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Relief swept through Laramie as they pulled up in front of the bunker in the dim light of evening. It looked almost home-like in the last golden light of day. Especially after what she’d seen that day. What she’d been a part of.
Gioia pulled her helmet off. “Go put your bike up and then meet up in the mess hall. We’ll be celebrating.” But her face twisted in a frown.
Nausea threatened Laramie’s stomach. “Yeah, think I’ll pass.”
Gioia leaned closer. “It dusting sucks, but at least stop by. You’re part of the gangs, almost a part of the unit. You’ll have to get used to it.” Sorrow clouded her brown eyes.
Laramie sat back on her bike seat, her gaze falling to where Gered was a lone figure heading toward the tower, his helmet dangling from a hand. He walked like the sky itself pressed down on him.
Maybe she’d go, just to make sure he was okay. I shouldn’t care that much. But an insatiable something had drawn her toward him since she’d first seen his gray and blue eyes.
“Okay.”
Gioia flashed a poor smile and wheeled her bike into the garage. Laramie pushed off and drove slowly toward the trainees’ garage. Harlan was there, waiting on her and Axel.
The kid parked his bike in silence. Something stained his dark jacket in uneven patches. Laramie swallowed. She assumed making a kill graduated a trainee right up into a unit. Harlan clapped him on the shoulder, a nod of understanding passed on.
“Go get a drink, kid. You too, drifter.”
Laramie turned away. If she said anything, she’d regret it. She forced her feet into the command tower. It was full of the units who’d stayed behind, clustering around Two and Four’s tables, chattering and shouting excitedly.
A few of the riders called back just as excited. Others like Dayo and Gioia, even Moshe, sat in silence, picking over their food with clenched jaws and distant eyes.
Restless anger thrummed through her muscles, turning her away from the mess hall. She wouldn’t be hungry for a long time. She stumbled down the stairs, jerking the zipper of the oversized jacket open as she headed back to the bunker.
She dumped the jacket and armored vest in the armory. She hadn’t discharged her gun. She didn’t need to clean it. Didn’t want to even look at it.
Her fingers itched to hold a tool. To find something to build instead of threatening to destroy. Laramie jerked the door to the garage open and stepped inside.
The light was already on. She came up short at the sight of Gered sitting against the wall by the workbench. His knees were pulled up, arms draped across and hands dangling limply, a vacant look on his face as he stared at nothing. His helmet lay discarded on the ground beside him. Blood still stained his face.
Her own struggles vanished. She whispered a curse and turned back in to grab two water bottles and a towel before heading back down.
He barely stirred as she knelt in front of him.
“Hey.”
He blinked, his eyes focusing on her.
“What are you doing down here?” His voice tumbled and ground like tires across rocks.
She held out a water bottle. He made no move to take it.
“Get out.” Fire crept through the words.
Defiance flared. “No.”
He blinked again.
“Drink some water.” She forced authority into her voice.
He stared at her a long time before lifting a shaky hand for the bottle.
“Are you hurt?” she asked.
He shook his head.
Laramie took a short breath. “Can I...?” She pointed to his cheek and held up the towel and other water bottle.
He just stared at her again before slowly nodding. One leg slid down and he unscrewed the cap. He drained half the bottle as she dampened the towel.
Gingerly, she touched it to his cheek. He didn’t move, and she pushed a little harder. He blinked a few more times, inhaling shakily.
“Why would be do this? It’s barbaric.”
His jaw worked a moment. “It’s Tlengin.”
Laramie’s knuckles clenched white around the towel. “Like I said. Barbaric.”
“It’s to celebrate a good kill. To mark a warrior upholding the raider way.” His eyes lost focus again.
“It’s murder. He made you murder them,” Laramie snapped. “And he wanted you to be happy about it.”
Gered pulled his head up, shaking it slightly. “He wanted me to keep remembering what they taught me. What he taught me.”
Laramie doused the towel with more water and scraped it across his cheek.
Water dribbled down his neck under his collar. He stirred again and looked down at himself.
“Dust.” He brushed a hand over his stained jacket. His movements came stilted as if he was drunk as he fumbled for the zipper, at his comm wire hanging loose, his fingers uncooperative.
She caught his hand. “Hey!”
