She left that room and entered her mother’s, which was dominated by a wide bed and a great many photo frames. Again, Neri’s night vision would not permit her to look at the pictures inside. Each one was entirely grey, colourless. And wasn’t that what she deserved? To be robbed of all colour when she had given the most precious one away? She spun and headed for her fast father’s room. The door was almost impossible to open, and she had to squeeze through a narrow gap to get through. Once inside she found piles upon piles of books and boxes of tools. She had quite forgotten how he liked to fix everything. His room was a mess, however; quite unlike the rest of the family’s. The next rooms were the bathroom and living room, each rather tidy but covered in thick layers of silt. The kitchen was in a remarkably good state, with its piles of serving ware and neatly stored cutlery. The cold store was rusted shut, though, and some creature had evidently found the cupboard food. Torn and chewed packets lay in one corner. Something else was out of place; a lump on the draining board. Neri dug it out of the sand and dusted it off.
It was the kindler from her birthday cake. Its casing still shone as if it were new, and the mechanism looked good. She put it in her pocket for later inspection. The final room was her own, and she stood outside the door for some time, trying to remember what it had contained. Not very much came. She heaved open the wood, but was shocked at what she found beyond. The end of a small bed was immediately visible, along with a collection of slim books and a fallen box of toys. But the rest of the room had gone. Above, the ceiling had given way and sand had poured in without restraint. Her bed, the walls and most of her things had been completely submerged. Her tears fought to escape, but instead she turned to leave the room and stepped back into the small hallway. But her vision was immediately filled by the white heat that formed the shape of a live body. It was a man. Neri screamed and fell back against a wall.
“It’s alright. It’s just me.”
“Valyar?”
“Yes. I didn’t mean to surprise you. Sorry.” He was looking around, his hand touching the wall for guidance. Clearly he was unable to see anything. He still appeared rather weary.
“Come with me. There’s a bed. It’s quite dusty, but you look like you need it. Besides, it’ll get too cold to stay out there at night.”
“Is this your house then? We found it?”
“Yes.” She led him into her mother’s room, and carefully peeled back the top sheet of the bed so that the sand did not get onto the things below. The preservation of the mattress was incredible. Not a single drop of moisture appeared to have touched it in the nineteen years it had lain there. “Lie on this.” She guided him to the bed and helped him into it. “I have a light here. One moment.” Neri pulled out the kindler, gritted her teeth, and turned the spark wheel. Nothing happened. Perhaps the wick was too dry. She upended it, let some oil soak through and tried again. Whumf. The kindler sparked up, shedding its tiny flames around her fingers. It was just as brilliant as she had remembered. “Hold this while I find a proper lamp.”
A short dig through the kitchen cupboards produced what she was looking for, and soon her mother’s sand-filled bed chamber had light. Neri removed her goggles, but Valyar was already examining the old photos.
“Your mother was quite a looker too.” He grinned. “Is this one you?”
A scrawny little girl looked out from the picture, grinning mischievously and sitting amongst an enormous mess of torn up paper. “Yes, that’s me alright.”
“And these are your fathers?”
Both men were crouched behind her mother, and while she smiled quite innocently, they appeared to be pulling silly faces. She laughed. “Yes. My mother was a very forgiving, tolerant woman.” It was so strange to see their faces again, faces she had almost completely forgotten. And yet the pictures were so instantly recognisable to her.
“Two husbands,” Valyar said with incomprehension.
“We were quite unusual. Most families had three or four fathers, but my mother always said she loved ours too much to add another. My grandmother had five husbands.”
His eyes widened, and he set the pictures back on the cabinet. “I see.”
“Anyway. I should go and see if I can get the water working. If the pipes are good enough to trip me up and stay whole, maybe they’re still good enough to carry water. I’ll be back soon.”
A quick journey to gather several of her father’s tools was made, and she struck out into the harsh sunlight once more. The water pump would have been turned off when the family had departed, and there was every chance that it would have seized up by now. The water may also have become polluted, or the drive engine could have failed, but Neri wanted to visit the old thing anyway. She had spent many days in the shed with each parent, watching as they wrestled with the machinery or tended its casings. She’d also caught her mother and one of her fathers in there once, but had not really understood the significance of it at the time. She laughed at the memory.
The shed was still standing amongst a crop of orange rocks. Its planked walls were somewhat weathered now, but the roof was locked on tight. Three hard kicks were needed to break through the door’s rusted fixings, and then she was in. Plenty of light filtered in through the gaps in the walls, enabling her to see the red, oxidised hulk of the pump. Neri pushed at the crank gently, and then harder. It gave after a short crunch, and she managed to turn it through two revolutions. Good. There were three cans of oil by the engine, and even a full, sealed can of petrol. As long as it had stabiliser, she was in luck. She went through the list of checks that were necessary as if she had done it every day of her life, oiling up the shaft, turning over the cams and emptying the petrol tank. She flushed out the fuel lines, wound the engine round, and added some of the preserved petrol. It smelled good and flammable.
Her fast father was at the end of the pump gear, fiddling with one of the bolts.
