The lift shuddered as it rose, though surely it must have been used to transport far heavier loads than the hundred or so deckers surrounding her and Ryke? She shrugged it off. Worse worries were ahead. And behind her. She pulled her dark coat close to her. Though of thin material it served to disguise what Ryke had given her to wear. Thin black leggings, a dark shirt with black carved clasps. Nothing that would show if a light swept over her. He planned to make them as invisible as possible, for when they left the well-lit area of the Gathering. Good.
She wore black gloves also. Her hair was dyed black and she had the hood up to be sure, in case stray hairs showed gold. Evening was coming, so even for a desert her clothes would be apt. The temperature would drop further as night fell.
The knife Aunt M had chosen sat, sheathed, deep in an inner pocket.
It was pointless weeping over a mechling. She must ignore that final wailing voice in her mind that’d said I’ll be fine, even as the creature clattered away with Aunt M’s body up the wall, her broken limbs scraping and squealing on steel.
Ugh. Gio shuddered. Aunt M was not fine.
She wore a pack since the mechling couldn’t be used to smuggle them out. Ryke wore one that bulged with the extra gear he’d stuffed in. Not conspicuous, at all.
Please let them be unnoticed by his enemies. Please let her slip away. She assumed slaves were well monitored at the Gathering but she had a big advantage – no collar, nothing advertising her as a slave, and a master who had other problems.
The lift halted and they poured out, joining the stream of deckers heading for the several landing bays.
This place would drive anyone insane, let alone mechlings, and that creature last night had been some sort of cobbled-together mechling. It fed on other mechlings! What the fuck was with that? What did it gain by doing that?
Waik energy, her logical center chipped in. The mechlings recharged whatever power cells they had inside them, in daylight, outside. If the creature had no access to the sun, or to power outlets, this was why it dismantled others.
Well, then, that made its vampirism of mechlings all fine and dandy... Not.
She needed to stop her sniveling. They were on their way up. This was it. The day she would leave the Mekkers in the dust, or die. Ryke could do his I’m a fucking prophet dance by himself.
When they reached a ramp that led down from a huge landing bay, she paused, rocked by those passing her, with Ryke plucking her sleeve. Then he waited, looking at her. Ignore him. Ohmigod.
The light, the massive number of people swarming here. The light and the pink-tinged sky. There truly was another world out here.
Her chest hurt, as did her eyes. She wanted to cry as people elbowed her, and Ryke finally grew exasperated and dragged her downward. Landships corralled the area outside. They circled like wagons from the old west, except these vehicles were the height of skyscrapers.
Awe, she was in awe. Having lived inside the royal landship for so long, she’d forgotten what it truly was – a feat of mechanical engineering on a scale no Earth country had ever attained.
The ground the people walked on was mostly dirt dotted with scrubby vegetation, but already stalls had sprouted in rows and a stage had been erected in the distance.
“Security detail there,” Ryke said in her ear. “Be ready to run.”
She nodded, having, for once, been told the plan. She looked about, registered the small things nearby again.
“Outside! It’s The Gathering!” someone yelled. Screams erupted and the entire crowd of deckers began to run. Within seconds, the uniformed guards checking people at the end of the ramp had been swamped.
Taking Ryke’s lead, and he still had a death grip on her hand, she jogged past the fallen guards and went onward.
“This way!” he bellowed in her ear, over the continued bedlam of deckers acting like kids at a party. “There’s a gap for people to go through and see the raw outside land at the bow.”
“Sure.” Tourism for Mekkers. Huh. Cute, if they weren’t the assholes of this universe.
He released her hand once the crowd slowed, and she shook it to get sensation back and blood flowing.
“You okay?” He walked beside her now, never ceasing to survey the people around them, eyes going flick, flick, flick, from potential target to target.
Many weren’t familiar, and lacked the blue of deckers. Ryke had already pulled up his hood to hide his marks. They might be from the above for all most knew.
And...she was no longer a slave in the eyes of anyone except Ryke.
