“Yep. Saw you, knew you were coming, and more importantly, I watched you burn that family with the wagons north of here. Not good, friend. That alone would get you good and dead, but not yet. We’ve got a lot to discuss,” I said.
We rode in silence, watching him, and when we rolled up to The Oasis, a crowd came out to meet us.
“Get him to the chair,” I said. He was bustled away by two burly men and Natif, who kept up a steady stream of curses that nearly made me blush. Silk met us with drinks and food, and I took ten minutes in our home to wash up and collect my thoughts.
Then I heard one of the Hannahs scream.
14
I bolted past Silk into the town center and came to a skidding stop.
Hannah was dragging Hannah Too away from our prisoner, holding her in a death grip around her small waist. Hannah was a spitting, sobbing ball of raw fury, unlike anything I’d ever seen in my life, and judging by the look on the raider’s face, he knew Hannah.
It took several minutes to calm the uproar, punctuated by Lasser bringing out a bottle of whiskey and pouring a large cup for both Hannahs. They downed them like water, and Lasser refilled, then guided the girls to a seat where they proceeded to glare at the raider with a hatred I’d only seen in divorce court.
I held up my hands for silence, and after a moment, it was granted.
“What’s your name?” I asked the raider.
To my surprise, he answered. “Taronic.”
“Hannah, you know him?” I asked. Both Hannahs—one blonde, one brunette, and both filled with righteous fury—nodded.
Hannah Too spoke first. “This piece of shit killed Milya last year. Raped her so bad she bled out and he didn’t even stay. Snuck out and said he was never in the house. Wetterick protected him, so we couldn’t do anything about it.” She spat at him, falling far short but making her point.
“Raped?” I asked, my voice going dangerously soft. I could feel my fingers begin to twitch as I fought the urge to kill Taronic without a single question.
“She was a whore,” he said, his voice flat.
I nodded, looking down. “She was. And a girl, I assume?”
“Seventeen,” Hannah answered.
“Seventeen,” I repeated, as if the word was a shit sandwich. I shrugged, leaning close to Taronic, who was tied to the chair with thick wire. He wasn’t going anywhere, but my rage would have to wait a moment. “Do you trust me, Hannah? And Hannah? Silk? All of you?”
I got a chorus of agreement, and Silk came over to touch my arm.
She whispered, “Make sure this doesn’t cost you too much.”
“Okay,” I said, and she stepped away, fixing Taronic with a sad smile.
“Wetterick. I need to know his strength,” I said.
Taronic looked around, finding no one in his corner. “Two hundred guns, give or take, depending on sickness or injury. We’ve been training hard for this ever since we found the hospital.
“Hospital? Where?” I asked.
“East of us. Some bonecutter from Kassos came out, said he was looking for a lab, whatever that is. He went on for hours about viral loads and cracking retrovirus or—something. I couldn’t understand it. None of us could, really, but he convinced everyone that he could build weapons to kill off the wild tribes out east. Probably you, too, once he found out about this place. Like I said, we were training for a lot of other things, so I wasn’t paying too much attention to some asshole with medical equipment,” Taronic said.
“What other things?” I asked. Andi came close, watching him with unblinking eyes.
“Going west. And south. We heard about you, of course, and others, but you were first on our list. We—knew things,” he said, his eyes cutting away.
“What things?” I asked him, feeling a chill in my gut.
“The reactors. The Cache. Other things.” Taronic looked into the crowd, then his head snapped back to face me.
In the direction he’d glanced stood Danto, looming in front of Breslin’s family. Danto wore a sour expression, his glower just short of open rebellion.
“And now soon will the whole force move on us?” I asked.
“Won’t,” Taronic admitted. “We’re going to the Cache. This place is small coin compared to all that.”
