Sword of Dreams (The Reforged Trilogy) (58 page)

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"My God! What happened?"

Logan looked up with a start. He had lost all track of time. Lynn Centra stood in the doorway with her hands pressed to her mouth and her cheeks bloodlessly pale. A bag of groceries lay forgotten at her feet. Logan sat up, wincing. He touched his face and felt the crumbly crackle of dried blood.

Lynn rushed to her son's side and grabbed the towel from the couch beside him. The cloth was still damp from the long-melted ice. She caught Logan's chin in gentle fingers and turned him to face her. "Oh, sweetheart. What happened?"

"Sullis," he mumbled. His lips felt stiffer and more swollen than before. The ice hadn't done a very good job, Logan decided. "He said things about you…"

"Shhh, it doesn't matter." She wiped lightly at the blood on his split lip. "God, Logan. You shouldn't be fighting. It doesn't matter what the other boys say about me. They're just children."

"But they called you a…" Logan couldn't even bring himself to say the word. It made him so angry just to think it. "It's not true!"

"No, sweetheart, it's not. I know that and so do you. It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks. Don't fight with them, Logan. If the older boys try to corner you, just run. It doesn't do any good to fight." He muttered a noncommittal reply and didn't meet his mother's eye. She sighed. "Look at all this mess. Why don't you go wash up while I get dinner ready?"

"Okay."

Logan showered and put on cleaner clothes, then came back into the living room. Lynn was in the kitchen, warming a small bowl of noodles and some red sauce. She smiled at the boy and nodded to the cupboard.

"Are you intact enough to set the table?" she asked.

"Sure," Logan answered.

"My brave little hawk." Lynn smiled at her son.

He pulled open the cupboard, the doors wobbling on tarnished, crooked hinges, and stood up on his toes to reach the bowls on the top shelf. Lynn owned only one set of dishes, four glass plates and four bowls with four matching teacups and saucers. They were her pride and joy – after Logan, of course. Her mother's mother had bought them from a Dailon who claimed they were antiques all the way from Axis. It probably wasn't true, but the glass was beautiful and delicate, finished in a rich blue like the evening sky.

Logan carried the bowls very carefully to the little table under the apartment's single window. Thick bars welded to the frame cut the view of the street outside into long slats like a paneled painting in one of the Union chapels. The sky was dark now, black like ink. There was only one moon out tonight, Unos. It hung in the darkness like a lopsided yellow grin, smirking down at the Prians scrabbling in the rocky dirt so far below.

Logan put out spoons and forks. He folded coarse paper towels under them and sat to wait for dinner. It was getting easier to open his left eye; the shower had helped. His mother stirred sauce into the pasta and carried it to the table. Logan scooped most of the noodles into his pretty blue bowl. He paused when the spoon scraped the bottom and flushed.

"Go ahead, eat up," his mother said. "You're a growing boy and you've got a lot of healing to do."

He reluctantly left only a little food for his mother. Logan's stomach rumbled. He hadn't eaten since breakfast and that seemed an eternity ago. Lynn said a short grace over dinner and Logan dove into his food like a falcon on his prey. His mother picked at her pasta, but ate very little. She was so thin, he thought, but still the prettiest lady on Prianus. She looked worried and Logan hoped she wasn't worrying about him.

________

Logan couldn't avoid Sullis and his gang for long. They caught up with him a week later, after school. Logan was almost home and felt the first surge of relief at the sight of his building at the end of the street.

"Hey, whore-son!"

He turned just in time to see Sullis charging out from one of the drip-dens. The other people on the sidewalk parted, unwilling to get caught in yet another bout of gang violence. Sullis' eyes were glassy and dilated, his rough cheeks brightly flushed as some chemical coursed through his blood and set his heart racing.

Logan balled his small hands into fists, but remembered his mother's words. As a dozen of Sullis' boys followed their leader out of the murky den and into the crowded street, Logan turned on his heels and ran.

