Strikers

by Ann Christy

  “Go to sleep,” I say, pulling the covers up a little higher, like she’s a child that I need to tuck in instead of a full-grown woman.

  She’s quiet for a moment, her breathing steady and slow but definitely awake. Then out of the darkness, she whispers, “He’s like a pirate, only better.”

  I laugh and roll over, leaving her to her dreams.

  In the morning I find the world outside has changed yet again. The river has grown to a preposterous width and there are marshes on either side, wide and flat, covered by a carpet of hip high greenery and reeds. The wall has receded from those marshes and is reduced to a smudge in the distance. The air is warmer, almost languid feeling, and the sails waft in the half-hearted breeze, making flapping noises when the wind dies and then returns again.

  Marcus is already long awake and Jovan is cooking a delicious-smelling breakfast on the little stove on deck. I stretch in the delightful air and moan at how good I feel. I’m still bruised and battered but my cuts are scabbed over and the aches in my muscles have drained away after another good night of sleep. There’s one thing I can say about sailing. The quality of sleep on a gently rocking boat is the best I’ve ever had.

  When I stroll over to the stove, drawn by the smells, Jovan hands me a cup and says, “Tea. With sugar.”

  I breathe it in and feel the tingle almost immediately. Sugar is a rarity I’ve had very few times in my life, but I remember it well. The taste of the tea is divine and I smile my thanks.

  The look he gives me is affectionate and a little amused. He waves a hand in the general direction of my head and I reach up to feel it. I’ve got bed head of the worst kind. Since I braid my hair into three braids before I sleep to keep the knots to a minimum, I can imagine the lumps of loose hair he’s seeing. I shrug and sip my tea again, which makes him laugh.

  Marcus whistles and then nods in front of us when we look his way. We’re coming up on a pair of towns, or trading stations at least. They’re still too far away to see much, but the number of masts is impressive and the piers look extensive. Small buildings seem clustered very close to the water, so they must be on the piers themselves.

  I hand Jovan my tea and say, “I’ll be back for that. I’d best get dressed.”

  He smirks at my long shirt and answers, “Probably a good idea. And maybe do something about that hair?”

  I shoot him a rude gesture as I walk away, but all he does is laugh.

  When I return to the deck, we’re much closer. Boats are launching in a steady stream, the river populated with sails and the hum of distant machinery floats across the water. I can’t make out individual people with any detail, but their movement and mass is obvious. This must be a popular port with a large population coming from somewhere nearby.

  Marcus is looking through his binoculars at the pier on the opposite side of the wall’s pier, his lips tight. When he takes them from his eyes, he gives us a concerned look.

  “Something’s up,” he says. At our alarmed faces, he adds, “I don’t know what. It probably has nothing to do with us. There’s a flag up at the tower.”

  He told us about the towers. They aren’t usually real purpose-built towers, but rather good vantage points to keep watch from. In most places they are just higher rooms with plenty of windows, but big ports have actual watch towers. From there port workers watch for fire—a hazard feared with so many boats in such close proximity each other—or trouble on the water.

  Signal flags tell boats coming near of troubles like disease, infestations which might impact them if they tie up or any other sort of difficulty. The color combination of the flags indicates what specific problem or bit of news there is to share.

  “I do need to pick up my boat,” he says uncertainly. “It’s hard to come back around when it’s this crowded if we pass it. What do you think?”

  Our only stop is supposed to be to pick up a newly refurbished boat for Marcus’s family, so he can tow it to the port where he lives. But stopping if there is trouble is something I’d rather avoid. Still, this is Marcus’s boat. I try to read Jovan’s answer, but I think he’s just as undecided as I am. Cassi is still sleeping below, and I’m almost glad because she’s not good with caution, even now when she should have learned to be.

  Finally, with a shrug in my direction, Jovan asks, “Can you get out fast if it is about us?”

  Marcus tilts his head, considering, then turns the wheel just enough to guide us out of the center of the river. “I’ll come up to the area where people go who can’t pay for a berth. Be ready to work the sails.”