“True. We won’t be, not for long, but it’s not a bad move.” I nodded, considering his words, then I stepped back and lifted my voice so everyone could hear. “I told you I would never be a tyrant, and I won’t. I told you I’d keep you safe. I will. But there are things you can’t know right now that can hurt us, and as strong as we are, we can’t afford a stand-up fight with hundreds of soldiers. Not if we want to grow, and have kids, and live in peace.”
I moved to stand next to Taronic, my hand on his shoulder. I held no weapon, and my face was blank. “It isn’t just that he raped and killed a girl, though that would be bad enough. It isn’t his actions in The Empty, when he burned that family and ended their lives. His crimes are far worse than that, because he has a secret, and even now, he can’t bring himself to tell the truth. Can you?”
“I don’t know what you’re—” Taronic began, and I tore his throat out with my fingers. I dropped the section of windpipe to the ground as he sputtered and gasped, a river of blood streaming down the front of his leather armor.
No one spoke save some children, who began to cry. I wiped my hand on his armor, and then then twisted his head nearly off, the bones breaking with dull thumps.
And then I walked toward Danto, who shrank back in horror, his faced gone dead white.
I put out a hand and moved him aside. “Why did you do it?” I asked Jossi, who stood behind him and next to a stunned Breslin. “Why are you a spy?”
15
Jossi had the good sense—or arrogance—not to say a word of denial. People moved away from her like she carried the plague, and in seconds, there was a ring of empty space with only Jossi, Breslin, and me.
“Jossi?” Breslin asked, disbelief in his voice.
When she finally looked up at him, her blue eyes were narrowed, lips twisted in a sneer that transformed her completely. Breslin took an involuntary step back, and I wanted to, though I held firm in case she was armed.
Then she spoke to me.
“You can’t imagine what it’s like, having this beast come at you in bed. Pawing me, lying beside me, reeking of dirt and sweat.”
Breslin deflated in horror as his wife became something else—someone else with each word that fell out of her lips. Their children stood in mute horror next to Natif, unsure what to say. They were old enough to understand, but what she was saying was beyond comprehension.
“Beast?” I asked her. “This man? He works harder than anyone here.”
Jossi flicked a glance at the Hannahs, then laughed, and the noise was like a knife. “You think you’re whores, but you don’t know what it’s like to give up everything to raise children in a stinking shithole of a camp, when I could have been a council daughter. I would have had—everything. Clothes. A staff to care for me instead of fending for a family who thought that success was finding two meals in a row.”
Beba walked briskly across the gravel and slapped Jossi across the mouth, hard. “I always knew you thought you should have a crown, but to do this to your own children? Don’t insult the Hannahs. You’re no whore. A whore has goals. You have a fantasy.”
Jossi laughed again. “Better than living like—”
Beba’s hand cracked across Jossi’s face for the second time. “Not one more word.” She turned to address me, and the calm healer was still there, but just barely. Beba was a woman transformed, too. She was a mother, protecting her son and his children, and when she spoke, it was in a voice so devoid of emotion I felt a chill on my arms. “Will you kill her for spying? It’s obvious she did it to secure a place in Kassos.”
“A place?” Jossi asked through bloody teeth. Her children were crying now. Breslin stood mute. Mira, Silk, and Andi looked like they wanted to
shoot Jossi on the spot, but the angriest face was Derin, who had walked up just in time to see the spectacle. He had a protective arm around Scoot, who leaned against him instinctively. “A palace. Not a place. Everything I deserved. Everything I earned.”
“Earned? By what?” Beba asked. “Being born pretty? You haven’t earned anything, except the love of your children, and you just threw that away. You sicken me.”
“How did you do it?” I asked Jossi.
“I waited until he was sleeping, and took a message outside the perimeter. They picked it up. They’ve known about this place since we arrived,” she said without a hint of regret.
“You got a lot of people killed for your chance at a paper crown,” I said. “Not that you care.”
“I don’t,” Jossi said, defiant.
