I plug in. There are no paths currently that allow us to deliver the cargo to the next station, that’s clear.
Thea kneads my shoulders like Jess used to do. For once, I don’t shrink from the comparison.
I don’t understand how there are no paths. To the – well, not west, but if my brain were looking at a compass and it worked, it would be about west – there are only vast craters of radioactive ash.
Ahead, or brain-south, are the rhinos. And east is where we just came from.
Nothing is right. It’s like every square on the bingo card is X’ed, but even so none of the rows connect.
There is only northward retreat again, and though it has rhinos, it’s the fewest. It’s the only direction that gives us a chance. Something’s got to give.
Thea says yes to my conclusions. Her hands are still on my arms, she’s behind me and holding me like it will keep me from flying away.
I let her hold onto me for a long time.
Up close, the rhinos are even more massive, if that’s possible, more ugly, more sulfuric. The very air is cooler in their shade.
They let us pass among them, like a toy carriage in a deep ravine.
I don’t understand yet, but they’re letting us go peacefully in some directions. Thea and I look at each other at the same moment.
“Jess,” I breathe.
“Is it letting us get Jess?”
It’s unheard of. It’s unthinkable.
“Then let’s do it,” I say, to Thea or Mouse or the rhinos or the devil itself.
I duck under and Thea follows me.
What is the path to Jess?
The lines are everywhere, close, far – clusters lit like firecrackers, small blinking dots, everything in between. Thea wraps her long fingers around mine.
I can feel her, her delight in the dragon, her fear of finding Jess’s body, her fondness for Jess herself.
Her love for me?
I blink and almost emerge, but she holds me tight.
Her worries about the guild and what it stands for.
And her secret: she was on the ley grid when we lost Jess. She’d been her station anchor.
“I’m sorry,” I think she says, and we steer the boks the only way they can go. That way.
Until we reach a small clearing, rocky and flat, without even the ever-present vines reaching for us.
And we can see her.
I’m used to what the marsh does to a body. Thea is chalk white and still hasn’t let go of my hand. But she’s steady.
I thought something would attack or try to stop us, but it’s so unnaturally calm we dare to open the main door. The marsh lets me approach what is left of Jess.
It’s not so bad. The marsh has given her back – some of her leathers, some clean small bones. It’s offering her remains back to us.
“Hey, partner,” I whisper. I hear Thea suck in a breath behind me, but I have to do this part. “Want to go home?”
There are no nightmare flashes of Jess screaming, just a sudden burst of love for this friend and partner I will miss forever. I catch a memory of the first time we rode these lines as full-fledged riders, both of us awed by the beauty and deadliness that surrounded us.
You have to love the marsh itself. Jess certainly did.
I gather the meager pile – her – and hold it against myself. My wearables are not warning me anything about them. They are not a trap.
Maybe they’re a gift.
Back at the phib, under Mouse’s and Thea’s watchful gazes, I prepare to stow the remains. As I lay them on one of our foil thermals, a stone falls out. Jess’s guild ring, her dragonstone.
There’s a pause in the marsh air, the hush that precedes a sigh, and the calm is over. Squawking moths and the restless shuffling of rhino feet, vines preparing to smother things, the sounds of hell are back.
And so is the hostility.
We secure the entry door against a cloud of enraged midgies, and that’s the least of it.
Thea rummages around on her bunk, which is basically just a storage shelf now, and comes up with a neoprene sack. “Is this irreverent?”
“No.” The bones and patches of leather fit inside, and together we seal it and place it in a cubby for safekeeping. The ring is still in my grip.
“You were her ley anchor,” I say.
She nods.
“You heard her?”
“Felt.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I don’t know,” she says. “I was upset.” She’s upset now. “She was gone, you were alone, adrift. I was terrified we’d lose you too. I’d lose you.”
Understanding floods over me. She wasn’t station anchor just for that one final expedition of Jess’s. She must have been our anchor many, many times. It’s possible it is all I have ever known – Thea’s sure ley signal, the bright glow at home.
It’s possible everything I love about the marsh and ley trancing is Thea. Always was Thea.
My hand finds hers, and I press Jess’s stone into her grasp as I pull her into an embrace.
I’ve underestimated her forever.
The marsh is more than hostile again; it was saving up its rage.
But under the gloom, the paths are suddenly open for the race to the border, to the station at the desert’s edge.
All the paths.
So we race, and race hard. The boks love this part of the job. They love the routes that have hard ground to spark their hooves and cool muck to tow us through, snatching at mutant cattails when they get near. This is their glory.
