“No, ma’am,” Duck said. “I’m gathering some wood for a fire. That might guide them in and convince the critters to stay away.”
“Critters.” Rysha eyed the desert lion, or whatever it was called. Given its two- or three-hundred-pound mass, “critter” seemed too innocuous a name.
“Wood?” Kaika said. “Not sure much of what we’ve been tramping through qualifies as wood. Something’s been poking me in the foot for the last mile though.” She bent over to examine her boot while Duck ambled to the bush he’d been hacking at earlier. He dragged some of the brittle branches over.
Kaika extracted something from the sole of her boot and held it up to Blazer’s lantern. “Ouch.” The brown thorn was as long and sharp as the lion’s fangs. “Good thing I’ve got thick soles. That would go straight through your foot if you stepped on it in socks.”
“This isn’t a hospitable land,” Blazer said. “Getting the fliers back out of it if the power crystals aren’t working isn’t going to be easy.”
“Easy?” Duck asked. “Will it be possible at all?”
Kaika handed him her thorn. “Firewood.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Duck tossed it into the brush pile. “That’ll go far.”
Something hooted from the other side of the spring. More roars and yowls answered the noise. Rysha imagined the animals speaking to each other, challenging the strong ones to try again to take down these human invaders.
“Getting out might take some creative engineering,” Blazer said. “Especially if we have to build a steam engine and boiler to haul our fliers out of here.”
“Ma’am,” Duck said, “are you joshing? We haven’t got the materials to build anything like that. We don’t even have any metal.”
“Trip has a lock and a sardine tin in his pocket,” Rysha said.
“We’re saved for sure then.”
Blazer shrugged. “I was joking. I hope. Our crystal kept flashing off and on after we landed. Whatever is affecting the magic seems to be intermittent. We might be able to point the fliers in the right direction and fly or drive them forward a ways each time the crystals are on. We need to finish the mission first though. In the morning, we’ll get the map out and figure how close we are to that mountain. We’ll go on foot if we have to.”
Rysha remembered the room behind the statue and everything she’d learned about Agarrenon Shivar so far. And the fact that Trip had implied he’d learned even worse.
Dorfindral buzzed irritatedly into her mind at this thought of Trip. She sent a quelling glare toward the sword’s hilt and mentally ordered it to stand down, though it occurred to her to be surprised it was awake. She’d thought it might have gone dormant, along with the fliers’ crystals.
“Are we still sure we want to complete it?” Rysha asked aloud for the others.
“You think Moe was right and that the dragon’s dead?” Blazer asked.
A lion roared from the brush nearby, and Rysha lifted her rifle again.
“Shut up,” Kaika yelled toward the noisy animals, “or I’m going to start lobbing grenades out there.”
A mocking hoot answered her.
“They’re asking for it.”
“No, I don’t think the dragon is dead,” Rysha said, answering Blazer’s question, “not unless he passed away in the last twenty-five years. But he’s not sounding like a promising ally for Iskandia even if he is alive.”
“My mission is to find him and point Trip at him,” Blazer said. “Majors don’t get to randomly decide that they’re not going to complete a mission.”
“We’ve come this far.” Duck dragged over another gnarled branch and also tossed a few dried cactus pads into his growing pile of possibly flammable fuels. “Might as well see what Trip’s papa looks like.”
Abruptly, the animals jabbering around the spring fell silent. The entire desert did. Rysha could hear Duck’s footfalls as he walked back toward the brush.
“I still want to find him,” came Trip’s voice from the darkness. “If nothing else, I’d like to find a way to keep that cult from sacrificing more people, and he’s the keystone in it, whether by accident or design. If he tells them to knock it off, I’m hoping they will.”
The others all jumped in surprise at his silent arrival, even the ever-alert Kaika. Rysha realized Dorfindral had been complaining about Trip’s approach rather than her thoughts of him.
“You think he can be convinced to do that?” Kaika asked, recovering quickly.
“I won’t know until I try.”