"Where are you off to?" they shouted, chasing Logan and laughing to one another. "Come back! We just want give our best to your mum."

Logan reached the bottom of the stairs. His worn shoes rang on the rusted steel and he flung himself up the steps as quickly as his short legs would carry him. The staircase shuddered beneath him as Sullis and his cronies closed the gap. They were bigger than Logan and much faster. Would his head start be enough?

There was no time. He fell once, caught himself jarringly on his knees and jumped back to his feet, fumbling the keys from his pocket. One of the other boys was so close now that Logan could hear his labored breath sawing away behind him. It wasn't Sullis, but one of his rangier and less chem-addled friends.

Up on the third story, Logan bolted the last few yards and jolted his key into the door. He twisted as hard as he could. Sweat streamed down the back of his neck, cold as ice melt. With a jerk, Logan unlocked the door and ran inside, flinging the door shut behind him. He spun, reaching for the deadbolt, but the door had already bounced off a large foot thrust through the gap. Logan's pursuer bellowed in pain. "You little bitch! I'm going to rip your skin off!"

The lanky boy lunged through the door and grabbed Logan. Sullis and the rest were close on his tail. They poured through the door and crowded into the small apartment. Someone slammed the door behind them. Sullis stepped forward, grinning at Logan. His lips seemed very thin and very dark.

"So this is where a rental lives." Sullis' words were slurred by drugs. He casually hooked Logan's legs out from under him and cackled when the boy crumpled to the floor. "Not much, is it? But then, that's about what I expect from a cenmark whore."

"She's not…!" Logan started, but Sullis drove a hard-soled boot into his crotch.

"You've got a lot of mouth for a whore-son. Boys, let's make ourselves at home. His mum rents her body easy enough. I doubt she'll mind sharing her place for a while. What's nice around here, Logan?"

________

Lynn Centra had to work even later than usual. Some drunk had knocked over a toy display, sending bits of broken plastic flying like the shrapnel of a grenade. It had taken an extra hour to collect the shards, once parts of model dinosaurs that were a favorite among those young Prian children whose parents could afford them.

She fished out a few more clattering pieces from under a shelf and swept them into a dustpan. The plastic was molded on one side with a scaly pattern and painted in mottled blues and reds. Lynn emptied the mess into a waste bin.

She wondered if any of it was salvageable. If she could put the pieces back together, the toy dinosaur might make a good present for Logan. It would be his birthday soon and she didn't have any gifts. Lynn sighed and sealed off the garbage bag. Even if she could somehow piece together the broken model, Logan was getting too old for such things. He was growing up so fast.

Finally finished, Lynn turned off the holographics and locked up the store. She ignored the listless catcalls from the whiskery old men lounging outside and hurried to her car. Highwind was no less filthy and dangerous by night, but at least the deep mountain night hid the worst of it away, out of sight.

An Arcadian woman slouched outside the apartment block when Lynn arrived at home. She had pulled her dirty wings around her against the sharp cold. Lynn felt a stab of pity, but then she caught the oily glint of a nanoblade in the alien's hand. She shuddered and decided to park on the other side of the building.

It was almost midnight by the time Lynn wearily pushed open her door and stepped inside. She heard sobbing. Lynn dropped her purse and turned on the lights. Something… everything was wrong.

The apartment was in shambles. All of the pictures had been torn off of the walls, shredded into pieces, and scattered across the floor. Her clothes, too, were strewn across the tiny living room, some ripped or cut, some stained and soiled. The cheap computer was gone from its corner desk and the sofa sliced open. The window was broken and shards of glass littered the worn carpet. Logan's guitar was smashed and lay like a dead pet in the corner of the room.

Lynn heard sobbing. "Logan?" she shrieked.

