by Tam Linsey
“We don’t need to spend any more resources on people who will only turn into reversions.”
Ijon didn’t speak for a moment, his frown engraved on his face. He bit his lips together, then took a deep breath and raised his chin. “We have another, more immediate problem, Councilman. I’m afraid he spoke to people at the Gate before I was informed of Mr. Yoder’s return. He says the others from his party have been taken into slavery and has confirmed that the cannibals are trading reversions to the Fosselites for guns. Panic is spreading through the Holdout.”
Rael massaged his forehead. He couldn’t let this rumor spread right before the Fosselite problem was solved forever. A shaft of daylight crept onto his elbow as the sun began its downward arc. The Fosselites’d had plenty of time to collect the reversions and retreat by now. All that would be left at the beacon site were cannibals. The kind who didn’t volunteer for conversion.
“It’s probably too late for the reversions if Mr. Yoder’s story is true,” Rael said. “I’ll send you the beacon’s coordinates. Put together two Burn Ops teams. I’ll rally a third from here. Send them at first light. Oh, and warn them about the guns—tell them to shoot from above and offer no mercy. I want those cannibals eradicated.”
The Taguan
Every fiber of Eily’s being cringed as Ana collapsed back to the pallet, limp and haggard. Normally, a birth during a flesh-feast was considered lucky. But nothing about Ana’s progress so far had been lucky. Labor had come on hard and fast, giving her sister no time to recover between contractions.
At least Sefe had relented and allowed Eily out of her cage. She reached out and stroked a sweaty strand of hair off Ana’s cheek. Her sister’s skin was unusually cold, and her eyes were sunken and bruised looking.
Two women hovered nearby, reluctantly helping as Sefe commanded them to boil water or bring fresh blankets. The rest of the cave’s population had disappeared. The great cavern seemed to swallow all sound and light, as though life had been sucked away. Even the roasting spit had been removed. Eily was glad the sickening stench of cooking meat was gone. The smell of Ana’s blood was bad enough.
The shorter helper-woman added a branch to the fire for the sixth time that night, sending shadows contorting across the cave walls. In the flare of light, Ana’s blood-soaked pallet looked impossibly crimson. Eily took her sister’s hand and choked back a sob. She’d not been allowed to help with births at the Holdout. The women considered her bad luck. But right now even she could tell something was wrong.
Ana screamed, curling in on herself with another contraction.
“If you’re screaming, you’re not pushing.” Sefe stood at the foot of the pallet, leaning on his spear as if it was the only thing holding him up. He was marked as a healer, but so far all he’d done was offer words.
The contraction eased. Ana shook her head weakly from side to side. “This child will live.”
Eily’s heart lay like a lead weight in her chest. She resisted looking up at Sefe and stroked Ana’s hand. “I’m sure you’ll be fine. Just keep pushing.”
Ana lifted her other hand toward Sefe. “Sefe, promise you won’t replace me. Let her go.”
He took an awkward step forward and knelt by Ana’s side to take her offered hand. “My Ana.”
Eily blinked in surprise at the tenderness in his voice.
Ana moaned, a contraction seizing her. Her eyes rolled back as she weakly tried to push. Sefe remained kneeling, his hand around Ana’s.
“You’re a healer.” Eily’s throat tightened. “Save her.”
He didn’t take his eyes off Ana. “I have no medicine for this.”
“Is she dying?” Eily whispered, the dreaded words sour on her tongue.
The muscles of Sefe’s jaw bulged beneath his scars. He lowered his chin, took a deep breath and let it out slowly. After a pause, he placed a palm on the side of Ana’s abdomen. With his other hand, he drew a knife from his belt.
Eily’s stomach lurched. She thrust her hands over Ana’s belly. “You can’t cut her open!”
He looked into her face and his lips spread into a line that might have been an attempt at a smile. His eyes glittered. “Sometimes what’s best isn’t exactly what we want.”
She threw her body over her sister’s. Some women at the Holdout labored for days. Ana only needed more time. A contraction tightened Ana’s abdomen as Eily held her. Opening Ana up without anesthetic or antibiotics was no better than giving her the Knife. A savage’s solution.
