Kira saw a light appear below, silhouetting the shapes of two Imperial officers crouching over a map. Handheld electric lights had once been available only to Mechanics, but in the years since the fall of the Great Guilds several workshops had begun turning them out in larger numbers and selling them to anyone who wanted one and could afford it. A rustle of movement marked the rest of the weary column dropping down to sit, their backs against the same rock wall that held the ledge Kira and Jason were on. She couldn’t see them without leaning out, but could hear their labored breathing. The Imperials must be pushing their people very hard.
“This trail isn’t on the map,” one of the officers said in a low voice to the other as she pointed to the paper. “We must be about here. This path looks like after it splits one way goes northeast and the other northwest.”
“Orders are if we can’t kill them we need to make sure they don’t make it west,” the other replied. “We’ll take the path to the northwest. The other groups to the east should catch them if they’re east of here, and if they try to go west we should catch them.”
“What about leaving some people here to watch this trail in case they come down it from that eastern side?”
“Good idea. Make it five, and pick somebody good to be in charge. You know what Prince Maxim will do to anyone who screws this up.”
“How many people are we supposed to lose chasing that demon spawn?”
“As many people as Prince Maxim wants.”
“We don’t have to try to capture her alive any more, right? As long as she’s dead, really dead, the prince will be happy?”
“He still wants her alive if possible, but accidents happen. We’ll wait another ten minutes for everybody to rest and then move on.”
Kira saw one of the officers, who seemed to be far too close below her, move to face the Imperials seated beneath her ledge. If the officer looked up and shined a light, she would be able to see Kira. She would be the last thing that Imperial officer saw, Kira resolved, gripping her pistol, but that would leave fourteen Imperials right beneath her and who knew how many others who might be nearby and come running in response to a gun battle.
“You five are staying here to guard this spot,” the officer said, pointing. “Pul, you’re in charge. Make sure you keep an eye on the trail from the east. Everybody else, ten minutes.”
Barely audible grumbles came from the Imperials. “Can’t we wait until dawn?” an Imperial sailor asked. “It’s treacherous footing, the trail’s really narrow—”
“Do you want to personally explain to Prince Maxim why you let that girl get away?” the officer asked, her voice hardening.
“It’s night,” another Imperial mumbled. “I don’t want to catch her at night.”
“She doesn’t like girls. Your blood’s safe,” a third responded.
“That’s not what the sailors from the Drusa say. She went after women, too, when they had her aboard. I heard she had her teeth in one’s neck before they pried her off. Maybe when she gets thirsty enough she doesn’t care.”
The Imperial officer’s voice grew harsher. “You know your orders. Anyone caught spreading rumors about her is going to regret it. This girl is the daughter of Master Mechanic Mari, who the emperor says is not her.”
“But Prince Maxim said—”
“Prince Maxim isn’t emperor yet.”
“What about the guy with her? He’s from Urth, they say? Somebody told me those people from Urth came here because she told them to. To bring that guy. For her daughter.”
Another sailor spoke up. “Yeah, ‘cause no regular man could survive being with that girl. They needed some kind of demon from Urth.”
“Prince Maxim can handle the girl,” the officer said, her voice even more stern. “If you all have enough breath to gossip like old fools maybe you don’t need any more rest time.”
That quieted the sailors. Kira watched the Imperial officer go back to talk to the other officer, the two keeping their voices low enough that even this close Kira couldn’t be sure what they were saying. She only caught a few words as she strained to listen. “Report…Drusa…blood…darkness…”
If she had been alone Kira would have been pounding her head against the nearest rock. “I heard she had her teeth in one’s neck before they pried her off.” If the Imperials didn’t kill her, her mother would, when she found out how much Kira had reinforced the Mara story.
Although Jason had now been incorporated into it as well. A demon from Urth, brought to Dematr to be Kira’s companion. She wondered whether Jason was also supposed to be dangerous to others, or if his special power was simply the ability to endure being Kira’s boyfriend.
