ROHILEK, KURU SYSTEM
“Marco, it is time . . .”
He groaned, the weight of . . . Of what? He moaned and blinked, his skull feeling as if it sat beneath a magged grav boot.
“That’s it,” an aged, kind voice said. “Keep following that scent.”
Scent?
Right. He anak’d and found it, latched on. Drew in a deep breath and snapped open his eyes, his sinuses clearing, his thoughts sharpening as he made sense of the shapes . . . people, upside down. No . . . hovering over him. People he didn’t know. An older man and two men near enough his age.
Marco jerked up—but the room spun. He canted forward and felt himself falling.
“Slow down,” the older man said, bracing his shoulder and nudging him back. “You’re on a table. We didn’t have anything else to lay you on, and the ground was too cold.”
He tried to make sense of the room—dusty, dank, dirty. Like a stable without the animals, or so the reek suggested. There was an acrid scent he could not attribute to any one person or thing. “Where am I?” He frowned at the older man, anak’ing the three men. The farthest had a dull scent, almost as if confused. The other protective, annoyed, flexing powerful muscles. But the old man . . . that was a strange one. Minty but floral, too. Touches of woodsy dolors. Like a combination of all scents rolled into one.
Marco scowled at him. “Who are you?”
The old man smirked, his bent frame heaped with a tan shirt, brown vest, and a thick shawl the color of cordi, as if all the garments could add to his posture the way a cat’s fur sticks on end when threatened. But this man wasn’t threatened. He was . . . What? Marco could not sort it. But he was glad for scent work at last, as it righted his world. Made him feel like himself again.
Still, the man’s clothes were too much on this sweltering mudball. Why was it so hot here anyway? None of this made sense—the man’s scent, the fact that there was a man and scent here at all, the heat, the thickness in Marco’s head . . .
“How do you feel?” the old man asked.
“As if someone switched my cordi for lager.” Hair dangled in his eyes, tickling his nose and mouth. Marco shoved it back and felt the world tilt again. “What’s wrong with me?”
The old man nudged one of the others with the back of his hand. “The ozuqa moddalari should be ready. Give him a cup, Tutar.”
Without a word, the thicker, larger man straightened. He had to duck to avoid cracking his skull on the low ceiling as he started toward a fire that blazed in the corner.
Ah, that explained the heat.
Curse the reek, his leg hurt. And what was that foul smell? This place stunk! “I need answers.” And fresh air.
“Of course you do.” The old man shuffled toward Marco and motioned a gnarled finger to his leg. “May I check it?”
Feeling odd sitting on a table, Marco leaned back but didn’t dare try to stand on his own with the way agony pulsed through his calf. He monitored the man bending to check the bandage that now covered the gored wound from the hairy rhinnock-rodent. “Will you tell me now who you are?”
Wiry, curly gray hair stuck out in sprigs from beneath a knitted gray-and-blue cap over aged gray eyes. His hands were suddenly deft and practiced as he removed a bandage. “You may call me Qadimiy.”
That didn’t answer anything. “Why are you here?” It was hard to think, to ask the right questions.
“I was asked to come.” Qadimiy used the table for support as he shuffled to the end and indicated to the form at the door. “You are very fortunate Daq’Ti sought me out.”
Marco startled. That was Daq’Ti at the door? “I thought him one of your men.” Why hadn’t he registered Blue? He seemed different . . . As pain spiked, Marco grabbed his leg.
“The venom of the kamiruvchi is fast and lethal.” Qadimiy let the bindings fall away, revealing a distinct, splotchy mark in the calf. “The poison has been drawn out, but it will never let you forget that you stood against a kamiruvchi.”
“Stood? I was more a dangling slab of meat for that thing.” Marco eyed the giant, who delivered the wood cup with a steaming liquid. The scent . . . “It smells like cordi.”
“And that is a good thing?” Qadimiy tilted his head as if to gauge the response. “Tutar makes this blend for the Uchuvchi.”
“That word—uchu . . .”
“Uchuvchi.”
Marco looked at Blue. “He keeps calling me that.”
The two men shifted, glancing at each other, then avoiding his gaze.
“What does it mean?”
