Burn

by Keri Arthur

  Annoyance surged, and I pulled my hands from his. But in truth, would I have said or acted any different had our positions been reversed? If I were being at all honest, no. Despite my earlier threat to tie him to Emri’s leg and haul him into Zephrine, we’d had plenty of problems with the Mareritt and their magically leashed spies—

  The thought ground to a halt. False memories. Implanted orders. Was that what had happened to me? Had I somehow been caught by the Mareritt and turned into some kind of weapon against my own people?

  It certainly made just as much sense as anything else right now.

  I ran a hand across my eyes, smearing sticky warmth. I swore softly and scrubbed the blood from my face with the sleeve of my undershirt. Then, in a probably futile effort to find some remnant of my true color, pushed it all the way up my arm. The skin to my elbow was white, but it changed to a murky cream past that, and then gradually became a darker shade near my shoulder. I hastily tugged the end of the shirt free from my pants and saw brown skin patched with splotches of lighter brown and cream.

  “At least some of me retains the color I was born with,” I muttered.

  “Which to me suggests a medical problem rather than outside intervention.” He rose and offered me his hand again. “We need to get moving.”

  I let him pull me upright. He didn’t immediately release me; instead, his gaze scanned me critically before he said, “Are you all right?”

  I couldn’t help a somewhat bitter smile. “No, but I’m not going to collapse on you again.”

  “Good. Let’s go get changed.”

  He stepped to one side and motioned me to proceed. I rather suspected he didn’t really believe my statement that I wasn’t about to faint—and that only made me wonder if the strength of Esan’s fighting women had disappeared right along with the drakkons they rode. Maybe there were in fact no true kin left; if the Mareritt had gone after both kin and drakkons, I guessed it was possible, given it was only ever women who bonded with and rode the drakkons—a fact that had been true since the first ancestor had shared blood and fire with the drakkons and had forever bound her line to theirs.

  And yet, Kaiden knew about the eye mote, so there had to be some kin blood left in this age.

  Once back in the storeroom, I grabbed a medikit from the shelf and tended to the cut on my hand as well as the various other wounds scattered about my body. Then I shucked off my boots and stripped off my pants and tried to ignore the deepening sense of disbelief when I saw a similar gradient of color slipping up my legs from my toes. Once I’d pulled on the rough woolen pants, I reached for the knife, but before I could strap the sheath on, Kaiden said, “Don’t.”

  I glanced at him, one eyebrow raised in query.

  “Any sort of visible weaponry will get you arrested,” he added.

  I frowned. “So how did you attack the supply train if you didn’t have weapons?”

  “Even I’m not reckless enough to move into the occupied territory without access to guns.” His amusement was evident in the creases that briefly touched the corners of his blue eyes. “We have caches and safe houses placed in strategic locations.”

  And no doubt those locations would be strategically changed on a regular basis in an effort to prevent informants causing major damage to the supply depots.

  I tucked the knife sheath into the waistband of my pants close to my spine, tightened the drawstring to ensure it stayed in place, and then tugged the shirt over the top to hide it.

  Kaiden plucked a small tub from a shelf holding a number of hand tools and tossed it to me. “Use this on your hair.”

  I pried the lid open. The stuff inside was foul smelling and pitch-black. “What is it?”

  “Grease. The smell will fade after a few hours.”

  “What is the point of staining my hair when my skin color gives the game away?”

  “Black hair suggests a generational gap; quarter bloods are treated a little more kindly than half-bloods.”

  I grunted, scooped some up, and carefully applied it. He tossed me a towel to wipe the excess off and nodded in satisfaction at the result. “At least now you’re not going to instantly alienate everyone.”

  His tone suggested that even with the staining, I wasn’t going to be welcome in many establishments. I plucked a bedroll from the shelf, rolled my pants and jacket into it, and then tied it off and tossed it over my shoulder. Kaiden repeated the process to conceal the band we’d pried off Oma.

  He must have sensed my curiosity, because he said, “We had no idea the bands were the means by which the Mareritt controlled the drakkons. Now that we do know, we might be able to find a means of disrupting the signal between the devices and the Mareritt. It could just give us the edge we’ve desperately needed.”

  “Then we’d better hope that if we’re pulled over by a Mareritt patrol, they don’t think to inspect the maggoty-looking bedrolls.”

  “They generally don’t.” He reached for a backpack and tossed extra clothes and rations in it. “But if they do, we deal with it.”

  Meaning I’d deal with it, given he didn’t take any of the weapons in the store, leaving us with only the one gun and the knife.

  Once the storeroom had again been concealed and the footprints I’d left on the stove covered with more dust, we made our way across to the outbuilding that leaned precariously. Inside was a mess of cobwebs and nesting skites, their crimson and blue plumage the only bright spots in the gloom. There were a few old farm machines—most of them in rusted bits that looked unsalvageable—and a long, needle-nosed vehicle that sat on a couple of brown metal skids—hence the name, I suspected. A control unit was situated at its midpoint, and behind that a bench seat that obviously wasn’t designed for two. A metal frame swept over the top of both, and probably supported the thick canvas bunched behind the seat. As vehicles went, it was pretty damn basic.

