by J. J. Green
But the long legs shifted slightly to one side, narrowly avoiding her, as if the beast knew she was there. With much rustling of leaves, the two animals passed by the children, leaving them unscathed. Parthenia let out a long, silent exhale and watched the eight legs retreat out of sight.
When she could no longer hear the animals or the people, she cautiously poked her head out of the foliage. The forest looked the same as when they’d first hidden. Aside from the plant life and insects buzzing in shafts of afternoon sunlight through the trees, it was empty. Parthenia stood and helped Darius to his feet.
“Can we talk now?” he asked.
Ferne and Oriana also stood up.
“Yes,” Parthenia replied to Darius. “But only quietly.”
“Where should we go?” Ferne asked.
“I’m not sure,” said Parthenia. “We definitely can’t go back to the road. If anyone’s looking for us we’ll be very easy to spot there. I guess we’ll just have to walk until we finally reach the city, or maybe a town.”
“Which way is it, though?” Oriana asked. “What direction were we headed in when we left the vehicle?”
“Uhhh… ” Parthenia didn’t know. She’d entirely lost her sense of direction when they were running through the trees. Oriana and Ferne also looked confused, however, so she said, “I’m pretty sure it’s this way.” She took Darius’ hand again and walked confidently ahead. She didn’t want her siblings to know how lost they were. It would only make them worry. Perhaps she’d guessed correctly, she reasoned. Or maybe they would hit upon a village or town eventually.
Trying to be brave for the sake of her sister and brothers, Parthenia led the little party through the forest. She pushed her memory of her previous desperate walk through the forest with Darius to the back of her mind.
Chapter Eighteen
Carina caught up with Reyes at the end of the street. She launched herself at him and grabbed him around his thighs. They both hit the ground. Before Reyes could get up, Carina climbed onto his back and pinned him down. Passersby drew back in alarm and hastened away.
Reyes struggled to squirm out from under Carina for several moments before saying, “Okay, okay. I give up. Get off of me.”
“Don’t try to run,” said Carina, releasing her pressure on his shoulders. “Or I’ll catch you again and I won’t be so gentle next time.” She moved off Reyes’ back and stood up.
As he also rose to his feet, Reyes said, “I didn’t think you were gentle this time.”
“Then don’t risk it,” Carina responded.
“You really were a soldier, weren’t you? Like Mother said. I didn’t think a girl could hold me down.”
Carina snorted derisively. “Plenty of female soldiers could beat your ass in a fight without trying. If I were you I wouldn’t go around saying they couldn’t.”
Reyes rubbed his shoulder. “I don’t know why you were chasing me anyway. I haven’t hurt you. I let you escape, remember?”
“As soon as you saw me looking at you back there, you set off running. If you didn’t have anything to hide, why run away? You weren’t in that place by accident. You knew I was there and you came to check on me. How did you know that?” Pedestrians were still staring at the two as they passed by. “Wait. Let’s get off this street.”
Carina took Reyes’ skinny upper arm and guided him along the sidewalk before pushing him down the first alley they arrived at. She walked along the narrow lane with him until they reached a spot between two towering apartment blocks that was empty of people. After halting, she pushed Reyes against a wall—not roughly but hard enough to reinforce that she was in charge.
“How did you know where to find me?” she reiterated.
“Honestly, it was just a coincidence. I often go to that temple. When I saw you there, I knew you would think I was spying on you, so I ran.”
“No. You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Really.”
Carina was tempted to force the truth out of the kid with the threat of—or actual—violence, but she’d experienced plenty of that kind of persuasion herself. She wanted to avoid dispensing it to others if she could. She tried a different tactic. “Okay. So if you go to that place all the time, what’s the main picture on the left wall? What does it show?” Carina had been looking at the frieze only minutes before. Her question wasn’t difficult for someone familiar with the building’s interior.
Reyes looked panicked. “It, er, shows… It’s a scene of… of—”
“Right,” said Carina. “So we’ve established that you lied when you said it was a coincidence you were at that place. You don’t always go there. Yet you knew that was where I was. But how?” She was directing the question at herself as much as at Reyes. Carina was fairly confident she hadn’t been followed, and she had no identity or footprint in Ostillon’s systems.
Reyes protested, “Like I said—”
“Oh, stop wasting my time,” Carina snapped. She regarded the young man. He seemed about the same age as Parthenia. “Look. You’re still young enough to not involve yourself with criminals and thugs, even if they are your family. You don’t have to go along with everything they do just because you’re related. You don’t seem like a bad kid. Why don’t you get out while you can? Go someplace else and start a new life. A clean life where you aren’t hurting anyone. Only first tell me how you knew where I was.”
Her words seemed to penetrate Reyes’ conscience. He lost his guarded expression and looked down as if ashamed to meet her gaze. “It isn’t as easy as you think, even if I did want to leave. But I can’t anyway. It would break Mother’s heart. I know she doesn’t seem like a good person to you, but she isn’t as bad as the others and she loves me. I’m all she has.”
“Then take her with you.”
“Huh. She’d never listen to me. Besides, she loves being a Dirksen. It’s her whole life.”
