Oh, the irony of it. How things had changed since Emily had lain beside Celine at the top of the apprentices’ tower at Seven Skies, coaxing her through reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
“C’mon, Em, let’s try again,” Celine said now, awkwardly shuffling the deck of cards they’d scavenged between her old and gnarled fingers. She, Emily thought bemusedly, was enjoying this a hell of a lot more than Emily was. It was hard, and it left her feeling drained. But it was so good to see Celine happy and intent upon something, and she didn’t have the heart to put an end to their practice for the day.
“Okay,” she sighed, exchanging a glance with Corbbmacc. He sat near the entrance, alternately watching them and keeping a lookout for Maddy and Galak’s return from foraging. He gave her a small smile, but it didn’t reach his eyes. She wondered, fleetingly, what that was about, but then Celine was impatiently tapping the top of the deck before her, and Emily returned her gaze to her friend.
“What’s the next card, Em?”
Emily sighed, bowed her head, and closed her eyes. She let her fingers run along the blade of the crystal sword in her lap, willing it to waken the knowing and half afraid of the moment when it would.
She thought she understood the basics of what she was doing—as much as she understood any of this crazy shit, anyway. Tapping into the knowing was tapping into her past and future lives; future versions of herself could do the same, and thus could be used to access memories of her current life for things that hadn’t happened yet. That was as far as she could get before her head felt like it was going to explode. For now, she wasn’t even going to worry about what the wizard had done to muddle things further.
Focus, she admonished herself, and she forced herself to empty her head.
She pictured the deck of cards in her mind’s eye and tried to blot out everything else. She imagined them hanging there, suspended in a void. She concentrated on her breathing. She couldn’t even really feel the blade beneath her fingers anymore.
There it was! That familiar thrum, deep inside her muscles. She let it build, loving and hating the anticipation that seemed to bloom inside her like a match dropped into kindling. A low whine began, and it felt like her whole skull was vibrating.
Flip the card over, she thought, concentrating on the deck of cards in her mind. Flip it over. Let me see.
The card on the top of the deck trembled, began to flip over, fell back, then slid sideways off the top of the deck and fluttered away like a leaf on the wind.
No, she thought. Let me see.
She wasn’t sure how she was doing it, exactly. It was like reaching out with an unseen hand—as if her thoughts were another limb that could manipulate matter, and they pushed on one corner of the card. The card at last flipped over, even as the power of the knowing grew and the whine pitched steadily higher.
It was the jack of diamonds, but not like any jack she’d ever seen. The face on the card was old and lined, with a mouth surrounded by sores and full of broken and crooked teeth, grinning at her above a ragged, graying beard. A pair of bloodshot eyes blinked at her, and as the lid rose on one, it was suddenly filled with a milky white cataract that foamed and writhed like a living thing.
The knowing grew stronger, and the card fluttered away—all the cards did, one by one, fanning out in every direction. The jack of spades, clutching a dripping, bloody knife in a black-gloved hand…the jack of clubs, clad in some kind of crazy sci-fi spacesuit and holding a fist of blue fire…the ace of spades…
Heat burned in her veins, the knowing’s magic mixing with an all-consuming terror that she could not find the source of. The cards swirled and danced around her, and slowly each changed color until they were only a cloud of autumn leaves, scattered to the four winds.
The knowing reached its peak, held, then broke, its warmth washing out of her like water draining away. She opened her eyes and saw Celine watching her intently, a small frown on her lips.
“Yeh lost control again that time, didn’tcha?” she said gently.
“A little,” Emily said, and she was proud to hear that her voice did not tremble. “But I got something.” She pulled the deck of cards toward her.
“Jack of diamonds, jack of spades, jack of clubs, ace of spades,” she recited slowly, then dealt out the top four cards.
They were in the order she’d seen, although the drawings on their faces were mundane—no grinning old men…no bloody knives.
