The Skin Hunter Series Box Set

by Tania Hutley

  “It’s a nut that makes dye,” I tell him. “Thanks for demonstrating.”

  He gives me a sharp salute, the yellow stain already drying on his hand. When he goes back to his squad, Sentin and I resume walking.

  “Is it strange for you to be back in Deiterra?” I ask Sentin. “Has it changed?”

  “So far, it’s just the same.” Sentin answers with no emotion in his voice, so I can’t tell if he thinks that’s a good thing or not. But something tells me this isn’t a line of questioning that’s likely to get him talking.

  “They don’t have any roads here?” I try instead.

  “This is a rural area. There are cities with roads, though compared to Triton, they’re more like small towns.”

  “Is Reliance a city?”

  He nods. “Reliance is the largest city in Deiterra. It’s where the imperator will host us in his palace.”

  Just ahead are several large, round structures, giant metal balls suspended off the ground. Behind them is some complex-looking machinery, and there are several pipes snaking from them that run along the ground and disappear into the fields. At the base of one metal ball, liquid is dripping, forming a large, muddy puddle.

  “What are those?” I point to them.

  “Water storage. They pump water from beneath the ground, to irrigate the land.”

  “They get water from the dirt? Do people drink it?” I grimace, thinking of the filthy water that collects in puddles on Old Triton streets when it rains. The water supply in Triton comes from desalination plants on the coast.

  “It’s purified to remove residual toxins from the food wars. I think it tastes better than Triton’s water.”

  I’m about to express my disbelief, when I spot something. Half hidden among the plants, several fat birds are pecking at the ground. I point them out to Sentin. “What are they?”

  He cocks his head, lifting one eyebrow. “You don’t recognise chickens?”

  I’m not even sure why I’m so surprised that there are chickens walking around. After all, I’ve just seen a horse. But before the Welcon disaster, there were still one or two chicken factories in Triton, and my parents used to talk about how they’d save up to buy real eggs. I’ve always thought that was strange, because the documentaries I’ve seen have stressed how inhumane it was to keep animals locked in tiny cages, and how much better off we are now that our food is manufactured.

  “How come the chickens are running around free?” I ask.

  “Because this isn’t a poultry farm. They probably belong to the farmer.”

  Rather than answering my question, that just confuses me more. But there are lots of other things I want to know, and if I ask him to explain, Sentin’s likely to waste time telling me about the intricacies of chicken farming.

  “Everything’s so different from Triton,” I say. “Do you still have family living here?”

  “My grandparents live in Reliance. If they’re still alive, that is.”

  “You don’t know if they’re alive?” It’s strange that he managed to get information about the Deiterrans developing Skins, and not about his own family. “But you’ll get to check in on them while you’re here?”

  He shakes his head, and I have to clamp my jaw down on the burning urge to ask why not. If he doesn’t get on with them, it’s probably a subject he doesn’t want to talk about.

  “And your mother?” I ask instead.

  “She’s in Triton.” He hesitates a moment, then shoots me a sideways glance. “She’s never been to Deiterra.”

  I gape at him. “You lived here without her for ten years? From the age of four to fourteen?”

  “My father wasn’t supposed to marry a Tritoner, let alone have a child born on the wrong side of the wall. The imperator ruled that I’d be banned from Deiterra forever, unless my father sent me here for a minimum of ten years, to be raised as Deiterran by my grandparents.”

  I let out a low whistle. “That’s tough, being sent away from both your parents.”

  “If they hadn’t sent me to be raised here, I wouldn’t have been able to negotiate this peace treaty.” Though he’s making light of it, he’s walking with his shoulders slightly hunched, and there’s a tension in his body as though he’s remembering a bad time in his life. Sentin’s emotions are always buried deep and hard to sense, but I get the feeling his time in Deiterra might have been difficult.

  “Not much comfort to a four-year-old boy,” I say sympathetically. He and his father must have had a complicated relationship. I can’t imagine my father ever agreeing to send me away at such a young age.

  Sentin doesn’t answer. He looks like he’s too busy concentrating on the placement of each footstep, even though the ground’s even, and walking is easy.

  “May I ask you a question?” I ask after a while.

  He brings his gaze up to flash me a tiny glimpse of his smile. “It’s a little late to ask for permission, isn’t it?”

  “I don’t think you’ll want to answer this question, and I don’t want you to go silent, or change the subject. I need an answer.”

  “Now I’m curious.” He raises his eyebrows, silently inviting me to continue.

  “Who are you loyal to?” I ask. “Deiterra or Triton?”

  “Why should I be loyal to a place?”

  Now it’s my turn to be silent, because I don’t know how to reply. It never occurred to me he wouldn’t be.

  “In Deiterra, they call me a Tritoner. In Triton, a Deiterran. They’re both right and they’re both wrong. Why should I be either?”

  I think of the way Brugan taunted him, and the Deiterran who made the obscene gesture. “Then why are you here?” I ask. “Why is this peace treaty so important to you?”

  “Because I’m shaping the future I want to live in.”

  “What exactly does that future look like?” Waiting for his answer, I catch my lip in my teeth. If he’d only tell me the truth, I’ll know whether we want the same things and if I can trust him.

