Dead and Buryd

  ***

 

  The Oprust district in the south-west of the city had always been neutral, used as a trade centre between the different tribes, who would set up stalls of meat and skins from hunting kills they didn’t need themselves. Different herbs and plants people had gathered from the different areas of the trails were dried and crushed down into powders with different purposes. Blankets, clothes and household objects made with the people’s various skills were traded for necessities.

  In the very south of the district, families brought livestock to trade. A single sheep wrangled for a flock of chickens saved from coyotes, or a horse foal for a couple of dog pups. Different tribes were known for their different skills and specialities, and while every tribe could get by on its own, Oprust trading was always an excitement because people knew that they could get the best.

  When the Adveni arrived, they’d set up buildings, large metal monstrosities that held the different elements of their science. The buildings, or factories as they called them, created food and drinks on a mass scale as was rumoured to have been common practice centuries before, weaponry and special clothing that protected the body from firearms injuries.

  In one factory, the Adveni had begun instructing the Veniche on electricity, an invisible force that powered the lights down below in the tunnels and the buildings in the Adveni-controlled areas. In another, they harvested water from the local rivers, purifying it before sending it through large constructed pipes that separated off into each Adveni-made building.

  It wasn’t long before the district was renamed by the Veniche. While formally still called the Oprust district, amongst themselves, the Veniche named it Oppression City, a place where, when driven to desperation, A Ven might get work from the Adveni. The work was horrendous manual labour. Workers were forced into cramped areas amongst loud machines, and the money it paid was hardly worth what you had to go through to get it. Yet when a family was starving, Oppression City was often its only hope without resorting to illegal or compromising measures.

  The market was still set up each day, but cramped into a single street. It was flooded with people trying to get to the stalls and attempt a decent trade. As such, it had become a haven for thieves and other criminals, who took advantage of those trying to get by. As the thieves moved in and business was forced to be done faster within the market, up popped those who wanted to trick and scam. Dried, crushed lemongrass replaced the rarer quinati, which cured aches and gave off the same smell as the lemongrass. Other such substitutions made trading for good products difficult.

  Georgianna used to shop in the Oprust for supplies. It was easy and she liked giving the business to those who needed it, but the more dangerous trading became, the more she relied on the Carae and people she knew for her medical needs. Sure, the Carae may have charged her more, and they also took advantage by selling the mind-altering substances that people became so dependent on over time, but at least she knew what she was getting, especially by dealing with Taye, who she knew would never knock her over for a scammed sale.

  The Trade Inn was one of the few remaining bright spots in Oppression City. Before the Adveni it had been used as a place to get specially made delicacies, sweets that most couldn’t make. Yet, as time wore on, and less people had the ease to spend money on such luxuries, they slowly began selling other food. It became a place for workers in the district to stop in and get a meal on their short breaks.

  One of Georgianna’s reasons for liking the Trade Inn was that Oz, the owner, had worked in one of the Adveni alcohol factories for a time and now brewed the stuff in the back room, selling it at a much cheaper price. Many complained that the alcohol Oz brewed was akin to the oil used to clean the machines in the factories, but from how much business the place received, it seemed no one cared enough about that to turn it down.

  Taye was sat at one of the back tables when Georgianna walked in. A watered-down wheat beer sat in front of him despite the time not really being appropriate for drinking. Before him, a man was hunched close, his hand jangling with coins whenever he moved. Taye leaned in too, obviously arguing with the man, but as the man got up to leave, Taye made no effort to stop him.

  Georgianna quickly busied herself at the counter as the man passed, giving Taye enough time to pocket something that had been placed on the table, before she went over and slipped in opposite him.

  “Georgianna!” He seemed surprised at her arrival. “What are you doing here?”

  “Looking for you.”

  He didn’t answer, but drank a mouthful of his beer and placed the glass back on the table. She shifted her bag onto the chair next to her and rested her elbows on the wooden table top.

  “I went to the compound.”

  Taye’s interest was piqued. He leaned across the table, almost knocking over his beer in his hurry to wrap his fingers around her wrist, pulling her hand towards him.

  “Did you get it to her?” he asked. “What did she say?”

  Georgianna gulped. This was the moment she’d been afraid of. She didn’t know how to say it. She didn’t know whether she should be blunt and simply tell him, or if she should calm him down and explain slowly. Carefully, Georgianna reached into the side pocket of her bag with the hand Taye wasn’t clutching between his own, and pulled out the small packet.

  Taye’s gaze shot to it and his excited expression faded instantly to one of confusion.

  “Gianna…”

  “Taye, I…”

  “But we had a…”

  “She wasn’t there.”

  Staring at her in shock and confusion, he released her hand.

  “Nyah was…”

  Georgianna paused. Taye’s face was so readable, always had been. She wondered how in the world he got through sales with a face as clear as a sign post. Yet, there it was, staring at her, waiting for her to admit what she knew.

  “She was sold. Three days ago.”

  He was on his feet almost before she realised what was going on. Leaping up, she grabbed him by the arm, forcing him back towards his seat. Perched on the edge of his chair, looking ready to jump up again at any moment, he glanced between Georgianna and the packet still lying on the table.

  “To who?”

  She shook her head and released his arm, letting him slide farther back.

  “I don’t know. I was told by an inmate.”

  “They could be lying!”

  “Why would someone lie about that?”

  Taye frowned at the table.

  “I don’t know.”

  She watched as he slipped into silence, head bowed, one finger slowly tracing the rim of his glass. For the first time in a long time, she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. His mouth curved into a determined frown, and she pursed her own lips together, wondering what to say. She couldn’t tell him that the idea of finding Nyah and freeing her was ridiculous. It would be catastrophic if he wasn’t already thinking it. On the other hand, he would be angry if she suggested he was doing the right thing in leaving it be if he were already planning an attack. So Georgianna stayed quiet.

  “Who would know where she is?” Taye asked, not looking up.

  Georgianna furrowed her brow and shrugged.

  “The guards at the compound, I guess. Apart from that…”

  “You’re allowed in there, maybe they’d…”

  Her mouth dropped open as she realised what Taye was suggesting. She could still see the look Edtroka had given her, as if he was suspicious of something. There was no way he would not realise something more was going on if she started asking questions.

  “Taye! Do you know what you’re asking of me?” Georgianna replied, glancing over her shoulder to make sure nobody was around them.

  “To be a friend, Georgianna!” Taye snapped back under his breath.

  Georgianna’s nose wrinkled as a snarl threatened to hiss through her teeth.

  “Friend?” she repeated. “And when you have this information, you’re not going to go
straight after Nyah? If anything happens to her, they’ll suspect me immediately!”

  “So?”

  “So I don’t want to be buryd, Taye!”

  Taye pushed his chair back sharply, stood up, and leaned over the table.

  “You have it so sweet. You’re allowed into the compound, a decent living in that bar. You need to remember whose side you’re on!”

  Georgianna could do nothing but stare open mouthed as Taye got up from his chair. She thought about how she helped the Belsa, that she was a good daughter to her father and a good sister to Halden. She helped her friends and did what she needed to in order to live. How was she on the Adveni side? She detested what they were doing in that compound, how they pulled families apart with their drysta yard.

  No, she had to believe that Taye was just angry, that he was upset about Nyah and he was looking for the easiest outlet. That had to be it. Georgianna was positive that she wasn’t helping the Adveni any more than Taye was.

  Taye stepped around the table, snatching up the packet and pocketing it. For a moment, Georgianna thought he was going to leave her there without another word, leaving them both angry with each other, but as she stared stubbornly at the other wall, Taye leaned over her.

  “I’m getting Nyah out! You can either help me or not, but I’m getting her out.”

  Georgianna didn’t have a chance to reply before he was gone from the Inn. She sat at the table with Taye’s abandoned beer, staring through the grimy window long after the door had slammed closed behind him.

  15 Blood and Choice

  “That self-indulgent, selfish Vtensu!”

  Keiran had worn a shallow rut in the dry earth as he paced continually back and forth, boot prints merging into one another. Dust clouds puffed out as each foot landed, but Georgianna had grown tired of watching them settle amongst the dry grass since Keiran had begun ranting. A rolled cigarette was hanging from his fingers, ash gathering on the end as he forgot to flick it away while he paced. Georgianna watched him silently from her position on the wall, her heels knocking against the brick as she swung her legs. She’d tried telling him not to be angry, tried slipping her arms around his waist and telling him to forget it, but she was as good at calming Keiran down as she was with Taye. The more she tried to change the subject, the more it came back to Taye and his—in Keiran’s opinion—ridiculous demands.

  Georgianna had been closing down the bar for the night, sweeping the floor while Liliah and Penn put the glasses away and restocked the bottles behind the bar. As she reached the front of the building, she’d been caught by surprise to see Keiran leaning against the building opposite, a bottle of wheat beer hanging from one hand, a cigarette from the other. Glancing back towards Penn and Liliah, Georgianna had signalled to Keiran that she just needed a few more minutes before she locked the door behind her, carrying the broom back out towards the back of the bar. Seeing as Georgianna had offered to finish up many times for Liliah in the past so that she could get home to her partner Qiyan, Liliah had grinned broadly and quickly ushered Georgianna out of the side door towards the Belsa.

  He hadn’t planned much, but he’d brought a couple of bottles of wheat beer, and with the promise that he didn’t have to be on duty until later the next day, they’d decided to spend a little of their time together outside the tunnels. They headed to the park that the Adveni had cornered off next to the Rion district.

  The park was nice enough, with plants organised in straight lines and low walls cutting it off from the road. Once they’d hopped over the wall, Keiran had brought out the bottles, opening both and handing one to Georgianna before asking about her day.

  She had started explaining about Taye’s reaction, and almost immediately Keiran had been up off the wall, his beer abandoned as he began pacing, throwing out questions that Georgianna was sure he already knew the answer to, making comments she was already painfully aware of. However, now he’d started, she wasn’t sure how to stop him. Every time she tried, he would find a way back to his annoyance with the younger Carae man.

  “What does he think you’ll do? Walk up to the first Adveni and start demanding to know the location of his little girlfriend?”

  “I don’t know. And he didn’t demand anything, he just…”

  “He insinuated you were fucking grutt if you didn’t help him break half a dozen laws,” Keiran cut her off matter of factly.

  Georgianna raised an eyebrow, watching him with a small smile. She was grateful that he was standing up for her, even if it was only the two of them listening, but his lecturing her on law-breaking was, admittedly, a little funny.

  “Because you’re such a good, upstanding Veniche,” she commented sarcastically. “Shall we check that one with the Adveni? Maybe there has been a mistake over that pesky law of being a Belsa meaning an instant death sentence.”

  Keiran rolled his eyes as he glanced at her and brought his cigarette up to his lips, inhaling a large breath of the sweet-smelling smoke. He finally flicked the gathering ash off the end, and Georgianna watched as it flittered through the air into the dry grass.

  “That’s not the same,” Keiran dismissed her before pointing his cigarette at her. “And it’s not like you can claim complete innocence either.”

  Laughing, Georgianna brought her knees up to her chest and perched her heels on the edge of the wall, wrapping her arms around her legs. Resting her chin on her knees, she nodded her head in determination.

  “I certainly can, thank you very much!” she claimed happily. “I am just a medic. A nice, wants-to-help-others medic who always follows the rules.”

  Keiran paused in his pacing, watching her for a moment before turning and stepping up to stand before her. With the cigarette still perched loosely between his fingers, he leaned over, placing his hands against the brick on either side of her body, smirking at her.

  “You, Miss George, are anything but innocent.” His hand moved closer to her, his thumb stroking gently back and forth against her hip.

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say.” Georgianna tried to look moody, but failed. She grinned instead.

  “Nice, no,” he replied, cocking his head to the side as he considered it. “But true, yes. I don’t think there is a person alive who’d think you were innocent if they knew the truth about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “If the Adveni found out that you help the Belsa, you’re not an innocent young medic anymore. If your boss at the bar finds out you swipe a bottle or two practically every shift you work, you’re not the sweet, cheerful barmaid.”

  Georgianna opened her mouth to argue. She didn’t swipe alcohol nearly as often as he was making out, but just because she didn’t do it every night, it didn’t mean she didn’t do it at all. Seeing as his point was relatively valid, she pouted at him, nodding for him to continue.

  He leaned in closer towards her, his lips just shy of brushing her skin as he spoke. Georgianna shivered, his breath flowing over her lips and past her cheek.

  “And let’s not forget your da’ and how innocent he’d see you if I were to tell him just how much you like it when I…”

  “Alright!” she yielded, placing her hands on his shoulders and pushing him sharply away from her body. “Let’s just agree right now that you are never meeting my father!”

  Keiran laughed as he grinned triumphantly and took another drag of his cigarette.

  “Agreed.”

  She nodded.

  “So, I know you’re already un-innocent,” Keiran said slowly, the amusement from his voice gone in an instant as he took a seat next to her. “But that doesn’t mean you have to be stupid. He’s asking too much, George.”

  The smile faded and she let out a huff. She should have known better than to think they were off that conversation. Staring out across the grass of the park, she couldn’t think what to do. She didn’t want to hurt Taye by saying no, but the risk of getting caught had been weighing on her long before Keiran had put it so bluntly.

 
“I just hate seeing him miss her like this.”

  “Yeah? How much is your family going to miss you? I mean, forget the things you do for the Belsa, and how much time I’d have on my hands if you weren’t turning up in my bed when you’re bored, what would your da’ be like if you were caught? Or your brother…”

  Keiran paused and she glanced at him. His brow was furrowed, his tongue darting out to wet his lips.

  “Halden,” she confirmed.

  His expression immediately loosened and he nodded.

  “That’s it! What are they going to do if you get locked up?”

  Georgianna frowned. She hadn’t really thought about how it would affect her family. She worried about things happening to them, but it was never the other way around. They’d already lost her mother to the Adveni and Halden had lost Nequiel. Neither her father nor brother would be happy if anything happened to her. She would be inconsolable if anything happened to Halden, Braedon, or her father. She would go to the ends of the world for them, put herself in the line of five bears if it even gave one of them a slim chance of getting away unharmed. The way she saw it, she had been selfish to even consider leaving them to such sorrow.

  The more she thought about it, staring out across the dry, yellowed grass, the words her father had constantly driven into her began replaying in her head. The same words her mother had told her as a child. The Kahle were family. It didn’t matter that they were not all connected by blood; they were family because they chose to be. They looked after each other. They cared like family and so that made them one. She couldn’t leave Taye to his sorrow and heartache any more than she could abandon Halden. Nyah was her sister, and Taye her brother, both by choice. If it were Halden in the compound or sold on, Georgianna knew she would not stop until he was safe, until he was free, so how could she expect Taye to leave Nyah to her fate?

  “You’re right,” she exclaimed, nodding her head.

  Keiran leaned back and let out a sigh, a thin stream of sweet smoke billowing up into the warm air. She pursed her lips, watching as he stared up at the sky. From the look of relief on his face, he obviously thought he’d convinced her, and he had.