Carina gasped. While she’d been talking to Reyes, in the back of her mind she’d continued to try to figure out how he’d found her. The answer had just come to her. “I’m carrying a tracer, aren’t I? Where is it? How did your mother get it into me?”
“Nnnno. That isn’t true.”
Carina grabbed Reyes’ bony shoulders and pushed him into the wall. “Yes it is! There’s no other way you could have found me. Have you been following me all this time?”
“I, er… ” Reyes slumped and hung his head. He nodded. “I haven’t been following you the whole time, but you are carrying a tracer. More than one, in fact. I’m sorry.”
Carina swore. “Where are they?” She tried to remember everything that had happened at Langley’s mansion. Had they injected tracers into her while she was asleep? No. She would have woken up. She was sleeping on a hair trigger these days. Had they drugged her? She was sure she would have noticed.
“They were in the food you ate at breakfast the morning after we went to see the Mech Battles,” said Reyes. “The type mother used passes through the stomach and latches onto the inside of the small intestine. You ate several but you wouldn’t have noticed anything.”
Feeling nauseated, Carina pressed a hand to her stomach. She had to get the tracers out immediately. “So that’s why neither of you came down to breakfast that morning. You couldn’t eat the food.”
Reyes nodded again. He looked up at her, a defeated expression in his eyes. “Would you be willing to come with me somewhere?”
“Where?” Carina asked. “And is this to do with getting these tracers out of me?”
“No. I honestly don’t know how to do that. But you’ll be safe with me. I just want to talk.”
Carina wasn’t sure if she could trust the young Dirksen. On the other hand, if he really was wavering in his allegiance to his mother’s clan he could be very useful. She was willing to take a chance. “Okay.”
Reyes continued down the alley and Carina walked with him.
The young man said, “Mother isn’t as bad as you think, you know.”
“You me
ntioned that already.” Carina wanted to tell Reyes what his family’s thugs had done to her brother. That might open Reyes’ eyes about exactly what he was involved in. But Carina couldn’t say anything about Darius’ experiences at the hands of the Dirksens without revealing more to Reyes than was safe. She hadn’t yet admitted to anyone that she was the merc who had rescued Darius and she wasn’t about to, despite the evidence of the vid. It didn’t matter how different from the rest of the Dirksens Reyes thought he and his mother were. Yet Carina wanted to find out whatever she could about the clan. Perhaps she might learn something that would help her locate her siblings.
Reyes seemed to be looking for something as they walked along the alley. When they reached the end, they turned into another narrow lane and continued along it. The district was seedy. The residents were too poor even for clothes driers. Rows of wet clothes hung across apartment block balconies and the street didn’t look like it had seen an autocleaner in a long time.
Carina was having second thoughts about going with Reyes. She needed to take out the tracers and she didn’t know for sure what Reyes would tell her. He might not know anything useful.
Finally, after turning down several more alleyways and entering deeper and deeper into the poverty-stricken neighborhood, Reyes seemed to find what he was looking for. He stopped at a door that didn’t seem any different from the others except that the wall next to it bore a pattern of scratches. The door had no security panel. Reyes tapped at it instead. When it opened a burly man not unlike Harmon stood there, his expression angry and sullen. But then he recognized Reyes and stepped backward, ducking his head.
“Wait a minute,” Carina said. “If you think I’m going to follow you into some clandestine hideaway guarded by your mother’s henchmen, you’re mistaken.”
“And if I wanted to recapture you, I could have done it at the temple,” said Reyes. “I’m not forcing you to go in. You’re free to leave now if you want.”
Carina hesitated then said, “I do want to. I worked too hard to escape from your clan to risk this.”
“Okay. Maybe we can go someplace else.”
“No. I changed my mind,” said Carina. “I’ve wasted too much time already. Goodbye, Reyes, and good luck living with thugs. I hope you don’t turn into one of them.” She began to walk away.
“Hold on,” Reyes said, running after her. “What are you going to do about the tracers?”
Carina replied, still walking quickly, “Don’t worry. I’ll figure something out.”
“Wait. I was going to say that maybe I can help you.”
“Really? How?” Carina wasn’t sure she believed him. After all, he’d already said he couldn’t help her, or at least not with the tracers. When Reyes didn’t reply immediately, she continued, “Forget about it. And stop following me or I’ll force you to stop.”
The young man halted. As Carina walked away from him, he called out, “I still don’t know your name.”
Chapter Nineteen
Carina had to find somewhere private to try to extract all the tracers. She wasn’t looking forward to the task. When she’d Transported the Sherrerr tracers out of her brothers and sisters while they were escaping on the shuttle, she’d only been working on one per child and she’d known exactly where the devices were. Now, she didn’t know how many Dirksen tracers were clinging to her guts, or their precise location. She would be using guesswork with her own body, and a delicate area of her body too. A damaged muscle would probably heal naturally in time, but she hated to think what she might do if she hurt her intestines.