  We round a bend in the path, coming out from behind some tall plants, and he nods ahead. “There’s Reliance.”

  “That’s Reliance?” I shade my eyes against the sun. Though he’s distracted me from my question, I’m determined to ask it again as many times as I need to, until he gives me an answer.

  In the distance is a low cluster of buildings, much smaller than I expected. The city almost disappears into the surrounding countryside, and some of the structures in front are just black frames. “Have those buildings been burned?” I ask.

  “They were grain silos. The knights torched them to destroy the Deiterran’s food reserves.”

  “Why?”

  “To force the imperator to surrender with the least amount of bloodshed.” His brow furrows as though he’s disappointed I’ve asked such a basic question. “Winters here are as cruel as in Triton. Without the food stores they’ve built up, many will be at risk of going hungry.”

  “Burning their food is pretty ruthless, don’t you think?” I don’t know why it disturbs me more than the thought of flat-out murdering people. Killing soldiers is bad enough, but deliberately starving the Deiterran population seems evil.

  “It was my idea.”

  I open my mouth and close it again, not sure what to say. But he can probably read my expression pretty clearly, because he adds, “If they’d surrendered, Deiterra would have become a protectorate of Triton. I would have ensured we increased capacity at our factories, and exported sufficient supplies to feed the population over winter.”

  “Oh.” I should have known he’d think of everything.

  “The grain shortage is an incentive for them to negotiate the peace treaty. They’ll ask us to pay reparations for the damage done by our knights.”

  “What else will they ask for?’

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “And what will you ask for?”

  One of the Deiterran soldiers appears in front of us, and salutes Sentin. “Sir, the cars are just ahe
ad. We’ll take you to Reliance, then transport your knights to the barracks we’ve provided for them, just outside the city.”

  He leads us on a little further. Sure enough, a road cuts through this field, its black surface dusty. Some odd-looking machines are stopped on one side of it. Though there’s no traffic, the cars have been pulled over so far to the side, their tyres are in the dirt. They’re nothing like the driverless pods we have in Triton, with their circular shape and glass tops. These cars are at least double that size. Their shape is long and rectangular, and they have no tops, but are open to the air. In the front is a mechanism that I assume is used for manual steering.

  We stop to stare at them, and Cale moves next to Sentin, touching his arm to get his attention. “If the knights are staying somewhere else, how will they protect us?”

  Sentin blinks. “We’ll remain in communication with them,” he says in an ‘of course’ tone.

  I shake my head. “Our bands don’t work here. We already tried.”

  “We must be out of the Triton communication zone,” adds Cale.

  “The knights have inbuilt transmitters to create their own encrypted swarm network. I’ve patched into it, and I can do the same for both of you. I’ll just need to change your band’s settings.”

  I bring up my control panel so Sentin can connect me to the knights’ network, then he does the same for Cale. When he strides off to address the knights, I exchange a look with Cale that tells me he’s thinking the same thing I am. Sentin has all the answers, but he’s giving us small servings of information as grudgingly as food gets dished out in a shelter.

  While the knight that’s carrying our luggage puts it into the car, Sentin orders them to stay in the barracks until we collect them. “But if we call on you, come immediately to the city.” He points to the buildings in the distance. “Once there, you know how to protect us.”

  It sounds like a threat, and I can’t help staring at the Deiterran legionnaires to see if they’re going to react. But they don’t look surprised or upset by Sentin’s order. I guess it’s what they were expecting. Maybe he even said it for their benefit.

  The knights all stay standing at attention while we get into one of the cars with some of the legionnaires. In this landscape, the Knight Skins look even larger, blacker and shinier than they usually do. They’re completely out of place here, and I can only hope they won’t get into any trouble.

  We settle ourselves in the car, and when it starts up, it surprises me by emitting a loud hum. The cars in Triton are silent, but the noise this one makes sounds like the whir of the conveyor belt in the factory I used to work in. I wonder what’s powering it?

  Sentin is sitting next to me. He bends his lanky body a little, moving his mouth close to my ear. My heart leaps. Has he decided to answer my question about the future he’s trying to create?

  He speaks so quietly that even with my enhanced hearing I can barely hear him.

  “When we meet the imperator, you must say nothing.”

  I frown, pulling away so I can shoot him a questioning look. “Why?” I mouth.

  “You’re not Deiterran.”

  Great. If there weren’t soldiers with us, I’d say something about how stupid that is. But I guess I’ll need to put up with being a silent bystander while Sentin makes all the decisions.

  I sigh and stare at the squat buildings in front of us. One thing I can say about this car, it’s fast. The city of Reliance is quickly getting closer. Hopefully there, the million questions I still have might be answered.

  Chapter Eleven

  So this is Reliance.

  The biggest city in Deiterra, but can it really be called a city when there are no scrapers at all? None of the buildings are more than two or three stories tall. Most are made of some kind of natural stone. I can’t see any built with steel or concrete, which are what all the buildings in Triton are made of.

