And the baby was still screaming.
With a frustrated growl, Chatine spun around and stalked toward the mother and child. She didn’t stop as she approached them. She simply tossed the chou bread at the woman and kept going.
Chatine could hear the woman calling out to her. “Oh, merci! Merci, ma chérie! You are sent from the Sols!”
But Chatine didn’t stop. In fact, she quickened her pace until she was running. The sounds of the baby’s hungry wails followed her down the hall, chasing after her, reminding her far too much of the past she’d been trying to escape for twelve years.
Chatine didn’t stop running until she reached the door of her family’s couchette. She was breathing heavily, and her stomach growled again.
She couldn’t believe what she had just done.
That bread would have been the most she’d had to eat in days. And she’d just given it away like she had food to spare. Like she had anything to spare.
Chatine shook out her left hand, her fingers just starting to tingle with sensation again. She reached toward the lock on the door of the couchette but froze when she heard the unmistakable sound of her mother’s voice thundering through the wall, shaking the crumbling corridors and threatening to bring down what was left of the doors.
“Thirty-five percent?! You’re out of your mind if you think I’m stupide enough to give that old croc more than a tenth!”
Fantastique, Chatine thought. She’s in one of her moods.
From the sound of it, Chatine’s father had just returned from his latest job and her parents were arguing over the cuts. They were always arguing over the cuts.
Chatine reached into her boot and pulled out the other half of the chou bread. She nibbled at the edges until they looked clean-cut and not torn. As the tiny morsels of bread touched her tongue, it took all of her willpower not to cram the entire thing into her mouth and pretend it never existed.
It wasn’t until she bent over to return the loaf to her boot that she noticed the tear in the fabric of her black pants, right over her knee. She must have done it when she was crawling around on the catwalk, trying to escape the droids.
Chatine sighed. Her pants were already patched with so many metal wires, chain links, and whatever other random scraps she could find around the Frets, there wasn’t much fabric left to patch.
She straightened up and listened at the door. Her mother’s tirade seemed to have subsided. She waved her left arm in front of the lock.
“Access granted.” The latch hissed and Chatine quietly pushed the door open and slipped inside.
Chatine imagined that the couchettes must have once been clean, shiny staterooms with proper doors and running water and a stove that didn’t sound like a sheep in labor. Before they turned into the decrepit slums they were now.
The Renards’ couchette, however, was still one of the nicest in the Frets. Her father’s position as the leader of the Délabré gang had awarded Chatine and her family some extra comforts, like their own kitchen, a location on a high floor, and two bedrooms instead of one. Most of the Third Estate didn’t even have couchettes of their own. They slept in old cargo holds on the ground floor, tightly packed into shoddy bunks stacked all the way to the ceiling.
None of the couchettes had their own bathrooms. And only every other communal lavatory worked properly, making for a highly unpleasant smell that had become a constant fixture for life in the Frets.
When the Renards had first moved across the planet to Vallonay from their inn in Montfer, Chatine had spent her days outside in the semi-fresh air and her nights trying not to vomit from the stench. But since then, she’d grown accustomed to it.
It was amazing what conditions a person could get used to.
As suspected, when Chatine entered the couchette, she found her father sitting at the table in the living room, counting a large pile of shiny, Sol-shaped buttons. She remembered him talking about a job he was planning to pull at the garment fabrique. This was clearly the result. Chatine knew, based on their shape, that the buttons were supposed to go on the uniforms of Ministère officers. They were made of pure titan, which her father would undoubtedly melt down so he could use the precious silvery metal as currency.
Typically, only the First and Second Estates had access to titan. Members of the Third Estate were paid in digital tokens—or largs, as they were called around here—deposited into their profile accounts each week. That is, if you actually showed up for your assigned job, which Chatine and her parents never did.
Chatine’s mother was standing over Monsieur Renard, monitoring the count.
“I can’t believe that greedy woman wanted thirty-five percent for flashing a tette! I could have flashed a tette for thirty-five percent!”
“Trust me. Your old tettes aren’t worth thirty-five percent,” Monsieur Renard said under his breath.
But her mother heard it. And so did Chatine. She attempted to stifle a chuckle but was unsuccessful. Madame Renard jerked her head up, noticing Chatine for the first time since she’d walked in. Before Chatine could see what was coming, her mother reared her hand back and slapped Chatine hard across the face.
She stumbled from the blow, slamming against the couchette door.
“What the fric?” Chatine held her throbbing cheek. “He’s the one who said it!”
“These old tettes have made more money around here than both of you combined!” Madame Renard was screeching now. She turned and glared hard at Chatine. “Because I know how to use what the Sols gave me to my advantage.”
Chatine bit down hard on her lip.
It had been over two years since since she’d turned sixteen, and there wasn’t a day that passed when her mother didn’t less-than-subtly mention how many largs a healthy young girl such as Chatine could make in Vallonay. The blood bordels paid almost double for girls her age. Once you turned twenty-five, the price started dropping.
But Chatine preferred her methods. They were working. And as long as she continued to bring in more largs as a boy named Théo than she ever could as a girl named Chatine, she was able to convince her parents to keep up the charade that they’d given birth to a son eighteen years ago, instead of a daughter.
And Chatine would rather empty her veins into the Secana Sea than sell her blood to the First Estate.
“What did you bring me?” Madame Renard asked, dragging her hard gray eyes up and down Chatine’s black coat, searching for extra bulk.
Chatine pulled the half loaf of chou bread from her boot and tossed it at her mother. Madame Renard caught it deftly with one hand and started to examine it, running her dirty fingernails over the edge where Chatine had torn it in half.
“Where’s the rest?” Madame Renard asked. “You better not be trying to steal from me too, you worthless clochard.”
Chatine returned her mother’s challenging stare with one of her own, refusing to show any fear. “It came that way,” she stated evenly.
Her mother’s eyes narrowed. She clearly didn’t believe Chatine.
“I lifted it from Dufour’s stall,” Chatine went on. “You know that old croc can’t be trusted.”
This seemed to do the trick. Her mother let out a grunt and tossed the loaf onto the table. It crashed into the pile of titan buttons that Monsieur Renard was counting, causing them to scatter.