the air the way he did on the field. Then the idea embarrasses me. It’s probably best not to draw that kind of attention out here, anyway. So I force myself to shake the idea off and frown at him.
You take to the skies here, I tell him instead, nodding toward the crowds, and we might spend the rest of the afternoon trying to quell the panic. I point up to one of the stacks. Just watch for me. If you see any of us slip, feel free to rescue us.
Red scowls. So I’m going to stay down here?
You’re too heavy to climb these stacks, I tell him, then start making my way up the side of one.
It’s been years since I’ve climbed stacks in the scrapyards, but the muscle memory of years spent here comes rushing back to me, and I find my footing as naturally as I always did—gingerly shifting my weight along the edge of a metal sheet until I find the stable spot, knowing where to hop to get to another stack, feeling the body of it move beneath me like a living thing. You had to make decisions quickly out here. I wasn’t the only child scavenging, but often I was the smallest. Other children formed roving gangs, teamed up to both take the best metal and beat down anyone else trying to prowl in the same areas. So I learned how to squeeze my body tightly between the stacks, how to hide myself inside hollowed-out carriages and rusted roofing.
Later, I’d taken Corian here, taught him how to navigate the terrain. We’d chase each other through the stacks, hopping back and forth, me saving him on more than one occasion from crashing down to the ground. We practiced first by daylight, then by moonlight. The Firstblade considered the exercise beneath that befitting a Striker, that we didn’t belong in the shanties. But there was a reason why Corian and I had once been considered the most nimble pair in the forces, and the reason was this.
The memory of his voice teasing me to find him in the stacks brings me up short. I stop midway through digging in the skeleton of a carriage, then close my eyes and try to steady my breathing. I can hear Corian’s laugh echoing around me, still feel him squeezing in beside me as he tried to wedge himself into the same hiding places I could find.
Then the wave passes. I open my eyes. Down below, I catch a glimpse of Red pacing beside the stacks, unused to doing nothing. His usual frown stays on his face.
Every day since his death, I have missed Corian so much that his absence feels like a wound in my side. Red could never replace that, no matter how long we end up knowing each other. Still, the longer I stare down at Red from the privacy of my vantage point, and the longer I feel the glimmer of thoughts through our link, the more curious I become about him. I find myself watching him the same way I used to watch Corian, in fascination over this human from a world so different from the one I was used to. In awe.
He stops pacing for a moment and glances up in my direction. I duck down into the husk of the carriage, my heart suddenly pounding. It takes me another second to remember that he, too, can sense the emotions flowing from me to him. He’d probably felt my mixture of grief, pain, fascination, and curiosity. Probably noticed the way I was watching him in interest. And now he is aware of the wave of embarrassment hitting me too.
I grit my teeth, irritated again at being forced to open my heart to this stranger and simultaneously ashamed because I’d been snooping on his feelings too. Through the bond, I can tell that he’s puzzled and even a bit bemused at my reactions, and trying to figure out exactly why I’m feeling such a wild jumble of things.
Time to put an end to that. Everything in me wants to look back out from the carriage to see whether or not he’s still looking up at me, but I force myself to turn my mind to something else. To the task at hand.
Magnesium. Right.
I let myself fall into the motions I used to do daily—find machines that haven’t yet been gutted, cut through their containers with shears and scrape through them until I find bright silver