Dorsey was pulling on clothes in what was technically her guest room. She had spent all of an hour in the space, mostly showering and changing, since they’d been led to the castle two days before. There was nothing inherently nicer about Ty’s room, but he was there, which made the choice to sleep over obvious.

It had been different last night, and her mind kept trying to parse one word he’d said to her in the heat of the moment. Denya. The sub-dermal translator she had was top of the line. Anyone who traveled as much as she did needed to be able to communicate. So when she ran into words that didn’t translate, she remembered them.

It sounded important.

She hadn’t asked him what he meant by it while her thoughts were muddled by his attention, and afterwards, she’d drifted to sleep more sated than ever. It was more intense then that time on the ship. That had been an affirmation of survival. This was something else entirely.

It had been a declaration. He was hers now, just as she was his. And she was going to make sure he understood that. It didn’t matter how many sultry looks Nina threw his way, she’d fight the warlord for him, and in this one matter, she would win.

She was just about to turn around and speak with him when the communications console in her room chimed. A robotic voice spoke: “Incoming call from Reina Draven.”

Lex’s wife. Anguish struck Dorsey anew.

“Accept the call,” she commanded.

The screen gave way to the incoming view, and for a moment, Dorsey thought her viewer was malfunctioning. It was too dark to see anything except the faint outline of a female form. A light flickered, illuminated her from below, and casting her in an almost monstrous light.

“Dorsey, are you there?” Reina whispered, the words cutting through the darkness, their desperation and pain as clear as day.

“Reina?” She couldn’t be certain, but it looked like Reina’s face was swollen and bruised, a nasty wound planted right above her right eye. “What happened?”

“I need help,” she stuttered, as if she were afraid to talk too loud. “They took Haylio, but I didn’t let them see it. He gave me time to hide.”

“Slow down, who took Haylio?” Reina’s brother lived with her and Lex—just with Reina now. “What didn’t you let them see?”

“Please,” she begged, her teeth white against the blackness around her. “I can’t stay here; I need help.”

She wasn’t going to talk on the line, not when she was so scared. Dorsey’s own palms were wet with sweat and her hand shook slightly as she raised it to the comms device. She could tell Keeda about this and have a team out to Reina in an hour.

But Reina was already shaken, and she wouldn’t trust strangers. A bitter part of Dorsey also knew if she told Nina’s people about this then she’d never know what had happened. They’d keep her in the dark or lock her up, never bothering to let her know why.

She lowered her hand.

“Give me your coordinates.”

After Reina gave them, Dorsey cut the call. It would be foolish to assume the transmissions weren’t monitored, but she would be willing to bet that they weren’t watched in real time if nothing in the calls tripped an algorithm. Eventually Nina would know, but it could be hours.

Dorsey changed her clothes once more, opting for a tight pair of black pants and a black top that gave her room to move. She’d never trained to fight, but she was scrappy and motivated. She stormed into Ty’s room to find him already changing into similarly dark clothing.

“How did you know?” she asked. The walls were too thick for him to hear anything.

Ty gave her an inscrutable look. “I had a feeling.”

Bless the man and his feelings. She kissed him quickly and grabbed a bag off the table, stuffing the clothing she’d brought from her room into it. “We’ve got to go quietly,” she whispered. The room was probably bugged. “I want you to meet one of my friends. You’ve already met her husband.”

With that, Ty understood. His eyes widened, the red only a dull ember, not the glinting ruby she’d come to love.

No one stopped them on their way out, and Dorsey was counting the seconds until they were home free. The vehicle they’d used to go to the market was waiting where they’d left it, and Dorsey slid into the driver’s seat, waiting just long enough for Ty to close the door behind him before taking off.

She punched in their coordinates and they were off.

“Aren’t you worried about someone coming after us?” Ty asked.

“They can track the car whether we use the nav or not.” If she’d disabled the tracking mechanism like she’d done on the ship they’d stolen that would have called Nina’s entire guard down on them. There was no use tempting fate; they hadn’t technically broken any rules.

“So what happened?”

The rundown didn’t take long to explain, but the coordinates weren’t far from Nina’s fortress. By the time their vehicle pulled to a stop, Dorsey had finished talking. “She’s really scared right now, and she might be armed.”

“We really need to get our hands on some blasters,” said Ty. She could tell he was remembering the pipe he’d purloined fondly.

“You’re not using a blaster on my friend.”

Ty grinned over at her and something deep within her clenched. Not the time, she told herself. “If anyone’s coming after her, that’s when I’d use it.”

They got out of the speeder. This area was only a few blocks away from the central market and the street where they’d seen the wedding. The coordinates that Reina gave didn’t lead them to her and Lex’s apartment, but they were close. If someone had come for Haylio, she might have been able to run this far to escape them.