“So Mia,” he said, blowing on the nut he’d removed, “what are you going to do when you’re all grown up?”
“Run.”
He grinned. “Running is good to do, but you can’t run for money. You need employment. And are you going to have a family? Find yourself some nice husbands?”
“No way!” She screwed her face up and shook her head, prompting a laugh from him. “I’m going to run, and be ruler of the whole world! Because every time anyone wants to catch me, I’ll be able to escape.”
He arched an eyebrow and handed her a small spanner. “Clean that in the bucket, will you?” He turned back to his work. “Empress, eh? I’d like to see that.” He chuckled into the housing, causing his voice to echo oddly.
Neri gazed at the housing for some time, wondering if he would emerge from it again. He did not. What would he say if he knew the emperor slept in their house? And what would he have advised she do? Valyar clearly felt he owed her some sort of debt, and had made his affection for her obvious; two factors that made him both useful and pliable. She would have to look past her anger over the naming matter, and take better advantage of her new power. A woman could achieve anything with an emperor in her employ. She moved her gaze back to the engine, and wound up the crank at speed. Chug chug chug chug, thump, whirrrrrr.
It started up beautifully, but the pump was not moving. Cada’shan! Neri kicked it out of fury, and the aged machinery started to turn. She blinked at it in disbelief for a moment, not really comprehending how it was possible that it still worked. Then came the wild laughter, whereupon she sprinted back to the house. The sound of rushing water in the building was loud and disturbing, but it meant that the pump was doing its job. She ran into the kitchen and turned on the tap. A flurry of brown sludge poured through, smelling absolutely revolting, but she let it run and within a few minutes it was mostly clear.
Neri turned off the tap to let the pipes’ innards soak, and returned to the bedroom. Valyar was sound asleep by the lamp, the ends of his black hair touching his closed eyes. The man looked almost innocent when he slept. She clambered int
o bed beside him, turned the lamp off and then curled up at his back for warmth. The calm beauty of unconsciousness soon took her as well.
“Are you awake?” A whisper. “Neri?”
She turned over to face the source of his voice. “Hmm?”
“Can you hear that? What is it?”
She listened to the howl of the winds outside and the distant thump of the water pump. Nothing else was obvious. “It’s just the pump.”
“No, not that.” Valyar clambered out of bed, and she heard him step carefully through the silt. Then she heard it. The emperor’s movements stopped.
“Sand dragon!” she hissed.
“Stay there,” he ordered, and she heard him stumble towards the stairs.
“Not a bloody chance.” Neri flung herself out of the bed, withdrew her sabre and launched after him through the murk. When she stepped into the starlit night, he was nowhere to be seen. No doubt he had done one of his peculiar shifting tricks. She remained motionless while she listened to the sounds of the desert. The wind was strong and harsh, but not troublesome enough to kick the sands too high. A low-pitched growl touched her ears. The dragon was close.
She raised her sabre and stepped forward slowly, feeling the grit rise between her toes with each footfall. Another deep growl. It had seen her. She threw herself to the side of the door, and ran around the back of the house’s entrance. The creature was waiting there, rocking from side-to-side on its huge feet. It was not dissimilar to a lurchcaw, with a gargantuan head full of teeth and skin composed entirely of scales. She’d seen one once during the day, and knew that they glittered red and gold in the sun. Neri brandished her sabre at it, watching the lizard’s tiny, bright eyes.
It growled again, then it lurched suddenly towards her, and she was ready. But just as she raised her blade to meet it, Valyar appeared between them and pushed her roughly to the ground.
“STOP!”
Both the emperor and sand dragon froze.
“Leave,” she ordered. The lizard huffed, turned and trotted into the night.
Valyar’s expression was one of considerable surprise. “Must you always steal my thunder? How do you do that?” He put his sword away and held out a hand to help her up.
“My fathers used to say that my mother had a voice to halt armies when she needed it.”
“I don’t doubt it. I thought I had to leave for a moment there. Or perhaps that was your intention.”
“No. Come to bed with me, emperor.”
He studied her for a moment, perhaps suspicious of her change of heart, and then his features relaxed into a smile. “As you instruct.”
She led him back into the darkness, but once they reached the bed he seemed eager to take control of the situation. Neri was more than happy to comply, and soon he was tearing her clothes off with the ravenousness of a man who’d been starved of pleasure for a lifetime. His body felt hard and firm against hers as he held her, though everything he did seemed to be designed entirely for her enjoyment. He teased her repeatedly with the brink of climax, stopping so that she would scream and claw at him to continue. By the end, the noises she made were loud enough to bring the house and the desert down on top of them. Thankfully, that did not happen, and instead they relaxed afterward in a contented embrace. It almost made her want to feel… happy.
“Valyar?” she whispered.
“Yes?”
“Why did you lie to me?”
“When did I lie?”
She moved to rest her chin on his chest. “You told me you had no children… when we first met.”
“That wasn’t a lie.”
“But Mia-”
One of his hands started stroking her hair. “Do you remember what happened after the couler? Do you remember what you did next?”
