He turned back to face the way he'd come. Back toward Juli.
“What are you going to do?” Darla asked.
“Go back, get the sky craft, and go hunting.”
ELEVEN
Two days in the company of pigs, and Taya wondered how Garek had stood it for two whole years in Garamundo.
That Garek had known Fek and Gaffri personally was clear, and that they had not been friends was even clearer, given the sly comments and disparaging insults Gaffri threw at her.
He insulted Garek, he insulted her. Ridiculous insults that were nonsensical, and often contradictory.
Garek was a pathetic loser who couldn't get anyone better than her. But he had also slept his way through the whole Gara guard, because the thought of coming back to a hag like her was too much. She wanted to laugh a few times, but managed not to respond to any of it, which initially incensed him, but eventually he stopped bothering.
They had stopped physically pushing her around as much, too. Probably because they were getting used to her, and forgetting to do it.
She guessed they'd tried to use it as a means to keep her fearful and wary, but they were both too lazy to keep it up.
No wonder they'd been eager to be part of the town master's plan to betray the liege. They didn't have the drive to reach the senior ranks of the guard any other way but through stabbing their own people in the back.
Gaffri, in particular, was worried about the future he thought would be his. Fek didn't say much about it, and Taya had the sense he was more pragmatic. He would try to adapt.
Gaffri, on the other hand, didn't like his new reality.
He poured over every detail of their confrontation with Nostra, looking for a way to twist perception so he could come out of it without censure from the liege. Then Fek would remind him they had abducted Taya at knifepoint in front of the Juli Day Guard captain, and he would be silent for a few hours, before he tried to talk himself into believing he could still wrangle it to his advantage again.
He didn't like the idea of exile, she realized. He was afraid of the unknown, of what he'd find in Harven's capital, Luf, and he was desperately hoping that arriving with Taya in hand would still somehow get him the senior position of power he had already decided was his.
As light faded on the second day, Taya tripped on a small rock hidden by the shadows on the path and stumbled.
She wasn't hurt, but she used the moment to crouch down and curl herself around her bent knees. She used every opportunity to keep herself as rested and ready as she could.
Last night she'd been hedged in behind both men under a deep overhang off the path, with one of them always on watch.
They'd been nervous yesterday and through the night, but now another day had gone by without a hint they were being followed, and they were more relaxed, more confident their ruse to draw Kas and the others toward Garamundo had worked.
If they would only both sleep, she could finally pull her knife out of her boot, cut the rope they used to restrain her at night, and run as fast as she could back home.
“Get up.” Fek stood beside her, his knees in line with her head.
She said nothing, tightening her grip around her shins.
He bent his knee so it hit her in the forehead and knocked her backward, and she landed in an inelegant sprawl across the path.
She looked up, straight into the bright blue sky, and saw the flash of Star light off silver metal.
A sky craft.
She leapt to her feet, darting past Gaffri, and waved her arms as she ran to the open area a little way up the path--one of the few places in full daylight, with no shadow.
She stood, jumping as she waved, even though she didn't know if the craft could see her, or even if Garek was piloting it.
Her attention was on the glint of silver, she never even sensed Gaffri until he shoved her down to the ground and pulled back his foot to kick her.
She rolled away from him, faster than her behavior until now had led him to believe she could, and she scrambled back into a crouch, with the sheer rock face of the mountain at her back.
The rock seemed to comfort her as she put a hand back to balance herself, and she had time for a quick zing of excitement at the thought that perhaps it contained traces of shadow ore, before she turned her attention back to Gaffri.
“You were waving to that sky craft.” His voice, almost expressionless, revealed his shock.
“Yes.” She chanced another quick look up, but the sky was clear again.
“Why?”
Had he not understood anything he'd been told in Pan Nuk? “Because Garek is flying one for the liege.”
His mouth dropped open. “But maybe he isn't in that one.”
Fek joined them, standing beside Gaffri, but his gaze was on the sky. “It's gone.”
So she hadn't been seen, or it hadn't been Garek. Otherwise it would be hovering beside them right now. She slumped a little against the rock.
“Whether it was Garek or a sky raider, you tried to bring them down on us.” Gaffri sounded as if he were sounding out the words for the first time.
“Yes. I was trying to escape.” She kept her voice matter-of-fact.
Gaffri breathed in, a quick, sharp sound, and Taya knew the time for being passive had passed. She could have slid her index and middle fingers into the top of her boot to get her knife, but she pulled with her mind instead and felt the quick, bright leap of joy as she connected with the ore, as the hilt of her knife slid out of its sheath and into her waiting hand. It was like touching pure happiness.
She rose slowly to her feet. Gaffri's face was wild, and she felt the first real fear since they'd abducted her. He looked prepared to kill her.
“You think the Harven liege will be pleased if you bring me to him hurt?” She kept her voice soothing. “You think hurting me will make your journey faster? Your reward better? Or worse?”
“She's right.” Fek looked away from the sky at last and turned to them. “There's no time for this, Gaffri. We need to make good time. Hurt her, and you'll slow us down.”
