“Soon,” Lev tells Kele. “I’ll be done soon.”
Lev puts down the scissors and lathers up the short, uneven stubble on his head. Then he picks up a razor.
• • •
These days it’s mostly young Arápache men planning to leave the Rez that get themselves tattoos. Those who have decided to go out into a larger world but want to take with them a permanent reminder of where they came from. A symbol that they can display with pride.
There are only a few tattoo artists on the Rez, and only one with real talent. The rest are more paint-by-numbers types. Lev visits Jase Taza, the talented one. He waits outside the shop until the last of Jase’s customers leaves.
Jase looks him over as he enters, not sure whether to be troubled or amused. “You’re the Tashi’nes’ foster-fugitive, aren’t you? The one who caught that parts pirate, right?” he says.
Lev shakes his head. “Didn’t you hear? I’m not a foster-fugitive anymore. I’m a full member of the tribe.”
“Glad to hear it.” Then he points to Lev’s shaved head. “What happened to your hair?”
“It became unnecessary,” Lev tells him. It’s the answer he gave the Tashi’nes, and anyone else who asks. His shaved head had troubled Elina, as he knew it would, but she allowed him his choice.
“What can I do for you?” asks Jase.
Lev presents him several pages and explains what he wants. Jase looks the pages over, then looks at Lev dubiously. “You can’t be serious.”
“Do I look like I’m joking?”
Jase looks at the pages over and over. “Are you sure you want this?”
“Positive.”
“This much ink, all at once?”
“Yes.”
“It’s going to hurt. A lot.”
Lev has already considered that. “It should hurt,” he says. “It needs to hurt, or it doesn’t mean anything.”
Jase looks around his shop, pointing to his many original designs. “How about a nice eagle, or a bear instead? You’re not Arápache-born, so you can choose your own spirit animal. Mountain lions look good in ink.”
“I already have a spirit animal, and it’s not what I want. I want this.” He points to the pages in Jase’s hand.
“It will take many hours over many days.”
“That’s fine.”
“And you’ll have to pay me for my time—I don’t come cheap.”
“I’ll pay whatever it costs.” The Tashi’nes gave Lev spending money, enough to last a while. It’s more than enough to pay Jase for his talent and his time. After that, he won’t need Arápache currency, because it’s no good off of the Rez.
He hasn’t told Elina and Chal that he’s leaving. He hasn’t told anyone, because anyone he tells will try to talk him out of it or, at the very least, try to discover where he’s going. It’s crucial that no one knows that.
He pulls the money from his wallet and flashes it before Jase. Like everywhere else in the world, money talks.
Their first session begins a few minutes later. He allows Jase full creative expression.
“Where do you want to start?”
“Start at the top and work your way down,” Lev tells him. Then he leans back in the chair and closes his eyes, mentally preparing himself for the ordeal to come. . . .
43 • Risa
Risa wakes to the breathy drone of some machine—a hiss that’s both muffled and loud at once. She’s on a king-size bed in a bedroom finished in polished redwood and brass. She’s dizzy. Queasy. She feels as if the bed itself is shifting beneath her but she knows it’s only the tranqs.
“Take your time,” says an unfamiliar male voice. “You’ve been tranq’d eight or nine times in succession. It will take you longer than usual to recover. Had it been me, I would have done it differently. I would have made it easier on you.”
The man speaks with a pearly lilt and an Eastern European accent. Russian perhaps. No, not quite, but something close.
As her eyes begin to focus, she sees him standing across the room, adjusting his hair in a full-length mirror. Slender, dark hair, well dressed. Risa pulls her knees up protectively, wondering what has transpired during her lapse of consciousness.
He glances over at her, and reading her body language, he chuckles.
“Do not worry,” he says. “No one has harmed you while you slept off the tranquilizers.”
Her head feels full of foam—fizz with no substance. She can only ask the obvious question. “Where am I?”
“Lady Lucrezia,” he answers. “My harvest camp.”
She has enough of the pieces now to pull at least some of it together. The man at the antique shop was a parts pirate, and she is now in the hands of a black marketer. The parts pirate killed Jack—whom Risa promised she’d protect—whom she put directly in harm’s way. And what of Sonia?
“I’m in a harvest camp . . . ,” she repeats, hoping to get more out of him.
“Yes, you and your friend Connor.”
She was not expecting to hear that. She shakes her head, not wanting to believe it. “You’re lying! Connor wasn’t there!”
Her captor looks at her curiously. “No? I thought you were captured together. But then, Nelson didn’t explain the specific circumstances when he left you both with me.”
Nelson? Not the same Nelson . . . But as she thinks of the parts pirate, she realizes that she knew that face—or at least half of it. Suddenly the entire room seems to heave, moving one way while Risa’s stomach moves another. Without warning she’s retching over the edge of the bed onto the floor.