As soon as I finished helping her rebuild Pioneer into a ship better suited for deeper travel, I vowed to dive into that sea and never return. This time there would be no Brien to pull me out of the ruins, no more spending half my life wishing he hadn’t.
Several pebbles tumbled down the face of the cliff behind me and I crouched lower as I caught a fresh putrid scent drifting from overhead. I preferred to wait until the last possible moment to twist out of the way of the beast’s first strike. It leapt onto my crevice with a grunt and I twisted, wrapping my arms around its heavy, scaly torso, so I could avoid the spikes lining its back. Claws dug into my thigh, nearly tore through the biosuit.
Rather than use my gauntlet, I kept one arm secure around its middle and used the other to slam it against the rock wall. The beast grunted again, this time in pain and I winced as my arm was partially crushed in the process. I avoided its claws and the spiked tail as best I could before grabbing it by its head and whipping it upside down, so its body again smashed into the wall. It fell, stunned, and its glowing-green slit eyes blinked up stupidly at me before it jumped to its feet with a snarl. I waited as it leapt up and this time, I let it come for me, jaws open wide, the span the length of my head. My hands caught its upper and lower jaw, needle sharp teeth pricking my skin as I tugged and waited for the familiar pop and snap.
A guttural gasp escaped its body as I threw it over the cliff edge and watched it tumble down the rest of the way until it lay motionless at the bottom.
I had not killed to protect this time, though I knew they would be out there, waiting for us as the beasts always had. This was about my uncontrollable rage, the feelings I had never been able to tame as well as the others. It made me feel less like a miner and more like what I was born to be, a predator.
V
Divide
I decided the following day that we needed to get Qeya on a path that would take her closer to the Nuki village before nightfall. Besides the fact that she was more vulnerable to predators, being around her only dredged up things I had no business muddling in. She seemed to understand my need for distance, though I caught her anxious looks more than once as we descended the cliffs and entered the wet forest.
Adi chose to speak with her, while I kept to the trail behind. Thrice I was forced to gun down predators twice our size. Two were the furred long-fangs and the other, the dwarf ridge-backs as I called them. After this, I kept closer to the two females than before, deciding my embittered feelings didn’t mean I had to sacrifice their lives along with mine.
I kept my eyes on the tangle of roots and vines and ferns around us, while Adi dove deeper into her questions about the people we were about to visit.
“Tell me, why don’t they try to make peace with the Var?”
Qeya rolled her eyes and huffed as she often did when forced to repeat herself. I smirked at the familiar sight in spite of myself as she answered, “The Nukis live in the trees and they know the span of the valley, but they never go near the northwest. That’s Var territory. And they don’t speak like we do, miner. The Var, too, have their own language, from what I understand. But I don’t know much more than…” she trailed off and then hissed.
I froze when she suddenly backed into me, gripping me by the belt and dragged me to the nearest tree trunk. “Come on! Climb up!” I was too shocked to argue.
Adi twisted her head and grimaced, opening her mouth to protest until she saw my warning glare. With surprising grace, she climbed another tree with ease. I followed Qeya until we were peering at the earth below. No sooner had I settled in behind her on a thick branch, my arms keeping her locked in, than a familiar cry echoed the forest. Soon a sea of spiked ridge-backs passed our way, sniffing our scent and hooting to one another as they sought our whereabouts. These were smaller than their cliff-dwelling cousins, better suited to the underbelly of the forest. But the sight of them reminded me of my killing the night before and how close I had been to losing it because of a blooming Royal.
Qeya held her breath and glanced over her shoulder so our eyes linked. I could see echoes of her sorrow, of that day we fought these same creatures and Menai lost his life. I had seen them during my nightly hunts in the cliffs from afar, but the ridge-backs never came so close to the border. Here they roamed free, reminding me that the Var were the least of our troubles.
“Can we get out of these leaking trees, already?” Adi growled nearby.
Qeya nodded. “Best to stay out of the creatures’ way. I should have paid better attention. The kainah always hunt this area. We should be more careful.”
