Reckoner Redeemed

by Doranna Durgin

She cleared her throat. “Maybe we can trick out Quinn’s mountain bike with some sort of dribble tube—the best way to cover the most miles. We can use a sprayer at critical areas, like the trail heads.”

  Lucia straightened, putting on what Garrie recognized as her game face. “Aerobics,” she said. “Hiking. We can earn extra huevos rancheros, yes?”

  “I can rent a bike,” Drew offered. “And I can keep my inside eye open while I’m out there.” If Drew rode past the spot where a hiker had fallen—whether days earlier or years earlier—the earth would remember it. “But you’ll check out the trails before we ride them, right? As best you can?”

  “As best I can,” Garrie promised.

  Robin lifted her head slightly, taking in an exaggerated sniff of the air. “Does anyone else smell—”

  “Exhaust fumes?” Drew said, looking out to the corner and the heavily traveled Broadway Boulevard.

  “Diapers?” Quinn asked, looking to the nearby children’s area where one mother pulled back her child’s elasticized shorts to do a quick check.

  “Worse,” Robin said, spying the fine black lines of whatever had bounced from her head to the table. “Definitely worse. Mad stink bug kind of worse.” She pinched the jointed thing and held it up for examination just as several more bounced most obviously off her head to the table. “Is this a—are these little legs?”

  “No,” Garrie told Robin, straight-faced as she stood and stepped over the picnic table bench. “I’m sure they’re not. Let’s go rent some mountain bikes and find some colloidal silver, huh?”

  Sklayne only laughed. It sounded like crunching.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 9

  Not Stable

  The Garrie had no idea what she’d just done. Touching Trevarr. Even more, giving of herself to him.

  Sklayne knew. And no number of crunchy stinky bug legs just to make the Garrie smile could distract him from the knowing.

  Because Sklayne lived both worlds. Lived both Trevarr and the Garrie. Had seen them at work, seen them together, seen them fight and seen them love—and now saw the distance between them, more clearly than anyone else could.

  Saw it all, when he wanted to.

  For an instant, he had the deepest of longings for things to be just as they’d always been—Sklayne, bound atreyvo to Trevarr. Trevarr, hunting bounties for Ghehera—not feeling things, just doing them. Adventure and effort and fear and triumph. Fierce being.

  Farking want to go home.

  Home to spicy air and dark spaces and rare sunshine, dangerous entities and lurking dangers—and even those in Ghehera. Those who had taken Trevarr and now hid him behind silvered glyphs and shackles.

  But the Garrie had touched Trevarr where Sklayne could not. The Garrie had offered of her other world self, and that gift had slipped right through the shackles with no one the wiser.

  The Garrie did not know the import of what she had done, and Sklayne...

  Sklayne could not tell her. Not when the Garrie had no hope of surviving full contact with Ghehera, or even with Kehar. Sklayne must put her life above Trevarr’s. For Trevarr.

  Trevarr had demanded it. Embattled in Sedona and losing, shouting the phrase to break the glyph-bond between them before Anjhela’s hunters dragged him away. Harsh, urgent words, striking to Sklayne’s always forming heart. Leaving him free—but leaving him here to watch over the Garrie, a plea as much as demand and a thing more in Trevarr’s heart than in his mind.

  A different kind of bond, revealed in the absence of the first.

  Farking want to go home.

  Before Trevarr. Caves and bugs and tickling energies, things to swallow whole and things to savor and swirling kindred dances to watch with eyes wide and the earth anchored beneath extruded claws.

  Home...

  Except too much had changed, and Sklayne knew better. There was no home for him. Not here, not there. There was only visiting, and being.

  So he lurked while the Garrie and her people wrung the city dry of supplies for their hunt, and he watched closely for signs that Trevarr had again reached through to her.

  Or that Ghehera had reached for her.

  And thinking of Ghehera’s potential touch, Sklayne also sent the Garrie another thing of use—a deep sharing and a knowledge. But he forgot to ask until after it was done—and then, while she blinked, dazed, at the items she’d gathered for purchase, he decided not to mention it.

  No. Best not. Not after. Best to stay the most invisible possible.

