Tinaree: Trial By Inferno (Shadows Of Peace Book 1)

by Nic Plume

  Salayla covered her surprise well. As primary Din her gift was stronger, with better and subtler control. A quick glimpse of shock and pain, and then release. As Salayla relaxed, so did Taylor. The tension left his body. His full weight was still on her, but it wasn’t as heavy or burdened. The pain moved away…not forgotten, but set aside, to be examined from a safe distance. Salayla opened her eyes and smiled. A sad one, but a smile. She released Taylor’s neck, nodded at Kaydeen, and turned to talk to Tonee. She wouldn’t be able to tell him what happened to Taylor—they couldn’t read minds or touch memories like psychics, so that was still Taylor’s story to tell—but she could reassure him that they’d help Taylor deal with it and keep him balanced.

  Now it was Kaydeen’s turn to tend to Taylor. She dropped her hand around his shoulder and settled in.

  He didn’t move, not for a long while. But that was fine. Salayla had taken Tonee into the bedroom and would give them the time it took.

  His breath was slow and steady, almost as if he were asleep. Kaydeen knew better. He needed time to sort things out and come to grips with what happened.

  Readings affected people differently. Some welcomed and even yearned for them. Others were indifferent, but all understood their benefit, especially after a Reading was performed. Taylor, on the other hand, avoided them. Not that he disliked them...he simply didn’t want them. He understood their benefits—the ability to release pain, both physical and emotional, and gain distance could be invaluable, especially in combat. But he thought it a crutch, one he shouldn’t need or want.

  Kaydeen waited for him to settle and reboot. He would be fine, she knew. She could feel it. His presence was changing back to calm and collected, and absolutely sure of himself.

  He straightened and looked at her in calm attentiveness, seeing every detail, every emotion, without giving away anything of himself. She returned his gaze, studied him in turn. Yes, he was back. The only thing missing was the twinkle in his eyes, only visible to those who knew him best. She couldn’t begrudge that. Too much had happened in too short a time, to them and between them. She laid her hand to his neck but didn’t attempt to Read him again. He was open to her, but she didn’t join his mind. Instead, she savored the warmth of his skin, his being, and his presence.

  "Kay—"

  She laid her fingers on his lips to stop him, "Shh."

  "I had no choice." He wasn’t talking about last night.

  She shook her head.

  "They would’ve killed you if I didn’t—"

  "You are the one who was hurt, not me," she interrupted him, pressing harder against his lips. "What they did doesn’t matter," she whispered. "What we did, does, and I wouldn’t want to have missed it." It wasn’t quite the truth. She had felt pain and disorientation when they had ripped him off her and shattered their link.

  He frowned. She continued, "Nothing they did can, or will, take that away." After a short pause she added, "Ever."

  The Sharing had been nothing like any she’d ever experienced before. It had been beautiful and intense…and hurried…and incomplete. The pain when they’d pulled him off her had been excruciating, as if a piece of her had been ripped away. It had disoriented her for hours. But he didn’t need to know that.

  He held her gaze, studying, imploring. Humans were so fragile in this subject, always second-guessing. She wished they could be a little more like Din—enjoy the exercise without attaching all the emotional baggage. Then, she sensed his decision. Closure.

  Finally.

  "Sometimes you can be so human."

  He looked at her, knitting his eyebrows. "I am human." The side of his mouth quirked up, ever so minutely.

  "Exactly. But I’m not, so human conventions and emotions don’t apply. At least, not fully. Don’t flinch over what doesn’t injure me." She touched her palm to his chest. "They can affect this," she raised her hand and touched the tips of her two forefingers to his temple, "and this, only if you let them."

  "My mother used to say that." The sparkle in his eyes almost returned.

  "She was a wise woman."

  "She also said attachments are a hindrance."

  Kaydeen shook her head. "That’s one saying she had wrong." She paused. "I like your version better. We are a team. We live as a team, we fight as a team, and whatever comes our way, we will deal with it as a team."