“Well done, Em!” Celine said, clapping her hands with delight. “Now, I know yeh can do it with less. Just a taste, Em. Just a sip, remember?” She swept the cards back into the deck and began shuffling, but her fingers betrayed her. The cards slipped out of her hands, scattering in every direction around her. One wafted down just in front of Rascal’s nose, and the kitsper opened a single silver eye to glare at it disdainfully.
There was a strange, choked sort of sound from the cave entrance, and Emily looked that way in time to see Corbbmacc’s back as he walked away from them, his shoulders hunched and his head down.
“S’wrong with ‘im?” Celine murmured to Emily, following her gaze.
“I don’t know.” Emily watched, disquieted, as Corbbmacc weaved around the rocks and boulders that marked the small bluff up to their shelter. He hardly seemed to be watching where he was going, and twice he nearly tripped over loose stones.
“I’m going to go see,” she told Celine, getting to her feet.
He didn’t hear her coming—didn’t even seem to know she was there until she was standing at his shoulder. He said nothing; he just kept his face averted, staring first at the ground, then out over the desert and the burned-out husk that had been the ghost town.
“Are you okay?” she asked. She wanted to reach out to him, to touch his arm, but something made her hesitate.
“Sure,” he said gruffly, but his voice sounded tight and strange, quite unlike she’d ever heard it.
They stood there for a long moment. The sun was going down in the west, and its rays felt especially warm against her back in the cool autumn air.
“What is it?” she persisted. She raised her hand, almost touched his elbow, then let it fall again.
“Nothing. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine.”
He didn’t argue, but he didn’t say anything else either. She wished he would look at her. Behind them, she could hear Celine murmuring softly to Rascal inside the cave.
“A few days ago, you told me off for not talking to you,” she said quietly. “You wanted me to trust you. And you were right.”
Corbbmacc took a breath, and she thought he would say something, but still, he was silent.
“I’ve tried, Corbb. I’m still trying. I do trust you. It’s just hard for me. I’ve had so few people to talk to in my life, and since coming here—”
She broke off, realizing the wonder of the words she was saying as they fell from her lips.
“—I have so many people I care about now…so many friends.”
At last, she did reach out to him. She touched his arm, letting her hand rest in the crook of his elbow. He stiffened, and she thought he would pull away, but instead, he slowly turned toward her, and she let her hand fall back to her side.
He wasn’t crying—not now—but she could see the wetness glistening on his cheeks in the light of the setting sun. It made him look younger—closer to her own age—erasing the year or two between them.
“It’s stupid,” he said, his voice hardly more than a whisper.
“Maybe it is,” Emily said, offering him a small smile. “But I won’t be able to tell you that until you tell me.”
He took a long breath.
“It’s Cel. I mean…she saved my life, Emily. She saved yours. Fuck, I practically made her save yours. And she saved Mona. I made her do that, too. And I can’t stop thinking about that—about all of it—ever since she healed me.” He hesitated, and she could see his struggle to find the words he wanted written across his face.
&
nbsp; “I owe her so much,” he said at last. “For Mona…for myself…for you.”
Emily felt heat rising to her face, and she forced a small laugh.
“I think it’s me who owes you on that last one,” she said. “I’d be dead now if you hadn’t carried me down off the mountain.”
Corbbmacc only shook his head, and they stood there for a long time, looking at one another.
“I owe her,” he repeated. “I don’t know how I will ever repay her, and seeing her suffer like that…watching her waste away…it’s killing me.”
Now that was something Emily could understand, and she nodded.
“We both owe her our lives,” she said. “Once we have Daniel, we need to get them both somewhere safe…somewhere they can rest.”
“That’s just it,” Corbbmacc said, frustrated. “The two of you need to get back to Michael. You’re supposed to fix this mess, right? You’re supposed to defeat Marianne together. You promised him you’d go back.”
“There will be time for that later,” Emily said.
“Will there, Em? Will there really?”
