Page 47 of A World Enough

“Brogan, I’m sorry I played that trick on you when we arrived. It was childish.”

“Don’t worry about it. I wasn’t in the best of moods.”

“No,” Camber said, “don’t let me off so easily. You’ve just been ripped from your home, having to take in all these experiences, and I made it worse. I’m sorry, and don’t say anything to make it seem less, just accept it.”

Brogan smiled. “I accept.”

The elevator doors opened, not to a corridor of rooms, but to two huge double doors. “I haven’t stayed on this floor before,” Camber said.

“Do you come here a lot?” Brogan asked.

“Not all the time, or people might notice. That wouldn’t be good for me or Ziggy.”

There was a retinal scanner at the side of the door. Camber put her eye to it, and she heard the doors click open.

“It can’t be just this room on this floor,” Camber said.

“Ziggy said it was her best room.”

“I know, but she’s turning away good money to let us stay here.”

“Can we go in?” Brogan said.

Camber opened the door and said, “Wow.”

The small entrance opened up onto a large sitting room area, with a couch, a dining table and chairs, and beautiful pictures on the wall. She turned to smile at Brogan, who was looking open-mouthed at something.

Brogan said, “Wow.”

“What is it that make you wow?”

“That view from the large windows, overlooking the city. Are these real, or projections like the elevators?”

“They are absolutely real. Come on, let’s go look.”

Camber took Brogan’s hand and led her over to the windows. “This is the view you don’t see from the foyer walls. This is one big city, up here and down below the moon’s surface. There’s everything you could want in a party world. Above and down below.”

“Where are we?”

“We are in a penthouse suite at the top of the first and most expensive hotel on the moon. Ziggy is spoiling us. I know she has an apartment in here. This hotel goes deep into the moon where all the more expensive, more high end social gathering places are, but all the more gritty, cosmopolitan life is out there,” Camber said.

Brogan looked at her. “It sounds like you’ve tried it.”

Camber sighed as she remembered an exciting night out with Ziggy and her friends. “I tried, well, Ziggy and her gang of friends tried to take me out on the town. We got an hour into the night, just enjoying some food, and word got around that Drazani arrived to check for resistance members. That meant me. Ziggy whisked me back to this hotel and had her security staff hide me.”

Brogan frowned. “So you’ve never had a normal life? Being youthful, having crazy nights out, having too much to drink, and realizing it was a bad idea when you have the mother of hangovers the next day?”

“No, I just run, and hide, and hope I can do this Map Keeper job the best I can. I don’t mean to sound as if I’m sorry for myself. It’s a great honour to be chosen, but it’s hard sometimes.”

Brogan instinctively put her hand on Camber’s back and hoped it wouldn’t be rebuffed. She didn’t always know the right thing to say, but touch was very important to wolves, and she hoped it would convey a sense of comfort and understanding.

She watched Camber closely as she closed her eyes and mentally shook off her negative feelings. Brogan could tell Camber wasn’t used to sharing or being vulnerable.

Vulnerability could get Camber captured, she supposed. She felt Camber calm under the touch of her hand.

She and Camber sat in that calm for twenty seconds or so, and then Camber jumped up and said, “I promised you a long run, unless you’d like to eat first?”

“No, I could run, and maybe we could eat together after?”