Mirage by Jenn Reese Page B

stopped her work and looked at him. He could hear the tiny buzzing of her mechanical eye as it focused. He sincerely hoped it couldn’t shoot teeny-tiny harpoons or poisonous needles.
    “Day one. Design a new attachment for this.” She waved her clawed arm in the air. “Go.”
    Hoku’s mouth went dry. Design a whole new artifact as his first assignment? Could this really be happening? He expected to be hauling metal scraps or washing Rollin’s feet for the first few days, not actually building something. He reached for the notched tool on the nearby workbench.
    “Stop!” Rollin said. “No touching. Did you forget rule one already?”
    “But you said —”
    Rollin shook her head. “The first step of designing, you use this.” She touched her clawed hand to her head. “Not this.” She wagged her hands at him. “Design starts in the brain.”
    “Oh, right,” Hoku said. “Of course. I know that.”
    “Good. Now talk. I want to hear your brain,” Rollin said. “Whatever you think, spew it out! Let’s see how those gears are turning.”
    Hoku pulled his hand back from the tool he’d almost touched, took a deep breath, and tried again. “Well, first I have to figure out what I want the new attachment to do —”
    “No!” Rollin yelled, and Hoku suddenly wished he’d stopped to eat breakfast before coming. He had a feeling his first lesson was going to be a long one.
    “No?” he said. “But if we don’t know what it’s supposed to do, we can’t begin to think about —”
    “You have to find out what
I
want it to do,” Rollin said. “It’s my hand, yeah? My new bit of shiny you’re designing. Who’ll use it? Me! So you ask
me
what I want.”
    Hoku wanted to skip ahead to the thinking and building parts of the exercise, but he knew better than to argue. His Kampii teachers back home played the same sorts of games. The sooner he gave them what they wanted, the sooner he got what he needed. “Fine,” he said. “What do you want the new attachment to do?”
    Rollin grinned. Her specially modified teeth glinted silver. “I want . . . a weapon!”
    He stared at her. “Really?”
    “Yes! Something powerful and deadly. Instant death to my enemies, if you can manage it. That’s what I want.”
    He could feel his face contorting with disappointment and made no attempt to stop it. “Weapons aren’t exactly my thing,” he said. “Aluna could invent a great weapon. In fact, she’d probably love the chance. But I like . . .
useful
things.” He sighed. “Even your grass-chewing teeth are better than weapons. Can’t I invent something like that? How about teeth good at chewing cactuses? Or a bigger fan for cooling the whole tent?”
    Rollin shook her head and lowered her hand. “So weapons aren’t tools? They aren’t useful? That world you’re living in — I want to live there, too. Everything so clean and fluffy and harmless.”
    “No, it’s just that —”
    “Your friends are your weapons,” Rollin said. “I’ve heard about your friend, and I don’t see any calluses on your hands. So other people will be your muscles and guts. Is that it?”
    “No!” Then he thought about Aluna and cringed. “Yes. But they like it! They’re good at it! I have other . . . skills.”
    Rollin plucked an apple-shaped artifact off the workbench behind her. She tossed it in the air, caught it, then threw it at Hoku.
    Hoku tried to twist out of the way, but she was too close and her aim was too good. The metal device slammed into his shoulder.
    “Ow!” He rubbed his wounded arm with his good hand and backed toward the tent flap. “Why did you do that?”
    “Where were your friends?” Rollin said. She didn’t look sorry in the slightest. “Not here, that’s where. If I were working for Scorch, I could kill you right now, before you even had time to scream.”
    He took another step back.
    Rollin sighed and scratched her cheek with her claw. “Oh, settle down,” she said. “I’m trying to