His pale face wentpaler. “Theshit.”
“Right?”
“Are these daeyari energy chips?”
“Right?”
