The floor and wall gave a series of shudders, more tangible than audible. Kieran's ears popped.
There was a dull, crunching thud, and everything got louder.
Time lost meaning. Everything was happening at once. A fine crack ran across the floor right between his knees, and he knew the storm would go on until everything was ground to dust. It felt right. He was aroused by the way Ash shivered against him, and that was not out of place either. The noise was infinite. There was no end to wind. His mind shuddered, and he knew that the wards were about to go, but they didn't.
And then the wind was not so loud, and nothing else was falling. The air went cold, and then there was only sighing rain, and distant rolling thunder. Darker than usual, because most of the lamps had smashed, the cell block looked strange.
He realized, abstractedly, that he was sorry it was over. Uncurling himself carefully, he checked Ash for damage. A few scratches, nothing even really bleeding. Ash was watching him expectantly, caught between fear and excitement. In the weird light, he saw with dismay that the cell was intact. They were still locked in. Voices were beginning to murmur, rising in astonishment; from the piles of debris on the floor, from the rain pouring in, he understood that the roof of the central area had been torn completely off.
"Holy shit," he said. His voice sounded strange in his aching ears.
Ash's mouth moved, and the words reached him from a long way off: "I thought it was going to kill us."
A flash of thought, his brain restarting -- hope bubbled up, unfamiliar and urgent. He launched himself at the front of the cell, scrabbling among the debris, and came up with a daggerlike shard of glass ten inches long. It was scary-looking, but not very sharp. He handed it to Ash. "Hold this."
Taking it, Ash was all eagerness. "You have an idea?"
Kieran couldn't find his makeshift knife. There was no time. He selected the thinnest sliver of skylight he could find and sawed it across the skin of his ankle, high up where his pants would cover it.
"What are you --" Ash stopped when he saw what Kieran was doing, ripping the cheap cotton of his shirt, smearing the blood on his hands and chest. Ash pressed the sharp tip of the shard against the floor until it broke off flat, held the larger piece out for Kieran to spatter. "You want me to yell for help."
"You're quick." Kieran placed the flattened end of the shard against his ribs, making sure it looked right. He dropped to his knees, curling over it as if in pain, and nodded. "Be realistic."
Ash took a deep breath, and for a moment Kieran thought he'd screech like a harpy and be totally unconvincing. But he started out only a bit louder than usual. "Kieran? Oh shit. Oh shit, okay, hold still." His voice began to climb and crack. "Help? We need help down here! Don't, don't, don't try to move it you'll make it worse -- we need some help here!"
The occupants of nearby cells took up the cry, moved by the usual human urge to be busy when things are weird. Kieran wanted to applaud. Instead he dabbed blood on his chin, set his teeth in his lip, and gave a hideous drawn-out groan for the pair of grubby, wild-eyed Watchmen who came to fumble at the lock of the cell.
"Hurry," Ash urged, hovering at Kieran's side.
To their credit, they were wary of Kieran. One covered him with a rifle while the other knelt to examine his wound. Their mistake was discounting his frantic, knuckle-biting cellmate. One moment, Ash was whimpering and fussing; the next, he shoved the rifle upwards and head-butted the guard in the nose, transformed in an instant from a comic-opera nancy-boy to a snarling fury.
Kieran made the nearer man swallow his exclamation of startlement, along with a few teeth. The angle was bad, so the beginning of the fight was awkward, and he took a solid punch to the ear that set his head ringing, but once he got his feet under him he dispatched the man in short order and turned to rescue Ash.
Ash didn't need rescuing. He was choking his man with the rifle. Seeing that Kieran was done, Ash flung his victim free and clubbed the man upside the head with the stock. He offered the gun over the Watchman's twitching body. "Got you a present," he grinned.
When they ran out of their cell, someone cheered. Another voice joined it, and another. Then demands and instructions swelled over the cheers and overwhelmed them. Kieran saw the one remaining guard running toward him and worked the rifle's bolt, but the man skidded and changed direction. He went for the exit on the far end. He'd be through it and raising the alarm before anything could be done about it, unless Kieran made a lucky shot -- in the dark, with a pounding heart, using an unfamiliar weapon, he doubted he could drop the man in time. He chose not to bother shooting. They weren't going out that way.
Climbing over rain-slick piles of broken stone, he felt his ankle begin to twinge where he'd cut it.
He shut the pain away. Reached the lock lever and hauled it down. With a clang, the tier unlocked, the doors swung open in unison. Ragged, dirty men swarmed out, cheering.
He wasn't going to waste time on the other three tiers. "Let everyone out!" he shouted over the general hollering. "The more get out, the less get caught!" A glance at the rifle showed him it lacked a strap, so he tossed it aside. He made a stirrup of his hands, nodding to Ash. "Go."
Boosted onto the lock box, Ash hesitated a moment, trying to fit his fingers and toes into the cracks in the wall. There had been no way to practice for this.