The fear she’d been keeping locked away suddenly rushed to the fore, stabbing at her heart. If she looked at Celine—really, truly looked at her—looked past the image in her mind of the small, undernourished, yet vivacious girl who’d kicked her awake on a boat outside Seven Skies—she saw a withered old crone, surely eighty or ninety years old, if not older. Even if they convinced Celine to stop using her power—a tall order all on its own—how long could she keep being on the run as they had been? How long until her body simply gave out?
“Yes,” she said desperately, and this time her voice did tremble on the words. “There has to be.”
He smiled at her sadly—that same crooked smile she had come to love despite how seldom she saw it.
“I hope so,” he said. “I really do. I just keep thinking that we’re running out of time. Not just Celine…all of us. We’re practically sitting here waiting for the Reavers to take us. What if we can’t help Daniel? What if we can’t help ourselves once they’ve got us?”
She didn’t answer him. She didn’t have any more answers. She was the one with all the questions, after all.
The sun sank lower behind her, and their shadows stretched long at their feet, touching even as they did not.
She thought about his words; she thought about Tamila’s.
…take the time with your friends that you have left…
Time might not mean anything inside the knowing, but it seemed so precious here. How much time had she squandered in her old life? How many things had she left unsaid to Casey? How she wished she could go back and change everything…find a way to help her mother—maybe even save her life.
Foolish thoughts…foolish dreams…
She couldn’t change what had been.
…Take the time with your friends that you have left…
Emily steeled herself—the way she always had when she’d known she wouldn’t be able to stop before slamming into the boards in the offensive zone. There wasn’t time to think…there was only time to act…and so she did.
She took one tentative step forward…
…slipped her arms around Corbbmacc’s neck…
…and kissed him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
This was practically a feast!
Emily wasn’t sure what the hell she was eating—not exactly, anyway—but it was delicious, even the weird-looking roots. Maddy and Galak had returned with some sort of bird that they had roasted over a fire outside the cave, as well as an assortment of unappetizing leaves and other vegetables—including the roots. She recognized none of it and resigned herself to just having to take Maddy’s word that nothing was poisonous. The sweet scent of burning wood mixed with the aroma of cooking food; a cool, clean breeze ruffled her hair; smoke stung her eyes; and it all put her in mind of the half dozen camping trips she’d taken with Casey’s family over the years.
Galak cooked everything with the enthusiastic glee of a small child, playfully flicking hunks of sizzling meat or steaming vegetables toward each of them in turn from the point of Maddy’s dagger.
“Here comes!” he warned, his voice rising perceptibly from its normal rumbling bass, and he snapped his wrist, sending a hunk of slightly blackened meat in Maddy’s general direction. His aim left a great deal to be desire. The morsel missed its mark by several feet, leaving Rascal to pounce on it the moment it hit the ground. It wasn’t the kitsper’s first treat.
“If you keep doing that, we’re all going to starve,” Maddy groused, but she couldn’t quite keep the amusement out of her tone. “Except for the damned cat, anyway.”
Galak ignored her; he was already tossing out another portion toward Emily. Corbbmacc snatched it out of the air, popping it into his mouth before Emily realized what he’d done.
“Hey!”
Corbb grinned, leaning back on an elbow and smacking his lips in almost indecent enjoyment, and when the next piece came flying in his direction, Emily knocked his arm out of the way and caught it herself. Her reflexes were still good—maybe better than they’d ever been on the ice.
“Jesus!” Corbb swore, massaging his arm theatrically. “Remind me never to get on your bad side.”
“You stole the first one!”
There was laughter and teasing as the others joined in the game. Even Maddy’s taciturn facade cracked, revealing a reluctant grin as she surreptitiously tossed scraps to Rascal. There was more food than they could ever eat in one evening.
Can none of them sense it? Emily wondered. The change between her and Corbbmacc—the furtive glances they shared, the fact that they sat just a little closer to one another by the fire.
Surely Celine would have noticed, but Celine was distracted by Rascal’s antics as he circled the lot of them, prowling for more tasty bits.