Adi ignored the last half of her statement and slid the rest of the way down. Qeya shifted against me, ready to move and for a moment I wanted to keep her there and ask her more ridiculous questions. Like why she knew the name to a creature if the Nukis only spoke through their hands. The word was familiar to me, if I thought on it long enough. But I hated Royal speech almost as much as I had hated learning to speak words with my mouth as a child when they plucked me from the sea.
I saw her chin shift and then tilt, the gills along her neck flare slightly and felt mine flare in response. Shaken, I crawled lower and focused on our descent. I watched and waited as she followed me down and caught her when she misgauged her last step.
Adi huffed an impatient sigh and grumbled, “If you two are done bloating gills at one another, I think we should go, before more of those things come back.”
Sometime later, as the sun reached its peak in the bold blue sky, Qeya’s demeanor shifted. Every sound from the jungle made her twitch and she kept her fist around the hilt of her retractable scythe. This put me on edge soon after but it was Adi who at last noticed and commented, “What in cranking bits is your problem, Royal?”
Qeya jumped and jerked her chin to the dense ferns blocking our path. “This is Var territory.”
“Awful cozy with the lay of the land already, Navigator?” I said while changing the gears in my gauntlet yet again.
“We’ve scouted from above a lot,” she grunted in reply.
“Finally sprouted wings, too, Royal?” Adi asked testily.
Qeya met her glare. “Finally learn how to swim, Miner?”
“Enough,” I roughly said, interrupting both of them. Something was prickling at the back of my neck, a disturbing sensation I knew well. The last time was right before Datura 3 was blown to bits, before the attack. Old Brien said not every miner had the sight. I chose to ignore it when I could. But it always put me on edge.
I shivered and then gasped when Qeya grabbed both mine and Adi’s hands and jerked us quickly into the thick undergrowth. We crouched, thickly drenched in blades of bright green grass and fern and mud, left over from the last dew. It rarely rained in the valley, far as I could tell, yet the air was much richer here, and an opaque fog hung over the sky, giving it an added opalescent sheen. Like the abandoned sea village and waters, I wondered if this was another unexplainable mystery.
Adi opened her mouth to growl some kind of protest, no doubt, but was silenced by the slap of Qeya’s hand to her lips. Adi’s eyes widened, indignant and she scowled.
I looked around us, trying to sense out whatever had her so spooked. If it had been those kainah, she would have led us back up the trees. The prickling sensation at the back of my neck intensified and I heard the gears in my gauntlet whine faintly as my arm muscles tensed nervously. Qeya reached out to cover it and I stared at her golden nails and the webbing between her fingers laid over my invention. Our gazes met and locked and she pleaded silently with me.
Clenching my jaw tightly, I finally nodded and followed her when she crawled further into the brush. Adi hissed something unintelligible behind me and for once we kept our fists free from one another’s faces, though that fight would come again soon enough. Our kind needed an outlet for our powerful emotions and if our need wasn’t met, it was common for us to turn on each other. It was the reason I went looking to hunt in the night, not just to protect, I admitted with disdain.
Now I could hear the snorts and shuffling of a small herd of grazing beasts. Predators had a sharper, bloodier scent to them. These creatures smelled like grass and nuts and bark. Sure enough, I saw the low backs of the short-legged creatures tied together ahead of us. It seemed we crawled forever before Qeya stopped and Adi and I took position on either side of her.
Voices called out in a rolling, sibilant tongue from where we had come. Adi and I shared a look before reaching for our weapons.
Speech indicated intelligence of the highest kind, be it complex hand movement or spoken. These must be the bleeding Var who had chased us across the valley and made us feel powerless to stop them the last time. I could feel the wildling inside me aching to release, ready to snap off the heads of whatever came our way. They were greater in number and their weapons crude, but we were miners and I had been raised to fight predators twice my size.
The voices drew closer and I enjoyed the taste of almost being able to enact revenge. The grass nearby shifted and two pairs of booted legs came into view. I clenched my naked fist and felt the blood surge inside me, coiled from the ground and prepared to strike. The element of surprise was our best advantage and I didn’t plan on losing it before they picked up our scent.
