“Reap!” He slams into me, spinning my chair sideways, clacking my teeth together, as he half lifts me out of the chair, stronger than he was, smelling of tobacco and engine fuel and sweat. He half laughs, half cries like an excited dog into my chest. “I knew you were alive. I bloodydamn knew it. Pixie bitches can’t fool me.” Pulling back, he looks down at me with a rickshaw grin. “You bloodydamn bastard.”
“Language!” my mother snaps.
I wince. “My ribs.”
“Oh, shit, sorry brotherman.” He lets me sink back into the chair, and kneels so we’re eye to eye. “I said it once. Now I’ll say it twice. If there’s two things in this world that can’t be killed, it’s the fungus under my sack and the Reaper of bloodydamn Mars. Haha!”
“Sevro!”
“Sorry, Deanna. Sorry.”
I pull back from him. “Sevro. You smell…terrible.”
“I haven’t showered in five days,” he brags, grabbing his groin. “It’s a Sevro soup in here, boyo.” He puts his hands on his hips. “You know, you look…erm…” He glances at my mother and tames his tongue. “Bloody terrible.”
A shadow falls over the room as a man enters and blocks the overhead light near the door. The children cluster joyously around Ragnar so he can barely walk.
“Hello, Reaper,” he says over their shouts.
I greet Ragnar with a smile. His face is as impassive as ever. Tattooed and pale, callused from the wind of his arctic home, like the hide of a rhinoceros. His white beard is braided into four strands, and the hair on his head shaved except for a tail of white that is braided with red ribbons. The children are asking him if he’s brought them presents.
“Sevro.” I lean forward. “Your eyes…”
He leans in close. “Do you like ’em?” Buried in that squinting, sharp-angled face, his eyes are no longer that dirty shade of Gold, but are now as red as Martian soil. He pulls back his lids so I can better see. They’re not contacts. And the right is no longer bionic.
“Bloodydamn. Did you get Carved?”
“By the best in the business. Do you like ’em?”
“They’re bloodydamn marvelous. Fit you like a glove.”
He punches his hands together. “Glad you said that. Cuz they’re yours.”
I blanch. “What?”
“They’re yours.”
“My what?”
“Your eyes!”
“My eyes…”
“Did yon Friendly Giant drop you on your head in the rescue? Mickey had your eyes in a cryobox at his joint in Yorkton—creepy place, by the by—when we raided it for supplies to bring back to Tinos to help the Rising. I figured you weren’t usin’ ’em, so…” He shrugs awkwardly. “So I asked if he’d put ’em in. You know. Bring us closer together. Something to remember you by. That’s not so weird, right?”
“I told him it was odd,” Ragnar says. One of the girls is climbing his leg.
“Do you want the eyes back?” Sevro asks, suddenly worried. “I can give them back.”
“No!” I say. “It’s just I forgot how crazy you are.”
“Oh.” He laughs and slaps my shoulder. “Good. I thought it was something serious. So I’m prime keeping them?”
“Finders keepers,” I say with a shrug.
“Deanna of Lykos, may we borrow your son for martial matters?” Ragnar asks my mother. “He has much to do. Many things to know.”
“Only if you return him in one piece. And you take some coffee with you. And bring these socks to the laundry.” My mother pushes a bag of freshly patched socks into Ragnar’s arms.
“As you wish.”
“What about the presents?” one of my nephews asks. “Didn’t you bring any?”
“I’ve got a present for you…” Sevro says.
“Sevro, no!” Dio and my mother shout.
“What?” He pulls out a bag. “It’s just candy this time.”
—
“…and that’s when Ragnar tripped over Pebble and fell out the back of the transport,” Sevro cackles. “Like a dumbass.” He’s eating a candy bar over my head as he pushes my wheelchair recklessly through the stone corridor. He sprints fast again and hops on the back to coast till we swerve into the wall. I wince in pain. “So Ragnar falls straight into the sea. Thing was at full chop, man. Waves the size of torchships. So I dive in too, thinking he needs my help, just in time for this huge…I dunno what the hell you’d call it. Some Carved beasty…”
“Demon,” Ragnar says from behind. I hadn’t noticed him following. “It was a sea demon from the third level of Hel.”