“She's already slowing us down. Tripping, walking too slowly.”
“She's half our size. If she could keep up, I'd be more surprised.”
She'd got the sense over the last two days that Fek was the less volatile of the two, but now he seemed to be the more intelligent, too. She wondered how Gaffri had become the leader.
“I don't care. She tried to bring a sky craft down on us!” He took a step closer, and Fek put a hand on his arm.
“No. We're in enough trouble as it is, and if we get there and find your harming her has ruined whatever plan the Harven liege has for her, then we've thrown everything away for what? Your lack of control?”
Gaffri shook his arm free. “She tried to get us killed or taken! And if I hurt her, I hurt Garek. That bastard was offered everything, and he didn't even care about it. He walked away and didn't look back. And now he works for the liege? He's some big shot in Juli? I want him to hurt.”
Gaffri pushed Fek away and grabbed her, hands biting into her upper arms, maneuvering them both so that his back was to Fek, and at last the path home was at her back and open.
“Wait.” She raised a hand and placed it on his chest, levering back with her upper body. She lifted her face to his, not needing to pretend the fear in her eyes, and then used her other hand to stab the knife into his side.
She saw his eyes open, his jaw drop, and felt his grip loosen in shock and she shoved him as hard as she could, spun on her heel, and ran.
She heard him scream, more in rage than pain, and then start after her, and she made herself run faster.
She'd barely gotten ten strides away when she felt the hard slap of air between her shoulder blades. She was running downhill and the strength of it was just enough to make her stumble, and then two unsteady steps later, she tripped on the small furrow of earth that had risen up on the path.
She had forgotten.
She
lay flat on her face, winded and struggling for breath, and cursed her idiocy. Fek and Gaffri were in the Gara guard. That meant they could call a Change. And she would bet Gaffri was the one who could call the air Change. It would explain his hatred of Garek more than anything else.
Fek was on her before she managed her first real breath, pressing her neck down with one of his huge hands, choking her.
When she fell, her knife had flown out of her hand and landed ahead of her on the path, and as she struggled against Fek's hold she considered calling it to her and impaling him, too. But if she missed, or even if she didn't, but he was still able to hold her, then her secret was out.
Gaffri limped past her, kicking out at her while he held his side with a bloody hand. He missed, staggering instead, and when he snatched the knife up he looked close to apoplectic with rage.
His eyes bulged from his face, and he gripped the knife and turned to examine it in the last of the fading light. “Just biding your time, were you?”
He took a threatening step toward her, hand coming up above his head and suddenly the pressure on her neck eased. Fek picked her up as easily as if she were a child and set her behind him, putting himself between her and Gaffri.
“You won't touch her again. This is your fault, Gaff. You should have left her alone. You hurt her now, you'll slow us down even more.” He leaned forward and tried to snatch the knife from Gaffri's hand, but Gaffri moved back, and Taya felt the hard slap of an air punch that forced Fek backward so he stumbled into her. The strength of it whipped her hair back and blew grit into her eyes.
“Get out of my way.” Gaffri's gaze was still fixed on her, and her heart gave a hard, painful knock in her chest at the promise of pain she saw there.
“Are you crazy?” Fek seemed to grow bigger; he flexed his arms and slammed his fists together and the ground under Gaffri's feet rumbled.
The vibrations rattled Taya bones, too, but Gaffri was in the epicenter, and he dropped to a knee until the tiny earthquake died away.
The two guards stared at each other, and Taya took a slow step back.
The men blocked her escape, and there was no benefit in running toward Harven, but she had the sense it would be wise to be out of range when these two went at each other.
“What is your problem, Fek?” Gaffri slowly rose up, his grip on her knife even tighter.
“My problem is that your great plan to get ahead and be the big man in Gara wasn't quite as great as you made out. Now it looks like we're finished, not just in Garamundo, but in West Lathor itself, and I'm not sure we're going to be all that welcome in Luf, either. But the one thing that will at least get our foot in the door--the one thing--is that we've managed to grab the girl. We don't know why they want her, we don't know anything because we're too low down the ladder, no matter what grand ideas you have in your head, so it makes sense we deliver her unharmed. And you want to fuck even that up?”
Gaffri stared at him, then he slapped his chest with an open palm. “You think you're in charge now? Is that it?”
A wind came up and a swirl of dust and debris enveloped Taya, who'd managed to edge four or five steps back, and Fek.
It didn't last long, though, and Taya guessed Gaffri couldn't hold it.
The bleeding from his wound seemed to have stopped, but it must have weakened him, even if she hadn't hit anything vital.
“Fuck you,” Fek said. “I'll leave you, take the girl, and you can limp into Luf on your own, with no leverage at all.” He took a step back, toward Taya.
He could do it, she realized. He had her pack and his own over his shoulders, and together they could probably go faster than a wounded Gaffri.
It would be easier to escape from just one of them, although she'd have to worry about meeting Gaffri on the path behind them if she did manage to get away.
“You'd take off, after everything I've done for you?” Another, weaker, gust of wind slapped at them.