  “I have to help him.”

  He sat up much faster than he leaned back and turned his head, glaring down at her.

  “What?”

  “I have to help,” she repeated. “If it were Halden, I would want help getting him out. So how can I not expect the same of Taye?”

  “George, that wasn’t what I…”

  She cut him off, reaching out and placing her hand over his, resting it in his lap.

  “I know it isn’t what you meant, but it’s what I have to do. You won’t change my mind on this.”

  Keiran groaned and untangled his hand from hers, reaching up and rubbing his fingers over his face. For a moment, he frowned up at the stars, his gaze darting amongst them before he finally looked at her, giving her a resolute glare.

  “You’re going to be the death of me.”

  16 Games of Escape

  The next few days after her discussions with Taye and Keiran, Georgianna hardly had any time to think about what she might be able to do to help Nyah. There had been a fight between some Belsa and a number of Adveni trying to push their control further into the Camps, which ended up with three dead and two injured men who needed almost constant care on the Way.

  She hardly found the time to go back home, let alone go down to the Carae grounds to look for Taye. She could, in the end, only hope that Taye hadn’t rushed off to do anything stupid without waiting for her.

  The tunnels were sweltering, a constant mist of sweat dampening the dry heat that emanated from the earth. Georgianna had finally convinced Jaid to take some time off from watching over Si. Getting Jaid to leave the Way was a good sign, but it also meant Georgianna had to stay in case anybody came in for help, and to keep a general eye on the patients they already had in, Si included.

  In the furthest car from the entrance to Medics’ Way, Georgianna sat cross-legged on one of the makeshift beds, a pile of freshly washed dressings next to her, one wound tightly around her hand. Across the car, Jacob was sitting up in bed. Lacie perched on the end of the mattress, a leather bag in her lap and a selection of small wooden tiles in her hand. It was nice, watching the two of them. While they never really spoke about anything very serious, the two kept up an almost constant stream of cheerful chatter.

  “How can you say you prefer the wash?” Jacob asked in disbelief. “Everything is so… wet.”

  Lacie let out a laugh, a high giggle that chimed like the metal bells that hung from caravans on the trail. Georgianna smiled down at her knees. Lacie was much more cheerful than when she first came to the Belsa, a tiny, thin, battered girl in Beck’s arms. Georgianna had hardly ever heard the girl laugh. There was usually a sadness to her that she had barely asked about, past needing to know her injuries.

  Jacob, too, was much happier in Lacie’s presence. When others were around, even Georgianna, the young man was quiet and withdrawn, pulling himself back into the corner any time anyone came near him. Yet with Lacie he seemed like any other man of his age, almost rambunctious while talking with the younger girl.

  “But freeze is so cold!” Lacie complained, a wide grin across her lips making her complaint almost impossible to take seriously.

  “Snow!” Jacob answered quickly. “Snow is so much more fun than water.”

  Lacie shook her head quickly and crossed her arms over her chest in determination. Jacob, seemingly ignoring the girl’s silent defiance, placed one of the wooden tiles onto the pile.

  “Only three to go,” he teased, reaching out to take the small leather bag from her and selecting a new tile.

  Georgianna looked up just in time to see Lacie pout in frustration as she turned her attention back to her own tiles, moving them one at a time from one hand to the other.

  “Well, I only have two to go,” Lacie quipped.

  Jacob looked at her, a competitive glint in his eye, and chuckled.

  “I never liked snow,” Lacie admitted, flicking through the rest of her tiles. “Maybe it would have been different if I had brothers and sisters.”

  Jacob, holding his tiles up in front of his face to shield them from being looked at by his opponent, furrowed his brow.

  “I guess my sisters made it more fun,” he said slowly. “Dessie loved the snow, even as a tiny girl. She liked caking it onto me like a coat so I was a walking snowman.”

  Georgianna smiled as another bell-filled giggle spilled from Lacie’s lips.

  Shifting her position on the bed as she placed the tightly wound dressing into the linen pack, she glanced over at the couple, smiling for a moment. It was nice that the two of them had each other. Even while the young man was unconscious, Lacie had taken it upon herself to tend to his every wound and to make sure that he was always comfortable. She was sure that even if she hadn’t been in Medics’ Way all the time, Lacie would have found reasons to come check on him.

  She wondered whether it had been curiosity on the young girl’s part, knowing that this man had been through the same things she had, felt the same pains and in some cases, worse. She wondered if he was a little slice of salvation for the redhead. If he could get past his injuries, maybe Lacie could as well? Up until now, Georgianna hadn’t dared ask the young man anything too stressful, but as she watched, she realised that here was her perfect opportunity.

  “Jake,” Georgianna opened cautiously, placing the dressings aside and leaning forward.

  Jacob looked up from his tiles in surprise, glancing over towards Georgianna with wide brown eyes. Beneath his mop of curly, dark hair, he looked so childlike, so innocent, that Georgianna wanted to scoop him into a tight hug and never let him go. On the other hand, it made asking her question so much more difficult.

  “Yeah?” he asked.

  Lacie was watching from beneath a fan of fair eyelashes, keeping her head down towards her lap though her gaze darted between Jac
ob and Georgianna. Georgianna shifted her legs out, placing her feet on the ground.

  “I was wondering,” she continued, “How did you escape?”

  For a moment, Jacob simply stared at her. There was no shock on his face, no anger, just a quiet sort of expectation, like he’d known the question would come and it was only a matter of when, and from whom. Georgianna blinked, wondering if he’d already been asked by others and he was checking off each person and how long it would take them. If that was the case, Georgianna could only hope she’d lasted longer than others.

  “George,” Lacie complained quietly. “That’s… That’s not… He’s still healing.”

  Georgianna frowned and pushed herself back, opening her mouth to apologise. Lacie was right. Jacob was still healing from his wounds, was still sent into fevers from the continued pain of the Nsiloq mark branded into his skin. However, before Georgianna could spill a single word of apology, Jacob reached out, sliding his hand cautiously over Lacie’s and squeezing her slim fingers in his own.

  “It’s alright,” he whispered.

  Georgianna and Lacie both stared at the hand in Lacie’s lap, grasping the girl’s pale flesh. Yes, Jacob had been friendly and cheerful towards the girl, but he was still incredibly skittish about being touched by anyone, including Lacie. It was why they changed his dressings while he slept, because everyone on the Way knew how much anxiety it gave him to have people close. Lacie’s mouth dropped open, her expression doing nothing to hide the fact that the gesture was as shocking to her as it was to Georgianna.

  It only took a second, a single second of them both staring at his hand, for Jacob to quickly tug his arm back, breaking the connection. He buried both his hands into his lap, staring at his knees for a moment.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked quietly.

  “Jake, you don’t have to,” Lacie urged.

  “No, it’s okay.”

  Georgianna gazed apologetically at Lacie for a moment before turning her attention back to Jacob. She wanted to move closer to him to hear better but she didn’t dare for fear of making him retreat further into himself. Instead, she grasped the edge of the bed, holding herself in place.

  “I have a friend who has been sold,” Georgianna explained. “I want to know how it happens, where you go. I know this is hard, Jacob, and I don’t want you suffering, but… any information you can give me might be useful.”

  “Are you planning something?” he asked, not meeting her gaze.

  Georgianna tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She couldn’t tell them that yes, she was planning on helping to break a drysta away from her owner. However, she also didn’t feel right lying about it, especially when Jacob was offering her more than he probably wanted to give.

  “For the moment it’s just information.”

  That much was the truth at least. She couldn’t plan anything if she didn’t have the information. Maybe Jacob’s story would prove that it was practically impossible, that his escape had been a rare fluke that relied on luck and nothing more. Maybe she would find out that planning was useless.

  Jacob rocked himself forward for a moment, staring intently at his knees before he finally pushed himself up straight, moving himself into the corner of his bed. He pushed his body back, bracing his feet against the bed until the walls pressed so hard against his skin that his flesh flattened to the metal. Georgianna frowned. This was too painful for him. She should stop it. She opened her mouth.

  “When I was caught I was sent to the compound,” Jacob said in a fast murmur. “I was there for a week when a guard came into the block. Even back then we knew it was strange. They didn’t come in unless…”

  “Unless for count,” Georgianna nodded.

  Jacob nodded.

  “I’d been hiding in a cell with a couple of others. We were young so we were trying to protect ourselves from… others,” he continued. “With a guard on the block, we all had to come out. He selected five of us from a list and we were taken to the Yard.”

  “Jake…” Lacie moaned.

  This time, Jacob didn’t reach for the redhead, even as she buried her face into her hands, the tiles spilling from her fingers onto the bed.

  Guilt flooded through her. She had known this would be difficult for Jacob but she hadn’t fully known how difficult it would be for Lacie. Their stories were so similar. Hearing his struggle had to be the same for the girl. Pushing herself quickly off the bed, Georgianna moved over to Jacob’s. Jacob, without even looking up, curled his legs tighter to his chest, but relaxed a little as she, instead of coming towards him, looped an arm around Lacie’s shoulders and murmured apologies into her ear.

  “I wasn’t sold the first day, so I was kept in the other block, where they keep the people who will be sold,” Jacob explained. “The next day, a man bid on me.”

  “How old were you?” Georgianna asked, brushing her hand gently over Lacie’s hair.

  “Fourteen.”

  “And when he bought you, what happened?”

  “You’re taken to be registered,” Lacie answered. “There’s a room. They take you in and an Adveni takes a sample of blood.”

  Almost at the exact same time, Lacie and Jacob raised their left thumb and held it there for a moment. Georgianna hugged Lacie a little tighter to her.

  “They take information on you,” Jacob explained. “Name, age, tribe, everything. It all gets put into a… a…”

  He held his hands a little way out in front of him, one hand flat, facing up, the other drawing like a pencil on paper.

  “On a tsentyl?” Georgianna asked.

  Jacob nodded.

  “The information goes to their… their… main thing, and it’s kept.”

  “Same as if you register yourself,” Georgianna explained. “I had to go in and register with my family.”

  Jacob did nothing but nod again.

  “So what happened, you know, after that?”

  Jacob shrugged, his gaze not shifting from his knees. Wrapping his arms around his legs, he looked like a small child, not a young man. Georgianna wondered if he’d always looked young, curled back into the corner, trying to save himself from his owner’s rage.

  “Whatever they want,” he answered. “After they’ve registered you, you’re theirs, they can do anything.”

  Lacie untangled herself from Georgianna’s arm and set about methodically putting all the tiles into a neat stack in her hands. Each tile facing the same direction and the right way up.

  “The cinystalq?” Georgianna asked.

  Cinystalq collars were an Adveni design used on dreta. Clamped around the neck, the collar could not only track a person’s movements, but also issue punishment in the form of painful shocks travelling through the body. From what Georgianna knew, they were difficult to remove. Doing it wrong could end up killing the wearer as the energy inside escaped into the body when the connection was broken.

  A couple of years before, it had been thought impossible. It was only when a Belsa turned up, collar in hand, that they realised that the impossible was actually doable with a little training and care.

  Jacob shook his head, his lips pursed. It looked like he was thinking about it, but when he answered, it was clear he’d already known what to say, just that it was harder to say it.

  “Personal choice. They are expensive, so most Adveni don’t bother unless they are having… problems.”

  Georgianna pressed her lips into a thin line as she considered his answer. It was good news in a way. Knowing that most Adveni who purchased a Veniche as a drysta wouldn’t bother with a cinystalq.

  As she thought about it, Georgianna hadn’t even realised that Jacob was rubbing his hand back and forth over the side of his neck where a long burn had healed not long before. Now, against his skin, a thin white line curved from just beneath his ear and disappeared under the neck of his shirt.

  “How did you get away?” Georgianna asked.

  His fingers paused halfway down his neck, and Jacob
glanced off to the side, a curl of dark brown hair falling in front of his eyes before he impatiently pushed it away.

  “My owner didn’t pay a lot of attention to me.”

  Georgianna’s gaze crept to the scars she could see on Jacob’s arms, long faded marks mixed with newer, angrier reds. From the look of him, Jacob’s owner had paid a lot of attention to the young man, and none of it in the way anyone would like. However, looking at him, Georgianna didn’t dare disagree.

  “It was only when he was bored that I became worthy of notice.” His voice was barely more than a whisper. “It was… it was almost okay at first, but then… After the last time, I knew I’d not last and so I ran when he was asleep. I figured I’d get far enough and the collar would kill me, but someone found me and they got the collar off.”

  “Are they so open with security? Why doesn’t everyone run?”

  “Some are.”

  Georgianna looked down in surprise as Lacie spoke instead of Jacob. She was looking at the tiles, flipping through them, though it had been unmistakably her voice.

  “At first they keep you locked away, all doors and windows shut. After a while, you stop thinking about running except when it gets really bad,” she continued. “But then, you’re scared of what will happen and…”

  “And you stay put,” Jacob finished when it seemed Lacie had lost her will to continue.

  Georgianna nodded slowly. From the sounds of it, Nyah would still be the type of drysta locked away, kept on a tight leash while she became accustomed to her new position. Unfortunately, that also meant that, most likely, she would be kept close to the Adveni who had bought her. It would be difficult for her to get away for any length of time.

  “Jacob, when you were sold… do you remember who did it?”

  Jacob frowned, and for the first time since he’d began speaking about what had happened to him, his gaze met Georgianna’s. His eyes were narrowed, but Georgianna was sure it wasn’t in anger, it was confusion.

  “Who bought me?”

  “No, who sold you from the compound? Are there specific guards, or do they all do it?” she asked.

  “Oh.” He looked back down at the bed. “There are a few who deal, but the one who sold me? His name was Edtroka.”

  Georgianna’s mouth dropped open as she stared at Jacob, and though he looked like he wanted to find out what was so surprising about that name, he didn’t ask. Edtroka couldn’t have been his favourite person. She didn’t want to have to explain to him that she knew the man who had sold him to an Adveni who would torment and beat him for almost six years.

  “Thank you, Jake, for telling me.”

  Jacob nodded gently but didn’t speak again. When she stood up, Jacob shifted and lay on his side, curled into a ball at the far end of the mattress. He held his pillow squashed in his arms. Georgianna considered suggesting to Lacie that they should give him some time alone, but Lacie had already moved, stretching out her arm, entwining her fingers with Jacob’s.

  No words passed between them as Georgianna collected her things and left the two alone. She felt horrible for asking Jacob and Lacie to relive what had obviously been the most horrific of times for them, but as she took a final glance back at the pair curled on the bed, she couldn’t help but feel that maybe talking about it had actually been the best thing she could have done for them. Maybe talking about things they had kept to themselves for so long had given them the chance to begin to move on.

  17 Question of Delicacy

  Georgianna’s conversation with Jacob and Lacie remained in her head for two days. In some ways, getting Nyah out seemed more possible than it had before, as the story that cinystalq collars were placed on every drysta at the moment of purchase had been proved a myth. However, knowing that a drysta would be more heavily controlled while they became accustomed to their new situation made the idea of breaking her out any time soon look virtually impossible.

