That drau is nobody’s friend.
He wasn’t sure it was the right idea to take them along; he didn’t trust the drau. But there was no way he was leaving Nat behind, and more than that, he couldn’t leave her with him. The protector of Vallonis had her own protector. But after those horrid things he’d said to her, it wasn’t as if Nat was going to fall into his arms anytime soon.
People say stuff all the time. It’s not as if they mean it.
Wes wished he could erase the memory of even imagining those words, let alone saying them.
He could be such an icehole sometimes. But he didn’t know what she was doing with the drau and he didn’t want to think about it. He couldn’t help but notice how alike they were, a matched pair, both of them in leather armor and carrying swords. He’s just a friend, she’d sworn. And yet she couldn’t leave Faix. Worse, she had defended him after he killed all those soldiers—boys and girls their age, some younger. And now she was looking at the white-haired motherfreezer like he was the second coming. Her Fake Blondie protector.
Wes snorted.
Excuse me while I fake vomit.
Wes looked anxiously at the Goliath, which was speeding away. Good. The pilgrims would make it to the Blue. Now all he had to do was get his crew safely and peacefully onto this chopper without hurting too many people.
Soldiers began to jump from the chopper, landing on the deck and fanning out, assessing the situation. “We got a distress signal,” their sergeant said.
“Yeah, from me.”
“You’re Wesson?”
“Yeah.”
“What the ice happened here?”
“Pilgrims shot at us as we tried to take them. They took out most of the crew and McCleod.”
“Where are they?” the soldier asked, looking around at the empty deck.
“We gave them to the sea. Listen, I’d love to chat, but I need to get my team back to base and report to Bradley. I have some wounded soldiers here.” He gestured toward Shakes and Farouk, who attempted to look critical. Cone, the fat kid they’d taken on, looked pale and frightened. Which wasn’t a stretch for him.
“These your hostages?” the soldier asked, motioning to the smallmen, Nat, and Faix.
“Yeah,” he said. “I got orders to take them back, too.”
“Right, it’s reaping day at the market, I remember,” the soldier said. “Davey will take you back to base.”
“No—I’ve got our own pilot. Command said you guys need to stay here to make sure they don’t come back . . . secure the area.”
The sergeant nodded and Wes ushered his crew into the chopper. Shakes went first, got in the pilot seat, put on the headphones, and started fiddling with the instruments. Then Farouk and Cone. Brendon and Roark shuffled on, followed by Nat and Faix.
The soldiers stared at the tall, white-haired boy in the black armor.
Faix stared back, his silver eyes glittering.
“You a drau or something?” the soldier asked. “Hey, man, look at his eyes! They just turned silver!”
“Naw, that’s no drau, that’s just a freak,” the other soldier said, laughing as he poked Faix on the arm with the butt of his rifle.
“Leave him alone,” Nat said.
“What are you, some kind of drau groupie?”
“Hey, it’s the—it’s the witch—the one—you know—the one who rides that thing!” the other soldier said excitedly. They leered at Nat, jockeying to get next to her. One of them took his handheld out and started taking pictures. Nat winced at the flash, and frowned as the boys crowded around her.
“She’s pretty hot,” one said. “Hey, Wesson, maybe leave this one behind for us, huh?”
“Knock it off,” Wes growled, annoyed. “Don’t even think about it.” He knew Nat could take care of herself, but it didn’t stop him from feeling protective. Besides, these kids didn’t know what they were getting into. Nat’s eyes were flashing angrily, and he’d seen what she could do when she looked like that.
Don’t. Not here. Not like this.
One of the guys slung his arm around Nat’s shoulders, and another groped her back, and that was all it took. “Don’t touch me!” she yelled, pushing the soldiers away, and the scene dissolved into chaos.
Wes dived into the crowd around Nat, pulling the soldiers away from her, and one of the boys punched him right in the chin. Shakes and Farouk ran out of the chopper, along with the smallmen, to join the fray. Faix remained still, watching. For a bodyguard, he didn’t seem too handy.
