A Passage of Stars by Kate Elliott Read Free Book Online Page B

out into dimness. She took the central one, found herself touching moist walls that gave beneath her hands. The floor was rough and broken. Here, where the corridors widened or where some hastily patched break had left space off the main path, people huddled, whispering, trading, watching. In the low light, Lily saw the telltale dapplings of tattoos.
    The corridor she entered was unnumbered and unnamed. But from here just one last alley would bring her to the section where she had landed.
    The alley was old, broad, and inhabited. Once she stumbled over a child, lying in a shadowed patch of the path. After that she went more slowly. A low, cracked voice begged for a drink. Far ahead, someone screamed. A family had gathered in an open seal that led into a patchworked hovel of one room, plastine ribbing covering old leaks. Bunks crowded two walls; at the third stood a low altar. When they saw Lily, they slid the seal shut. The green phosphorous torches that usually lit, however poorly, the alleys gave way to the inconstant flickering of red. Lily could scarcely see her hands. The screaming, half-sobs now, sounded from just beyond the corner. She paused.
    Sounds of a struggle, but an unequal one. Someone striking someone else. A determined but useless resistance. Threats: prison, rape, death.
    Lily came around the corner. In the first instant she saw three thugs beating and kicking and ripping the clothes off a child. In the second instant she saw that it was a girl, profusely tattooed, and that the child was fighting with all the frenzy of hopeless panic.
    “—think you’re too good for this kind of work,” said the man nearest Lily as he struck the girl across the face. “Getting above yourself, I’d say.” He saw Lily.
    She took him out cleanly, before he could react, doubling him over with a kick, striking to the head. He fell heavily to the floor. The tattooed girl shrieked and bit the arm of the woman who was holding her. The other man, jumping back, drew a short blade.
    “Let her go,” said Lily.
    The woman kicked the girl in the ribs, jerking her arm away, and launched herself at Lily. Lily sidestepped and pushed her into the wall, on the same beat spun backward and kicked the knife out of the other man’s hand. He hesitated. Lily snapped a kick hard into his groin. As he doubled up, grunting, she drove a final kick up into his chin—“Let the momentum go through your target,” Heredes would say—and felt the impact, the shattering of bone. With a high scream of pain, the man fell in a heap clutching his jaw.
    The girl had grabbed the knife; now she shouted a warning. Lily felt a hand grip her shoulder; she spun into it with an elbow straight to the woman’s face, and with her hips still turning, a punch solid to the belly. The woman fell, retching.
    Lily grabbed the girl’s arm, pulling her to her feet. “Come on,” she said.
    “Shouldna we—” The girl gestured with the knife. The first man shifted on the ground; the woman caught her breath.
    “Run,” said Lily, and she ran, tugging the girl along behind her.
    They had to push through a group of onlookers. None hindered them, but Lily did not stop until they came out of the alley into the wild disorder of the corridor. She let go of the girl’s arm and strolled as if undisturbed toward the berth the brothers had put into. The girl followed two steps behind her. When they came to an awning that sheltered three children and a rack of knee-length tunics, Lily paused, un-clipping her com-screen.
    “Now,” she said. “I’ll buy you something to replace that—” She halted, staring.
    The girl stood in the corner of the shop’s portico, shielding herself as well as she could from the street. She had stuck the knife under her belt and with both hands held together her torn shift to cover her abdomen and breasts. The three children had run into the shop, so the girl stood alone under the incandescence of a lighting tube.
    She was beautiful, despite,