  As our car winds its way to the imperator’s palace, Cale and I stare at the narrow streets, fascinated by this view of lives so different to ours. A few people are walking along sidewalks, probably headed to jobs or whatever schools they have here. Their hair and clothing styles aren’t unlike the ones on our side of the wall, but so far I haven’t seen anyone with an obviously tweaked face.

  With the car open to the outside air, the wind that blows over my face smells surprisingly clean, even fresher than the air in New Triton, and nothing at all like the constant pungent tang of urine, sweat, and filth of Old Triton. The streets are quieter here than on the other side of the wall. There are no street stalls, and no rough sleepers. The houses are built separately without sharing any walls, and some even have gardens between them, as though they have all the space in the world.

  With the legionnaires watching, I don’t want to seem like I’m gaping open-mouthed at everything. But it seems so far from the bustle and crush of Triton, I can’t imagine what it must be like to live here.

  Eventually, we pull into a driveway that cuts through an expanse of grass so green it doesn’t look real. The mansion we stop in front of is enormous. Not tall, but wide and sprawling, far wider than any building I’ve seen in Triton. It’s white, with ornately-carved columns around its girth, and large, elegant windows.

  This has to be the imperator’s palace.

  We pile out of the cars, and a couple of the legionnaires bring our luggage. The legionnaires march us inside, showing us into a lobby with marble floors, and walls that look like wood and are a deep, rich brown. They could even be made of real trees.

  A woman in a stiff white dress greets us, takes us down a long hallway, and ushers us each into a separate bedroom.

  “Please rest,” she says. “His Excellency has invited you to dine with him. I’ll collect you at six o’clock.”

  She closes my door firmly, as though she expects me to stay inside. The bedroom is as extravagant as everything else in this place, with a large bed, some enormous closets, and an attached private bathroom.

  I wait a minute or two until she’s likely to have left, then open my bedroom door and peer into the hallway. The door of the next room opens, and Cale pokes his head out.

  “Come in here.” He motions me into his room, which turns out to be identical to mine.

  “Can you believe this place?” I ask, sitting down on his bed. It’s covered with a silky red cloth that feels cool and luxurious under my hands.

  He closes the door. “I’m glad I came with you, to see it for myself.”

  “Crazy as it sounds, the entire way here, I kept looking for a glimpse of Tori. As though she might happen to be walking along the street.”

  “If she’s still wearing her band, she might have location tracking on.” He pulls up his own band’s control panel. “The swarm network Sentin set us up with seems to be working. I’m getting no signal from Tori at the moment, but if she finds a network and manages to connect to it, I should get pinged. It’s a long shot, though. It doesn’t look like the Deiterrans have their own public network.”

  “Thank you.” I let out my breath, trying not to get my hopes up. “And maybe our hosts will show us more of Deiterra. We could ask for a tour and use the time to search for her.”

  “I’d like to see more of Deiterra anyway.”

  “Me too.” Getting off the bed, I go to the window to gaze out at the wide expanse of green grass outside. Even if we were here forever, I don’t think I’d get tired of looking at it.

  “Did you see this?” Cale opens one of the large closets, and it’s not actually a closet at all. Inside is a mini kitchen, with a bench top and sink. Instead of a food production unit, there’s a round metal canister full of water, and a bowl of real fruit. Now the closet door’s open, the fruit’s scent is strong enough to make my head swim.

  I pick up a round, yellow fruit that’s about twice the size of the one I ate on the way here. When I hold it to my nose, its fragrance is better than perfume.

  “It smells like orange juice.” I say.

 
“Maybe it’s an orange.”

  I bite into its skin, but it’s thick and bitter. Now though, the smell is even stronger, and a little moisture leaks out from inside. When I pull off some of the outer skin, the juice that runs over my hands is delicious.

  Passing the fruit to Cale, I lick my fingers. “Did you ever think you’d get to taste a real orange?”

  He puts some of the inner flesh in his mouth, then closes his eyes and groans. “I’ve never had anything like it.”

  I grab another piece of fruit from the bowl. “I want to try all of it.”

  “Me, too. Instead of having dinner with the imperator, I’d rather stay here and gorge myself.”

  My stomach turns over at the reminder of the important meeting about to happen. I don’t know why Sentin seems so certain we can negotiate peace. We attacked Deiterra, then blamed the war on them. They have good reason to hate us.

  “Are you nervous?” Cale asks.

  I blow out a loud breath. “Why would I be nervous? We’re in a foreign land, we have no idea who we’re dealing with, and they might easily decide to kill us instead of negotiating with us.”

  He shoots me a sideways look, and I realise that of the three of us, I’m the only one who won’t actually die if they do kill us. I didn’t understand Sentin’s quantum entanglement explanation, but as long as he’s right about the consciousness transfer back to my human body working over such a long distance, I’ll just wake up back in Triton, in Edward Morelle’s pod.

  “Sorry.” I grimace. “I’m sure Sentin wouldn’t have agreed to this meeting if he thought they’d execute us.”

  “He does seem to know everything before it happens.” Cale scrapes the last of the orange’s flesh off its thick skin with his teeth, then leaves the peel on the counter and washes his hands in the sink. “I’m starting to wonder if we’re just actors who don’t realize we’re playing parts in a movie Sentin’s directing.”