Gered forced a breath, his grip tightening around her fingers with painful intensity.
She swallowed. When she’d wake up screaming from nightmares as a kid, Ade comforted her by speaking in Itan. Something familiar. She had no idea if it would help Gered, or send him further into whatever spiral he was in. Maybe it would be different enough to shock him out of it.
“Take it easy.” She switched to the lilting cadence of Itan. “Let me help.”
His head flew up, gray-blue eyes locking on to hers with painful intensity.
“Is this okay?” she asked.
He looked at her and it seemed she could see him piecing himself back together, shoring up the barricade that kept him from the world. He nodded. “Sa.”
Laramie offered a slight smile. “Let’s get this jacket off, yeah?”
He slowly released her hand and shifted forward, fingers cooperating now on the zipper, and let her pull it off his shoulders. She laid it aside, and took the armored vest from him next. He unhooked the comm and tossed it into the pile before pulling his knees back up and leaning on them, taking a shaky breath as he rubbed a hand across his face.
Laramie dampened the cloth again. “You’ve still got some on your face.” She held out the cloth in offering. He didn’t move. “Can I do it?”
He clenched and unclenched long fingers. “Sa.”
She gingerly nudged his chin to turn his cheek toward her, and quickly scrubbed the last traces away.
“There.” She sat back on her heels and extended the water bottle again.
He took a few sips, drew another breath, and slumped against the wall.
“Do you want me to get Dayo?” Laramie asked, then dared to add. “Or Gioia?”
Fear lurked behind the bits of blue in his eyes at the rider’s name, and he gave a frantic shake of his head.
“It’s okay,” Laramie reassured. “I’m not telling anyone.” Sadness filled her smile. She couldn’t, didn’t want to, imagine a life where she couldn’t be with the person she loved.
Gered’s jaw worked a moment. “Is it obvious?” The fear remained.
Laramie remembered Corinne’s words in the showers, and half smiled. “Probably only to another woman.” And to your friend.
He slid his legs back down and leaned his head back against the wall to stare at the ceiling. The water bottle crunched between his hands.
“You still thinking about running?”
Laramie caught her breath. Her heart hammered loud enough for him to hear. He hadn’t switched from Itan.
“Sa.”
Another shuddering breath from him before he looked at her. “Good. I’m coming with you.”
She stared in shock. “You’re...?”
“I’m dusting suffocating here. I can’t—can’t stay here and keep—killing. I can’t.” His voice began to rise and panic resurfaced.
“Hey!” She grabbed his hand again. “Okay. This saves me the trouble of trying to convince you to help me.”
Tension eased from his grip. “You really are persistent.”
“Some see it as a character flaw.”
The corner of his mouth quirked up. “What’s your grand plan then?”
Laramie settled against the wall beside him, stretching her legs out. If this was an act on his part to try to get her caught running, it was a hell of a convincing one.
“You tell me. I’ve only halfway got the unit numbers and routes figured out. I was able to supplement what I remember of the territory from Rosche’s map I saw the other day. Still not sure on the best route out of here.”
Gered hesitated a moment. “I have something that might clear us a way out by the eastern border. We just have to get there first.”
His lips pressed together again, and Laramie decided against asking what it was.
“That’s something, right?”
He jerked a nod. “More than I had last time.”
“I was planning on going before my two weeks was up.” Laramie leaned her head back.
“Smart. I think we could do it.” He curled his hand in a fist and relaxed it one finger at a time, over and over. “Unit Four has to go out again in two days for another sweep. Rosche wants to ramp up our presence after...all this.”
Anxiety jittered through Laramie. “How long will you be gone?”
“Three days. When we’re back, I’ll start taking you out for shooting lessons, or extra training, so everyone gets used to seeing us leave together. They know I’ve staked you, so it won’t turn heads.”
Laramie raised an eyebrow. “You’ve already put some thought into this.”
He flicked a sideways glance at her. “Maybe,” he reluctantly admitted.
She grinned. “Okay. So I keep training while you’re gone. When do we make our move?”
He rested his head back again, lips moving silently. “Two days before your last test. The weakest units will be in. We’ll need to time it right to avoid the patrols still out.”
“You know all the routes?”
