Damn, and why was she stressing about her bleeding AR at a time like this when –
A stick cracked behind her, about eight paces to her left, and Nuri nearly started sprinting right then. Hold, hold …
Her chest was tight, and a prickle at the back of her throat made her want to cough. The desire to peek, to see who was there was strong, but if she moved, she’d give away her location for sure. Often the best thing to do in a stalking game was to remain absolutely motionless until you’d established whether the hunter had indeed found you – or so she hoped.
Thing was, it was getting lighter by the minute. Proper sunrise was in twelve minutes and thirty-two seconds. As her AR prompted.
Damn this thing. Mute.
Low voices to her right.
They were homing in on her, she was certain. Damn, damn, damn.
Her calf muscles cramped from her hunching for so long. If only she could stretch –
An object thunked into the ground a hair’s breadth from the toe of her right running shoe. A moment passed before she registered that it was an arrow – like the ones they’d used during archery practice. The same green fletching.
Thunk.
This next arrow hit the thin young tree trunk behind her, spattering her skin with a few fragments of bark.
Go! It wasn’t so much a word as an impulse that shoved her to her feet, coming from deep within.
Nuri didn’t wait to find out where the next arrow would strike; she was up and off, speeding through the underbrush, jumping over rocks and weaving between trunks. Voices rang out behind her, to her side. She ducked and weaved, faster than everyone else. People crashed towards her through the vegetation, but then she boosted herself up a stony ridge, up a rock face, then skylined along the crest of the outcrop before she leapt to the ground, rolled twice along the path and started running again.
Judging from the confusion behind her, they still thought her atop the ridge.
This was easier than she’d expected. Despite the idiot with the bow and arrow. Nuri allowed herself a fierce grin.
It felt good to open up, feel her muscles pushed, the crisp air searing her lungs. That’s what she’d been missing all this time, the thrill of actual danger.
A dim part of her was shocked that someone had shot at her with a weapon, with deadly intent, but that was no different from all those occasions when she’d had lasers fired at her. She’d been burnt a few times. Hells, those scars she’d carry forever.
Ahead of her, the trees began to thin out, and between the pale trunks she could see the first of the training fields with the obstacles all set up. Joy flared up in her. She was totally doing this, she was win–
All the breath was knocked out of her in a whoosh as she and a heavy body collided and flew sideways, tumbling down a muddy embankment. Her world greyed out for what felt like an eternity, and then she dragged in a ragged breath. By some peculiar means, the ground had come to stop. And it hurt as if a pandor had kicked her in the chest.
A heavy arm was flung over her torso, pressing her down as she tried to sit up. She gazed right into the grinning face of one of the older boys. Stefan, she thought. And no, she wasn’t going to query the AR to find out if her assumption was correct. His dorm was on the ground floor. A friend of Byron’s.
“Gotcha!” His grin was so sickeningly wide she feared his face would split in half.
“Ugh.” Nuri flopped back.
On the bright side, she hadn’t been skewered by an arrow. At least there was that.
13
“You did your best,” Mei said.
They were making their way back to the dormitories and wonderfully hot showers now that the figurative dust had settled after Nuri’s capture. She couldn’t help but feel bitter. She’d been so damned close; the field had been in sight.
“My best wasn’t good enough,” she bit back. “If this had been real life, I would be dead. I was careless. I thought I was fast enough!”
“Speed isn’t everything,” Mei conceded.
“I know that!”
F’Thr caught up with them and slung an arm over Nuri’s shoulder. “Ah, but you had them good for a bit. If it’s any consolation, even Byron can’t best Stefan.”
“I heard that!” Byron called from a few paces behind them.
Stefan. So that was her captor’s name. The triumph writ all over the boy’s face had been as sickening as her disappointment. She was better than that.
Tell them.
Nuri wasn’t certain if it was her own conscience, but she halted in her tracks so abruptly Byron barely avoided bumping into her.
