Back in the Wild

possibility of scouts from Ilbertin finding them. Keeping her voice mild, Pevan answered Rel's challenge. "He's earned his chance."

  The firelight carved strange shadows out of Rel's cheeks, hid whether his expression was glaring and stern or just perplexed. She softened her voice and asked, "Rel, did you see the Court at all after we rescued you?"

  "No, why?" His tone told her he suspected something serious, though.

  Chag shifted against her again, and she gave in, letting him sit up properly. She pushed herself up to follow, awkwardly pulling her skirt straight. How to put it? It was hard not to sound sheepish as she said, "I think I might have made us all outlaws."

  "What? What did you do?" She felt more than saw Rel tense. He made no sound, but even Chag seemed to sense it, hunching forward, just a little closer to the fire.

  Did Rel think she was still a Separatist? Pevan swallowed. "To get us out... to get Chag out of his cell..." She raised her eyebrow, trying to sound sardonic. "I think I've discovered why it's frowned on to make Gateways in the Second Realm."

  "And the results were visible from the white cave?" From the tight, hoarse edge on Rel's voice, her attempt at levity had failed.

  She glanced at Chag, reached over to clasp his shoulder. They'd been over some of his Witnessings from the day's action, and he'd definitely spotted something amiss. Precisely what, they hadn't decided. His voice subdued, Chag turned to Rel and said, "It looked like one of the spires had fallen. Here."

  Rel actually flinched as Chag lifted his hand and brought the bubble of his Witnessing into being. It was a simple image; a broad expanse of green leading up to a sharp, flat horizon beneath a smudgy, blue-grey sky. The view they'd had just after escaping the white cave. The Court hung in the horizon, but while six black spikes drove down from it into the green, only five reached up into the blue; the sixth top lay along the line of the horizon, almost lost in the contrast.

  After a moment, Rel came up on his haunches, then scrambled around to kneel next to her, peering across her at the bubble. To Chag, he said, "Hold it. Let me take a Clear look."

  "You know, when you did that in Federas it was one of the most unpleasant things I've ever-" Chag finished in a throaty noise as the bubble vanished, leaving Rel staring fixedly at the floating image. Pevan glanced from her brother to the little man, amused to note how similar their expressions had become. They both looked like men with cats clawing their crotches, bug-eyed and breathing shallowly.

  At least Rel had the excuse of Clearseeing, which always made him look a bit uncomfortable. Pevan stroked Chag's back, trying to calm him down. He melted against her, gratefully, and she nuzzled his hair for a moment before returning her attention to Rel.

  He blinked away Clearsight and turned to her with a long, heavy sigh. "Doesn't look good. Atla say anything about it?"

  "Hasn't stirred yet. Whatever he did to get us out of there..." She craned her neck to look over the fire at the sleeping trainee. He wouldn't be a trainee much longer if she had any say in the matter. Big 'if'.

  "Yeah." Rel twisted his legs out from under himself, sat half-facing her. To the fire, he said, "As if we didn't have enough on our collective consciences as it is."

  "We'll just have to prove we were doing the right thing." She couldn't keep her voice from wavering as she finished, and she could tell the boys felt her uncertainty.

  Chag swallowed. "Can we? Really?"

  She poked his cheek. "We've been over this. You need to stop moping."

  "But what can we do?" He caught her hand, but released it when she pulled back. She didn't want Rel to think she was giving him the shoulder.

  "We rescue Taslin. Stop the Separatists. Show what they were up to." This time, she did hold her voice steady. It was easier when talking about concrete goals, things she could actually hope to achieve.

  "That's a lot to ask." Rel's tone was heavy, but at least he didn't sound quite so broken. She could almost hear the wheels turning in his head as he started evaluating plans. "I'd better take a look at the future."

  "Are you okay for fatigue?" She'd learnt to always check. He'd had a couple of extra nights in the Second Realm, and no proper break after fighting Keshnu at the Abyss.

  He blinked at her, rubbed a hand across his forehead. "Yeah, I'm fine. I was pretty raw last night, but so were we all."

  "It's still last night."

  "I slept for a good few hours." He shrugged. "I'll keep it careful, I promise. You should get some sleep yourself."

  She yawned, and that seemed to set Chag off too. She shouldn't have let him stay up with her, but they had needed to talk.

  Chag gave the broad, incoherent moan of someone trying to speak through a yawn, closed his jaw and tried again. "You don't need someone to keep watch while you..?"

