His eyes darkened. “I know.”
It was all irrelevant. Her work was the only thing she could contribute. She tapped her bracelet and keyed in to the new-grown matrix. Her dragonmesh nudged her gently about her missing sleeve.
She’d meant to ask. “Your friend Rafe.”
A flash of a grin that lit up Marcus’ whole face. “He built that plane himself. I told him he was mad, but he did it anyway.”
Sunniva couldn’t help smiling back. “Have you been in it?”
Marcus’ wince was exaggerated. “I squeezed in once. I couldn’t tell you if I was more afraid of crashing or of being permanently stuck inside. Apparently I have the wrong build for experimental craft.”
Sunniva couldn’t help running her eyes over the lines of his broad shoulders, telling herself she was only trying to work out how he would have fitted in.
“You remind me of him,” Marcus said. “Not to look at, obviously,” he added hastily. “When you’re working, absorbed in something new. Pushing boundaries.”
He was looking at her hand on the workbench, and the opal on her bracelet.
“I did volunteer.” He made it sound casual. “Rafe can’t work in the mines. Or do much physical work at all. He got sick five years ago, and it affected his heart. One of those diseases we used to be able to cure. Still could, if we had the resources.”
She’d thought he looked unwell. Sunniva stared down at the matrix she was growing, and thought of all the resources she’d used to create it.
“We’re not allowed to leave the area. Security’s too tight for anything other than the occasional note to get over the border. But we know some other human populations have more freedom. And more technology. Giels has taken other people from my village before to experiment on. Most die. No-one wants to volunteer, and apparently the technology is less likely to take if you fight it. About a month ago he came looking for someone to give away to one of the other clans, as a bargaining chip.” He shrugged. “Rafe was getting worse.”
“You were trying to get help for him.” Sunniva should have guessed.
Marcus nodded. “I was scared he was going to try getting out in that plane of his. His mother tried that when he got sick, the first time — she’d been a pilot, before, too.”
She could hear the sadness in his voice. “She didn’t make it?”
“Destroyed by the security at the border. Dead before we could get there.” Marcus put two fingers on the workbench and walked them over to the edge of the vat, almost but not quite touching. “I’m distracting you.”
He was. Sunniva set her jaw. She would finish the matrix. She couldn’t give him much, but if she could give him his friend back, however briefly… Maybe she could talk to someone at the meeting about helping him. “I’ll get back to work.”
She could see him putting his guard back up. “It’s all right. You can talk to him for me. We don’t have much time.”
“I want to try,” Sunniva said. More now than ever. “Go and change. Rest.”
She bent her head over her bench, and was startled when Marcus put a hand lightly on her jaw, lifting it up to kiss her on the mouth. It was all the sweeter for its shortness, and she ached for him as he pulled away again. “My lady.”
After working all night Sunniva gave instructions to Marcus in a daze and fell asleep in the crawler’s cabin as it took them back to the pinnacles, the completed matrix safely stowed in a carrier at her feet. She woke up as it pulled to a stop, with a crick in her neck and an aching head. Marcus met her as she clambered out. A thin white band of cloud lingered along the ridgeline, and the damp air clung to her skin.
Sunniva took a deep breath. “All right. Let’s see if this works.” She opened the carrier.
Marcus came over. “If it doesn’t, you can put me to sleep again.”
She was keeping that in mind. “Giels will be able to tell,” she warned. Marcus’ mouth twisted.
Sunniva pried the opal free and set it next to her new matrix, feeling the pathways connect, seeing them through the stone with her dragon’s sight. The matrix was a milky quartz, tinged with just the faintest trace of blue.
Pretty. Like his eyes, her dragon said slyly.
She fished it out, holding it loosely.
“Do you feel any different?”
Marcus’ eyes widened. “That’s it?”
“I hope so.” She could feel the quartz as a comforting presence next to the spikiness of the opal.