by F. T. Lukens
Exhausted, warm, and fed, Ren let his eyes droop as he watched the sun slowly sink toward the horizon. He was half asleep when he heard it—a loud thump and then a rattle at the front window.
Ren snapped to instant wakefulness and sat up in the chair. Heart thumping hard and sitting still as stone, he strained to hear. Just when he had begun to think it was his imagination and had relaxed into the cushion, he heard it again.
“Jakob,” he whispered, tone harsh, panicked. “Wake up.”
Jakob stirred where he had slumped on a soft rug under a large quilt. He made a noise which was part snore and part shout.
“Be quiet,” Ren said, shooting to his feet. “I hear something.”
There was another loud noise, and then the door handle of the front door shook. It didn’t give, because Jakob had locked the knob and the deadbolt. There was another noise, and the stomp of footsteps retreating.
Ren shook, body trembling, as he watched the front door. Agonizing minutes passed. Ren relaxed his shoulders. A thump reverberated on the other side of the house. Ren whipped around. The handle on the back door began to turn.
Jakob inched close to Ren. “Please tell me you locked the back door.”
Ren gulped. “I didn’t.”
A gust of wind shook the house. The flames flickered, casting shadows along the walls.
“Maybe it’s North Roper.” Jakob attempted a hopeful tone, but his voice cracked.
“Or maybe it’s someone responsible for what happened at our village.”
The door pushed open, but stopped, caught on a rug by the door. A gust of wind blew inside, and goosebumps bloomed on Ren’s arms. The person on the other side struggled with the door, and Ren glimpsed a pulse gun in a gloved hand.
“Hide!” Ren said, shoving Jakob’s shoulder.
The door budged, and the rug gave way. Jakob dropped his blanket and took off, bare feet thumping across the wood floor.
Ren faced the intruder. He reached for his star; the power crackled at his fingertips like lightning in a storm. The hairs on his legs and arms rose. Blue bled into his vision, and he reached out and saw the mechanisms of the pulse gun as a blueprint.
The person stalked in, covered head to toe in a layer of snow and ice over a thick coat and scarf. Only a sliver of his face was visible, and his cheeks were flayed red from the wind. His green eyes glittered, and he stalked forward, undeterred when Ren’s power dismantled the weapon. The weapon lay in pieces on the floor, but the man kept coming. When Ren realized he wasn’t stopping, it was too late to flee, but he tried, staggering backward, tripping over the quilt Jakob left behind. His pulse raced; fear was tangible with the cold sweat at the back of his neck. Ren’s feet tangled, and he fell against a chair. He let out a strangled cry as he pushed out of the man’s grasp and stumbled to the staircase.
He made it up one step before the man grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him backward. His collar dug into his throat, cutting off his air, and he slipped. Grabbing the banister, Ren held on, desperate and afraid, in his last attempt at escape.
But the intruder was stronger. He pried Ren’s arms back, and then Ren was pressed hard against the wall so the back of his head knocked into it. Bruisingly tight, an arm pressed across his body. His chest heaved. He struggled weakly, gasping. The tips of his toes barely touched the wood floor. This was it! He was going to die at the hands of someone he didn’t even know. He had survived capture, the citadel, mercenaries, the Phoenix Corps, only to perish in an old farmhouse, a day away from possibly finding his family.
Then he was let go. He sagged on the wall; his knees were weak.
The man pulled the scarf away from his face. His mouth was turned down in a frown; his expression was absolutely livid. He hit Ren on the back of the head.
“You idiot!” Asher said. “You left the door unlocked. Do you want to be killed? You have no idea who or what is wandering around out there. Tracking you was depressingly easy. You could have at least tried to cover your tracks.”
Ren let his head thump on the wall. “Cogs, Ash! You scared the star right out of me.”
“And running up the stairs? Unless you were going to jump from a window, you would have had no escape. Plus, no boots. No trousers. For someone who ran away from people who were protecting him, you have done an abysmal job of trying to keep yourself alive.”
Ren slid to the floor so his bare legs stuck out. A flush worked up his neck. He was mortified to be caught half-naked, but relief won out over the humiliation.
“I could go on, but I am going to go lock the back door.” Asher went back the way he came, passing a closet door. He grabbed the handle and wrenched it open. “Predictable hiding place, Jakob.”
Ren laughed, giddy, as Jakob stepped out. Jakob shot a glare to Ren, which only made him chuckle harder as his fear morphed into lightheadedness.
The back door slammed, and Asher carried a pack into the main space. He stripped out of his own hat, scarf, gloves, and jacket. The snow clinging to Asher’s boots and trousers melted into puddles as he stood near the flames.
“Where the stars do you two think you are going, anyway?”
Jakob snatched his quilt from its heap and went back to his nest on the floor next to the fire. “None of your business.”
Once Ren gathered his wits, embarrassment welled through him, though Asher had seen Ren looking worse, and he quickly found his own blanket and wrapped up in it. He sat in his chair and huddled into the warmth. “Where are the others?”
“Heading toward Delphi, hopefully.” Asher warmed his hands over the fire and rubbed them. His fingers were red.
“They left?”
