Song of Scarabaeus by Sara Creasy Page A

instead on fastening the tool belt around her waist—a delaying tactic. The familiar, encouraging weight of the belt boosted her courage.
    Finn lifted off his seat to reach across the table with a quick, controlled movement that made her sit back in alarm. He flicked her a calm look that held neither query nor reassurance, took her cup and drained it. His presence set her on edge. She couldn’t tell if it was an overreaction on her part or something more. The carefully directed defiance told her this man had learned to survive his servitude but had never succumbed to it.
    She’d been rolling the magkey between her fingers as she watched him. Not once had he looked at it, yet she knew that was by conscious effort. She’d heard that the voice snag was the single most despised tool that serf handlers used on their charges. Cleanly and silently it removed identity. The uniform garb rendered them unseen, while the snag ensured they remained unheard. It was easy to assume a man lacked normal human thought processes when he was unable to speak them.
    As Finn wiped sticky crumbs off his fingers, Edie mentally braced herself before walking around the table to stand beside him. As obediently as if she’d given him an order, he swung a leg over the bench to straddle it, and tilted his head. The snag, a flat metal strap the length and width of a finger, was locked with a magnetic seal into his throat. It prevented the vocal cords from moving and made even whispering too painful to attempt.
    But she’d heard him whisper, once, when he asked her to save his life.
    His skin was warm under her fingers. She fitted the magkey against the indentation in the center of the snag andit fell away. It didn’t detach completely. Three thick wires were embedded into the corded flesh of Finn’s throat, and the snag dangled from them. He reached up and tugged at it firmly. The hard line of his mouth was the only clue to his pain, while Edie winced at the sight of the slick red wires emerging. The snag finally came free. Three parallel trails of blood dribbled down his neck.
    Finn drew a ragged breath and started to choke. The snag clattered to the floor as he coughed up blood onto the table top. Edie backed away involuntarily. Was this normal? As she retrieved the snag, she noticed the cook hovering nearby.
    â€œGo on, I’ll clean up.” The cook swept in without taking a second look, as though crewmembers depositing blood on her tables was a daily event.
    â€œWill he be okay?” It seemed both logical and absurd to be asking the cook, of all people, such a question.
    â€œHe’s been snagged a long time, this one, eh?” The woman stopped wiping long enough to give a sympathetic shake of her head. “Infirmary’s on deck two.”
    Edie touched Finn’s shoulder. “Come on.”
    Finn followed her out of the mess, doggedly wiping his mouth and throat with the back of his hand as though this, too, were nothing out of the ordinary.
    In the infirmary Edie handed him medigel and swabs and watched him clean up his wounds. From there he trailed her down another ladder to her quarters. The tiny annex seemed ridiculously small to serve as his berth. With the portable bunk and the console, there were barely three square meters of floor space.
    She indicated the bunk. “I guess this is where you sleep.”
    Finn walked past her and entered her room without a word. He hadn’t yet spoken and she was worried perhaps his vocal cords had been permanently damaged. For the first time, he seemed to take an interest in his surroundings. He investigated her quarters with methodical precision—which took about thirty seconds. There wasn’t much to see. He checkedthe hatch between the two rooms, flipped open the lockers, ran his hands briefly along the interior bulkheads as though feeling for something.
    â€œWe’re not bugged, if that’s what you’re looking for. I already