"Go!" Kieran bellowed, and somehow Ash found footholds. Kieran was right behind him.
It seemed to take hours to climb the wall. Below, faces swarmed and shouted. There was one gunshot, but it wasn't followed by any change in the general commotion. Kieran could see that Ash's limbs were shaking; his own were beginning to tremble as well, reminding him that he'd been through Testing that same morning. A moment's dismay broke in his mind. We're not going to make it. But right on its heels came the realization that half an hour ago he'd been making final confessions, and now he was halfway up the cell block wall, heading for open sky. More than halfway. Almost there. And they were pulling themselves over a lip of broken wall, between twisted slats of metal that had once barred the skylights, into the full blast of the downpour.
Lightning flashed, showing him the wreckage all around. The tornado had broken down walls and snarled fences like yarn. He spotted a relatively clear hole and pointed it out to Ash, getting a nod in answer. Beside his feet, a knotted strip of torn blanket thumped across the top of the wall; the less limber prisoners had made a rope and thrown it up to him. He didn't have time to help them, but he did it anyway, tying the blanket rope to a solid-looking bit of skylight frame before he took off running.
A shout, several shouts from different directions, muffled and meaningless. Then a shot. He ignored it. The rain was bucketing down. No one could shoot straight in this, he could hardly see ten feet in front of him. They were running downhill, he could tell because rivulets of runoff were forming and flowing the same direction. Ash was pulling ahead despite his shorter stride, not bothering to pick his footing but trusting to pure luck. There were more shots, more shouting, falling behind. A heap of fence loomed on their right, eerily tall the way the winds had twisted it, and then they were through.
Suddenly he was no longer blind. Ahead of him, Ash stumbled and slowed, then settled into a smoother gait, subject to the same sensation: seeing with something other than eyes, knowing in a way he had never even noticed before it had been taken away from him. They had passed the ward's edge, they were finally really out.
And we're going right back in if we don't put some serious miles behind us, he reminded himself.
It was easier to run, outside the ward. He had a general sense of the terrain around him, allowing him to pick smoother ground. He'd never thought about that ability before, but now he realized most people must not have it. He could sense that the ground here was flat and sandy, that the puddles and rivulets forming on it were shallow and solid-bottomed. Fluttering blue from the clouds showed him that it looked the same for a ways ahead; hard to judge distance in this light
and veiling rain, maybe half a mile. Beyond that was just a dark jumble, which he could only guess must be a bit of hilly terrain.
Ash was faltering now. That first burst of speed had worn him out. Kieran took his arm, made him stop, and they took ten seconds to catch their breath. Put their heads back and gulped rain.
Then Kieran clapped Ash's shoulder to get his attention and led him out in a brisk walk. He hoped Ash was a good walker. He himself could keep up this pace all night, even tired as he was, but Ash was looking worn. The climb had been hard for him. He might have torn muscles.
"You're fine," Kieran said. "You'll make it."
In reply he got a wild-eyed look he couldn't interpret. It could have been fear or elation or anything. He darted a look back at the compound, but aside from a general impression of untidiness he couldn't see anything that was going on back there.
Downhill, the slope becoming more gradual as they left the vicinity of the immense mesa, they began to encounter knots of scrub, lumps of rock. His feet were starting to hurt; though he'd grown used to going barefoot, no amount of callus could save him from all this gravel. He hoped they didn't step on anything poisonous. In a rain like this, critters could get flooded out of their holes, and in their panic they'd sting or bite anything that got near them.
The rain seemed to be letting up, so what was that roaring? Water was doing something large up ahead. Kieran wanted to uncurl his senses and reach out to it, but he wasn't sure how. His mind was too sore, this particular skill too unpracticed. He slowed his pace, mindful of the dangers of a desert rainstorm.
It was fortunate that he did, because there was no lightning to show him the sudden river that cut their path. Only the sense of surroundings that came with Talent kept them from falling in. Not, he realized, that he could sense the river itself. In fact, it was blank, a wall of emptiness, snatching away any senses that were extended toward it.
"Now what?" Ash's voice was a shade too high. Starting to panic. "Can we go across?"
The experience of his whole life told him that you never, never cross unknown water in the desert, never go down in a wash in a rainstorm, never linger in a slot canyon at any time, because the water might not follow the regular water rules. It might suddenly swell, might drop on you a wall of water ten feet high, or it might do the opposite and be suddenly sucked away, leaving you buried in cemented mud. It might carry you off, slam you against rocks, wedge you in holes, and of course it would always do its best to drown you. In this darkness he couldn't tell how wide this flood was, but from the sound and the way it blocked his mind it had to be big. So the idea that came to mind was probably suicidal.
"It'll cover our trail. We go in."
"What? No, no we don't."
"Grab onto me. Here, not just my hand, that won't work. We'll lean on each other and try to stay upright, but if we fall -- can you swim?"
"Not in this!"
"Sure you can." Arms locked around Ash's waist, Kieran stepped into the water. Ash had no choice but to do the same.
