For a moment, the two stared at each other. The cat snarled, but its eyes were hooded and its stance unsteady. The animal must be fresh from hibernation and still groggy. However, it would also be ravenous from the winter fast and therefore very dangerous.
The cat pounced, claws outstretched, striking for Riki’s head. She ducked aside but one of the cat’s paws clamped on her right shoulder. The thick reinforced leather of Riki’s jacket prevented the claws from piercing deeply enough to cause serious injury, but the weight dragged her to her knees. The cat’s saber fangs raked toward Riki’s face, but the paw locked on her shoulder meant the cat’s chest was exposed. Riki thrust her sword deep into its body. The animal spun away, yowling, almost wrenching the sword from Riki’s grip.
Riki managed to keep hold of the hilt and pull her sword free, ready to strike again, but there was no need. The wound was fatal. Already the cat’s rump was sagging to one side as its rear legs lost their strength. Its head flung back in a last roar, and then its shoulders crumpled. The dying animal collapsed onto Beth, who screamed again.
Riki scrambled to her feet. The cat twitched a few times and then lay still. Beth carried on screaming.
Running footsteps sounded, both ahead and behind. Looking up, Riki saw Faye splashing through the stream and scrabbling to Beth’s side. Where had the miner been? There had been no sign of her when Riki arrived. Clearly Faye had found a place to run and hide, safeguarding her own skin.
The feet behind were getting closer. Riki looked over her shoulder and saw three miners arrive, hefting axes. At the sight of the dead cat they slowed and lowered their weapons. After a moment of shuffling hesitation, they went to assist Faye in extricating Beth from beneath the carcass. Riki was about to help, but she felt stinging in her shoulder. Her leather jacket had not fully protected her from the claws. The wound was not major, although she suspected the liquid trickling down her arm was blood.
Gingerly, Riki knelt and wiped her sword clean on a patch of grass, then resheathed it. When she stood up, the situation was getting calmer. Beth had thankfully stopped screaming and was standing, wrapped in Faye’s arms. The other miners were gathered around supportively.
More footsteps and shouts announced the arrival of the remaining miners. In the lead was the forewoman. The fear on her face faded at the sight of everyone standing, limbs and life intact, but in an instant her expression changed again to one of fury. Shaking with rage, she stormed over and grabbed Riki’s uninjured shoulder.
“Why the fuck weren’t you on lookout?”
*
“How many more last chances does she get?”
“It wasn’t deliberate.”
“She wandered away from sentry duty by accident?” Lieutenant Aisha O’Neil’s voice dripped sarcasm. She stomped into her office.
Kavita Sadiq was not about to give up so easily. She followed the commander of the Rangers at Ginasberg into the room, closed the door, and then slumped unbidden on a chair beside the desk. As a civilian, she did not need to meet military protocol. Beyond this, her on/off relationship with Ash O’Neil made any formality unnecessary. Kavita rubbed her forehead, hoping to ease her tension. How many of those offs had been due to friction over her unruly daughter?
“Faye and Beth were as much to blame. They shouldn’t have wandered into the woods on their own.”
Ash threw herself into her chair and glared across the desk. “The other two aren’t Rangers. They’re civilians who’re free to wander wherever they want.”
“Even if Riki had stayed on lookout, they’d have been out of her sight.”
“That’s not the point.”
“But—”
“No buts. She was on guard duty and she left her post for no good reason. That’s a court-martial offense.”
Kavita rested her head in her hands, thinking of all the other times she had been in that office, making excuses for Riki. What more could she say? What more did she need to say? Ash knew the situation, and knew Kavita’s feelings of guilt that prompted her to plead Riki’s case.
As a child, Riki had been a handful, as befitting the youngest in a family with three older sisters to spoil her. Maybe she had been given her own way too much, but she had never been out of control. Riki had been no worse than any other high-spirited girl, back when Kavita had lived with her partner, Eli Diaz, in their home at Highview.