After five minutes of walking, they slid past an arguing family, through a gap in the crowd, and found themselves beyond the bow of the ship. The land-eating jaws lay partly buried in the ground, their teeth stilled and silent. Unseen, on the other side of the bow, but a few hundred feet back, was where the DRAC missile had hit.
“Come. We get past this and we slip into the night. You don’t stray far from me. Understood?”
“Yes.” But oh, how she lied.
Walk and act normal. People were rubbernecking, picking up soil and sand in their hands, marveling. Pouring some of it into bags, even. You could make a killing selling special rocks in this place. Gio grinned, feeling lightheaded. Freedom, soon. Fucking freedom!
Be calm, look happy but calm.
Ahead was the aisle between the ships and stalls to either side, but at the end of the aisle bits of sky showed. With each step, it widened. High above her, the hulls of the landships to either side shrank the sky to a captured rectangle, but in front of her was real.
She couldn’t shut her eyes, enraptured by the sight of a sky she might soon live beneath.
Almost there. Almost.
She’d get out with Ryke, even if she had to sneak away from him afterward. He’d try to stop her, of course. She gnawed the inside of her cheek. That was what the knife was for, right?
Strangely, Ryke had drawn ahead of her, and he waved his hand at her behind his back as if to say stay there.
Damn. She froze and let people come between her and Ryke. There was the reason for his caution.
More guards. On their heads was a symbol she knew from the day he’d showed her in public in the kol hide suit with the mask on, the day he’d offered her up as a fuck toy. She slinked sideways to hide in the darkest shadows between two stalls. Rough blue canvas on one side. Khaki colored on the other.
These guards had their heads shaved at the sides and an O tattooed or painted on them, with a red R in the middle. These were Judge Ormrad’s men. Already they trained their pistols on Ryke. From his stance, Ryke had slipped his hand under his coat to draw his own weapon but he’d halted in mid-action. No wonder. Ten men at least were out there, surrounding him. She slinked further, deeper. Shadows were her friend.
“Evening, Ryke. I wouldn’t do that. Bring it out with your fingertips and drop it to the ground.” A man with neat, brown hair strolled between the guards, wearing nondescript pale gray-and-brown clothes. He might’ve been anyone. No shaved symbols on this one. Who was he?
Wait, she knew the face. From Ryke’s rooms.
“Gyle.” Ryke nodded then obeyed the order, pulling out the pistol and dropping it.
She was near enough to hear the thud as it hit dirt, to see the puff of dust. Behind her was a gap that must lead to behind these stalls. If quiet, she could weasel her way along at the rear and still reach the outside.
“Ryke, where’s the mechling? Where is the human?”
“The mechling met with an accident. It left the residence yesterday and a sun-mad mechling attacked it, dragged it away.”
“Don’t play with me, Ryke. I need it. If I don’t get that mechling, you’ll lose everything. Understand? Your privileges, your liberty. Your ability to do anything except scream.”
“Why do you want it?”
“Let’s say we have a use for its brain. Are you using it as a bargaining tool? What do you want then?”
“Nothing, or nothing new. I said the truth.”
“Ryke...” Gyle sighed then sang out to the guards, “The box! Bring it. You’re losing that sigil on your hand unless you talk. I don’t have time for this.”
What was this box? She backed quietly, then wove along, with the hull to her right, found the next gap in the stalls and there were the two men, and another dumb guard partly obscuring them. With two others beside him, one with knife, one with a gun aimed at Ryke’s neck, Ryke had placed his hand into a metal box a third guard held.
A series of heavy clicks sounded and his arm jerked as if something in the box had wrenched at his hand or bitten it.
“It’ll take a minute to warm up then we can rip that sigil out of your hand. No King’s Own would deny me. It is your duty! Where is it? Where is she? I know she can create portals, the mechling told me.”
As Gyle had said that, Ryke showed no emotion, not a flicker. Had he known that Gyle knew? In the midst of this simmering violence, it hurt her brain trying to follow who had done what. What she did know for certain was that Ryke had protected her from being caught. A dull pain sliced up from her stomach. How dare he be so goddamned nice.