“I went back to ranging. I had to tour the western border and check for any imperial movements. Then I had to run north, where I met up with Dan, and then east to that border. I met another ranger there – an imperial one - killed him, and then another. They were all over the area. I think I took down five in the end.”
“And after that?”
“It was the beginning of the mid-quarter, that’s when our team met up to exchange what we’d seen and heard.” She remembered running to their place of convening, a mountain called Haldarin. And she remembered sitting before the large campfire while she warmed her toes. She felt tired. The rangers’ commander, Tomarr, had been there, along with Dan, Fionar, Morho, Carlo and Loriman.
“Eastern line’s crawling,” she announced.
Tomarr gave her the briefest of acknowledgements, and returned to stirring the pot of stew. “Damn.”
“You think they’re getting ready to push through that way? It’s hardly the easiest,” Dan said.
“It’s our weakest line.” Tomarr took the spoon up and tasted its contents. “Best I’ve ever made,” he announced. “Bowls, please!”
The group was soon a-clatter with the sound of their containers and the sloshing of stewed snow cat. When Neri’s bowl came back, she took a good sniff of the stuff. Odd. “Are you sure this is alright, Tom?”
He raised his eyebrows at her. “Don’t start with me. Just eat it.”
She looked back at the food. She ought to have been hungry for it, but the smell made her stomach churn. Neri tasted a little, and her whole body began its mission of protest. She had no choice but to leap out of the campfire hollow and run down the slope to somewhere private, somewhere where she could vomit. Snows of blood, what had been in that stuff?
When she finally returned to the group she found the men still tucking into their repast as if it was the finest banquet they’d ever tasted. She could not understand it at all.
“Alright Neri?”
“Not hungry. Sorry.” She shook her head at them and settled herself to munch on some snow instead. At least that was less objectionable. But on the following day she was ill again, and the malaise seemed to remain with her from morning through to evening. She was still vomiting whatever she ate on the third day of their meeting, which Tomarr took some exception to.
“Maybe one of those bastard rangers poisoned me,” she joked.
The commander frowned and tucked his thumbs into his waistband. “A word, please, Neri.” She followed him into an alcove under the rocks, and they sat opposite each other as she had in her first interview for the post. “You’ve been ill for three days at least, and you’re sleeping late.”
“It’s not a problem. I can still run and keep enough food down to do so. It’ll pass, captain.”
He rubbed at the stubble on his jaw. “It’s not as if I haven’t seen the signs often enough before.” Tomarr sighed heavily. “Have you been having stomach cramps?”
“Well, yes. I’m ill.”
“And are your breasts tender?”
“Excuse me?” Her hand trembled towards one of her daggers. Tomarr was a family man… not like this…
“Are they?”
She tried to form words through her surprise at his indiscretion, but her emotions quickly turned to concern. “A little… I suppose. Though it’s not you busin-”
“You’re pregnant. And that is my business.”
No. No. No. “That’s not possible.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Right. Is Dan the father?”
She stood in anger. “Of course not! Those are rules I’d never break. You know me better than that!”
“Whoever it is, Neri, it’s a problem. There’s a reason women aren’t recruited to be rangers, and this is it. I took a considerable risk bringing you onto the team. I gave you a chance when no one else would. I thought I could rely on you!”
She wanted to cry, to scream. It wasn’t true! She was just ill. That was all. “You can. I’d not leave this for anything. You know I’d not give up on it. I can still outrun every man here, and go for hours longer. I’m the best damned sword you have!”
“Which is why this upsets me so much, Neri. But you cannot range and fight with a ba
by inside you!”
Tears welled up in her eyes, completely drowning the nausea she had felt. It was not fair. It shouldn’t have been possible! She took in a deep, calming breath. This wasn’t the end. Grailer would meet his death, child or no. Maybe she could even have the thing removed. “Tomarr. I want you to keep me on for as long as I meet the grade.”
He placed his hands on hips and shook his head. “Absolutely not. You are going back to The Old Facility today.”
“No. It’s my choice and I’ll range these mountains regardless. As long as I can best these men and run, I’ll be here. You said yourself that you need my help.”
His mouth twisted and he tilted his head. “You would stay here as well, wouldn’t you?” He kicked absent-mindedly at the snow. “This isn’t just you at risk anymore.”
“It’s my risk.”
“Fine then, against my better judgement. But we test you every month. The minute you fail, you have to go back.”
“Deal.” They shook hands, and Neri began to feel the fear sink in with the cold. This was not what she wanted.
The other men looked at her with curious, questioning eyes when she left the meeting with their commander. No doubt they had heard most of what had gone on. “I’m pregnant. I don’t want to talk about it any further,” she said, and walked away to find some space by herself. Cada’shan, but it was disgusting! An imperial thing growing inside her! She began to feel nauseous once more.
When night fell, Dan came to sit at her side.
“You can’t stay out here forever.”
Maybe she would succeed in freezing it out of her body. She hadn’t invited it to take up residence inside her. “I like it here.”
“I won’t go away until you talk to me, Nerinna.”
“Then you’ve a cold, quiet night ahead of you.”
He sighed and settled a cloak over her shoulders, but she threw it off.
“I’m pregnant, not bloody pathetic!”
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