by Cheree Alsop
He was the biggest Luminos I had ever seen. Usually Luminos were tall and slender, but my captor had the thickly muscled body of a Nathos while still bearing the gray skin and fair hair of the Luminos. He grinned at me, his crooked teeth jutting out in the front like a tunnel rat. “Now will you walk straight, little Duskie?” His expression was amiable enough, but there was a hint of steel in his light eyes and something else I was familiar with, poorly concealed disgust.
“Can we continue on our journey, Dathien?” Axon’s voice spoke from the front of the group. “Or is one Duskie too much for you to handle?” Several around us chuckled and the Luminos in front of me parted. Axon stood cloaked and hooded in the attire of a desert crosser like the rest of his group, sand-colored clothing, sandals on his feet, and a strangely curved sword at his side. He smiled down at me, his expression clear of any vehemence or judgment. I met his gaze, my own guarded and distrustful.
He studied my face and his smile fell. He glared at the men around him and several stepped back and dropped their eyes. “Is this how we treat someone we’ll soon be trusting with our lives?” he demanded.
He dropped to a knee in front of me and I scooted back in surprise. Dathien’s solid legs kept me from moving any further. A puff of red desert dust rose around us.
Axon caught my chin in his hand and turned my head to look at the bruises and swelling. I jerked my chin from his grasp and bared my teeth. Dathien’s big hands grabbed my head to hold me still, but Axon's voice came softly, “It’s alright, let her be.” He met my eyes. “I wouldn’t trust us either.”
He rose to his feet and dusted the dirt from his loose pants, quite a contrast from the Firen Caves attire of tight lizard skin that the higher inhabitants of the Caves wore to prevent snagging on the rocks. He sighed. “We might as well take a break here. If we don’t work this out now, we’ll all be prey for the Sathen at nightfall.”
The company moved like clockwork. Axon’s six men set about their individual tasks. Several unrolled beige tarps and set up a makeshift tent that surrounded the sides of his chosen camp and left the top open to the sun’s rays while others pulled out food and water and arranged small cushions to sit on. One of the men brought a cushion for Axon. He met the man’s gaze steadily until he bowed his head and brought back a second one.
Axon waited until the man left, sat on his cushion, then motioned for me to take the other one. I hesitated, but knew that with the lingering dizziness from the blows to the head I would be taking a seat on the hot desert sand soon enough. I grabbed the cushion and scooted it as far from him as the chain he held would allow.
Axon just watched me with an ever-present touch of amusement in his cool eyes that I found unnerving. “Comfortable?” he asked.
I glared at him, then looked away when he remained undisturbed by my hostility.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” he said quietly.
I looked back at him and gritted my teeth against the anger that rose in my throat. His eyes again took in the bruises on my face in a quick sweep and the amusement in them lessened. “I guess that’s a little late to promise, isn’t it?” His gaze softened slightly. “It’s not right, you know, the way you’ve been treated.”
I didn’t trust my expression to be as calm as my voice and looked down at my hands. They were stiff and swollen from fighting back. “It’s your men that did the treating,” I said quietly, my voice steady.
I saw Axon shake his head out of the corner of my eye. “I don’t mean now, I mean always.” He rattled the chain that attached to my wrist manacle. “This isn’t right.”
I gave an unfeminine snort. “Like you can change it.”
He tugged gently on the chain until I met his gaze. “I can change it. I just need to know I can trust you.” His light blue eyes held mine and I couldn’t turn away.
“Prince Axon, Rasa spotted dust rising in the distance. We need to move.” The voice broke our gazes. I stared at Axon, trying to pair him with the title ‘Prince’. They had called him ‘Sir’ during their stay at the Caves, but the Luminos who spoke to him, a thin man with worried green eyes and ink-stained fingers, bowed deferentially and waited for Axon's next words.