  She wouldn’t understand that it was for her care. She’d only want to talk about the asking.

  Yes, being invisible was very much best. Being quiet.

  The Garrie would figure out what he’d done eventually.

  Being invisible made the day boring. No bubble wrap. No bug legs. No casual cell phone battery snacks. Nothing that would make her look.

  Until now, when they’d returned to her home, alone, and he crouched half-visible on the top of the thing called bookshelf. From there he watched the Garrie as she worked up the nerve to poke into things that shouldn’t ever have been her business in the first place. Artifacts and devices and things that meant little to her.

  Unless she went beyond nosy and started understanding them. Then they might mean everything to her after all.

  ~~~~~

  Garrie sat alone but for hints of Sklayne and glad of it, the spoils of the day arrayed around her apartment and Trevarr’s battered satchel on the low trunk before her. She had things to think about...and things to face up to.

  Like the way she’d been lying to her friends. And to herself. The way she’d been denying and downplaying those moments of connection to Trevarr—never saying out loud that the ongoing moments of intense longing, of almost reaching him, had in fact quite suddenly turned into something more.

  Why she lied to them was obvious, even to an inner self in denial.

  They hadn’t wanted her to grieve so hard or so long. They hadn’t wanted her to deny acceptance of his loss. And now, even though they’d say otherwise, they really, truly didn’t want to know the truth. Not that she’d connected, and not that she intended to do something about it.

  And she lied to herself because she was a coward.

  Because after all these months of silence and dogged attempts to parse her way through the breezes to Kehar, she quite suddenly knew he was still alive. Alive and hurting and too farking obviously tortured.

  Because of her.

  But she didn’t quite dare hope that she could do something about it. Not yet.

  Especially as she hadn’t the faintest idea how.

  So for the moment, yes, she was just as glad to be alone—although alone didn’t mean uncrowded.

  A stout mountain bike leaned against her closed apartment door. Beside it sat several five-gallon containers of diluted Secret Recipe mixed with even more dilute colloidal silver and a handheld garden sprayer. Rigid bike panniers lined up in front of her bedroom, containing her backpack stuffed with hydration bladders—as was Quinn’s, and the new one they’d bought for Drew.

  It was all quite enough for this small apartment—the only place she’d lived since taking full control of her modest inheritance and her years of quiet work and launching herself into the world...

  She’d kept things simple.

  Then why are you buying a house out in the Canyon? One big enough to hold ten of you?

  Not just for Lucia. Not just for Quinn’s books. Or even Trevarr’s Bestiary.

  *Small person of much power,* Sklayne said, from nowhere in particular.

  She finally spotted his barely visible tail. It hung from the top of her single bookshelf, not limp so much as awkwardly poised—which made more sense once she realized he’d grown himself an eye on the end of it.

  One that peered at her most wisely.

  “Of course,” she said out loud. “Because this is my life now. Where it makes more sense that you have an eye on the end of your tail than it does for you to hav
e a clumsy tail.”

  *Spptt!* The tail lashed, but immediately stilled as he thought better of it. *Clumsy,* he grumbled. *Not.*

  “Of course not,” she agreed. She uncrossed her legs, stretched, and jammed her elbows on her knees to regard the satchel. It was a worn leather thing of impeccable workmanship and a faint but unfamiliar grain, complete with a dark old blood stain.

  Trevarr’s satchel.

  He’d taken care to leave it here, hidden away from the Keharian bounty hunters who had beaten and captured him. Bounty hunters just like Trevarr himself.

  *Not like Trevarr,* Sklayne said. He came into full view—on the floor now and sitting beside the electrical socket. He’d taken full sorrel Abyssinian mode, his ears large and body not so large. *Took five of them.*

  And he’d been hurt to start with. “Eavesdropping,” she told him, if not without any true heat.

  *LOUD,* he responded in the same tone. A series of sparks traced his backbone.

  “Fine,” she said out loud. “We can sit here feeling sad and crabby or we can play with Trevarr’s things.”

  Suddenly he was beside her, one many-toed paw on the satchel and a few more toes popping out for emphasis. *Mine.*

