Ari Goes To War: (The Adventures of Ari #2)

by P. J. Sky

  Krebs sighed. “Lieutenant, what’s for dinner?”

  “Umm… camel stew, I think, Sir.”

  Krebs looked at the lieutenant and grinned. “I owned a camel once, you know that sailor? But in the end I had to shoot it, damn thing just kept gettin’ the hump.”

  The lieutenant smiled.

  “Only good camel is one in a pot, remember that sailor. You won’t catch anyone in my outfit ridin’ around on a camel.” The Commander nodded to himself. “All right, summon the midshipmen. We can wait this out a little longer. But remember…” Krebs spun about and held his finger to the lieutenant. “When I say go, we go.”

  ∆∆∆

  “You know, the Morning Star has taught me so much.”

  Starla tore a chunk of bread away with her teeth. She chewed absently and, with those wide, blue eyes, she looked through the bars at Ari.

  Ari looked down at the dry piece of bread Starla had poked through the bars and now lay discarded on the cave floor. She didn’t feel hungry. With her right hand, she scratched absently at the sticky skin on the inside of her left arm. It was all too much to take in. Her father had died here? And Starla was her sister?

  Ari began to shiver. The longer she spent locked in this cave, the more the walls felt like they were closing in. In the dank, humid atmosphere, it was like she was suffocating. And alone in the confined space of the cave, she found it increasingly difficult to arrange her thoughts into anything that fully made sense.

  She watched for guard movements; it was always the same guard, the one with the eye patch, but he visited rarely. When Starla wasn’t here, she was alone with her thoughts. And always with her were the images she’d seen when she’d looked into the Bone Pointer’s eyes. These images seemed burnt onto the surface of her brain. They didn’t fade, like the hallucinogenic visions found in dreams, but instead with every recollection they became more vivid.

  Focus, Ari, she told herself. You gotta focus.

  If only I had the blade, then maybe I could pick the lock? Maybe…

  But the sheath by her ankle was empty, as were her pockets.

  “You look well,” said Starla.

  Ari didn’t feel it. The swelling in her lip and around her eyes had reduced, and the gash on her chin had stopped weeping and was now dry and crispy. But the healing of these external wounds hid the open lesions that lacerated her insides.

  The Bone Pointer…

  Previously she’d feared him, as one might fear a ghost in the dark, but now the thought of him ignited a deep loathing. He’d killed her father, as surely as if he’d broken her father's neck himself. And by extension, he’d killed her mother. For all those years, after her father had failed to return with the medicine, she’d blamed herself for not being able to save her mother. But now she understood. Her father would have returned, but instead he’d been taken by the Bone Pointer’s slave caravans. The same caravans that, only days later, had swept her up too.

  Ari looked up at Starla. The girl she’d helped; the girl she’d saved; the girl she’d sacrificed all those lives for.

  Was it worth it?

  But Ari, what did you think it would be like to see her again?

  But if she’s my sister…

  Had the Bone Pointer really taken away one family only to present her with another?

  Ideas crowded Ari’s mind, as if the sum of her thoughts were far greater than the confined space of her skull or the cave. Now these thoughts ricocheted off the walls and longed to be free.

  Sister… Could it be true?

  The word now seemed alien.

  Do we really share the same blood? And if we do, does that change anything anyway? Didn’t I already call her sister? And besides, whoever Starla was back there in the wasteland, that ain’t her now.

  “Just being here is good for you,” said Starla. “I can tell. It’s in your eyes.”

  Swimming across her inner vision, Ari saw the dreamlike image of Starla lying sprawled on the stage, thick blood soaking into the flower petals. She pressed her nails into her palm.

  It ain’t the way it’s going down. Whatever else happens, and whether she’s my sister or not, I ain’t letting it happen. It’s the only way to beat the Bone Pointer.

  “My father has grey eyes too, not that he’s your father too. I wonder if he had grey eyes. Did our mother have blue eyes…”

  “Dag it, look sister, ya in danger…”

  Starla shook her head. “Don’t be silly, we’re both perfectly safe here.”