She hated him, why couldn’t he hate her? He’d shot all those women. But that was then, this was now. Could you forgive a man who did that?
“Why didn’t you tell me she could?” Gyle gestured at the box with his fingers. “Tell me. I can make this painless.”
“I don’t fucking care if you rip my lungs out. She’s gone. I don’t know where. I freed her.”
Then she would swear he flicked his gaze at her, as if he of all those out there knew where she hid, way at the back of this shadowed gap.
The man must have owl genes.
“You what!”
“I said to her, go, be free. She left me.”
“You fool. Are you serious? Where did she go? Ormrad wants her as a pet, and when he gets notions you don’t deny them. Even if this portal thing isn’t viable, he wants her. No one can withstand torture forever. You know you will tell me.”
“But not yet. Not today, Gyle.”
“She can’t have gone far and I have days to find the mechling. That’s long enough to crack you.”
Gyle nodded at the guard and the man pressed something on the box. It hummed. With several guns aimed at him, Ryke couldn’t run or fight, and yet he was acting as if on a picnic. Smiling.
“Begin. One or the other. Where is that mechling!”
She needed to vamoose for reals. Gyle was going to send his men after her any moment.
Then it hit. Ryke had told her to go. His words had been a subtle signal to her.
Go, be free.
Damn him. Now he’d done that she was even deeper in his debt, even deeper in misery.
“Important, was it? I didn’t know. I can show you where it was taken in the Underdeck. I swear it’s the truth. How can a mechling that’s a hundred years old be so important? Is it the tech, or is it something else?”
The sky was falling into grays and crimsons, the shadows long and darkening.
And she should go. Except she had this pain inside her and she knew if she merely abandoned him she’d never forgive herself. She wiped her eyes with her forearm. They’d kill him. But what could she do? She brought out the knife, unsheathed it, stared at the blade then at the nearest guard.
Knifing one guard would achieve zip and even the idea of getting closer to him scared her.
If she threw it, if, it might distract them enough to let Ryke fight back. With his arm in that box and all?
What to do?
She simply wasn’t this brave. The knife in her fingers turned and turned as she tried to think her way past her indecision...her cowardice.
She should do, not stand here. Either run away or throw it...
And die.
Lights flared somewhere back where they’d come from – she saw the flicker and glow on the canvas. They weren’t yet needed, but by the time she reached the free area past these guards, it should be well dark enough – as long as the lights weren’t also being turned on out there, where the Gathering site became simply a part of this world of Aerthe.
Aerthe.
Take those steps, go nearer. She backed up but stopped after two shuffles, straining to listen. A new guard arrived and blotted out much of light and the space between the stalls. She cringed but he didn’t notice her. Guess her shaking knees weren’t that loud after all. He positioned himself facing outward. Then above his head she saw, across the way, a face she recognized – Badh.
Which was when her head lost track of her hand and she threw the knife. It was sinking into the guard’s back and he was twisting and falling before she could scream. There were muffled gunshots.
Everything went crazy.
Deckers ran from nowhere, assaulting, shooting, knifing. Guards fought back but fell anyway. Gyle was shot several times and toppled.
What she could see through the small gap between the stalls only amplified her fears.
Ryke smashed elbows into guards and used the hand trapped in the box. After a guard dropped a gun, he nabbed the weapon from the air, as if this were a juggling act, and began shooting – calm and steady, until someone shot him and he spun. Dropping to one knee, he squeezed off more shots.
Deckers moved in. She put her hands over her ears to block out the cut-off screams, the fleshy thuds, the smuk smuk sound as some weapon fired.
Her whole body shook and her stomach tried to crawl into her mouth.
Quiet fell, punctuated mostly by a few groans and the ragged beating of her heart. Soon it was clear the deckers had won.
Ryke? She almost didn’t want to go see what had become of him.
Fuck to the no.