“Save my baby.” Ana’s voice brushed Eily’s ear, a sigh of wind at sunset.
“I can do no more.” Sefe’s voice was almost as soft. “Would you waste them both?”
Eily shuddered, every muscle, every fiber, every bone crying out in denial. No wasting. The core philosophy on the Tox. This entire journey, Gid’s certain demise, Wint and Lisius and soon Pulo’s deaths, had been wasted. The baby had next to no chance at survival; Haldanian mothers exposed to UV during gestation almost always delivered stillborns. How could this be happening? Sefe couldn’t be right. How much loss could one person take?
Ana’s chest rose and fell as fast as a bird’s. She lived, but her body felt oddly clammy and stiff. The scent of death rose from her. Eily groped for her hand. The fingers and wrist were limp and cold. Nothing but meat. A voice inside Eily’s head began to wail. No!
Beneath Eily’s embrace, a tiny ripple rose across Ana’s abdomen, like a fish surfacing from a pond.
The wailing in Eily’s head ceased. The baby lived. For now.
She pushed away from her sister and met Sefe’s eyes. “No wasting.”
Jubal hurried along the river trail back to the Taguan, plunking the makeshift staff’s butt against the ground. The staff was merely a long amarantox stalk he’d stripped of leaves. A few broken pottery shards dangled from strings at the top, their noise more muted than he liked. The staff would be worthless in a fight or even to support his weight, but it would announce a trader’s presence in the dark. His heart raced. If Sefe chose not to honor the staff, Jubal would die long before the flying machines arrived.
Rodi jogged next to him. “I don’t understand this Flame Runna magic.”
“Eily said the button calls flying machines. The entire Taguan is in danger.”
“But how?”
“I don’t know. But they could be here by morning.” He shook his head, glancing up at the moon hovering over the tamarisk stand on the far bank. To his right, a long slope of rock formed the basin floor from the cave mouth to the river.
“If I had my son with me,” Rodi looked back over her shoulder, “I’d leave with Rann right now.”
His brother had gone the other way with the wagon. Jubal couldn’t care less if Rann took all the goods and was never heard from again.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I have a plan to save you and the Taguan if we can convince people to listen.”
“Flame Runnas burn everything. Are you sure your woman isn’t setting a trap?”
Jubal swallowed, his breathing ragged as he climbed the slope. The wooziness was mostly gone, but he still felt worn out. He shook his staff again to calm his nerves. “I trust her. If we keep everyone inside the cave, away from Sefe and the others who will fight, the Flame Runnas won’t burn us.”
“That sounds like a trap.”
Without pausing his stride, Jubal said, “She offered to stand with us, so if they send fire, she’ll burn, too. Remember the rumors of children being taken? They’re true. Small children don’t run or fight back, so the Flame Runnas adopt them. Eily was such a child. She was born into the Under Stone tribe.”
“Then how did she get Flame Runna skin?” Rodi’s voice came from farther behind him.
Jubal paused to look over his shoulder. She stood with the moon at her back, one hand on her hip. “Keep up,” he said. Once she continued walking, he answered. “Eily says they changed her skin to make her one of them.”
“Will they turn us into Flame Runnas?”
<
br /> “I don’t know.” Jubal shrugged. “But Eily hasn’t eaten once since I met her. Flame Runnas never hunger. I think many people would like that.”
“Sefe and his men will try to shoot the flying machines. Then the Flame Runnas will burn out the cave.”
Jubal grimaced. Hiding inside the cave did seem dangerous. But so did standing outside, especially if Sefe’s men were attacking. “Eily said she’d stand with us.”
Rodi kept pace with him in silence.
As they drew near the Taguan, the gabble of a crowd met his ears. Jubal slowed. Was Sefe about to send men after Rann? A child cried, and a woman’s voice floated over the others in laughter. Not a hunting party. “Why are they all outside?”
“Wait here.” Rodi disappeared into the darkness.
Jubal eased forward until he could make out a clump of people sitting around a small fire. They were visiting and talking. Shadows moved about other glowing fires scattered up the Taguan’s basin.
