I've never understood the idea of flying. You fly in a spaceship, powering through the void at hundreds of times the speed of light. It takes a crudmunger to hang beneath an upside-down sail with a noisy propeller engine behind your feet. The climb down into the Gash was like that, only worse.

  The wind slammed me against the cliff, except when it tried to drag me down into the depths. The sun had gone past the ridge, and the Gash was edging towards gloom. Occasionally, the narrow ledge would turn into a growth bed, and I'd be stepping in sand and loose soil, everything shifting.

  I tried to put up a brave face, but even Darrow noticed.

  "You'll get used to it," he said.

  "Don't intend to stay long enough," I growled at him. For a moment, he looked like he was about to argue. Then he shook his head without a word.

  The scrape of stone on stone came behind me, but I didn't dare to turn my head to see who it was. Hopefully not someone dangerous. Darrow didn't seem to mind, and that was good enough for me. I clawed my way closer to the cliff face, continued.

  We climbed. Down and down, until we reached the sand at the bottom. My hands shook, like I'd just gone through a battle. The sand looked inviting. I expected us to run across it, but Darrow held tight to the cliff.

  "Sinkholes," he said. "And quicksand. You walk in the middle, and you get killed."

  Sounded like Remba. Cliffs, sand, Syndics. Everything on this voidmucking planet got you killed. I was starting to despise it, and the desert, the cold, the eternal wind. And now the sand was getting in my boots.

  Still, we made it to the Knife. Who turned out to be a slim man, old and grizzled, with skin almost as wrinkled as Riina's, sitting in a narrow slit in the cliff wall that barely gave cover from the wind. If it ever rained, he'd be washed out.

  "Yup, I could take you," was all he said. "Why should I?"

  I held up three shiny steel cans without labels, as Darrow had instructed me. I had another four in a tote made from woven grass that one of Widen's friends had given me. I'd given her an entire can for it, and she'd tried to refuse, but had accepted with tears in the corners of her eyes when I made it clear that it wasn't a mistake. Food was currency in the Gash. Three cans should make people fall over themselves to help.

  "No," the Knife said with a grimace. First, I thought it was directed at me. Then I realized that his stomach was growling. The Knife was disgusted with himself.

  "Sir," said Darrow, which surprised me. "He needs to go to the port."

  "The tour desk is that way," the Knife said, pointing out into the sand. "Here we deal in why. Which you still haven't said."

  "He's got a ship, granddad," came a high-pitched voice behind me.

  Ade, Widen's and Darrow's daughter. So this was who had followed us.

  "That so?" the Knife said.

  "Yes," I replied, trying to not be too curt. Ade seemed to like him, and Darrow respected him.

  "He's getting us all off Remba," Ade said, her eyes big and shiny, her mouth open. "Every one of us."

  She might as well have poured fluorine on the Knife and set him on fire.

  "That so?" he said, and his previous dour grimace turned openly hostile. He sucked his teeth, a dry, smacking sound.

  "Yes," I said.

  No change in his demeanor. To the void with the Knife. I needed to get to the port before the Syndics turned off the engines on their haulers, or flew them off.

  "Look," I said, "you want the trade or not?"

  "Six," he said, his mouth barely moving, the corners drawn down as if gravity was too much for it.

  Help support creative writers by finding and reading their stories on the original site.

  I put three more cans on the ground by his feet, and added a small pile of painkillers from the medkit without being asked.

  The Knife puckered his mouth, sucked his teeth, grabbed the painkillers and shoved them into a pocket in his stained, too-large combat coveralls.

  "They don't do crud," he confessed, "but they don't hurt either. I'll take you."

  His expression softened, the previous distrust wiped away like an old stain. Now he only looked old, weather-beaten, and angry. He stuck out a hand, Dromoni-style, and I grabbed it, expecting to shake. Instead, he curled his fingers hooking them into mine. The wonders of light-years of travel, meeting new people and learning their strange customs.

  Darrow turned back to his group, taking Ade with him. She left with a final glance back at us, staring as if we were the latest pop-culture craze. The unabashed adoration nicked my heart, making it hurt.

  No way I'd leave these people behind.

  I spent the afternoon sitting on a sandy floor, trying to keep the wind from freezing me, and listening to war stories about hunting horses, stealing supplies, and trying not to get shot while raiding the Syndics.

  "That last one is hard," the Knife confessed. "But if you're smart, and lucky, and figure out where their detectors are, you can slit a throat or two."