He was in the kitchen. The cupboards stood open and empty of food. The boy was covered in drying blood. There was a long cut on his temple that seemed to be the source of most of the red, but his lips were puffy and there were dark, terrible-looking bruises on his thin arms and on his bare back. Logan stood at the counter, cradling shards of blue glass in his hands and weeping broken-heartedly over them as he tried to glue them back together. Logan looked up at his mother's approach.

"They broke your plates," he whispered.

"My God," Lynn choked. She batted the broken glass out of his hands and held Logan close. "Oh, my God! Are you all right? Did they hurt you?"

It was a stupid question. Of course they hurt him. Lynn scooped Logan into her arms and carried him out to the car. She needed to take him to the hospital. As she buckled him into the passenger seat, Logan cried.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," he sobbed. "I couldn't stop them!"

"Logan, sweetheart, it doesn't matter. We just need to make sure you're all right."

"They said… and took… I'm sorry." The rest was lost in tears.

________

"How're you feeling?"

Logan avoided his mother's gaze. He flexed his arm. It was stiff, but not too painful anymore. "Fine," he said. "All better."

"Good."

Lynn patted his shoulder gently and steered him across the hospital lobby, but a young man cleared his throat. "Mrs. Centra?"

She sighed and smiled at Logan. "Why don't you go sit down? I'll come get you in a minute."

Lynn pointed to a row of white plastic chairs, each stamped with the words Property of Highwind Municipal Hospital. Logan nodded and padded across the scarred tile. He sat down beside a middle-aged woman who greeted him limply and then resumed her wet coughing.

Logan watched his mother. She spoke softly to the man behind the desk, quietly so her son couldn't hear. But he knew what they were talking about – money, of course. It was expensive to see doctors on Prianus. Logan heard stories at school about other Alliance planets, closer to the core where there were lots of the silver-skinned Ixthians who all but gave away their medical expertise to anyone, even criminals and the poor. But that was far away. There weren't many Ixthians on Prianus.

Logan kicked his legs. They didn't quite reach the floor. The woman in the next chair smiled, charmed by the ostensibly cute display. But Logan wasn't trying to be cute. He was angry. His blood felt hot in his veins and seemed to burn behind his eyes. His legs were short and thin, knees still raw and red. He was weak, too weak to defend his mother's home and honor. If Logan was going to beat Sullis, he would need help. A lot of help.

His mother was done talking to the receptionist and signed something on a computer screen that Logan was too far away to read. She gestured him over and offered the sullen boy a tight smile.

"Let's go home," she said. "You need your rest."

________

His mother had already gone to work by the time Logan woke the next morning. The broken cupboards were still empty, but she had left a candy bar and a small sleeve of crackers atop a note:
I love you, my hawk. Have a good day in school.

Logan stuffed the food into his mouth and left the scrap of paper. He wasn't going to school today. He had more important things to take care of.

The rising sun pierced the thick haze of Highwind sky in silver-gray needles, sharp rays like impossibly slender nanoknives. The streets were busy, as always, full of the thick, noisy bustle.

Though not many Prians could afford NI vehicles, even the air was alive with traffic. Hawks and falcons streaked across the sky and shrieked at one another as their paths crossed or even collided.

It was full summer, but the thin air remained bitterly cold. Logan cinched his wool coat tightly around him and began his hunt. None of the adults took any notice of the young boy shouldering past. He stopped at the mouth of every alleyway and at the door of every dark bar and smoky drip-den. Heavy-set bouncers turned Logan away from many of these, but most simply ignored him or demanded entry fees, none of which the boy could pay. When he exhausted every place within walking range of his apartment, Logan took a bus deeper into Highwind and continued his search.

He stopped to peer through the window of a worn-looking palaestrum. Inside was a wood-floored gymnasium where a stout balding man was practicing the Prian martial forms. A pair of women in loose-cut clothes studied the short man intently and tried to mimic his movements. Logan caught a reflection in the mirror and turned. A boy about his own age vanished into the dark alley that separated the palaestrum from the shop next door. Logan followed him through the narrow passage and behind the building.