But then Kavita had been denounced as heretic, and there was no time for her to think things out. Her other birth daughter, Sue, had been twenty-two and newly settled with a partner. Eli’s two birth daughters, Bron and Jan, were eighteen and twenty-seven respectively. All of them were old enough to make up their own minds, and none were implicated in the heresy. Kavita had left them behind when she fled via the heretic network, into the Wildlands. Only twelve-year-old Riki had been still a child and still her responsibility.
Kavita bit her lip, thinking of her former partner, Riki’s gene mother. Riki and Eli had been so close. Kavita had watched their bond strengthen as her own relationship with Eli had crumbled. In her heart, Kavita knew that Riki would have been happier with her gene mother. At the core of Kavita’s guilt lay doubts about how much her action had been motivated by jealousy. Had she taken Riki as a way of hitting back at her ex-partner?
“It’s my fault.”
Ash snorted. “How are you to blame for your daughter deserting her post?”
“I should never have brought her here. I should have left her at Highview with Eli. When the Guards came for me. I panicked. I grabbed Riki and fled. I should have thought.”
“You were her birth mother. She belonged with you.” Ash sounded bored. The argument was an old one that they had long ago kicked over to the point of tedium.
“But Riki never asked to become a heretic.”
“Is she? I thought she still worshiped Celaeno. That’s what she keeps telling people.”
“She never asked to come here,” Kavita amended.
“Nor have any of the other kids brought here. But they don’t go around like hell on legs.” Ash’s voice softened. “You’re not to blame for everything Rikako does.”
Yet Kavita knew she was responsible. When she had first heard the heretics’ claims that the Goddess Celaeno was no more than misremembered folktales of a ship that had brought people from another planet, she had been intrigued. It made sense of some things that had long puzzled her. Why had she not left it at that? Why had she felt compelled to seek out the truth and find all the answers? And if she had to indulge her curiosity, why had she not waited until Riki was grown, so the consequences would affect no one else?
Joining the heretics would never have been without pain—Kavita missed her other daughters and granddaughters desperately—but she had been able to settle in. Back in Highview, Kavita had been a building forewoman. When she and Riki arrived in the Wildlands, the township at Ginasberg was newly founded and Kavita’s experience had been put to use, constructing the town’s defenses. She now worked as the chief engineer in the mines. Kavita might even have been happy in a relationship with Ash, comforting after the turmoil with Eli, had it not been for her disruptive daughter.
Riki had reacted to the family breakup with increasingly troublesome behavior. At first she had limited herself to bouts of quarrelling, sullenness, and disobedience. Then she had started causing mayhem outside the home. The fights with other children had been followed by petty theft and vandalism. In a community as small as Ginasberg, Riki had become notorious.
Kavita’s only hope had been that as Riki got older, she would start to understand and learn to deal with her anger and pain in a mature way. The hopes had met with limited success. In the last few years, Riki’s behavior had improved, but the mother-daughter relationship was showing no sign of healing.
The general consensus in town was that Riki needed discipline, and with her reputation, job prospects were limited. There was no chance of her following Kavita into engineering. In temperament and interests, Riki took after Eli
, a fur trapper. Math, geology, and mechanics bored her. She was happiest in the wilderness, using the skills she had learned from her gene mother.
In a rare moment of contrition, Riki had let herself be talked into joining the Rangers. Kavita had needed to exert even more pressure getting Ash to accept her, and it still had not worked out. Riki was no longer raising hell in town, but rules and regulations were never going to sit well with her. Membership in the Rangers was an invitation for trouble—one more thing for Kavita to feel guilty about.
“She’s been so much better these last few years. But people remember the fuss she caused in the past and won’t give her credit for making an effort now.”
“Fuss! Can I mark that down as understatement of the day?”
“Whatever. She’s changed, but people won’t give her a chance.”
“I’ve given her plenty of chances, as you know. She deserted her post. Now. This morning. Not some time in the past.”
