Burn

by Keri Arthur

We marched on. Weariness and hunger were now biting deep, but I resolutely ignored it. There was no other option; aside from the fact that we had no rations, this area wasn’t safe. Until we were, we had to keep moving.

  The moon had made its way through the stars, and the flags of sunrise were just beginning to spread across the sky when Kaiden held up a hand and stopped.

  I halted behind him and cocked my head to one side, listening intently. There was nothing that immediately suggested danger to me, but this wasn’t an area I knew. Even if it had been, the dangers I’d been familiar with would have changed in two hundred years.

  Again, disbelief rose. Or maybe it was more the desire to disbelieve rather than anything else. Because honestly, how was something like time travel even remotely possible? Magic could do the seemingly impossible at times—the Mareritt and the coruscation spheres had certainly proven that—but I seriously doubted even they were capable of such a feat. Besides, why would they want to throw even one of us so far into the future—a future they now controlled? It made no sense.

  But if it wasn’t magic, then what?

  I scrubbed a hand across my face, sending small flakes of dried blood flying. Maybe this really was one big nightmare. Maybe I’d wake up tomorrow safe and sound in my own apartment within Zephrine and have a good laugh about the absurdity of it all over a tankard or two with my friends.

  After another few seconds, Kaiden moved forward again. The trees thinned out, revealing a sweeping meadow of barely existing yellow grass and a broken farmhouse that had been more than half claimed by autumn-colored snake vines. Behind it were several outbuildings—one was more or less upright, but the smaller of the two leaned on such a precarious angle that the next big storm would surely blow it over.

  “I take it our transport’s waiting in one of those buildings?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  Again, it was a curt response. I rather suspected it would be easier to get information out of stone than the warrior ahead of me right now. “If the Mareritt patrol this area, why wouldn’t they regularly check those buildings? It seems an obvious stop point for escapees.”

  “They do check, but the vehicles we use wouldn’t raise much in the way of alarms.”

  Which didn’t fill me with a whole lot of confidence in our upcoming mode of transport. But then, I was kin. Any form of ground transport made me uncomfortable—especially if it was enclosed.

  I glanced at the brightening sky, half searching for the flash of red that would indicate a drakkon aloft. But there was nothing, and that was surprising. The first thing I’d have done in their situation was order all available drakkons into the area. But if their supply was limited and used more to control Arleeon’s population in fractious areas, then maybe they didn’t want to take the risk. Or perhaps they simply figured it would be easier to deploy the tanks and speeders once the tunnel had been cleared.

  At least the ground here was hard and the grass near dead; whether they used drakkons aloft or vehicles, our trail would be difficult to spot.

  The old farmhouse had been constructed out of greenstone, a hard-wearing rock that had been plentiful in the Argon region. Was that where we were? I didn’t know the area well, as it was located in the east of Arleeon, closer to Esan than Zephrine. It was—or had been—a cropping region, but the dryness of the soil and the fact that this vast field was abandoned suggested no crops had been grown in this area for years. Maybe even centuries.

  The wind sighed through the building’s broken windows and tugged at the remnants of metal sheeting that had once covered the entire roof. The sound echoed forlornly through the gathering brightness of the morning, emphasizing the lonely nature of this building out in the middle of nowhere. I wondered what had happened to the people who’d once lived and farmed this vast stretch of land. Wondered if the Mareritt had forced them elsewhere or if they’d fled to the safety of Esan. Like many other things right now, they were questions I had no answers to.

  “You’ll find clothing and food in the kitchen,” Kaiden said. “Go change while I check the vehicle.”

  I nodded and walked around the broken end of the building to the still-standing portion. The door was unlocked and scraped against the floor as I opened it. The sound bit across the silence, and deep in the shadows, tiny feet skittered away. I had no idea whether they were rodents or overly large bugs, but it did at least mean this area wasn’t as barren as it first seemed.

