One Man’s Pest #2
He unbuckles his collar and peels the plates from his shoulders.
Wrapping his iron-vine arms around his waist, he crosses the planks to their sleeping quarters and creaks open the door.
Afternoon light spills across the apartment, the tiny table, the kitchenette, settling on Tyro’s back, hunched over the washbasin.
Guy freezes. “Ty?” he says quietly.
Razor clutched in one hand, a clump of hair in the other, she meets his eyes in the rusty mirror.
Curls lie at her feet, and a thin red line runs from a nick on her temple, past her ear, her cheek, to her clenched jaw.
A sound catches in her throat, and her face reddens.
She turns, drops his razor, and begins, silently, to cry.
Guy stands in the doorway, one leg in, one leg out, unsure which way he should run. He knows his sister’s tears; he knows which are pain and which sadness and which rage. This soundless weeping is entirely alien to him. He has never seen such exquisite guilt on her face before.
He opens his mouth but can’t force anything out. He has a hundred questions and can’t choose which to ask first.
“Oh, princeling,” he says eventually.
She bites her lip. When she speaks, it’s in a strained whisper.
He steps into the apartment and gently closes the door. “I can’t hear you, Ty.”
“I said,” she rasps, “are you gonna help me or what?”
He breaks, releasing a chuckle. “Sure. Can’t let you make it any worse.” He fetches the razor from the floor and brushes back her curls, revealing the nicks on her ear and forehead. “There’s blood on your collar, Ty. Here. Take this off.”
“No.”
“No?”
“You’ll stare.”
“I won’t stare.” He pulls a stray hair from her shoulder. “Has someone been staring?”
She says nothing. Reluctantly, she removes her dress.
“Who’s been staring, Ty?”
“Rickhardt. A little.”
“He’s not giving you those drawings again, is he?”
“No.”
“Three will talk to him.” He looks over her head, assessing the damage.
“Scissors’ll be much better for this. I’ll get some.
” Tyro latches to him, gripping his sleeve, unwilling to let him go.
He sighs, gives in, and turns her toward the mirror.
“‘Little poet,’” he sings, “‘dry your eyes and whet your blade.’”
“My eyes are dry.”
“Sure they are.” He slices through her terrible handiwork, avoiding the cuts and clotted blood. “God, you did a number on yourself, grease-beetle.”
“I didn’t feel it,” she says.
“Of course not.” When their mother had cut their hair, rough and desperate, he had always wept. Tyro never flinched. “Your skull’s iron. That’s why it’s so fucking thick.”
“What?”
“Iron. You’re iron.” Across the barracks, he can hear Dawn holler for him. He ignores him. “Half, at least. On your dad’s side. He was an oil drum, you know.”
“No he wasn’t.”
“It’s true. When our mam worked in Textile Crack, they kept these oil drums full of silkworms on the factory floor, where they bred them.
She found you in one of them, after the night shift.
The one on the end of the line. Worse for wear but still sturdy—that was your dad.
You were the biggest silkworm he ever grew. And the prettiest.”
“Stupid,” Tyro mutters. She quiets for a minute, listening to the short scrapes of the razor. “What about yours? What was your dad?”
“An awl. A rusty awl.” He adjusts her chin.
“You know, our mam was so good with her scissors that sometimes she took them to the Root of Broken Teeth and fought with them for money. She had a pair the size of my arm. She could fend off swordsmen and blacksmiths and carvers, easy. So one night she’s fighting this cobbler, and he’s her match.
Just as tough, just as mean. Every time she’s got him between her blades, he parries with a shoehorn.
When he swings a leather sole she spears it with a seam-ripper.
“They’re stuck like that for a while. Neither of them ever fight fair, that’s why it’s even. Then one day, he gets her with his awl, right in the belly. Part of the metal breaks off in there, but she doesn’t know until it swells up and she goes to the doctor.”
“She didn’t take it out?”
“No. Dunno why. Maybe she wanted it. Maybe she wanted to show off the scar. Either way, it grew and grew and eventually I came out. Then she went right back to the trade. Kept up her duel with the cobbler, on and off for eight years or so. Until she landed the finishing blow with a pair of fabric shears.”
Tyro digests this for a moment. “Bullshit,” she says.
“Bullshit or not, it’s true.” He slices away the last of her loose hair, then runs his hands through it, short and greasy. “Now, go help Dawn. He’s gonna teach you to skin a hellrat.”
“You got a hellrat?”
“And a dragon. Maybe you can see it when they bring it down to R&D.”
This, more than anything, puts a smile on her face. She pulls on her dress, runs her hands through her curls, and runs her feet out the door.
When she is gone, Guy drops to his knees, gathers her hair, and salvages what he can for sale.