Trip came into view, and the sounds of someone walking much more loudly drifted to their ears. Dry foliage rattled, and grunts of pain came from the brush. Leftie?
Trip paused and looked back, frowning with concern. “He wouldn’t let me give him a hand,” he said quietly.
“That you, Leftie?” Blazer asked.
“Yes, ma’am. Be there soon. Hurt my foot a little.”
“You didn’t step on one of those thorns, did you?” Kaika asked.
“Pulled something out of the bottom of my boot in the dark, yes. It cut deep into my foot in addition to putting a peephole in my boot sole.”
“The foliage is more likely to kill you here than the animals,” Kaika said.
“Well, maybe not more likely.” Blazer prodded the dead lion with the tip of her rifle.
“Equally likely?”
“Trip refused to heal me,” Leftie said. “I finally worked up the courage to ask for some magicking, and he says his magic isn’t reliable right now.”
“Maybe you just weren’t pretty enough,” Duck said, “for him to want to gather you in his arms and spread healing magics all over.”
“I did offer to carry him,” Trip said.
Leftie sniffed. “No man is going to let another man carry him unless both legs and his spleen are blown off.”
“The spleen is integral, is it?” Blazer asked. “Just the missing legs wouldn’t do?”
“That’s right, ma’am.”
“Might I borrow the lantern, Major?” Duck waved at his brush pile. “I’ve got enough gathered to start a fire. That ought to help keep the animals away. I’m not sure about the thorns.”
Blazer handed him the lantern. “Status of your fliers, Leftie and Trip?”
“I landed without doing too much damage, I believe,” Trip said. “I’ll have to take a closer look when it’s daylight.”
“Yes, I noticed you lost your lanterns too. Or decided trekking around in the dark was a good idea.”
Trip’s forehead crinkled, as if it hadn’t occurred to him to dig out a lantern. Rysha had noticed him tramping around in the dark without needing a light before so she wasn’t surprised.
“The critters got real quiet,” Duck observed.
“Maybe they realized that an apex predator arrived,” Rysha said, looking at Trip.
Leftie lifted his hands. “It’s true. I’m a carnivorous beast on the hookball field. If I didn’t have a hole in my foot, I’d show them my skills by pegging them with rocks.”
Rysha opened her mouth to clarify, but caught Trip frowning again, and closed it. He surely didn’t think of himself that way, and he wouldn’t want her drawing attention to his otherness.
“Leftie, flier status?” Blazer prompted.
“Mine’s probably still flightworthy. If we can get the crystals working.”
“And get it out of the ditch?” Trip asked, smiling.
Leftie didn’t smile back. “How’d you know about the ditch? I met up with you half a mile from where I landed.”
Trip hesitated. “I think you told me.”
“No, I didn’t. I wasn’t real proud of getting it stuck in a damn wash. If you’re reading my mind, I sure as hells don’t appreciate it.”
“I didn’t—”
“At least it would be useful if you could heal a man, but nobody wants his privacy invaded. Asshole.” Leftie limped toward the opposite side of the gathering, leaving the influence of the light and kicking som
ething into the spring.
A disturbed bird flapped its wings and flew away.
Trip’s shoulders slumped, and his chin dropped to his chest.
Rysha scowled after Leftie. She could understand people being disturbed by someone reading their thoughts, but throwing insults around wouldn’t help anything. And Trip had enough bugging him right now. Finding out his sire might be some vile cult-inspiring dragon who reveled in bloodshed couldn’t be sitting easily with him. Talk about an asshole. Trip wasn’t anywhere near that.
She took a step toward him, but he backed away from the group.
“I’ll stand watch while you all rest,” he told Blazer, then disappeared into the night without meeting Rysha’s eyes.
15
Trip hadn’t realized how much a part of him his magic was. For most of his life, he’d only thought of it as a sixth sense, but it had always been there, his instincts accurately guiding him when his other senses weren’t enough.