  I walked through the first room, past broken furniture and the remnants of an ornate mirror, into a kitchen that held little more than an old stove and a few cupboards. After a brief hesitation, I moved across to the sink and turned on the tap, which resulted in a loud, somewhat thumping squeal and brownish water spluttering out. I waited until it ran a little clearer, then rinsed the blood from my face and used my jacket sleeve to dry it. I checked the cupboards and then inside the old stove for the clothes Kaiden had mentioned, with no success. I frowned and glanced around again, studying the floor for anything that suggested there might be a concealed storage area, and then the roof. A small portion of plaster above the stove had come down, and there were a number of spiderweb-like cracks fanning out from it that suggested further collapse was imminent. I frowned and stepped a little closer. A small triangular portion of those cracks seemed less random than the others.

  I climbed onto the stove, threw a hand against the wall to steady myself as the thing rocked sideways under my weight, and then reached up and pressed my fingertips against the suspicious area. There was a soft click, and a section of wall slid silently to one side. I jumped down and discovered a storage area had been built within a largish cavity in the wall dividing the two rooms. Inside were not only neatly stacked piles of clothing, but dried rations, weapons, and ammunition.

  Footsteps echoed in the other room. I swung around and reached for the knife rather than my fire; in a place this old, and a region this dry, any spark could be disastrous. Kaiden appeared, his gaze sweeping me before coming to a halt on the hand clasping the knife. He raised an eyebrow, amusement briefly warming the chill from his eyes. “You were expecting someone else?”

  I released my grip and flexed my fingers. “Given I’m in a land that has altered beyond anything I recognize, caution is definitely warranted. Is the transport there?”

  He nodded. “It’s an old skid, though, so it’s going to be a slow journey anywhere.”

  I had no idea what a skid was and didn’t bother asking; I’d find out soon enough. I stepped back to give him room to enter the store, but his arm still brushed mine and an undefined sensation ran through me. It wasn’t so much awareness or even attraction—it was both more nebulous and yet far stronger than either of those. It certainly wasn’t something I’d felt before, and I had no idea what it meant. No idea whether it was a warning of some sort or simply a random reaction due to nothing more than the situation I’d quite literally fallen into.

  I frowned and followed him into the room. “How do you keep this place operational if the Mareritt run constant patrols through the area?”

  “We get regular updates on patrol positions, which enables us to work around them. It helps that the place looks and feels deserted.”

  He picked up what looked to be a miniature knife—one that had a grip little wider than half an inch and a thin blade with an odd hook at the end—and motioned toward my left wrist. I raised it and watched as he shoved the knife into the cuff’s old-fashioned keyhole and then pressed a button at the top of it. The cuff unlocked and clattered to the floor; once he’d repeated the process with his own, he picked up both cuffs and dumped them onto a shelf that held multiple others. No matter what I might have thought earlier, there’d obviously been plenty of escapees from Break Point Pass.

  “But if I found the entrance for this room so easily,” I said, “surely the likelihood of them doing so is—”

  “Quite low,” he cut in. “You had enough nous to expect a hidden room; they do not. And the vehicles we leave here c
an’t be started until the wiring is reattached. They wouldn’t think to do that.”

  “None of which sounds like the Mareritt I fought against.”

  “Presuming, of course, your memories of fighting against them are real rather than implanted.”

  False memories… A snippet escaped—that of a rescued kin whose story belied her later actions, resulting in chaos within Zephrine and her eventual death. What her actions were, I couldn’t say, but the fear in me increased. Her memories had proven to be false and her destructive actions devised by the Mareritt. “Is that what you think has happened? You think the Mareritt have replaced my memories in an effort to infiltrate Esan? Because you know how ridiculous that sounds, don’t you?”

  “Almost as ridiculous as you having been flung forward two hundred years through time.”

  Which was a good point. “Even if I was a plant—and I’m not, whether you want to believe it or not—why wouldn’t they rejig my memories for this time rather than a point so long ago?”