“Yeh’ve had enough a’ready,” Celine told the kitsper, laughing gently. “Yeh won’t be able to get off the feckin’ ground if yeh keep eatin’ like that.”
More laughter…more shouts…a warm glow that was more than just the flickering light of the campfire in the dark or the glittering stars in the moonless sky.
None of them noticed the figure that separated from the shadows and stood at the edge of the firelight until it was nearly close enough to touch. Even Rascal was taken by surprise, hissing and turning to face the stranger with his sting arched over his back only seconds before the others became aware of its presence. Silence fell.
Emily should have known it was too good to last; every decent meal she’d scrounged since finding herself at Seven Skies, rare as they were, had been interrupted by some sort of catastrophe, it seemed. The Reavers were here at last, just as Derek had promised. Their time was up; her time to leisurely explore the knowing was over.
Her hand dropped to the hilt of the crystal sword at her hip. She knew it wouldn’t really be much good as a weapon, but feeling its cold, hard edges beneath her fingers was comforting anyway. The knowing did not stir, but she thought she could feel it humming just below the surface of her emotions—waiting.
“Humans…” the figure said, and its voice was unlike any Emily had ever heard. It buzzed and crackled like a chorus of katydids on a summer’s evening. “…And a Sarqin.”
Warily, Corbbmacc and Maddy got to their feet, and Celine caught hold of Rascal by the scruff of his neck and pulled him into her lap. Galak became very still, hunched over the fire.
Belatedly, Emily followed Corbbmacc’s lead and stood, peering past the fire into the darkness beyond. The figure was little more than a vague black shape among shadows. She wished she could see—him? her?—more clearly.
“Where are the others?” Corbb asked, and Emily realized he wasn’t looking at the stranger at all. Instead, he was scanning the darkness around them, his own hand on the dagger that Maddy had given him from her stash of weaponry.
“Others?”
“You’re a Reaver. You don’t travel
alone.”
The figure suddenly became very still, and when next it spoke, its words sounded even less natural.
“Do not speak that filthy human word to us. We are the Damhán Alla, and this is our territory. Forget not that you trespass.” The figure stepped forward into the light, beckoning as it did to the shadows behind it. Another figure materialized beside the first, but there was little more to see now than there had been while they’d been cloaked in darkness. Both were wrapped in heavy cloth, covered from crown to foot like Egyptian mummies. Save for a narrow gap where Emily presumed their eyes must be, their faces gave only the barest suggestion of features beneath the cloth. Even that could be misleading; Emily wasn’t sure if she actually saw the shape of jaw and brow beneath the dark wrappings, or if she only imagined she did.
The Reavers moved strangely—almost awkwardly—but their motions were quick and clipped. The smooth twitch of their limbs reminded her of something, but she couldn’t quite place it.
“You’re still Reavers, no matter what else you call yourselves,” Maddy said with disgust.
The second figure started toward them, but the first stopped it with a motion so fast Emily hardly saw it.
“We do not want trouble,” it said, its voice buzzing into a higher register. “Few venture so far into our lands. Surely you come to trade. If not, then you would be wise to turn back. The Red Desert is no place for the likes of you.”
Derek had told her the Reavers would come, and yet Emily wasn’t sure what she had been expecting to happen once they had. She supposed, in her mind’s eye, she’d imagined the covered wagons she’d seen in her vision of Daniel.
“Trade?” Maddy sneered, and she let out a harsh and bitter laugh. “Maybe that’s what you call it. We call it retrieving what you filth stole from us.”
Beside her, Emily heard Corbbmacc sigh. Silently, she agreed with that sentiment. It didn’t seem the best idea to let Maddy tip their hand.
“The Damhán Alla are many things,” the first figure said quietly, “but thieves are not one.”
Galak rose then, standing next to Maddy and towering over all of them. His shadow stretched out behind him, its enormity only making him seem larger still.
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