The area was solidly decent, but by no means rich. The streets were dusty with the fine sand that covered the dunes outside the city, and small bits of trash could be seen in the gutters. It wasn’t dirty, but the street sweeper bots didn’t come by often enough to keep it pristine.

A few people milled about, but no one looked suspicious. She didn’t think the mother and child at the far end of the lane had chased a terrified woman from her home or kidnapped a full-grown man. But stranger things had happened.

The exact coordinates that Reina had given her led to a brick wall. They’d come to get her, but Reina was gone.

 

***

 

Dorsey stopped short right in front of Ty and let out a short yell of frustration. Her hands fisted and she raised them up as if she was going to beat them against the blank wall. Ty grabbed her shoulder to stop her from hurting herself.

“Is this the place?” he asked. They’d come to a small street with a few storefronts built into the first level of each building. A door a few paces down from the blank brick had numbers above it and a small intercom suggesting that it lead to a suite of apartments.

But Dorsey just stared at the brick. “These were the coordinates.”

And she wasn’t there. “Could she have hidden somewhere?” If she’d been on the run, it made sense.

Dorsey held up a hand and peered even closer at that one spot on the wall. Then she leaned back and smiled. “It’s a distortion field. She’s hiding right in front of us.” Dorsey reached a hand out, but it came flat up against the brick. “It’s warmer than it should be.”

A distortion field disrupted the senses in several species. They could create temporary walls where there were none and keep someone hidden for hours. But they were quick and dirty tricks with a nasty habit of failing at just the wrong moment. And they trapped you inside. A person had to be desperate to use one.

“We need heat,” he said. They didn’t stand up to flames, and a laser also did the trick. But both he and Dorsey were low on supplies. Ty looked around. The shop closest to them sold clothing and the one across the street advertised the finest soups in the city. “Stay here,” he told her. “I’ll get something we can use.” He didn’t like leaving her unprotected, but he knew she wouldn’t leave her friend and the biggest danger was past.

For the moment.

Ty jogged down the street. In every city on every planet there was some kind of corner store within walking distance. That was how cities worked. But when he got to the corner of the street he was on, he only saw another café.

“Slow down, cousin. Why the rush?” At first he didn’t understand the words or realize that they were meant for him. But then it clicked. Someone was speaking Detyen.

Ty whirled around and saw a young Detyen man, his skin aquamarine with clan markings covering one arm and climbing up his neck. His hair was cropped short and he carried a thick walking stick that looked like it could double as a blunt weapon in a pinch. Ty had not heard Detyen outside of the message recordings from his family in a long time, and when he spoke, it felt rusty. “Well met, cousin.” They were most likely not related, but with so few Detyens left, all were considered distant family by default.

“I am Stoan NaTakandey. You must be new to this city.” He seemed a nice enough man, but Ty didn’t have time to chat.

“Do you have a lighter? Or a laser light?” he asked, eschewing introductions. They’d talk later, when Dorsey wasn’t depending on him.

Stoan nodded and reached into his pocket, pulling out a slim device that looked tiny in the palm of his large hand. “Is it for that disruptor field?” he asked, nodding down the street.

“How did you…?” He didn’t want to give it away, but the man shouldn’t have known it was there in the first place.

“Saw a streak of a woman run by. She was quick, but I didn’t get a good look with her hood pulled up like it was. My brother was at the other end of the street, but she never came out. He said she just disappeared.” He shrugged. “Now you come looking for heat, seems like you’ve got a disruptor field.”

A normal person wouldn’t make that connection. But Ty doubted this man had anything to do with the taking of Reina’s brother. He didn’t look like he’d come from a fight. “We should speak later.”

Stoan nodded. “Yes, I would like that.” He gave Ty his communication code and left.

Some might have offered more help, but Ty appreciated the discretion.

He ran back towards Dorsey and saw her casually leaning against the wall as if she didn’t have a care in the world. He was struck anew by her beauty. The sun hit her just right, turning her hair into a curly dark halo around her head. She’d given herself to him, and even if they hadn’t sorted out every last detail, she was his now. And no one else could claim her.

“Did you get it?” she asked.

He handed over the lighter. She took it and pressed her thumb against the bottom of the device. A small spark of flame spurted from the top, growing into a three centimeter long yellow orb of flame. It wouldn’t extinguish until Dorsey removed her finger, immune to wind or rain or anything that would douse it.

She bent over and grabbed a crumbled up wad of paper that someone had thrown on the street. It looked mostly dry and not too terribly trampled, but all that mattered was that it could catch fire. Ty hoped Reina was nimble enough to jump back from the flame. The disruptor field worked both ways. She wouldn’t know they were coming until the fire did its job.