But all my senses were thrown into overdrive when she covered my neck with her hands and dragged me to face her. Shaking her head, she mouthed the word while pleading at me with her eyes. “No.”
I sneered, disgusted that we were about to lose our main advantage. I remembered how the Var came from the trees like ghosts, throwing their spears too quick for us to get away unscathed. We lost three more hunans because of them. I planned on making them regret it. But when I tried to pry from her embrace I felt her power flee from her fingertips and into my skin. I gaped at her while a pinch of willpower left me. She snatched hold of my soul too easily, I thought, before I began to fight her back. It was all I could do to hold in a snarl while the Var spoke in their strange tongue two paces behind us.
Something happened then I did not expect. A shout came from near the herd and the Var left their pursuit of us to return to their camp. More voices answered the questions the two who had just left us, were asking. We moved closer by silent agreement, and hidden within the shelter of the high grass, we saw through the thick blades into the small clearing ahead.
There were four Var, I counted, dressed in animal skins tied about their waists and necklaces made from the bones of different creatures. Their skin was bronzed and covered in a faint layer of hair, which grew thicker from the tops of their heads and around their faces. I had expected them to wear more clothing, to help their bodies sustain in their environment. But the crude weapons they were motioning with in their hands reminded me that these people were an age away from biosuits. The two larger Var who had been scouting out our scent were angry with the others and pointed at the baskets and meat they had been strapping to their pack beasts’ backs. The smallest and hairiest of the four came around from behind the pile of supplies and threw the crumpled form of a hunan onto the ground at the others’ feet.
It was the captain of the Pioneer, I realized, the same instant that Adi gasped thickly and hissed, “I knew it!” and Qeya started mumbling incoherently.
“—our fault… Shouldn’t have left them. Have to tell the others. Oh, they can’t be alive, still. Just can’t…” Qeya was whispering softly, but with increasing hysteria. We couldn’t let her give our position away. So I did her a favor by covering her mouth with my free hand and tapping my forefinger to my gauntlet.
Against her ear I growled low, “Shut your trap before I gut you, Royal.”
Adi peered over Qeya’s head and lifted her blaster to her chin as she locked eyes with me. I nodded imperceptibly and watched the undergrowth ripple and sway in her absence after she left us to get a closer look from the other side.
After Qeya stiffened, I returned my focus on the camp and watched. Adi wasn’t granted much time to scout out, or for us to form a plan to help the Royal escape. It wouldn’t do us good to give our position away now. We only saw four Var now, but that didn’t mean there weren’t more waiting in the forest. My limbs were shaking with the effort to hold her down by the time they gathered their beasts and threw the limp Royal over the rump of the one at the head. After climbing onto their backs, they retreated back into the deep forest.
Only then did I release her mouth and I grabbed her by the shoulders, pinning her to the ground with a low growl.
Again she was mumbling hysterically, her eyes glazed over as they looked past me. “Can’t be… Should have been dead by now! Did we give up too easily or did we just want to give up?”
“Shut your trap!” I barked low and her gaze slowly refocused and returned to me. “What in leaking gears was that? Are you really that stupid, Navigator! We could have taken the first two and you stopped me. But then you try and rush them when there are four?”
“You haven’t watched them!” she interrupted with a trembling, yet hard voice, her gold eyes glowing like twin coals at me. “You do not know what they’re capable of, Ohre!”
“And taking on four like you were about to makes more sense?” I countered. “Have you lost your mettle, then? Or is there another reason you’d go after them knowing better, Royal.”
I hadn’t forgotten the fact that we could have ended this moments ago. Adi and I could have easily dropped the two scouts, silently enough to check the perimeter and ambush the others. We were nearly caught twice, and for whatever reason, I felt like blaming her for it.
I lowered myself closer to her, wanting to make her bleed into the mud, hating her for being the one being capable of stopping me, and hissed, “You don’t know what I’m capable of, Qeya.” Her inner lids closed over her eyes, transparent and beautiful. I eased back almost instantly when Adi grabbed me by the arm and ripped me away.