“Rowan is justifiably furious. She says she’ll meet us at Delphi and if she’s not there when we get there, to wait for her.”
“They let you go off alone?” Ren asked. He rested his cheek on his pulled-up knees.
“Ollie wanted to come,” Asher said. He unlaced his boots and stepped out of them. His socks had a hole in the toe. “But I made him escort Rowan and Penelope back to the ship. Not that I think they couldn’t take care of themselves, but because if Ollie came, then Penelope would want to come, too, and that would leave Rowan alone. She’d feel abandoned by her crew. And then I’d have to deal with that. So here I am.”
“You could’ve announced that it was you when you came through the door. You didn’t need to scare us,” Jakob snapped.
A slow, cruel smile bloomed across Asher’s lips. “What would have been the fun in that? Besides, you two deserved it, for sneaking off on a dumb mission for nothing.”
“It’s not for nothing,” Ren said, quietly. “And we know where we are going.”
Asher lifted an eyebrow. “You do, huh? Something you want to share?”
“Jakob found a note.”
“Stars, Ren! Why don’t you tell everyone? I’m sure my father wouldn’t mind since he wrote it in code.”
Ren gestured. The blanket slipped down his shoulder. “It’s Ash.”
Jakob gave Asher a narrowed-eye glare. “My father left a note. We have an idea about where my family is living and we’re going to check it out. You can go back to the space dock and wait for us there.”
“Like hell.”
“Ash,” Ren said.
“No. I’m not letting you two out of my sight, even if it means staying up all night in case you get it in your heads to sneak off again.”
Jakob snorted.
Ren sighed. “No need for that. You should rest. We leave at first light.”
Asher studied Ren, then nodded.
Jakob grumbled as he twisted in his nest to get comfortable. Ren grasped his blanket tighter. Asher settled down, careful of the small pools from the melted snow. Ren’s eyes drifted closed, and the last image he saw was the flames reflecting in Asher’s gold hair.
7
> bundled in layers and carrying their packs, they left the farmhouse as the sun rose. Ren had reconstructed Asher’s pulse gun, though that was more difficult than making it fall apart. It had taken a few minutes, but in the end, Ren was fairly certain it would work. Asher had it tucked near his hip, hidden beneath his bulky coat.
Ren covered up; only the barest sliver of skin was exposed to the cold and the frost. They trudged through the snow: Jakob leading, Asher a step behind, and Ren bringing up the rear. The snowstorm had died down during the night, and the sky was clear. The sun was bright and beating down on the rolling fields covered in powdery white.
Ren looked over his shoulder at the house as it diminished in the distance. He was glad to be out of there; the place had left him unsettled.
“I’m still mad at you for scaring us, by the way,” Ren said, as they walked.
Asher laughed. “Well, I’m still mad at you for sneaking away from the group.”
Ren hummed. “Fair, I guess. Oh, I’ve been meaning to ask, how did you get from the front door to the back door so fast last night?”
Asher stopped. He frowned. “I wasn’t at the front door.”
Ren’s stomach dropped. “What?”
“I approached the house from the back when I spotted the fire through the windows. I was freezing and went for the direct route.” Ren swallowed. Fear must have shown in his eyes because Asher moved close. His voice was full of concern. “Was there someone at the front door last night?”
“It must have been my imagination.” The wind had been brutal. He had already been thinking of ghosts and of being watched. And only a few days ago, he’d been slowly driven insane by a spaceship.
“Are you sure?”
Ren picked up his pace and brushed past Asher. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
By the afternoon, Ren sweated beneath his layers from exertion and the warmth of the day. He didn’t remove his scarf or coat, however, knowing that his sweat would chill and leave him colder than before.
When his stomach growled, they all stopped to eat the dried meat Penelope had packed and to drink from the canteens. The cold water chilled Ren’s throat and chest, and he coughed into his fist. Before they moved on, Asher packed fresh snow into the empty canteen, then looped it over his shoulder.
The path they took wound through the countryside. They started in farm fields, but as they neared the entrance to the Laurels, they encountered a small wood. They stuck close to the edges, taking refuge under the canopy of evergreen branches. Ren didn’t experience the feeling of being followed or watched again, but he occasionally prodded the area with his power to make sure. He didn’t experience any feedback from tech, which put his mind somewhat at ease.
As they traveled, Ren couldn’t help but remember the time he and Asher had spent days wandering the countryside on their way to a spaceport: how they had slept in a hollowed-out log, how they had bathed in a stream, how they had spent most of their days in a dazed sleepless state, how they’d kept moving out of fear and desperation. Ren had spent days watching Asher’s back as he’d pushed them onward. The circumstances weren’t quite the same, but the span of Asher’s shoulders was no different and neither was the determined length of his strides.
Their relationship was different, though. The closeness they had found in the dungeon and in their escape had evaporated. Maybe that’s all their relationship had been—born of mutual desperation. When the fighting was over, the flimsy premise had disappeared, and whatever they had been crumbled.
Ren frowned and pushed the thoughts away. It wasn’t the time to dwell on the past and the things Ren couldn’t change. He would always be a duster technopath, and Asher would always belong to the stars.