  “But I saw…”

  “You just don’t understand, Ari.”

  “Ya ‘ave to listen, sister…”

  “It’s so funny how you always called me that, as if somehow, all this time, you always knew. You’re so wise like that.”

  It’s like she’s off her head, thought Ari. But I gotta focus; I have to have a plan. I have to escape this place.

  “So were they?” Starla looked at Ari.

  “Were they wha’?”

  “Blue?”

  “I… can ya tell me about the Bone… I mean, the Mornin’ Star?”

  “Yes,” said Starla. From a shawl, she produced a banana. She peeled it open, tore it in half, and pushed one half through the bars to Ari. “Can you believe, before coming here I’d never eaten a banana. I mean, it’s like nature’s syntho.”

  With shaking hands, Ari took the yellow fruit. The flesh crumbled between her fingers. “So ya were gonna tell me about the Mornin’ Star?”

  Starla sighed. She looked away from Ari. “What’s to say? He knows everything. You can’t keep anything from him, but in return he keeps nothing from you.” She looked back at Ari. “He demands honesty, but gives nothing but honesty in return. After the city, that’s so refreshing.”

  “Ya know, I dunno how to explain it, but he showed me my Dad somehow.”

  “Yes,” said Starla. “I’m sorry about that, but he understands, he’s sorry too. If it could have been any other way it would have been.”

  Ari squeezed her fingers around the banana. “Dag it, ya don’t know what ya talkin’ about. He was my Dad.”

  A lump bubbled up Ari’s throat, and all of a sudden, in the corners of each eye, she felt tears.

  He was kin, she thought, and real kin. The ones you know since before you can even remember.

  She thought of how little Starla seemed to care for her own father, and suddenly the girl beyond the bars seemed very far away.

  And then what does Sister mean? Like kin like Mum and Dad?

  The pupils of Starla’s blue eyes widened.

  Ari looked down at her fist and blinked away the tears. She opened her claw-like fingers. The banana pulp that coated the inside of her palm was sticky like blood. She shuddered.

  My Dad died here, and it’s like his death meant nothing to no one. If I die here, it’ll be like he never lived at all. And Starla will never understand that.

  But Starla ain’t thinking right, Ari.

  The voice of reason prodded the back of her brain.

  Just look at her eyes, she’s mad as a cut snake. And you ain’t thinking right either. And if you lose it now, then we’re all in crazy town. Someone’s gotta hold it together and that might as well be you.

  Ari took a deep breath.

  And besides, a half-sister’s better than no sister, and it might as well be Starla. After all, the girl drives you crazy.

  So I ain’t gonna die, and neither is Starla, and that’s how I beat the Bone Pointer. But I gotta escape this cage, and I gotta find a way of waking Starla from whatever trance the Bone Pointer’s put her under…

  ∆∆∆

  …Starla watched Ari rub the slimy fruit pulp between her blunt and calloused fingers, her head dipped, a faint red halo circling above.

  It was so good to see Ari again; her complicated but endearing sister. Ari was a person almost impossible to understand.

  As Starla watched, the halo moved from red to black.

  “So wha’ does he want?�
�� asked Ari.

  Starla frowned. “What does who want?”

  “The Morning Star, wha’ does he want?”

  Starla tilted her head. “But you know.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  Starla grinned and raised her hands. “He wants to save us from this place. He wants to see us fly like birds, like…”

  Starla’s voice trailed off and she frowned again. She cast her eyes around the jagged walls of the cave. They seemed to represent everything she understood of this world. She knew all about confinement, having spent all those years locked at the top of that glass tower in the city. All she’d dreamed of was escape, and now… she couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

  “Why do ya think he wants us ‘ere?”

  Ari had interrupted her thoughts. Starla shook her head. “Ari, you always have to make things so difficult. No more questions. You have to see for yourself. And you will, the final ceremony is very soon. We’ll ascend together and we’ll have all the time in the universe.”