  “Mine,” she told him back, clamping a hand over the satchel.

  Without hesitation, he put his paw over her hand, covering it with sharp daggery-looking quills and making them bristle and spark. Garrie waited him out with no evident reaction.

  After a moment the quills subsided. After another, Sklayne removed his paw, held it in an uncertain hover, and then fell to a vigorous cleaning between its pads.

  Garrie flipped the satchel open and reached inside.

  Trevarr’s shirt. She knew it by touch and closed her fingers around it, pulling it out...inhaling of it. More than human, that scent. More than earthly, that deep indigo color with its subtle scintillating overlay, leather lacing at the neck and leather panels across the shoulders, down the front. Mended and cleaned—

  *Mine. I did that.*

  “You did,” she agreed, and set the shirt beside her. So casually. Then again pretended not to notice when he hooked out elongated toe-fingers and pulled the shirt in, working it close until he settled on top of it.

  He’d never admit how much he missed his bond-partner. His atreyvo.

  Atreyvo. Atreya. Atreyo. Words that had until recently had meant nothing to her, and now meant everything. Bond-partner. Beloved, his and hers.

  Fark.

  She reached into the bag and pulled out the unevenly woven belt he’d never worn, at least not in front of her.

  *Kirkhirra,* Sklayne said, as he always did—with reverence, as was also always the case.

  Garrie had no idea why. It was a thing of unfamiliar fibers and knots, the occasional stone or gem woven right in, along with tangled leather strips and extensive fringe at the end—but no way, as far as she could tell, to secure it.

  *Stories,* Sklayne told her, again as he always did. He stuffed his face down against the shirt and if he thought his sniffing inhalations were inaudible, he was wrong.

  “Right,” she murmured. “Stories.” And because it mattered to him, and because it had mattered to Trevarr, she folded the belt with care and set it to the side of the leather-topped trunk.

  *Ekhevia,* Sklayne said, even before her hand closed over the next item. *That which gathers.*

  She pulled out a thing of sleek lines and interlocking pieces, patinaed metal inset with stones of stunning color and clarity—she didn’t know if they were Keharian gems, or an artificial construct. Closed, it would fit neatly into a large hand; open, it made Garrie think weapon. She couldn’t have said just why.

  Trevarr had used it to force the krevata into their ethereal state and contain them, putting her Secret Recipe baggies to shame. Then again, she’d never meant those baggies to contain beings with both corporeal and ethereal states. Demons, she’d first thought them. Trevarr’s voice echoed in her memory. Your people might call them so.

  At the time, she’d taken it as confirmation. Now she knew he’d simply allowed her to believe her initial assumptions—sparing her the existence of an entire separate world. Worlds, when it came down to that.

  *Oskhila,* Sklayne said, prompting her. *That which sees to travel.*

  She put ekhevia beside the belt and pulled out the oskhila. She’d once thought it a medallion—but it had more heft, it had deeply incised glyphs and clear rainbow stones, and it had, on more than one occasion, transported her from this world to another.

  Of course, she had no idea how to use it, either. If she did, she would find Trevarr so fast she’d make Ghehera heads spin.

  Supposing they didn’t already do that on their own. Who knew?

  Next came Trevarr’s belt. His personal belt, the wide leather one he’d always worn wrapped around lean hips. Burnished pale metal made the buckle, and it bore a stylized design of sweeping lines and sharp angles both harsh and elegant.

  *Kyrokha,* Sklayne said, as he always did, and never any more. Until now, as reluctant as it was. *Mountain, also kyrokha.*

  She stopped with her hand already reaching inside the bag and closing around the knife that always came next. “Say that again?”

  He simply watched her, as inscrutable as any cat. She narrowed her eyes at him, contemplating the value of a good poke to his ribs versus his ability to grow instant claws wherever and whenever he wanted to.

  It didn’t matter. She knew what he’d said. Whatever he labeled as kyrokha, he’d perceived it in the mountain entity, as well. And hadn’t she found some familiar flavor there herself? She’d keep it in mind, yes she would. In spite of Sklayne.