The paper caught fire and Dorsey set it down at the base of the brick wall. It smoked and curled in on itself, but nothing seemed to be happening to the wall. A tiny piece of kindling couldn’t do anything to brick. It especially couldn’t make it hum and shiver like a scared prey animal.

But that was what was happening.

As the smoke climbed, the wall in front of them vibrated, the hum growing to a whine and then a shriek until it gave way with a giant pop and fizzled out completely, revealing a human woman no older than Dorsey, crouched against the real brick wall a few paces beyond where the disruptor had placed it. The hiding spot would have stood out if two supporting posts hadn’t created a crevasse just big enough for a person to creep into.

The fire kept burning for a few seconds after the field collapsed, but without anything else flammable near it, it died to embers and then little more than smoke. Reina vaulted over the hot remnants and into Dorsey’s arms. Dorsey clamped down around her and held her close while Ty surveyed the rest of the street.

No one was watching and no one seemed to notice that part of a building had just changed shape.

“Who’s that?” he heard Reina ask.

He turned around and looked her over. Her skin was much lighter than Dorsey’s and her blond hair fell flat down to her shoulders. The bruise over her eye had transformed from that red welt they’d seen over the comms to an ugly mass of purple and gray. It looked incredibly painful, but he knew humans could take a lot of damage.

Her bottom lip was swollen and cut, but she stood straight when she stepped back from his denya, and the rest of her seemed uninjured. As Stoan had noted, she wore a dark hooded robe and loose fitting black pants. At a sprint, she’d be little more than a dark blur.

“That’s Ty, he’s a friend,” Dorsey said. “We need to get you out of here and somewhere safe.”

“What about Haylio?” She sounded weak, broken. She’d just lost her husband and now her brother had been taken as well. But Ty knew that looks and words could be deceiving. She’d run from her attackers, hidden herself well, and called for help. A broken woman would have let herself be taken or killed. There was more to Reina than met the eye.

“We came straight here,” Dorsey told her. “Let’s go to our rooms and then call for help. Someone will go looking for him if we let the authorities know.”

He noticed that she didn’t say where their rooms were located.

But Reina was waving her personal communicator around, pointing intently at the screen. “You need to see this, I tried to send it to your account, but something blocked the transmission.”

“What is it?” Dorsey swung around and stood beside her.

Ty joined them. “Anyone can see us right here. We can watch it in the speeder with the privacy shield engaged.”

Reina looked at him like she wanted to argue, then she looked back to Dorsey for support. But Dorsey was already nodding. “Good idea, I already can feel eyes crawling all over me.”

It was probably just stress, but Ty knew the feeling.

The street was just as busy as it had been when they got there, which was to say not busy at all. Not more than ten minutes could have elapsed, but it felt like a lifetime. The speeder was parked in the same spot and looked undisturbed. Still, Ty held up a hand and did an inspection of the undercarriage and the doors before he let Dorsey or Reina touch the vehicle.

Something felt wrong. It might have been paranoia, but they didn’t call it paranoia when a person ended up in chunks on the street after an explosion.

Once he was satisfied, they climbed into the speeder. It was a tight fit, but they all huddled around in the front seat and set Reina’s communicator to hologram mode.

A light flickered, and then the screen resolved itself in front of them, a very alive Lex sitting there, smiling and waving from the cargo hold of his ship. “Hey, babe,” he said, his voice higher pitched than Ty expected. “I know I’m not supposed to be back here, but I didn’t think that you’d tell.”

He snickered to himself and Ty saw Reina wipe a tear from one eye. Dorsey’s arm came around her shoulders and she rubbed her gently, offering comfort.

Lex hitched himself onto a big red crate, and Ty could just make out a circular symbol with a triangle in it. It was stamped on several red crates within view of the holoprojection. “This is going to be the last run for a while. I got a sweet delivery deal, and after that it’s smooth sailing. I know you wouldn’t like it if I told you who gave me the job, but trust me, this is just business. Nothing to be afraid of.”

Reina wasn’t bothering to wipe away her tears anymore; she just let them fall.

“They gave me the flight path and clean papers, so it’s all going to be good. And they even gave me a little present for you.” He held his palm open and Dorsey gasped as she saw the shining pink stone. Lex winked and closed his fist. “Now keep quiet again. We’ll have a nice dinner when we—”

His speech was cut off by a blast and the holovid went black.

“That bastard,” Dorsey hissed.

Ty still didn’t have all the pieces, but he knew she wasn’t cursing her dead friend. “What is it?”

She looked at him, eyes glinting. “Droscus had Lex killed, and he tried to do the same to me.”