I'd built her a knife so no one would ever pin her to a wall again. And here I was, the biggest thing on the street, and she had her hands over her mouth.
"Right." Remmen was breathing hard himself, one eye already darkening where somebody's elbow had caught him in the pulling apart. He didn't let go of me. "Korfas, put them in the cells. Separately. Let them cool overnight and we'll settle this like civilized beasts in the morning, when there's less of the town to enjoy it."
Nobody argued. Kazan's grip on me didn't ease.
"The female should come to the Agency barracks." Theeodus had appeared at the edge, pale and wringing, his jumpsuit splashed to the knee with mud. "For her own safety. Until all of this is resolved properly. There's a room."
"She's welcome at the orchard." Kazan said it over the top of him, flat, not a question. "With me and Maisie. As long as she likes, until it's sorted."
Theeodus opened his mouth. Looked at Kazan. Shut it.
"The orchard," Chloe said. Her voice came out steadier than her eyes. "I'll go to the orchard."
She turned toward Kazan with the mud on her, and her arms wrapped around herself. Then Remmen got me moving the other way down the street toward the jail, his hand fisted in the back of my shirt, the crowd peeling open to let the monster through.
13
CHLOE
I'd beenon Maisie's porch for three hours, and I still wanted to throw something.
Preferably at a minotaur. More specifically, one sitting in a cell on the other side of town for the crime of being the single biggest idiot on this or any planet.
"I cannot believe him." I'd said some version of it maybe nine times by then. Maisie kept topping up my cup and letting me. "He just didthat. In the daylight. In the middle of the street. To just throw down, like a?—"
"Like a veteran of the arena?" Maisie didn't look up.
I jabbed my cup at her. "They both ignored me and decided to run at each other like wild animals!"
"They're bulls. They do that from time to time." She had her feet tucked under her in the big chair, cider balanced on one knee, looking insultingly peaceful about the entire thing. "And they spent most of their lives in the arena. They're still learning how to settle things… peacefully." A pause. "Are they hurt?"
"I don't think so."
"Good."
That was it. Good. Like one man putting another man through a wall was a weather report. I loved her. I also wanted to push her off her own porch.
The star-figs had gone sparkly in the dusk, whole rows of them glowing soft, and one of the goats had its head through the fence rail watching me like even it thought I was being a lot. Everything here was so calm. Maisie got the orchard and the glowing fruit and the giant who'd built her a buggy with her name on it, and I'd gotten a blacksmith who answered the world with his hands.
That wasn't even true. Ididn'thave the blacksmith. All I had was a one-way ticket back to Earth.
"How do you handle it?" My voice came out thinner than I wanted, and I hated it. "Maybe I should just hop on the transport when it shows up and be glad of it."
Maisie let the quiet sit for a beat. "You don't mean that."
"I think I do." I looked into my cup instead of at her. "You didn't see it, Maze."
I didn't say the rest. That I'd stood in that mud with both hands over my mouth and watched the gentlest thing I'd ever had turn into something I didn't know. That every man before him had, sooner or later, shown me the part of himself that handed me back, and Lorkin had gone and done his in front of the whole town. That it would be easier to climb onto the ship myself than stand on a dock and watch him put me on it.
I'm normally hilarious about this kind of thing. I make it a bit, but with Lorkin, I couldn't.
Maisie was quiet. Then she set her cup down on the rail.
"It isn't like the brochures," she said.
I looked over at her. "What isn't?"
"Belonging here." She picked at the hem of her sleeve, the way she does when she's deciding whether to say a truething. "There's no way to put it that doesn't sound completely unhinged. Drink your cider first."