But a decker found her and took her by the hand and brought her into the aisle.
Ryke was alive, though bleeding at the hand and shoulder. His brother had blood across his stomach yet Badh nodded to her, pale of face and grimacing.
“Go, you two. I was coming to tell you the king is not abdicating. There’ll be no vote, but...” Badh gritted his teeth and his hand scrunched into his shirt. “Our landship is being vacated. The king is changing homes because the ship is going to die.”
“Die? Seriously?” Ryke frowned. A man was bandaging his hand, someone else his shoulder.
“Yes. We have a day to have fun then we’re being sent to other landships in the Royal Swathe. Don’t know how much we can take with us, or what we’ll be there.”
“I can’t see them fitting you all easily.”
“I know. Guess they didn’t want panic.” Badh shook his head. “Anyway, you must go. I’m going to talk to the deckers. Now they know what you’re doing –”
“I’m an experiment. Don’t tell anyone to follow me. Your wound isn’t bad?”
Badh laughed still clutching his stomach. “Go. I’ll get doctored. Let me deal with them.”
Her teeth were chattering and her hands cold. Her mind buzzed distantly.
Ryke nodded then said to her, “Come. We still have to run.”
Then he took her cold hand in his warm one and they ran into the night. After a while, he let go of her hand and she wished he hadn’t, but still she ran with him, her pack bouncing on her back and sweat gathering, for the night was not yet cold enough to justify the layers.
She could think again.
Had she just made the dumbest decision of her life? Not sure, not sure.
At some stage, a voice slipped into her mind.
Found you, it said, cheerfully. Something was running beside them, clinking and clattering, its feet rasping as they dug into the sandy dirt.
Aunt M!
Yes, it is I.
How?
My brain is not a normal mechling brain. It could not eat me. I said...I said...I said I would be fine.
“Aunt M...is here,” she told Ryke, between her pants.
He grunted. “Is she rational? I was about to stop and shoot.”
“It’s her. You know, I can hear her in my mind. She’s different but not crazy, I think. Injured perhaps.”
Though he stared across at her for a few steps, all he said was, “Good.”
They ran on and on, only stopping to drink, until her muscles gave out and they had to walk.
When dawn approached, paling the horizon, she was done and staggering.
A small copse was the best shelter for miles. The trees concealed them from spies in the air. The soil was less sandy than she’d thought it’d be, more dirt and leaves than sand, and richer. She ate and drank methodically, helped Ryke change his bandages, though the blood made her want to throw up – his hand injury was messy but superficial. The king’s sigil had been removed by that box. His shoulder was a clean through-and-through wound. Then she fell asleep, lying beside Ryke and partly in his arms.
When she woke, the sun was somewhere high above but the canopy of these thick-leaved trees was dense enough to block out all the sunlight except what came in from the sides. Ryke was crouched and watching some craft zip along in the open area. They flew past too far away for her to see much except that they were slim and fast.
“What are those?”
He turned his head to reply. “Snikers. They’ll be looking for us. If we move in daylight, it’ll have to be under these trees.”
“Do they thin out? Isn’t this near a desert?”
“It’s a river delta with a few hundred small streams and some bigger branches of the river. Go some miles that way and it’s nothing but sand. Here, we can hide and sneak.” He stood and returned to her, crouching. “We’ll eat then see how far we can get. If Ormrad catches us, it will not go well for us.”
Food was dried meat and fruit, and swigs of water from a metal bottle. “So if there’re rivers here, we have plenty of water?”
“I guess so. I’ve been on patrols when in military service but we rarely had to find water. Or kill to eat.”
Not so reassuring. Here was she, a geek who’d sucked at hiking. Would Ryke know more than her about catching animals to eat them? “If I ever have to skin anything...”
“Skin an animal? Why?”
Oh boy. “Never mind.” She chewed off another hunk of dry something. The wind whispered through the trunks of the trees, rattling some sort of seed pod. Something scampered across her view and over tree roots before vanishing. Brown, non-furry, and maybe eight legs.