  He still had a long way to go, but he was well on his way to his old self. At least, his old self adjusted with these new experiences.

  The door to the back bedroom flew open. Mica walked out, fully dressed, stuffing his rolled up sleeping bag into his pack. Behind him, Nitus hopped on one leg, desperately trying to aim for his half-pulled-up pants with the other one. Leer sat on the edge of the bed in his underwear, rubbing his face.

  "I thought we were leaving with first light," Mica asked as he closed his pack and swung it onto his back.

  Tonee came out of the other bedroom. "First light is past."

  "Why didn’t you wake us?" Nitus asked. He had finished dressing and was stuffing his loose sleeping bag into a pack already bulging in all directions.

  Tonee started to answer, but Salayla stepped around him, cutting him off smoothly. "Because you needed the sleep."

  "Oh." Nitus paused to look at her. "We could’ve gotten up earlier. We have alarms."

  "Then why didn’t you set them?" Tonee asked.

  "We did." Mica dropped his pack by the door and then returned to Nitus and helped him pack his gear correctly.

  "So, we don’t have to hurry?" Nitus handed over his pack without hesitation.

  "I want to be on the road by eight," Taylor answered and grabbed one of the packs they’d prepared yesterday.

  Nitus asked, "Why eight?" at the same time that Leer demanded, "Who made you the boss?"

  Taylor didn’t look up as he moved the pack to the middle of the floor. "Because that gives us an hour to get going and fifty-two hours to travel thirty klicks." He crouched over the pack and opened it. "Nobody."

  His voice didn’t rise. Ignoring Leer’s challenge, he simply stated a fact. Typical Taylor.

  Leer, fully dressed, strutted out of the bedroom, puffing out his chest and trying a little too hard to be casual about his posturing. Having Taylor in height and muscle mass and seeing the man crouched on the floor seemed to bolster his confidence.

  "Then why should we have to do what you say?" He stopped halfway across the living area and smirked at Nitus and Mica as if trying to impress them with his boldness.

  The two paused, looking from Leer to Taylor and back. Leer’s behavior obviously wasn’t new to them.

  "You don’t." Taylor inspected each item as he emptied the pack. "You can leave whenever you want to."

  He had yet to look up.

  "We had a deal," Leer huffed. "You can’t renege what they agreed to." He stomped closer, spreading his elbows.

  A picture of a bull readying to charge came to Kaydeen’s mind. She stifled a laugh. If Leer thought Taylor—who looked closer in age to the teens than his teammates—was a peer he could push around, then he’d be unpleasantly surprised when he hit that brick wall. Taylor might appear to ignore him, but his muscles had tensed and his movements had become too precise, too calculated to be casual. No, Taylor knew exactly where Leer was and how to take him down.

  Leer wouldn’t be the first to underestimate Taylor. They’d seen it on a regular basis at the Academy as other recruits had tried to knock him off the pedestal the trainers kept putting him on. As the top-ranked trainee he already had a bullseye on his back, but the trainers had made sure it was clear and sharp for the rest of the class to target. Taylor hadn’t been fazed, though, and dealt with whatever was thrown at him, sometimes with unconventional methods. He could be brutal and blunt, using the smallest advantage to destroy an opponent mercilessly, but he could also be helpful and supportive. He readily handed out praise, or advice if approached, and wasn’t above admitting when he stepped wrong—although he never apologized
for his actions.

  "Then I guess you’d better leave with us." Taylor finally looked up and met Leer’s gaze, stopping the boy in his tracks.

  The room fell silent, holding its breath. Taylor was still on his knees. Leer towered over him in comparison. It didn’t matter. Taylor’s presence dominated, turning the bull into the sheep he truly was. Leer didn’t like what he received but was smart enough not to test it. He turned, huffed, and stormed back into the bedroom to retrieve his gear. Kaydeen shook her head and continued prepping breakfast while Salayla and Tonee helped Taylor with the packs.

