Pima jostled the girl. “Say it.”
Lucky Girl stuttered, but she said the words. “I got your back, you got mine.”
Nailer nodded, satisfied. “Good.”
He pried open her bleeding hand and drove his thumb into the slash of her open wound. She gasped at this new pain and then he pressed his thumb to her forehead. She flinched as he applied the bloody tattoo between her eyes, a third-eye mark of shared destiny. She trembled and closed her eyes as he marked her.
“Now you mark him,” Pima said. “Blood with blood, Lucky Girl. That’s how we do it. Blood with blood.”
Lucky Girl did as she was told, her face frozen as she drove her own thumb into his palm and marked him well.
“Good.” Pima leaned close. “Now me.”
When it was done, they went down to the black water and rinsed the blood from their hands before hiking back up into the vegetation. The sea was all around, leaving the three of them alone in the darkness as they slowly climbed up to their beacon fire. Nailer’s shoulder was tender and inflamed from all the activity and it made climbing difficult. Lucky Girl scrambled ahead of them, loud in the vegetation, unused to climbing, breathing heavily, her clothes torn. Nailer watched her slim legs and smooth form under her skirt.
Pima smacked him. “What? You think you’re getting with her after you stuck a knife in her hand?”
He grinned and made a shrug of embarrassment. “She’s damn pretty.”
“Probably cleans up nice,” Pima agreed; then she lowered her voice. “What do you think? Is she really crew?”
Nailer paused in the climb, rotating his shoulder carefully, feeling the sear of his wound across his back. “Being crew wasn’t worth a scrap of rust with Sloth. Crew don’t mean anything except that we’re all sweating together on the same ship.” He shrugged and winced at the pain again. “Still, it’s worth a gamble, right?”
“You serious about leaving here?”
Nailer nodded. “Yeah. That’s the smart thing, right? The real smart thing. Nothing here for us. We need to get out, or we die here same as everyone else. Even Lucky Strike got trashed in the storm. Being light crew boss didn’t do Bapi any good at all. Just got him killed.”
“Lucky Strike did a lot better than us.”
“Sure.” Nailer spat. “That’s what the pig in the pen says when his brother gets knifed for dinner.” He shrugged. “You’re still in the pen. Still gonna die.”
11
NAILER WOKE TO SUN pouring over him, and the luxury of knowing that he still had another couple of hours before the tide would be far enough out for them to make their way back to shore. By this time on any regular day, he would have been on light crew, deep in a duct with LED glowpaint smeared on his forehead like a luck mark, sucking dust and mouse droppings and sweating in the darkness.
The sun shone down through the rustling of ferns and stunted cypress of the island in dapples of light and shadow. Voices interrupted his thoughts.
“No, don’t put all the damn wood on at once. Do it slow.”
Pima’s voice. Lucky Girl said something in return that Nailer couldn’t make out but sounded like she wasn’t much interested in Pima telling her what to do.
He sat up and gasped with pain. His whole shoulder was on fire, a brutal pain that dug deep and burned like acid. He’d worked it too much yesterday for sure. Too much effort hunting scavenge and getting Lucky Girl out, and now he’d screwed it up again. He moved his arm gingerly, trying to get it to loosen up. The pain was intense.
“You awake?
He looked up. Lucky Girl, peering through the ferns. In the daylight, she was still pretty. Her light brown skin was smooth and clean, freshly scrubbed. She’d pulled her long black hair back and tied it in a knot so that it was out of her way, showing the delicate structure of her face. She grinned at him. “Pima wants to know if you’re up.”
“Yeah, I’m up.”
“Get over your beauty sleep, Nailer,” Pima called. “It’s breakfast time.”
“Yeah?” Nailer pushed himself upright and forced through the ferns to where the girls crouched around a newly built fire. Down on the water, the ship was still there, shifted by the tide, but so tangled in the rocks that it hadn’t fled down the coast. Luck was holding, he supposed, especially if they wanted Lucky Girl’s people to find her quickly.
He looked around for whatever they were eating. He didn’t see anything prepared. “What’s for breakfast?” he asked, puzzled.
“Whatever you make,” Pima said, and she and Lucky Girl laughed.
“Ha ha.” Nailer made a face. “Seriously, what you got?”
“Don’t look at me.” Pima leaned back on the sandy ground. “I made the fire.”
Nailer gave her another dirty look. “We’re not on light crew here. You’re not the boss of me.”
Pima laughed. “Guess you’re going to be damn hungry, then.”
Nailer shook his head. He started rifling through the sacks of food they’d pulled off the ship the night before. “Don’t be surprised when you find snot in yours.”
Pima sat up. “You spit in my food, I’ll spit in your mouth.”
“Yeah?” Nailer turned around. “You wanna try?”
Pima just laughed. “You know I’d kick your ass, Lucky Boy. Just make breakfast and be glad we let you sleep.”
Lucky Girl interceded. “I’ll help.”
Nailer shook his head. “Don’t worry about it. Pima doesn’t cook because she’d screw it up. All muscle, no brains.” He started pulling fruit from a sack, digging through the rest of the food. “Check it out.” He pulled out a pound sack of grain.
“What is it?” Pima sat up, interested.
“Wheat berries.”
“They good?”
“Pretty good. They chew better than rice.” He paused, thoughtful. “You swanks have sugar?” he asked Lucky Girl.
“Down on the ship,” she answered.
“Really?” Nailer looked down to the water. He didn’t want to have to climb all the way down and come back up. “Can you get some sugar and some fresh water?”
Lucky Girl nodded, surprisingly eager. “Sure.”
Nailer kept rifling through the food as Lucky Girl disappeared down the hillside. “Man, I can’t believe how much food they have.”
“Regular feast every day,” Pima said.
“Remember that pigeon Moon Girl brought me for a luck gift?”
“Good eating.”
Nailer jerked his head toward Lucky Girl, scrambling into the ship. “Bet she wouldn’t think so.”
“Is that why you want to leave with her?”
Nailer shrugged. “Never really thought about it until last night…” He trailed off, trying to explain what was in his mind. “You saw her cabin, right? All the scavenge? It’s nothing to her. And look at all her rings. Take that diamond out of her nose and you or me, we’re rich. But she doesn’t even notice.”
“Yeah, she’s rich all right. But she’s not crew. No matter what you say. And I don’t trust her. I asked her about her family, who they were…” Pima shook her head. “She ducked and dodged like Pearly when you ask him why he thinks he’s Krishna. She’s hiding stuff. Don’t be fooled just because she looks so sweet.”
“Yeah. She’s smart.”
“More than smart. Sly. You know all that gold on her fingers? Some of it’s missing today. Don’t know where she hid it, but it’s gone now. She’s saying all kinds of things about us being crew, but she’s running her own game, too.”
“Like we aren’t?”
“Don’t blow me off, Nailer. You know what I mean.”
Nailer looked up at the tone in Pima’s voice. “I hear you, Boss Girl. We’ll watch her close. Now lemme cook.” He found a sack of some kind of small dried red fruits and tasted one. They were tart and sweet in a mix. Pretty damn good. He tossed one to Pima. “You know what this is?”
She tasted. “Never had it.” She held out her hand. “Gimme some more.”
He grinned. “No way. I’m using them. You’ll just have to wait.”