Oh, his magic hadn’t abandoned him completely. He’d still located Leftie, but it had taken him longer than usual, with his certainty that he was going in the right direction faltering often. He’d walked a few steps, then had to stop and wait for his senses to return to him. When he’d attempted to heal Leftie’s injury, his concentration had proven elusive. He’d been able to see the wound with his mind but not do anything to fix it. It had been frustrating, especially after his almost effortless success at healing Rysha’s injury.
That feeling had yet to fade, frustration mixed with agitation. He’d almost lashed out when Leftie had made that comment as he stalked off, and that scared him. As a boy, he’d occasionally caused nearby vases and plates to break when he’d been having temper tantrums. One had broken close enough to his grandmother that a shard had struck her in the face, drawing blood. That had been about the age he’d realized he was responsible for those items breaking, even if he hadn’t understood how, and he’d been horrified that he’d caused her harm. Now that he was training and learning to draw upon more power, he cringed to think of what kind of damage he could do if he had a temper tantrum.
Trip drew in a deep breath as he stared across the spring at the fire burning on the far side. He sat near the water’s edge, his knees drawn up, his arms hooked around them. The animals that had been skulking about earlier had slunk away when he’d walked over here. Rysha’s comment about him being an apex predator seemed laughable, especially now. What would happen if something sprang at him in one of the periods where his power was gone or unreliable?
From time to time, he sensed the crystals in Duck’s flier, but they were just as unreliable as his magic. They went out and came back on again. There was no way it would be safe to fly with them like that, but he hoped the team would be able to drive the fliers out of the desert. Or at least out of the area of this strange magic dead zone. Or whatever it was. That was the term Rysha had given him, apparently given to her by Bhrava Saruth. Trip’s magic wasn’t dead so much as it was intermittent. What could cause that? He could understand why the dragons wanted to avoid it. He itched to get out of the area.
Rysha walked into his view, heading toward the fire, her sleeves pulled down over her hands as she dragged dry, thorny branches to add to the pile. She and Duck had given themselves fire-making duty. They had also dragged that carcass away from the camp so it wouldn’t attract scavengers.
Leftie, Blazer, and Kaika had spread bedrolls in a spot between the flier and the fire, but that was it. One of them should have been doing the hard work so Rysha could rest. She’d endured enough that day.
Trip told himself to look away. Since they didn’t know he was over here, he was essentially spying on them, a different form of invading their privacy. Seven gods, he didn’t even remember poking into Leftie’s thoughts to find out what had happened to his flier. He’d just known.
He closed his eyes and rested his forehead on his knees. A part of him wanted to call across the spring to Rysha, to ask her to join him in this secluded spot. But he didn’t know if his telepathy would work, and he had no intention of shouting so that everybody could hear it. He’d have to go back over there if he wanted to quietly draw her aside, and that would mean enduring another glare from Leftie. And snickers from the others if he and Rysha went off into the dark together.
Or worse than snickers. Blazer might write them up when they got back for being unprofessional during a mission. She hadn’t said anything after walking up on the kiss Trip and Rysha had almost shared outside the Charkolt hangar, but he had no delusions about kissing being acceptable behavior for soldiers on duty. There weren’t any rules against officers spending time together or seeing each other off duty, though it was frowned upon if they were in the same chain of command or if there was a great deal of rank separating them, but out on missions, officers were supposed to be professional. Lip-locking wasn’t professional.
He sighed, supposing he should return to the group. Stomping off hadn’t been professional, either, not when he hadn’t asked for permission to stand the first watch.
A rustle came from the shoreline to his right, and he jerked his head up. Instinctively, he tried to stretch out with his senses, but they had no better luck at piercing the darkness than his eyes did. Everything was fuzzy and indistinct. He couldn’t tell if some bird tramping around under the brush made the noise, or if a massive predator approached, perhaps a lion like the one that had attacked the camp.
Trip dropped his hand to his pistol—he’d removed the soulblade scabbards, laying them in the dirt beside him, so he could more easily sit down.