  “You sure this thing is safe?” I asked, eyeing it rather dubiously.

  His smile flashed, bright in the gloom. “Nope, but it’s our only option, so climb aboard.”

  I sat astride, then pushed back to the rear of the bench to give Kaiden room. He handed me the backpack, then climbed on board. The whole machine settled lower. It was a tight fit—my legs were pressed either side of his, and my breasts were squashed against his back. It all felt a little too intimate for my liking.

  I softly cleared my throat and said, “How is this thing powered?”

  “With batteries that are charged at night via either sun panels or wind turbines.”

  “Is it going to be powerful enough to move the two of us?”

  “Yes, although it won’t be capable of its usual speed. But that may not be a bad thing, given slow movement is less likely to attract attention.”

  He pressed a button and the skid came to life; it might be battery powered, but it wasn’t silent. Its rumbling filled the shed, and the skites rose as one, creating a feathery cloud of crimson and blue as they abandoned their nests and headed out of the building.

  “Do you want the cover up?” Kaiden asked.

  “Not unless it’s necessary.”

  “Unless it rains, it won’t be. But it means you’ll have to hang on to me.”

  I was pretty sure my thighs—which were used to gripping the back of a drakkon—would keep me upright, but I nevertheless held his waist. The heat of him warmed my fingertips, even through the thick roughness of his shirt.

  He carefully maneuvered the skid out of the shed and then through the yard. Once we were in the open field, he pushed the control stick all the way forward. The skid didn’t exactly lurch forward, but it did rise up and increase its speed. Fractionally. What was possibly worse, however, were the vibrations that ran through the thing. When combined with Kaiden’s closeness, it had a rather arousing effect.

  Not something I wanted to be feeling, given the situation I’d fallen into and the fact that I knew so very little about him. Instinct might trust him, but he certainly didn’t trust me. Not entirely
, at any rate. And, despite the flashes of understanding that sometimes ran between us, he certainly hadn’t seemed in any way attracted.

  “Where are we headed?” I almost had to shout to be heard over the rush of wind and the racket the skid was making.

  “Renton.”

  Vague memories of a pretty city made of soaring stone buildings and tree-lined streets rose. “You’ve people there?”

  “Not as many as we once had. The Mareritt have had a good run of luck when it comes to ferreting out insurgents.”

  Suggesting, perhaps, they’d been getting insider help. No wonder he was so damn suspicious of me.

  “How long will it take us to get there?”

  “At this speed? It’ll probably be nightfall.”

  “Won’t the guards think that suspicious?”

  “The Mareritt tend to think everything is suspicious these days—another pointer to them planning something big, in my opinion.”

  I frowned. “If they’re planning to mobilize against Esan, wouldn’t you have seen evidence of it by now?”

  “Not if they’re massing within the White Zone.” He glanced around briefly. “And it’s not as if we had any warning two hundred years ago, when the coruscations and subsequent ice storms were unleashed.”

  “We’d had more than enough warning to get the graces from both fortresses into the air to attack,” I said. “Surely if they’re planning something along those lines again, there’d be a similar warning time frame.”

  “Except we no longer control the skies—the Mareritt do.”

  “But the coruscations were huge—we spotted them the minute they entered Arleeon. Surely if they were creating more of them, you’d see them from beyond the boundaries of the White Zone?”

  “The White Zone is a large area, so not necessarily.”

  I frowned. “Which begs the question, why haven’t they created them before now? Why wait two hundred years to wipe out the last Arleeon city?”

  “We don’t know. And until we can somehow get more information from either our people close to the White Zone or from our scouting forays, we remain very much in the dark.”

  “I take it you’re not just responsible for supply raids but also scouting forays?”

  He glanced over his shoulder again, one dark eyebrow rising. “What makes you think that?”

  “You have that air.”

  It was dryly said, and amusement twitched his lips. “I’d ask what sort of air that might be, but I’m a little afraid of the answer.”

  I snorted. “I very much doubt that.”

  His smile grew. “You think me incapable of fear?”

  “No, because anyone with common sense knows fear is neither here nor there—it’s how you react to it that matters. You, Kaiden, have reacted as any good leader should up to this point—with calm efficiency.”

  “Thank you for the compliment.” He paused. “It sounds like you’re familiar with leadership.”

  “I’ve never led anyone or anything.” Unless it was into trouble—that I’d definitely been good at—and my sister had been very good at pulling me out of it. “I was considered a little too reckless for such a position. But my sister did.”

  “And your sister was?”

  I hesitated, battling against the ice in an effort to remember her name. That I couldn’t was troubling—why would I be able to remember that I had sisters and brothers but not remember the name of the one who’d been my commander? A woman who’d saved my life twice?

  “You can’t remember your own sister’s name?” he said, that touch of disbelief riding his voice again.

  “No.” I hesitated again, half fearing how he’d react to the information I could supply given the anger that had washed through his voice earlier when he’d spoken of the woman who’d led the graces into the coruscations. “I do know she led the attack, though.”

  The surge of his contempt was so strong it almost felt like mine. And yet within that rush of fierce emotion came a flare of something far more undefined—something that almost walked the edge of hope.