  "I've got my ears." Rel glanced at her, a sting in his eyes. "You two need your sleep. And I mean sleep, too, not snuggling."

  Heat rose in her cheeks, but she caught herself halfway through drawing breath to get angry. Instead, she rolled her eyes at him and pushed to her feet, dragging Chag with her by a fist wrapped in his shirt. Rel could just get used to the idea of her wanting the little man.

  She found them a spot to lie down, close together, around the fire from Rel. Without even a cloak or blanket to make a pillow, they had to lie on their backs, and curling up together would be a recipe for all sorts of aches and pains in the morning. With her eyes closed, though, she found Chag's hand and rested hers lightly in it.

  He whispered, "Will Rel ever accept me?"

  However good Rel thought his ears were, there was no indication that he'd heard, so Pevan turned her head to peer at Chag in the gloom. Her own whisper felt lighter than breathing. "Prove yourself as a Gifted. Show you were in it for mankind and the First Realm, not just me. That might do it."

  "I'm not much of a Gifted."

  "Go to sleep, you hopeless boy." She squeezed his hand to take some of the sting from the words. Only some of it, mind.

  "I love you."

  "Good night."

  She awoke to daylight and the sound of Rel's slowly-rising voice. He was saying... something about the Court?

  That brought her bolt upright, noisily enough that Rel flinched. Chag, too. The little man waking up ahead of her was a rare occurrence. Atla hunched beyond them, stroking a finger through the damp grass. Pevan wiped dew off her face and hunched closer to the fire. In sunlight, it was a sorry sight, but there was a tiny bit of warmth to be had.

  When she tried to speak, her mouth was too dry and claggy to shape specific sounds. She coughed a couple of times, then looked up to find Rel offering her a canteen. She took it gratefully, tipped it to her mouth and was delighted to discover the contents stream-fresh. Another long slug of it cleared her head and throat. "What did I miss?" She looked up, trying to measure the time by the sun, but the surrounding trees obscured too much of the horizon. Directly above, the sky seemed only a few shades short of full blue.

  "We were talking about the Court." Chag spoke, apparently not noticing Rel's grimace. Why didn't Rel want her to be party to the conversation? Probably he thought she couldn't handle the truth.

  Spitting her brother with a glare that only seemed to puzzle him, she said, "Go on, hit me with the worst of it."

  Rel looked to Chag, who swallowed and turned to Atla. The Guide, to his credit, only glanced at the other men before meeting her eyes. "I... uh... When I was looking for a Route... well, it looked like the Court was being attacked."

  "Attacked?" Pevan felt her body go stiff. If Atla had sensed it all the way from the white cave, it had to have been bad. But that meant probably not her fault. If the Court had been collapsing, maybe, but could anything she'd done have provoked an attack on the Court? Maybe the Separatists had chosen that moment to challenge the Gift-Givers outright, but that didn't fit with anything she knew of their plans.

  "Maybe that's not the best word... uh... I could tell the spire was down, the one that Chag saw. But it, well, it looked lik
e a lot of Wildren were either pushing to get in or trying to get out. A lot of Wildren." It was Atla's turn to swallow. His gaze dropped to his hand, still picking at the grass.

  "Define 'a lot'." She pushed down a tight feeling just under her heart. "Could you count them? Are we talking dozens? Hundreds?"

  Atla looked up, but his eyes jittered away from hers, darted to Chag and then to Rel. Rel frowned. To Atla, he said, "You said it was like a mountain of them."

  "Higher than the walls of the Court." The Guide's voice was almost a whisper, dull and lifeless. Then his training seemed to come back to him, his face pulling back to some sort of focus. "It's not easy to describe... I mean, I've never seen so many Wildren so active in one place at once before. The ones around the white cave were... there were more of them, but, uh, they didn't seem... they seemed stunned, maybe?"

  What did she make of that? In all likelihood, there was no way of knowing what it meant. Children of the Wild were inscrutable at the best of times. In the midst of a Realm-shaking crisis like this one, their behaviour could mean anything. The only thing they could probably rely on was that help wouldn't be forthcoming from the Gift-Givers. Quilo had made that clear even before they'd fled the Court.

  She started to speak, to tell the boys to let the matter drop, but Chag got in first, his tone croaky and uneven. "Where does that leave us?"

  "On our own." Rel seemed grimly satisfied, his mouth closing to a flat line, his