The current snatched at their ankles, rose around their knees. Debris knocked and scratched, snarled weeds wrapped and tangled. Step by laborious step, they made their way downstream.
The rain was beginning to let up. A glance back made his stomach clench -- there were lights at the prison again. The search was beginning. With luck, they'd round up the weaker ones first, the ones who hadn't made it this far, but he couldn't leave it to luck. He and Ash were still close enough that a searcher with a lantern might locate them by sight alone.
"We have to go faster."
"We can't," Ash protested. "We'll drown."
"You can swim, right? We'll ride."
"No. No. Kieran --" Ash's objection ended in a splutter as Kieran pulled him deeper into the rush of water. It snatched them both instantly, knocked their feet out from under them and whirled them away.
Aware only of his struggle to breathe and to keep hold of Ash's shirt, Kieran didn't know how long the flood carried them. Longer than minutes, less than hours. His strength was ebbing fast, the chill of the water stiffening his muscles. More than once, he took on a lungful of water and thought he had drowned himself. He threw a mental apology to Ash for his stupid idea, which had surely killed them both. But at last sandy ground scraped under him and rolled him over, and he was beached, panting in the icy night.
The darkness was total. The water had shelved, spread out maybe, and he lay on his back in inch-deep mud. He still had a handful of Ash's shirt; Ash was attached to it, and alive, wheezing and coughing. Relief turned his guts to warm jelly, making him feel even weaker than he already was.
"It's cold," Ash said shakily, when the coughing was over. "Where are we?"
"How should I know? It's as dark as the inside of a dog. We should get up. We should walk, to keep warm."
"I can't."
"Me neither." Kieran rolled over, spit out a mouthful of grit. He tugged at Ash's shirt, tried to get closer. By shuddering stages, Ash climbed into his arms and huddled there. It seemed forever before the space between them grew warm. Kieran would not have been surprised if his wet shirt froze to his back.
"This would b-be a s-s-stupid way to die," Ash chattered.
"We'll get up and walk in just a second. As soon as the moon comes out."
"Okay."
"Won't be long now."
"Okay."
Gradually, their shivering subsided. In the storm's wake, the damp air was not so cold, and clinging together like this was warmer than Kieran had thought it would be. With warmth, though, came exhaustion. He heard it in his own voice when he spoke.
"They won't find us. We must've rode that river for miles. We got out, Ashes."
"You got us out." A ghost of a laugh. "Kieran Trevarde, you are significantly larger than life."
Chapter Eleven
Discomfort woke Ash; a long list of discomforts. Heat; itching; buzzing; things were walking on him. One of his hands had gone numb. He kept his eyes closed for a long time, nonetheless, sleepily convinced that he was hiding.
Last night surfaced in little bubbles of memory; they were running, were they still escaping? Or had they escaped? Was it safe to move? That was Kieran's bony shoulder under his head, Kieran's chest under his arm, which would have been lovely except that there were flies walking on his face. He snorted them away from his nostrils, rubbed at his eyes; mud flaked under his hand. It felt hot to the touch. When he opened his eyes, brightness gave him an instant headache.
Inches away, Kieran's face was dusty and gilded. This was, Ash realized, the first time he'd seen Kieran sleeping in a good light; that might account for the way Kieran's beauty shocked him. His eyelashes were astonishing. His lips, slack and soft in unconsciousness, were pure drunkenness, and Ash remembered with a surge of gladness that he had tasted them the night before. Kieran's long, callused hands were draped loosely around Ash's waist. His pulse beat in his throat. He looked about fourteen years old. He looked innocent. He was real, all this was real, they were really free.
Ash closed his eyes again, pressing his cheek a little closer against Kieran's shoulder, everything else flying away for one moment. It wasn't possible that it had all turned out so well. Things this good simply didn't happen.
He couldn't avoid the world forever, though. It was getting really, really hot out here.
Where was 'out here'? Ash moved to sit up, and discovered aches in muscles he didn't even know he had. The groan he let out woke Kieran, who immediately answered with a groan of his own.
"Ow. Shit. Ow. What died in my mouth?"
So much for innocence. Ash couldn't help smiling. "Good morning."
"Yeah." Kieran stretched, wincing. He scratched a shower of dirt out of his scalp. He looked at Ash and burst out laughing.
"What?"
"You should see yourself."
"What? I'm dirty, I know."
"You're the mud man."
"I can see you."
"Yeah, but your hair is
doing this." Kieran grabbed a hank of his own matted hair and splayed it atop his head, making a face and a rude noise.
Laughing, Ash got himself vertical and dusted himself off. There was an Ash-shaped outline on the ground where he'd been lying, an imprint still damp in a field of mud cracked into irregular polygons. The sun was over some hills in one direction, there was nothing but cracked mud in all the other directions, and though he was fairly sure direction one was therefore east, that didn't help a whole hell of a lot. "Where are we? Are we lost?"