Mirage

by Jenn Reese

  “Aluna,” he said. He had no head wrap. His straight dark hair streamed behind him like a black sash.

  She stumbled toward him. No wounds. She didn’t see any wounds. The blood must be from the others. “Are you okay?”

  He nodded. “It’s Tayan. She’s hurt.”

  Aluna pulled her eyes away from him and looked down. Tayan lay beside him. He’d been shading her face with his shadow.

  “The others attacked,” Dash said. “They belong to Weaver Sokhor. They tried to murder us. They were going to tell the khan that I killed Tayan. That I killed his daughter.”

  She knelt by Tayan and dropped her ear to the Equian’s mouth. “She’s still alive.”

  “They got the first blow. The dishonorable one,” Dash said. “We got the rest.”

  Aluna searched Tayan for the wound and found it. A deep puncture dangerously close to her heart.

  “Berrin got away,” Dash said. “He will spread lies about us as soon as he gets to the settlement. Sokhor wants to hurt the khan. He wants to weaken him with grief.”

  “Berrin will never get there,” she said. “He’s dead. You got him, too.”

  “Good,” Dash said, and sat back on his heels. Aluna glanced at him and saw clouds in his eyes. He’d killed before — some of the Upgraders in the HydroTek dome had died. Was this the first time he had killed one of his own?

  She said nothing but began to rummage through the packs tied to Tayan’s back. “Help me remove these. We need to lighten her burden. Maybe she has medical supplies in here somewhere.”

  Dash snapped out of his reverie. “Yes, of course. She always has supplies. She is ridiculous that way. I do not know why I failed to think of that.”

  I know, Aluna thought, looking at the sword still gripped tightly in his hand.

  They found bottles and ointments and bandages, and Dash set to work applying them. Aluna had never been much for tending wounds, not even her own. She headed over to the other Equian and began sifting through his supplies. More food, more water. Two knives. A compass. Special tools for making fire without wood. She took it all but left the bedding and extra clothes. Tal couldn’t carry much more.

  “Traitors!” Tayan breathed.

  Aluna looked up and saw Tayan struggling to lift her head.

  “Slow,” Dash said. “They are dead. The traitors are dead.”

  The panic washed out of her eyes, and she sighed. She groaned and touched her wound. “I should have known,” she hissed. “I should have insisted on bringing only warriors loyal to my father.”

  Dash finished taping a bandage around her shoulder. She’d have to keep the whole arm immobile to stop the gash from reopening. “Can you stand?”

  She nodded. “With help.”

  Aluna called to Tal. The horse had been keeping her distance, but now she stepped carefully into place beside Tayan.

  “Thank you,” Aluna whispered to her. Tal didn’t like the Equians of Shining Moon. Or at least she didn’t trust them. But Tal understood life and death, and she knew what she had to do.

  Tayan gripped Tal’s mane with her good arm, while Dash supported her on the other side. From what Aluna had seen, horses never looked graceful when they tried to stand. Wounded Equians were so much worse. Tal grunted as Tayan cursed and pulled herself up.

  “Careful,” Dash said. “Try not to reopen the wound.”

  “Of course I am trying not to aggravate the wound,” Tayan said bitterly, then added, “My apologies. My anger is not with you.”

  “Be as angry as you need to be — just get to your feet,” Aluna said. “We’re shark meat if we can’t get you walking.”

  Another few curses and Tayan got all four hooves underneath her. Aluna and Dash lifted, Tayan pulled on Tal, and the Equian managed to stand.

  “Keep hold of Tal,” Aluna said. “You’re likely to be dizzy.”

  As she finished speaking the words, Tayan stumbled forward and almost toppled over again.

  “The desert spins,” she said.

  “Here, water. Drink as much as you can.” Aluna handed her the canteen. Tayan sipped carefully at first, then lifted her head and gulped.

  “The sun climbs,” Dash said. “We should start moving.”

  “No,” Tayan said, handing the water canteen back to Aluna. “We must bury the dead. These men were Shining Moon.”

  “Shining Moon who tried to kill you,” Aluna said. “We’re not wasting our energy, our water, or our time on them. Not when we need every minute we have to find shelter.”