I addressed Breslin and Beba as one, lifting my voice so it could be heard. A hum of stunned shock hung over the area, and my next words had to be carefully chosen. Taronic’s corpse still hung from his final place not ten meters away. I had killed to protect The Oasis, and now, I had to do something different to assure the same outcome.
“I won’t touch her, and I won’t allow anyone else to either,” I said, shooting a glance toward the Hannahs, who stared at Jossi with fevered intensity. “This should be a family decision, but we’re past that now. She’s a spy, and she put us all at risk. She brought Taronic south, and cost a family their lives. They died badly.” I fought the urge to spit, reminded of the scene we saw from the air, with burning bodies and shattered wagons.
“You wanted . . . a crown?” Breslin asked his wife.
Her sneer faded, replaced by something even worse. Pity.
“Like you would understand. I was turned out from the city and left to my own devices because of—politics. And then you came along and I couldn’t go back to Kassos because I would have been killed. It’s a snake pit of lies, and I was outside looking in. So I let you climb on me and fill my belly with children, each one wearing me out and making me more like the women who trudge to the fountains in Kassos for water each day.” She shook her head with regret, and her lack of caring was so perfect she might have been made of clay.
Breslin said nothing, but he stepped back and gathered his children in his arms, muttering quiet assurance. Beba did the same, and it was only me and Jossi in the space. She was alone, and she was hated.
But I wouldn’t kill her.
“Danto,” I said.
“Yes?” he asked in surprise.
“Do you want to be here or not?” I asked him.
“I do.”
“Then I have a job for you. Silk and Mira will get packs together. Take Jossi north,” I said.
“I told you I can’t go back to Kassos, idiot!” Jossi snapped.
“Kassos? Who said anything about Kassos? You’re going to the site where those traders were killed. Danto is going to watch you bury their bodies, one at a time. You’re going to give them a decent burial with your own hands, princess, and then he’s going to march you back here where you’ll be given a choice,” I said.
“What? Are you out of your fucking mind? I’m not going into the—”
“I wasn’t done. You’re coming back here, and you’ll open a stall doing paper work, making dyes—things you’re good at. Breslin will keep his children. You’ve lost that privilege, but I will not kill you. That decision lies somewhere else,” I said.
My words sank in, and Jossi stared, dumbstruck by the knowledge that someone other than me held her fate. “Who?”
“Your children. When they come of age, they decide if you stay or are exiled. It’s up to them, not me, and not anyone else. Your children, who you threw away over a chance at something shiny,” I said. The words felt like rot on my tongue, but I said them anyway.
Jossi was pale, swaying on her feet. Danto came up, his eyes on her with a wary distrust. “What if she runs?”
“She won’t. She’s a coward,” I said.
Danto led her away, and for the first time since I’d woken in that tube, I felt the true meaning of sadness.
16
It took a full day for The Oasis to return to some kind of normal.
I dragged Taronic’s body into the desert and left if for scavengers, because he didn’t deserve the effort it would have taken to bury him. He made a choice, and even in death, he would live with it.
Breslin clung to his children, and Beba kept them with her as she began to build a clinic in earnest. She was training the kids to be healers, whether they knew it or not, and it made a kind of sense that families should pass skills on without concern for things like school. The Empty was our school, and it was a hard one. We were carving out a place to live, one sapling at a time, but in the meantime, learning took place every day through the work we did.
I chose to lead by example, digging and planting thirty saplings along the newest channel, just past the eastern pond that Breslin and Lasser had completed. It would be a place for fish, we decided, so Mira took Natif and some of the other kids to a small creek about ten klicks west of us. It was the first significant water we’d seen on our way to The Oasis, and it had pools deep enough to hold fish.
After four hours, they came back, a chattering mass of excitement led by Natif. Each kid carried a small bucket filled with fish.
Mira was grinning at the excited mass of kids. “The fish never stood a chance.”
“What did they find?” I asked, looking in each bucket. Dark shapes swam, most of them small but a few large enough that I could tell they would be big fish in a few months. There were catfish, crappie, sandbass, and largemouth, all alive and well.