  The moment they stepped outside, an acrid stench of burning fuel and plastoids assaulted Kaydeen’s nostrils. It hung in the air and clung to every surface like soot from a fire, leaving a bitter taste in her mouth. She scraped her tongue across her teeth but was unable to rid herself of the nasty tang. They quickly made their way out of the village—Taylor in the lead with Mica, and Tonee bringing up the rear. Leer gravitated toward Salayla, smoothly directed so by her attention, leaving Nitus for Kaydeen to manage. To the boys, it seemed like a natural formation of their choosing. It was anything but.

  As they left the settlement and entered the forest, the air improved, replacing the pungent stench with a musty, woodsy scent that had a citrusy hint with sweet undertones. Kaydeen inhaled deeply—nature was so amazing. Her eyes agreed. Vibrant greens and browns in every shade imaginable jockeyed for dominance in an attempt to drown out the colorful palette of flowers, mosses, and fungi hidden throughout as tall deciduous trees with an understory of low ferns and shrubs followed the natural dips and rises of the descending mountainside. Kaydeen smiled. There was nothing like being locked into a color-deprived prison to remind the senses of how brilliant nature was.

  The dirt trail they followed was easy going at first, the slope not very steep. Ample enough to easily pick your way around washed-out roots and rocks, although not quite wide enough for two people to walk side-by-side, it wound around patches of knee-high shrubs dotted with an onset of small round fruit. Where the shrubs spread across larger areas, the trail split into a web of smaller paths, crisscrossing the plants in a seemingly random fashion.

  Kaydeen’s enjoyment was soon curtailed when the cool damp mountain air started to seep into her bones. She closed the light jacket she had found and was glad she grabbed it. Being locked underground for six months had done nothing to acclimate her to the temperate weather of the region. The boys had said that the valley was warmer. She hoped so, or the coming nights would be miserable.

  The hiking trail quickly became narrow and steep, at times winding in serpentines, at others, angling straight down the mountain. Roots and partially buried rocks served as natural breaks for their momentum, while tree branches and boulders offered handholds for balance. They made good progress. Nitus was much more used to this type of activity than he’d previously let on. He huffed and puffed and slipped on loose gravel and wet ground, but with a few pointers, he easily picked up the tricks to navigate the alpine footing.

  The first outcropping was covered in fog, inhibiting their view of the valley. Distant rumbles bespoke the destruction the milky wall kept hidden from their view. They didn’t stop. Fog tended to obscure the distance and origin of sound, but it did nothing to hide their bodies’ signatures from airborne sensors. When they reached the second outcropping an hour later, the fog had lifted and the valley opened up ahead of them.

  At one hundred seventy-eight klicks wide, the valley’s other bordering mountain range was only a shadow in the distance. Mannahe spread in its center, surrounded by blocks of colorful agricultural fields dotted with smaller towns and villages. The scene would’ve been beautiful if not for the plumes of smoke rising like fingers reaching for the sky and the aerial craft zipping around like gnats over an open sore, dropping their deadly armaments or coming in for landings to discharge their living but equally deadly payloads. The fighting was concentrated over the large city, leaving the fields and smaller towns mostly untouched. Mica pointed out a tall comm-array tower that poked into the sky from the city’s center like a skinny needle, and explained that Totiga Plaza, their destination, was about half a klick beyond it. Roughly thirty klicks of open fields lay between the bottom of the mountain and the edge of the city. Although that part of their route was untouched by the fighting, the sensors of any aerial craft passing within seventy klicks would easily notice their movement. If they were lucky, an Intergal patrol would come to investigate and give them an opportunity to identify themselves as friend or foe. If they were unlucky, a patrol—Traverse or Intergal—would decide to shoot first and ask questions later.

  Mica, Nitus, and Leer fell silent as they watched the destruction spreading below them. Taylor motioned for everybody to retreat into the tree line for a break, but soon after, he and Tonee moved to a better vantage point to quietly discuss how what was going on below might affect their continuing route and progress.

