Page 22 of Breaking Point
“Things?”
Luciana smiled to herself.“My parents were both mechanical engineers.Hands-on and practical.Both raised Capitolinos, too.I learned how to jury-rig just about anything from them.A bit of solder, a circuit board, an interface, all scrounged or printed from the cheap files.I started off building shipscape dioramas.Little models of Endurance districts, with moving parts.”
“I remember those,” Brice said.“They were everywhere for a while.The Palatine hub was transparent at one end, and everything inside was miniature.”
“I sold them to a stall manager in the Capitol market,” Luciana said.“I had a few credits of my own.It was…magical.”
“Empowering, is the word you’re looking for.”
“Yes!”Luciana nodded, her chin scraping his jacket sleeve.“Then I found out that the stall manager was selling them for five times the price he had given me, and all the magic was gone, just like that.”She paused, recalling her fury and the sense of betrayal that drove it.
“You started your own stall after that?”
“I rented one half of a stall, for a month, once I had enough things to sell.I had more dioramas, some personal weather simulators—”
“That was you, too?My mother kept one on her desk.It was always freezing around her desk.”
“They soldverywell,” Luciana admitted.“I just seemed to have a knack for guessing what people wanted.I made tools—”
“Made…tools?People didn’t want to just print them off?”
“They said mine worked better.Some of them didn’t exist in the print files, anyway.One of my biggest sellers was a lockbox.”
“A lockbox,” he said, with a baffled tone.
“It didn’t use electronics at all,” she said.“Just a key.I researched mechanical keys and designed my own from pictures.Once I had the basic template, I could build them out of just about anything; sheet metal, iron-class plastics, faux wood, big, small, tiny.Someone carried a lump of real wood from a tree that had fallen in the Palatine and asked me to build a lockbox out of that.”
Brice laughed.
“I eventually got my own stall.That was when I realized that it wasn’t making things that I liked.”
“It was selling them?Making money?”
“Yes.And being good at it.I would watch other artisans and stall managers, and figure out what they were doing wrong, that stopped customers from buying, and I’d fix that thing on my stall.That was when Parry, who owns the stall beside mine, wanted to pay me to tell him how to better manage his own stall.I gave up my stall and rented it to Becker, who made the most amazing clothes out of bits of other clothing that people hadn’t got around to recycling.I taught her how to sell, and that’s how it started.”
“Managing stalls.”
She nodded, her chin rubbing against him.“It wasn’t about the selling, either, although I am good at it.”
“It’s running your own life,” Brice said softly.
“My business is all I am, Brice.It’s all I’ve ever done.Once Devar was an adult, it was all I had.I want it to mean something, when I’m gone.”
“The largest management company on the ship,” he said.“I remember.”
Which is why I want to buy your stalls.Only, she didn’t say it.It wasn’t important.Not right then.
?
The entire Aventine had been turned into a hospital to deal with the casualties and Luciana learned in the five days she was there that it wasn’t the first time the district had become a healing center.
She suspected, though, that the first time the Aventine had been used this way, it hadn’t been right beside the scene of the disaster.From her bed, Luciana could turn her head and see hundreds of people carefully picking through the ruins of the arena.Industrial sized recycling maws lined up beside them.Once a section of rubble was declared free of bodies, larger mechanical scoops would roll in and sweep up small hillocks of mortar, metal and other building materials, and drop them in the maws.
Luciana’s hip was broken.Brice’s femur was also broken.They both had multiple cuts, bruises, gouges and other minor injuries that were dealt with while their bones knitted.
On the fifth day, Luciana was told to go home, rest, and report to her physician in three days’ time.
Brice was released the day after Luciana, when his leg could support him.He walked across the Aventine and knocked on her door.When she opened it, he bent and kissed her.
