It was only just getting light, but despite the deep shadows, Garek could see immediately that someone had been here.
The bushes that clung to the side of the steep hill, which he and Aidan had used to ease their way down to the lake when he'd hidden the sky craft, had broken branches and crushed leaves that showed the passage of at least one interloper to the waterfall.
“You do this?” he asked Aidan.
“No.” The princeling's answer was hard to hear over the sound of the falls. “I decided to keep quiet about it, but anyone could have seen us if they were keeping watch and been curious.”
Maybe. Garek edged his way behind the curtain of water and moved to the side to let Aidan in, waiting for his eyes to adjust before he moved deeper into the cave behind the waterfall.
The sky craft sat precariously on its rocks, overbalanced and looking as if it had crash landed, rather than been put there on purpose. He carefully found handholds on the wet, slick rocks and worked his way to it, climbing up to the door and looking it over carefully.
“Looks like someone used a rock to scrape or bash it.” He had to shout over the sound of the water, and Aidan bent his head close as he pulled himself up behind Garek, and then nodded when Garek pointed out the damage.
Whoever had come here had been looking for a way in. They hadn't found it.
Garek raised himself a little higher, and pulled himself onto the roof, walked around on it, noting the scuff marks from boots and the smudge of moss and dirt from footprints that told him whoever had been here had swum across rather than using a boat, and their boots had been soaked through.
He resented the intrusion because it forced him to waste time, but he wanted to make sure he and Aidan were alone before he opened up the craft and gave away where the button to open it was.
He let his gaze drift from one side of the cave to the other, the lightening sky behind the waterfall causing ripples of green and gold to dance on the rocks all around him.
There was a quick, furtive movement in the shadows, and he dived across the roof, sliding on his side and going airborne as he shot off the edge and landed lightly with a pull of his Change on the rocks below.
Someone scrabbled higher up, and small stones and showers of dirt rained down.
Garek just caught the outline of someone as they reached the edge of the cave and pulled themselves onto the hill using the vegetation again.
“Go after them?” Aidan shouted.
“No time.” And maybe they'd see who it was when they got the sky craft out.
Garek pulled himself back up to the pilot's door, opened it and started the craft up before Aidan was even inside. As soon as the door was closed, he lifted it up, and thought maybe Aidan was right, and he did call his Change more than he'd consciously realized when he flew the craft. Maybe had done from the very start.
Now that he was tired, had called his Change a lot over the last day, it was easier to notice the drain on his energy when he flew.
He shot out of the waterfall directly into the rising sun.
He spun the craft around as soon as they were free of the pounding water, lifting up and back, his gaze going to the hill and the rocky beach.
The boat was still there, untouched, but someone was crouched beneath a thick bush. He could see part of their leg.
They were wearing a guard uniform.
“Spy?” Garek wondered.
“Who for?” Aidan asked, but he didn't sound outraged by Garek's question.
“Take your pick.” Garek sent him a quick grin. “From your father's advisor, to Vent, to Harven's liege, or any of the other states. Even Kardai.” As he thought of Kardai, he thought about Dom, the Kardanx he'd taught to fly the second sky craft they'd used in the rescue, the one the sky raiders had stolen back.
“You should keep a guard on Dom,” he said. “Not because he's untrustworthy, but because someone might get it into their head to use him to fly a sky craft, just like Dartan has already threatened to do.”
“Already done,” Aidan said, and Garek sent him an appreciative look.
“Straight to Gara?” Aidan asked him.
“You want to come with me?” Garek had thought he'd drop Aidan back on the wall before he left.
The princeling nodded. “I think it's time I asserted myself a bit, and what better way than bringing Gara to heel?”
“You want to bring a few guard units along?” It would take time he didn't want to waste to organize extra guards to accompany them, but Garek didn't think getting Taya back from a hostile Gara guard would be easy. A cohort of Juli guards to back them up might make the difference.
Aidan nodded, and Garek landed the sky craft back on the palace wall.
“Make it quick.” He realized his voice was shaking.
Aidan swung down the ladder, and then stopped. “You'll find her. You did it before, you'll do it again.”
As he disappeared below, Garek slid long fingers through his short cropped hair and rubbed hard in frustration. He didn't know how he could have played the events of the last two days differently, but he'd promised himself and Taya he would never leave her again.
And he'd broken his word.
“DO you have to go so fast?”
Garek looked over at Vent with cool eyes and the Juli guard master turned back to the window of the sky craft with a hunch of his shoulders, his grip on his sword hilt white-knuckled.
Garek was still unsure Vent should have come along, although there was no doubt the Juli guard master would command respect with the Garamundo guard, and he would cut through most of the nonsense they were sure to encounter.
Nostra stood beside him. She was handling the speed and the idea of being in the sky craft better than her boss, and Garek was glad he'd taken the half hour extra to fetch her, Darla, and Haz.
They'd left the rest of her unit, to the unit's considerable relief, to continue on to Juli with Darrin as their prisoner, but Garek had persuaded Vent and Aidan that Nostra knew the most about the supposed plot in Gara, and with her as witness, they would be able to get to the bottom of things faster.