  Still, even though it had been days since her argument with Taye, Georgianna had yet to approach him about helping out. She knew that the longer she left it, the more likely it was that Taye would do something reckless, but Georgianna also didn’t want to go to him with a half-baked idea that would wash away at the lightest touch. She needed something positive, something they could work with, like who it was who had bought Nyah in the first place.

  She had meant to go to the compound the next day, feigning that she had her days mixed up, but as things usually went, she’d been caught up with other responsibilities, one of which included looking after Braedon while her father went down to the Oprust district and Halden worked. Her nephew had been more than happy to spend the morning with her, especially as it meant going to various sections of the camps to make small trades. Georgianna had been a little worried about taking her nephew with her, but Braedon had been fascinated with the different places and people. He was thrilled when his aunt, someone who was usually seen as someone to entertain him, had been asked to stitch up a rather ugly-looking wound on an equally ugly-looking man, something Georgianna was grateful Braedon had not commented on.

  Having left the family home early that morning to get back into the centre of the city before sun up, Georgianna made her way through the tunnels towards the east of the city, taking the familiar lines until she could come up out of the entrance a few hundred metres from the entrance to the compound.

  Getting through the gates was a rather regular affair, though with Edtroka not standing guard, it had been up to Georgianna to ask whether he was on duty.

  “Dreta,” the guard had grumbled at her, handing back her bag, now checked for contraband, for Georgianna to take inside.

  Georgianna gave a small, polite nod and instead of taking the first door into the compound, walked down a bricked path that led along the side of the high walls.

  Between the wall and the fenced cage surrounding the compound, the thin path felt more like a tunnel than anything else. Georgianna could only guess at the reason they’d made it so narrow, but as she saw the crowd of people gathered in the yard at the end, she wondered whether it was to prevent a quick getaway should anything happen. Only so many people could get through the fenced corridor at a time, not to mention that at the other end they would face guards with heavy copaq weapons. Her father had once told her that, should you wish to fight off a large number with only a few men, leaving them no entrance or retreat but a small corridor meant only so many could attack at any one time. Looking at the swarm of Adveni and the number of Veniche lined up to be sold, she decided that was a useful thing to keep in mind here.

  It took a while to locate Edtroka. She’d first made her way respectfully through the crowd to the other end of the yard, letting Adveni bump and push her around and apologising to them each time they did. When she could not see Edtroka standing guard near the dreta waiting to be sold, she instead stood near the high wall of the compound, looking out through the sea of people. She finally spotted Edtroka. He was talking to a man with a pompous, self-important expression on his face. Edtroka was nodding politely, but even through the stiff, polite smile, Georgianna could see that he was not enjoying the conversation.

  Georgianna slipped through the crowd, once again apologising to anyone who barged into her, until she reached Edtroka’s side. She held her distance a few yards away, giving the two men the space to continue their conversation. It only took a minute or two before Edtroka held the side of his fist to the middle of his chest in the Adveni mark of respect, and the other man turned to walk swiftly away.

  “Guard Edtroka?” Georgianna asked cautiously, stepping forward.

  Edtroka turned, the forced smile on his lips fading for a moment, to be replaced by a look of amusement. Georgianna looked at him, surprised that his expression would not be one of annoyance, especially seeing as he’d seemed almost incapable of fully hiding his contempt from someone who was clearly his superior. Edtroka stepped forward and nodded to her.

  “Med,” he answered, his head cocked to the side. “Don’t
see you here often. You do know I’m not allowed to sell to you, right?”

  Georgianna gazed back at him in surprise. The only time she’d seen Edtroka for long enough to hold an actual conversation, he’d been stiff and surly. Today he seemed practically happy to see her.

  Not entirely sure how to respond, she faltered, glancing up towards the area where Veniche were waiting to be sold as dreta. There was such a stark contrast among them, young and old, male and female, defiant to downright terrified. She couldn’t look at Edtroka, his gaze was too piercing for her liking, as if he could see what she was thinking, what she was planning.

  “I was hoping you’d be able to give me some information,” she said. “On a sale.”

  His gaze flickered over to the soon-to-be dreta and the Adveni guarding them. Georgianna suspected that he was about to tell her that he wasn’t allowed, that giving over information like that was considered dangerous. However, when he looked back at her, he nodded for her to go on, holding one hand out and curling his fingers over his palm to ask for the details.

  Georgianna was stunned. She’d expected to be drilled with questions about why she wanted such information, but instead she was being treated like an equal to this man. At least, for the moment. With no idea how long the pleasure would last, she quickly adjusted the strap across her shoulder and glanced around them to see if anyone was listening.

  “Her name is Nyah Wolfe, she was Kahle,” she continued. “Twenty-three, blonde.”

  Edtroka nodded, his lips curved into a momentary frown before he shrugged.

  “Gone eight days,” he answered. “Maybe nine, this heat makes it hard to remember.”

  She nodded enthusiastically.

  “That’s right. She was in the block for an assault.”

  Edtroka let out a laugh, a gruff sound that didn’t suit his face. Georgianna looked at him properly. His eyes, the mottled brown of yapoque leaves after they had been dried for smoking, held more warmth than she’d noticed before, and his features were almost delicate. High, curved cheekbones on a slim face above a pointed jaw and a straight nose led the gaze directly down to the bow of his lips. She blinked and glanced down, forgetting about his face as she realised he had about five methods of killing her strapped to his uniform that didn’t include his bare hands. Her gaze settled on his slim fingers, capable of killing a person with ease.

  “She wa…”

  “E’troke!”

  The voice came out of the crowd and despite the difference in the pronunciation of his name, Edtroka turned his head towards the sound. As Georgianna fell back a step, not wanting to get caught in the middle of a conversation between two Adveni, she wondered whether the difference in pronunciation was because she’d been saying it wrong. Yes, Edtroka had introduced himself as such, but Georgianna knew that there were certain pronunciations Veuric tongues never got right when it came to Adtvenis words. Maybe Edtroka’s name was one of them, so he’d just given up trying.

  “Tzanlomne,” Edtroka greeted the newcomer with another fixed, polite smile.

  The man was short compared to most Adveni, almost a head shorter than Edtroka, but with dark features to rival the taller man and a wider stance, he seemed to demand as much respect as the guard. Georgianna averted her gaze, but unfortunately not fast enough.

  “That one, how much?”

  Edtroka looked over his shoulder at Georgianna and shook his head.

  “She’s a medic, not drysta.”

  The man, Tzanlomne, snorted in derision and rolled his eyes. Edtroka’s word meant little as he reached out, grasping Georgianna’s chin in a grip so tight that she thought his fingers might crush straight through her jaw. She jerked backward away from him, but his grip was too tight, holding her still with one hand while he waved the other dismissively.

  “I don’t care what she was, E’troke,” he answered. “I care what you will sell her for. She’d make a nice addition.”

  Tzanlomne barely looked at Edtroka. He turned her head this way and that, his gaze travelling over every inch of her face. He reached out and tugged the ribbon from her hair, watching as it fell in a tumble of messy blonde waves over her shoulders.

  “I won’t, and she wouldn’t,” Edtroka snarled through gritted teeth.

  She struggled against him. Grasping his wrist, she tried to pull his grasp away from her face. Tzanlomne’s grin of approval slid into a sneer. He grasped her hair in a tight fist, yanking her head back.

  Georgianna yelped and her ribbon sailed silently to the ground.

  “Now, E’troke, I have my ways, you might as well be part of the…”

  Edtroka cut him off by snapping something in such rapid Adtvenis that even if Georgianna had known more than a few names and swearwords, she still wouldn’t have understood. It was no more than a few sentences, but the snarl on Edtroka’s lips, or perhaps the words that hissed forth, were enough to make Tzanlomne narrow his eyes and turn his attention away from his new potential toy.

  She could barely see Edtroka from the way she was held, but she felt the extra fingers in her hair as Edtroka pried Tzanlomne’s hand from her. Tzanlomne released her and Georgianna hurried back a few steps. She rubbed her fingers over her skin, glancing to Edtroka to find his face twisted into a murderous mask. Tzanlomne took a step back, and when Edtroka’s expression didn’t soften, he turned, stalking away through the crowd.

  Georgianna watched with cautious curiosity as Edtroka glared after Tzanlomne. She didn’t dare ask him what had been said in Adtvenis though she was dying to know what had transpired between the two Adveni men. Once Tzanlomne had disappeared into the crowd, Edtroka turned back to her, the frown still present on his pursed lips.

  “Everything alright?”

  Edtroka gave a dismissive wave of his hand.

  “Vtensu varsonnir!” Edtroka answered without any more explanation.

  It was an insult, one Georgianna had learned a few years before. Vtensu could be used in a number of ways, but as an expletive, it was very similar to the insult ‘bastard’. Varsonnir, however, was specific. You had to listen carefully, as a Veniche anyway, to hear the difference from Volsonnar, the name for the Adveni leader much like the Elder of a tribe. Varsonnir, on the other hand, was reserved for someone who thought they were more important than they were.

  From Edtroka’s insult, Tzanlomne was a self-important bastard, and Georgianna found herself grinning.

  “Well, thank you,” she muttered.

  “For?” Edtroka asked, looking at her in surprise.

  “For not selling me.”

  He laughed again, the same gruff burst that in Georgianna’s opinion didn’t suit him.

  Glancing over his shoulder in the direction Tzanlomne had disappeared, Edtroka reached out and took hold of her elbow.

  Georgianna tugged her elbow back away from him. She didn’t feel as safe as she had before. The man had cared little whether she was legally for sale, and if other Adveni were the same, what would it take for Edtroka to turn a blind eye and accept the payment? She was in the compound already, it wouldn’t be difficult for him to create some charge that stripped her of her legal registration as a free Veniche.

  Edtroka’s grasp, while not as tight or restricting as Tzanlomne’s, was just as unbreakable. He kept hold of her arm and began leading her through the crowd towards the compound doors.

  “Even if you were up for sale, he would not have you,” Edtroka told her with a wicked grin. “I would be in front of him in the queue.”

  “Is… Is that a compliment?”

  “Perhaps.”

  Georgianna couldn’t help but notice the glances she received as she was half-tugged towards the walls of the prison. Maybe it was because she wasn’t out here often, or because she was being held onto by a guard of the compound, but she received more than a couple of curious looks before they slipped through the door and into the cool relief of the compound corridor.

  The shadows that flung themselves through the corridor stunned her i
nto blindness once the door swung closed with a bang. She blinked rapidly as she was tugged along. Edtroka seemingly had no problem with the sudden shade, or knew the corridors too well to need sight to navigate them. Surging forward, he turned them down a slimmer corridor that ended in an open door. With her sight slowly returning, she glanced over her shoulder, any exit now out of sight.

  Fear surged through her as she wondered whether Edtroka’s protection of her in the yard had more to do with his own desires. Had she asked about a drysta’s whereabouts to an Adveni who’d been looking for a reason to keep her in the compound? Was that where he was taking her now?

  As they proceeded through the open door, Edtroka made no effort to close it behind them. Instead he released Georgianna’s elbow and marched across the small room, collecting up a jacket. Georgianna stood just inside the doorway watching him, her hands clenched before her. She wondered whether he was retrieving the device that opened the block door, or perhaps a pair of binding cuffs before he took her back to the yard. He dug into one of the pockets of the jacket, and pulled out a tsentyl, swiping his thumb casually across it.

  She didn’t feel any more reassured, wondering if he was registering her capture. Glancing over her shoulder through the open door, Georgianna wondered how far she could run before the guard would catch her.

  She’d never reach the gates, and even if she did, Edtroka could easily send a message to make sure the other guards knew not to let her pass.

  “The girl, she related?” he asked, barely glancing up from the device as it opened onto his palm.

  “Who?” Georgianna asked in surprise, looking at him again.

  Edtroka glanced up, raising an eyebrow.

  “You wanted information on a sale, right?”

  She blinked, staring at him for a moment before she realised what he was talking about. The run in with Tzanlomne had driven Nyah from her mind. Now the memory was back, she nodded.

  “Nyah.”

  Edtroka nodded, but didn’t look up as he moved his thumb over the tsentyl again.

  “Not by blood,” Georgianna answered. “I grew up with her and a friend, though. I just…”

  Lifting his head, Edtroka fixed Georgianna with a hard glare, one that immediately told her that she was not to argue with him.

  “You just want to make sure she is safe.”

  Georgianna paused, taking a slow deep breath before she nodded.

  “That’s right.”

  “Maarqyn,” he answered. “She was bought by Maarqyn Guinnyr.”

  “Maarqyn,” Georgianna repeated. “Who is he?”

  Edtroka shook his head as he slid the tsentyl closed and stuffed it back into the pocket of his jacket. Slinging the item over the back of a chair, Edtroka perched himself on the edge of the table, watching her like a hawk hunting for prey.

  “No one you should be pressing for information, Med,” he said. “My advice: find out your friend is okay from a distance and then leave be. Your pretty neck will be the better for it.”

  Georgianna’s eyes widened as she looked back at Edtroka. She didn’t want to think that Maarqyn was really that dangerous, or that he would hurt Nyah. She knew better than most that only a small number of dreta got through unscathed. Even if they weren’t physical wounds like Jacob’s, they were always there.

  “Thank… Thank you for telling me.”

  A shudder moved down her spine when Edtroka’s gaze didn’t falter from her face. She took a step back and his lips flickered into a momentary grin.

  “No need to thank me.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. Taking another small step back, she was again wondering how far she could run when Edtroka shrugged, almost chuckling.

  “Dreta owners are public record. I could have sent you into the city to find out from them, but they ask more questions and… well… not a problem.”

  Georgianna froze. Had she really just worked herself up over nothing? Every look, every motion, she’d thought meant something else. She almost didn’t know what to do now. She’d worked this whole thing up in her head as such a problem when, as it turned out, it was almost as if it were a common occurrence.

  Edtroka pushed himself quickly up from the edge of the table. Georgianna didn’t think anything of it until a hand clapped onto her shoulder, making her jump. She turned her head, looking up at one of the other guards.

  “What you doing here?” he asked. “E’troke?”

  “I’m guessing she’s looking to be let onto the block,” he suggested. “Got turned around, right, Med?”

  Looking between the two guards in surprise, Georgianna hesitated for a moment.

  “Yes, Volsonne,” she answered, glancing at Edtroka with a cautious smile.

  “I’m going that way anyway,” Edtroka said, patting the guard on the front of his shoulder as he passed through the doorway into the corridor. “I’ll take her.”

  The guard shrugged and removed his hand from Georgianna’s shoulder.

  “Thought you’d have known better, Medic,” he warned.

  Georgianna nodded.

  “Yeah, me too,” Georgianna replied.

  She followed Edtroka down the corridor, wondering why, if it was all public record, Edtroka had lied to the other guard. However, the guard was right about one thing. When it came to the compound and asking about things that went on within it, she really should have known better.

