Page 20 of Scion

After that, I stand and survey. Water still dribbles down through the mounds of sand and broken coral. The gills in some of the cut-off chunks of oxysuit continue to open and close creepily nearby. Fish of all sizes either gasp their last or lie still. There’s broken glass everywhere.

I should probably go and tell Old Woman I’ve made a bit of a mess, I suppose.

THIS ISN’T ‘A BIT OF a mess,’ Azure,” says Old Woman primly, surveying the pungent remains of her aquarium.

“I may have undersold it.” I step over a shark corpse. “But it’s not my fault! It’s his.” I point to Fish Boy’s corpse.

“So he smashed the aquarium wall?”

“Well… no,” I concede. “But he was in there. The wall was in the way.”

“There’s a hatch. I showed you the hatch.”

“At the other end of the house.”

She glares at me, knowing I’m enjoying this and disapproving immensely. “I am unimpressed.”

“Alive, though,” I point out.

Old Woman growls something under her breath that I doubt is very complimentary, but seems to realise that complaining isn’t being constructive. “So what now?”

“Now we need to get out of here.”

“If that’s an option, wouldn’t it have been better to do that before you broke everything?”

“I wouldn’t say…” I catch sight of the shattered glass and fish bodies lying everywhere, and cut the protest short. “Probably, but the situation’s changed.”

“How?”

“I think he was a canary.” In the hour since the attack, I’ve only become more certain of it. “Kind of a… B-grade version of me, I guess. You hire them to test defences. Send them ahead into the mine, so to speak. If they happen to reach the target? Great. Less work, still a net profit. And if someone like me was waiting? You’ve got the warning and lost some tokens, not your life.”

Old Woman processes it, eyes on Fish Boy. “That’s a thankless job.”

“Well you don’t tell them they’re canaries. Obviously. They’re usually just stupid kids with a couple of natural skills and a grudge against lifers. Hell of a lot better than rushing in and risking your own…” I see her look. “Not that I would ever use one.”

“Uh-huh.” She sounds about as convinced as I was convincing, which was not very.

“Anyway. Point is, canaries aren’t cheap. Whoever’s after you is serious.”

“You didn’t think it was serious before now?”

“I mean they have resources. These contracts are one-and-dones, usually. Crowdsourced funding to get rid of whichever lifer has offended the masses most recently, paid up front. That’s why protection is worth it. You kill the assassin, there are no more tokens to try again. And once that happens, generally speaking, the backers decide their hard-earned is better spent elsewhere next time.” I suck on my teeth irritably. “Fish Boy had an oxysuit. Very expensive to grow. Probably cost more than hiring him did. To throw away that kind of investment on a canary run…” I shake my head. “They’re well informed, and they’re just going to keep coming. Next time—and there will be a next time—they might come in somewhere neither of us has thought of yet.”

Old Woman, annoyingly, seems unsurprised by all this.

“If I’d had a better idea of what we were up against,” I add sadly, “these beautiful fish would still be alive.”

“Don’t be a churl, Azure. Where are we going?”

“Themis.”

Old Woman stares at me, wisps of white hair jutting distractingly into the air. “That’s five hundred kilometres away. I’m not sure I’m up to walking that far.”

“You said you owned the maintenance bots that are fixing the Loop?”

“I do,” she says slowly. “But I can’t make them go any faster.”

“They have toxic waste removal containers. They’re airtight and, what—two-metre cubes, at least? Should easily have enough air for two people and five hours of travel.”