The safe that Mouse started out riding in could now fit inside her if she swallowed it whole, which is not such a far-fetched notion as you might think, and her wingspan probably exceeds three meters. She rides on the phib’s turret, sometimes flying, grabbing a tasty-looking fungus or a thylacine that’s foolish enough to rush the phib.
But it’s only as we near Transit Station that the incongruity of it all really hits us. We have to give them some warning, if only to keep the station from shooting her down. I’m surprisingly nervous about the guild’s reaction – will they see that we literally had no choice? I’m certainly in no position to march up to an elder and say I’m sorry to disappoint you but we survived.
But I’m more terrified about Thea.
We’ll pull into station, she’ll debrief or whatever councilmembers do, and walk back out of my life.
In the turret I take one last look under the gloom for any surprises lurking in the final kilometers of our route, and give a tidbit to Mouse. “I take responsibility for the condition of the cargo,” Thea is telling Maura over comms when I come down. “Don’t get on Lucy’s case about any of this. This is on me.”
I just gave the damned dragon my rations. I think I share the blame here.
Thea holds her hand up to stop me from interrupting, and it’s the authoritative councilmember, stern Thea, commander Thea, that I’ve seen so little of. In the early days of this run, a guild leader playing at being a rider could have thrown her weight around. She hadn’t. She never has.
The station is already in the distance, visible.
I don’t want my miracle time with her to be over.
“Except,” I hear her say, her voice cracking, and I’m not sure if it’s still going out over comms or if she’s talking to me.
“I don’t want to go back,” she says, thumbing off the mic. “Can we just stay here?”
She does love me. I’d read that in her, but I still don’t know what it means. Is she saying we can be together?
“The marsh isn’t a very good place to live,” I say. I mean it to be bantery, but I’m so clumsy that she thinks I am turning her down.
“Yes, I know. I have to go back to council business besides,” she says, cool, straightening up.
It’s easy to misunderstand when you really want to get it right. When it matters.
“Come here,” I say. For once I’m the one leading the way.
She thinks I’
m taking her to the bunk, but I go up the ladder, pulling her with me.
“Mouse,” I say to the ungainly thing flapping around our heads in delight. “We need a moment of peace. Keep the midgies off us?”
Bless her, she seems to understand, or maybe she just likes the midgies. “Come under with me,” I say to Thea.
I place her glorious fingers on my chest – over my heart. “Feel.”
She smiles, brilliantly even, but she’s in heartbreak leaving mode and it’s hard to reach her.
“Feel,” I say again.
Under the gloom together, I can feel her uncertainty, her own pulse tripping rapidly, her longing for me.
“You are getting over Jess,” she says.
“So are you.”
She is still, except for that exquisite pulse. “I love your heart,” she says finally.
“You love your hands on my chest.”
She blinks and then smiles. “Well, yes.”
“My answer is yes.” I have no eloquence, just need. “Stay, be with me. You’re a great rider.”
“It’s my riding skills you want.” Thank the gods, her spirits are rising.
I feel the heat rising within her, too. I swallow hard. “Well. You’re very good at riding.”
“I do have to debrief. And you know I have to make sure about Mouse. I won’t let them hurt her. But things are more complicated than when we left Marsh Station.”
What things? She’s saying no.
“After that?” I push. Her ley presence gives nothing away.
“After that, we’ll talk.”
We’re still in the turret – under the gloom, her hand on my heart, and a live, very alert dragon perched above us overlooking all – when the boks lead us into the station.
“What the fuck? Thea adopted this dragon and tried to tame it?”
“She named it?”
The other riders in station surround me as soon as the council room door shuts.
“It’s a she,” I say, “and she’s actua– .” I stop. What am I doing, defending dragons? They kill riders! “She hasn’t shown us any hostility,” I trail off.
One of them looks pointedly at a series of blackened welts on my leathers, and I stick my chin out.
“Accidents happen,” I say. “She’s a baby.”
I glance up at the roof of the station. Mouse is perched on a radio antenna. She looks hungry and not at all baby-like.
“What about Thea? How was it with her ladyship tagging along?”
I’m beset with their snideness, nervous for what Thea is facing in there, and terrified for what may come after. I snap. I hold up my shoulder kit with the neoprene bundle inside. “These are Jess’s – remains.”
They hush. They may be my crew, my tribe, but they have royally pissed me off.
“Thea led us through the marsh, and we got Jess back.”