  He’s showed us how to do basic things to help him around the boat. Normally he does it on his own or has a second hand aboard. The deckhand he had on the way upriver disembarked with the trade goods due to an injured foot that needed attention sooner rather than later. That’s part of the reason he so willingly took us on, though I think Cassi had more to do with it if I’m honest.

  By now, we can work the sails with only a modicum of yelling required on Marcus’s part. A quick holler down to let Cassi know she should stay below, mostly so that her looks, which would certainly have been included in a description of us, would not tip anyone off immediately.

  Jovan and I lower the two sets of propellers attached to the back of the boat. The breeze running through the small turbines at the top of the masts and on the bow of the boat power the batteries he uses for these propellers. They don’t move the boat quickly, but they do allow for precise control, or so he says.

  A man is standing next to a rough hut on the bank of the river. It’s on a small area between marshes that looks as if it were built up to provide a dry, elevated walkway of dirt. There’s nothing special about the way he’s looking at us, nothing that would tell me he’s been alerted about us. In this place, we’ve actually committed no crime, unless the stealing of the fish counts, but that doesn’t mean people won’t be swayed by what is, no doubt, a sizable reward for Jovan’s safe return.

  The man clearly recognizes Marcus’s boat, which is no surprise, and once we begin edging up to the cluster of ragged boats anchored there, the man begins making rapid hand signals with his fingers in the air. It reminds me a bit of the signals used by the deaf, but I don’t understand those either so it means nothing to me. Marcus sends back a rapid series of his own signals and then yells at us to man the towing rope.

  He increases power to the little propellers and we slow almost immediately, then start backing up. I turn to see his face tight with concentration and his hands quick on the wheel. I glance at the man and find him running towards the piers. He’s not yelling or drawing attention, and his run is the calm one of a person who needs to get somewhere instead of the kind that telegraphs alarm. Even so, it feels urgent to me and my heart kicks up the pace a little.

  The towing rope is a thick one, heavy and hard to manage, but we’ve been schooled in this as well and I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.

  The boat veers back out into the flow of the river, the current taking over to move us neatly and slowly toward the cluster of crowded piers. I’ve lost sight of the man, but Marcus looks confident about where he’s steering the boat.

  At last, I see the man from the shore again, heaving along with a few other men on ropes. They’re pulling a boat with a battered looking topside but a strangely pristine hull. It’s an odd juxtaposition, the gray and weathered wood on the top against the gleaming blue and white of the bottom. I’m guessing this must be Marcus’s newly refurbished boat.

  They move the boat in the water between the piers, two men on each pier with ropes, tugging it toward the end of the pier just about where I think Marcus has our boat aimed.

  “Bumpers! Toss them over!” Marcus yells without taking his eyes off his task.

  We toss over the huge tires attached by ropes, almost just like the tire swing in the school playground, so that they line the back of the boat. Just as we start to come even, I see that the smaller boat has picked up momentum and is moving with some force to
ward us. Simultaneously, Marcus changes the power to the engines and spins the wheels so that our stern begins swinging toward the oncoming boat. I’m pretty sure it’s going to smash into us, which isn’t how Marcus explained this procedure, but I grit my teeth and get ready to do whatever needs doing.

  It’s surprisingly elegant and graceful in the end and my appreciation for Marcus’s skills on the water expands tenfold. He shimmies the boat, nudging first one way and then another, calling out short and precise directions as needed. Before I have time to get really worried, we slip the end of the towing rope over the fitting and Jovan hops over to secure the remaining lines. Just like that, it’s over.

  At least, our part is. When my attention is no longer completely monopolized by this new adventure in boating, I find Marcus exchanging more hand signals with the man, who now stands at the end of the pier. He’s so close I can see the deep, worried furrow between his brows and the curls in his hair are the exact same shade of almost-black as Marcus’s. They are more than close enough to speak, but they don’t. And I notice that others are giving us sidelong glances from various boats along the edge of the piers, too.