  18 Into the Northern Quarters

  “Are you sure we’re going the right way?” Georgianna asked, looking over her shoulder for what felt like the hundredth time.

  Taye nodded, though she didn’t think he seemed all that sure about it, the way he kept looking around. She frowned, chewing on her lip as she stared down the street, the houses melting into each other.

  “It was the eighteenth?”

  “Yes, Gianna, will you give it a rest already?” Taye hissed irritably. “I know where I’m going.”

  Frowning and gritting her teeth, Georgianna resisted the urge to roll her eyes. It was fine him telling her not to worry, but he wasn’t the one who had asked the questions about Nyah, and to an Adveni no less. If something happened, who did Taye think they would suspect? She had done her part, she was doing it. She’d found out who Nyah had been sold to, Taye couldn’t ask more of her than that.

  She remained silent, even though she itched to get a straight answer from him. Crossing her arms over her chest, her fingers drummed against her skin. Silence stretched between them like rubber, threatening to snap.

  Who knew how long they would have before an Adveni spotted them and asked them what they were even doing in this district? Taye had brought some ‘product’ with him, an insurance plan so that, should they be asked, he could say he was delivering a purchase. He’d even memorised the street name of a client so that he could lie convincingly. However, the best option was that they were able to come, see the house, and then move away without being seen.

  “Who did you say gave you this?”

  Taye turned his head to glare at her in disbelief, a huff of indignation whistling through his teeth.

  “Suns girl, you don’t give up, do you?”

  She shook her head.

  “I think I have a right to be worried,” she grumbled, stuffing her hands into her pockets. “We’re in Adveni territory, Taye. Or had you forgotten with all these nice buildings?”

  The buildings were nice, almost annoyingly so. It was just that little bit harder to hate the Adveni when you were surrounded by their technology. Georgianna didn’t venture into the Adveni sections of the city very often apart from the Rion, but even there the bright lights bouncing off smooth, polished surfaces were hard to ignore. Everything was sleek and well made, smooth lines and sharp corners. It all looked very… technical.

  Out in their housing quarter things were a little simpler. The buildings were less focused, but beautiful just the same. Two and three-storey buildings sprawled across larger areas of land in the wealthy areas, tall blocks that hou
sed dozens of dwellings for those who were not as high on the pay scale.

  The biggest building they had seen so far, a little way in past the beginning of the dwellings, had been a two-storey complex that spread like a lake, sprawling further than Georgianna could see. The pale yellow stone shining in the sunlight made it almost blinding. Outside there had been no signs in Veuric as to what it was. Unfortunately, Taye didn’t know.

  “It was just a guy I do a deal with,” Taye sighed finally. “I promised him a couple extra doses if he found out where this Vtensu lived.”

  “Doses?” she shrieked. Taye glanced fearfully at her, so she lowered her voice. “Please tell me the guy was at least not taking while he agreed.”

  Taye waved his hand, a smug grin on his face.

  “You want to take issue with my sources, Gianna, you might want to return the Adveni stuff I get you.”

  Georgianna clutched her bag against her hip and pressed her lips together as Taye laughed.

  “Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

  Georgianna had dosed a couple of times, though not for a while. It was a slippery slope. The euphoric sensation the powder gave when smeared onto the temples was thrilling, and she could understand why some chose to do it more often. However, she’d also seen the effects of dosing over a long period, so she made sure to keep her own use to a minimum.

  “Remember Taye, we’re just looking!” Georgianna reminded him forcefully.

  Taye glanced at her, turning his head and glaring for a moment, his steps slowing as he seemed to consider whether to answer her or not. Not, it turned out, won the argument and he quickened his steps along the road, crossing his arms defensively over his chest. Georgianna immediately lengthened her stride to catch up with him.

  “Taye! We’re just looking… right?”

  “Yes!” Taye snapped, not looking back this time. “Just looking. So stop, alright?”

  “You’re just… you’re not filling me with a lot of confidence here.”

  Taye stopped, turning on his heel to move in front of her. Georgianna wavered for a moment mid-step, quickly righting herself and coming to a stop in front of him.

  “What do you expect?” he demanded.

  Georgianna frowned and shrugged. She didn’t know what she expected from Taye. He’d been so anxious since the moment she had told him that she knew who had bought Nyah. No, that was wrong, he had been this way since Nyah was taken. There were times when he was cheerful, but mostly, he wasn’t the same guy that she had known before. Even after the Adveni arrived, Taye had always been happy and confident, yet these days Georgianna hardly recognised him.

  “I know you’re worried about her, but…”

  “Yes, I am, but, can we just talk about something else?”

  Georgianna sighed and nodded. Maybe it was best.

  “Like?”

  Taye turned away from her, starting off down the road again, though Georgianna couldn’t work out how Taye could keep his head straight in this maze. The roads twisted and turned and she had no idea how many turnings they’d taken onto different streets. Taye, apparently, was keeping track, because he was walking with the determination of someone who knew exactly where they were going.

  Georgianna hurried to keep up, a few long strides before she fell into step with him. Taye was naturally tall and long legged, so it meant Georgianna had to push every step to stay close. Luckily, however, she was used to walking next to her father and brother, both a good head taller than her.

  “I dunno, how’s your da’?” he asked.

  Smiling and giving him a careless shrug, Georgianna glanced sideways up at Taye.

  “He’s alright,” she answered. “I think he likes having Braedon around to keep him company when he’s at home.”

  “Yeah, he’s what, four now?”

  “Almost five,” she answered. “And exactly like Halden.”

  Taye glanced at her and raised an eyebrow. Taye knew Braedon was not theirs by blood, but he didn’t comment on it.

  “Well, out of the people to be like, Halden’s a good one,” he said. “How is Halden doing, anyway?”

  Georgianna’s grin faded and she looked down at the floor, watching the smooth path pass beneath her feet.

  “He’s… surviving.”

  “Aren’t we all?”

  “Some better than others.”

  Taye rocked his head from side to side.

  Georgianna brought her hands from her pockets and clasped them in front of her, idly picking at a notch in her thumb nail.

  “I dunno, he seems fine, work and all, but I don’t think he’s even trying to move on.”

  “Should he?” Taye asked. “He was joined, that’s not an easy thing to get past.”

  Georgianna nodded. She knew she couldn’t expect Halden to move on from Nequiel, not when his death had been so horrific. Yet like Taye, her brother was no longer the same person she had grown up with. He was quieter, more reserved, and less willing to talk about anything important. As selfish and as stupid as it was with everything Halden had been through, Georgianna missed her brother.

  “It’s not like Nyah,” she said slowly. “Nequiel is gone.”

  “You say that like my missing Nyah is worse,” Taye answered. “I still have hope that I can see her, maybe even get her back one day. Halden doesn’t.”

  Taye looked sideways at her, raising an eyebrow as Georgianna glanced up at him.

  “We don’t all flit easily onto someone new.”

  Georgianna opened her mouth in indignation. She’d never been in Taye’s situation, or Halden’s. She’d never even considered joining with someone, not past a silly teenage fantasy.

  “I don’t…”

  “Oh yes you do,” Taye cut her off. “You think your brother likes that Keiran?”

  “He doesn’t…”

  “Yeah, he knows,” Taye confirmed. “You’re not half as secretive as you think you are. They know you’re seeing someone, someone who doesn’t treat you the way you deserve.”

  Georgianna harrumphed at his suggestion and shook her head.

  “He’s nice to me!” Georgianna argued. “And it’s not like I’ve been begging him to join and he’s saying no. I’m not ready for that either.”

  “That doesn’t mean your family like it. They want you settled with a decent guy.”

  “Settled is…”

  “Safe?”

  “Boring.”

  Taye laughed and rolled his eyes. Georgianna looked away.

  “Well, boring or not, Keiran is not who I would suggest doing it with.”

  “Oh, and I suppose you have a host of guys for me to choose from?” she asked. “There is nothing wrong with Keiran. He’s Nerrin, he’s a Belsa!”

  “He’s a Vtensu!”

  Georgianna reached out and smacked Taye. He stepped away, rubbing his arm.

  “I’ll tell your uncle what you said if you don’t shut your mouth.”

  “Tell him. He’ll agree with me,” Taye argued.

  “He’s…”

  “Oh, admit it Gianna, you like him because he’s handsome, not because he’s a good guy.”

  “He is a good guy!” Georgianna exclaimed.

  “No, he’s not. If he was, he wouldn’t be running round with other girls.”

  “How do you…?”

  “Everyone in the tunnels knows he has a different girl most nights,” Taye answered with a hard look. “You’re more often than most, but there are others.”

  “You think I don’t know that?”

  “Then why put up with it?”

  Georgianna stopped, glaring at Taye in annoyance. Though, it did occur to her for a moment that maybe she was more annoyed that so many people apparently knew the ins and outs of her private life. Liliah, Wrench, Taye, and apparently her family. Now, Taye was making out that everyone in the tunnels knew as well. The Belsa, the Carae, her sex life was apparently common knowledge.

  She was probably worrying about it too much. Taye was ov
er-exaggerating. He had to be.

  “The last one was better,” he said suddenly.

  “The last what?”

  “Boyfriend.”

  “What boyfriend? I wasn’t…”

  Taye uncrossed his arms from over his chest, clicking his fingers together as he waved his hand around, as if that would help him remember.

  “Al… Al… Alec?”

  Georgianna looked at Taye in surprise. As surprised as she was that Taye knew about Keiran, it was even more of a shock that he knew about Alec.

  “Alec was never my boyfriend,” Georgianna said.

  Taye opened his mouth, ready to reply, but Georgianna held up her hand, cutting him off.

  “Plus, you can like him all you want,” she muttered. “He’s dead, so there’s no point talking about it.”

  Taye looked away quickly. Whether he’d not known about Alec’s death, or he’d simply not thought about it before bringing it up, a slight colour rose on his cheeks and he stuffed his hands into his pockets. Georgianna felt a little bad. She hadn’t meant to bring it up quite so bluntly, but it was the truth, Alec was dead and there was nothing that could be done. Like Nequiel, people simply had to find a way to move on.

  Alec had been fun to hang out with, and they certainly found each other attractive and enjoyable enough to keep going back, but they had both known what it was. She wasn’t looking for a relationship, and Alec was trying to forget the loss of one. She had asked him about her once, his wife, but he simply said that she was gone and that was that, conversation over.

  That was the thing about Alec: everyone knew he was a great guy, that he was a skilled fighter and had impeccable morals, but he was hard to actually know on any intimate level. His unwavering belief in his hatred of the Adveni, which admittedly he had good cause for, made it difficult to talk to him about anything regarding them, including her work at the compound. Alec had made his opinions on her working there abundantly clear: it was a bad idea and she shouldn’t go back because one day she would get caught up in it.

  When Georgianna refused, the argument had not been pretty. It was, unfortunately, one of the most honest conversations they ever had, yet it had turned into a shouting match which ended in her storming out. She didn’t need some guy she fooled around with telling her who she should and shouldn’t help.

  She’d been stubborn, refusing to go back and apologise, even though she really did think Alec was a decent guy. However, before the stubbornness had even begun to fade, she’d learned that he was missing. She’d looked for him, she’d checked the compound and she’d listened in on conversations between the Belsa, but in the end, they’d agreed that death was the only logical explanation for his disappearance.

  For a while, Taye and Georgianna walked in silence, Taye watching the buildings pass around them, Georgianna watching her feet. She tried not to think of Alec too often, even though she knew that his death had not been her fault. He was a Belsa: short life expectancy was almost a given. Despite her difficulty in getting to know him, he had been a decent friend if nothing more.

  Georgianna still hadn’t told Si about Alec, though she suspected that Jaid might have explained it to him. She hated pretending that Alec was alive, as if he would walk in at any moment, having come off guard duty to visit his friend. Hearing Si speak about Alec as if he were still around had been much harder than she’d thought. It had been two years, but it still caught her breath when he was brought up so casually by Si, by Keiran, and now by Taye.

  “I think that’s it,” Taye suddenly announced, lifting his hand to point at a house coming up on their right.

  Georgianna slowed her steps, trying not to stare. She glanced around at the other houses, scanning across them until she came to the one Taye had pointed at. For a moment she paused, her gaze washing over everything she could take in before she quickly looked away to the other side of the street.

  “You’re sure?” she asked.

  Taye looked around too, but his gaze locked back onto the house pretty quickly. It looked much the same as the others, a little bigger than those next to it, but the same style and general appearance. Slowing their steps even more, Georgianna scuffed her foot idly against the pavement, looking this way and that but always landing on the same spot.

  “Yeah, this is the eighteenth,” he answered after a moment. “I’m sure of it.”

  She looked away, not wanting to be seen staring, but when she looked back, Taye was already two steps ahead of her, moving across the road towards the house. Squeaking in horror, Georgianna lurched forward and grabbed Taye’s arm, tugging him back.

  “Taye!” she hissed under her breath, looking up at him furiously.

  Taye, however, wasn’t listening. His gaze never wavered from the window at the front of the house, which was flung open. Georgianna followed his gaze and gasped as she saw a blonde figure there, looking out of the house.

  Her face was partially masked by her long blonde hair, the clothes not her own but those given to her, but it was Nyah. Georgianna paused, unable to tug Taye along any more as he stared at the woman he would have been joined to. His mouth opened, his chest heaved, and a groan issued from his mouth.

  Georgianna kept a tight hold on his arm, especially when a deep voice echoed out of the house.

  “Nyah!”

  Nyah flinched, her hair flying back as she turned towards the voice and disappeared back into the house. This time, Georgianna moaned as well: for the briefest moment before she disappeared, clamped securely around Nyah’s throat, a cinystalq collar had glinted back at them in the mid-heat sun.

  19 Still Not Grown

  The house dripped in shadows, the flickering light from the oil lamp dancing in dappled spots across the corridor through the open doorway. Georgianna sat on the floor, her back against the corner of the doorframe, watching the specks and flames of light across the sandstone. It had been a long time since she’d heard one of her father’s stories, but the moment he’d begun telling it, Georgianna could remember it in its entirety.

  Halden was out, working long hours again, so the task of putting Braedon to bed had fallen to her own father, as did storytelling. As Georgianna was home so infrequently compared to her brother and father, Braedon had quickly demanded that Georgianna be the one to tell him a story, but she had managed to talk him out of it. Her tales were far too dull, and didn’t always have happy endings. It was better to have a tale from his Grandda’, who was experienced in such things. Her father had scowled and smacked the back of her arm for passing the job onto him, but she’d noticed the small smile as he tucked Braedon in, and the look of fond surprise when he moved to sit down and noticed her perched outside the door to listen too.

  It was the one about the coyote who found himself trapped in a deep hole. He needed to learn to be nice to those who were different if they were to help him find a way out. Braedon had complained and whined when he couldn’t have the ship story, which was apparently his favourite, but Georgianna knew all too well that the coyote story was the best. It was the longest, which meant you got to stay up longer. For twenty-six years, she had neglected to tell her father that particular reason for requesting it as a child.