  “Dumbass,” she muttered at him, but not very loudly, and withdrew the knife from the satchel.

  This, she knew well. She carried it often if not quite always...and because of its otherness, its uncanny sheen of patterned blade and its preternatural, never-ending sharpness, she otherwise felt compelled to tuck it away.

  She knew what came next, because it was the only item of substance remaining—and because she’d put it there. The energy storage devices that Trevarr had called echveria, left over from the krevatas’ illicit San Jose portal harvest. But she’d never shown it to Sklayne before. Hadn’t even whispered of its existence. Trevarr had known she had them—but only in the last moments of his time here. Before and after, Garrie had kept it hidden, bathing it in deftly applied shields and intent.

  She closed her hand around the oval plastic container and released the shielding.

  Sklayne reacted instantly, his tail lashing to thwack the love seat cushion. *No,* he said. *Nonono. Small stupid person of much power!*

  “Hey,” she protested, more stung than she’d expected. “What was I supposed to do with it? You left, as you might recall! Both of you!”

  But Sklayne wasn’t into reasoning. The hair along his spine puffed up, more like a dog than a cat. Or a not-cat. Sparks traced an outline of his bones.

  “We can use this,” she said. “We have to use it, to save him.”

  *Wrong,* Sklayne said. *Wrong wrong stupid.*

  “Shut up,” she told him.

  *Stupid,* he said.

  “Shut up,” she told him.

  *Dangerdangerdanger,* he said, slanting back ears and whiskers.

  “Shut farking up,” she told him, and pulled out the giant plastic egg that had once, in its heyday, been a hosiery container.

  Sklayne made a spitting noise through a throaty growl of disgust, launching himself off the couch and into a brief circuit of impossible speed, banking along the walls in a blur. A sudden POOF and he did that thing her eyes could never quite see. Gone.

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” she muttered, sitting in darkness with the city of Albuquerque lighting the sky beyond the window of her second story apartment. “Isn’t the first time, probably won’t be the last.”

  Besides, it wouldn’t be for long. Not once she opened the plastic egg—once the pantyhose container, then
an Easter egg decorated by her own clumsy young hand, and now...

  Now, the receptacle for several devices of pale metal and glowing bright stones that lit the room in dazzling color.

  “All together now,” Garrie murmured to a non-existent audience. “Ooooh! Ahhhh!”

  The krevata were ungainly camel-nosed, oversexed beings with delusions of grandeur and ambition, but they had nonetheless once escaped Kehar for San Jose. There they’d built their illicit portal in the spiritual nexus of the heavily haunted Winchester House and siphoned off its plasmic energies for storage.

  The result was a Keharian doomsday weapon in the hands of beings who had quite sincerely seemed torn between gathering the energy up or using it to fuel an impromptu orgy.

  Garrie had come out of that adventure with blue-silver streaks in her hair, her skin shimmering in the sunlight—again, not like sparkly vampires—and several of the plasmic energy vessels.

  At the time, she’d picked them up simply so as to leave no trace of the illicit activity—not that all of San Jose hadn’t felt the rumbling repercussions. Trevarr had been gone, facing Ghehera in the wake of mixed victory and defeat, and Sklayne had been gone with him. She muttered again, “What was I supposed to do?”

  *Not,” Sklayne said, from nowhere and everywhere at once, *stable.*

  “Right.” Garrie was always surprised at the calm in her own voice. She’d seen what these things could do. She’d heard the alarm in Trevarr’s voice when he’d understood that she had them. “Then help me.”

  He responded with an utter absence of himself. No hint, no tickle, no hissing undertone or supernaturally shed fur.

  So Garrie sat in the darkness and watched rainbows play on her ceiling, knowing doomsday sat on her living room trunk and wondering if it just might also be salvation.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter 10

  Kehar: Until Trevarr

  Anjhela had left him dying. The man who had helped make her, the man she once thought she’d loved. The man she’d been so certain she could regain.

  But she’d gone too far. Infuriated beyond tolerance by the disappearance of the village Solchran, she’d interrogated Trevarr far beyond any point of any recovery and still failed. She’d known it then; she still knew it now.