  “Sorrel? She was your sister?”

  Sorrel. Once again, an image flashed through my mind, this time of the happy creases lining the corners of her eyes and the warm sound of her laughter as we drank mead after a particularly sweet victory over the Mareritt—one that had been meticulous and daring and planned entirely by her. Strategy and precision were her thing—always had been. So what had gone so desperately wrong at the coruscations?

  “Yes—and if you’re blaming her for an action the combined war council agreed to, then you’re out of line.”

  His silence stretched for too many minutes, but his continued disbelief and anger surged around me, so sharp it felt like I was being wrapped in fire. Then he took a deep breath and that wave was gone, leaving nothing but empty neutrality. Which I wasn’t sure I liked, because it gave me no idea as to where his thoughts and emotions were.

  “If Sorrel was your sister, that means you’re Nara. They were the only two members of the Velez line who were drakkon riders at the time.”

  I blinked. Another name that felt right, even if there was no immediate certainty stirring from behind the ice. “I take it from the edge in your voice that I’ve now been added to your hate list?”

  “Given you didn’t lead an unauthorized attack into the coruscations, no.”

  “That’s not what—”

  “It’s what the reports made after the attack state happened.”

  “Then the reports are wrong.”

  “All joint council decisions were recorded as a matter of fact,” he said. “There is no record of such a decision being made, by either Zephrine’s council or ours.”

  “I was there, Kaiden. I don’t know why your records show otherwise, but trust me, it was a joint decision. Why else would Esan’s graces abandon their posts?”

  Though I couldn’t see his skepticism, I felt it. “Because Sorrel was apparently a charismatic and powerful leader.”

  That was true enough. Even if she hadn’t been my sister, I would have followed her into the deepest depths of the underworld itself—and, from the looks of things, probably had. Or at least the Mareritt’s icy version of it.

  “No one could have convinced Esan’s graces to abandon their posts to follow an unapproved mission,” I bit back. “You do your ancestors a great disservice by even thinking that.”

  He grunted. It was difficult to say whether he agreed on that point or not. Silence fell, but this time I was in no mood to break it. Until we found a reader to either prove or disprove my memories, there was little point. But at least now I had a name—Nara. Whether it was mine or not, I’d soon find out, but in the meantime, I certainly intended to use it.

  It was late afternoon by the time the first signs we were approaching a major city appeared. Houses dotted the fields around us, gradually growing in number. There were no lights visible in any of them, however, which suggested they’d been abandoned. Either that or the Mareritt had cut their power—a task I would have thought difficult given that even in my time, power for regional areas was provided via individually owned wind generators and sun collection panels. It was usually only the major cities that were connected to the grid—a system that used a mix of sun generation, wind power, and energy drawn from the earth itself.

  Our rough roadway soon joined a wider, better-kept one. The dust blooming around the skids fell away and the ride smoothed out. Our speed didn’t increase, however. I suspected the old vehicle had nothing more to give.

  The sky was a riot of orange and gold and the chill of the oncoming night beginning to bite by the time we neared Renton—a vast city whose stone buildings shone a deep green in the fading brilliance of the day. Aside from them, Renton seemed an otherwise drab city. Gone were the trees and the brightly colored flags that had once topped many of the buildings here. Maybe the Mareritt had ordered them cleared—it’d be the sort of move they’d make to cow or break the people they were trying to con
trol.

  But perhaps the most gut-wrenching sight of all was the metal towers that dominated the city’s outer ring and cast deep shadows over all the houses. Guard platforms and guns topped three of those towers, but the fourth was strangely empty.

  It wasn’t hard to guess why.

  “Where’s the drakkon that usually guards this city?” I asked. “We haven’t sighted her at all during the day, which is odd considering how close Renton is to Break Point.”

  Kaiden shrugged. “Perhaps two fugitive farmhands aren’t worth the trouble of unleashing a drakkon.”

  “If that was the case, she’d still be here. Besides, I seriously doubt they still believe we’re farmhands, given the efficiency we showed with guns and the means by which we escaped.”

  Not to mention my use of fire—that alone should have had them scrambling after us, given kin were all but dead in this time.

  “Except the drakkons usually do a final patrol before the night sets in.”

  Which made it even odder that they hadn’t set her flight zone to target the area between the pass and here. “Why don’t the drakkons patrol at night? They’re not night blind, are they?”

  “As far as we’re aware, no.” He shrugged. “With travel restrictions and the difficulties involved in moving from one town to another, the general population mostly stays put. And that, in turn, means there’s little cause for night patrols unless there’s been a major problem.”

  “Is that why you timed our arrival for dusk?”

  His smile was something I felt rather than saw—a heat that swirled deep within. “Not deliberately—I had no control over the vehicle left at the farmhouse, remember.”

  Our speed increased fractionally as we continued down the hill toward Renton, and the old vehicle shook violently. The noise was so bad that half of Renton probably heard our approach. Hopefully it’d make the Mareritt less suspicious of us—after all, why would fugitives make so much damn noise?

  Kaiden slowed the skid as we drew closer to the city. Lights were now visible in many of the taller buildings, but those in the outer ring remained in shadows.