  She’d considered going back to the tunnels with Taye after their trip into the Adveni quarters, but after seeing Nyah, with the collar fastened around her neck, Georgianna felt the longing for the familiarity of home. Taye was so separated from everyone he considered family, and so she found herself making the long trek through the camps, looking forward to the safe and protected feeling when her father gathered her into his arms.

  “Holding on to the head of the snake, they began lowering his long body into the hole.”

  Georgianna giggled, quickly covering her mouth so as not to disturb the story. She’d never considered as a child, just how odd it would look for a bear to lower a snake into a hole so that a coyote could climb up the animal like a rope. Her father’s stories, except for the ships, had always been a little strange, and it h
adn’t been until she got older that she realised the life lessons in them all.

  Resting her head back against the frame, Georgianna closed her eyes, listening to the low rumble of her father’s voice. In fact, she had almost drifted off herself when he stepped over her legs, nudging her shoulder so that he could pull the door closed. Georgianna got to her feet, following him back into the front room where she slumped down onto the thick rug. It was bare in places, and there were some stains that just wouldn’t come out, but it was still more comfortable than the bare floor.

  Her father took a seat on his whittling stool, collecting up his knife and a half-finished piece, glancing over at his daughter lying flat on her back staring up at the ceiling.

  “You will need your own stories soon, my Gianna,” he said.

  Georgianna let out an amused breath, shaking her head.

  “Hardly.”

  “No, you will. When you are ready to tell them.”

  She turned her head, her cheek pressed against the coarse fibres of the wool. Her father didn’t look up, his knife making smooth strokes against the wood, slivers coming off against the blade, floating down onto the floor.

  “I don’t think that will be for a while, Da’,” she replied. “I don’t even know if that’s what I want.”

  Her father gave a low hum of laughter, and though he didn’t look up, she could see the amusement sparkling in his eyes through the lamplight.

  “You’re still a sapling.”

  “I’m twenty-six.”

  “And still a sapling,” he said. “Your mother was the same.”

  Rolling onto her side, Georgianna curled her arm underneath her head, using it as a pillow. Brushing a curl of hair away from her face, she grinned at him.

  “She was, what, twenty-one when you had Halden?”

  He thought about it for a moment, nodding his head.

  “Yes, I suppose she would have been.”

  “That’s hardly the same.”

  Her father lifted his head, his gaze locking onto her. Leaning to the side, he placed the block down on the floor, resting the knife on top of it, and rested his elbows onto his knees.

  “I always knew what I wanted,” he explained. “I wanted a family and a steady life. Your mother, she didn’t know. She was free and adventurous.”

  Without warning, her father let out a sad laugh. What had seemed so happy in his eyes only moments before filled with a desolate longing.

  “She called me her tether.”

  Georgianna blinked as unexpected moisture began collecting in the corners of her eyes. She wasn’t sure whether it was the memory of her mother, who she had missed for such a long time, or the sight of her father missing her so deeply, but even blinking couldn’t keep the tears at bay. Reaching up, she swiped the heel of her hand across her eyes.

  “You may not know what you want now, my girl, but one day you will find your tether and it will all fall into place.”

  She shook her head, the tears gathering faster than she could brush them away. Blurring her vision, she felt the first drop slip along her lashes and drip down onto her cheek, rolling towards her ear. She pushed herself up, crossing her legs and leaning forward into her lap.

  “I don’t want that.” She looked down at her feet. “Not when I can see how much it hurts when it’s gone.”

  She heard a slow sigh. Without looking up, she could imagine his look of puzzled concern, brow furrowed, adding even more lines to his worn, tanned skin.

  “Nyah was sold.”

  “The Wolfe girl? She used to follow you kids around like a pup.”

  Georgianna nodded, staring at her fingers while she dug at a crack in her thumbnail. She’d not remembered that, the way Nyah had always followed them around. It probably looked different to her father, the eight-year-old children being trailed by this five-year-old little blonde girl. Taye had adored her, even then, though it had been different that long ago.

  “She was arrested a few months ago, and we found out that she was sold as a drysta. Taye’s devastated.”

  “Yes, I can imagine he would be. His mother wagered their joining by the time you were, oh, fifteen?”

  Georgianna breathed a breath of bittersweet laughter. If anyone had had the traditional plan of joining, it had been Taye and Nyah. They’d been friends longer than any of them could remember, and that bond had grown into something unbreakable as naturally as the grass grew after the wash.

  “I’ve never felt that way.”

  “Who says you should have? You’re still a sa….”

  “Please stop calling me a sapling, Da’!” Georgianna pleaded. “I’m not a sapling.”

  Her father frowned back at her, clasping his hands in his lap. He hunched further over his knees, considering her for a moment before he spoke.

  “When you were young, I told you that you couldn’t force wood to be a certain way.”

  Georgianna nodded.

  “Well, wood also cannot tell you what it wants to be when it doesn’t know itself,” he explained. “You are still becoming who you want to be; you cannot be what someone else needs as well.”

  It was Georgianna’s turn to frown. She wasn’t entirely sure that she knew what he was talking about. She thought she had it, but she didn’t feel any better about herself, or about what was happening to Taye and Nyah. For an inspirational talk, she wasn’t feeling all that inspired. She felt more depressed than ever.

  “You are still growing, Gianna,” he smiled. “Emotionally, at least. I don’t think you’re ever going to be tall.”

  She couldn’t help herself, a laugh slipped forth, and she smiled a wet grin back at her father.

  “Mum was the same?”

  “She grew so unexpectedly,” he beamed. “Maybe that will be how it is for you, that you will meet the man and… it is a man, right?”

  Georgianna’s eyes widened in surprise.

  “Yes, Da’.”

  “Okay then,” he nodded. “Well, maybe you’ll meet him and you’ll… feel grown.”

  She remembered her father’s stories being more eloquent than this. Or, at least, easier to follow. He sounded so profound and wise when she was a child, though maybe he wasn’t as sure about how to deal with a daughter who didn’t dream of her joining the way other girls did. She had been running after medics, asking them to show her injuries, or climbing trees and getting lost on the trail.

  “If Mum had been sold…” Georgianna cut herself off. Even the thought of that was horrifying to her.

  “I would have walked off the edge of the world to get her back.”

  Georgianna pushed herself up onto her knees, shuffling across the floor to kneel between her father’s legs. Wrapping her arms around his waist, she buried her face against his chest. He wrapped a strong arm around her shoulders, holding her against him as tightly as when he’d been able to pick her up in one arm and carry her through their camp. With Taye’s desperation for a plan and Keiran’s objections to carrying one out at all both vying for attention in her mind, her father’s words were exactly what she needed to hear.

  Georgianna sniffed, her final tears brushed away by his shirt.

  “So would I.”

  20 Behind the Bar

  The Rion district was alight with Adveni electricity by the time Georgianna trudged through their streets. While the district was controlled by Adveni, Veniche huddled on street corners, waiting for an Adveni who might give them a second glance.

  On one corner were the Olcinyty, who would sell their bodies for an Adveni’s pleasure at the right price. On the next, a couple of Carae who would sell the Adveni their pleasure in substances the Adveni did not know how to create from Os-Veruh’s plants.

  Georgianna travelled past them all, before turning down an alleyway to go in through the side door of a bar. Closing the door behind her, she moved through the back corridor to a small room assigned to the workers. She placed her bag on one of the shelves against the wall, and pulled out a ribbon to tie her hair in
a knot high on her head.

  Leaving the small room, she passed along the corridor that led out to the bar. Greunn, the Adveni owner of the bar looked out of his office as she passed, clucking his tongue against his teeth.

  “Late.”

  She gave him an apologetic smile.

  “I’m so sorry. I was on my way, but there was an emergency.”

  He didn’t look convinced. He raised an eyebrow, scratching his jaw.

  “Always is,” he grumbled.

  Georgianna’s smile faltered as he turned away, grasping the door handle to his office.

  “Docking wages, maybe that’ll teach you.”

  Nodding respectfully at his back, she slipped past Greunn and headed out towards the bar. It happened to be the third time he’d told her such a thing, so she wasn’t too worried.

  Lifting the thick wedge of wood that closed the bar off from the customers, Georgianna slipped past. She closed the wedge behind her and turned around, straightening the front of her shirt as she went.

  “You’re late,” a man chuckled from his seat on the other side of the counter.

  Glancing at him, her eyes widened in surprise. It was Edtroka, a drink in front of him, his dark gaze fixed on her. He looked different without his guard uniform, less scary in some ways, but odd in others. She had never seen him in anything less than a perfectly kept Adveni uniform. Sitting in front of the bar, he looked almost, dare she say it, normal.

  “Has someone been telling tales on me?” she asked, glancing down the bar at Liliah, who had clearly been listening in on the exchange. She looked at Georgianna and swiped her finger swiftly across her lips. Penn, on the other hand, washing out glasses, grinned sheepishly down into the suds.

  “Glad to see you take timekeeping more seriously when you work for me.”

  “I, Volsonne, do not work for you,” Georgianna insisted. “I work to keep those prisoners alive.”

  “And yet you run every time I send you a message,” he sighed. “Must be my irresistible charm. I should have that looked at. You don’t happen to know a medic who can give me something, do you?”

  Georgianna giggled involuntarily as she shook her head. She couldn’t quite believe he was talking to her this way, though their exchange when she’d asked for details on Nyah should probably have alerted her to the fact there was a side to Edtroka of which she saw little. She wondered how he was with his friends, how he behaved around Adveni women. She could imagine, what with the way he was now and the way he looked, that he would be rather popular.

  “Maybe some sort of sedative,” she suggested. “It would certainly keep that ego under control.”

  Edtroka cocked his head to the side, considering her words. After a moment, he nodded slowly.

  “That would certainly work. Wouldn’t be half as entertaining as what I had in mind though.”

  “Well, I do try to tell my patients the downsides of any medication,” she told him. “Now, would you like another drink?”

  Georgianna was kept relatively busy with customers after delivering Edtroka’s fresh drink, and when there weren’t people at the bar waiting, there were tables to clean and glasses to collect. She didn’t get much of a chance to talk to Edtroka again, especially not while there were other Adveni in close proximity, and the guard kept a steely silence.

  Penn apologised to Georgianna for telling the Adveni that she was late, but Georgianna dismissed the apology and told Penn that there was nothing to be sorry about. He had only been telling the truth after all.

  Liliah, however, seemed much more interested in why Georgianna had been late, not to mention her banter with the Adveni, even though he was still sat at the bar behind them. As the two of them found themselves reaching for the same bottle of dark berry wine, Liliah finally found her chance.

  “There’s nothing to tell,” Georgianna assured her. “I was out in the camps visiting my Da’ and I ran late.”

  “So you weren’t with…”

  Georgianna glanced at Liliah as she took the bottle of wine from her and began pouring some into a glass.

  “With who? Keiran?”

  “Unless there’s another?”

  Giving her friend a scandalised look, Georgianna rolled her eyes.

  “What exactly do you take me for? There’s no one else, and I wasn’t with Keiran. I was at home.”

  She turned quickly away from Liliah, delivering the glass of wine to the customer with a respectful bow of her head. Liliah gathered a brewed beer and the glass of wine she’d poured, and took them to her own customer before returning to Georgianna.

  “Did something happen?” she asked, placing her hands on her hips. “Did he do something?”

  “Suns, Lil’, what makes you think that? He didn’t do anything.”

  “Every time I’ve seen you recently, you’ve either been working, or you’ve been with him, now you’re going home instead,” Liliah answered as if it were the most obvious thing on the planet. “Girls get their hearts broken and they run home to their Da’.”

  Liliah offered her a triumphant smile, leaving Georgianna to stare dumbfounded as the brunette walked off to collect some glasses from a table left vacated by customers. Georgianna didn’t like it; she didn’t like that Liliah thought Keiran had done something wrong when he hadn’t. It wasn’t her involvement with Keiran that had meant she’d gone home. She’d wanted to talk to her father about Taye and Nyah, though that did open up questions on how she would tell Keiran that she wasn’t heeding his advice about the whole situation.

  “He didn’t do anything, Lil’,” Georgianna said quietly as she returned to the bar. “Things are fine. At least, I think they are.”

  “You think?” Liliah asked.

  Georgianna frowned, scratching behind her ear as she tried to think of what to say. She couldn’t tell Liliah about Taye. It wouldn’t be fair to force that sort of secret on her.

  “I don’t agree with him on something,” she admitted, “and I don’t know if he’s going to be upset about it.”

  “Why would he be upset? After all, aren’t you two just… friends?”

  “Yes, we are, but this is different.”

  “Why?”

  Resting her elbow against the bar, in front of all the bottles positioned neatly in their rows, she thought of how to explain without actually explaining. Liliah knew Georgianna worked down the Way whenever she could, but telling her that she was involved in the escape of a drysta was too dangerous.

  “It’s about my sister’s job,” she said, making sure to pronounce every syllable correctly. “It’s not the safest job.”

  Liliah stared back at her in blank confusion. Liliah knew that Georgianna didn’t have a sister, and she opened her mouth twice before the light of understanding flickered in her eyes.

  “Okay,” she answered, pausing for a moment. “So why would he be upset? It’s nothing to do with him, right?”

  “No, it’s not, but he’s being… I don’t know, he’s… he doesn’t want her to get hurt.”

  Liliah could not stop a small squeak of laughter. Looking at Georgianna, she offered an apologetic expression that didn’t quite look sincere as the smile pressed against her lips. Georgianna looked back at her in surprise, raising an eyebrow as she tried to work out what was so amusing.

  “Sounds like he’s protective, if you ask me,” she beamed.

  “So?”

  “So, it’s not like a man who’s ‘just having fun’ to be protective of his friend’s sister, is it?” Liliah asked. “Sounds like he’s not simply taking advantage anymore.”

  “Who said he was taking advantage?”

  “Isn’t he?”

  “No, he’s not, Lil’. He’s not tricking me or promising me things he won’t deliver. I knew what I was getting into.”

  “Short term, yes,” Liliah answered. “But long term?”

  Georgianna tucked an errant lock of hair behind her ear and crossed her arms. Seeing the look on Georgianna’s face, Liliah held her h
ands up.

  “Alright, alright, forget it,” she said. “So you disagree. What’s the problem?”

  Liliah shrugged as she collected up a couple of glasses from the bar and handed them over to Penn. Georgianna grabbed a cloth, absently wiping the same spot on the bar.

  “I don’t want to fight with him.”

  “Well, there’s your problem.”

  “Where?”

  “You don’t want to fight. You never do. You keep doing something while it feels good and then run away as soon as there’s a problem. Isn’t that why you stopped seeing the other guy, because you fought and you didn’t like what he said?”

  Georgianna’s brow furrowed and she shrugged.

  “You don’t stick around to see if something will work. You just move on to the next thing that feels good. You think Qiyan and I never fight?”