“Pilot,” Tutar growled and tugged aside his shirt, revealing on his chest and abdomen distinctive marks. Familiar marks.
Marco had scars in those same places. The sight of them tossed him back to the Prevenire, to the walls perpetually closing in, the hollow din, the torture of light on his corneas after weeks trapped in the hull. He knew how he’d gotten his. “What . . . What are they from?”
“Ports,” Tutar muttered, folding his arms. “It’s where they plug us into their ships.”
Gut roiling, Marco was going to be sick. He looked to the old man, then to Blue. “They . . . they’ve done this before?” Not just to me? “This . . . it’s . . .”
Curse the reek! Why wouldn’t his thoughts form? “This is what they do? To people?”
“They care not who or what they use, as long as their ships fly,” Qadimiy said.
Anger knocked aside the shock, the revulsion, and charged forward into a white-hot focus. “Unbe—”
“Sentries!” Blue warned. Moved lightning fast toward them. “Hide!”
UNKNOWN SETTLEMENT, UNKNOWN PLANET
Wrapped in a thick pelt, Eija was guided back into the main hall. Hands and feet aching from the warming bath that had stung like nobody’s business as the frostbite battled for her digits, she felt the eyes of the village on her as they once more placed her in a seat before the fire.
“M-my friend,” she whispered to the lady who’d tended her. “You promised you’d tell me about him.”
The woman’s smile faltered. “Sit quietly and answer honestly.” She rested a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll get you some stew.”
“I’m not hungry.” Eija’s stomach loudly betrayed her lie, even as she saw the men closing up around her. The scowls, knives, and hatchets they wore said they were serious and skilled.
The burlier of the men folded his arms over his chest. “You’re a guest here. Dependent on our mercy. We can put you outside the gate and see how long you last. Now tell us true—how did you get out this far?”
Irritated, she accepted the bowl of stew from the lady. This was perhaps the fiftieth time this man had asked that question since she’d arrived in this cavernous barn-like structure. And it’d be the fiftieth time she told him the same lie. “I understand you doubt my story. I would, too, but as I keep telling you and everyone else—we got lost in the storm.” Which was true, technically. She couldn’t exactly tell them how she got here because she didn’t know. “Thought we were headed back to Kaata Shahar.” She had picked up the name from the whispers of the women as they tended her this morning.
The burly fifty-something man cut her a glare. His clothes pulled taut across shoulders that had seen a lot of heavy work. He wasn’t one to be messed with. “You’re a strafer, then?”
That sounded like a bad thing. But was it a bad thing that would help her cause, or hurt it? Eija bought time sipping the broth of the stew, relieved to see meat on the spoon.
“’At one’s not a Marshal,” a grizzled man with a beard snarled. “She’s too soft, and they weren’t in uniform when we found them. I say put them back out there.”
Eija didn’t miss the pronoun. “Put them back out there . . .” So maybe Reef was still alive. He’d seemed so dead . . . It was tactically sound to separate and interrogate prisoners, but what on earth could make these people so suspicious that they’d do that? “What happened to my friend? Is he alive?”
“My problem,” Burly said, “is that there wasn’t a storm.”
Eija blinked, hoping her desperation looked more like disbelief. “There was. I was lost in it. I told you.” Holding up her hand, she showed the excruciatingly painful frostbite.
“An hour outside the gates does that if you don’t have the right gear. And anyone in Kaata Shahar would know better than to even tempt Muzlatilgan.”
The round woman knuckled the table, more to support herself, it seemed, than to be threatening. “Leave her, Belcmeg. Let her get her feet under her first.”
He glowered at her. “She’s not one of us, Delsi. It’s village law—no strangers inside the gates during the waxing. And if she escapes and reports our location to—”
“But she’s marked.”
Gasps sparked around the room, slowing movement and drawing stares. The younger women ceased their knitting, their cooking, cutting roots, mending . . . Men straightened. Hands shifting to swords, axes.
Okay, that did not sound good. “M-marked? What does that mean?” Eija asked but hastily added, “I’m not marked!” She had no idea what it meant—did they mean something like the tattoo Marco had on his nose, or his arm brand? Regardless, they weren’t throwing her out—not without Reef.
