Page 172 of Seven Oars
Only when she woke up did she realize she’d done it.
“I’m sorry, I did it again,” she said, groggy.“I feel so sleepy all the time.”
He was pensive.
Then he picked at her bracelets.“They don’t help?”
“They hardly did before. He,” she motioned at the corpse,“doesn’t give off any energy. He only helps me store my own, and I don’t produce enough.”
“I see.”
Rosamma shifted, and Father Zha-Ikkel swayed in response. She glanced at him fearfully.
Then glanced again.
“Finn, I think he’s losing weight.”
She sat up, alarmed, and squinted at the carcass, searching for signs of Father Zha-Ikkel’s diminishing muscle tone.
“I’m seeing things,” she muttered.“Please tell me I’m seeing things.”
“You’re seeing things,” Fincros confirmed readily.
“Now you’re humoring me.”She cast another reluctant gaze at the body.“But he does appear slimmer. How is it even possible?”
“Suck him dry, Rosamma,” he said, and he sounded tired.“I killed him for you.”
She threaded her fingers through his.
“You killed him to take over his space station,” she reminded him, perturbed at the direction of this conversation.“It was years before we met.”
“I kept him for you,” he amended.
“Fincros, you couldn’t have known…”
“Couldn’t I?”
He rotated his head restlessly.
“Fine,” he said.“I killed him for the station and skinned him for the chair. There was no reason to keep the body in the freezer. Yet I couldn’t bring myself to send him to the chute. Such a strange compulsion.”He closed his fingers firmly around her smaller fist.“Now I know. For you.”
In terms of gifts, this was most unconventional, but a fitting gift, perhaps, for the kind of life Rosamma’s had become.
She would refuse it, except she’d already accepted it.
“I feel like I should be grateful,” she murmured.“And I would be, if it weren’t so wicked.”
He was silent for a long time.
“It’s time you went home, Rosamma.”
Chapter 25
She didn’t return to the Meat Locker despite clear signs that she should do so. It wasn’t stubbornness; it was bone-deep revulsion that Rosamma couldn’t overcome. She stayed at the Cargo Hold with Eze and Gro, pretending things were business as usual, unhappily chewing on hard, tasteless protein strips, and unraveling inside.
It’s time you went home.
Those words had upended Rosamma’s existence.