  Liliah gave a sudden bitter laugh and shook her head, using the glass in her hand and gesturing with it. She moved her hand so violently that, for a moment, Georgianna thought the glass might be flung out of Liliah’s slim fingers and shatter into a thousand pieces.

  “We fight all the time, but we stick at it because we love each other,” Liliah said. “Suns, we fight over this place, but he knows it brings food in.”

  Georgianna wasn’t entirely sure where Liliah was going with this. If she was trying to convince Georgianna that she should talk to Keiran, even though it might make him angry, telling her how much she fought with her fiancé wasn’t the right way to go about it.

  “You know what’s best about the fighting?” Liliah asked suddenly.

  Georgianna frowned.

  “Nothing?”

  “The sex,” Liliah answered. “Angry-fight sex, or after-fight sex, it’s brilliant.”

  From his place at the bar, Edtroka snorted with laughter. Both girls turned quickly to look at him, their eyes wide in surprise and embarrassment that he’d been listening to their conversation. Still chuckling, Edtroka raised one hand.

  “Oh, don’t mind me,” he said through a smirk.

  Georgianna glared at him before turning back to Liliah, lowering her voice significantly.

  “So what? You’re saying I should tell Keiran about… my sister’s job? So I can have angry sex?” she asked.

  “No,” Liliah answered bluntly. “I’m saying that if you’re not willing to tell him something just because it might cause a fight, if you won’t stick around for the bad, how can you ever expect him to stick around and fight for you?”

  Liliah was called away by a customer before Georgianna managed to think of a suitable response. Even as the night progressed she couldn’t find a comeback to prove Liliah wrong. The problem was, the longer it took for her to think of an argument to the brunette’s point, the more she thought that actually, Liliah might not be wrong after all.

  21 Wrench in the Works

  It was late by the time Georgianna finally finished at Crisco and made her way from the Rion district. It felt like stone blocks had attached themselves to her hands and feet, making the walk through the streets long and laborious. While it usually only took a short time to walk the stretch to the nearest safe tunnel entrance, Georgianna felt like she’d been walking for hours before she could finally slip down into the lit main line. Even then, down in the tunnels, in the quiet of the night, it felt like too long a time until she could make the turning unseen into the stretch of Belsa-controlled passages.

  The guard recognised Georgianna before she even realised he was there, and proceeded to ramble and panic about a problem down Medics’ Way. Georgianna didn’t stop to find out what the problem was. The fact that a guard was still on post was enough to tell her the Belsa hadn’t been discovered, and despite the aching in her legs, she set off at a run down the tunnel.

  Coming into Medics’ Way, Georgianna expected chaos. The way the guard had told her about it made it sound like it was a big problem. However, apart from a pained groaning echoing from one of the cars, all seemed relatively quiet. Still, Georgianna kept hurrying down towards the car, hauling herself up and dropping her bag to the side of the door.

  Jaid had her back to her, her short dark hair mussed from being woken up in a rush. Georgianna moved further into the car, trying to see what was going on.

  “Wrench?”

  Wrench was lying on the bed before her. His dark skin was beaded with sweat, his breath, too fast for Georgianna’s liking, came in quick pants that left no space for anything else. His trousers had been left intact but his shirt, always tattered at best, was torn from neck to hem, lying open across the bed to show a large, purple and red angry welt across his barrelled chest.

  “George!” Jaid cried, stepping back from Wrench’s side and reaching into a bucket, pulling out a cloth and wringing it, using it to clean an oozing wound. “Where have you been?”

  “Work,” Georgianna answered, stepping closer to Wrench and placing the back of her hand across his stomach to gauge his temperature. “What happened?”

  The taught skin across Wrench’s skin was searing hot, radiating out from a weeping wound of burned flesh. Georgianna didn’t even need to hear Jaid’s answer before she knew exactly what had happened.

  “Copaq. He came in an hour ago, I’ve not been able to stop the sweats, and nothing will take the pain away.”

  Georgianna frowned and moved to her bag. Flipping it open, she dug through it until she found a small, linen bag. She tugged it out, pulling the drawstring open and taking out a shiny, lilac pill.

  The copaq didn’t injure like a normal gun. Instead of firing a metal bullet, a copaq, whether one of the small hand weapons or a larger rifle, projected a gel pellet which, though hard when shot, splattered across the skin upon contact. When the gel hit, it sent out a number of electrical charges as it reacted with the skin, slowly fading away as the chemical inside the gel was used up. Even after scraping the gel from the skin, the damage had been done. The Adveni used them mainly on capture missions because the electrical charges shooting through the body made it impossible to run. Unfortunately, healing the injuries was also made difficult, as the Veniche had little with which to counteract the chemical.

  “What’s that?” Jaid asked as she dabbed the damp cloth against the welt.

  Wrench let out a pained cry.

  “Drugs. They’re Adveni.”

  “Where did you get Adveni medicine?” Jaid asked suspiciously.

  “Compound,” Georgianna explained, stepping past Jaid. “Here, Wrench, swallow this.”

  “It won’t help.”

  Georgianna and Jaid spun around, the wet cloth slipping from Jaid’s fingers to the floor with a wet slap. Jacob was leaning into the car, his curly hair dishevelled from sleep.

  “Jacob, go back to…”

  “No, wait.” Georgianna interrupted. “Jake, what won’t work?”

  Jacob swung his legs up into the car with surprising agility for someone who had so many healing injuries. He came and looked down at Wrench.

  “The cloth, it won’t help. Neither will your drugs. They design it that way.”

  “Then what will?” Jaid snapped.

  From Jacob’s time as a drysta, Georgianna wondered whether he had more experience with the wounds the weapons created. She didn’t want to think about how Jacob would know about copaq weapons.

  “Something cold,” he said. “Wrapped in hyliha leaves.”

  “What?”

  “It can be anything cold, but the hyliha is what does it. And you should make him drink that water, not wash him with it.”

  Georgianna looked at Jaid in confusion. Hyliha leaves weren’t often used for anything important, so why would they work when apparently nothing else would? Jaid didn’t seem too pleased with Jacob’s assessment, and Georgianna was sure that given the choice, she would tell him to go back to the car he currently called home. The man was only twenty-one. He had been fourteen when he was taken by the Adveni. At most, he had three years’ training, not enough to know about different medic
ines, even if he’d been training as a medic. With all his injuries and the things he had suffered, Georgianna had never even thought to ask him.

  “I don’t have any hyliha leaves,” Jaid answered after a moment, crouching to collect the cloth from the floor.

  Georgianna watched as Jaid shook off the cloth and dunked it back into the water, wringing it out and moving back to Wrench’s side. Frowning, she glanced back and forth between the three people in the train car, daring them to defy her. During her training, Georgianna had been taught that hyliha was only useful if you had nothing else. It could be used to sooth irritation and to cool the burning of heat, but there were other things that worked better. Hyliha was only used as a last resort until you could get your hands on something better.

  Georgianna glanced down at the pill in her hand. She didn’t know what to think. They’d treated men with copaq wounds before and the pill always took away some of the pain. Not all of it, but at least some. Stepping to the side, Georgianna picked up a canteen and shook it. Water sloshed inside the metal, and she moved over to Wrench’s side.

  “Swallow this,” she urged, dropping the pill into his open mouth and carefully moving the canteen to his lips.

  Wrench swallowed, small sips at first, but within seconds he was reaching for the canteen, grasping it and tipping more water down his throat. Georgianna stared in surprise before her gaze darted to Jacob. He was watching silently, his fingers wound in the material of his shirt. He said the pills wouldn’t help, but here Wrench was, gulping down water like he was already feeling better. Georgianna’s mouth dropped open as a realisation hit her. When she had been healing copaq wounds before, it hadn’t been the pills that were helping; it was the water they used to wash it down.

  She pulled the canteen away and dunked it back into the bucket.

  “George, what are you…”

  “He’s right!” Georgianna cried, bringing the canteen back to Wrench’s lips and letting him take hold like an infant at bottle. “The water! I… We need hyliha!”

  “George, I already told him, we don’t have any!” Even Georgianna could hear the edge of desperation in her voice.

  “No,” Georgianna answered, a smile on her lips. “But Lacie does!”

  “What?”

  “Lacie has hyliha leaves! I gave them to her for grinding practice!”

  Georgianna signalled to Jacob.

  “Give him as much water as he can drink.” She turned to Jaid. “I’m going to get Lacie!”

  Georgianna was already slipping past them, jumping down out of the train car as Jaid’s desperate cry for her to come back followed, not fast enough to catch her and drag her back inside.

  Sprinting down the tunnels, Georgianna turned through the passageways, a stitch burning in her side by the time she reached Beck’s car. She felt energised and awake, the weight in her legs dissipated in her desperation to help Wrench, and elated at a new method of treating his wounds. Leaping up into the car, Georgianna tripped and stumbled forward, straight into a pile of crates stacked against the wall.

  The crash echoed and reverberated as Georgianna slid down the wall, landing with a thump against the floor. Before she could right herself, she glanced up to find a gun barrel had been levelled at her chest.

  For a second, she stared down the barrel of the weapon before a relieved and admittedly frustrated sigh came from behind it.

  “George?” Beck asked, rubbing his hand over his face and blinking to make sure he was right in his assessment. “What the hell you thinking, waking a man like that?”

  “Lacie,” Georgianna gasped. “I need Lacie.”

  “Huh? Why?”

  Lacie’s bleary voice slipped from behind the canvas hanging and out into the main area of the car. Georgianna glanced over her shoulder as the hanging was pulled to the side, Lacie’s mussed hair falling over her face, a shirt large enough for a full grown man hanging down to her thighs.

  “Lace!” Georgianna cried.

  “George?”

  “I need those hyliha leaves. The ones I gave you for practice.”

  Lacie blinked and stared back at her sleepily.

  “I finished,” Lacie answered, stepping out further into the car.

  Georgianna let out a cry of frustration, having hoped that the leaves were still intact. She glanced up at Beck, who looked more than a little confused. The man reached up and rubbed his hand roughly across the back of his neck, surveying the scene cautiously. Georgianna felt awful for waking him up, she knew from Lacie how little sleep he managed to get, but right now it was necessary.

  “Where are they?” Georgianna asked.

  Lacie stepped over Georgianna’s legs, moving to the other side of the car and collecting up a wooden box. Georgianna clambered to her feet and accepted the box from her, opening it to find the pale green powder, as perfect as if a skilled herber had done it.

  She didn’t know if it would work, whether it would be able to do anything for Wrench in this form, but she had to try. If it didn’t work, she could always run and try to find some hyliha in the camps, but who knew how long that would take, especially seeing as she would have to wait until morning.

  “George, what the hell is going on?” Beck asked, placing the gun back onto a blanket crumpled beside his chair.

  “Wrench has been hit with a copaq,” Georgianna explained. “Jaid was following normal procedure, but Jacob came in and…”

  “Jacob?”

  “The guy down Medics’,” Lacie explained.

  “Yeah, well Jacob said hyliha leaves really help!” Georgianna finished, brandishing the box.

  “Should I…”

  Georgianna quickly shook her head as Lacie offered to come back. While Georgianna knew that this was a good opportunity for Lacie to learn, she highly doubted Wrench would want to be surrounded by people when he was injured. Not to mention that Beck would probably have something to say about Georgianna dragging the girl off in the middle of the night.

  “Stay here, I’ll tell you how it goes.”

  Out of the car before she even thought to thank them, Georgianna called back an apology for waking them. She was soon sprinting back through the tunnels.

  The change in Wrench’s condition was marked by the time Georgianna pulled herself back into the car. Despite not being gone more than thirty minutes, his breathing had improved and he was not sweating nearly as much.

  “Did you get it?” Jacob asked, pausing with his hand and the canteen dunked into the bucket.

  “Not exactly,” Georgianna explained. “Lacie had already ground it. It’s been dried and crushed, but…”

  “What about a paste?” Jaid asked. “Put some in a bowl with some water? The water’s not cold, but it’s decent.”

  Georgianna and Jaid both looked at Jacob expectantly. It was his cure after all. However, he simply stared back in surprise. Then he shrugged.

  “No harm in trying.”

  Opening the box and grabbing up a bowl, Georgianna tipped a generous amount of the powder in and went to the bucket. Taking the canteen from Jacob, she poured a small amount into a well in the centre of the mound, letting the granules of the powder float in and around the cool water. She handed the canteen back and swilled the bowl, digging her finger into the power and beginning to mix. It smelled just like hyliha trees in the rain, their large leaves working perfectly for protection from sudden downpours during the wash. After a few minutes mixing in most of the granules, Georgianna had the bowl filled with a thick green paste. She stepped to Jaid’s side, nodding to the older woman. Jaid pulled the cloth away, holding it tightly in her hands as Georgianna began slathering the paste onto Wrench’s side.

  The man groaned loudly, startling both of them, but then a relieved hiss slipped through his teeth, and he laid his head back against the bed.

  “Kid’s a genius,” he moaned, closing his eyes. “Tha’s… tha’s amazing.”

  He didn’t stay conscious long, his breathing slowing and his body releasing t
he tension that had been held within it. By the time he was fully unconscious, Georgianna wasn’t nearly as worried as she might have been. The hyliha seemed to be doing its job and Wrench was beginning to look much better, if that was possible so soon after being hit.

  22 Who She Was

  Once Wrench had passed out, his copaq wound slathered in hyliha paste, and as much water as he could safely drink in his stomach, Jaid had sighed and slumped back against the wall. The woman, stubborn as she was, having been dealing with Adveni-made wounds for a decade, refused to thank Jacob for his input.

  “We’ll see how he’s doing in the morning,” she insisted. “Better not to get our hopes up too high.”

  It wasn’t long before Jaid left to go back to her husband, currently being watched over by a guard she’d dragged from duty. Georgianna had grinned in amusement, not only wondering what Beck would think about one of his guards being pulled off duty, but also what the guard themselves had thought about being used as a glorified babysitter. She decided it was best not to comment though. If Jaid hadn’t been there, who knew what would have happened. Georgianna also doubted that any Belsa would comment on it so soon after Jaid had partially lost her husband to the madness of the heat thanks to a Belsa mission nobody knew the details of.

  With Wrench passed out on the bed, Georgianna cleared away the bucket and cloth. She closed the wooden box of hyliha powder and tucked it into the top of her bag. She would ask Lacie to make another batch, knowing now how useful it could be. She’d probably test a few other things, but as hyliha was so readily available throughout most of the year, it seemed an incredibly useful trick to know.

  Taking a seat on one of the beds, Georgianna pulled out a journal from her bag, its horse-hide cover no longer crinkling in protest the way it used to, worn and supple with years of use. Her brother had given it to her as a present when she chose to take her training as a medic, a place for her to record all she had learned. The inside paper had been changed out three times since she had received the gift. Once when Georgianna was fifteen and the book had been so full of notes that she couldn’t fit any more into it, not even around the edges where she scribbled tiny things to remember. Georgianna had spent an entire freeze down in Nyvalau organising and rewriting the notes in order.

