They'd leave them here on Shadow to starve.
“What about you?” She forced her mind away from the darkness of her thoughts. “Do you have someone in Kardai?”
“No.” Min laughed, but there was no humor in the sound. “Yusemi was a small town. Like your Pan Nuk. All the men there knew who I was, what I was. None were ever interested in a relationship with me. Having sex with me, yes. Some were very interested in that. Some didn't care much whether I was interested back or not, despite all having sworn loyalty to the Mother. I'm sure they all read the Guardian every Thanks day, too.”
“They tried to rape you?” It wasn't unheard of among the Illy, but women had as much legal and social standing as men, and very few got away with it. The punishment was extremely harsh. At least ten years in the labor camp, and no right, ever, to marry.
“The price if they were found guilty is steep in Kardai. It's death. But they didn't think the haidai would take an interest if I was the victim, and they may have been right. As it was, they kept forgetting one of the reasons I was alone was that I could call the Change.”
“You called the Change to protect yourself.” Taya found satisfaction in that. The thing that made Min different was the same thing that protected her.
“Yes,” Min said. “I will never be sorry I can call the Change.”
They both fell silent again, and the only sounds were the rush of water, getting louder all the time, and the rustle of their clothes and the tap of their feet as they walked.
Taya slowed, taking tiny steps, as the sound rose to a roar. A fine mist settled on her face, coating her cheeks and forehead in dew.
It took her several minutes to realize that she could now make out the rock around her, her hand against the wall, the ground she was walking on.
She stopped dead. “There's light up ahead.” She barely breathed the words.
“Sky raiders?” Min's breath was hot in her ear.
Taya raised her shoulders in a shrug and started forward again, even slower than before.
The light was strange, like everything else here, a murky color rather than a pure white.
It was a relief to see the way, though.
Perhaps she would have struggled to see clearly if she'd come directly from above ground, but being in the dark so long, even the dimmest light helped illuminate everything around her.
She could finally see the long crack they were walking in rose up so high above their heads there was no indication where it ended. The walls were rough, looking like they'd been violently ripped apart, and now she could see what she'd only felt before, the sparkle and glint of shadow ore.
The light grew brighter, in tandem with the thunder of the water, and Taya took one last, cautious step around a sharp turn in the tunnel and stopped.
She was standing on the edge of a narrow ledge about four feet above the floor of a massive cave.
At the far end, to her right, water geysered out of a hole in the wall at least twenty feet above the cave floor, landing on a jumble of boulders. Over time it had hammered a deep pool out of the rock at its base, and then worn a groove across the gently sloping cave floor. The channel running the length of the cave and then disappearing to her left was smooth, looking almost hand-carved, like the stone gutters on the houses in Pan Nuk.
But as amazing as that was, what made her catch her breath and gape were the lights.
Min stood right behind her, her hands gripping Taya's shoulders. “Is that . . . moss?”
Taya nodded. “It looks like it.”
The ceiling was so high above them the light didn't reach it, but moss clung to the walls, to jutting rocky overhangs, to the floor, and it glowed, not just one color, but many, which explain why the light spilling down the narrow crack had been so murky.
There were subtle pinks, blues, greens and yellows.
Insects with wide, fluttering wings darted from patch to patch. One flew erratically past her and she saw its body was tiny, its wings white with a subtle black pattern.
She moved aside to make room for Min, and then peered over the side of the ledge they were standing on. There were rocks and rubble below, and she crouched and then climbed down cautiously.
Everything was slick with water, and tiny droplets clung to her hair and beaded at her temples, sliding down the sides of her face.
Nausea rose as soon as she stood on the uneven cave floor and she had to bend and put her hands on her knees and breathe.
“The shadow ore?” Min asked, clambering down beside her and putting a hand between her shoulder blades.
She nodded, her eyes fixed on the moss she was standing on. Its leaves were intricate and succulent, the light it emitted coming from them as well as the tiny, delicate flowers. And the parts of the floor not covered in moss, she noticed, were dark with ore.
She fell to her knees, unable to tell whether the roaring her ears was from the waterfall or her reaction to the ore. Her hands burned as they landed on the ore-rich rock, the searing heat traveling up through her arms, embedding itself in her skin.
She'd wondered, in the last few days, how Garek and Kas, who could call the Change for something really abundant, like air and earth, had coped with the disorientation. They had both been thirteen when they'd called the Change. And had literally been surrounded by their element.
If they could handle it, she could, too.
“My father threw me in the river when I started to call the Change.” Min said quietly, crouching beside her.
“Was it bad?” Taya could barely speak, her breath short, her body switching from being hot to suddenly wracked with chills.
Min nodded. “But once immersed, I never felt sick again. It was good for me.”
“Maybe this will be good for me, then.” Where on Barit could she ever have been immersed in shadow ore? Perhaps this was the only way to truly claim her Change.
She shuddered in a breath, and then fell to the ground, the pain from her earlier injuries flaring as she landed on her scraped side.
The last thing she saw was the flutter of white and black wings.
Chapter 16
“What's your plan?” Aidan stood to the side, staring at the massive ship in front of them.