  That comment endeared him to me, making me ready to forget his previous hostility. Nobody who hunted Syndics for a hobby could be entirely bad. Either that, or he was my type of bad. He even said it with a big crudmucker grin, showing a row of brilliantly white teeth. Strange, for someone surviving on a desert world without a toothbrush.

  The Knife must have heard my thoughts, for he knocked on one tooth.

  "Fake," he said, and spat the entire thing out. Two sets of teeth, stuck together with a hinge at the back. He slurped, and they fell back into his mouth.

  Strange customs, indeed.

  We set off after nightfall, climbing out of the Gash along a path that had a rope suspended next to it to aid climbing, a good, knotted, woven polymer rope.

  "Aren't you afraid someone will steal it?" I said.

  "Who'd steal from the Knife," the Knife said, more a statement than a question. "It will hang there until I die, and a long time longer. Besides, I don't charge for the use. The sneaks like getting up and down the easy way for free."

  "I thought everyone pulled together," I said. "Partners in misery and all that."

  The Knife spat, a small, bubbly wad that the wind tossed aside.

  "Maybe somewhere else," he said. "This is Remba."

  "So you value your life to six cans of food and some painkillers?" I said. "That doesn't indicate too much self-esteem."

  That got me the evil eye from his wrinkled face. Not quite up to Riina's standards but close.

  "Darrow brought you," he said. "That counts for a lot. And you're heading for City."

  "That count for something, too?" I said.

  "Pegs you as a blood," he replied with a shrug. "I'm not as young and spry as I once was. Might need a partner with a fancy rifle."

  "You don't even know if it works," I said.

  The Knife stopped. I continued on for two more steps, my boots crunching on rough sand, before stopping.

  "Man doesn't carry a magerifle if it doesn't work," the Knife said. "Nor a ward blade."

  That made me take a step back, to give myself room to swing if he came at me. He could have spotted my concealed sheath, but he wouldn't have known it was a ward blade unless he was a warder himself. Or a dirt mage.

  Which would explain how he could sneak up on a Syndic hunting party and slit their throats.

  "I'm not going to hurt you, boy," the Knife said. It didn't make me relax. Most times I'd gotten hurt had begun with the words 'not going to hurt you.'

  He sighed, a dry rasping deep in his throat. Something flashed from his hand, landing between my legs. Another flash, and another knife in his hand.

  "Could have put that into you," he said. "Not that it would have cut through that fancy magearmor you're wearing. Could have cut the rope while you were climbing, too, the way you kept clutching it like it was your grandma. Could have done lots of things. Didn't. So the question is if you got a mind to go with that fancy rifle and fancy ward armor, or if we're going to stand here all night and get shot at dawn."

  "What do you want?" I said, with barely a tremor in my voice. I'm not shy about being a warder, but someone who could dowse my blade was a danger.

  "I want your trust," he said. "I want to know where you're going, and I don't have time to water you and watch you grow. So I figure I drown you in honesty and hope for a bloom."

  My mind screamed for me to get back, to run and hide, to pull my flameblade and gut him. My gut told me I was overreacting. We might have started out badly, but he'd warmed to me. My gut liked the Knife.

  Often, my gut was right.

  "I'm Jake," I said.

  "You're not," the Knife said.

  I hoped he couldn't see as well in the dark, and the shadows beneath the brim of my stockman hat, because I felt my eyes widen. No one had pegged my name like that.

  "No need to be surprised," the Knife said. "I already figured you're smart. Giving out a traceable name would be stupid."

  "True," I said. "I'm Jake."

  "Good to meet you, Jake," the Knife said. "I'm Paolo, and that's traceable for all it's worth."

  Which it might even be, if he wanted to gain my trust. No way to check. I shivered in the cold wind. Next time I warded my coat, I'd put a short heat ward on it. And a cooling ward. And a magical spout that poured tea and pea soup. I'd really like a cup about now. Meaning that my gut had made a decision.

  "I'm getting everyone off this planet," I said. "That wasn't crud. I'm not leaving anyone to be hunted down on a Syndicate world."

  The Knife uh-huhed, noncommittally. Maybe he agreed. Maybe he thought I was insane. Maybe he didn't believe me.

  "I'll get you to City," he said. "That's what you paid for. You want to raise hopes, you do that on your own time."

  With that, he turned and walked off. Momentarily, I followed.