  The next time had been when she completed her training and now, once again the book was full. Georgianna had separated the journal into different sections, one for procedures, one for supplies and their uses, a section for things Georgianna wanted to learn how to do, and one for everything else. Flicking through to the supplies section, she noted down hyliha’s use for copaq wounds before she found the section on copaq wounds and added hyliha, circling it a couple of times.

  Georgianna looked up, her gaze landing on Jacob who was swirling his finger around in the hyliha paste, leaning against the wall. Moving herself to the end of the bed, Georgianna smiled at Jacob and nodded to the space next to her. He considered for a moment before he walked slowly over, perching himself delicately on the edge.

  “How did you know about the hyliha, Jake?” she asked, closing her journal and replacing it into her bag. “Have you…”

  “Not with a copaq,” Jacob answered, cutting her off, though he didn’t look up from the paste. “The cinystalq has the same sort of charge as a copaq.”

  Georgianna glanced at the burn on Jacob’s neck, a white scar running down from beneath his ear until it disappeared under his shirt.

  “Will his be like that?” Georgianna asked, nodding towards his neck.

  Jacob rested the bowl in his lap and reached up, covering the wound protectively.

  “No,” he answered. “This wasn’t nearly as bad before they removed the collar.”

  “It wasn’t made by them removing it?”

  “That made it worse,” he explained. “But I already uh… I had a number of burns there from… from Uyinagh.”

  “Is that,” Georgianna paused. “Was that your owner?”

  Jacob nodded.

  “They can give you shocks through the collar. If you do something that displeases them.”

  Georgianna frowned gently and carefully reached out. Jacob flinched, cowering a little as she came closer. She took her time, moving forward to take the bowl from his lap. The young man became as still as a statue until she moved a little further away.

  “Do you mind?” Georgianna asked, holding the bowl up towards him.

  Jacob kept his head down, but he glanced at her curiously. Georgianna indicated his wound.

  “It’s older, but maybe this will still work for you.”

  Staying still for a moment or two, Jacob finally nodded. Georgianna carefully scooped up some of the paste on two fingers and placing the bowl between them, she used her other hand to reach out and gently brush the hair back from Jacob’s neck before she smeared the paste over the wound. The entire time Georgianna was touching him, Jacob remained as still as if he had been made out of the stone his name spoke of.

  “I don’t know anyone who has been through the things you have,” Georgianna lamented quietly as she scraped the last of the paste from her fingers into the bowl, taking a dressing and placing it carefully onto his neck. Gently, as to not restrict his breathing, she wrapped a thin bandage loosely around his neck to keep it in place.

  Jacob didn’t say anything.

  Finally pulling back, Georgianna held out the bowl for him to take. Jacob took it, a small smile flitting across his lips.

  “So, when you got those wounds,” Georgianna said slowly. “How did you know about the hyliha?”

  The smile, so small and inconspicuous at first, split into a broader grin. He seemed proud, something she had never seen in Jacob before. The only time she’d seen him smile was when he was playing Erpal with Lacie. This was more measured. It wasn’t a sudden smile of enjoyment, but of memories.

  “I was training as a herber,” Jacob answered, finally turning his head to look at her.

  “Really?”

  Jacob nodded.

  “That’s great. You know, we’ve been looking for someone to help out,” Georgianna suggested suddenly. “Maybe once you’re feeling better, once you’re up to it, you could take the job?”

  Dropping his head immediately, Jacob looked like the young boy again, so scared and unsure of himself. He dipped his finger back into the paste and began drawing patterns into it, smearing it against the bowl.

  “I only trained for three years,” he answered. “I’m not…”

  “You’re more than what we have, Jake, and I know a couple of people in the camps. I could bring them here, maybe make a deal for training.”

  “I… I don’t know where my parents…”

  Georgianna shook her head. The usual arrangement for training was that parents would accept someone to train in exchange for another family accepting their own child for training. Either that or payments in trade were made every season. Georgianna’s parents had paid highly in furniture for Georgianna to be trained as a medic. Not to mention that her father took in two boys to train in carving and carpentry.

  “I’ll do it,” Georgianna declared. “I’ll take a trainee so that you can train.”

  Jacob’s shy nature seemed to vanish for a second as he stared at her, open mouthed, his eyes wide in surprise.

  “You’d do that?” he asked.

  Georgianna smiled and nodded.

  “Of course I would,” she answered.

  “What are you doing?”

  Georgianna turned in surprise as Keiran climbed into the car. Smiling brightly, Georgianna got to her feet and moved over to him.

  Keiran looked down at Wrench in concern for a few moments until he realised Georgianna was next to him. Turning his head, he pressed a soft, slightly absent kiss against her lips, quickly turning back to Wrench.

  “What happened to him?”

  “Hit with a copaq,” Georgianna explained, reaching up and touching her fingers to Keiran’s arm.

  “He okay?”


  “He’s going to be fine. Turns out, we’ve got a pretty great herber here.”

  Keiran threw a glance over to Jacob, who, at the appearance of someone new, had retreated into himself again, keeping his attention on the bowl in his lap. Georgianna gave Keiran’s arm another squeeze.

  “You alright?” she asked. “What you doing here so late?”

  Keiran frowned distractedly, his tongue swiping out to wet his bottom lip. Georgianna wondered why he was even awake at this time. She knew he hadn’t been on duty, they’d discussed it the night before, so why wasn’t he asleep?

  “I had to go meet a friend,” he answered. “Heard about Wrench as I was coming back into the tunnels.”

  “Bit of a late meeting,” Georgianna said with a snort.

  Keiran’s gaze flickered over to Wrench and he remained silent for a moment, as if he didn’t want to comment on why he had been out so late. Georgianna frowned and quickly looked away. She was pretty sure she knew who he’d been meeting. Well, not who, but at least what kind of meeting it had been… most likely one that didn’t involve a lot of words. If that was the case, it wasn’t really surprising he was coming back so late. Georgianna moved over to Wrench and placed the back of her hand against his forehead. His temperature had come down drastically since they’d put the paste on and given him the water. Jacob really did know his stuff.

  “He’ll be fine,” she reiterated. “Jacob gave us a new method which is working far better than our usual.”

  Keiran nodded.

  “That’s good!” he answered. “You know how he got shot in the first place?”

  “Cornered on a scout.”

  Georgianna, Keiran, and Jacob all looked at Wrench in surprise as he groaned the words, his eyes fluttering open. He reached up, rubbing his hand delicately over his face, and his lips curved into a smile.

  “Hey,” Georgianna muttered, brushing her hand over Wrench’s forehead again. “How’re you feeling there, hero?”

  “Like I was trampled by a horse,” Wrench answered. “But better. That kid’s a genius.”

  Georgianna glanced over her shoulder at Jacob, smiling at the young man. Back to staring at his knees, Georgianna saw Jacob grin briefly.

  “You were on a scout?” Keiran asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why didn’t I know about it?” he asked, frowning as he took a seat on the edge of Wrench’s bed, down by his feet.

  “Casey’s orders,” Wrench explained in a gruff voice. “Needed a couple of guys to see what was going on at that new building.”

  “The one on the way to the Camps?” Georgianna asked. “What is it?”

  “Dunno,” Wrench answered. “I was hit before we had a chance to get a decent look.”

  She frowned. What was it that would be so important in an unfinished building that Beck would want people scouting it out? The Adveni erected dozens of buildings every year and hardly any of them were ever scouted. Well, as far as she knew, anyway. Perhaps Beck sent scouts to each of them, but usually there were no problems?

  “Well, your temperature has come way down,” Georgianna explained. “You want to try sitting up for me?”

  Wrench nodded, but it was a difficult process getting the man upright. In the end, Keiran had to get up off the bed and take hold of Wrench’s hand, placing his other arm behind the man’s shoulder to help him sit up.

  “Aww, you two look so cute together,” Georgianna mocked, bringing another small smile from Jacob in the corner.

  Keiran and Wrench glanced at each other before looking at Georgianna, Keiran quickly moving away as Wrench adjusted his position on the bed, leaving room at the end for Keiran to take a seat again.

  “Fuck off, George,” Keiran scoffed under his breath, leaning back against the wall.

  “No, it’s adorable that you worry,” she assured him.

  “Only ‘cause Casey’ll have his ass if I keel over,” Wrench chuckled, quickly regretting it and holding his hand to his injury.

  Georgianna rolled her eyes as she took a seat, perched on the edge of the bed next to Wrench’s legs. She took a rough count of his pulse. He already looked so much better. The sweat was gone and his breathing much more even. The hyliha was definitely working better than anything Georgianna could have done.

  “Hey,” Keiran piped up from behind her. “What happened down the dwellings? I haven’t seen you.”

  Wrench gave Georgianna a curious look, and Georgianna knew immediately that despite the fact Keiran and Wrench were friends, not to mention Keiran being Wrench’s superior, Keiran had not told his friend about Georgianna being tangled up in a drysta escape attempt.

  Georgianna waited a few more seconds, keeping a track of how many thumps of blood she felt passing beneath the skin before she finally released Wrench and noted down the number on the papers Jaid had set up.

  “We saw her,” Georgianna explained. “She’s got a collar on. Taye wasn’t happy.”

  “Yeah I bet,” Keiran grumbled.

  “Who we talking about?” Wrench asked.

  “Pretty thing. Carae that used to sell down Rion,” Keiran answered. “What’s her name?”

  “Nyah,” Georgianna offered.

  “Oh yeah, I remember her.”

  “She was sold, her boyfriend wants to get her out.”

  “And she’s got a collar?” Wrench asked, sucking in a breath. “Tough break.”

  Georgianna frowned and nodded, looking absently down at the notes for a few moments before she glanced back up at Wrench.

  “Weren’t you the one who got Lach’s off?” Georgianna asked.

  “And mine,” Jacob piped up.

  All three looked at him. When he realised they were all watching him, a deep pink blush rose almost immediately into Jacob’s cheeks. He kept his gaze fixed on Georgianna instead of the two men he didn’t know properly.

  “Well, he did,” he assured them.

  “Yeah, I’ve done a couple,” Wrench confirmed.

  Georgianna pushed herself off the bed, chewing on her bottom lip as she began pacing. Since discovering that Nyah had been given a cinystalq, she’d assumed it would be much more difficult to get her away from Maarqyn. The whole point of a cinystalq collar was that it could be tracked to a location. They’d need it off before they even considered bringing her back to Belsa or Carae territory. However, if Wrench could disable it and get it off, maybe it would be easier than they thought. Wrench was a good friend of Keiran’s, and the fact that Keiran was his superior would mean convincing him to remove a drysta collar would be much easier.

  “How long does it take?” Georgianna asked.

  Wrench shrugged.

  “Depends. It’s difficult and quite precise, so I’d need to see it.”

  “But you can do it?”

  “Can, yes,” Wrench answered sceptically, narrowing his eyes.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Will you do it?” Keiran asked, reaching out and slipping his arm around Georgianna’s waist, pulling her a little closer.

  Wrench gazed at them, glancing occasionally over to Jacob before he sighed and threw his hand up on the side that hadn’t been hit.

  “Well, I guess I owe you now, huh Med?” he answered.

  It was only because she was sitting on Keiran’s other side, and his arm was wrapped around her, not because she would have hurt Wrench, that Georgianna didn’t leap into his lap and throw her arms around his neck. Suddenly, getting Nyah out didn’t seem quite as impossible as it had before.

  “I take it this means that you’re not done helping your friend,” Keiran suggested.

  She shook her head.

  “I have to help him.”

  He nodded as if he’d expected as much. He knew who she was, that she couldn’t stand to see people needing help and doing nothing about it. It was who she’d been when she met him, and it was still who she was now.

  The first time they’d met, she’d helped him even though she wasn’t supposed to be working. T
he fact that it had been her fault he needed treatment in the first place was neither here nor there. He should claim some of the responsibility there since he’d been the one sneakily trying to grab a feel of her ass and had accidentally grabbed hold of the knife in her belt. Still she felt bad that she’d forgotten to make him aware of the weapon in the first place.

  Keiran pushed himself up a little and pressed a kiss gently against her temple, brushing her hair out of the way. Yes, he knew who she was. She helped Wrench, she helped the Belsa, and she would help Taye now that she knew that they might be able to pull it off without all being carted into the compound as criminals.

  23 Pillars of a Plan

  Heat still rose in chest-tightening waves, even after the sun had set. Out of the city and away from the towering buildings the Adveni had erected in its centre, there was nothing to shield the ground from the baking rays, leaving it to expel the heat throughout the night once the sun had disappeared over the horizon. Georgianna lay on the ground, her head resting on Keiran’s shin as he cleaned a pistol in his lap. Wrench, still a little sore from his injury, but doing better than anyone would have expected after a copaq wound, was sipping dark berry wine, swirling the liquid around in the bottle every time he lowered it.

  They’d decided on a spot outside the city to talk to Taye. While the tunnels would have been acceptable, Wrench had been antsy to get out of Medics’ Way and Georgianna had been cooped up underground most of the day. This wasn’t the type of thing you could discuss in the Oprust district, not knowing who would turn you over to the Adveni for a few coins. So they had left instructions for Taye and headed south out of the city, a good half-hour’s walk towards Keiluck Forest. They had considered going as far as the forest, but even to the wary Belsa it seemed over-cautious to walk two hours out of the city in both directions just for a conversation. Instead, they had chosen to meet under the southern Mykahnol pillar, knowing that most gave the towers as wide a berth as possible whenever they could.

  The Mykahnol pillars weren’t actually dangerous. If anything, the towers themselves were a safety measure. However, no Veniche living in Adlai could think of the pillars without thinking of the device that they were installed to control. Aimed at the centre of Adlai, at the centre of every city in fact, the Mykahnol weapon was more destructive than any that the Veniche had ever seen before the Adveni arrived. It was capable of wiping out a city in a single blast and, if the Adveni were to be believed, without the pillars reigning in its power, the force of the blast would continue until it consumed the whole of Os-Veruh. The four pillars, installed equidistantly around Adlai, provided some kind of electrical lasso, or unseen force that held in the blast.

  No Veniche person had proof that the destruction would continue without end if the pillars were not in place, but many had seen the pillars contain a Mykahnol blast, Georgianna included.

  It had been near the end of the fighting, when most people were giving in to Adveni rule. Many fled south, hoping that they would be able to find their own small corner to live out their days. However, as they neared Nyvalau, the weapon was detonated. Even from two days’ travel away Georgianna had seen the blast, a humungous cloud that rose into the air like a field mushroom, the crackle of electric green lightning flashing in a sphere below it. They’d sheltered for three days, waiting out the aftermath that was sure to come, but when no such force hit them, they continued south only to find that their entire southern lands had been levelled, a great canyon in its place where some began to rebuild their lost Freeze homes.