Rodi returned a moment later. “The Flame Runna is giving birth. They’ve moved your father’s flesh-feast outside.”
He glanced toward the cavern entrance. “Eily’s inside?”
Rodi nodded. “I hear labor’s not going well.”
Jubal pursed his lips. “Where’s Sefe?”
“Inside. He’s a Healer.”
“Gather your group. Let me talk to them.”
Rodi reentered the crowd, and Jubal approached the nearest fire, shaking his staff gently to announce himself.
“Trader?” A man looked up over his shoulder. “I’m surprised to see you return.”
“I would not miss my father’s flesh-feast.”
The group murmured to each other. A woman with braided hair spoke up. “Your father was a fair man. He’s traded with us since I was a child. But he’s brought ill luck on the Taguan this season.”
Jubal squatted down between two men in the circle. “How so?”
“That Flame Runna of Sefe’s is about to spawn more,” the man beside Jubal said. The entire group turned to spit over their shoulders.
“What has that to do with my father? He didn’t plant that babe inside her. Nor did he bring her here in the first place.”
A heavy pause, then a young mother with a sleeping child on her lap said, “His flesh-feast is cursed by her birthing.”
Jubal cocked his head. Births during a flesh-feast were considered good luck. The child was almost always named after the deceased. “How can a flesh-feast be cursed by a birthing?”
“It’s a Flame Runna birthing,” the man next to him muttered. Again, people spat.
A man with deep lines around his lips and eyes wiped his mouth with the back of his forearm, then pointed at Jubal. “And you traded more of the evil into Sefe’s hands.”
The man beside Jubal stirred the fire. The orange light exposed their frightened faces. Two new people joined the circle, a young man and woman holding hands.
“Has Ana been evil?” Jubal asked. “Has she brought the flying machines? Or killed your children outside the Hunger?”
“Sefe uses her to control the hunters,” the old man said.
The woman with the child replied, “Not very well.”
From among the other fires, Rodi arrived with her son on her hip. She brought with her three women and two men. They took places standing or squatting behind the others around the fire.
“How many of you are or were hunters?” Jubal asked, looking at the firelit faces. Most of the onlookers were women. None of the men had a hunter’s peculiar braided beard or facial piercings.
A slight pause before a young man answered. “Not me.”
The rest of the group muttered agreement.
The woman who’d spoken first said, “Sefe needs them to attack the Flame Runnas.”
“Ana’s a Flame Runna. Why does she help attack her own kind?” Jubal asked.
“She claims she was once one of us,” one of Rodi’s women said, “and the Flame Runnas gave her green skin. She hates them.”
“But her sister’s one of them,” Jubal pointed out.
“I don’t think she likes her sister much, either.” Several people laughed.
Jubal’s stomach soured. The hazy recollection of Ana’s kisses prickled his skin. He was fairly good at reading people during trade, and while Ana had seemed regretful, she’d also been resolute. Eily was competition. And Ana had spoken of death. Was Eily all right? Ana’d helped the other Flame Runna escape. Maybe she’d help Eily. He could only hope. Right now he had to get the residents of the Taguan to safety. “Sefe is bringing the anger of the Flame Runnas onto you and your children.”
“We’re safe at the Taguan,” said a lisping girl. Many in the group turned faces to the dark sky.
“Not out here, we’re not,” Jubal said. To the east, the sky and land had parted ways, light above and shadow below. Dawn approached. He had to get everyone inside. “Flame Runnas are on their way. They will be here with the daylight.”
The mother let out a cry and lifted her child to one shoulder. The man next to Jubal shot to his feet, fists clenched at his sides. Others rose as well, muttering plans to run.
Jubal shouted over the rising noise. “Families moving through the amarantox will leave trails. The Flame Runnas will track us down and burn us out.”
The mother sobbed along with her child. The young couple clutched each other, the woman burying her head against the man’s chest. The crowd grew as word spread to the other fires. “How do you know they’re coming?” a woman shouted.
“He brought them to us!” Other voices rose. “We should kill them all.”