“Dump ‘em in and see what happens. Let’s keep the catfish in the western pond, and everything else goes east. Sound good?” I asked the kids. Their shout of agreement was followed by a mass charge as they split up in two directions, sloshing water and shrieking as they pelted over the gravel paths.
Mira sighed. “That was harder than scavenging. They wouldn’t . . . stop . . . talking.”
I draped an arm over her shoulders, laughing at the frustration in her voice. “Kids are like that, especially when they’re excited.”
“I think I’ll have Lasser do that next time,” she said.
“Can’t. While you were away, I made an official declaration. You’re in charge of all youth activities. It’s a fulltime job, so you’ll have to—”
“Tell Silk and Andi that we’ve suddenly developed lockjaw?” she said, raising a threatening brow.
“Well, as long as your knees aren’t locked, I could survive for a bit, I guess.”
She leaned in to nip my ear, then pushed me away and went to wash up. It was time for lunch, and people were starting to come in from their various projects, tired and dirty. They were talking—not as much as two days ago, but still, it was something close to normal, and that would have to do for the time being until we learned how to process Jossi’s betrayal. I still wasn’t entirely sure what it meant, and that was part of my job.
I took a seat after scrubbing myself clean in the sink, my black hair dripping as I filled drink cups for the line of people forming, and by the time I had my food, I was dry and thinking of the jobs that faced me for the rest of the day.
Andi slid next to me, her eyes glittering with excitement. “Get the girls. And Lasser. Our house in one minute.” She walked away, mumbling to herself, and I felt another chill of uncertainty on my neck, but this time it was the sensation of something bigger than a raiding party.
We were in the main room of our house, excited and uncertain as Andi thumbed her tablet to life then tilted it toward the wall. “Close the door,” she said.
Lasser pushed the door closed, and it was darker. An image flared to life on the wall, and I knew what I was seeing. “Drone footage?” I asked. Andi’s tablet was projecting the raw feed from the Condor at a massive height. Far below, our Vampires were visible as bland triangles on the wind. Their camouflage worked at every angle, and I knew we would b
e able to use them in a variety of future missions.
“I can barely see the ground,” Mira said. Silk made a noise of agreement, so Andi touched her tablet. The picture began to zoom, first straight down, and then in wide, sweeping arcs as the camera lens began to employ a specific search pattern.
“When we were at our farthest northeast, I had the drone look toward a line of trees. It’s a river, and I’m not sure what it is because it wasn’t there when I was working in the area. You can see from the drone that it’s far more than just a tree line,” Andi said.
“It’s a forest. Like ours, but bigger. Older. Things look green,” Mira said.
“There’s grass, too,” Lasser added, and his tone told me he hadn’t seen grass in a long time. The Empty was changing, and quickly. Part of it was due to our efforts, but other changes were happening that I couldn’t explain.
“Among other things,” Andi said cryptically. “Look here.” She pointed to a dry creek bed, glinting in the harsh sunlight.
“A dry channel. So what?” Mira asked. There were thousands of them across the desert, and other than turning into raging torrents during storms, they had no use but as game trails.
“Not a dry bed. I noticed something when I was looking at the footage. It’s too big to be creek rock. It’s excavated. Tailings from a mine, if I’m guessing, and recent. That means there’s an active mining operation going on less than a hundred klicks from here, and I couldn’t figure out who would be doing it because there was no sign of houses. No tents, no buildings, and not even any tracks. If there are people working a mine, then they would be trading. There’s no evidence of that here,” Andi said.
I watched her for a moment, then smiled. “But you found something else.”
“Fucking right I did. Do you believe in fairy tales? Because I do now,” she said.
She drew the view down, magnifying as the camera focused on a small clearing about forty meters inside the tree line. There was a large, flat stone and a shape in front of it. It was pale, nearly luminous in the dappled light of the tree cover, and only visible when the drone had been banking hard while the camera was running.
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