“Schismatic OPA faction?” she said. “Well. It wouldn’t be the first time a revolutionary leader was targeted by the extreme wing of his own side.”
“It wouldn’t,” Fred agreed. “What bothers me is that they’re feeling secure enough to tip their hand.”
Chapter Nineteen: Naomi
The beer was vat-brewed: rich and yeasty with a little fungal aftertaste where the hops had been cut with engineered mushrooms. Karal was making hot-plate cousa: thin, unleavened cracker bread heavy with gum roux and hot onion. With Cyn and Naomi and a new man named Miral sharing air with Karal and the hot plate both, the recyclers were working near their top rate for the space. The heat and the spiced air, the closeness of bodies and the just-buzzed relaxation of the alcohol felt like falling backward through time. Like if she opened the door, it wouldn’t be the dockside grunge of Ceres Station but Rokku’s ship burning for the next claim or the next port.
“So Josie,” Cyn said, waving one vast palm. He paused and turned a scowl to Naomi. “Kennst Josie?”
“I remember which one he is,” Naomi said.
“Yeah, so Josie sets up shop there, sa sa? Start charging the Earthers to go down the corridor. Calls it…” – Cyn snapped three times, trying to call up the story’s punch line – “calls it a municipal tollway. Tollway!”
“And how long did that last?” Naomi asked.
“Long enough we had to get off station before security grabbed us,” Cyn said around a grin. Then he grew sober. “That was before, though.”
“Before,” Naomi agreed, lifting her glass. “Everything changed after Eros.”
“Everything changed after the fuckers killed the Cant,” Miral said, eyes narrowed at Naomi as if to say That was your ship, wasn’t it? Another invitation for her to tell her stories.
She leaned forward a degree, hiding behind the veil of her hair. “Everything changed after Metis Base. Everything changed after Anderson Station. Everything changed after Terryon Lock. Everything changed after everything.”
“Ez maldecido igaz,” Cyn said, nodding. “Everything changed after everything.”
Karal looked up. His expression was a mix of camaraderie and regret that meant Everything changed after the Gamarra.
Naomi smiled back. It had, and she was sorry too. Being here, with these men, brought up a kind of nostalgia that seeped into everything. All of them would have liked her to tell her stories – being on Eros, riding the first ship through the gate, trekking out to the first colony on the new worlds. Cyn and Karal wouldn’t ask, and so the new one followed their lead. And she kept her own counsel.
Filip was asleep in the next room, his body curled into a comma, his eyes merely closed. They weren’t the profoundly shut eyes of a sleeping baby. The rest of the cell were in other safe houses. Smaller groups drew less attention, and even if they lost one group, the rest could go on. It wasn’t something anyone had said. The strategy was familiar and strange at the same time, like a once-favorite song heard again after years of being forgotten. Karal scooped up the cousa, lifting it off the heating element and spinning it on his fingertips in the same motion. Naomi held out her hand, and he set the cracker down on her palm, their fingers brushing against each other. The simple physical intimacy of close companionship. Of family. It had been true once, and that it was less true now was forgiven by the fact that they all knew it wasn’t what it had been. Since she’d arrived, they’d all been careful not to let conversation stray into anything that put too fine a point on the gap of years she’d been absent.
And so when she broke the unspoken covenant, they would know she’d meant to. And as much as she didn’t want to undo the fragile moment, the only thing worse than talking about it was leaving it all unsaid.
“Filip is looking well,” she said, as if the words carried no extra significance. She bit the cracker, roux and onion flooding her tongue and the back of her nose with salt and sweet and bitter. She talked around it. “He’s grown.”
“Has,” Cyn said, his voice cautious.
Naomi felt years of grief and anger, loss and betrayal at the back of her throat. She smiled. Her voice didn’t waver. “How’s he been?”
Cyn’s glance at Karal was nothing, a flicker almost too fast to notice. They were in dangerous territory now. She didn’t know if they were looking to protect her from the truth or Filip and Marco from her. Or if they only didn’t want a part of the drama that had been and still was her old lover and their son.
“Filipito’s been good,” Karal said. “Smart boy, and focused. Ser focused. Marco seen after him. Kept him safe.”
“Safe as any of us ever are,” Miral said, trying to make the words light. The hunger of curiosity was in the man’s expression. He hadn’t been there when Naomi and Marco had been together. It was like the rest of them were having a conversation, and half the words Miral couldn’t hear.
“Que a mí?” Naomi asked.
“We all told him the truth,” Karal said, a hardness coming into his voice. “Not going to lie to our own.”
Cyn coughed once. He looked at her sideways, like a guilty dog. “When he got old enough to ask, him, Marco tells him how things got harsh. Too harsh. His mother, she needed to step away from it. Put ellas kappa together.”
“Ah,” Naomi said. So that was the story of who she was. The one who’d been too sensitive. Too weak. From where Marco sat, it might even look like the truth.
But then what must it have been to see who she’d become? XO of the Rocinante, survivor of Eros Station, traveler to new worlds. Looked at that way, “too harsh” was a strange thing. Unless it meant she just didn’t love her son enough to stay. Unless what she’d run from was him.
“Filipito, he’s solid,” Cyn said. “Be proud of him.”
“Nothing but,” Naomi said.