  “I agree,” Dash said. “We have no idea how long it will take us to cross the desert.”

  “We know exactly how long,” Tayan said. “It took us six hours to ride here. It will take us slightly longer to get back. We have more than enough supplies.”

  Aluna looked at Dash. He shrugged and gave her a small grin. She felt her face break into a smile in return. “Tayan, we’re not going back to Shining Moon,” Aluna said firmly. “Dash will be killed, and you’re too weak to make the journey on your own. We must go forward.”

  “Never!” Tayan said. “I must warn my father. I will go back by myself if I must.” She let go of Tal and clomped forward. Her legs wobbled, and she fell to her forelegs in the sand. “Uhhh . . .”

  “Easy,” Dash said. He put a hand to her head. “Fever. And I have already given her all of our painkillers.”

  Aluna stood near Tayan as the Equian struggled to stand again. “Listen,” she said. “I understand what it’s like to think you’re in charge and then find out that you aren’t, but it’s happening to you now.”

  “I must —”

  “No. No arguments,” Aluna said. “Dash and I are making the decisions. We’ll find someplace safe to get you fixed up, and we’ll find some way to get word back to Shining Moon. Our friends are back there, too. We won’t forget. But now, and until we say otherwise, you’ll listen to us.”

  Tayan wanted to fight. Aluna could see it all over her pale, bloodless face. But the woman was also feverish and dizzy and suffering and seemed to realize that she’d lost.

  “Good,” Aluna said. “Now, you hang on to Tal. Dash and I will walk alongside.” She turned to Dash. “We’re east of Shining Moon. What direction do we walk?”

  He looked up and studied the sun. “Southeast,” he said. “I may have some allies in that direction. They won’t care that Shining Moon has condemned me to death.”

  Tayan snorted. “Then they cannot be honorable allies, to ignore desert law without care.”

  “Equian law is not desert law,” Dash said easily. He could have said more — Aluna saw it in his eyes — and yet he didn’t. His restraint seemed to vex Tayan all the more.

  She wanted to ask about these allies, too, but not in front of Tayan. It would be so much easier if they could just let her go back to Shining Moon. She and Dash could make good time riding Tal without a wounded Equian to care for.

  But letting Tayan have her way would kill her, and Aluna didn’t want her to die. Tayan had told them how to save Dash and had risked everything to carry out her part of the plan. Aluna could do no less for Tayan now.

  “Dash, there are extra clothes for you in Tal’s pack,” Aluna said. “And I’m sure you need food and water, too.”

  “I can wait on the food and water, but not the clothes,” he said. He walked around Tayan but stopped when he stood in front of Tal. “Thank you for your assistance, friend,” he said to her. Then he touched his fingers to his heart and bowed as low as she’d ever seen him bow. Tal responded by huffing air into his face. Dash smiled. “It’s good to see you again, too.”

  When Dash had once again tied his hair into its accustomed tail and donned his head wrap, they set off. Slower than Aluna wanted, but probably faster than was good for Tayan.

  Tayan walked between Tal and Dash, protected on both sides. Aluna floated around, first walking next to Tal, then finding her way to the other side of Dash. His mood seemed lighter now; his eyes held more spark. She guesse
d that surviving a death sentence might make you playful as a porpoise, even under bad circumstances.

  “Thank you,” he said when she fell in beside him. “For rescuing me.”

  “It wasn’t just me. Hoku was brilliant, and so was Calli,” she said. “Besides, I haven’t rescued you yet. Not entirely.”

  “Yes,” he said. “You have.”

  They kept walking, and despite everything, Aluna felt light as a bubble rising in the waves.

  “FINGERS!” Rollin yelled for the third time.

  Hoku pulled his hand off the sheet of metal just as the slicing light cut through it.

  “You’re too far away to use the slicer. Too far away up here,” Rollin said, tapping her temple. “Do something else. Something not involving sharp, pointed, hot, or otherwise dangerous tools. Unless maybe you want to design new fingers next?”

  He sighed and shut off the slicer. It was almost dusk, but Tayan and the other Equians hadn’t returned. They should have been back hours ago. A net of anxiety had fallen on the whole settlement. Everyone was talking about what might have happened.

