Total pages in book: 210
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 200837 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1004(@200wpm)___ 803(@250wpm)___ 669(@300wpm)
“I should’ve warned ya. I meant to, but I forgot.”
“She fed me some kind of boiled mud and little pieces of grass.”
I nod, laughing. “Yep. I fell for it once, too. Ya should not have promised to go again. She’ll be expectin’ ya.”
“Oh, no. I will not be going. But anyway. What do you think of the new decorations?” Clara does a little thing here. Something very girlish and flirty. She looks over her shoulder and tilts herself in my direction as she tucks her chin. Her smile a little bit shy, her eyes a little bit mischievous. “It brightens the place up, don’t you think?”
I look down at the rug—which I am not sitting on—then up at the curtains. “Yeah, it’s fine.”
“It’s fine? It’s better than fine. And for nine coins! Can you believe it?”
“Where’d ya get nine coins, anyway?”
“Oh, Rodge. He paid me a groat for yesterday.”
“What? What’d ya do down there, a striptease?”
She laughs. “No. Just… helped fill orders, then I came up here to clean your place. He overpaid me, didn’t he?”
“Way overpaid you.”
“He gave me a dress too.”
“What?”
“A dress. Like the one Prisha was wearing yesterday.”
“Well.” I lean back against the end of the bed. “He likes you. That’s handy.”
“Yeah. So a groat is worth fifty of those coins in your jar.”
“Yep.”
“So.” She shrugs. “I bought all this stuff, plus a whole new wardrobe.”
“So that’s where those pants came from.”
She stands up, modeling them by turning around and giving me a nice view of her ass. “They’re OK, right? I mean, I know they’re ripped. But Anneeta says it’s fashionable.”
She’s wearing a pair of faded denim jeans that are least one size too big for her. They’ve got all strategically fashionable rips in all the right places. Knees, thighs, and a small one on her hip. “They look good.”
My opinion makes her smile. “They do, huh? I don’t know what this magic fabric is, but it’s soft and these pants are comfortable.”
“What else did ya get? Fancy a fashion show?” I wink at her and she blushes.
“Oh, a whole bunch of stuff. But I gave it to Rodge to wash in his machines.”
“Well, there goes all your coin, right? It was nice while it lasted.”
“What do you mean? He didn’t charge me.”
“What?” Now I’m just confused. But also suspicious. “Why not?”
“Why do you say it like that?”
“Because washing machines require jumps to power them. And a single jump costs four groats. You can make it cheaper by putting your clothes in with someone else’s, but it’s still gonna be at least thirty coins.”
“He said don’t worry about it.”
This is when it hits me. He’s billing me. He’s not giving her any of this for free, he’s just putting it on my tab. I chuckle, because it figures. “Anyway.” I change the subject. Let her think she’s his favorite person in the whole world. What do I care if it makes her happy? “What else did you guys do all day?”
“Anneeta took me to her place.”
I’m taking a sip of soda when she says this, and I nearly spit it out. “What?”
“Yeah. She showed me where she lives.”
“Where? What does it look like? It is a room?”
“Well, it is a room. But not one with a door like this. I’m not sure I could find it again because first we had to go through something called an access panel. She could walk, but I had to crawl. Then, after I had a good crook in my back, we ended up in some kind of… water room?”
“Water room?”
“I don’t know what to call it. Anneeta called it the cooling cell. It was just like… a lake of water, only inside. There was a little walkway around it with a mostly functioning railing, and we followed that to the opposite side of the lake and on the other side of that wall was her place.”
“What did it look like?”
“Small, cozy, cool. The water made like a mist in the air. So even though it was hot as hell outside, it was pleasant.”
“Where does she sleep?”
“Oh, she’s got a bed. It’s actually a really nice room.”
“Really?”
“Yeah. It was all decorated. I mean, I’d sleep there if I was here. There were even rugs. Nice furry ones.”
“Really?”
“Really. And a fireplace.”
“Shut up.”
“I swear. It was something right out of an up-city house, in my opinion. There was no window—not a real one—but she had something that looked like a window, but it was really a painting. She got new curtains too.”
“Speaking of… I wasn’t aware they had matching décor sets in the tower lost and found. What’s up with this stuff? It looks new.”
“Oh, it is new. I found it in Anneeta’s personal shop.”
I squint at Clara. “Her what?”
“Yeah. Down in the lost and found, there’s a whole room down there filled with things specifically for Anneeta. Everything has her name on it. She said I could buy this set because she’s so over yellow.”