“I agree she shouldn’t have done it. But everyone’s acting like she’s committed some terrible crime, and nobody’s praising her for killing the cat and saving Beth’s life.”
Ash sucked in a deep breath. “You’re right. People haven’t gotten around to being angry about this morning. They’re still angry about the five counts of theft, eleven counts of vandalism, four counts of drunk and disorderly, the first when she was only thirteen, and one count of arson. She played truant from school so much it’s amazing she can read and write.”
“The arson was an accident, so she...” Kavita’s voice died. Whether or not it was intentional was fairly irrelevant. Riki should not have been playing with fire in a hay barn.
“And that list doesn’t include all the things aimed directly at you that you hushed up.”
Kavita could feel the tears forming. “It was all aimed at me. All of it. Riki was just trying to punish me for splitting up the family.”
Ash sighed. “If you’d stayed in the Homelands, the Guards would have had you tried and executed. You weren’t to blame. You had no choice.”
“But Riki was just a child who was hurting. You can’t expect her to understand.”
“She isn’t a child anymore. She’s twenty.”
“And she isn’t getting into the same sort of trouble. That list you just gave, the theft and the vandalism and the rest. None of it happened in the last few years. But people always look for the worst in her. Leaving her post today. It was just mucking around.”
“But she was mucking around on duty. And it isn’t the first time. She still treats the rules as if they’re an optional exercise. I will not put up with that in the Rangers.”
“But she—”
Ash cut her off, sounding resigned rather than angry. “I’m responsible for the security of Ginasberg. Her actions were unacceptable. I can’t afford to have someone like her under my command. It was her last chance and she’s blown it.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I’m tempted to tie her up and dump her on the Homelands borders for the Guards to deal with.”
“You’re not serious.”
Ash left her chair and walked to the window. Kavita stared at her back, waiting for Ash to give judgment. She caught her lip between her teeth, fighting back tears. She could make one last emotional appeal, playing on what remained of the affection between them. But their relationship had suffered enough because of Riki. Ash had always tried to be fair and did not deserve to be pressured by the forlorn remains of their relationship.
Three minutes passed in silence before Ash sighed and turned back. “Okay. One very last chance. She gets a fresh start, somewhere that people won’t start out by hating the sight of her.”
*
Riki marched into Lieutenant O’Neil’s office and snapped to attention. “Ma’am.”
O’Neil remained seated on the other side of the desk. The glare she gave Riki could have stripped paint off woodwork.
Riki kept her own eyes on the wall while she worked at keeping her expression under control. She was in trouble again. It was not fair or rational, but letting her anger show would not help.
The whole thing was a joke. If she had stayed at her post, she would not have seen the cat and she would have had farther to run when Beth screamed, which would have meant getting there too late. Instead of the pointless sentry duty, she should have been patrolling the perimeter of the camp. Then she might have spotted the cat before it attacked anyone. Yet nobody was criticizing the sergeant for giving inane orders that had put the safety of the miners at risk.
The embroidered badges on Riki’s jacket sleeves felt heavy. They carried the single bar of a leading ranger. Normally, when someone entered the Rangers, it took two years to complete probation and get the automatic promotion. Riki had taken over three, and she had the nasty feeling that she was about to go back to private again. She hoped nothing worse would follow.
O’Neil got to her feet and stalked around the desk. She stopped to one side, standing so close that Riki could feel the lieutenant’s breath on her cheek.
“Okay, Ranger. This is your chance to tell me your side of it. Why you weren’t at your post?”
“No reason, ma’am.”
“That’s not a bloody answer,” O’Neil barked. “What were you doing?”
“I...ah...” Riki restrained the urge to sigh. She was sure that O’Neil was not really interested in the details, but she might as well say it. “I was pouring cold stew into Beth’s hat, ma’am.”
“Why?”
“I was angry about the portion of food she had given me for lunch, ma’am. I wanted to get back at her.”