  He shrugged. “The Mareritt often do things that make no sense to the rest of us—like subverting Argon’s major water courses to use in the fishery farms and all but dooming what was once prime farmland to a slow death.”

  Meaning I’d guessed our location right. But fishery farms out here in Argon? Why not just use major fishing hubs like Holton? Or did they not control those centers? Not knowing this sort of stuff was possibly even more frustrating than the lack of full memory.

  “It’s still hard to believe they’d go to the trouble of reconstructing memories that would automatically engage distrust—”

  “Except there’s been a lot of unusual activity happening in the last few months,” he cut in again. “We’ve only vague reports to go on, as none of our informants live within the White Zone—”

  “The what?”

  “White Zone—it’s a restricted area totally occupied by the Mareritt. None of us can get anywhere near it—the Mareritt have a shoot-to-kill policy for any Arleeon found within its boundaries.”

  “How large is this White Zone?”

  “Large enough.” He glanced at me briefly. “New Zephrine lies within its boundaries.”

  “Why would they bother to rebuild Zephrine when it was built to guard against them?”

  He shrugged. “We presume it’s because they wanted a trade and dispersing hub close to both a seaport and Mareritten.”

  That seaport being Kriton, which—despite its closeness to the Mareritten border—had never been attacked, thanks in part to the presence of the aerie and drakkons but also the Mareritt’s aversion to sea travel.

  I frowned. “Zephrine had a full complement of land soldiers; it’s hard to believe they were overrun so easily.”

  “They weren’t. From what was gleaned from the few survivors, it was magic, not fighting numbers, that made the difference.”

  “Meaning they unleashed more coruscations?”

  “No. It was said that the air became so cold it froze everyone on the spot. The Mareritt then simply walked in and shattered each warrior.”

  Ice, it seemed, had been the Mareritt weapon of choice.

  “Was New Zephrine built on the remains of the old city? Or did they erase her entirely and start anew?”

  “It was rebuilt.” He hesitated. “Why?”

  “Just how destroyed is she?”

  “That I can’t say, because we can’t get into the White Zone.”

  “So it is possible the structures within the mountain and her foundations still exist.”

  “I guess—again why?”

  I shrugged. “Curiosity, and perhaps an unwillingness to believe that the place and the people so vivid in my memories were totally and utterly annihilated.”

  He grunted and pulled a shirt and a pair of trousers free from one of the stacks. “You’d better change out of that uniform and into these. It’ll garner too much attention even if people aren’t aware of its origin.”

  “Another fact that surprises me—why didn’t the Mareritt, at the very least, recognize the standard flight uniform of the kin?”

  He tossed the clothes toward me. “The Mareritt care not for history as far as I can see, so perhaps minor details such as the coloring of their enemy’s uniform are not as important as the fact they were defeated.”

  I caught the clothes and dumped them onto the nearby shelf. “Then what’s the point of me changing?”

  “No Arleeon living within occupied territories wears leather these days, let alone gold leather.”

  Which explained what he was wearing; it was camouflage. I stripped off my flight jacket and said, “Just so you know, my clothes are coming with me.”

  He frowned. “Why? It’s not like you’re ever going to need them again.”

  “Maybe.” I caught the end of my right glove and began to tug it off. The water had shrunk the leather, so it was somewhat tighter than usual. “But the uniform is fire-proofed and that might yet come—”

  The glove came off and the rest of the words froze in my throat. My hand was white. Not brown. White.

  Disbelief and shock stormed through me. For a moment, I could only stare at it. Then I hastily pulled off the other glove. That hand, too, was white.

  What in the wind’s name was going on?

  My expression must have matched my surging horror, because Kaiden quickly said, “What’s wrong?”

  I didn’t answer. I just spun and raced through the kitchen into the other room. Dust stirred with every step, creating an angry storm of brown that matched my confusion and growing sense of wrongness. Not just with this world, but with me. I slid to a halt next to one of the mirror shards and scooped it up. One edge sliced into my palm and red blood welled. At least that hadn’t changed.