  Ari’s eyes narrowed. “A ceremony? Like the one before, with everyone kneeling and stuff?”

  “Yes,” said Starla. “But it will be the final one. You’ll see.”

  “So I’ll be out there for that? With the others?”

  “Of course. I… think so.”

  Ari chewed at her bottom lip. “So tell me, if I asked ya to let me outa this cell, would ya?”

  “But Ari, you’ve chosen to stay here?”

  Ari grinned. “No I ain’t, sister.”

  “But, you didn’t listen to the Morning Star.”

  “I heard ‘im all right.”

  “But you didn’t listen.”

  “Well ya didn’t answer my question, did ya?”

  Starla looked upwards, to the corner of the cell. She pictured the Morning Star, a glowing beacon, bathed in a pure, white halo. There was something about stars, she thought, that she no longer remembered. Something she’d wished upon all her life yet only now found. Through the cave walls she saw it glow, a throbbing crystal of endless pure light. “I’d have to tell him,” said Starla. “Although… I think he already knows.”

  “Yeah sister, that’s what I thought.”

  “In fact,” said Starla, “he comes now.”

  The big, hulking figure of the Morning Star stepped into the room, his eyes aglow, a white halo above his head. Starla could see it as clear as day, so bright that even his black robes glowed. In the dark cell, beneath his pale, translucent skin, his large, round skull took on the form of a bright, vivid marble that knotted in the curves.

  The Morning Star looked at her and smiled. “My dear child, and here with your sister I see.”

  Starla smiled. “Yes, Master.”

  So wrapped up had Starla been in the bright halo of the Morning Star, that it was only then that she realised what walked at his side. Her eyes drifted to the big, golden animal. The hairy mane, the delicate, dark pattern between its eyes, the long whiskers and that dark mouth that seemed to split in the centre, working its way up to that pink, inverted triangle, forming a perfect cleft. Its huge amber eyes inspected Starla with perceptible precision. Its moist, black nose sniffed the cool air of the cell, and then it shook its golden mane.

  Starla’s smile widened. “A lion.” She turned to Ari who was now on her feet and looking warily at the creature. “Look Ari, a lion.”

  “I see it, sister.”

  “Yes,” said the Morning Star. He looked at Ari but appeared to still speak with Starla. “You see, my child, I’ve brought your sister a companion, something to play with her and keep her company in her cell.”

  The lion yawned, exposing, in a bed of black jaw muscle, four large, dagger-like teeth. It looked towards Ari.

  “You, Quinn, have a strong soul, and with it you resist me. Some might see a strong soul as a virtue, but in truth it most often brings misery. It is cruel. It is inflexible. But fear weakens the soul; it forces one to live in the present, rather than in some inflated memory of the past.”

  The Morning Star looked back towards the doorway. The guard with the black eye patch entered. He unlocked the cell door and swung it open.

  The Morning Star loosened the chain around the neck of the animal.

  “Please,” he said to the animal, affection in his voice. “Join our guest.”

  The lion slunk forwards through the doorway of the cell. Quickly, the guard swung the cell door closed and turned the key, sealing the animal inside the cell.

  Ari was backing into the wall as the lion moved towards her.

  Starla clasped her hands together. The halo around Ari’s head was turning purple. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she said.

  Ari glanced up at Starla. “Sister, there’s somethin’ really wrong with you.”

  The Morning Star turned to Starla. “Come, child, let us leave our friends to get acquainted.”

  Starla nodded. “I’ll come back to visit you again soon, Ari.”

  As she followed the Morning Star out of Ari’s chambers, she heard the lion purr and she smiled to herself.

  Ari is so lucky, she thought, he really is a beautiful friend for her. Now at least she’s not alone down here.

  Chapter 26

  Keshia perched on a steel rail and wiped the dust from her face. She reached under her shawl and pulled out the round form of her canteen. She tipped the neck to her dry lips and swallowed down some of the warm, metallic liquid. It felt strange to be doing this with her left hand, but the right one remained almost useless. She could move the fingers a little, but each time she did, a sharp pain bounced up to her elbow.