“Close enough. I’ll look at what you’ve got. And,” he swallowed hard. “I’m guaranteed to go back into the war room between now and then, so I’ll look a little closer at the ones I’m not as familiar with.”
Something squeezed Laramie’s heart. What difference would it have made in his life if the travelers had picked him up?
“We get across the border, then what?” she asked.
“Part ways?” He lifted a shoulder. “Might be easier to split up anyway since we’ll have someone after us.”
She nodded slowly, turning her attention to her hands in her lap. “Sure you don’t want to keep together? We might stay stronger together.” Something didn’t want to see him leave if, when, they made it.
A little more tension released from him, and he slumped further against the wall. He stared across the bikes. “No,” he finally said. “You’ve got a place to go back to. I don’t. And I don’t think there’s anywhere for me to belong.”
Her heart twisted harder. “You don’t know that.”
He lifted an eyebrow, but still didn’t look at her. “You’ve seen what I can do. No one wants that around.”
Laramie bit back a sigh and the urge to hug him. That probably would go over as well as trying to pick up a red-scaled viper by the tail. She settled for nudging his arm with her elbow.
“Maybe we can figure it out when we hit the border.”
A half smile stirred his face. “Maybe.”
She rubbed at a grease spot on her trousers. They hadn’t slipped from Itan once since she’d begun. “Your Itan is pretty good.”
Gered rolled his neck side to side, eliciting a faint crack. “Severi saw the value in keeping me fluent.”
A chill prickled her arms. Severi—a Tlengin-sounding name.
“The travelers do the same for you?”
His question caught her off guard, and she bristled at the implication before she realized he probably didn’t see it any way other than a skill that provided value.
“They helped me stay fluent because they knew it was important to me. That, and my common wasn’t so good when they found me, so it’s what we had to communicate in for a while.”
Gered stared at her a moment, then shook himself. “Easy to forget sometimes not everyone is out to use you.”
She looked back at her hands to disguise the sting in her eyes. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?” Confusion coated his voice.
Laramie met his gaze. “I was just thinking how different things would have been if the travelers had taken you in like me. We might not be sitting here right now.”
“Yeah, well, daydreams never got anyone anywhere.” His thumb pressed against each of his fingers individually, some cracking under the pressure.
“I’m sure they would have taken one look at the extra blue in my eyes and decided to make something of me as well.”
Anger flared bright again and she sat up taller. “They’d never do that.”
Gered raised an eyebrow. “Ask Dayo about travelers’ priorities. His family sold him to Rosche for safe passage through the territory. He was the easiest to let go because he doesn’t have any gold in his eyes.”
Laramie’s mouth hung open in shock. No wonder he’d been so hesitant at the bar. “Those...those dangarn!” She heaped the worst traveler curse on them she could. “My family isn’t like that.”
“You’ll have to forgive my life experience then,” Gered said wryly.
She shook her head, still incensed at the thought of a traveler family giving up one of their own. Aclar families were closer than layers of rock crushed together over millennia. And giving a member up like that would have—should have—been like the Rift splitting the land in half.
Voices, thumps, and the slam of a door jerked her attention up.
“Time to go,” Gered said, but he sounded just as reluctant as she felt. “Head up first. We don’t need to be seen together more than’s necessary.”
Laramie pushed to her feet. “When do we talk again?” Maybe then would be the time to bring up the possibility of Gioia, or Dayo, coming.
“I’ll come find you,” he said. “We can use Itan if we need. Dayo is the only other one who might know a little.”
She nodded, then propped her hands on hips and stared down at him. “You going to be okay?”
The way his eyes widened in shock nearly drew a laugh from her. “Yeah. Get lost, drifter.” But the words didn’t have any weight behind them.
She smiled and headed back toward the door.
“Laramie.” His soft call halted her. She pivoted.
He stood, hands fisting around his jacket. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, kamé.”
“What’s that mean?” The question came quiet, almost small. “Dayo says it sometimes.”
Laramie half smiled. “Depends on how you mean it. Between us, it means friend.”
Gered shifted a little, but didn’t seem displeased.
“I think for Dayo, it means brother.”
He stared at her a long moment then cleared his throat. He took a moment to speak, but when he did, his voice came oddly tight. “Thanks.”
She tipped a nod. “See you in the morning.”