“DON’T SHOOT! DON’T SHOOT!” Wes ordered the group. He was still hoping to get out of this with his hands clean. “NAT!” he yelled, just as a snarling female soldier hit her from behind with her gun. Wes threw the soldier who was punching him to the ground and ran to her.
Nat was rolling on the floor, holding her shield to block another soldier’s kicks. Wes jumped on the boy and began to pummel him. But they were losing, the chopper crew had full gear on, and in quick succession the smallmen were stunned, Shakes and Farouk were badly beat up, and he couldn’t fight every one of them himself.
“Round ’em up, round ’em up!” the sergeant barked.
The soldiers moved to restrain them, holding out the shackles, but before they could touch any of them, each and every member of the strike team slumped to the ground, unconscious.
Wes looked down at them, and when he looked up, he met Faix’s eyes.
The drau was serene. “I didn’t kill them,” he said mildly. “They are only asleep.” The soldiers were lying on the deck, their mouths open, their eyes closed or rolled to the back of their heads.
“Well, you could’ve done that before we all got beat up, huh?” Wes asked as he helped Nat up. He checked the bruise on her cheek, which was already fading. “That icehole,” he said, and he wasn’t sure if he meant the guy who had groped Nat or the drau. Maybe both.
“It’s okay, I can take care of myself,” she said stiffly, moving away from him to stand next to Faix.
Great.
The three stood for a moment in uneasy silence, massaging their bruises, stretching their necks. Wes helped Shakes to his feet. A line of blood dribbled from Shakes’s beard. Farouk lay on the deck, stunned, with Brendon and Roark attending to him. “He needs a healer,” Roark said. “I think he has a concussion.”
Faix knelt by the fallen soldier, murmured a few words, and gently placed his hands on his forehead. Farouk woke up and blinked his eyes.
Cone stuck his head out of the chopper. He had remained inside, scared to fight. “Is it over?”
No one answered him.
“Help me carry these soldiers to the hold,” Wes said, gesturing to the one nearest the open doorway.
“Let me,” said Faix. He followed Wes, taking the nearest soldiers and dragging them into the cell two at a time. Nat and Shakes carried the fourth. The rest of the team made quick work of the task, and they laid the soldiers next to each other in neat rows.
“They’ll wake up soon; I used a rather gentle spell,” said Faix.
Shakes looked skeptical.
Faix shrugged. “At least in my opinion it was gentle.”
Wes tossed a case of MRSs into the room with them along with his satellite phone. “They can call for pickup when they do wake up.”
Behind him, Shakes and Farouk were loading the chopper with supplies from the ship’s kitchen. Brendon and Roark had already dug into the wafers. “Look! New flavors. Roast beef!”
Wes caught Nat’s eye and for a brief moment they smiled at each other before looking away again. He knew what she was thinking. It was just like before. Now all they needed was Liannan.
Chapter 26
NAT WATCHED AS WES WIPED MIST from the chopper window. Outside, snow covered the soft hills of the New Ganrajayan coastline. They’d been flying for hours. To mask their escap
e, Wes had removed the chopper’s radio and satellite tracker, and smashed the black box recorder and the backup GPS. Shakes was flying blind, keeping the helicopter soaring low, below radar, and fast. Wes had done everything he could imagine to cloak their escape from the RSA, and Nat hoped it was enough.
Wes was sitting next to Shakes in the copilot’s chair, the one that Farouk usually occupied, and Nat understood it was because he was avoiding her. Wes didn’t trust Faix, and by extension, he didn’t trust her, either. He hadn’t said a word to her since they left the deck of the Colossus. Boys.