  Marcus clicks his tongue to get my attention and gives a sharp jerk of his head downward, his glance encompassing Jovan as well. We scamper below and wait. It can’t be good news, not at all. All I can do is wait to find out how bad it is.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Creedy is far more resourceful, and far more determined, than I gave him credit for. Jovan tells me there’s more than his job at stake. He’s not at all surprised at the news Marcus has relayed to us from the man—Marcus’s cousin—at the port. And that information is that he’s offering a piece of gold for Jovan’s return, and a matching piece for the detention of the four people traveling with him. Gold is a hard thing for anyone to refuse. Such a lure would be enough to make friends turn against friends, never mind total strangers, no matter how poorly they view the Texas Republic.

  But winning Jovan is not just some personal need of Creedy’s. Not only does Creedy work at the ranch, he lives there. His failure might well result in the loss of the only home he’s got. And there’s more. The information that Jovan has been reluctant to share is finally revealed now that we’re in trouble once more.

  This bit of information would have changed much in how I dealt with Creedy, how I approached my decisions on whether or not to run from him or just shoot him. Before, he was just a man—though by all accounts not a nice one—and we had our suspicions that he would want to eliminate us to prevent any word that Jovan had joined us from getting out. But those were just suspicions, speculations we had no way to confirm. Even the deaths of the two soldiers we couldn’t lay at his door in any sure way.

  Jovan is leaving me alone for a while. My anger at his leaving out information I consider vital is obvious. I can almost feel him at the other end of the boat, out of sight on the deck behind Marcus, while I fume silently here at the bow. The jumpy way he reacted to Creedy is now explained in full.

  Though Jovan doesn’t know exactly how old he was, he knows that he once heard the unmistakable sound of pain coming from Creedy’s house on their property. Curious, he ventured closer and was rewarded with the sound of Creedy’s harsh voice coming from inside, along with a woman’s scream. It made Jovan yelp and Creedy came out, shooing him away with an explanation of a hurt dog.

  At the time, as a small child, he hadn’t understood. Jovan’s father had merely punished him for encroaching on the foreman’s area and confirmed it was a dog. Only later, much later, when rumors swirled about female Strikers caught but never returned to Bailar and female Climbers from the south found buried in the desiccating sands to the west, did he remember that long-ago day.

  And once he remembered, other things made themselves plain as well. The way the female hands avoided Creedy’s gaze or traveled to and from the barns and fields in pairs all said something to Jovan. But his father once again brushed it aside as imagination. Except that this time, Jovan didn’t believe him. Instead, he felt—and still does—that it was something his father not only knew about and ignored, but used as a tool of control over the foreman.

  And now I’m left with the regret of having not killed Creedy, which just feels wrong in every way. I also fear him finding us and perhaps doing what he must have done to those other women. The sigh I let out is loud enough to hear over the breeze and Cassi sinks to the deck next to me, tucking one arm around mine. “Don’t be mad,” she says, brightly.

  “I’m not mad,” I say. When she gives me a skeptical look, I correct myself, “Okay, I’m mad, but I’ll get over it. It’s just that Jovan has known, or at least suspected, that this Creedy is the worst kind of creep and not shared that? I wouldn’t have hesitated to kill him had I known that. Just think of what would happen if he got hold of you, Cassi. Or me for that matter, if what he says is true.”

  Cassi squints in the sun but doesn’t look away from me. She’s always been good that way, at listening. Maybe it’s because someone has always had to read everything to her, giving her practice, but I don’t think so. I think it is just that she has a much kinder and more patient nature than anyone else I know.

  She gives a little hum as she thinks, then says, “And what would have happened had you or I known that it wasn’t just a chase?”

  I shake my head, thinking of that day in the dry streambed, “We did know that. We knew they were probably going to kill us if they caught us. That’s more than a chase, Cassi.”

  “True, but we—as girls—weren’t the targets of anything in specific. We always knew we could ask Jovan to go back and that would be the end of it.”

  At my look, she adds, “Okay. It would probably be the end of it if we kept going fast.”

  I nod.