  But everything else had.

  Because while the facial features in the mirror were mine, the skin, the hair, even the eyes of the person staring back were not. My coloring should have been the same as Kaiden’s, but the reflection was white-skinned, with blue-white hair and eyes such a pale blue there was only a small difference between the white and the iris. The crimson mote was the only thing that remained the same.

  It couldn’t be me. It just couldn’t...

  I reached out with a shaking finger; the reflection did the same. Fingertips met, separated only by glass.

  It wasn’t a joke. It wasn’t a game. The image in the mirror was me.

  The shard fell out of nerveless fingers, and my knees gave way. I staggered back and would have fallen if Kaiden hadn’t somehow moved fast enough to catch me.

  He lowered me to the floor and then squatted in front of me.

  “Deep breaths, Red.” He grabbed my hands, pressed them together, and started rubbing them. “You’re hyperventilating. You need to calm down.”

  “Can’t.” Not when all I could feel—all I could hear—was the roar of disbelief. “It’s wrong. It’s all wrong—”

  “And becoming unconscious isn’t going to make it better.” His voice was calm. Soothing. Gone was the abrupt terseness of before. “Just listen to me and concentrate on slowing your breathing. Take a deep breath in and hold.” He paused. “And now release.”

  I closed my eyes and rested the back of my head against the wall, listening to the soothing resonance of his voice and gradually managing to match my breathing to his.

  “Now,” he continued softly, “without getting all hysterical again, tell me what’s wrong.”

  “I wasn’t hysterical. Just shocked.” I opened my eyes but for several seconds did nothing more than stare at him. The words were stuck in my throat; as silly as it seemed, part of me just didn’t want to utter the unbelievable, as if by doing so, I’d somehow make the change irrevocable. I swallowed heavily and said, “I’m white. Actually, not just white, but Mareritt white.”

  “Yes, I know.” His dark brows drew down. “Why do you think I thought you were a Mareritt spy?”

  “I really had no idea, and it confused the hell out of me.” I drew
in a somewhat shuddery breath. “I guess it does explain why the woman in the pod drew back when I touched her.”

  “Yes.” He paused. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but… while it is possible for readers with enough psychic skill to implant or erase memories, utterly changing someone’s skin color is a different matter.”

  “Then why has it happened?”

  “I can’t tell you that.” His voice remained gentle; perhaps he feared anything louder might just break me.

  Truth be told, I definitely was feeling more than a little brittle. But the cause wasn’t anything he’d said or done; it was being hit by one impossibility after another. His presence was probably the only thing keeping me grounded.

  “But I’m a soldier not a doctor,” he continued. “It’s possible there’s some disease I don’t know about that can cause—”

  “This isn’t the result of some disease.” Of that I was sure, if nothing else. “I went into the coruscation one color and came out another, so something obviously happened within that place.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, then said, his voice as neutral as his expression, “You went into the coruscation?”

  “Everyone did. Everyone who could fly.” I hesitated. In truth, I couldn’t actually remember doing so. I could remember the ice that had surrounded Emri and me, but what if that hadn’t happened in the coruscation? What if we hadn’t been part of that main attack force? But if that were true, then what had changed? I’d certainly been part of it all when my sister had broached the idea to the council... I licked my lips and somehow said, “But you already knew that.”

  “Yes, but this is the first time you’ve said you were one of their number—and again, we’re presuming your memories are correct. We both know how unlikely that really is.”

  “I’m not a spy, Kaiden. I’m not Mareritt.”

  He hesitated again. “Look, I believe something very traumatic has happened to you. I believe the cut on your head hasn’t helped your memories. As to the rest—” He shrugged. “While it’s extremely rare—given the Mareritt aversion to our color and lack of extra fingers—there have been instances of half-breeds. They’re not treated kindly by any of us, so maybe abuse lies behind what you remember and what you don’t.”