That thought, on top of her tiredness and overstrained nerves, brought her perilously close to laughing.
After what felt like an extremely long ten minutes, the two officers headed out with eight of the sailors, leaving five to guard the area. “If anything happens, signal. One shot to alert. Two shots close together if you see her. And you’d better be sure it’s her before you fire those two shots!”
Jason pantomimed frustration to Kira, who responded with a gesture urging patience. These Imperials were worn out, their officers gone. It seemed likely there would be slacking off that she and Jason could take advantage of.
Sure enough, after the sound of the others had faded into the night, a sailor who must have been Pul spoke up. “One of us can watch that trail while the others get some rest. Right? You take the first watch, Nik.”
“Why do I have to take the first watch?” Nik complained. He sounded young to Kira.
“Because you’re the most junior of us, and because I said so,” Pul replied. “I’m in charge here, remember? It’s easy. Just stay awake and keep an eye on that path from the east and if you hear anyone coming, you wake the rest of us up.”
Kira gave Jason a nod as they heard four of the sailors settling a short distance down the trail, where the path was wider and they could lie down.
She looked up at the stars, trying to gauge the time. It was well after midnight, maybe only an hour or two until dawn.
It wasn’t long before she heard deep breathing and snoring from where four of the Imperial sailors were sleeping the sleep of the exhausted. Nik, grumbling under his breath, walked slowly back and forth for a little while before sitting down beneath the ledge. Kira listened intently until his breathing slowed and deepened. She brought her lips to Jason’s ear. “I’ll jump down. If he wakes, I’ll distract him while you jump down behind him. Use a rock to knock him out.”
Jason nodded, reaching to grasp a fist-sized rock as he put away his knife.
Kira moved very cautiously, trying not to make a sound as she slid to the edge of the ledge. She needed both hands free to do this, so she holstered her pistol. Lowering herself until she hung by her hands, she dropped as lightly as she could to the ground near Nik.
—Who was still awake and stood up, turning to look at the sound of Kira’s boots hitting the trail.
“Adel?” Nik whispered as he stared at Kira. His head turned toward the four sleeping sailors, and Nik jerked in surprise as he saw them all still asleep. “W-who are—?”
Kira, her pistol still holstered, remembered the earlier conversation of the sailors as well as the stories she had heard about Mara. She whispered a reply in a very friendly voice. “Hi. Are you lonely?”
“W-what?”
“Are you lonely?” Where was Jason?
Nik flicked on a hand light, pinning Kira with it. “W-who?” he gasped again in a very faint voice.
She didn’t have much experience with this, but she had heard the sailors on The Son of Taris laughing about pick-up lines they had heard, and remembered some of them. “Would you like to have a night you’ll never forget?” Kira whispered, smiling. “Come here.”
The light on her began twitching around. Kira realized that the young sailor’s hand was shaking so badly he couldn’t hold the light steady.
Jason finally jumped down, landin
g behind Nik, who was so focused on Kira that he didn’t notice. A moment later, Jason swung the rock in his hand against the back of Nik’s head, the impact of the rock making enough noise for Kira to flinch. Nik fell forward, unconscious, as Kira dashed in to catch his body before it hit the ground.
She barely managed to grab Nik in time, the sailor’s limp body falling against her. “Go,” she whispered to Jason, using her head to indicate the trail to the northwest. As he backed away, Kira carefully lowered Nik to the surface of the trail, trying to ensure that his equipment didn’t rattle loudly enough to wake any of his companions.
Nik’s rifle would make a very useful weapon for Jason. But the strap was over Nik’s shoulder. Could she get the weapon off without—?
Kira heard a gasp behind her and twisted her upper body to see that one of the sleeping sailors had awoken and was staring at her with eyes so wide the whites were easily visible in the night. Kira realized that Nik’s hand light, still on, was illuminating her crouched over his body. The female sailor had grabbed her rifle and was already raising it.