O’Neil turned away sharply and paced around Riki, circling like a predator sizing up its next meal. Her footsteps sounded slow, heavy, and ominous. At last, she came to a stop in front of her desk. Her eyes bored into Riki.
“Your mucking about nearly got Beth killed. Is that enough getting back at her for you? Or do you want to have a go at breaking her arm again?”
Riki clenched her jaw shut. Her mucking about was what had saved Beth’s life, and O’Neil was quite experienced enough to know it.
“Answer me!” O’Neil shouted.
“No, ma’am.”
“You’re supposed to be a Ranger, not a kid on a frigging picnic. Do you know the difference?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Really? I’m surprised, because I’d never guess it from the way you act. In over forty years, you are the most pathetically irresponsible excuse for a soldier I’ve ever seen. I wouldn’t trust you to watch over a dung heap. I certainly can’t trust you to defend the town. You’re a fucking liability from the moment you wake up in the morning. It’s all one big game to you, isn’t it?”
“No, ma’am.”
“I think it is. And I’m not putting up with it anymore. You’re out of my command.”
The first ripples of concern awoke. Things were going worse than Riki had feared. What happened to a Ranger who was flung out of the service? Would she be allowed to stay in Ginasberg? Or would she be exiled back to the Homelands, to take her chance with the Guards and the Sisterhood?
O’Neil spun away and stormed back to her chair, although she did not sit. She leaned forward, resting her knuckles on the desk. “I ought to kick you out of the Rangers altogether, but I’m going to give you one last chance. A fresh start. I’m transferring you to Westernfort. You’ll join one of the squadrons based there. And if you screw up again, it won’t be me who deals with it. Captain Coppelli will be the one who works out what to damned well do with you.”
Chapter Two—Back On The Outside
Riki checked her horse’s water for the third time, adjusted her saddle on its stand, twitched the harness so it hung a little straighter from the hook, and then scratched her horse’s nose. None of these activities was necessary, just a way of putting off the impending encounter. Riki pouted, deriding herself. She had been in trouble enough times before and it never used to bother her. Why was
she hesitant now? Had she lost her nerve? Or was it that Westernfort and Captain Coppelli were unknown entities?
Regardless, dawdling in the stable was a waste of time. She might as well get it over with. Maybe Captain Coppelli would have some amusing personal quirks that she could laugh about afterward. Most people did. It was just a question of learning how to set them off. After a final pat of her horse’s neck, Riki shouldered her pack and marched into the bright afternoon sunlight.
At the doorway, she paused and considered the view. A soaring line of cliffs ran away east and west, fading into the distance. The only break in the sheer rock face was where the mouth of a hanging valley emerged midway down. This was the entrance to Westernfort. The only way in was a narrow path, cut into the cliff. The opening to the high valley was further protected by a stone wall along its bottom. A stream cascaded through a culvert at one side of the gate and fell in a single glittering drop to the plain below.
The disorderly collection of barns and animal shelters were clustered around the start of the pathway up. They were light structures that could be abandoned and rebuilt, should the Guards attack. Riki shifted the pack on her shoulder and set off, threading her way between the rough timber structures and avoiding spots where the ground had been churned to thick mud by countless hooves.
Westernfort lay five days north of Ginasberg, on the rim of the high escarpment overlooking the plains around a winding river. Like the other heretic stronghold, its location had been chosen for its defensive capabilities. In the case of Westernfort, these had already been tested. Thirteen years before, the Guards had attempted to storm the site. The cairn raised over the bodies of the fallen was the only reminder of the battle.
The ascending path, when Riki got to it, was a meter and a half in width, allowing no more than two women to walk side by side, and all the way, attackers would be exposed and vulnerable, at the mercy of archers above. As she climbed, Riki craned her neck, studying the wall hanging over her. The stone blocks continued the sheer line of the cliff, allowing no foothold for attackers. The open gate was solid, with insufficient room in front to maneuver a battering ram.
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