“She’s one of them,” Delsi insisted, her expression stern yet matronly. “I saw it when I bathed her. We have a responsibility to her. He would insist.”
“Put her outside the gate.”
“We have to,” another added. “If they learn our location, we’re all done for!”
“No! You can’t. I’m not marked!” It made sense now—the way the woman had shooed everyone out of the bath earlier. At the time, Eija had thought it was to protect her privacy and give her time to work through the brutally painful process of the water warming and chasing off the bite of winter on her fingers and toes. “She couldn’t have seen anything, because I don’t have . . . whatever she thought she saw!”
“Silence!” Belcmeg bellowed, seemingly ready to tear her apart.
“I saw it with my own eyes,” the woman said, nodding. “You know what it means, Belcmeg.”
Face ashen, he stood, arms now resting far too comfortably at his sides. Not relaxed. But ready. It reminded her of an Eidolon about to reach for a pulse rifle. He ignored Eija, looking to the woman. “You are sure?”
“She has a ridge,” Delsi murmured with a nod.
What in the Void was this woman talking about?
“Harm her and you’ll bring the wrath of the Ajratilgan on this village and all in it.”
Ajra-what? Eija’s mouth went dry. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“I would not speak it, especially not against a stranger, but do you want the Ajratilgan razing our village? Yo’qolgan is no more because of lesser crimes. Carefully think about what you do here,” Delsi warned.
“Do not chastise me, woman! This girl could be a spy.”
“Then you should have left them to the wild tishlar!”
Fisted hands seemed as anvils as Belcmeg debated her fate.
“Listen,” Eija said quietly, shakily. “I am not an Ajra—whatever. I don’t even know what that is.”
Belcmeg’s brow knotted.
“We don’t have tech but we’re not stupid,” the grizzled one said, advancing on her. “It’s obvious you aren’t—”
“Wait!” Delsi hurried forward. “She doesn’t know . . .” Meaning carried in her tone and expression as she held Belcmeg’s arm.
Something twitched in his left eye. “Your friend,” he said calmly, “is clearly Azizlar.”
Again, no idea what that was either, but they’d now twice referred to Reef in the present tense. “So he’s still alive? Where is he?”
Delsi took a step back. Swallowing, she looked to Belcmeg. “It doesn’t . . . make sense . . .” She seemed terrified.
“We need to kill her,” the grizzled one spat. “It’s the only way. Bury them both. Be done with it. Before it’s too late.”
“What? No!” Eija felt panicked, desperate. Wished she could transport them again or whatever she’d done. “I vow to you, I am no threat. We just got lost. Please—”
“Qochoq,” Delsi whispered, then her eyes widened, and she tightened her grip on Belcmeg. “If the Azizlar learn we have harmed one of theirs, we pay with our lives!”
“We can’t let her go,” Grizzled said. “She’s a spy—she’ll tell them of our location, and we’ll be ash before first break. We must return her to the snow, leave her for the tishlar.”
“They’ll come,” Belcmeg said, resigned as he shook his head. “Either way, whether for her or for him, they will come.” He stood considering Eija.
She’d been under a lot of scrutiny for most of her life, but this man terrified her.
He nodded to her. “Show me.”
The men in the barn converged on her.
“No!” Eija tried to move away, but they caught her. She wrestled, kicking, screaming. As they lifted her off her feet, she saw another man enter with a large shape thrown over his shoulder. But she had bigger things to worry about—four of them. She pitched backward, but it did no good against their vise hold.
Screaming as they stretched her out prostrate before Belcmeg, she felt cold, powerless. Terrified. “I am not marked! Unhand me! Stop!”
“Then you have nothing to fear,” Belcmeg said, even as cold, small hands moved along her collar. “But if we find that mark, you will not long enjoy the warmth of our fires.”
“Leave me! Stop!”
Grunts and words spewed through the room. At the same instant, she saw past the boots and tanned hides, past the wall that ended at her fingertips. And there, deposited on the floor, was the large shape the other man had brought in. Reef! He lay on his back, eyes closed.
Was he dead or . . . asleep? He was pale. Relief and alarm trilled. Very, very pale. Unmoving.