Chapter Ten
Kira’s pistol was still in her holster. Aunt Bev had acted out moments like this for Kira, demonstrating that if someone already had a weapon pointed in your general direction, they could get off a few shots at you before you had a chance to draw your own. And even if Kira avoided getting shot before she had her own weapon out, she’d be facing three more sailors awakened by the noise, and forced to fire multiple times herself. Even if she escaped getting hit, everyone in earshot would know what the sound of a gun battle meant.
Her thoughts took only a fraction of a second before Kira bolted over Nik’s body and along the trail to the northwest, shoving Jason into motion before her. She heard a babble of noise behind them as the other sailors awoke, but between the twists and turns of the trail and the darkness, Kira knew that she and Jason were already out of sight.
“The others went this way!” Jason whispered fiercely to Kira as they ran. A shot sounded behind them, closely followed by a second shot. “And they’re going to be coming back!”
“I know!” Kira said. “They left over half an hour ago. Keep running for another several minutes and keep your eyes out for somewhere to hide!”
“What if the ones behind us chase us?”
“I don’t think they’ll do that, especially if they wake up Nik and ask him who knocked him out.”
“What do you mean? He saw you! And what was that stuff about the night of his life?”
“I was pretending to be Mara’s daughter! A blood-sucking young male-seducing monster! That’s why he was too scared to shout a warning. And you are never to tell anyone about it! Aside from it having been extremely embarrassing, my mother will kill me if she hears I did that! Mother would never have pretended to be Mara, no matter how bad things were. Not in a million years would she have done that!”
Kira saw a place where the land fell off steeply into a series of small ridges beside the trail. “Here. Down here.”
They dropped down to one of the ridges, standing on it with their heads about half a lance beneath the edge of the trail, hugging the rock before them. Kira hoped they would be almost invisible in the darkness even if someone looked down this way. Jason had his knife out again. She drew her pistol, clicked off the safety, and waited.
The sound of pounding feet came from the northwest, followed by a rush of movement on the trail above them. Kira tried to count, deciding that it was the entire group that had gone on ahead.
Once they were past, she set the safety and holstered her weapon again, and she and Jason helped each other back up onto the trail. They set off at a trot, trying to maintain a pace that they could sustain. “We’re ahead of them again,” Jason said.
“We hope,” Kira said. “Those guys were already really tired. Running back all that way should make them unable to chase us for a while.”
After covering what must have been several hundred lances they slowed to a walk out of necessity. Throats dry and stomachs empty, they took drinks from their bottles and chewed on the remaining onions as they walked. “Doc Sino is always telling me to eat more vegetables,” Jason commented. “And she likes me getting exercise. So at least one person should be happy about what we’re doing right now.”
“Are onions vegetables?” Kira asked. “Remember to keep your voice down. We don't want any of them hearing us.”
“They should have caught us back there,” Jason said in a whisper. “We’re toast, aren’t we?” He sounded tired and discouraged.
“Don’t give up, Jason.”
“I'm just trying to accept reality.”
“Don't! Look, I’m tired and scared, just like you are. Which is why I need you to believe we can make it. Do you understand? I need you to believe along with me! If we give up, if we decide it's hopeless, we are toasted.”
“Toast,” Jason corrected.
“Whatever! As long as we keep believing we can survive this, then we still have a fighting chance.”
He looked at her in the growing light as dawn approached, a smile slowly forming. “Yeah. Okay. We’ll make it.”
She grinned back at him. “See? Doesn't that feel better?”
“I guess it does. Thanks for telling me that you needed me to help you that way.” He laughed once. “After all, I am a special demon brought here for you. Am I dangerous?”
“You’re a teenage boy, Jason. I’m sure a lot of mothers and fathers would consider you to be dangerous around their daughters.”
