The Archive Undying by Emma Mieko Candon

Author:Emma Mieko Candon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tor Publishing Group

23

The Harbor is methodical, patrols moving up and down the waterfront in a pincer formation. Sunai crouches in an alley between a fishmonger and a warehouse, timing his last dash from the wharf to the pier where the Never Once is moored. White light lances down the way; he’ll have to be lucky, and he’ll have to be quick.

Then a voice flags down the patrol to the other side of the warehouse.

“Are you kidding me? I pay you people out the ass for a storage license and this is what I get?”

More voices follow, echoing similar complaints. A gaggle of business folk come bustling down the stairs from the boulevard. “I’ve got the citizen liaison on the line!” one of them shouts, waving a radio. “Do you hear me?”

The approaching patrol sends a few officers to wrangle the locals, and Sunai uses the distraction to flit forward. Years as a salvage-rat, a smuggler, and a flagrant hermit have made him a brilliant sneak. He clambers up the side of the Never Once the second he reaches it.

Getting on is easy. The trick will be getting back off. Everything on the rig is a problem, from the stolen chitin to the rogue autonomist, and Sunai has no idea how to scrub it all.

His passenger asks: If you know you will lose something, what must you save?

Sunai inhales through his nose and nods as he slips through the door into the Never. People are his prerogative. The Harbor can find whatever harrowing evidence it wants, so long as Sunai gets the people out alive.

There’s no immediate sign of Waretu or Cothai, and the bunk he shares with Veyadi is empty but for the chicken. The doctor only ever goes to one other place on purpose.

The cargo bay door is closed but unlocked. It slides open at a push. A slice of dull light enters with Sunai, and it illuminates Veyadi, crouched in the center of the floor with his back to the entrance. His hand is pressed flat to the empty space where the chitin was piled, and he’s concentrating, though on what is unclear.

“Cradle could crash and you wouldn’t notice,” Sunai says as he approaches.

Veyadi scrambles up. Sunai stops short, aware he’s crossed some hidden line. Perhaps it’s due to Veyadi’s face, unencumbered by his prosthetic. His eyes catch the light from the corridor like a cup to be filled.

“Brooding time’s over,” says Sunai. “We have to go.”

“What? You—you shouldn’t be here.”

“Things got problematic. Harbor raid. They’re looking for you.”

Sunai reaches for Veyadi’s arm. Veyadi jerks back, and they don’t touch, precisely. Only a graze of fingers on forearm. Sunai recoils the second he remembers. Too late.

He is hit as if by a wall and driven to his hands and knees, where he hunches over, gagging for breath that won’t come because he’s—

—angry, angry like he hasn’t been in years, like he was when he was alone, balled up, forehead shoved against the porous swell of an enormous coral palm within

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