They know every part of that statement is impossible, but I stare them down.
“If you say so,” another says. And she actually seems to mean it.
A loner like me knows a good exit cue. I about-face and stalk off to see the station chief about giving Jess a proper burial.
It’s only as I round the corner of the building and I’m out of their line of sight that I remember the station chief is in the guild council meeting with Thea. I stop and lean against the wall.
I don’t want to be alone. Thea saved me from that already.
So I go back to the main lodge for human company and something to eat, and I’m surrounded by chattering guildmates and keeping one eye on the mess hall doorway by the time Thea appears. She spots me and gives a little nod and then backs out of the doorway. I push my tray away and stand up.
“Wait, we want to hear about the new rhinos,” someone protests, but I have to get to Thea before she gets in a phib going the other way. Everything is clangy and wrong.
But she’s nowhere to be found.
How can she be gone already? There’s been no time to get the phib restocked, and the stables are quiet.
I jump when I think of it. The damned dragon. Thea’s got to be with her dragon.
My boots on the metal stairs echo through the atrium and I slam through the fire door to the roof. Mouse squawks and belches flame and Thea lets out the cutest shriek.
“I found you,” I say triumphantly.
She looks tired. Gorgeous and tired.
“I wasn’t really hiding,” she says with a half-smile.
I seem to be able to form only simple, childish words. “I looked for you and here you are.”
“I mean, surely you knew I’d be up here.”
“Talk no more,” I say, and I kiss her fiercely, with all the persuasion I have.
She doesn’t hesitate for a picosecond, she just flows up against me, mouth open and eager for mine.
Mouse huffs and flaps to a ledge further on.
“She’s very polite,” I say with a laugh.
“They – the guild – want me to ride rearguard on the final leg.” Thea is keeping her voice low. From the roof, I suppose any number of passers-by below might hear. “For Mouse.” I don’t need any gloom link to know that there’s more to the story. If I were a betting woman – and I am – I’d say Thea insisted that the dragon needed continued care and training, and nobody else stepped up.
She had probably counted on that.
I pull back enough to look at her. She’s gloriously windblown and well-kissed. “I’m going, too, then. With you.”
“Yes, I told them that.” She blushes.
Fingers and foreplay may be in sync, and a ley reading can show you a kind of truth, but when hearts are in sync it’s the whole shebang. Where the heart goes, the body follows. My pulse speeds up as she pulls me in for a long kiss. Mouse harrumphs, I swear it, and it’s Thea’s turn to laugh.
Mouse has taken over the station roof for the couple of days until our mission is ready to resume, and has begun to attract admirers.
We’ve been sharing a bunk; station quarters are more than sufficient, especially without a great flapping weirdo pawing through our stuff.
We’re truly private.
Thea hops onto the bed straight from showering and sits naked and cross-legged on the bunk.
She has amazed me from the moment she showed up in the phib that day, and she always will amaze me, I suspect, but maybe as much because of her extraordinary openness to me. To me.
She grins with full awareness that her pose is maddening. “You have way too many clothes on,” she says.
“You have just the right amount,” I say. I nudge her shoulder lightly and she tips over onto the mattress. There’s so much space here. I can see every perfect inch of her; her breasts that I know as well as my own now. The pale triangle of hair, the bewitching fingers, the smile that can make me believe anything.
“You know I love you?” I say to her. I smooth her still damp hair back from her temple, run my finger along her jawline.
“You know I love you,” she says, and there’s no question in her voice.
“I’m not sure why,” I say.
“Well, yeah,” she says and then we’re wrestling and laughing until I find the tips of her breasts, her mouth, my fingers finding their way down to that sweet heat below.
“Oh,” Thea says faintly. “That’s why.”
I laugh, my fingers grazing her clit.
“Don’t stop,” she says. “I’m your guild elder. You have to obey me.”
“Okay,” I say. I trail kisses down her belly and don’t stop until I have her arching and begging.
When her breathing is returning to normal, she turns to me thoughtfully. I think she’s about to say something sentimental, our first real night together as a couple, right?
“I have an idea how to graph leylines on a time axis,” she says instead.
I fling myself back into the pillows. “Oh, my god, are you mapping the marsh while – okay, that’s enough.”
Because Thea’s laughing while taking the
rest of my clothes off and flinging them far from the bed.
“The mission is very important to me,” Thea says. Yes, she’s entirely competent. I get it now. She pulls my shirt over my head in one smooth motion, and then she shows me one more time exactly how competent she is.
END
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