Oh no. No no no. She felt her clothes being torn away, but she focused on her friend. “Reef.” Even as they stripped her—anger and panic warring—Eija strained to touch him. Felt a rush of something heated through her spine. Though she pushed with her toes to reach him, touch him, be sure he wasn’t dead, the combined weight of the men held her fast.
“Rahmdil ayollar!” someone shouted.
Then another. Strangled shouts.
As Eija’s finger caught the edge of Reef’s shoulder, she felt the heaviness fall away. Nausea swirled.
“Kill her!”
Anger and fear shocked her system.
Jagged pain tore down her spine. They’re killing me! Somehow closer—which was impossible, but she didn’t care—Eija gripped Reef’s shoulder. Inexplicably, they weren’t lying on the floor anymore. She sucked in a breath to find herself facing Reef, holding his shoulders. Shocked eyes blinked at her. Widened. Sparked with admiration.
“You’re alive!” Eija hugged him, cheek colliding with his shoulder. The air stirred as she felt his arms tighten around her. But even as that registered, she also noted the scalding whiteness. Warmth like a hot spring bath . . . yet, gelled like the stasis pods. And some indistinct thing below her.
Reef latched onto her arms. “Eija! What’s going on?”
She looked at him, confused. “I don’t know—they’re saying I’m marked. I don’t even know what that means. I just—”
“No, why are we floating in the air?”
She frowned. “What—”
“Wait!” a woman shouted. “Eija!”
She startled, a haze around her vision—no, not her vision. Around her—them. Her and Reef. Suspended, just as he’d said, in the air!
What the djell?!
“Eija, wait! Please!”
Through that barrier came a shout of her name. But . . . nobody here knew her name. The realization forced her to focus. Through the haze, she saw two villagers standing in the door. The smaller one rushed forward, looking up at her, arm extended. “Eija, wait! Please!”
Disbelief shocked through her. “Shad!”
ROHILEK, KURU
“Where are we going?” Marco hissed as they fled the sentries, hurrying across the darkened city. Skirted walls and slipped through courtyards toward a vast complex and the strange hexagonal buildings he’d noticed from the plains. Crouch-running, he had to force himself to ignore the sting from that beast. Qadimiy had been right—it wasn’t something he’d forget, mostly because there was a lingering acid burn every time the muscle contracted.
Ahead, Qadimiy and Tutar banked right around a corner.
Marco hustled forward, but a strange stirring in the air made him hug the wall and slow. When Blue was about to pass him, he flung out his arm to stay the morphing Draegis.
Blue’s eye slits pulsed—not with anger but surprise.
“Wai—”
Voices shot through the dark.
Marco nudged Blue into the shadows and edged closer to the corner to peer around. Fifteen yards down the street two Draegis stood before Qadimiy and Tutar. Three things struck Marco as he watched: the Draegis were addressing Qadimiy; Tutar—capable of ripping people limb from limb—stood with his head down, hands clasped; and a thickening scent that did not make sense wafted in the air.
Draegis didn’t have scents. What was he anak’ing?
Qadimiy chuckled as he talked to the Lavabeasts. Who was this man that even the Draegis seemed to defer to him? One of the beasts shifted, and his head suddenly swiveled toward Marco, the slitted eyes—four!—pulsing.
Marco jerked back, heart thumping. He waited a few seconds, listening hard, then braved another glance.
Lavabeast2 had broken away from the others and was heading toward him.
“Hide.” After warning Daq’Ti, Marco threw himself at the wall to tic-tack, but the burn seared. His foot dragged down the plaster. He stumbled into it. Then pitched himself at the other side, using a window ledge for a boost. Gritting through the burn, he tic-tacked up the corner. Shoved upward and caught the ledge. His arms trembled, hating him, telling him he should’ve been doing more push-ups on the dreadnought. He growled and pulled himself over. Rolled onto his back, looking up at the sky littered with strange stars, panting. Trying to quiet his breath, he peered over the ledge just in time to see Lavabeast2 confronting Blue, chortling then shoving him back.
Blue staggered.
The shadows were too long, the light too wan, to see if Lavabeast2 outranked Blue, but that might explain the rough treatment.
Lavabeast2 shoved him again—revealing his yellow rank.
This time, Blue held his ground. Pushed back and raged at the other.