  Well, everyone except Rollin. She’d assigned Hoku a series of mindless tasks: cut strips of metal, coil wire, uncoil wire, solder strips of metal back together. She didn’t seem to care about Tayan or Dash or much of anything besides the tech in her tent. But he had to admit, he’d have gone wild with worry if she hadn’t kept him so busy.

  Rollin stood hunched at the desk dedicated to “fiddly bits and micro-making”— the place where she worked on tiny tech. Once she started a new project, she could focus on it for days. He made sure to bring her food and water when she got like that. And to sneak as many looks over her shoulder as he could.

  Now, released from his senseless slicing duties, he surveyed the room, looking for something harmless to occupy his time. He spotted a squat machine covered in loose wires hunkered at the back of a table. It had the same configuration of knobs that Calli’s radio had, plus a keyboard, a viewscreen, and a few more knobs of various shapes and sizes. Was it some sort of communication device?

  He made a path to the table by moving three sacks of miscellaneous parts, a humming machine with no apparent purpose, and a stack of old, crumbly suntraps. The wires strewn across the machine were buried in sand and dust and seemed impossibly knotted. He lifted the whole mess of them off the artifact and dropped them to the floor.

  “Commbox,” Rollin said without looking up from her work. “Most of the settlements got ’em. Smaller units than those in the big cities. Not that useful when you only have one. Talking to yourself gets old, yeah?” She laughed at her own joke. Apparently that part of talking to yourself never got old.

  “So it works?” He reached over and twisted a knob. The commbox whirred to life, sputtered, and choked back to silence.

  “Nope,” Rollin said.

  He rolled his eyes. She loved to answer his questions when he already knew the answer. He was probably supposed to learn to stop asking dumb questions that way, but so far, it hadn’t worked.

  A quick examination of the commbox led him to a series of tiny screws keeping the faceplate in place. He headed back into the chaos to look for a screwdriver small enough to fit.

  A shadow fell across the tent’s entrance flap. “It’s Calli. May I come in?”

  Hoku smiled. Hearing Calli’s voice still did that to him.

  Rollin huffed. “Why not? The basic’s no good to me or himself today. Not without a brain.”

  Calli lifted the flap and entered. “Oh, it’s very . . . full . . . in here.” She tried to snug her wings to her back, but it was no use. If she moved around too much, she’d be knocking gizmos off their ceiling hooks and toppling them off their precarious stacks.

  “Hey,” Hoku said. He tried to make it no big deal. That’s what Aluna’s brothers always did — they pretended they didn’t care one way or another if the girl they liked paid attention to them.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” Calli said. “The khan has sent out a search party. I . . . thought you should know that I told them what direction to look.”

  “Good,” he said. “I’m glad they’re doing something. I feel so useless.”

  Rollin snorted.

  “What are you working on?” Calli asked, pointing at the newly visible artifact. “Looks like a commbox. We have one of those at Skyfeather’s Landing.”

  “You do? Do you know how it works? Can you help me fix it?” Barnacles. He’d channeled Aluna’s brothers for approximately thirty seconds before lapsing back into himself.

  “Ours hasn’t needed fixing since I’ve been alive,” Calli said. “We only turned it on a few times a year, to talk to the Aviar colony in Talon’s Peak. But it can’t be much different from my radio, and I got that working by myself.”

  “Don’t you have to get back to Dantai?” Hoku asked. He hadn’t meant the question to sound so . . . well, the way it sounded — equal parts jealous and afraid.

  Calli tilted her head, clearly uncertain about what his question really meant. “Dantai and most of the others are preparing for the Thunder Trials. Even the khan is on the practice field — although I wouldn’t want to be his sparring partner. Not until Tayan returns.”

  Rollin turned. “The khan fights? At his age? Ridiculous! What fresh foolishness is this?”

  “Dantai and Tayan were supposed to champion Shining Moon in the Thunder Trials, at least in the warrior arts. But Weaver Sokhor convinced the council that it would better display their strength, and bring more honor to the herd, if the khan himself took up his sword.”

  “Weaver Sokhor wants the khan dead,” Hoku said. “No one will argue if High Khan Onggur does it in the middle of a contest.”