The reflected light Garek had turned toward earlier had become this behemoth and he wondered just how happy Falk would be to have been proved so right.
“We find a way in.” There wasn't much else he could do, although he was very aware that Falk had altered the air inside this sky craft. They wouldn't be able to breathe if they left its safety.
“You think they'll let us enter?”
Aidan was regaining Garek's respect a little at a time. He wasn't dwelling on his helplessness, or his deep dislike for what Garek was doing. He'd decided to deal with reality.
“This is one of their ships, why wouldn't they?”
“Yes, but it's been missing for months.”
Garek hesitated, then decided he might as well start sharing a little with his unwilling passenger. “I don't think they'll be keeping track. Unless there's another group out here with sky craft of their own, I'm guessing they assume all ships that are theirs are piloted by their people.”
Aidan gave a grunt. “I see your reasoning, but it's a big risk to take when you can't be sure.”
“We aren't going back, so we have little choice but to hope my guess is accurate. And I'll say again, this was supposed to be a solo run.”
Aidan sighed. “So who's this person you're rescuing? Family?”
“You could say that.” Garek intended to make Taya his family. And there was the small matter of his own father and Taya's brother, as well. However much the old man and him grated against each other, however much Kas may wish him dead or on the other side of the world to his sister, Garek couldn't, wouldn't, leave them behind.
“How do you even know they're alive?”
“Because until two months ago, the sky raiders were taking people. Now, they're taking food, clothes--whatever s
upplies they can. I don't think the people who designed this,” he waved at the craft's interior, “are desperate for our food and clothes, do you?”
“They're stealing food to feed their prisoners.” Aidan gave a slow nod. “You'd be a good general.” He said it grudgingly. “You think the right way.”
Garek didn't answer, because something bulky shot out from under the big ship, and he saw it was a people-stealer. He slowed the sky craft's approach a little to watch it.
It turned away from them, aiming for Shadow.
“You going to follow it?” Aidan asked.
Garek was tempted. But he didn't know where he'd be going, and he didn't want to waste his only chance.
“No. We go in, see what we can find out in the big ship.”
“How are we going to do that? We don't know much about the sky raiders, but we know we don't look like them.”
“No. They have claws, and we can't breathe their air, anyway.”
Aidan sucked in a breath, and Garek guessed he'd just remembered that Falk had had to recalibrate the air in the ship. “So we're confined to this ship?”
“That's right.” Garek hoped they could slip the sky craft into what was surely a loading and maintenance area and observe for a bit. There was a lot a busy transport hub could tell the patient watcher, and he could be patient when it was important enough.
“You know, I said I didn't know you were crazy before, but there was something that always bothered me about you. I should have trusted my gut.” Aidan's face was calm as he spoke, his tone neutral.
Garek didn't much care what spoiled rich boys thought of him, so he simply shrugged.
Aidan's face lost its calm, and his lips tightened. “You genuinely don't care what I think, do you?”
“No. But my guess is you're going to tell me anyway.” Garek kept their speed steady as they closed in on their destination.
“Maybe that's why I like you despite your charming personality. You don't care where a person comes from.”
Garek laughed at that. “You've got that right.”
Aidan crossed his arms over his chest. “You answer to a higher power, is that it? Some kind of strange abstinence thing? Because the behavior that got my nerves jumping about you back in Gara was that you never once took up an offer of sex. Not this last year when I served with you, and the other guards told me not the year before, either. And you weren't short on invitations, my watchers and I both saw that.”
Garek stared him down blandly and eventually Aidan looked away with a jerk of temper.
A higher power?
Garek couldn't help the chuckle that burst out of him. Maybe he'd share that with Taya one day. Because he was getting her back. “When you say you like me because I don't care who you are, remember, that comes with a distinct downside. Just because you want to know why I've done something doesn't mean I'm going to answer. It's none of your business. You're obviously used to snapping your fingers and being obeyed. I don't jump for you, or anyone.”
“That's an arrogance all its own, isn't it?” Aidan turned back to face him, lips in a tight line. “You carry that mantle about you, knowing there's no one who can physically take you down. But that's not because you've earned it. You were born with the power of your Change.”
Garek shrugged. “I've worked to get to my peak. I've supplemented the strength of my Change with physical strength. What have you done? Sulked at being in the Guard? Splashed money around? Deliberately been a thorn in the administrator's side? And now I discover, also spying on the security set-up at Gara. Betraying every guard you had anything to do with.”
Aidan froze, eyes wide. “That's what you think I've been doing?”
Garek sneered at him. “You bribed Falk, and you risked your neck because you thought I was making off with the sky craft for another liege, which tells me that's exactly what you were planning to do with it when Falk worked out how to fly it.”
Aidan shook his head. “I hadn't thought of it like that. But you're wrong.”
Garek ignored him. They were getting closer to the mother ship, and he needed every ounce of concentration.
“Garek, listen to me. You don't trust me, which means you won't let me have your back, and we're going to need that going in to that thing.” Aidan looked over at the ship that was now looming over them, monstrous and overwhelming.