Fek nodded. “Even after everything you've done for me.” The sarcasm in his tone was evident. Another rumble seemed to grow out of the ground, shaking everything, and Taya crouched down, unsure where to run.
A rock bounced off the cliff just beyond them, in the direction of Pan Nuk, and slammed into the ground.
The rumble intensified, vibrating through her chest and growing to a roar, and a large slice of the cliff seemed to sheer off from the mountain in a slow, graceful slide and slump across the path.
Gaffri had gone still at the first sound of the earthquake, then he turned and looked behind him before he was wrenched off his feet.
Taya saw her knife fly from his hand before she, too, pitched forward as the ground beneath her bucked and buckled.
She called her Change, looking for the knife with her new, extra sense, but she lost her focus as Fek grabbed her and threw her to safety up the path.
She landed hard, the air forced from her lungs, and as she struggled up she saw Fek lunge, take hold of the top of Gaffri's pack, and use it to drag him back as another rock bounced off the cliff, hit the path, and then disappeared down the drop on the other side.
The rumble died away, and then the sound of small pebbles skittering died away, too. There was silence except for the audible breathing of all three of them.
Taya stared at the massive piece of rock blocking off the path home. There was no way around it.
She tried to reach for her knife again, found herself bombarded with multiple pulls on her Change. There was definitely shadow ore in these rocks, small amounts spread evenly through the granite.
It acted like a crescendo of sound, making it impossible to find the one strand she needed.
She pulled back, focused on Gaffri and Fek, who were both looking upward with anxious faces.
Fek shook his head. “I must have destabilized a fault that was already there.”
Gaffri gave him a quick, nasty look. “At least it'll make it harder for anyone to follow us when they work out we tricked them down the Gara path.”
Fek nodded slowly. “True.”
They both shouldered their packs more securely, Gaffri wincing as he did it and shooting her a look of pure hatred.
The shock of the earthquake, the close call with death, seemed to have forced their problems aside for the moment.
Gaffri stood stiff and slightly turned away from both her and Fek, and Fek seemed content to ignore his former captain.
She slowly pulled herself to her feet, and Fek turned to her, narrowed his eyes and gave her a push up the path. “We walk until it's fully dark. Get going.”
She loosened her shoulders, stiff and aching from her falls, and then felt a tremor under her feet again.
Fek gave a shout and she looked over at him, eyes wide.
It was the last thing she remembered.
TWELVE
Aidan met Garek at the dock, warned most likely by the guards at the gate that he was coming in, hot and fast.
It was near dawn, the sky just starting to lighten to indigo.
Garek had made his way back to Juli balanced on the fine edge again between using his energy to call the Change, and being awake enough to fly the sky craft when he got there.
He'd left Nostra and her team far behind him almost straight away, and when he wasn't calling the Change, he'd run full tilt.
“What is it?” Aidan held a row boat docked at the far end of the pier steady for him to climb into, and then leapt in himself.
“I met Nostra and her team on the way back. Thanks for letting me know about them, by the way.”
Aidan winced. “That was Vent's deal, he only told me after you left the first time, and when you came back with the sky craft there was so much happening, I forgot. I honestly forgot.”
Garek pulled hard on the oars and brushed the apology off. “She said a team from Gara came for me in Pan Nuk, on the town master's orders. The ambassador from Harven is also involved somehow. She has the full details and is probably a day behind me.”
“Who wa
s sent from Gara?”
“Gaffri and a crew of his favorites, except for Haz and Darla. Again, Nostra has the information, and Haz and Darla are with her. The thing that had me running back was that the order was to take me and Taya, and seeing as I wasn't there, they just took Taya.”
Aidan looked up at him, eyes wide. “Where did they take her to?”
“Kas thinks Gara, which makes sense. They found some of her hair on the path.”
“Why would they do something so stupid? They must know you'll come after them. That Kas would come after them.”
“If the town master and Utrel have taken control of the senior guard, what am I or Kas going to do about it? Take on the whole city?” Garek heaved on the oars again, looking over his shoulder to line the boat up with the Left Plait. “They don't know my connection to you. If I'd come to you as a normal citizen with a complaint about it, how quickly would Juli have investigated? Would anyone here have investigated at all?”
Aidan gave a wry twist of his lips. “Point taken.”
“It's not all going the town master's way, though. Some senior officers put Darla and Haz in the team for a reason. If you're quick about it, you could crush the little coup going on there and wrest control back for your father. You'd obviously have some internal Gara support.”
“I should hope I'd have a lot.” Aidan grimaced, his eyes going to the palace high above them.
If he was waiting for support from his father, Garek thought he'd be waiting forever. There was none coming.
Valtor's mind was too clouded by mugs of firebrand and bitterness. If he ever gained his former clarity, it would only be after months of staying away from the drink. And West Lathor didn't have the luxury of that kind of time.
He said nothing though. Aidan should know this.
The scrape of rocks on the bottom of the boat signaled they'd arrived at the small beach beside the waterfall, and Aidan jumped out with him and helped him drag it clear of the waterline.
Calling the Change (Sky Raiders Book 2) Page 8