Page 45 of Skinwalker's Bane
“Baki, you’re an idiot,” Gelin Merritt said, with an exasperated sigh. “Shut up before someone makes you shut up.”
Adam shoved his arms into the suit and Perez dropped it over his shoulders. He sealed it up and turned to face the whole room. Everyone was in their suits, almost sealed up. They were all looking at him.
He hesitated, for the first time in his life unsure of what to say to his crew. The problem was, he hadn’t let himself think too much about the last few days he’d spent in Devin’s little house on the desert table top.
Having someone bring it down to a crude joke felt like a sucker punch, though. Maybe heshouldhave dealt with it before coming on-shift. He constantly railed at the others to get their personal shit sorted out before they stepped out onto the skin. He didn’t want people distracted out there.
Most of the time, those personal problems got dealt with right here in the locker room. The raw and direct wisdom of six other people dissecting a problem was one of the fastest ways he knew to dismantle the stress it generated.
Carver Powell was the new recruit to the team, recently promoted from the Droolies—the Remedial Crew—to replace Lincoln. He was an unknown to everyone so far, yet he had earned his chops in the Droolies or Adam wouldn’t have picked him. He had proved to be as discreet and trustworthy as everyone else. Yet Carver was sitting and looking at him expectantly, too.
Adam had never excluded himself from anything his crew had to do. The worst shifts, the hardest work, he made sure did his share and then some. These were some of the toughest people he knew and they didn’t like being told what to do by someone who wasn’t willing to do it right alongside them.
So the dissection of their personal lives for the sake of team cohesion meant that he was fair game. “She’s not my girlfriend,” Adam said, before the silence went on too long.
“You’re fucking her, ain’t you?” Maria asked. “And you didn’t move on, come morning.” She shrugged. “What is she, if she’s not a girlfriend?”
“You just tasting some fine Patrician ass, boss?” Leyla Kovar asked. It sounded like genuine curiosity in her voice.
His heart thudded. “I don’t know what it is,” he said shortly. Truthfully. “Her being Palatino has zip to do with anything. Okay?”
Except that was a lie. Because Adam wasn’t entirely sure that Devin being Patrician was the reason she had let him, a Plebian to the core, into her bed. Although hedidknow it meant nothing to him. Patricians were humans just as Plebians were and he’d screwed more than a few of them that the difference was truly no difference to him. Naked, they were exactly the same as him. So he knew that Devin’s status as a Patrician had nothing to do with it.
“You power-tripping then?” Maria asked. “She’s a politician, right?”
“All that fancy yap yap might muddle your brainpan, boss,” Tolly added. “You’ll get all moony and think we’re not good enough anymore.”
That was it, Adam realized. That was the fear driving their interrogation. They thought he would put them in danger either because he was too distracted by Devin, or because he’d stopped caring aboutthem,anymore.
There was only one way to put their fears to rest. It was crude, but it was direct. “How many Patricians you figure I’ve fucked over the years?” he asked them, his voice harsh. “None of them turned my head. Why would this one?”
He could see them relax. The grins lost their strain. They looked at each other and smiled as if to say, “There, see? Problem solved.”
The crew fell back to chattering as they sealed boots and picked up gauntlets and helmets and prepared for the outside. The moment had passed.
Adam was the one left feeling uneasy, because he wasn’t sure that Devinhadn’tturned his head. He wasn’t sure of anything, anymore. He just knew that the last two days had been a precious moment in his life that he would keep tucked away forever, no matter what came of it.
The shift proceeded normally, although Adam was aware that everyone was watching him with more than the usual amount of wariness. They were monitoring to see if his head really was in the right place.
He worked hard to make sure they were reassured on that point, although, damn it, Devin and her warm smile, her throaty laugh and her soft, soft skindidkeep intruding.
By the time the shift was done and they were cycling through the airlock once more, the conversation among the crew was completely normal—ribald, rude, direct and merciless, with the layer of self-awareness and understanding beneath it. Most of the jokes were directed at themselves as much as the recipient.
By Haydn’s definition, Adam’s crew were not stupid people.
Adam went through the process of unsuiting, showering and changing, wondering how stupidhewas, instead.
There were always a dozen or more messages waiting for him when he came off shift. As crew chief, he got first turn at one of the two public terminals that were all that were available in the engine room. He went through them quickly. One was from Peter Hannah, asking to speak to him as soon as he was free.
The rest of the crew wanted to check their messages, so Adam didn’t connect right then and there. He could do that at the Institute, if Peter wasn’t already at the Institute when he got there.
So he logged off and headed for the shield doors and the taxiboat that would be waiting there. The taxi drivers knew the schedules of the crews and there were always two or three of them waiting at either end.
Adam grabbed one of them for himself, not waiting for the others as he sometimes did. He was still not officially off duty as they were. He didn’t get to clock off until he had arrived at the Institute and gave his shift report. He often took a boat himself, so he could get there faster and go home sooner.
As they passed over the center of the rotunda, he scanned the curved landscape beneath and around him, looking for the Table. It stood out because it was a rectangle of very pale green and parched ochre earth, among all the green fields and the forest. It was just emerging into daylight.
He wondered what Devin was doing, then shut down on the thoughts and images that crowded into his mind in response, annoyed at his inability to compartmentalize. He’d never had trouble shucking off his personal life during a shift before.
