Page 62 of Consort's Glory
Margot turned to open the door, but didn’t get farther than popping the handle before she peered over her shoulder to ask, “You two have a history, don’t you?”
Viktor’s eyes were vivid in the darkness, reflecting with a predator’s nightglow. “Yeah,” he answered softly, “we do. Grew up together, if you can believe that. We were best friends.”
“What happened?”
“A girl happened.” Seeing her sudden tension, he released a hoarse chuckle. “Not like that, sunshine. Not for him. He was just trying to protect one of his own. Looking back, I’m pretty sure he’s always belonged to you.” He nudged her elbow. “Now go on. I’d hate to have him find you here in my car and end up on the wrong side of those claws, thinking I’m aiding and abetting your daring escape from monogamy.”
Margot swallowed hard. She desperately wanted to know more about what happened between him and Theodore, but he was right. She didn’t need anyone else tangled up in her mess. Swinging her legs out of the car, she muttered a soft, “Thank you, Viktor.”
“Any time, sunshine.”
The weight of his eyes lingered on her well after she closed the door and walked away. The air was cold and wet, seeping through the impressive layers she wore to sink into her bones as Margot approached the great, ugly face of the old soap factory.
She was tired, on edge, and a part of her still shrieked to return to Theodore’s side, but this place was at least familiar to her. It would be a safe place to sleep. In the morning, she could…
Well, she had no idea what she was going to do.
Margot tugged her hood up around her face and slipped through the gap in the chain link fence surrounding the property. A complex glamour on the old, squat building hid the bustling life within, but those who dared slip in and out had to be careful to avoid too much notice.
The Market wasn’t nefarious, but it was illegal.
Tucking her arms tight around her sides, Margot burrowed into Theodore’s pilfered coat and kept her head down as she passed a cluster of unhumans going in the opposite direction. They were insectoid, and she couldn’t identify them at a glance in the growing darkness, but their arms were laden with tote bags full of groceries and household goods anyone would recognize, no doubt paid for with unofficial currency that didn’t require the ID chips or recognized alternatives all official citizens of the Protectorate were required to have.
They chattered in a language she didn’t know, but quieted down as she passed them, their steps faltering to give her plenty of room. Their caution made sense. Unofficial residents who couldn’t pass the requisite background and criminal checks to enter the EVP were not allowed to stay, and the pathways to getting ID chips or accepted alternate identification were vanishingly few. If the small group ran into the wrong person, they could be booted from the territory with no warning.
As eager to avoid them as they were to avoid her, Margot hustled past them and turned right at the papered double doors that most visitors would have stepped through. Instead, she circled the squat brick building to find an abandoned loading bay.
Levering herself up onto the high ledge once used to assist in the loading of trucks, Margot pushed past a billowing sheet of yellowed plastic to skim her fingers along the metal door blocking her way. It took only a handful of seconds in the dark to find the latch, then the welded sigil in the corner.
A dull flash of light, a low creak of rusted metal, and the emergency door was open just enough for her to squeeze through.
Immediately, the sights and smells of the Market assaulted her. Unlike the morose, abandoned appearance the factory displayed for outsiders, inside it was a riot of color and sound and scent. Lights were strung over every available surface. Stalls crammed up against one another to sell everything you could imagine and much of what you couldn’t. Heat wavered in the air, mingling with the heavy scents of bodies and cooking oil, as people of every shape and size and race went about their business as usual amongst it all.
For a long, tense moment, Margot huddled by the emergency door, obscured by several stacked crates that might have been there a day or fifty years. It was a lot warmer in the Market than outside, a product of the many fryers and bodies pushing up against one another. Sweat beaded under her layers as she waited for an opening in the flow of bodies.
Two giants, both of them wearing tool belts around their massive waists and arguing about the day’s work, made a gap for her in the mass. Margot slid into the flow easily, her head down, and let it carry her around to the opposite side of the Market. When she was close enough, it took only a few creative sideways steps to exit the river of people.
The old clinic wasn’t so much a clinic, and more of an abandoned locker room for the former soap factory workers that was — through grit and plenty of cleaning solution — retrofitted into something close to a sanitary space.
It was marked by a crudely painted sign on the old particle board door, a Healer’s Hand with the open eye in the middle marking it as a place not to be disturbed and open to all who needed aid.
Fitting,she thought dryly as she jiggled the rusty knob, since I’m the one in need of aid tonight.
The door had expanded with the moisture in the air, but it only took a good shove with her shoulder to get it open. Margot darted inside and slammed it closed behind her.
Only when the door was firmly closed did she lean back and breathe.
Okay,Margot thought, I made it. What now?
Food first,she decided. Then rest. Margot slid her hand against the wall until she felt the pitted plastic of the old light switch and flicked it on.
The clinic was roughly square, with one wall made up of old, rusted lockers and the other lined with shelves that once stored safety equipment. A narrow doorway led to a communal bathroom, long defunct except for a single toilet and one rusty spigot that ran ice cold water. One high window let in the smothered light of a streetlamp, but it was so hopelessly cracked and taped back together again that Margot didn’t worry about it exposing her to outsiders.
Lined up along the lockers were three cheap medical beds separated by rolling screens, and in the far corner of the room there was a workbench, a cork board, and a bookcase full of plastic containers. Beneath the cracked window, there was a single folded cot.
“Not exactly homey,” she muttered, wearily peeling herself away from the door, “but it’ll do.”
The air was at least cooler in the clinic. That was a plus. As was the lack of overwhelming food smells, which made her empty stomach protest its mistreatment even more vocally than before.