Yellow/Lavabeast2 raised his arm, powering the weapon. Blue bellowed and somehow managed to flip the other Draegis onto his back. Stood over him, chortling like a long, deep horn. Yellow cowered, head down, as he pulled himself to kneel. The whole scene reminded Marco of a docuvid showing how among wild animals a younger male might attack and kill a wounded leader. Only, Blue wasn’t quite so wounded.
“On your feet.” Daq’Ti waited, annoyance trilling in his heaving breaths. “Why aren’t you at your post?”
Yellow shifted, trying to free himself. “We heard something. Found the Caretaker out past curfew.”
“You sent him back?”
“Yes, Ra’gatira!”
Blue thrust him backward. “Return to your position before someone else goes where they aren’t supposed to.”
Yellow glanced down at Blue’s arm and then to the mark on his cheek. “Yes, sir.”
“Got a problem, askar?”
“No, Ra’gatira.” Yellow pivoted and scurried back into the darkness.
“Askar!” Blue snapped, waiting for a response or some action. “Search the streets. Make sure he wasn’t helping someone escape.”
“Yes, Ra’gatira.”
Blue watched the underling for several long seconds, then angled his head to the side. “It’s safe.”
With more than a little reticence, Marco dropped. Stumbled at that fire like a dagger in his calf and came up jogging. “What was that?”
“I’ve diverted the askars—soldiers.” Blue stalked down the street. “They’ll go south, away from us. It’ll make it easier to get in.” He cuffed Marco’s arm. “Act subservient.”
Jaw tight at the sudden command and redirection, Marco stiffened. Debated arguing. This . . . didn’t feel right. Then again, nothing had felt right since coming through the Sentinel.
“I can leave you out here to die,” Blue suggested.
“No, you can’t. Not if you want Xonim to speak to you again.”
Blue’s growing eyes pulsed, and it was just then, in the shadows, that Marco realized how very different Blue was now from his compatriots. He was still tall and brawny, but he seemed more . . . human. Slits were shifting even more toward two eyes and a nose. His skin more gray now than black. “The changes . . . I wasn’t sure if it was real or my imagination.”
“Much pain . . .” Blue grunted a nod to him. “Subservient.”
This time Marco complied with the request, wondering if being so compliant made him stupid. These creatures annihilated species without compunction. Did the bidding of the Khatriza . . . Xisya. And Eija. Which was interesting.
Blue led him up the steps, chambered his arm toward an obsidian panel set in the door.
A bolt of pain shocked the air, startling Marco. A wake of heat-infused pain poured from Blue—chambering his arm hurt. It didn’t even fully chamber, but was it enough to access the facility? Heavy and mechanical, a thunk rattled the ground beneath his boots as the door opened.
Grip tighter, Blue chortled at Marco and roughed him through the door, walking way too fast and powerfully for Marco to get his feet under him. Humiliation heaped upon anger as he was dragged through halls etched with unusual symbols reminiscent of carved machi wood. Only these displays somehow seemed organic. Not like they were carved, but like they . . . grew. Patterns covered the walls and crowded the tight space.
Marco stumbled, still trying to find his feet.
With a howl, Blue hauled him off the floor and caught him by the throat with a hot-to-the-touch hand. But not searing.
Dangling, Marco gripped the meaty paw. Resented that Blue could pick him up so effortlessly. He’d be in trouble if he really wanted to escape, but a notable truth ceased his struggling: he wasn’t being strangled. He could breathe. The powerful Blue was exerting terrific control over his grip as he stalked the passages with Marco hanging like a dead dog, other Draegis either hurrying aside or nodding approval.
Onward Blue clomped, giving Marco an occasional shake as if fighting with him, through a passage that was more umbilical than corridor to another controlled-access portal. There, Blue chambered his arm again and aimed at the unique lettering. The patterns swirled and shifted, then snaked around and cinched his arm.
Fire surged through Marco’s brand. For a second, he forgot to fight against the grip and instead shook out his own arm. When he did, the wall patterns spiraled through the air and wrapped around the armored thing on his forearm as well. Still dangling in the air, he sucked in a breath and stilled, watching as it dug into the plating.
What the reek?