Darla and Haz could hopefully also point out who to trust. They'd need all the loyal officers they could find.
But first--he dipped west when he reached the halfway point between Juli and Gara, curving around until he found the narrow backroad from Pan Nuk to Gara that ran through the mountains.
He skimmed close to the ground, and almost three quarters of the way to Gara, with the city walls rising up in the distance, he found Kas, Lynal, and the two guards Nostra had lent Kas for the search.
They'd been running but when they heard the sky craft they stopped and looked up.
He put down up ahead of them, opened the back of the craft, and then took off again as soon as they ran up the ramp.
“Thank the Star.” Kas stumbled into the pilot area, face streaked with dust and eyes red from exhaustion. His gaze flicked to Aidan, widened with surprise at the sight of Nostra, and then sank into the co-pilot chair beside Garek.
“They took her, Garek. Right in front of me. Knife to her throat.” His hands trembled on his thighs, and Garek didn't think it was just from exhaustion.
“Nostra told me. I was on my way on foot from Juli back home, so I ran back for the sky craft.”
Kas processed that, gave another nod. He pulled a piece of fabric from his pocket, together with golden hair that was bloody at the roots. “Taya's shirt collar, or part of it. Her hair. We found them along the path. Not sure if they're careless, Taya dropped them to help us, or if it's all a ruse.”
“Where else would Gaffri go?” Garek asked.
“Luf,” Nostra said.
Everyone looked at her.
She shrugged. “Unlikely, because it's a long way. But don't forget, we don't know all the details of the deal with Harven, and our only information is from Darrin, who was clearly not included in everything. If Gaffri thinks the deal he has with the Gara town master has been compromised, he ma
y have decided Luf is the safer bet.”
“Then who left these?” Kas asked, lifting Taya's shirt collar and hair again.
“They could have split up.” Garek felt his chest seize up, like it had done over and over since Nostra had told him Taya had been taken. He forced a careful breath out. Then in.
“And if they have?” Aidan asked.
“Then I fly the road to Luf. They won't have had time to reach the Dartalian Range yet.”
Kas slumped into his chair and closed his eyes. “She knew. I didn't understand at the time, but she knew they weren't going to let her go, it was in her eyes. And there was nothing any of us could do.”
“We're doing something now,” Garek said.
He increased the speed of the sky craft, so the engines screamed as he shot toward Gara.
He intended to do a lot.
THIRTEEN
When Taya woke, it was to blackest night.
She came to slowly. Pain had woken her, along with the dryness of her throat.
She could barely swallow, it felt so parched.
Some of the dehydration would be from her proximity to a fire that burned low, but still threw off enough heat to make her want to turn away, to find cooler air.
She tried to do that, shifting on what she realized was the pallet from Janu's pack, and then holding still as the relentless thumping in her head became as sharp as mine picks.
She managed to swallow, and swallow again. She lifted a hand, hoping Fek would see it--even Gaffri would do--and give her something to drink, but it simply flopped down, and she couldn't hold her eyes open any longer.
They closed, no matter that she fought to stay awake, and she was pulled back under into the darkness.
When she woke again, it was to Fek putting her down on the hard, sharp rocks on the bank of a swift flowing mountain stream. The light was the muted gold and orange of early morning, and she closed her eyes against the brightness of it as it danced and glinted on the water.
Fek shook her, and she squinted up at him. He stopped when he noticed her eyes had opened, and stepped back.
“Good. Was getting worried there. Clean up.”
He walked away--she had the impression of him climbing up a steep incline--leaving her lying where she was, blinking in confusion.
She struggled up, tears streaming down her cheeks at the pain in her head, and then just managed to lean over the bank in time to throw up a thin stream of bile into the water.
She coughed, cleared her throat, then lowered her face into the tumbling river, choking as the icy snow-melt shocked her into breathing in a little water.
She managed to wriggle forward enough to scoop up handfuls of water and drink.
She drank for a while, tears still running down her cheeks and into the water at the agony and relief of it, and then lifted her hand to gently probe her head.
There was a large bump high behind her left ear, and from the matting around it, she guessed it had bled profusely.
She caught a whiff of her own body, and made a face. She smelled foul. No wonder Fek had decided she needed to clean up.
Forcing herself up on her hands and knees, she swaying for a bit, and then pushed back into a crouch, and looked around for Fek and Gaffri.
They were nowhere to be seen, and she realized she didn't have it in her to care that much about her privacy, anyway.
She pulled off her jacket, her shirt and tight undershirt.
She found a low rock, sat and pulled off her boots, then her trousers and underwear.
She was shaking, like she'd been sick in bed for days. Her muscles were like jelly, and her stomach was concave. She could barely stand as she rose up and took the few steps to the stream.
Almost impossible to believe how strong she'd felt when they'd first taken her.
She stepped carefully into the freezing water, biting her lip to stop herself making a sound.
The air was warming up, though, and she thought it would dry the clothes on her body before nightfall, so she pulled her shirt and underwear in with her and rubbed them as she lowered herself into the water, then spread them on the warm, Star-touched rocks before steeling herself against the cold and submerging herself completely.
