Outrageous Fortune-Errant Freight Book One

Chapter 21

Eitan's palm pressed flat against the cold wet brick.

He felt the rain pattering against his coat, sliding cold down his face, weighing down the tail he'd pulled his hair into.

Nearby, Rory's curses were spitting with the same vehemence as the clouds above, underscored by deeper rumbles, likely from the man with the red beard.

A tightness in his chest reminded him he needed to breathe, so he did, and with that first lungful of damp air noted also the lingering odor of rotted vegetables inherent to alleys everywhere.

And none of it—not the chill nor the wet nor the voices nor the rot—none of it could compete with the warmth of Leo's skin, the lyrical music of his voice, or the autumn wood scent he remembered from over a decade past.

* * *

Morning, nine years past, and Eitan's eyes opened to a room not his own.

This was not unusual.

That they'd opened in a room not his own, and it coming on morning, was very unusual.

With care he untangled his legs from his bedmate's and rolled onto one elbow, and there he remained for a time, taking in the view.

He had to admit, Galileo Kane was a view worth taking in. With his tousled hair, face shadowed by the night's beard, and long limbs splayed over the university-issue bedding, he might have been rendered by an artist.

Reflexively, Eitan's fingers brushed over the stubbled cheek, the brief contact enough to tell him Galileo was even now falling out of a dream.

"If you're after waking me before dawn, I may have to kill you," the other student's deep voice was deeper still with sleep.

Eitan's brow arched, but he glanced back over his shoulder to the loft's half-shuttered window, where Tyche's first rays showed in a hint of rose behind the university's gilded dome. "Just past." He turned back to see the brown eyes open and studying him.

They'd studied him just so the previous day, during an Ethics debate in which Eitan had drawn the pro-technocrist stance. His passionate arguments in favor of technocratic developments on Fortune left the lecture hall breathless, and more than a few students in need of a chill bath.

But it had been Galileo Kane, the visiting scholar from Lovelace College, with his depthless brown eyes and velvet voice, who'd won the star pupil's attentions that night.

"Galileo..."

"I dreamed of you." Galileo reached up to toy with the braid falling over Eitan's shoulder. "Of us."

"So did I." Eitan took the hand in his, pressing his lips to the calloused palm.

"We were walking through the souk," Galileo said, his lips turning up in a smile. "We stopped under a stall with a blue..."

"...canopy." Eitan dropped Galileo's hand and picked up the thread of the dream. "It sold clockworks, arithmometers and... other things..." Things Eitan did not recognize, but which left his dreaming self chilled. "There was a girl at your side," he continued as the dream blossomed into waking. "Young, with gray eyes and hair like the sunsset—"

Galileo rolled up to rest on his left arm, facing Eitan, who was leaning on his right. "You were in my dream," he said it with a lazy sort of wonder.

"Or you were in mine." Shamed, Eitan looked away. "I try not to project, but when I am sleeping—"

"I usually have greater control," Galileo said at the same time.

"Wait," Eitan said, realization dawning with the suns.