Page 1 of Only Cold Depths
PART ONE
RUNAWAYS
CHAPTER ONE
VESPER
Sometimesinlife,youmust hide who you really are to survive.
Like slink through a marketplace in the morning, avoid bounty hunters at noon, and escape from a planet before midnight.
I had been hiding who I was for the last few weeks. I might be surviving, but I wasn’t any safer now than when I started—
A woman with wavy, dark red hair bumped into me. The sharp, unexpected motion knocked me off-balance, and I staggered to the side of a narrow, cramped aisle. My shoulder smacked into the corner of a polyplastic booth, and the trinkets on the display table rattled in an ominous warning, like vipers about to bite me.
My heart kicked up into my throat, and I whirled around, expecting an attack. My hand dropped to my black leather belt, reaching for my stormsword, but my fingers only skimmed over empty air. I silently cursed my own forgetfulness. I hadn’t wanted to wear such a distinctive weapon, so I’d slid the sword into the long, oversize shopping bag hanging off my left forearm.
My right hand darted down into the bag, and my fingers curled around the three eye-shaped sapphsidian jewels embedded in the sword’s silver hilt. Smaller pieces of sapphsidian winked along the silver crossguard, which curled out in opposite directions, although the two end points perfectly aligned like the halves of a yin-yang symbol. More prongs of silver curled up to touch the lunarium blade, which glimmered with an opalescent sheen.
My fingers tightened around the sword, but instead of attacking, the woman kept going. She didn’t even glance back, and her red cloak streamed out behind her like a long scarlet ribbon. The woman quickly vanished into the bustling crowd roaming through the marketplace.
I hissed out a breath, released the sword, and rubbed my throbbing shoulder. No one had noticed my awkward landing except the booth’s owner. I ignored her angry glower and glanced around, my gaze skipping from one person and booth to the next.
This marketplace on Tropics 44 was as bright, vibrant, and colorful as the rain forest that covered the planet. The booths ranged from tall and wide to short and squat, and each one was painted a different color, from ocean blue to flamingo pink to electric purple. Even the hibiscus-shaped cobblestones underfoot were painted with brilliant hues, making me feel as though I was walking on a bed of blossoms.
Large, stiff plastipaper pennants topped many of the booths. Some bore cutesy graphics of bananas and coconuts, while others featured images of clothing, jewelry, and tools. In between the booths, food vendors cooked everything from brown-sugar-crusted pineapple chunks and juicy mango kabobs to spicy chicken wings and balsamic-glazed filet mignon bites over open flames. The sweet smells of caramelized fruits mingled with the deeper, smokier scents of the grilled meats, and my mouth watered at the delicious aromas.
“Well?” the booth owner demanded in a sharp voice. “Are you going to buy anything? Or are you just going to stand there gaping like a fool? You almost knocked all my lovelies off my table!”
I turned to apologize and caught sight of myself in a glass mirror standing on the table.
Dirty-blond hair, purple eyes, a long lumpy nose, a thin white scar slashing across my chin. I blinked a few times, not recognizing the face staring back at me. Then again, it wasn’t reallymyface.
My hand crept up, and I traced my finger over the small, eye-shaped bobby pin nestled in my hair. The polyplastic pin was a miniature colorizer that changed someone’s hair without the need for messy dyes. One of the many inventions I’d been working on at Quill Corp before I’d been forced to abandon my company, leave everything behind, and go on the run.
Still staring at myself in the mirror, I kept tracing my finger over the bobby pin, and the ends of my hair darkened from their colorized dirty blond to their natural brown. I dropped my hand. The colorizer was still a work in progress, and fiddling with it drained the solar charge. Plus, the purple contacts and the sculpted bits of plastipaper that made up the rest of my disguise were itching. Time to get back to the ship.
I hoisted the straps of my cloth bag onto my left shoulder so both my hands were free. I’d already bought fresh mangoes, tomatoes, and cucumbers, along with beef jerky, potato hash, and other freeze-dried staples.
“Well?” the booth owner demanded again. “Are you going to buy anything?”
I didn’t want to buy anything, but the woman was pissed, and I didn’t want to give her any more reasons to remember me, so I studied her goods.
The woman was selling rose quartz, amethyst geodes, and other pretty stones. A few silver-framed mirrors perched on the table, along with white velvet trays bristling with jewelry. Nothing useful or edible like the food in my bag, but I needed to buysomething . . .
A tiny rainbow of blues caught my eye, and I leaned down and focused on a butterfly brooch nestled among a row of necklaces and bracelets. Unlike the rest of the chunky jewelry, the brooch was made of delicate, curving swirls of silver. Blue opals gleamed on the butterfly’s wings, while sapphsidian chips formed the creature’s eyes and antennae.
I picked up the brooch. The midmorning sunlight made the blue opals spark with inner fire and brought out the true, deep blue of the sapphsidian chips. The brooch reminded me of the mammoth butterflies lazily flapping their wings in a netted petting zoo I’d passed earlier.
“I’ll take this.”
The booth owner’s anger melted away, replaced by a sunny smile. “My lady has excellent taste! That piece was designed to match a hairpin that Lady Vesper Quill wore during the recent Regal midnight ball.”
I flinched at the sound of my own name. My fingers went cold and numb, and I almost dropped the brooch.
The booth owner frowned, suspicion crinkling her face. “Is something wrong?”
I forced myself to shrug. “Of course not. I just didn’t realize the brooch was modeled after . . . her.”