He laughed again. “Yeah. I was such a threat to girls back on Earth. Why are the Imperials so superstitious and ready to believe stuff like that?”
Kira sighed, remembering talks that seemed to have happened an eternity ago. “Father told me it’s because of the bargain the Imperials make. They give up a lot of freedom, a lot of control over the own lives, because in exchange the emperor will protect them and their families. That’s the deal, see? But sometimes bad things happen anyway. The Imperials could admit that meant that their deal was messed up, that giving up their freedom hadn’t actually made them much safer. But they don’t want to do that. So instead they created the myth of Mara, someone with supernatural powers who is always trying to do evil things. Since she’s so powerful, the emperor can’t stop her. But the emperor is the only one who can fight Mara. So the Imperials can rationalize bad things happening and the need for an emperor to control their lives even though having that emperor is supposed to prevent bad things from happening.”
Jason nodded, frowning as he thought. “They’re not the first people to make that kind of bargain. It’s self-reinforcing, isn’t it? The more bad stuff that happens, the more powerful someone like Mara has to be, which makes it all the more important for them to back the emperor.”
“Exactly,” Kira said. “And now, with lots of bad stuff happening because the old emperor doesn’t have a firm grip on things any more and the various princes and princesses are fighting for influence and power, it must mean that I’m not just your average dangerous teenage girl but a teenage monster who’s a mortal danger to every young man.”
“And woman,” Jason said. “You had your teeth in the neck of one, remember?”
“Which is another thing my mother will kill me for if she hears about it,” Kira said, unhappy with the turn the conversation had taken. “Bad enough that young men from the Empire get the shakes when she looks at them. If the young women start doing it, too…”
“Chemically, there’s not much difference between the blood of young adults and older adults. The lymphocyte levels decline, but that’s about it,” Jason said. “Why do you only crave blood from young people?”
She glared at him. “I don’t know, Jason! Maybe I think it’s inappropriate to date and drink the blood of people outside my age group! Hey, I’ve got an idea. You know how much my mother loves talking about her supposed association with Mara. Why don’t you save up all these questions and when we get home you can ask her
!”
He jerked backwards, surprised by her reaction. “That wouldn't be very smart. I know how your mom feels about…”
“Is there a light going in there, Jason? Are you starting to realize something important?”
“You don’t like to talk about people thinking you’re a vampire either,” Jason said slowly.
“And there it is!”
“I’m sorry,” Jason said. “I was thinking of it like something in a game. You know, role playing.”
Kira shook her head. “I’ve never really understood that whole role-playing thing, Jason. But it is a game, and this isn’t. This is me, and other people thinking I am literally a monster. Not just a freak, a monster.”
“I really am sorry,” Jason said, his face twisted with emotion. “I should have known that. My mom and dad sort of treated me that way, always finding new ways to tell me how awful I was. And I hated that. I won’t bring that stuff up again, Kira. But…can we make a deal? I can’t call myself a jerk. That’s good. Can we also have a deal against you calling yourself a freak?”
She frowned down at the trail. “Do I do that a lot?”
“Even once is a lot, isn’t it? Because you’re not. Not any more than you’re a monster.”
“All right, Jason. It’s a deal.” She relented and leaned close to kiss his cheek. “You’re not a bad person, so I know when you say or do something wrong it’s not on purpose. Sorry I got mad. How are you doing?”
“Um, I believe we can still do this but I’m really tired, my whole body hurts, my stomach is really empty, it’s still cold, and I’ve got one bottle of water left.”
“Same here, except I don’t have any water left. Once the sun rises high enough we should get warmer, at least. And we’ll be able to see anyone coming from farther off.” Someone coming toward her. Kira suddenly remembered the dream she had been having when Jason woke her. “Jason, there’s something I haven’t told you, and you need to know about it because it could endanger both of us. If you see me sleeping and it looks like I’m having a bad dream you need to wake me up right away, because if I screamed, like when that group of Imperials was close, it would give us away.”
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