  Kaydeen and Salayla stayed with the teens, keeping them occupied and their minds distracted from the events playing out below. Twice, Taylor called on Mica to identify locations or infrastructure, but he waited for Mica to return to the others each time before he continued his conversation with Tonee. Throughout their discussion, their hands signed a running transcript of their conversation for Salayla and Kaydeen. It was a habit they’d gotten into during their captivity to keep each other informed or hold obfuscated conversations. Sometimes they’d spoken about mundane subjects, filling the air with inconsequential noise while their hands had done the real talking.

  "I think Taylor wants to change our route," Mica said as he sat beside Salayla.

  "What?" Leer’s head snapped up from the comm he’d been engrossed in. "Why?"

  Kaydeen was surprised he’d heard Mica. His face had been glued to the handheld ever since he sat. He saw her gaze and laid the comm screen face-first in his lap. She wondered what he was hiding, but then dismissed the thought. His movements had been so natural, the boy probably didn’t realize he was doing it.

  Mica shrugged in reply. "I think he thinks it’s a bad idea."

  "A bad idea? It’s the shortest route. We discussed that last night." He huffed. "We all agreed it was the best route."

  "He wasn’t part of that decision."

  "His fault he slept through it. That doesn’t give him the right to change our decision willy-nilly."

  "What decision did I change?" Taylor asked as he and Tonee approached.

  "Who says we’re talking about you?"

  Tonee raised his eyebrows at Leer’s snappy retort and looked at Salayla, who shrugged. The boys were under stress—they all were—but unlike the teammates, the teens had no training in how to handle it. Using somebody else as lightning rod was probably Leer’s way of dealing with it.

  Taylor seemed to blow off Leer’s attitude, which was probably a good thing.

  "Who says you weren’t talking about me?" He said it lightly, with a shrug and a flutter at the corners of his mouth.

  Leer huffed again. "And if we were? What’s it to you?"

  He didn’t get up, clearly trying to imitate Taylor’s body language from this morning and failing miserably.

  Tonee inhaled deeply but said nothing. Taylor was quite able to fight his own battles.

  This time, Taylor smiled fully. The image of a tiger allowing a kitten to stalk and pounce on his paw came to Kaydeen’s mind.

  Taylor shrugged. "Just wondering." He turned to the others. "Are we ready to move on?"

  The boys frowned at him. They had clearly expected a bigger confrontation.

  Taylor didn’t oblige them, nor did he seem to pay attention to Leer’s smug posturing.

  16

  Tuscoony

  An hour later, they entered a tight foothill valley that took them into the small town of Tuscoony. It was quiet and empty. Nitus explained that most of its residents were probably at the market on the central square. Holding to old tradition, all villages and small towns still held a
market day to sell local produce and goods, and to distribute information. Although the information dissemination was mostly done over the Net nowadays, people used the market to mingle and socialize and, since the Traverse invasion, to distribute info that was blocked or forbidden on the Net.

  "Produce?" Salayla looked past Leer at Nitus. "As in raw food from a farm?"

  "Yeah," Nitus nodded.

  "That might not be such a good idea." Kaydeen put in, easily following Salayla’s train of thought. "We’ve been eating nothing but nutritionally balanced manufactured slush. Eating something naturally grown will probably give us some gastric side effects we don’t want to deal with right now."

  "Oh, come on," Tonee said from behind them. "Think about biting into an apple, or whatever their version here is called. The smell as you bring it to your mouth, the resistance as your teeth break through the skin, the crunch as you bite into the flesh, and the flavor as the juice floods your mouth." He closed his eyes. "Hmm, my mouth waters just thinking about it."

  "Yeah, and your gastrointestinal tract might thank you with cramps and diarrhea later."

  "Might be worth it." Tonee smiled. "Plus, the food from the apartment hasn’t given us any issues."

  "The food from the apartment is also manufactured."

  "But based on real food, not chemicals. I read the ingredient lists."

  Kaydeen shook her head with a smile at his insistence. "We don’t have money, anyway."

  "We can charge my ID," Mica said over his shoulder. He was still walking point with Taylor. "Or, if you prefer," he turned to walk backward. "Leer usually has cash on him."