by Chele Cooke
“ They kept us alive, Alec,” she said quietly. “Edtroka kept me from Maarqyn, Keiran helped you and Nyah escape. Without them…”
“At what cost?” he demanded. “You talk about Zanetti like he’s so perfect.”
“I know he’s not perfect. I know he was in…”
Georgianna shut her mouth as quickly as she had opened it, gritting her teeth and staring resolutely across the water. Alec already blamed Keiran for his capture. Bringing it up now would only make things worse. She took a steadying breath.
“I know they’re not perfect, but they are fighting with us. They’ve done more for the Belsa than anyone… even you.”
“I’m not saying this because of the Belsa, Gianna,” he murmured. “I care about you and I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“And you think killing the people who helped me get out of the compound is a good way to protect me?”
“I see the way you look at him!” Alec snapped. His fingers hovered over the copaq for a moment, but he balled his hand into a fist and shoved it back into his lap without picking up the weapon.
“Keiran and I are together; of course I look at him differently.”
Alec shook his head, reaching up and tugging his hair back from his forehead. He pulled at it in frustration and heaved out a resigned sigh.
“Not Keiran,” he said slowly. “Grystch. This isn’t just about him helping the Belsa.”
Georgianna forgot her steely glare at the water as she looked at him in surprise. Her knee knocked the copaq off the rock as she turned to face him, scrunching the shirt in her fists.
“What are you talking about? I do not have a way of looking at Edtroka.”
His hands beat an unsteady rhythm against his knee. Georgianna was reminded of Edtroka telling her that she fidgeted when she lied. Somehow, she knew that Alec’s uncontrolled movement wasn’t about lies; it was because he had something he didn’t want to say.
“George, this is a man who bought you, who used you to get information from the Belsa. Yet you were willing to spend the rest of your life with those murderers to protect him.”
“He’s more important than I am. He’s…”
“He’s important to you.”
She opened her mouth to argue, but she couldn’t tell him that he was wrong. Edtroka was important to her. Licking her bottom lip nervously, she stayed quiet. She could see where he was going with this conversation and yet she couldn’t deny it.
Alec leaned across the gap and brushed her hair back from her face. He tucked it behind her ear, his fingertips playing against the curve of her jaw.
“I’ve known you all your life,” he murmured. “I know you, Georgie.”
Despite herself, she smiled weakly at the nickname. She hated it and thought it made her sound like a child. Alec made her feel like she would always be a child. They’d been children together, but she didn’t think they’d grown up together. Alec didn’t seem to think she’d grown up at all.
Back in the tunnels she had claimed that he didn’t know her, but now he was creeping in, the same way he always did. His words wormed under her skin and she began to think that maybe he had been right all along. He might have been right in the past over her trips into the compound. And there could be some truth to her reliance on Edtroka.
“I don’t want you to get hurt by this… guy.”
“I’m with Keiran,” she breathed.
“Yet you were willing to sacrifice yourself for Grystch,” he said, pulling back.
His gaze searched her face and Georgianna held herself resolutely still. Whatever Alec said, she wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of thinking he was right, even if a small voice told her that he was. Alec chuckled under his breath and looked out over the water.
“Give me the silent treatment all you want, but you can’t tell me that you see him as just your owner,” he said.
The jealousy she had felt at seeing Edtroka talking to the beautiful Adveni woman lingered in the back of her mind. A sense of loyalty clung to her. He had told Keiran to keep her away from Alec and Nyah’s escape to protect her. He had kept her from Maarqyn. He came into the block to find her when he should have run. He had begged Dhiren to act to ensure that she didn’t spend her life with Ta-Dao and Vajra. Ever since meeting him, he had been protecting her and Georgianna couldn’t see him as “just her owner”.
“He’s not,” she said quietly, turning back to the shirt. “Edtroka is… He’s not my owner, Alec.”
“He can’t be more than that,” he insisted. When she glanced at him, he shook his head and moved closer, placing his hand between her shoulder blades. “Not because he’s an Adveni, but because he is who he is.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t hate him for being an Adveni.”
“I won’t, but that’s not it this time. You heard how he talks about war, about life. He is willing to take the risks necessary to win this war. He risks people’s lives as if they were nothing more than a number and one day that risk might be you.”
“I…”
“He will, George,” he said. “You deserve better. You deserve the person who would risk everything for you, not risk you for everything.”
She leaned towards him, biting back her breath as she rested her head against his shoulder. He squeezed her shoulder and placed his other hand on her knee.
“Are you saying this so I’ll forgive you?” she asked.
Alec laughed.
“Oh, you’ll forgive me no matter what I say,” he teased. “You’re a better person than I am.”
Georgianna let out a snort of laughter.
A cough came from behind them, making them both jump. When they turned around, Edtroka was standing a few feet away, watching them with curious amusement. Her blood rushed directly to her face, her cheeks burning as pink as the suds on her fingers.
“Casey’s here,” was all he said.
Dropping the shirt on the rock next to her, Georgianna leapt to her feet and hurried past him, desperate never to know how much of their conversation he had overheard.