A twig snapped, and a branch rattled.
Jaxi? Azarwrath? Can you tell what’s out there? Trip asked.
The soulblades had been largely quiet since the power crystals failed. They had managed a few conversations, but the dead zone was affecting them as well as him.
“Trip?” came Rysha’s soft voice.
He almost laughed, lowering his hand from his pistol.
“Here,” he whispered, just loudly enough for her to hear.
Across the spring, everyone except for Leftie had lain down in the sleeping area. He stood by the fire, alternately watching the darkness and feeding branches into the flames. Blazer must not have been willing to assume Trip would keep an eye on the camp.
That disgruntled him for a moment, but the fog covering his senses lifted for a few seconds, and he grew aware of Rysha’s approach. Of her concern for him, her sympathy for all he’d learned about Agarrenon Shivar that day, and her desire to stand beside him, no matter what a jerk his sire ended up being.
He smiled, not sure how she’d known where to look for him, but happy to guide her the rest of the way. “Come here,” he whispered.
She patted around, not seeing as well in the darkness as he—apparently, that was some physical attribute rather than magic, because his better-than-average night vision hadn’t left him yet—and her hand patted the top of his head. She followed it down to his shoulder, then sat beside him.
“Leftie is an asshole,” she assured him, “not you.”
He chuckled, his mood lightened now that she sat next to him, her shoulder touching his.
“He might be, but he’s not wrong,” Trip admitted. “I’m doing things without being conscious of it now, and it’s scaring me a little.” It occurred to him that he might have drawn Rysha over to him without intending to. He swallowed. If true, that disturbed him even more than his reading of Leftie’s thoughts. The last thing he wanted was to take away her free will. “How did you find me?” he asked, worried what the answer would be.
“I assumed you wouldn’t go far.”
He licked his lips. That wasn’t an answer.
“I decided to risk walking around the spring, now that it’s less animal-infested—I also figured you were still around because of that.”
He smiled, some of the tension leaving his shoulders. He wasn’t surprised she had used logic to find him.
“And then about a quarte
r of the way around, Dorfindral started making grumpy thoughts in my mind, so I was sure you were over here.”
“Oh? I haven’t been able to communicate reliably with the soulblades since we landed. Has Dorfindral’s grumpiness been intermittent or consistent?”
“Consistent, I think. But he mostly only gets huffy when I drift close to you, especially now that Dreyak is gone. Not that Dreyak ever irritated him as much as you and the soulblades do.”
“Irritating people seems to be my special gift.” Trip sighed.
It hadn’t been a pitch for sympathy, but the emotion melted off Rysha, and she rested her arm around his shoulders.
He stared at the water. He didn’t want her to hug him out of sympathy—or pity. No, he wanted her to be attracted to him because of his handsome masculineness and the way he handled his flier, taking down enemies that threatened Iskandia. Of course, he didn’t mind that she seemed to be attracted to some of his quirkier traits, too, his penchant for tinkering with things, even things some would label as garbage. That was a part of his personality and seemed a legitimate thing for someone to be drawn to. But if she had come out mostly because she felt sorry for him…
He dropped his forehead to his knees again. She rubbed his back through his uniform, sending delicious tingles of warmth through him. Even if his pride would have preferred she’d come for another reason, he couldn’t imagine pushing her away. Instead, he was barely breathing, afraid she would stop touching him if he moved.
“That feels good,” he whispered.
“I’m glad. You deserve to feel good once in a while.”
“I don’t deserve anything more than anyone else.”
“Everyone deserves to feel good once in a while,” she said dryly. “I haven’t observed you looking happy that often. You have a tendency toward moroseness. Is that something you manage sometimes? Happiness?”
He thought about mentioning that he didn’t feel morose now, not with her rubbing his back.
“I don’t know. I spend too much time in my head, I think. I envy Leftie sometimes. He runs down a field and throws a ball in a net, and he’s ecstatic for the rest of the day.”