Last First Snow by Max Gladstone Read Free Book Online Page B

get bad,” she said.
    â€œI hope not. But if it does, there’s my card. Monicola Hotel, room four-oh-four. Or visit our local office. They can find me.”
    She put the card in the breast pocket of her shirt. “Thank you.”
    Then she returned to her work, and Elayne to hers.

 
    7
    The guards cheered when Chel came to the bonfire for dinner. Forty of them sat in a clearing between the tents, and they set down their bowls to applaud: guys and gals she knew from childhood and from the docks, survivors of the picket lines and the final wicked deal last winter, all muscles, tattoos, dirt and scars and smiles. She raised her hands and sketched an actress’s bow, flaring an imaginary cape. Her friends hooted and whistled. When she looked up she saw Tay at the other side of the circle. He wasn’t laughing, and hadn’t clapped. Well, fuck him, or not, at least for now. “Thank you,” she said in the poshest Camlaander accent she could fake, hamming it up. Cozim, by the fire, laughed so hard he almost dropped the ladle into the stewpot. Not everyone here was a dockhand: when they started standing guard others joined them. One of the new women gave Chel a high-five, then winced. Soft hands. Chel dropped back into her normal voice, into Low Quechal. “Not that I mind—but what did I do?”
    Cozim passed her a bowl of stew that looked and smelled like it was mostly made from charcoal. “Heard about you and the witch this morning.”
    â€œKnocked her right to the ground,” the new woman said. Ellen, Chel’s memory supplied. Schoolteacher, one of those who came over with Red Bel from the union, which explained her soft hands.
    â€œChoked her half to death.” That was Zip, huge and broad. Word around the docks ran that Zip once won a head-butting contest with an ox, and Chel credited the rumor. “Shoulda gone the other half.”
    â€œWay I heard it,” Cozim said, “you saved Temoc’s life.”
    She stared into the stew, but it offered her no reflections. She tried a bite; something in there might charitably be described as meat. “Cozim, did Food Com send this?”
    â€œAin’t their fault.” Cozim pointed over to Zip. “They sent meat raw for us to cook. Something to prove, I guess, after the fight this morning. Thank Zip for the texture.”
    â€œGodsdamn, Zip. Your mother never teach you to cook?”
    â€œâ€™S good all black like that. Cleans the teeth.” Zip bared his own teeth, which did not help his point.
    â€œPut those things away,” Chel said. “You want to blind us?” She tried the stew again, but a few seconds’ cooling had not improved the flavor.
    â€œWhy didn’t you kill her?” Ellen again—and Chel couldn’t tell whether she was scared, or eager. The circle grunted interest.
    â€œYou think I could have?” Chel said. “You ever seen a Craftsman die?”
    â€œSaw one crushed by a shipping container once,” Zip said. “Walked under the crane. Cable snapped.” Someone chuckled, and he glared around the circle, looking for the one who’d laughed. Nobody owned up. “I’d checked it. Hand to gods.”
    Chel didn’t argue. “Did he stay dead? They can come back, mostly.”
    â€œBeats me.”
    â€œStill, though,” Ellen pressed. “Why not?”
    â€œShe didn’t come to hurt Temoc. She just got the wrong impression when she saw him at the altar. You’ve been to services.” Nods around the circle. “She jumped him because she didn’t know what was happening. That was my fault. I should have told her.”
    â€œStill,” Cozim said. “You got your hands on her throat. Counts for something.”
    She’d thought so too, at first. But Elayne had healed that girl, and Temoc greeted her as a friend. “It’s not like that,” she said, and again, louder, for the