“Have everyone ready to leave as soon as they’ve eaten,” Axon said. He turned back to me and read the questions in my eyes. I never was good at hiding what I thought. “It was safer that the inhabitants of your Caves didn’t know who I was. You never know who might be seeking revenge or looking to advance themselves in some way.” He shrugged as though these were common concerns. “Like I said, I have the power to change your position.”
Suspicion tightened in my chest. “Why me?”
A brush of pain changed Axon’s expression. “We lost all our Nathos in a Sathen attack on our way here, and the inhabitants of Firen Caves refused to journey with us to Lysus. We’re protected by our own fortifications against the Sathen during the day, but nightfall leaves us a bit helpless, as you can imagine.”
I stared at him. “You kidnapped me to defend your group against the Sathen by myself after dark?”
“Yes.” He spoke with blunt honesty.
Aghast, I fumbled over my words. “I don’t have my spear or a shield. There will be too many of them for one person to-“
Axon pointed at the tent around us. “This cloth cloaks us from them. It’s been treated with special oils that block our smell so that they can’t locate us. All you would have to do is be there in case any did happen to get through.”
I looked doubtfully at the cloth. “If the tent works so well, how did the Sathen find you the first time?”
Axon looked away from my searching eyes. “We got sloppy and confident in our own strength, the downfall of many a great empire.” He looked back at me and said seriously, “If you help us get safely across the desert, I promise you’ll be free once we reach Lysus.”
“Free.” The word had an unfamiliar flavor, like the tart I had stolen once from the kitchen at the Caves and was whipped for later. It hadn’t tasted as good as it smelled.
Axon nodded. “No chains, no masters, nothing. You will be your own person.”
I wondered if it was my imagination that saw the longing in his eyes at his own words. I shrugged and fought down the doubt in my abilities to defend all of them against a Sathen attack. “I guess we don’t have much of a choice, do we?”
He smiled and it reached the corners of his eyes, drawing them into little laugh lines that made him look younger. “I’m glad you see it my way.” He paused. “You know my name. What’s yours?”
I considered not answering, but his eyes held me with their open curiosity. “Nexa,” I finally said.
“Nexa.” He tested it out and looked me up and down. “That fits you.”
My brow furrowed. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He laughed. “Not everything’s a shot, Nexa. Ever think that someone might just be trying to be nice?”
I shook my head.
Rasa, the shorter Luminos with eyes that never stopped searching the horizon, handed me a hard roll with jerked meat, a piece of dried yellow and green fruit I had never seen before, and a chunk of hard cheese that broke off in pieces. The man barely looked at me, and his lip curled in aversion when he touched my hand to give me the food. It was a feast compared to what we normally ate at the Caves and I stared at it in my hands long after he walked away. I looked up to find Axon watching me. “Better eat up,” he said, his expression unreadable. “We’re leaving.”
I shoved the roll and meat in my pocket and slowly ate the fruit and cheese as we walked, savoring every mouthful. The fruit had a bitter skin, but I bit into it after watching the others do the same, and found that the bitterness counterbalanced the almost too sweet yellow interior that seemed to melt on my tongue the moment I took a bite. I ate it slowly and savored the way the taste chased away the dryness the desert air left in my mouth.
Dathien stalked beside me and carried my chain. I practically had to run to keep up wi
th his gigantic strides, but he ignored me, his attention on the swath of dust in the distance that slowly faded away.
Chapter 3
I rushed to the edge of the tent more than a hundred times that night at sounds that were probably part of the normal desert cacophony, but that jangled eerie and unfamiliar to my cave ears. Small, metallic looking silver beetles ran under the edge of the canvas, their backs hot with the stifling heat they absorbed while burrowed under the sand during the day.
Eerie-looking, fist-sized red creatures with a dozen legs and flat, rock-hard bodies scuttled along day and night. Marken, one of Axon's men who followed behind Dathien and I to watch our back-trail, gathered these creatures into a sack to cook at night. He called them sand crabs and pointed out how when their backs got too hot from the sun, they just would flip over and walk with their stomachs up. Their legs were jointed so that they could walk either way in the same scuttling, sideways crawl that gave me the creeps.