  From the information skittering through the different tribes, the Mykahnol was the last resort of the Adveni. Should they choose to leave Os-Veruh for good, they would detonate every Mykahnol as they left, destroying everything they had ever built on the planet in the fast-growing cities. The pillars weren’t something people talked of often, not wanting to think about what would happen if the Adveni made good on their threats. However, staring up at this one , as it towered ominously, silhouetted against the sky, Georgianna wondered if the force of the blast would continue past their world if the pillars were not in place. Perhaps it was not for Veniche protection and survival that they had been put in place, but for that of the Adveni.

  Keiran had picked up some bottles of dark berry wine. Though Georgianna thought it was best they all remained sober while they sorted out a plan, Keiran and Wrench had talked her down because surely liquid was good while out in the heat. She had tried to explain that actually, berry wine made the heat’s effects on the body worse, but before she’d even finished talking, Wrench had one of the bottles open and was drinking large, unhealthy mouthfuls. So, she had instead resorted to staring up at the pillar as they waited for Taye to arrive.

  “Took me a long time to find you guys!”

  Georgianna lifted her head, spotting Taye walking towards them. His lightweight jacket had been shrugged off and he carried it instead, swinging it from one hand.

  “Well, didn’t want to make it too easy by sitting right on the path next to a giant erection,” Keiran answered sarcastically, glancing first at the pillar and then off to his left where the path was trodden into the ground not ten feet from where they had camped out.

  Taye threw a glare in Keiran’s direction before coming over and slumping down next to Wrench. Wrench, far more cheerful now he’d drunk a decent amount of berry wine, offered the bottle. Taye looked at it sceptically before he shrugged and took it, glugging down a mouthful as he reached into his pocket and tossed Wrench a small linen pouch.

  The other opened it and peering in, let out a laugh.

  “Oh, brilliant!” he cheered, lifting the pouch and taking a deep sniff. “Yapoque?”

  “Foinah,” Taye corrected, glancing at Keiran. “Your usual, right?”

  Georgianna turned her head, glancing up at Keiran as he looked at Taye in surprise. She blushed and quickly looked away. She’d told Taye that Keiran smoked cigarettes made from foinah leaves when he could get it. Of course, they were harder to get than yapoque, but better.

  “Uh, yeah,” Keiran answered. “Thanks man.”

  Taye shrugged and took another mouthful of the wine, glancing sideways at Wrench. Georgianna didn’t know how well the two knew each other, she was even sure that Taye didn’t know Keiran that well. He knew him enough to know his name and a few other choice pieces of information, gathering from their conversation in the Adveni dwelling quarters, but whether the two had ever actually held a conversation, she didn’t know.

  “So, how’re things going?” Taye asked awkwardly.

  Leaning forward, he placed the bottle between them as Georgianna pushed herself up off the ground, turning around to face the centre of their little circle. Crossing her legs, she sat comfortably next to Keiran, his arm brushing against hers as he continued cleaning out the pistol. After Wrench’s injury, he’d been unwilling to travel so far without it.

  “Wrench was hit by a copaq,” Keiran announced, as if that explained how they were doing.

  “Fuck, man, you alright?” Taye asked, glancing to Wrench.

  Wrench nodded, a cigarette paper on the ground in front of him as he sprinkled the foinah into it.

  “Yeah, thanks to Med here,” he answered. “And that kid, Jake.”

  “Jake?”

  “Escaped drysta,” Georgianna explained. “Was in a pretty bad state when he was found, but turns out the guy is a herber, knew enough to change the way we treat those things.”

  “Ah, well, that’s good then.”

  Wrench and Georgianna nodded. For a minute there was silence, no one really knowing what to say. It wasn’t like this was any ordinary meeting. How were any of them supposed just to blurt out a plan to free a drysta?

  “So, your girl’s been sold, huh?”

  Georgianna looked at Wrench in surprised amusement. Apparently, that was how it was done. Taye looked at the ground between his legs, nodding to nobody in particular.

  “I found out he’s military,” Taye answered, g
lancing to Georgianna. “Maarqyn.”

  “They’re all military,” Keiran answered. “Hence their… their… dickishness!”

  Georgianna snorted.

  “Coming from someone who could be considered to be involved in a Veniche military organisation…” she suggested, leaving her comment hanging in the air between them.

  “Yeah, well, I wasn’t brought up saluting and bowing to Casey’s every demand, now was I?” he asked, grinning back at Georgianna.

  “Okay, so he’s military,” Wrench interrupted. “Makes sense about the collar then.”

  Taye picked up the pouch of foinah leaves and began dealing out portions for three cigarettes into papers, evening them out before he dropped the pouch onto the ground in front of him.

  “He’s some kind of commander,” he explained.

  “So, we’re gonna need a solid plan with backups,” Keiran agreed.

  “What do you suggest?” Georgianna asked.

  Out of the four of them, Keiran had the most experience in these sorts of things, closely followed by Wrench. The two had been in the Nerrin together. From what Georgianna knew, both from Keiran and from Liliah, who had taken the opportunity to tell Georgianna about their tribal days, the two men had been hunters, meaning that they had a lot of experience in planning attacks, even if those attacks had been against animals. Once the Adveni arrived, it was only natural that the two joined the Belsa, though Georgianna also knew a lot of hunters who had preferred to keep their heads down and avoid joining the rebel group. More recently, however, a hunter had come to mean something completely different to most people. A hunter was an Adveni whose job it was to track down Veniche who had escaped punishment for a crime. From the Adveni perspective, Keiran and Wrench were no longer hunters, they were very important prey.

  “She’s got a collar on, right?” Wrench reconfirmed. “We’re gonna need somewhere to get rid of it. Can’t risk one of those coming into Belsa, not for anything.”

  “She’ll be coming to the Carae!” Taye corrected fiercely, looking up from the papers in his lap.

  “You want one of those collars in the Carae?” Keiran asked, raising an eyebrow as he looked over at Taye. “Good luck keeping the Adveni off your ass, you do that.”

  “Where she’s going isn’t the point,” Georgianna interjected. “Wrench is right. We need somewhere else, somewhere we can remove the collar before she goes underground.”

  “Where?” Taye asked.

  “Oppression City,” Wrench suggested. “Busy as hell, especially if we get it at the right time. Even the Adveni will have trouble getting through quickly.”

  “Alright,” Keiran agreed slowly. “Wrench, can you find a place? I would suggest the Trade, they’re always willing to help, but Oz won’t appreciate an Adveni battalion bearing down on his ass. Get somewhere central enough that it’ll hold the Adveni up.”

  “Doesn’t that mean we’ll be held up?” Georgianna asked in concern.

  Keiran glanced at her, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips.

  “Well, yeah, but we ain’t got a lot of choice.”

  Georgianna nodded. She didn’t exactly know a lot about battle tactics. Keiran probably knew best.

  Taye leaned forward, offering one of the rolled cigarettes out to Keiran. He accepted it gratefully, holding it up in a toast to Taye before he stuck it between his lips, but he didn’t light it. Almost immediately, he plucked it from his lips and used it to point at Georgianna.

  “Oh, and another thing,” he announced. “We’re doing it on a day you’re at the compound.”

  “What?” Taye and Georgianna demanded at the same time.

  “Why?” Georgianna asked.

  “We need her!” Taye exclaimed.

  Keiran dug into his pocket, pulling out a lighter, a convenience the Adveni had brought to Os-Veruh with them. Lighting his cigarette, he inhaled before bringing it down from his lips, blowing the smoke up into the dry air.

  “You asked that guard about the girl,” he explained, looking at Georgianna squarely. “Minute she goes missing, you’ll be suspected of being involved. We need to make sure they got nothing on you, that you’re somewhere the Adveni can recognise you.”

  “But, what if we need her?” Taye asked, holding a cigarette out to Georgianna.

  “The first priority is going to be that collar,” Wrench said. “No matter who needs what. The longer that collar stays on, the more likely we’re carted off to Lyndbury to be sold with your girlfriend. I say George meets us later. We get to Oprust, we remove the collar, everything else comes after.”

  “Do you think Beck could get some Belsa to help?” Georgianna asked, turning the unlit cigarette over and over in her fingers.

  Wrench watched Georgianna as he sucked in a lungful of smoke and let it flow lazily past his lips.

  “Jobs like this, the less people the better. More people that know, the more likely someone will talk.”

  “A Belsa talk to an Adveni?” Taye asked. “Come on.”

  “No, to a friend,” Keiran answered. “Guy talks to his buddy over a drink about how they’re helping break out a pretty little piece of ass from the Adveni. The friend talks to another friend. That guy tells an Adveni for a few coins.”

  Georgianna wasn’t sure which Taye looked angrier about, that Keiran had proven his scepticism wrong, or that he had called Nyah a pretty little piece of ass. Even Georgianna felt a stab of annoyance at the latter. She didn’t mind jokes about him seeing other women, she didn’t even mind that it happened. But it didn’t mean he had to talk so openly about it in front of her.

  “What if we don’t tell them what it’s for?” she asked. “Just a couple of guys to hang out around the place where Wrench’ll remove the collar? So they can warn you guys if Adveni show up?”

  Wrench thought about it for a minute before looking at Keiran.

  “She has a point. A few lookouts might be helpful, especially if this collar proves difficult.”

  “Alright,” Keiran answered. “We’ll try to get some men to look out.”

  Though, for some reason, he didn’t seem too happy about it, quickly taking a swig of the wine.

  “George, you got some paper?” Wrench asked suddenly.

  He reached out and took the bottle of berry wine from Keiran, drinking down a mouthful as Georgianna tucked the cigarette behind her ear and dug into her bag, pulling out her journal and a pencil. Placing the bottle down between them, Wrench took the journal and opened it on the back page, checking both sides before he began scribbling something down. Georgianna picked up the bottle as she watched him, sipping the wine thoughtfully.

  “When can we do this?” Taye asked hopefully.

  Keiran glanced at Georgianna expectantly, but she could only shrug.

  “This is a list of things I’m gonna need,” Wrench explained, placing the journal down between them. “Once we have those, we can go the next time George is in the compound.”

  “And I’ll meet you after,” she added, glancing at Keiran.

  As Taye reached out, holding the journal open at the back page to get a good look at the list, Keiran reached out and brushed some of her hair back. Smiling, she leaned in as he placed a soft, simple kiss on her lips.

  “And you’ll meet us after.”

  24 The Supply Scout

  Despite the fact that Taye and Keiran seemed intent on not getting along with each other, they ended up having a pretty good night. Keiran had brought berry wine and a bottle of Adveni-brewed liquor that Georgianna had given him to get them significantly merry, and Taye had enough foinah leaf to last them until the early hours.

  In the predawn they made their way, admittedly with some wavering along the path, back into the city, Taye peeling off when they reached the entrance to the Carae. Georgianna knew that really she should go back home. Though, seeing as she needed to speak to Beck, she accepted Keiran’s rather blunt and dirty suggestion that she come to his place instead. Wrench made the usual jokes of course, but
in all reality, by the time they got back to Keiran’s shack, Georgianna was so tired that Keiran just slipped an arm around her under the blankets and pulled her close. Georgianna was asleep within moments.

  Later that morning, she set about locating Beck. His tunnel car was empty and no one had seen him since they emerged from their own homes. In the end, she stopped by Medics’ Way to find Lacie in the hope that she might know where her adoptive father may have gone. Lacie informed her somewhat distractedly, as she sketched in a notebook, that Beck had been gone before she woke that morning.

  The sun’s highest peak had been and gone before Georgianna found Beck, sitting with a group of men, plans lying across a couple of crates in front of them. One of them, an older man Georgianna didn’t recognise, glared suspiciously at her, but Georgianna waved him off.

  “I’m not staying,” she explained. “I just, uh, need to speak to the marshall.”

  Beck took hold of Georgianna’s elbow, leading her down the tunnel a hundred yards or so before he turned to her. He looked tired, lines that previously appeared and vanished depending on his expression slowly wearing their way into his skin. The circles under his eyes were darker than normal and Georgianna gazed at him in worry for a few moments, even after Beck indicated that she should start talking.

  “Georgianna…” he urged, his eyes widening expectantly.

  “Oh, right, yeah. I uh, I wanted to ask if there was any chance of getting a few Belsa to stand guard for us.”

  Beck looked at her, puzzled as he shifted his stance, crossing his arms over his chest.

  “For?”

  Shuffling her feet awkwardly, she didn’t know why she felt so nervous asking this of Beck. She’d asked favours of him before and never felt this knot in the pit of her stomach. The only thing she could think of as the cause was that Beck was a friend of her father’s and she already knew that he would not be happy about what his daughter was planning to do.

  “A friend’s partner was taken by the Adveni a few months ago. She was sold to a man living in the Adveni quarter and we want to get her out. We need a few men to stand guard in Oprust while we remove her collar to let us know if any Adveni are coming.”

  Beck frowned as he looked down at her, pushing his lips into a thin line, his expression thoughtful. For a moment, Georgianna thought she saw a hint of anger in his face and wondered if she should say more, if she should explain that Keiran and Wrench had already agreed to help them. She considered telling him that they had a plan in place, or at least, the beginnings of one, but she quickly decided against it, standing silently as Beck considered what she’d said.

  “I’m sorry, George,” he said, letting out a low sigh. “I can’t risk a number of men for the freedom of one girl. If they were discovered to be Belsa, they would face the rope.”

  Georgianna sighed and looked down at her boots, but she couldn’t fault Beck on his logic. If they were discovered, the people who stood to lose the most were Wrench and Keiran. They would be executed for Belsa affiliations if it became clear the Belsa were involved. Having a group of men standing guard would make it obvious that this was a Belsa operation. Nyah would be sent back to her owner, Georgianna and Taye to the yard. The Belsa faced a much fiercer penalty.

  “I understand,” Georgianna answered sadly.

  She immediately felt bad that her tone was not cheerier, that she was possibly making Beck feel guilty about not being able to help. While she’d hoped he would, it would be stupid to have expected it.

  “Look, if I can help in some other way…” he suggested.

  “No, no, it’s okay,” she interrupted, trying her best to sound more cheerful. “I understand that you need to look after the Belsa. I was only hoping anyway.”

  Beck nodded slowly. Suddenly remembering Wrench’s list, Georgianna tugged the book from her bag. She opened it to the last page and turned the book around so that Beck could see.

  “Can you get any of the things on this list? Wre… We need them to get the collar off.”

  Studying the list, Beck’s brow furrowed. He tapped a finger against his jaw until he pointed to two of the items on the list, one of which, Georgianna had been sure would be the hardest to find.

  “I can get the absorber,” he answered. “Managed to get a couple from a raid a while ago. I’ll keep the other bits in mind.”

  “That would be great, thank you!”

  “When do you need them?”

  “Soon as possible,” Georgianna answered shyly.

  Beck nodded.

  “Alright, stop by my car tomorrow, I should have them for you,” he said. “Now, I’m sorry, Georgianna, but I really need to get back.”

  Georgianna nodded gratefully, closing the journal and slipping it into her bag.

  “Thank you again, Marshall.”

  Beck had already turned and taken a few steps back towards the other men when he waved a hand above his head dismissively.

  “Beck!” he called back.

  Georgianna laughed as she made her way back down the line.