Garek flicked a glance at him. “What can you possibly say to change my mind?”
“You don't care who I am? Fine. That is something I appreciate, no matter what you might think of me. And I admit that I behaved like a petulant child when I got to Gara. I can see you think very little of me for it, and I deserve it. But I'm not betraying the Gara Guard, because they may report to the town master, but the town master reports to the liege of West Lathor. And the liege is my father.”
Garek managed to keep his attention fixed on what looked from this distance like a narrow opening in the ship's underbelly. He hoped it didn't look like such a tight squeeze when they got closer.
“Nothing to say?” Aidan asked him.
He shook his head. “I guessed you were some high-end rich boy. You threw your weight around in Gara too much to be anything else.”
He noticed Aidan winced a bit at that.
“But you understand now, I wasn't a spy for the enemy? My father wanted me to understand Gara from the inside out. We knew no one in the Guard would likely recognize me, I haven't made any official visits from Juli to Gara since I was a teenager. And my father wanted someone he trusted to check out the intelligence he'd received, word that things weren't as they should be. That the Gara town master was actively working against his own liege.”
“Only because he's let too much slide for too long.” Garek had thought that for a long time.
Aidan winced again. “My father hasn't been himself since my mother died, but that's no comfort to anyone who's had to deal with Gara for the last two years. I accept that.”
“Do you?” How nice for him.
“You're truly angry, aren't you? You like me even less now you know who I am.” Aidan's shock made Garek want to laugh again.
“As you've already pointed out, princeling, I don't care who you are. You say you weren't betraying the Guard, I believe you. But I'll still kill you if you do anything to mess up my plans.”
“You're a bastard, you know that?” Aidan turned back to the window.
Garek shrugged. He got that a lot.
Chapter 17
“Wake up, Taya. Wake up!”
The last words were hissed with such terror, Taya forced her eyes open.
She was lying close to where she'd fallen, pulled up under the slight overhang of the ledge they'd climbed down from.
Min held her around the shoulders and she gave Taya a little shake. Pain shot through Taya's side and she groaned.
“What's wrong?”
Min slumped in relief. “There are things up there.” She pointed to the ceiling.
Taya blinked and shuffled her legs a bit so she was more or less upright. The light was diffuse, with no single source, and each one so weak, it was impossible to see the vast ceiling above.
“How long have I been out?” She rubbed at the bump on her head from when Ketl threw her down the shaft, and gingerly pulled her tunic from her body where it was stuck against the open scrapes, hissing at the pain.
“Ten minutes or so.” Min shivered. “Soon after you collapsed, something came diving down from above. It nearly clipped my head.”
As she spoke, a dark shadow swooped silently over them, at the last second angling its body with its wide wings to rake the ledge above them and bringing soil and tiny pebbles down on their heads.
Min made a low sound in the back of her throat and put a hand over her mouth.
“What is it?” Taya brushed dirt off the top of her head, her hair so damp from the spray of the waterfall, it was more like rubbing mud.
“Not it, them. More than one.” Min pointed again and Taya saw more sh
adowy shapes swooping above.
“They weren't doing that when we got here.”
“No.” Min shifted, pulling up her knees and hugging them tight. “I think we disturbed them.”
Whatever they were, Taya knew she hadn't seen anything like them above ground in the camp. The animals they'd encountered on Shadow so far had been strange creatures, furtive and mostly small. These were the biggest she'd seen, and they were bold by comparison, attacking rather than running away.
She closed her eyes and tipped back her head to rest against the stone wall behind her.
“How are you feeling?” Min's voice was soft, almost contrite. “I'm sorry I shook you awake.”
“Besides the headache and scrapes from when Ketl grabbed us, I'm all right.”
“I feel like an idiot for panicking like that.” Min rocked a little, back and forth. “Do you have garls in West Lathor?”
Taya looked over at her and gave a nod.
Min shuddered. “There's a cave of them up above my village, and they come down in the summer when the lake fills up with croakers to feed.” She shuddered again. “Slithers with wings, my mother used to call them. Once, when I was about twelve, one got into my hair. I've never been able to be reasonable about things landing in my hair ever since.”
“It's okay. I'd panic if something strange grabbed at my hair, too.”
“You didn't look good when you collapsed, are you sure you're all right?” Min searched her face.
“Yes.” The nausea was gone, the strange feeling of disorientation. She didn't feel her normal self, though. She felt excited, little fizzes of anticipation rising up inside her and bursting, so she could hardly stop herself shaking.
She reached for what she was looking for, unsure herself what it was, and a piece of rock the size of a fist lifted up beside her.
“I hope that's you doing that,” Min whispered.
Taya blinked. “It is me. Although I didn't . . .” She was going to say she hadn't meant to, but she realized she had. Before, when she'd confronted Ketl in the tunnels, and when she'd manipulated the ore with Quardi, it had felt like she was slightly apart from herself, like someone else was making the ore do what it was doing. But now, the feeling was a tug inside her, as integral as breathing. She lifted the rock higher and one of the creatures from above had to dodge around it as it came in for another dive.
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