Say hello to future dinner.
Something screeched and screamed and goose bumps arrived.
The trunk of the tree near her bare foot bore silvery streaks, and when she peered she saw silvery-red veins twisting and coursing down it, joining, splitting. Another sign she wasn’t on Earth. How would she know what was even edible?
Maybe Ryke had a Wikipedia of how to live off the land?
Why had she thrown that knife? She could’ve run off by herself. Left him.
Because it would’ve been wrong. There were all manner of wrongs though. So many things she wanted to know about him, his past, his past actions.
“Tell me, Ryke.” She looked at the soles of his boots. Her hair fell across her face. “Why’d you kill those women in the blood-snack room?” Would he answer? She raised her eyes and found his, staring. “Why’d you do that?”
She’d asked him once before but hadn’t believed the answer.
“I told you. They were sentenced to die. Some were already close to death. I gave them mercy.”
Mercy? A funny sort. She’d always regarded every moment of life as precious. What a tangled bit of morality there. Was he right? Or was she? Maybe he should’ve asked the women before putting a bullet in their heads?
“What about back there? You told me I could go free. Why?”
“I didn’t want the judge to have you. Are you judging me?”
“I might be.” That he didn’t smack her down was progress. That he had done so in the past meant she shouldn’t ever trust him, surely?
“To have me? Jealousy? Possessive?”
“All that, plus I know he’d toss you aside eventually. You’d end up in another blood-snack room.”
You think?” Somehow his answer had made her angry. “I can make portals, remember?”
“He’d extract that from you, give it to another, move on.”
The fuck he would’ve. That was probably impossible to do. It was a valid point Ryke had made, however.
He poked at the soil with a twig. “So why’d you do what you did?” He raised an eyebrow. “Why didn’t you run?”
She hadn’t quite figured that out herself and puffed out a breath that sent flying the strands of hair hanging before her face. “A moment of martyrdom.”
“Hmmm.”
If he said liar, she would possibly smack him. Which would be unwise.
Something rustled above and she spotted a thing glinting, hanging in the trees, in a fork of the branches.
Aunt M?
Aunt M had perched in a tree. If she’d had a mouth, Gio could totally see her grinning like the Cheshire Cat. Whatever that evil mechling had done to her, she wasn’t the same in the head. Bizarre. Maybe dangerous?
“We should watch Aunt M. She could be a danger.”
“I noticed. Mechlings don’t usually hang about in trees. So, after all the questions, are we friends now?”
“Friends?” She nearly choked on that. “Ummm.” Did Ryke have any concept of friendship? Well, he had his brother. He must do. “I’m not sure.”
Or did he sort of mean boyfriend? Her brain stuttered over that concept. She’d need to utterly trust him to do that sort of relationship with this man. He’d regularly simply taken her when he’d wanted to, in the kinkiest ways. Still might, once he recovered. She squeezed her thighs together, arousing a familiar wanton tingle between her legs.
Hold that thought for later.
Friends. Ryke had been the spider wrapping her in his cocoon, trapped in his web, sucking out her innards for his pleasure...and now he morphed to this? Whatever he was now, she couldn’t put a name to it, couldn’t touch what he was, couldn’t sculpt it or kiss it. Mister Unknown.
Spiders had fangs, eight legs, and webs. Two out of three for Ryke, if you played fast and loose with labels.
“You know you’d never survive out here alone.”
“I don’t know if you would either, sir. Besides, I have Aunt M.”
“That is not alone.”
“Close. Mechlings aren’t really people.”
“She is sentient.”
What? “Oh. Really?”
“I’m fairly sure she is. Since that other one attacked her. No obedient mechling would do what she does now.”
True. So very true.
“Maybe...” She hated to suggest this. “Maybe you should shoot her?”
“No. I’ve grown to like her. Besides, she might simply eat my gun.”
Was that a smile? The man had the damn stupidest sense of humor.
That was a start though. Boyfriends needed a sense of humor. If only she was sure he was defanged.