Kwaide (The Ammonite Galaxy Series, Book 2)

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter 18

ARCAN TRANSPORTED GRACE to Kwaide, together with the rest of the possessions that she wanted to save from Xenon and Amanita. Grace no longer felt guilty at taking a few things from her home. So what if it did all belong to Xenon? He had tried to kill her, and she knew that trying to kill your own sister in some way invalidated your right to withhold her own prized possessions, claiming they were your own. The Sellite laws which would uphold Xenon when he claimed ownership of every single thing in the skyrise were absurd. She would no longer be bound by such clearly archaic laws. She would take her own personal property, neither more nor less. Arcan had already returned all the artifacts Six and Diva had ‘saved’ after the Sellite attack.

She had added her mother’s paintings of Xiantha, her own canvases, and a few odds and ends which she thought might come in useful. 

Arcan deposited her in the shack she was to share now with Diva, and hung around as Diva and Six helped her to distribute her few belongings.

Grace was appalled when she saw the Spartan conditions. Her mother’s living quarters had been positively luxurious in comparison.

“Goodness, Diva, this is worse than I thought!”

“I know. Not exactly a home from home, is it?”

Grace shivered. “And it feels like an ice-box in here.”

“That? You’ll get used to that. Six thinks it keeps us from getting soft!”

“No kidding! We will be frozen hard as rocks in here!” giggled Grace, watching as her fingers started to turn blue. “A really fun place, then?”

“A laugh every minute,” promised Diva. “I am not sure I will be able to fit you into my busy agenda. As you can see, we are out wining and dining every moment.”

“Yeah. Even the orthobubbles are beginning to look good, aren’t they?”

“Warmer, certainly. You see those wide cracks over there, in the wall?”

“Hard to miss them.”

“Six put those there, just to make sure the north wind could visit us every night. It is the Kwaidians idea of ‘air conditioning’.”

“I did not! Not my fault if the timber was warped. Nothing to do with me!”

“I saw the smirk on your face, no-name!”

“That must have been a twinge of pain because of my arm,” Six informed her, holding his injured arm towards her like a bird with a broken wing.

“When warthogs fly! Your arm is perfectly all right now, you – you malingerer! You were delighted to see that sleeping here would be practically impossible!”

“I may have thought that it would help you adjust to adverse conditions, is all.”

“Sure. And you may just have to adjust to some adverse conditions yourself if you don’t wipe that smug grin off your face!”

“You wouldn’t hit an injured man!”

“Only to try and get my circulation running again.”

He shook his head. “No staying power. No sense of enjoying sleeping rough.”

“Rough I can cope with. It is the frostbite which bothers me.”

“Frostbite! What an exaggeration!”

Grace looked at her blue finger, and gave silent thanks that she had thought to bring a couple of full bodywraps. They could sleep in them. Diva pummeled Six in the good shoulder, and they all turned to Arcan.