  Keshia closed her eyes. It was so hot she had trouble thinking. Within her skull, her brain felt like it was melting. She understood now why Ari opted to shave her head. Beneath her shawl, her shirt stuck uncomfortably to her tacky skin.

  Ari, she thought, you’re a fool, going in on your own like that.

  She put down the canteen and, though she wasn’t hungry, she took some of the dried lizard from her pocket and chewed it slowly, sucking at the sweet meat. She had to keep up her strength.

  If she understood Bina’s sketch, she was now somewhere south of the route Ari would have probably taken to get to the mine. Ari would have taken a more direct route, but Keshia had worked her way to the railway tracks that Bina believed ran between the mine and Alice.

  Keshia swallowed the dried lizard and washed it down with the metallic water. She slipped the canteen back under her shawl and got back to her feet. She already felt exhausted and her arm ached.

  This is crazy, she thought. Ari goes to save Starla, and I go to save her, and we both wind up enslaved in a coal mine.

  Keshia shuddered.

  What’s to stop me being enslaved? Surely being stuck down in the tunnels of the mine would be worse than being stuck at the orphanage?

  Keshia remembered fidgeting in class and feeling like she’d die if she had to sit still any longer listening to those awful lectures the mother superior gave. What good was listening to all those lessons on honesty and morality when the world beyond the convent was so corrupt and reckless and far more interesting? Instead, she’d pray for that bell to toll. She’d pray for it all to disappear and to be older and to be free of the orphanage and the classes and the nuns who looked down on her with their piety and judgement. She remembered cutting class and sneaking into the quiet, sunlit kitchen so full of the honeyed tang of freshly baked bread, and then taking the sweet, warm bun with the dried fruit in.

  “Wicked child,” the mother superior had said when she’d caught her. She’d grabbed Keshia’s arm and whisked her through the long corridors at such a speed that before she knew it she was in the chapel and standing in front of the cross, the mother superior beside her, and her head had been full of anything but prayer. And then it had happened…

  She remembered the way the stained glass had shattered, like an explosion of the sun, scattering shards of coloured light across the tiled floor. And she’d looked down and
there was the mother superior, crumpled on the floor like an old sack. And she’d just stood there, watching the blood work its way through the narrow channels between the tiles.

  I didn’t even try to stop the bleeding.

  You couldn’t have saved her anyway.

  But I could have done something, couldn’t I? I could have tried?

  Keshia’s legs weakened and she began to shake and she knew that being enslaved wasn’t the worst that could happen to her. The thought of death crept into her heart, like an icy spectre that had hung forever at the outskirts of her life.

  What if, after escaping death in the chapel, death in the convent, death in the desert, death on the streets of Bo, death in the sky, and death on the road, what if now I’m walking right into it? Because all my life I’ve run from it; from whatever took my parents and every time after. I should have listened to Bina when she tried to warn me. What chance do I possibly have, with a broken arm and no weapon to speak of? Out here, I can’t even think straight.

  Keshia’s head spun and beads of sweat trickled down her back.

  But you owe her.

  Keshia could feel her lungs contracting and her legs stiffening.

  In Bo, when you got into trouble with the syndicate, Ari could have left you to it but she didn’t. She didn’t break into the warehouse, you did that. But she stuck by you and took the rap anyway. And besides, how else are you going to get the syndicate off your back and walk away with all the half-moon coins you can carry?

  But what if I’m killed? And really killed, and not in the casual way that was so easily thrown around, but middle-of-the-night killed in the way of the noose or the mother superior bleeding out on the chapel floor. That cold, unheroic way of dying, with no battle cry and no great cause and with nothing gained and everything lost. And would anyone even remember me? Or would my body crumble into the dust like it had never been at all. For people to remember me, do I have to be forgotten first? Did anyone even remember me now?