21. The People We Become #3
“Kira!” he shouts. “She’s joking,” he mutters to me. Firmer, he says, “And it’s an inappropriate joke—”
“A keeper,” she echoes. “Dezeeves does like to give you a challenge, doesn’t he? Never thought it was fair of him withholding your promotion for so long like that.”
Cosmer’s shoulders shoot up. “He sees potential in me. He knows I can meet those challenges.”
“Sees something in you. I don’t think potential is it, though.”
“Are you going to give me a gun?” he snaps. “Or do I need to write you up for an OTI – and maybe for Disrespect, too?”
Reluctantly, the woman picks up a pen, dabs it into her ink pot, and scrawls something onto a piece of paper before she disappears for a moment. She returns with a revolver.
With one hand, she rotates a kind of dial within the caged hatch, which brings the weapon around to our side of it.
Now I can see her better, I realise she’s quite frightening. Wild hair. Bloodshot eyes. Skeleton-thin and veiny. She’s swaying slightly on the spot.
“Back by sixteen,” she says.
“It will be,” he replies, holstering it.
She leans against the glass.
“I’ve still got plenty of food,” she whispers. “If you ever wanted to start trading again.”
“Get yourself clean, Kira,” is all Cosmer says. “It would do us all a favour.”
He turns his back on her. Grabbing my hand briefly, he marches us away, his body coiled up like a spring.
Back outside Deck 8, he lets loose.
“Insulting me like that, in front of you. She’s lucky I didn’t mark her down for the brig for Disrespect. Or take away her food – since she’s apparently got so much of it.”
“You don’t mean that,” I say, calm. “She’s just an old woman. She didn’t look all there.”
“She’s not. She’s a huffer. That’s what they start to look like, if they’ve been on osimidite for too long. That’s what I started to look like. Before Riss stepped in.”
He’s hunched over, like he’s been winded. I watch him take deep breaths.
I step in front of him.
“That’s in the past now, Cosmer. You got yourself clean,” I remind him.
“Did I?” he says, chest moving. “I went down there last night, Ara.”
“I know,” I say, muted.
“I’m an idiot. Six months sober. For what? Just to ruin it, in ten minutes!” He sort of flails his arms.
“You’re being too hard on yourself. It was one moment of weakness.” I lower my voice. “I know how strong you are.”
He sidles towards the staircase. Thumps down on a step.
“I don’t know what came over me,” he says, quietly. “When you were dancing…”
I go over to him. Sit right beside him, our bodies touching.
“It made you jealous,” I say, repeating what I said last night.
“I think it was more than that, Ara,” he says. “I’d been feeling it since I first saw you outside my ship – and you were holding his hand.”
We have to stop, because two soldiers are climbing the staircase below. Instinctively, we separate ourselves until they pass on either side of us. Luckily, they don’t seem too suspicious.
Alone again, Cosmer bends over, head in his hands. I can’t see his face. I wish I could.
I gravitate to him again. Stroke his back.
“Tell me.”
“It crushed me, Ara,” he almost whispers. “I came up here to give my mother a better life – and you and your family a better life. I didn’t expect to be gone so long. I did think you might have found someone else by now. But to see you with that person, who you just looked so perfect for…”
“Just because he’s Rhavnan—”
“It’s not just that. There’s something about the two of you. I knew it even before you told me about this thing you have with him. Other people know it. Dezeeves called it young love. And the officers loved it—”
“I love you Cosmer,” I say, talking over him. “I loved you at sixteen. I love you now. The things you’ve done for me. Gone through for me…”
It’s like I’m sinking. Plummeting. If someone told me the hive was falling out of the sky, I’d believe them.
And suddenly, my face is crumpling. I cover it with my hands. Why must I be such a wreck up here? Why can’t I get it together?
Immediately, his sinewy arms slide around me.
“Hey,” Cosmer says, gently. “I didn’t mean to upset you.”
“It’s all my fault,” I say, gasping. “If you’d never met me—”
“Never met you? Ara—”
“It’s true,” I say, looking up at him through my tears. “You wouldn’t have come up here. You wouldn’t have starved yourself. Got yourself addicted to this omisidite—”
“Osimidite—”
“I don’t care! All this time, I didn’t even know.”
“Ara—”
My voice lifts. “And there’s nothing I can do to fix it! Dezeeves refused to reinstate your food unless you asked him yourself—”
“You spoke to Dezeeves?”
“And you don’t seem to believe me when I say I want you, not Drake—”
“I didn’t say that—”
The radio is crackling. That stupid radio.
“Cosmer,” Dezeeves’ voice calls. “What’s taking so long? We’re all waiting. I hope you haven’t disappeared again.”
Cosmer stares at me. With longing, or heartbreak, I can’t tell.
He sighs, long and aching, like it’s actually part of his soul that’s leaving him.
He states, into the worst machine ever invented, “We’re back on The Emperor. Just coming up the Deck 8 stairs now.”