Nat knew he was jealous of Faix, but there was no reason to be. If only she could make him understand that she held no secret romantic attraction toward the unmasked drau. Faix was beautiful, but he was also foreign, ancient, strange. He was a guardian, a teacher, a mentor, a link to Vallonis’s past and her heritage, and that was all. But there was no way to explain that to Wes if he refused to talk to her. He didn’t even seem to want them on his crew, and had only taken them on grudgingly.
Next to her, Faix had retreated into a blank silence, his eyes open but glazed. He looked as if he was meditating. Perhaps he needed to rest. Magic was like any other kind of energy; magic had a tithe, when used it had to be replenished. It had limits. Even the drakon flagged, even the drakon needed time to heal. She reached out, tried to touch Faix’s thoughts, but found only silence. His mind was closed to her for now.
Fine.
She left him alone. She wanted to learn more about her power, about Apis, but she understood his need for privacy. Liannan’s call had interrupted her training, and she was eager to try again. As they flew through the clouds, Nat concentrated on her empty palms, trying to imagine a flame arising from deep inside herself. The fire is within you. Faix had made fire without a drakon, and said she could do the same, but how? Nat fixed her gaze on her empty hands, trying to conjure the feeling of fire and heat, to create something from nothing, to spark a flame without flint or match.
Nothing. She balled her fists in frustration, then unclenched, exhaling. Faix had said she could not let her emotions get the best of her. She would have to learn control, to use her power and exercise it at will, not as an unpredictable, violent, raging impulse.
Nat closed her eyes, searching for the drakon, across the many miles between them and the deep earth in which it was buried. Where are you? She felt so empty and alone without it.
She waited patiently for an answer, sending the same call again and again. Finally, a familiar jolt of power came rushing through her body, electric, the connection between them sparking once more. Her drakon was healing. Vallonis was nursing it back to life.
I am here. I have never left you.
A puff of smoke appeared, dancing on the palm of her hand.
The fire is within you.
“What are you doing?” a voice interrupted her.
She looked up to see the new kid, Cone, watching her with widened eyes. “Did you do that? That’s cool.”
Nat closed her hand, feeling a little self-conscious to have been caught playing with fire, and the puff of smoke disappeared. “Just practicing.”
Cone nodded as if she had just confirmed something.
“Can I ask you something?” she said.
“Sure,” he said, weaving his fingers into a steeple, then quickly pulling them apart.
“Why did you want to follow me?”
The young boy chewed his lip and looked out the window, down at the inky waves that swirled between continents of ice. He squirmed uncomfortably in his seat. “There’s nothing to live for, the world’s done. Toast. We’re drafted into the military, then spit out when they’ve used us up. All there is to eat is glop, all there is to drink is Nutri. There has to be something else out there. They lied to us. The Blue is real. There’s . . . magic out there. Magic that will change the world. You’re part of it, and I want to be part of it, too. Better here than stuck on that cruiser, that’s for sure.”
She smiled. “So you’ve gone AWOL. Wes is a bad influence.”
“No,” he said. “Not AWOL. I’ve done something better: I’ve died. For all they know, I was sucked into the black waters with the rest. I’m free. I can start again. I can fight, but this time I get to pick my side.”
“I’m sorry about your friends,” she said softly, thinking of the crew of the Colossus who had choked to death on the deck, felled by Faix’s power.
“Those weren’t my friends. I was new to this unit, and excuse my language, but they were a bunch of motherfreezers. They would have killed you without blinking if they’d had a chance. I don’t want to be like them. I want to be brave. I want to be like you.”
“I’m just as scared as everyone else,” said Nat, leaning against the cockpit wall. “I just don’t dwell on it that much. But thank you for believing in me,” she said, the cabin feeling small. Nat smacked her head on a panel latch when she tried to back away from the kid.
Cone smiled. “I have to believe in something.” Then he closed his eyes, too tired for more conversation. He slunk back into the tiny chair, trying to find a comfortable position in a seat that wasn’t designed for comfort.