Beck had been busy before leaving Adlai. Whether it had been his intention to bring as many people with him as possible, or it had simply worked out that way was unclear, but he had brought at least four-dozen Veniche north to Nyquonat. Edtroka alone seemed cautious about such a large influx of people and insisted on spreading the group further into the forest in the hope of hiding their numbers.
The congregation of people around the lake was far too many for the tents they had brought with them, so Dhiren pointed groups towards the houses further around the shore. In small groups, people began trudging along the tree line, disappearing into small, bare shacks, while others moved into the shade of the trees to create shelter for themselves.
The sunlight glittered on the water’s surface and waves of heat warped the image into a mirage that Georgianna could barely believe was real. Practically everyone she loved was in one place, safe. Only her family were missing. She didn’t want to upset those who considered their escape a success, so she had retreated into the shadows of the trees, watching from afar while guilt and homesickness pawed at her chest.
Jacob, Lacie and Liliah sat on the shore, a large tarpaulin spread between them. They gathered all their supplies and organised them into piles, joking and laughing the entire time. Georgianna had never seen the young runaways so animated. Liliah, with her cheerful and caring disposition, was a good influence on them.
“George?”
She leapt away from the tree trunk she’d been leaning on at the sound of her name. Covering her heart with her hand, she looked around. Even though Edtroka had told her last night that Beck had arrived, she’d not seen him until now. She’d been told that he was helping to organise the others, helping them find places to stay and making sure that everyone had care if they needed it. From the look of him, he’d not found time to care for himself.
Georgianna stared open-mouthed as he moved through the trees towards her. A large bu
rn spread down the side of his face and neck, fanning out over his shoulder. Tendrils of raw flesh licked down the front of his chest beneath a tattered shirt. A large patch of hair was missing behind his ear.
“Suns, Beck,” she whispered.
He glanced at his shoulder and shrugged, giving her a half-smile that looked gruesome beneath the raw skin.
“What happened?”
“I’m fine,” he insisted. “I went to help get people out and the Adveni started burning out the tunnels.”
“They what?”
“Look, it doesn’t matter. It’s not why I came to find you.”
“But your skin… Has someone looked at it?”
“Lacie took a look the morning after we left.”
“It looks bad. I can go and get my kit and…”
“Will you hold on for one second? I’m trying to tell you something,” he snapped, but there was no anger or annoyance in his voice and he raised an eyebrow as he glared at her. She shrank under his stare and smiled apologetically.
“Sorry.”
“Some of the Belsa weren’t willing to come this way,” he explained. “They’ve gone south.”
“Okay?”
Beck moved closer and leaned against the tree trunk next to her.
“I sent a message down to your da’,” he said. “Telling him what’s happened, that we’re going north. I couldn’t say whether you were safe, but…”
Her mouth dropped open. She stared past him into the shadows of the trees.
“You what?”
“I thought you’d want him to know.”
“Are you kidding?” she demanded. “He’s going to come right back up here.”
“And?”
“And I don’t want him anywhere near this. I don’t want any of them near it.”
“I’m sorry, George. I thought…”
“Suns,” she breathed, burying her face in her hands. “What am I going to do? I promised them I’d stay safe and…”
“And there is nothing you can do about it now,” he said gently, laying a hand on her shoulder. “If they come, they come. We’ll deal with it then.”
Georgianna nodded as she let out a sigh. He was right. There was nothing they could do about it. In the days since they’d moved north, the others had moved south. There would be at least a week between them. She didn’t think anyone would be happy to leave, not when they were waiting on the arrival of the Cahlven.
Edtroka had assured them that it would be a matter of days before the Adveni began searching north instead of south, but there were many who had already grown anxious about how exposed they were. Should the Adveni come, they did not know the land this far north well enough to escape. Luckily, however, the land was so scarcely populated that hunting and fishing were easy sport.
They stood silently for a minute. Georgianna slowly calmed herself down by breathing deeply. Beck watched the people moving back and forth, closer to the water’s edge. He didn’t say how he felt about their current location, nor the imminent arrival of another race to their planet. He reached up to scratch at his wound and, without even thinking, Georgianna knocked his hand away. He grumbled and glared at her. She smiled back.
“Come on, I’ll find you something for that burn,” she said, pushing herself away from the tree.
Beck followed her down to the tents, watching as she crawled inside and dug out her bag and the medical kit Edtroka had given her. It was going to take her a while to learn all the names of the medicines and their uses, but she also had her own supplies. Knowing that she had a qualified herber a shout away also calmed her nerves.
Sitting in the mouth of the tent, Georgianna dabbed the burn with a wet cloth, bringing forth hisses and groans of pain from Beck. He’d managed to keep the wound relatively clean, but it would have been better if he’d let Lacie deal with it properly when it happened. Three days was a long time for a burn like this to go untreated and being out in the heat-end sun couldn’t have helped.