  “Hold your tongue, or someone will chop it out for you,” Rollin hissed. “What you say is true, and all the more dangerous for being so. Think the thoughts, boy, but don’t let them reach your mouth.”

  Hoku’s face flushed with heat, but he only nodded.

  Calli lowered her voice when she spoke again. “I heard Dantai say that some of the messenger birds are missing. I wonder . . . if a certain weaver might already be in contact with the High Khan or Scorch.”

  Rollin sighed. “That’s not much better, girl, but points for effort. Don’t either of you go into spying.” She turned back to her fiddly-bits work. “Truth has a way of showing itself. Suppose we’ll see for ourselves soon enough.” And then Rollin fell back into her work. She may as well have disappeared off the face of the Above World, for all she paid attention after that.

  “Come on,” Hoku said. “I’ve got a screwdriver. Let’s see what’s inside the commbox.”

  Calli nodded and carefully maneuvered to the table. As they bent to work, Hoku remembered their time together at Skyfeather’s Landing, when he’d just discovered the immense possibilities of Above World tech and Calli had been there to get him started down the right paths. For the first time the entire day, his body relaxed. Aluna was out there somewhere, alive. He knew it. And if she was alive, there was a good chance that Dash and Tayan were, too. He needed to let go of the worry. To focus on the things he could control. He needed to learn as much about tech and artifact-making as he could. He and Calli needed to figure out the bizarre twists and turns of Shining Moon politics. And together, they had to find some way to help Shining Moon beat Red Sky in the Thunder Trials, so they could kick Scorch and Karl Strand out of the desert.

  But for now he let himself be in the moment. He had tech at his fingertips, just itching to be fiddled with, and he had Calli at his side — talking fast, biting her lip, being brilliant, and smelling like feathers and sunshine, no matter what time of day it was. He’d been so uncertain of everything since they got to Shining Moon, so sure Dantai would sweep Calli away with his muscles and braids and “I know what it’s like to be a leader” talk.

  And maybe he still would. But that didn’t change what was important between Hoku and Calli. That didn’t hurt their friendship at all. Nothing could.
>
  He finished with the last screw, and Calli helped him lift the face off the commbox. They set it down behind them on the wobbly stack of cracked suntraps.

  Calli began pointing at parts immediately. “That’s the transmitter, I’m almost positive,” she said. “And this is the receiver. Or at least it should be. The transmitter sends our voices to an ancient artifact floating in the sky, which bounces them to other places. The receiver is our ears. It hears whatever someone else sends to the sky artifact. We should check for loose wires first — that would be the easiest problem to fix. And then we should double-check the power source. If it’s spotty, it could be causing a short when you turn it on. . . .”

  He smiled and dug into the tech, testing wires and pushing parts more firmly into place. He interrupted Calli with a few ideas of his own but in general was happy to let her voice wash over him like waves at high tide.

  IT TOOK HOKU AND CALLI three days to get the commbox working. It turned on and off when they wanted it to, and they were able to talk into its audio input and hear their voices on Calli’s radio when they aligned the frequencies. Whether it worked across vast distances would remain a mystery.

  Calli shut the machine off with a sigh. “Better save the energy for something more useful.”

  “That’s thinking with your head. Good bird,” Rollin said.

  “No. Leave it on,” Hoku said. “There’s almost no chance we’ll hear anything, but if it’s off, that chance drops to zero. It’s worth the energy. I’ll go without a fan, or whatever I need to. But please, leave it on.” He reached over and turned the knob. The dull hum of fuzzy noise made him breathe easier.

  Rollin put down her tools and looked up at him. “That sounds like thinking with your head, but it’s really thinking with your heart.”

  Hoku stuck out his chin. “What’s wrong with that?”

  “Nothing,” she said with a shrug. “Just a rare thing to see — thought I ought to point it out.”

  Three days. The search parties had come back covered in sweat, half dead from dehydration. The iron trail that Tayan left had long since been blown away, but it didn’t matter. Aluna had the only metal scanner calibrated for iron. Without it, the searchers had no chance. It was like trying to find a single specific shell on the vast ocean floor.