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Signy spotted a jacket that was not adorned with aspirational pastiche, and it was a sight, like so many others, that had started to give her a little flutter when she noticed it. Cora was waiting for her by the departure board, as agreed upon. She leaned back jauntily against it, her mask hanging down against her chest. One gloved hand rested in her pocket, while the other held—

Oh, Signy thought, melting. Yes, this was worth the ferry ride.

“I know it’s silly,” Cora said with a smirk, a shrug, a blush. “But I saw a lady selling them, and—”

“No, it’s lovely,” Signy said, accepting the bouquet of folded paper flowers. Sure, it was silly, too, but wasn’t it awfully nice, to have somebody who wanted to do silly things for you?

They kissed beneath the departure board, the seconds above clicking away.

“Sorry for the change in plans,” Cora said. A new café called Oasis had been the original plan that evening, but the raft four ferry was on limited service (two boats had broken down; a bad situation for everyone involved). On the fly, Cora had conjured the current alternative for dinner—the Old World Grill, she’d said. Apparently they were known for doing good things with mock steak.

“Not your fault,” Signy said. “This sounds good.” She took Cora’s hand as they began to walk through the market hall, following signs for the Mercury Street exit. “So what did you get up to today?”

“Safety drills,” Cora said. “Easy peasy.”

“What do safety drills entail?”

“You get in a fake saddle—without a rorqual, of course—and you practice bailing out, putting out a fire, that kind of thing. Sometimes we do rescues—like, you get two saddles side by side and one of you pretends to be injured and the other has to walk through retrieval procedure.”

“Is there room in the saddle for two?” Signy asked.

Cora nodded. “There’s a jump seat behind the pilot’s rig, in case we have to go pick someone up. I’ve never done it for real, but the drills are fun.” She frowned. “I mean, obviously it wouldn’t be fun if it were for real. But today was just bail-out practice, and that’s pretty boring.”

“Why?”

“I have probably gotten kicked out of a saddle and tossed into a crash net . . . I dunno, ten thousand times. I could do it in my sleep. But that’s why we do it. It’s gotta be muscle memory.”

Signy glanced at one of the planters as they walked past. Whoever was caring for this assortment was giving the boxwood too much fertilizer. “Sounds a lot less boring than my day,” she said. “I had so much street traffic.”

“Ah,” Cora said, understanding. “No fun work?”

“No fun work,” Signy confirmed. “And nobody even bought very much.” She sighed. “Sometimes I wonder if—”

She cut off as she noticed the crowd ahead of them. A lot of people had congested near the exit, and they did not sound happy. A small squad of cops was funneling pedestrians through a makeshift checkpoint and waving scanner wands over everybody, one at a time. They didn’t sound happy, either.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Cora said. “Are they really doing this?”

“Doing . . . what?” Signy asked.

“I heard on the news they were thinking about doing, like, random crowd checks on the center rafts, because of that dipshit who ran into some office with a mining sledge. He wanted . . .” Cora sucked her teeth. “Honestly, I don’t even remember what he wanted. I just thought they were talking big. I didn’t think they’d—”

Cora’s grumblings slipped into the background noise as Signy realized she had a problem.

In her left pocket, beneath her barrier pants, she carried a bottle labeled Vitamin C.

The bottle was full.

The bottle was for Cora.

She froze—not out of fear; merely thinking things through. But that was a mistake, because the actual point of cops waving wands over people was to see if anybody in the surrounding crowd did anything suspicious to avoid it. Things like, say, sneaking around, or running away. Or holding still.

She wasn’t sure if the cop watching the crowd had seen her or not, because she wasn’t stupid enough to look their way, not when she’d already been stupid enough to stop walking. She reached out with her free hand and caught Cora’s elbow. “Cora, it’s very important that you turn around and kiss me right now.”

Cora stopped and looked back at her, surprised and amused. “Yeah? Should I recap the news more often, or—”

The cop was watching. The cop was definitely watching. “No, I mean it. Right now.”

Thank goodness for a lover who didn’t argue. Cora hooked her index fingers into Signy’s belt loops, pulled her forward, and began to kiss her in the middle of the crowd, as though they were both half their respective ages. There were a few scoffs and mutters around them, which Signy couldn’t have cared less about. One of Cora’s hands fell naturally to Signy’s hip. Signy guided Cora’s fingers down and over, right over the pill bottle in her pocket.