“Hey!” he said.
Mei turned around, clasped both Nuri’s wrists. Concern furrowed her brow. “Are you all right?”
Nuri didn’t want to talk about the arrows, about the archer who’d almost skewered her.
It’s not an admission of weakness. Tell your friends.
The words touched her with a rush of affection, and she reached after them even as they faded. The Seed. Could it be? Truly?
“Nuri?” Mei shook her gently. “You’ve gone all spacey on us. Are you sure you didn’t knock your head on a rock or something?”
Nuri blinked slowly, gazing into Mei’s brown eyes.
“There’s more. But” – Nuri cast about at the other recruits passing them along the edge of the field – “we can’t talk here.” She wet her lips, studying her fellows. No one else was observing her and her little group, so far as she could see. “It’s serious.”
Byron rubbed at his shoulders. “I’m bloody freezing. Can I suggest that we get cleaned up and meet in our dorm room we’re done?”
“No, we can talk now,” Mei said. “Come.”
She led them to the benches where visitors sat to watch events on the fields.
Nuri hated that she was dragging her friends into this, but she’d learnt her lesson that time with Stasja – about what happened when she let things be.
She sat with Mei on her left, F’Thr wedged in on her right, and Byron crouched before her. This didn’t look at all suspicious, did it? Damn it, let her mysterious would-be assassin see this. Let them know that Nuri wasn’t without teeth, and she had allies.
“Okay. While I was hiding in the forest, someone took pot shots at me with a bow and arrows.”
“Ancestors, Nuri, are you all right?” Mei studied her intently. “You didn’t get hurt?”
“Just got the wind knocked out of me when Stefan caught me. I’m fine, really. The archer’s aim was off. I don’t think they were very good.”
“This is really very bad,” Byron growled. “We should tell the facilitators.”
“And then what?” snapped F’Thr. “The idiots will just be driven underground.”
“No one can remove the archery equipment without permission, right?” Nuri asked.
“No,” Byron said.
“I could make some inquiries …” F’Thr said.
“Hacking the AI? Not a good idea.” Mei shook her head. “You forget the debacle with the swamp-jiggers.”
“Hey, you forget,” F’Thr interjected. “I don’t actually want to be here, remember? If I get booted out for a serious enough transgression, I’ll be happier than a rat in a bowl of custard.”
“Eh?” Nuri. “A rat in custard? Why’ve I not heard –”
“I just made that up on the spot, all right?” F’Thr flapped his tentacles at everyone. “Besides, if my expulsion was the result of me doing something awesome …”
“It’s a terribly wannabe idiomatic expression,” Mei muttered.
“All right,” Byron said, “so figure out who checked out the equipment. What do we do then? We can’t confront them.”
“I’ll go speak to Raphel,” Nuri said. “I shouldn’t have got you involved.”
Mei clutched her hand. “No, you did the right thing. We needed to know, so we can protect you.”
“I’m more trouble than what I’m worth.” Nuri hunched her shoulders, t
rying to make herself smaller.
“Don’t you start with that defeatist nonsense,” Mei said. “Self-sabotage is the worst.”
“I hate that even just my being here is causing trouble for everyone!”
“Well, that’s just how it goes. There’s a reason why the facilitators are pretty much tying themselves in knots just to keep you here, don’tcha think,” F’Thr said. “You do realise my aunt called, audio and visual, just to ask if I was all right still being here. That the family had reconsidered my situation after the whole debacle with Stasja. That they were concerned that people might question why we had one of our own in such a dangerous place. With all the scandal about psi attacks and such.” His facial tentacles retracted in distaste at that last word.
Nuri turned and stared at him. “But you don’t even want to be here.”
“And you know what I told her?” His eyes went wide, the pupils huge. “I told her that I was fine. That I’d changed my mind. And there are no deplorables here, unless they consider the privileged snots who like stirring trouble where it’s not necessary. I’d rather be expelled for having done something right than just giving up.”