With night also came the hissing tams, flat black slithering creatures with long bodies made of scales that slid into each other as it moved and two heads, one at either end. Both heads hissed so that an enemy couldn't tell which was the real one. They had a lethal set of sharp spikes that rose down the spine if they felt threatened, and they grew to almost the length of a man by the time they reached adulthood. All in all, it was best to leave them alone if you ever found one.
I ran my fingers up and down the curved, unfamiliar blade Dathien had given me before dusk, and longed for my spear and shield. Dathien had wrapped the chain from my manacle securely around his arm while he slept, but left enough slack to permit me access to the entire circle within the tent.
The Luminos slept around me in pairs supposedly so they could guard each others’ backs in case of an attack; but they would be no help if we were attacked at night. During the day, the Luminos carried huge packs and walked endlessly without the need to stop for food, drink, or rest; but when the sun went down, they were weak as baby bats and slept before the last shade of pink left the horizon.
I guarded the sleeping forms and contemplated just how much trust Axon had placed in me. I could kill them all or take the tent with me and leave them to the mercy of the merciless Sathen. But as much as I hated both the Luminos and Nathos, I couldn’t bring myself to walk away. Maybe it was the way the men looked less like menacing warriors and more like tired boys when they slept, or the way the moonlight softened their gray features and took the harsh lines from their faces, or perhaps it was the trusting look Axon had given me before he fell asleep with his head on his arm. He had no reason to trust me, but he did. My heart pounded at the thought of trusting him back.
The shift from dusk to dawn was a longer one than I had ever held at the Caves. By the time the Luminos woke from their moon sleep, I could barely think. My muscles ached from the unaccustomed walking and the bruises that colored my skin in patches of purple. When Axon’s men sprang to life at the touch of the sun on their skin, I had to force myself to stand from my sentry position on a group of rocks near the side of the tent. Marken handed me food identical to the night before and gave me a skin of water to sling over my shoulder. It felt like it weighed more than I did.
“One night down,” Axon said with a smile while he watched his men pack the tent away.
“Yay,” I replied with all the enthusiasm of a cactus. I waved my curved sword in a tired victory circle, then slung it through the ring on my belt Dathien had given me.
Axon’s eyes narrowed in amusement. “Not thrilled about your accomplishments?”
I shrugged. “Not infused with the energy of the sun, I guess you could say,” I replied with a nod at the rest of his camp. They jostled each other and joked as they packed and made ready for the trek. Marken dropped a sand crab from his pack and Jatha, the youngest Luminos in the group, dove for it before Marken could. They both wrestled for a moment in the warming sand until Marken bested Jatha, then proceeded to drop the sand crab down his shirt.
Axon smiled at them fondly. “They’re just glad we survived a night in the desert. We couldn’t have done it without you.”
I shook my head. “I didn’t do anything.”
“Ah, but you did.” Axon picked up the cushion I had been using and dusted it off with hands calloused to match the sword at his side. “It’s the thought that you are standing guard that helped them rest, not the actually guarding.”
I shrugged my shoulders; the movement pulled against the still fresh whip wounds along my back. They scratched at the rough cloth of my shirt, pulling in places where the blood had dried against the fabric.
Axon’s brow creased. “Are you alright?”
I opened my mouth to reply, then shut it again. A Luminos had never asked me if I was alright. Luminos as a rule didn’t care about Duskies, though Axon seemed an odd exception. I glanced around the camp and noticed that the gazes of those who looked my way were a little less harsh than the day before, a little less disgusted at my presence. I nodded. “I’m fine.”
He frowned. “I don’t expect you to walk to the next campsite after standing guard all night.”
I gave a wry smile. “And what, someone’s supposed to carry me?”
He nodded and I shook my head, horrified at the thought. “I’ll be fine, trust me.”
He studied me thoughtfully. “You weren’t a very obedient Duskie at the Caves, were you?”
I bit my lip. “What makes you say that?”
He smiled. “No one’s ever talked to me the way you do. You argue, don’t follow orders, and try to do everything the hard way.”
