I could tell that Susan was moving out from behind the counter, probably drawing them away from me. She must have walked over to a shelf. “This one. It’s…it’s a bit older. All about the legends that sprang up around Mall Hall after its orbit changed and its moon drifted off.”
“No seal on it,” a third voice said a moment later.
“Oh? Yes, well, look at that. I’m not sure anyone minds so much about that anymore,” Susan said.
“The Overseer minds,” the man grumbled.
Actually, I was pretty sure the Overseer had bigger fish to fry, like the rebel squad that had just found and destroyed the unmanned probe that had been sneaking around Sector 17. It had probably been gathering information about the possible location of the rebel base.
Asshole goons. They’d never find what didn’t want to be found.
Even from downstairs, I heard the Dark Watch soldier scrape the saliva out of his throat with a vulgar grating sound and then spit. I didn’t have to see it to know he’d spat on one of Susan’s beautiful books, and it was all I could do not to tear upstairs and spit onhim. If I hadn’t been outnumbered and armed with nothing but four books and a clingy cat, I might have tried it.
“Well, now it’s got somethin’ on it, doesn’t it?” the man drawled.
“It does,” Susan agreed without a hint of animosity in her voice.
Feet stomped, trooping all over the floor above. “Now clean this place up before we come back!” the first man growled. “Or we’ll double the fine from last time.”
The bell chimed violently, and then they were gone.
My pulse continued to roar, at odds with the new quiet in the bookstore. The cat still wove between my legs with long, sinewy caresses. The feline was small. Not a baby, I didn’t think, but slight and lithe. The rumbling vibration coming from its body was curiously soothing and helped to settle my incensed spirit and rattled nerves.
Susan wound down the spiral staircase and located me in the maze of cats. “Sorry about that. They were just…”
“Harassing you?” I supplied.
She nodded, adding a fatalistic shrug that told me this had happened before—and would happen again. Everything about the movement saidit is what it is.
But something in her eyes seemed suddenly forlorn. Not defeated, but unsure and maybe a little scared. I put a hold on the rebellious rhetoric I wanted to spew with angry and justified words. She was already fighting in her own way, bravely, and I had no right to try to persuade her into more. The reason more people didn’t rise up was because it just meant getting beaten down. That kind of life was something a person had to choose.
Fucking Dark Watch. Damn Overseer, with his tyrannical—no, maniacal—vision of the galactic ideal.
“Your bookstore isn’t a shithole. Far from it.” I wanted to reassure her, since I hadn’t been able to defend her. If they’d turned physical, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself, but apparently, bullying and verbal threats weren’t enough to make me take a risk with myself anymore, and I wasn’t sure I liked what that said.
“No,” she agreed. “But it’s untidy—at least for them.”
Chances were, those goons probably wouldn’t have cared aboutuntidyat some past point in their lives, and maybe they would have even liked it. But anyone who joined the galactic military was eventually brainwashed into believing the Overseer’s jargon and garbage.
“Untidy isn’t the easiest path these days,” I pointed out. Expressing her desire for more personal freedom through mildly subversive means like a riotously disorderly bookshop made Susan a target for fines and intimidation. That took guts.
She still looked shaken, but a sense of pride washed through me. For her. For me. For everyone who consciously drew their own line in the sand and refused to cross it.
“For what it’s worth, I like your form of protest,” I said, finally getting up the nerve to squat down and pat the cat. It immediately turned its small, striped head into my hand and rubbed enthusiastically. Its fur was soft and short, its nose wet, its whiskers wiry. The rumbling sound got louder.
“And for what it’s worth, I like yours,” Susan replied with a significant look, holding up the book I’d shown her and that she’d hidden behind the counter.
I nodded my thanks, knowing that the level of defiance the crew and I embraced wasn’t for everyone. We knew the consequences of our actions. We’d already lived them. We still did.
Susan’skindred spiritsremark came back to me. For some reason, it made me think of a huge web connecting everyone who fought the oppressive regime in whatever way they could, big or small. The image morphed into stars, bright spots of hope and courage winking all over the Dark—one giant constellation, spread out, but strong. Stronger than the Overseer thought.
I scratched under the cat’s chin, where fluffy white fur led down to a slim chest. It seemed to like that and offered me better access, tilting its little head to one side and closing its eyes into contented slits.
I smiled. This little beauty had a small body but a big personality, if I had to guess. I wondered if all cats were like that, or if this one was special and different from the rest.
“What’s that noise?” I asked. “It’s like this cat has an engine inside it. It’s not an android or something, is it?” I’d never heard of robotic cats.
Susan laughed. “He’s quite alive. It’s called purring. It means he likes you.”
