Page 108 of Throwing Fire

I have a second, a heartbeat, to make a choice.

I swing the katana over my head and into the unprotected meat of the kid’s throat. His body jerks. The blade sticks in his spine. When I tug it free, his head lolls back against the metal grating.

I don’t inspect the wound, or the corpse.

Acker climbs over the kid, onto the platform, and peers down at him. “I would not have asked this of you,” he says heavily. “It is not justice. He was barely more than a child.”

I shrug. I learned long ago that justice ain’t something you find in war. There’s destruction and survival, and the winners are the ones who survive. “You mind sendin’ some of your people out here to carry him back? I don’t want to leave him here—” For whatever might come along for a late-night snack. “But I’m not gonna be ableto carry him.” I show him my right hand, which is already purple and starting to swell.

“I can carry him.” Acker lifts the kid’s body without straining. For all that Kein was strong and wiry, he was still just a kid. A scared, stupid, brainwashed kid.

Acker hoists the body over his shoulder and pads down the staircase ahead of me, carefully grasping the rail with one hand. Blood drizzles down Acker’s back to spatter the stairs; I move to the other side so I’m not walking in the kid’s blood. We don’t speak on the way back to Kez and Match, and I wonder if that’s because Acker’s finally figured out he doesn’t want to be friends with the monster.

Kez has no such compunction, and she runs to me as soon as she sees us coming down the tunnel. She notices my hand immediately, pulls off her tank, tears it in half and wraps the strips around my hand.

“Kitten—” Not that I don’t appreciate the gesture, or her naked chest.

“Shut up,” she says. “No one’s looking.” That, at least, is true. Both Acker and Match are very studiously looking at the floor. “Iknewyou’d get hurt. I just knew it. Whenever you leave me behind, something bad happens to you.”

Not entirely true, since I get injured with her just as often as I do on my own. “Youaremy good luck charm.”

“Stop joking. What happened?”

“He didn’t stay down?—”

“Snow did the only thing he could have done,” Acker interjects. “And he saved my life.”

Guess he’s not adverse to being the monster’s friend when the monster saves his ass. “Fall might not have killed you.”

“I’m pleased not to have found out,” Acker responds. “You need that treated.” He nods at my hand. “I heard the bone crack.”

Ifeltit. “I’ll strap it tonight and have Doc Gray look at it tomorrow.”

At some point. I’ve got pressing business in Jielt.

“First thing,” Kez says to me. Damn, she knows me too well.

“Sure. You got any ice?” I ask Acker.

He nods. “Match?”

The older rat-man takes the body off Acker and when we get back to the main cavern, he splits off down a different tunnel. Guess the rats have corpse-storage somewhere. Acker leads us through his suite, where the medibeds are dark and quiet. There’s no sign of Grace. Acker turns into a back room where there’s a jumble of hastily-relocated furniture, including the bar from which he served us drinks when we came for dinner. He picks up a bulb, opens an insulated cabinet and scoops out ice. Kez takes it from him; Acker hastily averts his eyes from her bare breasts. Good man.

“Thanks,” I tell him.

He reaches out and grasps my left arm. “Thank you. I know you made a choice, and that choice could not have been easy, given all that has transpired.”

“Wasn’t ever a question.” I go to pat his hand but discover I can’t bend my first and second fingers. “An’ before you get all huggy again, you know you gotta figure out how he got loose.”

Acker squeezes his eyes closed. “That, I already know. We do not often have need for guards. Ormer fell asleep. But he did not turn off the monitor. There is no mistaking who opened the membrane.”

From the pain in his expression, I can guess who it was. “She been the one feedin’ the Ojos intel all along?”

Kez glances at me in horror.

“I did not ask, my friend.” Acker hangs his head and shakes it slowly. “You would have, I’ve no doubt. That is why I am not the man you need. I did not ask.”

He didn’t ask because his heart was breaking. This time, I’m the one who hugs him. Kez puts down the bulb of ice and wraps her arms around both of us. We hold Acker for a long time. None of us says anything, but neither of us lets go until Acker does.