Georgianna ripped down a handful of large leaves from a nearby tree and washed them in the water before smearing them with ointment and laying them over the affected skin. Without bandaging half his face, there was little she could do, but she managed to cover most of the patches across his neck, shoulder and chest. As she dabbed the ointment carefully onto his face, Beck grimaced and she had to bat his hand away more than once.
“You’re worse than a child,” she scolded with a fond smile as she wrapped bandages over the leaves to keep them in place.
“Thank you for this,” he answered, patting her knee.
“Keep it covered for now. I’ll check it tomorrow and put some more ointment on. And you should sleep on your left side so you don’t stick to the floor.”
Beck chuckled as he grasped her shoulder to haul himself to his feet.
“Beck.”
“Yeah?”
He turned and looked down at her, his brow rising and wrinkling his forehead.
“Do you think they’re okay, my family?”
His hand was halfway to his neck before he remembered the dressings and let it drop back to his side. He stared past her into the trees and sighed.
“I think your da’ is capable and smart,” he said finally. “If anyone can avoid trouble, he can.”
Georgianna nodded, even though she wasn’t sure whether he thought that they were okay or not. She wanted to think that he believed they were fine, but the Adveni had burned out the tunnels, they had scoured the camps. Who could say whether their anger at the Belsa attack had pressed that far south?
“Zanetti did a good thing,” Beck said idly, letting his gaze rove over the houses further around the lake. “Grystch did a good thing.”
He didn’t wait for her response before he ambled over to join Lacie, taking a seat next to her and slinging an arm around her shoulder. Lacie looked at the dressings curiously and glanced over her shoulder, beaming at Georgianna where she sat in the tent mouth. She waved before turning back to Beck and resting her head against his uninjured shoulder.
Georgianna packed her supplies away slowly, watching the others laughing and talking down by the lake. Every worry she’d had about Keiran and Edtroka melted away. It didn’t matter how they had gotten to this point. The lies and secrets no longer mattered. Beck was right. They’d done a good thing. That was what was worth remembering. That was all she needed to worry about: the good things. For today, at least.
Indigo night chased the sun from the sky while the curved moon, fatter than the days before, watched the chase from just above the horizon. Some people set up camp with the meagre provisions they had brought with them while others disappeared into the forest to get a better feel for their surroundings. A few men had set themselves up with comfortable positions on the edge of the lake where they wove more nets and created traps out of fallen branches and rope.
Georgianna lay on her back next to Keiran, scrunching her fingers into the springy grass. Her leg no longer hurt, though it would take longer for it to heal properly. Jaid had frowned at the rudimentary repair, but when Georgianna had explained that Alec had done it, her frown had softened into a caring smile.
Since their arrival with Beck, Alec had spent most of his time with Si. Georgianna hadn’t spoken to Jaid’s husband since before her incarceration, but the older woman had been quick to explain that Alec had been the first to offer help with his care. Si enjoyed Alec’s company, he was calmer when the other Belsa was around and Jaid was grateful for the rest.
Georgianna didn’t know if Alec felt guilty for Si’s current condition. Si had been out getting information from Alec when he’d been chased by the Adveni and forced to live in the mid-heat sun for three days. He had calmed down significantly since he’d been found, but he wasn’t the man he’d once been.
When she bent her leg to scratch at the dressing, her hand was batted away. Keiran tutted at her.
“For a medic, you’re a horrible patient.”
“So I’ve been told,” she
said, scratching the skin next to the dressing.
He propped himself up on his elbow, leaning over her. Georgianna laid her leg back on the ground and gave him a triumphant smile. Shaking his head, he kissed her cheek.
“Where did you go before?” she asked.
Keiran’s brow knitted and tiny wrinkles appeared in the bridge of his nose. Reaching up, she ran her finger over the creased flesh until he relaxed.
“When?”
“When you went into the forest with Dhiren and Edtroka.”
“Well, I went into the forest.”
“Haa haa.”
He grinned mockingly and brushed hair off her face, watching his fingers get lost in the curls. Georgianna waited for a moment, wondering if he would give her a real answer. He didn’t.
“Keiran?” she prompted again.
He sighed.
“Edtroka wanted to contact Olless. Dhiren and I were… protection.”
“Protection? From what?”
“From who,” he corrected.
Georgianna’s brow rose against her forehead and she rolled onto her side towards him, taking the opportunity to look across the lake. They’d moved further around the shore to have some privacy, but she could still see the tents. One of the tents had been pulled closed, and she could only guess that Edtroka was inside.
“Who would he need protection from?” she asked, turning back to Keiran.
“Everyone?” he suggested. “Let’s face it, George, he’s still an Adveni surrounded by Veniche.”
“But they know he helped us.”
“Yes, and I have a scar on my back that says that some of those guys won’t wait for you to explain that in small words they can understand.”
Frowning, Georgianna glanced across the lake again. She had noticed how some people avoided Edtroka. They wouldn’t as much as look at him. She’d heard him mentioned a few times, but each time it was as ‘the Adveni’ or ‘it’. No matter what Edtroka had done, to some of the people camping with them, he was still the enemy.