Where to go? Carina continued deeper into the maze of streets. It was a warren of cheap apartment blocks served by small eateries and convenience stores. After stopping and checking behind her several times, Carina was finally convinced that neither Reyes nor anyone else was following her. Not that it mattered as long as she carried the Dirksen tracers.
Langley had tricked her into swallowing them in case she attempted to escape, of course. The Dirksen matriarch had been right on that score. Reyes hadn’t mentioned what had happened at the estate since Carina’s escape. Did his mother know that he’d let her go? He also hadn’t explained why he’d been checking up on her.
Or had she been set up? Had Langley Dirksen deliberately made it easy for Carina to get out of the mansion? Reyes had even been carrying cash to hand to her. It was all too convenient.
So many questions. And Carina had walked away from the only person who might answer them. Perhaps she’d done the wrong thing. Her friend, Bryce, had told her once that she was too untrusting. He’d said that not everyone was out to exploit mages for their own ends; that some people genuinely wanted to help.
He’d been right. The soldiers aboard the Sherrerr flagship had deliberately missed with their shots, allowing Carina and her family to escape. Perhaps Reyes really was a good guy, despite his family affiliations? Ah well. Now she would never know.
Then, as her hand touched the bills in her pocket, Carina realized she hadn’t quite shut the door on Reyes Dirksen just yet.
Carina finally spotted what she was looking for: a small sign in a window high up in an apartment block. After counting the stories down to the ground, she walked through the security-free entrance. Only one elevator served the building and it was broken. Carina began to climb the stairs, counting each floor as she went up.
When she reached the story where the sign had been displayed, she tried to figure out which apartment it belonged to but she couldn’t tell which it was. She couldn’t remember in which direction the street lay and the hallway was windowless.
Carina went from door to door, pressing the panels until someone finally answered. It was a child, perhaps only seven or eight years old. Carina wondered if Ostillon was entirely staffed by children and if that explained why they were always hanging around. Didn’t the planetary government provide schools? The little girl looked up at her expectantly.
“I want to speak to the person renting out a place on this floor,” Carina said.
The little girl only continued to gaze at her.
“I said, I—”
“That would be me,” said a portly middle-aged man, waddling hurriedly toward the doorway. “Go back to your room,” he said to the girl.
She moved away, but slowly, casting backward glances at Carina as she dragged her feet down the hall.
“So you’d like to rent my apartment?” the man asked eagerly.
“I’d like to see the apartment,” said Carina. She didn’t want the landlord to know she was desperate for a place. She only had a limited amount of money and no means of getting any more right then. She asked, “But if I like it, do you take cash?”
“My dear,” the man replied. “I only take cash.”
It turned out the apartment for rent was directly next door. The landlord keyed a code into the panel and the lock clicked open. The place was almost exactly as Carina had expected it to be—awful. It hadn’t been cleaned in a long while. The windows were so grimy they were almost opaque and the bathroom and tiny kitchen were covered in stains.
“The place cleans up beautifully,” the man said. “I would do it myself only I have a bad back. And with my grandchild to look after, I simply don’t have the time. I was going to—”
“How much for a week?” Carina interrupted.
When the man named the figure, Carina didn’t know if it was expensive or cheap according to the local rates, but she guessed he was probably trying to rip her off. He could tell from her accent that she wasn’t an Ostillonian.
“Are you joking?” she spluttered. “You think you’ll get away with charging that much for a place like this?”
“Oh, wait,” said the man. “What am I thinking? That’s the rent for my other apartment that has twice as many rooms.” He dropped his figure by a third.
Carina said, “That’s still far too much.”
The man shaved off a small percentage of the proposed rent. Carina was tired of haggling and she n
eeded to remove the tracers as soon as possible. “All right, I’ll take it—”
“Excellent.”
“If you include an interface.”
“An interface? You don’t have one?”
“Mine was stolen and I haven’t ordered another yet. I need something to bridge the gap.”
The man frowned disbelievingly but said, “Well, that’s easy enough. You can have one of my old ones, though I’ll want it back at the end of your tenancy.”
“Agreed,” said Carina.
“And you pay me your week’s rent up front. Now.”
Carina reached into her pocket to pull out the cash. When her hand touched the bills Reyes had given her she stopped and took out the money she’d earned for her day’s labor instead. It wasn’t enough. She added some notes from Reyes’ money to the pile and handed it to her landlord.
He counted the bills carefully and slipped them into the money belt he wore. “What’s your name?” he asked.
“Tamira,” Carina replied.
“Tamira what?”
“I’ll tell you if I stay longer than a week.”
“Ha,” the man said. “If you say so. I’ll send my granddaughter over with the interface later. Water and power aren’t included in your rent, by the way.” He told Carina the door code and left.
Adding the point about the utilities after the deal was struck was a typical trick, but Carina dismissed it. She hoped she wouldn’t be in the place for longer than a few days. She couldn’t contact her siblings through Casting, but she hoped she could find them through more conventional means, perhaps utilizing the planetary network.
She had an urgent task to complete first. Carina was about to take a sip of elixir and set to work when her door chimed. When she went to open it she found the little girl standing there wearing a solemn expression and holding an interface.
