Blue on Black by Carole Cummings

Author:Carole Cummings [Cummings, Carole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-06-12T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THE IMPORTANT thing to remember here—still—is that Bas is not in love with Kimolijah. Never has been. That would be stupid. Kimolijah is not the shy young man brimming with so many ideas they had to spill out all over dozens of notebooks and journals and sketches. And Bas does not kind of like this version better. He doesn’t. Which is the point. Kimolijah’s a cynical little bastard, using sex to turn Stanslo’s head, using his Tech when he’s cornered, using his genius brain to come up with new and inventive ways to gain even a small advantage….

…using sex to distract Stanslo so fewer people die, using his Tech to save a hardcase like Fox from a torturous, drawn-out, ignoble death, using his genius brain to….

To do what?

Bas frowns.

Kimolijah’s brilliant—his brain is the size of a planet—and if he doesn’t want to be here, someone that smart has to be coming up with plan after plan for getting out. His notes and schematics had backup plans for his backup plans. Maybe Bas has been asking the wrong questions. And maybe he understands why he kind of likes this version of Kimolijah better than the flawless image he’s had in his head for a couple of years. If it even is a different version, because really—aren’t the things Kimolijah’s doing now easily extrapolated from what he used to be? Maybe Kimolijah hasn’t changed all that much; maybe it’s just that his circumstances have and he’s trying to survive them. And maybe Bas has just been having a hard time thinking through the whole sleeping with the enemy thing.

Bas tries dozing the morning away, but it doesn’t quite work out. He spends too long wondering if Kimolijah’s right now in Stanslo’s “great big bed” and trying not to imagine what he’s doing there, and then Bas is wondering how he’s ever supposed to get another decent breath when his chest is abruptly so filled with wanting, because he knows now what he’s missing. He spends even longer trying to pretend he wasn’t wondering that at all, and trying to will away the mental pictures the wondering conjured, and telling himself he’s not jealous, he’s not in love, and none of it has anything to do with his inability to sleep. It’s not his racing mind keeping him up; it’s just that morning in Stanslo’s Bridge is fucking noisy.

There’s a very quiet to-do when Lowen goes out to bring back what might be left of Fox. Bas had kind of hoped it would be “not enough,” but it’s plenty. Scavengers have been at him, but not nearly as much as they would have been had Kimolijah not been standing over him until almost dawn, reeking of gridTech and keeping most of the nibblers away. Lowen, as instructed, hauls Fox’s corpse back to town and sets it next to Travis in the town’s square.

The branchlike burns on Fox’s face and neck are telling, just like Bas had known they’d be. No one says anything out loud.

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