Her whisper was filled with spittle and her dark eyes flashed madly as she urged the two of us up. “You’re both going to get us gutted if you keep snarling like this! Ohre, the Royal’s right. We can’t take that hunting party on. Remember what happened last time? Now come on, if we hurry we can follow their trail.”
My gauntlet lit up then as I unconsciously tightened that fist, ready to follow through with Adi’s obvious intention. Qeya spoke up, but I couldn’t meet her eye and risk losing focus again.
“We’re going to follow them? Are you cracked? Adi, they’ll slice off your fins and gut you for sure if you do. That was just a hunting party. We’ve never seen the village but the Nuki say its two days’ journey from here and a suicide mission. We should head back for the others. We’re going to need their help.”
Adi rolled her eyes and stood, keeping an eye on the distant figures ahead of us. “You aren’t going anywhere, Royal. You are going back to that treetop village where you belong. I think you can find your way from here.”
I gritted my sharp teeth, knowing this was the moment I had been dreading, the reason I had been tense ever since we left the cave we once lived in. Adi’s plan was to find the Var all along, I realized. She was dead set on finding Remin, and now I understood where she thought he must be. She couldn’t care less about the other two adult Royals, I knew. In fact, she was probably upset either of them was still alive. Because the Orona had seen them, and we knew enough of her kind to know that the Orona was bound to protect all her people.
I made myself look at Qeya then, at the outrage hidden behind the clasp of her full lips and the pulse pounding at her neck, just above her flaring gills. And she wasn’t looking at Adi when she replied, but steadily, pointedly at me.
“I can’t believe you would go along with this. Can’t you see she’s obsessed? Don’t think I don’t know the reason you’re going to their territory in the first place. I can’t let you do this alone, Ohre. Not after everything you did for us…”
Adi scoffed. “Done whining yet, Royal? And he’s not alone. He has me, and our people do plenty fine on our own, whatever your k
ind think. Ohre, we’ve got to move, now.” With that, the last of my adoptive clan turned her back on me and began to follow the Var.
I shifted the pack I had dropped so it was tight against my back and before she could protest, adjusted Qeya’s over her shoulder. As we stood in each other’s space, I tried to tell her what I wasn’t saying with my eyes.
“You go straight to that village and don’t ever go to the caves alone, again, you hear?”
“Ohre, please don’t…” she trailed off and turned her chin away roughly.
Don’t what? I wanted to ask her. Don’t leave? Don’t abandon me like I did you. Don’t ever come back?
“Qeya, you’re going to go back, and you’re not going to tell the others we’re here,” I restated in a firmer voice. “We’ll free your people too if we get the chance and make sure they get out of Var territory,” I added, though I knew Adi would disagree when the time came. “But you can’t fight an enemy you don’t understand, Navigator. These Var are predators, just like us.”
Her gills flared one last time before she relaxed and she bowed her head. “I hate this.”
“Hate what?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder to keep track of Adi’s smaller frame.
“I don’t want to leave you. I want to help.”
Adi turned and paused to make a rude gesture back at me. I sighed impatiently and turned to face Qeya one last time. I let my eyes take in the bold-as-flames hair, the liquid heat eyes and the shape of her mouth that I had tasted, just once. And then, I said, “We don’t belong to your group of Royals. They are the ones that need you, Navigator. Or have you forgotten already?”
She jerked out of my grasp as if the blow my words had dealt her were physical and glared up defiantly at me. “Goodbye, Ohre.”
I ran from her after, not bothering to turn around and see if she was still watching, even though I somehow knew she was. I didn’t let anything consume me except for the promise of the fight to come. I only needed to keep Adi alive now. If she died I had no more hope of getting off this rock. And with Qeya’s words and her face in my mind, I was determined to forget nothing but the way the waters of home world pressed against my skull until I couldn’t breathe.
Ohre (Heaven's Edge) Page 5