Nat noticed that behind her, the smallmen were sleeping on each other’s shoulders, their heads touching, Roark snoring softly. They were all exhausted. She leaned back in her seat and was asleep before her eyes had closed.
• • •
When she woke up a few hours later, Wes was conferring with Cone and Farouk about the map. The frozen spires of New Kandy loomed in the distance; they had arrived at their destination. “Are you sure?” Wes asked Cone.
“Yeah, the markets are over here, on this island off the mainland: They call it the Red City because sunset turns it red. It’s the only place in the world that still gets a bit of natural sunlight, right before dark. That’s where the guys said the base is.” Cone said, pointing to a spot on the map that was unfolded on his lap.
“So we’ll land over here,” said Farouk.
“No, it’s too risky and too near the base. I want to keep this chopper hidden so we can use it to get out of here,” said Wes.
“What’s over there?” asked Farouk, pointing to an unmarked area on the mainland.
Cone shrugged. “As far as I know, nothing. That could be good.”
“No, that’s too far to the ferry,” said Wes. A boat made daily runs from the mainland to the island where the temple complex was located. They would need to make the trip from the landing site to the ferry on foot, but once they got off, it was only a short hike to the markets.
“How about over here?” Wes pointed to the other side. “What’s that?”
“Ruins of the old city. They built Kandy Two on the other side,” said Farouk.
“Okay, we’ll land there. There will be room to hide this thing, and it’s not far from the port.”
Shakes landed the chopper behind a few burned-out buildings covered in snow and ice. The boys pulled their identifying stars and ranks from their collars and cut the name tags out of their pockets. Runners often wore military surplus, and once they were done, they’d look like just another ragtag team sent to collect trinkets from the markets for their rich clients.
“Here, let me,” Nat said when Wes struggled to pull the lieutenant’s stripes from his shoulder.
She put a hand on his arm and pulled delicately, her breath catching in her throat at how close they were.
“Thanks,” he murmured, still unable to look her in the eye.
“You’re welcome.”
“I think you should stay behind, all of you,” he said abruptly, meaning Nat, the smallmen, and Faix. “It’s too dangerous. You know what they do in the markets, so close to the temple. We can’t take that chance.”
Nat’s cheeks burned. “We’re here to help.” She brushed lint from Wes’s uniform.
“And you’ll be hel
ping by staying safe,” Wes said, adjusting the buttons on his jacket. “If we don’t make it, you guys need to find Liannan and get out of here.” He was using his commander’s voice now, the one that sent men to battle. In spite of her irritation, she liked the ring of it, the authority it held. He had a day’s worth of stubble on his jaw and the look of a man who hadn’t slept in days, but was trying to keep the exhaustion off of his face, trying to appear brave.
“Cone, can you fly this thing?” he asked.
The big kid stood, looked at the pilot’s seat and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “I flew one of these in basic.”
“Good. You stick with the chopper, too,” Wes said. He reached for the latch; he was going, leaving. The door inched open, cold air swept through the cockpit.
“How will we know you’re all right? You threw out all the radios,” she said, the freezing air turning her breath to white mist.
“Yeah, too dangerous, as they monitor all the open channels,” Wes said, still fingering the latch. “But I got an idea. Your friend can read minds, right?” asked Wes, gesturing to Faix.
Nat nodded.
“Then he’ll know if we run into trouble,” he said, with a slight cheeky grin.
“I will,” said Faix, who had awoken from his dreamlike state.
“I still don’t like it,” she muttered. She knew he was only looking out for them, but she wanted to stay close to him.
Wes yanked the latch, sliding the chopper’s side door fully open, motioning for the others to go. Shakes and Farouk loaded their packs with provisions. They put up their hoods against the wind and left the chopper. Wes was next. He was leaving her again, and the ache in the hollow of her chest intensified.
He smiled as he fixed the straps on his gloves and lowered the hood over his face. “Don’t worry about me, Nat. Like you, I can take care of myself,” he said, echoing the words she often said to him.
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