“Sniffing around that friend of yours, the pretty barmaid,” Cringle Kerr told me. “You’d best watch out for her.”
“I’m not her ma, Cringle,” I’d said. “I can’t be here and out on the road at the same time. I’ve my work and she has hers. Lenore knows her own mind.”
Words that turn my stomach now. Lenore’s mind! I can’t fathom what she was thinking throwing her hand in with the rebels. I should have stayed closer to town. Should have taken shorter runs. Should have sought out this smuggler the minute I heard he was in Whistletop and plowed him over with my rig.
Mars Dresden’s name has been on every villager’s tongue for months now and I’ve done well to time my trips to avoid his stays. He has a big job, they say. Is looking for help.
But people only come to Whistletop looking for a particular brand of help. He’s looking for a rig and a driver. While I have very few scruples about which jobs I’ll take, I steer clear of rebels. They have the kind of convictions that could get a girl blacklisted by the Majority.
He steps closer, dips his head so his eyes are flush with mine. He doesn’t have to stoop far. Mars isn’t a large man, just a few inches taller than me, but there’s power there. I feel it. Winter feels it. She’s a whining squall inside my head.
“Mars Dresden. They weren’t lying,” I tell him. “Your eyes are spectacular.”
“Yours aren’t the standard issue either, Miss Quine.”
I know what he’s seeing, of course. Bright gray irises—sylver, Mistress Quine called them—with pinpricks of black dust across the whites. The kol in my eyes has taken a more subtle approach than his.
He smiles now. A smile that serves as a terrible warning. The insides of his lips are lined with blisters—streaks of black kol and flecks of ice frozen to the sores.
“There are ways around that,” I say.
He pulls a square of white cloth from his pocket and dabs at a sore in the seam of his grin. “Keeping my mouth shut, you mean. Not my style.”
“You could give a little care who you order around at least.”
He folds the cloth and tucks it away. “I’m nothing if not careful.”
I’m dead on my feet, but I find the energy to lift the monster wrench in my hand and jab it at Mars’s chest.
“You and one of your people. That’s all I can take.”
“The Sylver Dragon,” he croons, stepping around me, his pale fingers playing lightly over the tank tread beneath the rig’s bumper.
It’s the tank tread that makes the Dragon so popular. Caterpillar tread, tank track, articulated bands—they’re called many things, but in place of rubber tires, my rig has six individually mounted track systems. Technology that’s not available here on Layce.
“What changed your mind, Miss Quine? Hyla told me your refusal was absolute.”
“There is a rebel camp in the mountains,” Hyla whispered, leaning across the tavern table, her Paradyian inflection turning the flat common tongue to music. It was the first time I’d spoken to anyone from the golden isle. “Do you know it?”
“I know very little about the rebels,” I said, wishing I’d taken supper in my room. “And that’s far more than I ever wanted to know.”
“It’s no matter. Mars Dresden knows where the camp is. And he needs you. The rebels need you.”
“Not interested.” I stabbed a carrot with my fork.
“Sylvi,” Lenore said, pulling the fork from my hand, pushing my plate away. “Listen to her, please. This isn’t just another job. Mars is asking you to help with something that actually matters.”
Leave it to Lenore to assume the jobs that paid well didn’t actually matter. But even if I’d been interested in helping the rebels, I was already heading out with a haul and it was my last run of the season. The melting weeks had arrived and it was foolish to tempt Winter. There wasn’t a job Mars Dresden could offer that would be worth losing my rig.
Until now.
“I’ll make you a deal,” I say. “I’ll truck your haul to this mysterious rebel camp, and in exchange—”
“You’re chasing your friend,” Mars says. “You’re chasing Miss Trestman.”
“Lenore never would have gone if I’d been here.”
“You think so little of your friend’s convictions?” Hyla asks. “She believes in what the rebels are doing.”
I snort, the memory of our fight still sharp.
“You never, ever do anything unless there’s coin in it,” Lenore yelled.
“It’s coin that keeps this place open,” I said. “Coin that keeps a roof over our heads.”
“We could sell them, Sylvi. The garage and the tavern both. Leave it all behind and do something that really matters. Please.”
“Is that what he’s told you? Mars Dresden? ‘Sell all your possessions and follow me?’ You’re not that stupid, Leni. That black-eyed snake will say anything to flip your skirt.”
I shouldn’t have said that. It was cruel. Lenore has no love for the Majority, I know that, but that’s not why she left. She left because Mars told her that her life didn’t matter. And she believed him.
When I climbed into the Dragon to deliver that final haul, she was raging. So it’s my fault too. I should have stayed. It just never crossed my mind that she’d pack her anger alongside her belongings and climb into Bristol Mapes’s rig.
“In exchange for my services,” I tell Mars, “you’ll convince Lenore that she’s misguided. That the rebels do not need her in their camp. You’ll do whatever it takes to get her into my rig and away from Bristol Mapes.”
Mars slides his hands into his pockets. “What’s your problem with Bristol, Miss Quine? He’s always seemed affable to me.”
“Then you’ve not seen him drunk.”
His brows lift and I realize he hasn’t. “What else can you tell me about the plow driver?”
I know more than anyone could ever want to know about that bastard. And I should have told Lenore what kind of man he was. But I didn’t. And now she’s tucked in next to him for the next who-knows-how-long, heading to a camp very few can find. If I don’t get her back here soon, we’ll lose everything Drypp worked so hard to give us.
“You want the Dragon or not?” I ask. “There isn’t another rig that can truck any distance this time of year. And you can be sure there isn’t another driver who’ll haul a trailer this close to the Flux. I’m guessing that’s why you’re still sniffing around Whistletop.”
Hyla moves to speak, but Mars holds up that pale, white hand.
“She doesn’t breathe fire, does she?” He tips his face to the shimmering dragon painted across the cab. “That could prove hazardous on the river crossing.”
“Which river?” I ask.
He clicks his tongue. “Not so fast, Miss Quine.”
“Look. If I need her to breathe fire, she will. The Dragon does whatever I ask her to do. That’s why you’ll talk with Lenore and you’ll pay me double what your woman offered.”
“I offered you nothing,” Hyla says.