“Wow.” Mei sat back. “That was quite a speech, F’Thr.”
“Hells, colour me impressed.” Byron forced them all to scoot up so he could sit next to Mei. “But that’s not going to solve our current dilemma. We need to figure out what to do about our would-be assassin.”
“Obviously it’s Vella,” Nuri said with more bitterness than she’d intended.
Mei sighed. “We don’t know that.”
“It’s perfectly obvious,” F’Thr said. “We just have to dig up the evidence.”
Byron cleared his throat. “We should do what we can. Go speak to Raphel, Nuri. I’ll go with F’Thr to snoop around the archery equipment.”
“And me?” an indignant Mei asked.
“You’re a nice, sweet person,” Byron said. “No one will suspect a thing if you discreetly ask a few questions to find out if anyone’s mouthing off.”
“Where I’m safely out of the way.” She was most certainly miffed.
Byron toed a leaf that lay on the ground. “We each need to play to our strengths.”
“Not just a pretty face then,” F’Thr quipped, which earned him a slap from both Mei and Byron.
Nuri laughed, and a measure of heaviness lifted from her. She couldn’t figure out who F’Thr had aimed that last comment at either.
“Thanks, guys. I appreciate this.”
“We need you in one piece.” F’Thr locked eyes with her. “You’re the next avatar, I have absolutely no doubt. Why do you think the others are fighting so hard to get you out of the running? You’ve got them scared spitless.”
His evident faith in her was charming, but then a cool wave of apprehension made her sit back with a gasp. She wanted to argue back, but deep down inside, she dared herself to believe. What else could she do?
* * *
“Can we talk?” Nuri had almost lost her nerve several times on her way to seek Raphel.
Now he sat at one of the tables in the common room, busy with his AR, fingers dancing in the air before him as he moved tabs and pages only he could see. He blinked twice and his gaze focused on Nuri.
His smile was broad. “And here we have our little scout.”
A few heads turned to observe Nuri and Raphel, and she wished the floor would swallow her.
Ever astute, Raphel rose. “Shall we go for a stroll out on the grounds then, luv?”
Relieved, she nodded, and fell into step next to him as they padded out the double doors.
“You did good, all things considered,” Raphel said once they were outside.
“It was still a failure,” she mumbled.
“Hardly. You forget that Stefan’s a Military brat. A long, long pedigree there, plus augmentation. To be fair, I’d have been more surprised if you had gotten past him.”
“Doesn’t that make him a better candidate for the Seed than me?” Nuri shoved her hands in her pockets and tried to keep her expression as mild as possible. She couldn’t quite suppress the little hook in her voice, though. Bitter disappointment.
Raphel threw back his head and laughed. “That lad’s as dead as a lump of poured stone in terms of psi-cognition. You’re way ahead of him.”
Nuri shot Raphel a sharp look, which he caught. That smile of his didn’t fade.
“You’re not going to win every battle. But if you’re clever, you’re going to use the friction from your setbacks to overcome your inertia and become a stronger, more well-rounded avatar. It won’t serve you to be complacent.”
“Is that what this was all about?”
He shrugged. “Mayhaps.”
“You behave as if me bonding with the star-jumper is a foregone conclusion.”
Another shrug.
Nuri wet her lips, her stomach turning over at the thought of talking about the attempt on her life. For there was no mistaking the archer’s intent – it had been a serious attempt. “It’s going to upset a lot of people if I succeed.”
“It would upset a lot of people no matter who bonded. The Military would point fingers and call out the Elders for abusing their class privileges. The Elders’ lineages would complain that the Merchanters were once again trying to buy their position ahead of everyone else. The Artisan class always grumbles that they never have any opportunities while the Academics waste time trying to prove that one side or another isn’t relevant.”
“Ancestors forbid a crim beats them all,” Nuri said bitterly.