When she was as clean as she could get, she rose up and out, her legs shaking even more than before. Her mind was sharper, though, her listlessness gone.
She had to brace herself to pull on the clinging, icy clothes, had to lower her head to her knees to get her equilibrium.
She crouched down one last time to drink, and when she lifted her head, she saw Fek and Gaffri standing on the rock above her.
Her teeth were chattering, she realized.
She also felt off-balance, with her body twisted, her head raised, and she fell sideways, just putting a hand out to stop herself in time.
“And you thought I'd slow her down.” Gaffri's lips drew back from his teeth as he looked over at Fek. “She can't even sit up straight, let alone walk.”
Fek flicked him a look of contempt and then ignored him, coming down, and hoisting her up into his arms.
Nausea gripped her again as he swung her up and carried her in big, jerky moves as he hauled them both up the rocks. Spikes poked at her closed eyes and she breathed carefully, trying to keep herself from vomiting, and then almost cried again in relief as Fek set her down on something with some give on the path above the stream.
He'd made a stretcher, she realized, using the thin, flexible wood from the bushes that lined the path.
She closed her eyes, exhausted, and only became aware they were moving a little while later, although she understood that she'd been pulled along for some time, the sway and bump as Fek dragged her behind him was almost familiar.
She was warmer, now, too, so she guessed the Star was higher in the sky.
She should be walking. Should be working out how to get away.
But not right now, she accepted.
Garek would be coming for her, she didn't doubt that for a moment, and she would help.
But not right now.
GAREK LANDED the sky craft in front of the Four Towers, the stronghold that would have served as a palace had Garamundo had a liege of its own. Instead, it was disrespectfully called the Pie Hole by the less wealthy citizens of Gara, an allusion to the fact that it sat exactly in the middle of a circular city with each sector divided into wedges.
As Garek powered the sky craft down, he was surprised to see only a few guards had come running, standing with arrows notched and swords drawn. He'd have expected a massive mobilization for the arrival of a sky craft in Gara.
As the Juli guard walked cautiously down the ramp with Vent in the lead, those guards stood open-mouthed.
Garek made his way to the back and caught up with Aidan and Kas as they followed behind Vent, and caught the shocked recognition on his old colleagues' faces.
As soon as they all stood on the lush grass of the lawn, Utrel shouldered his way through the thin line of defense.
He was one of the worst guards to ever walk the walls; lazy, brutish and incompetent. It didn't escape Garek's notice that he'd only shown his face when he thought the situation was safe.
He smiled.
He'd show Utrel just how wrong that assumption was.
The guard master stumbled to a stop when he caught sight of Garek, and when their gazes clashed, Garek's smile faded, and his vision went dark.
From everything Kas and Nostra had told him, Taya's abduction had been violent and brutal.
And Utrel had been the one who assembled the team that carried it out.
Garek didn't realize he was choking his old boss until Utrel started scratching at his neck, his eyes panicked.
“We need him alive, if only to tell us where Taya is,” Aidan warned him, putting a hand on his shoulder as Utrel fell to his knees.
Garek pulled back reluctantly, and stood over the Gara guard master, watching him gasp for breath on his hands and knees.
“Where
is my intended?” He saw, from the widening of Utrel's eyes, that of all the questions he'd thought Garek would ask, this was the last one he expected.
“Your intended?” Utrel's voice was husky as he twisted his neck to look up. “How should I know where she is?”
“You sent a unit to my village, with orders to bring me and my intended back to Gara. I wasn't there when Gaffri arrived, so they took my intended without me.” Garek bent down, grabbed hold of the front of Utrel's tunic, and half-lifted him. “Now where. Is. She?”
“I don't know!” Utrel's voice rose, and Garek clenched his fist in the tunic's fabric, and twisted.
“I didn't hear anything about your intended, only someone called Taya.” As Utrel spoke, words tumbling over each other in his haste, Garek saw the moment he put together that the woman named Taya and Garek's intended were one and the same.
“Utrel sent Gaffri to abduct your intended?” One of the archers Utrel had stationed around the sky craft lowered his bow. “Why?”
“You would need to ask him. To me, it's inexplicable.”
“To me, too.” Aidan said.
Utrel's gaze fixed on the princeling, and Garek gestured toward him.
“I think you know the liege's son, Aidan of Juli?” He watched Utrel's eyes widen. “And the guard master of Juli, Vent?”
Utrel's expression shifted from one to the other, and Garek bet he was recalculating the hundreds of conversations and meetings he'd had with Aidan. A hundred clashes with his liege's son, who at the time he'd thought of as merely a rich boy who was sulky at being forced to walk the walls.
Aidan had fooled them all, taking up his position as guard without ever letting on who he was, and his clashes with Utrel had been legendary.
“Tell Garek where Taya is,” Aidan said to him. “Now.”
“I don't know.” It came out as a whine and Garek yanked on the air in Utrel's lungs and stared at him impassively as he choked and gagged. Then eased back.
“I promise. I promise.” Utrel's voice was a hoarse whisper. “I'd forgotten about the girl, but they're not back yet, anyway.”
Calling the Change (Sky Raiders Book 2) Page 9