Page 100 of Reaper Said Mine

“Honest woman.”

He looks down at me as the chamber door opens, and the corridor beyond exhales cooler air across my face. The station hums around us, dangerous and alive, while somewhere beyond its walls diplomats sharpen language into knives.

“Yes,” he says softly. “That is what I said.”

CHAPTER 14

GNASH

The archive room beneath the negotiation annex has no windows, which makes it one of the more honest rooms aboard Guyver Station.

No one enters this chamber pretending the galaxy is beautiful. The walls are thick, black, and sealed behind layered security fields that hum against my teeth when I step through them. The air is cold enough to raise faint steam from my breath, heavy with the clean bite of coolant, old dust trapped in shielded vents, and the faint burnt-sugar stink of overloaded data cores. Rows of secured holo-cradles line the walls like sleeping machines, each one holding drafts, maps, intercepts, legal opinions, fleet reports, blackmail files, and the hundreds of small ugly truths that keep a station alive while diplomats upstairs sip imported tea and speak of mutual confidence.

Ursa stands beside the central projection table with her sleeves pushed to her elbows, red hair coiled badly at the back of her head, and her face lit from below by treaty language that has already tried to bite us six different ways. She has removed her jacket and draped it over the back of a chair built for someone much larger than she is. Her compad sits beside my restricted archive reader, linked through a hardline that Vakka installed while muttering threats against every cybernetic god she does not believe in.

There are three empty cups beside Ursa’s hand.

She has drunk two of them.

The third belongs to me, though she keeps stealing from it whenever she forgets which cup is hers.

“You realize,” she says, eyes narrowed at the projection, “that this clause is wearing a little hat and false mustache.”

I look down at her. “Explain.”

“It pretends to be a tariff stabilization mechanism, but it’s really an enforcement trigger.” She flicks her fingers, enlarging the language in the air between us. “See this phrase? ‘Recurring volatility in corridor access rates may activate provisional review by recognized partner authority.’ That sounds boring enough to kill a committee by natural causes, but it means the Coalition can define your tariff fluctuations as instability. Then they can demand review. Then review gives them standing. Then standing gives them leverage.”

I bare my teeth at the clause because tearing the throat from legal language remains tragically impossible. “Theryki said this was standard commercial protection.”

“Theryki is a genius, a snake, and a menace to paragraph structure. Those things can all be true at once.”

“She flatters the clause with complexity.”

“She hides the knife in the footnote.”

I lean closer, and the scent of her reaches me beneath the coolant and hot circuitry: caf, station spice, the faint mineral scent of recycled water, and the warm human smell that has begun to settle into my senses with terrifying ease. The bond stirs whenever I stand too near her, a deep pull beneath my ribs that feels less like hunger now and more like recognition. That may be worse. Hunger can be fed. Recognition begins rearranging the room in your skull.

Ursa glances up at me. “You’re staring again.”

“I am thinking.”

“With your eyes on my mouth?”

“My thoughts are complicated.”

“Your thoughts are about my mouth.”

“Among other strategic concerns.”

She tries to look stern, but amusement betrays her. It begins in the corner of her eyes before she can stop it, brightening the green until I understand why weaker poets used to blame entire wars on women’s faces. My ancestors sang of warriors, raids, and blood debts. They should have sung more warnings about clever women in archive rooms.

“Gnash,” she says.

“Ursa.”

“We are supposed to be identifying treaty traps.”

“I have identified several.”