“We’re getting close to the entrance to the Laurels,” Jakob said, in the late afternoon. “We should start looking for a place to take shelter.”
“I think I saw a thicket a few yards back that would be good,” Ren said, pointing over his shoulder.
“We should keep going,” Asher said. “And find actual shelter. I don’t want to be out here in another snowstorm.” Asher waited for Ren to join him. “Not that I don’t think we could tough it out, but there may be better shelter ahead. I’d hate to go backward.”
Ren shrugged. “Whatever you say—”
A sharp crack of a twig cut Ren off.
Asher grabbed Ren’s coat and yanked him back while stepping between Ren and the place where the sound originated. A shrub rustled nearby. Footsteps approached.
Jakob joined them and crowded close. Asher had his pulse gun out of his holster. Ren reached with his star, and four pieces of tech pinged back from different directions.
“Four of them,” Ren whispered. “We’re surrounded.”
Jakob had a knife in his hand; his gloved fingers were wrapped tight around the hilt.
“Come out,” Asher called. “We know you’re there.”
Four figures, dressed like villagers, but wearing body armor and helmets reminiscent of the Baron’s soldiers, melted out of the wood. Three of them had prods, the fourth carried a stunner. Suddenly the thought they were being watched didn’t seem so farfetched after all.
“Well, this is familiar,” Jakob said, low.
The four fanned out with weapons trained on their small group.
“I can take care of this,” Ren said. They had fewer weapons than the Hatfields had, and Ren’s star already crackled through him, lighting up his nerves from his frozen toes to his fingers.
“No,” Asher replied, voice low. “Don’t reveal yourself. Not yet.”
“You’re trespassing,” one of the group said. She stepped forward. Her red hair peeked out from beneath her helmet and trailed over her shoulders. She hefted the stunner. “Turn around and go back, and we won’t hurt you.”
“No weedin’ way,” Jakob shot back. “We’re heading to the Laurels. And you’re not stopping us.”
“Stars,” Asher said, voice low and irritated. “You want to get us captured?”
“The Laurels,” the woman said. She looked them up and down, but the helmet covered her expression. “Why?”
“We’re looking for someone.”
Their potential captors shifted, adjusting their weapons, firmly pointing them at the group. If they weren’t on edge before, they certainly were now.
“He didn’t mean that in a threatening way at all,” Ren said. That didn’t help, especially when one of the group moved forward so his prod grazed the outer layer of Ren’s coat. Ren struggled with reining in his desire to lash out, to render the weapons harmless, to protect the three of them. His eyes flashed as he blinked blue for a second. He choked back his power, packed it up, and shoved it down.
Asher looked to the sky. “Save me from idiot dusters.”
“We should take them with us,” one of the others said. “Let the leader handle them.”
“And lead them to our camp? No. What if they are birdmen?”
“They don’t look like birdmen.”
“What the hell is a birdman?” Jakob said. He pushed his hood back and pulled the scarf from around his face. “Whatever. I don’t care. I’m looking for my father and my sisters. We’re not here to hurt anyone or steal anything. Okay? Just let us go.”
The leader tilted her head. “You look familiar.”
“Well, I am a duster from the village near the lake.”
They murmured. The leader allowed the muzzle of the stunner to aim at the ground. “Surrender your weapon and come with us.”
Asher resisted, standing still. He looked to Ren, read the hope apparent in Ren’s expression, then spun the pulse gun in his hand and held it out to the nearest person, grip first.
The person holstered a prod and took the pulse gun, then tucked it into their belt.
“Good,” the leader said with a nod. “Follow us. We’ll be back to our camp
before sundown.”
The end of a prod pushed into Ren’s back, and he lurched forward; he held his body stiff lest he sizzle with electricity. He followed the woman with the stunner into the trees. She led. Jakob and Asher and Ren walked in the middle of the cluster. The three others surrounded them and herded them.
“How long have you been tracking us?”
“A while.”
“Since Roper’s farm?”
The woman looked over her shoulder. “No.”
Asher and Ren exchanged a glance.
There was someone else out there. Or Ren should start believing in ghosts.
An hour later, the group stopped. The wood thinned, and the evergreens and the thick bark of leafless oaks gave way to a copse of slender branched trees. Ren stepped forward and ran his hand over the smooth, white bark. The roots forked like legs and dug into the earth in a curve like the arch of a foot. The branches rose toward the sky, like arms raised in supplication to a higher being. Daphne ran, and prayed, and turned into a tree, frozen in beauty for all time.
Asher placed his own hand next to Ren’s. “They’re beautiful. What are they?”
“The Laurels,” Ren said.
“Why are they so different from the other trees?”
The question had their captors whipping their heads around to stare at Asher. At least, that is what Ren thought they were doing. It was hard to tell through the shields of their helmets.
“There’s a story,” Ren said. “I’ll tell you another time.”
Asher realized his question had marked him as an outsider, either because he didn’t know the lore or because he had limited experience with trees, which was clearly a drifter trait. Ren was afraid he’d do something rash, but instead, Asher shrank back near Ren with his shoulders hunched and his head down.