  “I don’t know about you, but if I had time to dwell on what Jovan just told us, then I wouldn’t have been able to sleep. I would have been even more frightened. I might have done something I would regret. Maddix,” she says, giving me a significant look.

  “Oh,” I say. I know what she’s saying. If I try to put myself in that frame of mind, one that fears what a man like Creedy might do if he catches me, I can see how I might make mistakes. I can see how waiting for Maddix to heal up in that old building might have seemed too much to ask.

  And yes, I would have regretted leaving Maddix behind or not giving him time to heal. And if we had pushed, would Maddix have lived through his injury? Would he have been strong enough for all that we had to do when we left that building? Possibly not. Did Jovan somehow understand this about me, or perhaps understand it of Cassi? It would be just like him and that thought makes my anger drain away.

  Cassi nudges me and says, “You should go talk to him. I dunno, maybe apologize for calling him yellow-livered?”

  I roll my eyes, because I distinctly recall my mismatched insult. In my defense, I was too angry to think straight. Marcus says that the news of the reward will travel fast and that the guards at the wall gates are not all immune to such a bribe. He’s offered to bring us further south, almost to the mouth of the river itself, where he’s from. The wall retreats but the gates are trustworthy there and the people known to him.

  I can’t fault his logic, though I know having hands on board to help him and keep watch is part of his thinking. That, and Cassi. At night, he takes the wheel but during the middle part of the day, he allows Jovan or me, or both of us, to guide the boat in the wide river with only a small sail and the current to push us on. We won’t be able to slow down now and Jovan and I will need to work together. Which means I do need to go make up with him, even if only so that we can work together in harmony.

  Cassi hops back up, her bare feet red on top from going without shoes in the bright sun, and almost bounces her way over to stand by Marcus. They fall into quiet talking, their heads close together in a way that tells me they’re getting along just fine. The way they talk and look at each other makes it seem like they are mere seconds away from kiss
ing most of the time.

  I sigh again and grudgingly get up to go make my apologies. I’m no good at that. Having to apologize and be sorry about things means I did something I regret and that means I lost control of my thoughts, my words or my actions. I don’t like that idea at all. I’ve always felt like there was so little in my life I could control that what I chose to do was all that I truly possessed. Losing my temper just shows me that I didn’t keep the control that was mine.

  I tap his shoulder, even though I’m quite sure he heard my hard footsteps on the deck. I don’t seem to be able to keep my heels from striking the deck with the same firmness they do when I wear boots. It hurts, but it’s also quite satisfying.

  He looks up at me, his eyes flashing that golden, bird-of-prey color in the sun. His face is a study in conflicting emotions and he looks miserable. “I’m sorry,” he blurts.

  “No. I’m sorry,” I counter and sit next to him. The deck is warm on my behind through the shorts. I finally found some that fit while digging in a pile inside the storage pit under the bed. It feels good to be dressed. We sit there, both of us with our knees pulled up and arms braced on them for a long while. I can’t delay forever. Marcus will need to sleep soon and our hard feelings should be resolved before we take over the boat. Otherwise, our watch will be interminable.

  “Jovan, I shouldn’t have called you names. It was wrong,” I begin tentatively, but get no further. It seems my opening was all he was waiting for.

  “I should have told you, but I just…I don’t know…I couldn’t stand the idea of saying that to you. Or to Cassi. It’s so,” he pauses while he searches for a word, then adds, “dirty. Filthy. I figured that if it came down to it, I’d kill him and no one would need to worry.”

  I remember the gunshots when Jovan rushed out of the woods and ask, “Is that what you were going to do before we went to the bridge?”

  He nods, his face grim. “I screwed that up, too.”

  He looks so forlorn that I reach for his hand. It’s a strain because we’ve both got our arms crossed on our knees and I wind up holding his far hand with mine. When I grip his hand in mine, it turns our knees just enough for them to touch. When he entwines his fingers with mine, our thighs press together and it’s almost like an electric shock to my system. We sit like that for a moment, an expression I don’t quite understand in his eyes as he stares at me.