“Perhaps it’s time the old order gets a bit stirred up.” Raphel stopped and turned his face to the sun, which wasn’t doing much to shrug off its shroud of cloud. “It’s such a lovely winter’s day, don’t you think?”
They stood on the track that ran along the perimeter of the field closest to the forest. Nuri couldn’t help but shiver looking at the pilaar with the clumps of gauze-berry bushes surrounding the trunks. Not even an hour ago she’d been running for her life, and now she stood here yet again.
“When I was hiding in the forest this morning, waiting …” Nuri cleared her throat. “Someone was stalking me. They knew where I was, but they didn’t try to … They –”
This next bit went against absolutely everything she’d ever known, to admit that she couldn’t handle a situation herself. The kind of stunt that would have made her the laughingstock of Vadith’s pack.
“Someone tried to shoot me with an arrow – like the arrows we had in training the other day.”
Raphel spun towards her. “What? Where?”
“Come, I’ll show you.” Nuri took off through the forest, gratified that the man followed her.
The tricky thing was that now, on her way back in, with the ground so disturbed from all the others who’d been searching for her this morning, it was difficult for Nuri to find the exact spot. She navigated by the density of the forest, the particular shapes of the rocky outcrops, until she recognised the copse of saplings in which she’d hidden.
There. Where the soft imprint of her soles had disturbed the leaf litter, the particular indentation of the toe, the spot where her palm had pressed down on the ground as she crouched.
No arrow. Of course not.
Nuri cast about until she found the second arrow’s telltale mark in the truck of a thin sapling.
Raphel nodded as she pointed at the spot where a sharp object had been withdrawn.
“Any idea who might be behind this?” she asked.
“Nope, but some of those families will hold grudges.”
“It’s one thing slamming me down a staircase, hoping I’ll break my neck. This” – Nuri jabbed a finger at the ground – “is so obviously attempted murder that it can’t even be excused.” Her chest started to heave with the effort of speaking. Why was she losing her composure now, of all times? The weight of the morning’s events was pressing into her from all sides, and she fought hard to keep her mask of cool from slippi
ng.
Raphel regarded her calmly. “I understand.”
“Do you?” She hated the way her voice shrilled, as if she was a little child throwing a tantrum.
He hissed out a breath. “When I joined the military, I was practically an orphan. I didn’t have a fancy patron who paid my way. I was one of the scholarship students, promising enough that they’d give me the opportunity. Improve the gene pool, so to speak.” Raphel gave a humourless bark of laughter. “Much like you, in a way,” he added.
“You weren’t a barrens crim.” Nuri didn’t bother softening the acid in her words.
He shrugged, his smile skew. “True, but there was still an upheaval. Similar to what you’ve gone through. Except I wasn’t special enough to warrant intervention. The bullying was the sort that flew under the scanners, so to speak. The kind of stuff if I complained about, would just make me look weak, spoilt. So, I sucked it up. And I sucked it up. Turned the other cheek. Thought if I pretended like it didn’t matter, they’d eventually get tired and leave me alone.”
“This is supposed to be a lesson for me?” Nuri asked.
“Merely an illustration. Sometimes the assholes don’t give up. They’ll carry on, escalating. Until someone cracks.”
“I’d bet that you were not ever in danger of killing someone merely by thinking.”
A small frown creased the centre of Raphel’s brow, and he clenched his hands into fists then relaxed them. “You can hurt someone with your bare hands, Nuri.” He spoke so quietly a chill ran up her arms.
“What happened?”
“These hands …” He held out his palms to her. The skin was lighter than the rest of him. “What do you see when you look at these hands?”
“Fingers. Your point?” Nuri hugged herself. It was cold here in the shade beneath the trees. She had a vague idea of where he was going with his story, and she didn’t like it much.
“Hands are an amazing result of evolution. The Progenitors really struck on a good design when they seeded the galaxy. Hands can grasp, can turn, shape. They can support. They can kill.” He clenched both hands then dropped his arms to his sides.
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