Jubal shook his staff, yearning for assertive metal chimes instead of the dull clunk of pottery. “A trader does not choose sides in wars between the tribes. I only bring news.”
“If you didn’t lead them here, then how’d they find us?” The old man pushed to the front of the crowd to face Jubal.
Guilt washed over Jubal, and he sidestepped the question. “They’re hunting Sefe. Their magic leads them to the guns. I’ve traded with them, and they say their attacks are in response to hunters invading their home. They don’t know the difference between tribes, between hunters and families. You must lay down your weapons.” A memory of how Flame Runnas discerned friend from enemy poked at the edges of his attention.
An old man’s voice rose above the shuffle. “I lived on the Tox many years before this and experienced many hard times. We’ve avoided the Hunger here. The Taguan’s our home. Let Sefe fight them.”
“Sefe’s assaults have only made them more sure of their cause.” Jubal said. “If he attacks them, we’re all doomed.”
“But they always attack first!” a woman wailed, throwing both hands into the air.
The flash of her pale palms in the dawn light brought the image of Gid waving his white flag. A way to tell friend from enemy. He blinked as the image took full form. Among the items the Holdout had traded him was a folded length of white cloth.
It was still on Rann’s wagon.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Eily clenched her jaw as tears swam across her vision. Sefe hesitated, his gaze locked with hers. Then he glanced over his shoulder at the women. “Is there water ready?”
The short one nodded once. The other scurried to the fire.
“Pray to the Mothers for a girl child,” Sefe said, knife poised above Ana’s belly.
Before he could cut, a breathless warrior skidded into the cavern. “Sefe! That trader’s back. He’s causing a riot outside.”
Eily’s heart skipped a beat. Jubal had returned?
The king set the tip of the knife to Ana’s midsection. “Deal with it.”
“He says Flame Runnas are coming.”
All the air left Eily’s lungs. Jubal had used the beacon? Even with the danger to the Taguan? She looked down at her sister. Maybe the Protectorate would arrive in time to save Ana. She and her sister could go back to the Holdout. She had to act fast to get the duster�
�s attention. To stand out from the rest of the people at the Taguan. She pulled her crumpled bonnet from her pocket and fitted it over her hair.
Sefe stopped his knife and looked over his shoulder at the warrior. “He’s lying.”
“He’s telling everyone not to fight.” Sefe’s man thrust his gun upward in one hand. “He wants us to stand there and be slaughtered.”
The woman who held the water dropped the bowl. She turned and fled the cave without a backward glance. The second woman gaped at the warrior, her face ashen.
Sefe lifted his eyes toward the cavern ceiling and let out a howl. Then in a single, deft stroke, he sliced Ana from ribs to pelvis, exposing muscle and blood and a thin layer of yellow fat.
Eily choked on a scream. But Ana never moved. Never flinched or made a sound.
He sliced again, this time more gentle and precise. The folded limbs of a baby slithered from the bloody mess, hardly bigger than Eily’s two palms. The mouth opened as if to emit a sound, but none came. Sefe grabbed the child by its feet and flipped it upside down. He cleared its mouth with a sweep of his finger. The child gurgled weakly.
“A boy,” he said, his voice flat. “Not green.”
The child lives. In wonder, Eily reached out and cupped the slippery body in her hands. A miracle for which she had no words. She didn’t bother to tell Sefe none of Ana’s children could be green. Converts could only have photosynthetic children if they implanted genetically modified embryos. Even then, many mothers ended up miscarrying.
She snugged the child into the crook of her left arm in an attempt to warm him. Her nephew. Her last piece of her sister. The boy was limp, not quite pink and not quite blue. The chances of the baby surviving were less than slim, but if the Protectorate arrived in time, perhaps they could save him. He whimpered, eyes squeezed tight as if in denial of this cruel existence.
Sefe twisted the umbilical cord around a finger and pulled taut before severing it with his knife. He flung the severed end back toward Ana. Something else moved inside her gaping belly. Sefe scowled. The flesh moved again, slight but sure. He slid a hand into the cut. A second, tiny body emerged, sprawled face-down across his palm. This one squalled, and Sefe quickly hung it to clear its mouth. A second boy.