His eyes crinkled again at the corners and I looked away at the thought that he was laughing at me. He chuckled and walked to join his waiting men. I lingered for a moment by the rocks, then a tug on the chain drew my attention. I made my way to Dathien’s side and the trek continued.
By the time we stopped at midday, I could scarcely force one foot in front of the other. I had drained half my water and barely ate any of the rolls and jerked meat, but I shoved the remains in my pockets for later and sucked on the bitter skin of the dried fruit in an attempt to stay awake. Dathien walked beside me until I stumbled on a rock that wasn’t there. He tugged on my chain to catch my attention. “You know, I don’t look this strong for nothing.”
I glared at him. “Yeah, I remember.”
He frowned and his lips pushed out. “You won’t be any good at guarding the camp tonight if you can’t stay awake.”
“I’m not good at guarding it anyway,” I mumbled. Dathien glanced at me and I finally nodded. “Alright, fine. You can carry me.”
He smiled as though he had won something and picked me up in his arms like a child before I could protest. He continued on as if I didn’t weigh anything. I felt silly and told him so.
“You need to sleep,” he said simply.
“I’m not a child to be carried,” I argued.
One of my earliest memories surfaced. I saw the Nathos mother who watched over the young Duskies strap her own pure Nathos baby tenderly into a pack and lash him to her front in a secure halter. A Duskie child a year younger than me toddled over to her and opened and closed his hands for her to pick him up, too. She glared at him in revulsion and turned away, leaving him to cry his abandonment to the cavern floor.
“You aren’t much more than a child,” Dathien reasoned with a glance down at me.
I bristled. “I’ve lived longer than some of the Duskies at the Caves.”
Dathien’s jaw tightened, causing a vein to stand out along his throat. “I have a daughter your age at Lumini, though she’s of pure Luminos blood.” His eyes creased for a moment, but he continued walking and didn’t speak again. I fought back the wave of absurdity I felt at being carried and closed my eyes. Within minutes, the rhythm of his steps and the cadence of his breathing lulled me to sleep.
We stopped just before dusk and I awoke on soft desert sand still hot from the sun’s rays. I pushed groggily to my feet and wordlessly
accepted the night’s meal. This time, someone had gathered prickly pears from the cacti and peeled them to remove the spines. The fruit was sweet and juicy, and the taste lingered in my throat long after I had eaten it.
Marken built a small, smokeless fire, then banked it until smoldering hot coals remained. He threw the sand crabs into the pit, laid a tanned hide over the top, then covered the pit in sand. Just before the orange sun disappeared below the edge of the lonely red hills, he and Jatha uncovered the pit to reveal smoky brown shells that were piping hot when he handed them out.
I passed the baked sand crab he handed me from one hand to the other, unsure what to do with it. The shell left smoke stains on my fingers and a strange smell wafted from the inside.
Marken set a crab on a flat rock, then hit it with another rock. Steam rose from the crack in the shell and he wedged his knife into it and pried the creature apart to reveal dark purple meat that had been steamed to perfection in the pit. He handed the cracked crab to Rasa, who sprinkled some spices from a little pouch onto the meat before giving the crab to Axon. Marken then held out a hand for the next creature to crack.
I thought he would forget me and preferred not to make a fuss, but when he finished cracking a crab for Jatha, an extra large one for Dathien, one for Staden, who acted as the group's doctor, and one for Dyloth with the ink-stained fingers, he held out his hand to me without meeting my eyes. I handed him the crab, careful our fingers didn't touch so that I wouldn't have to see his reaction.
The crab cracked cleanly on the stone and he held it out for Rasa's spices before handing it back to me. I carried the crab to my cushion near the edge of the tent and cradled it carefully in my lap. I watched the others relish their food, eating the meat with their fingers and then licking them clean before drinking what remained of the juices in the bottom of the shell. Axon caught me watching and held up his shell in a toast before downing the contents. I fought down a smile and tasted the purple meat.