Gorish looks up from the little suction cups on the ends of his fingers.” Yes, master?”
I feel my mind-fingers deep in his skull, filling those holes never meant for my thoughts. He has to answer me honestly. “Is there another Sundered One out there?”
His gaze is steady. “Always, master.”
Yeah, not what I was asking, but okay. I might argue with it, honestly. There aren't enough Sundered by far—the best estimate puts their number at a few thousand, about the same as us, but shorter lifespans. “There's one very close now. Are there any people with him?” That's not specific enough. I need to be sure. “Is he claimed?”
“No, master! He is not!” Still crouched, he does a weird little shuffle, like he's celebrating that he gave me the right answer.
So the new Sundered is free. I'm not letting this chance pass me by. “Can he see us?”
Gorish sort of sniffs. “Oh, yes, master. He's quite close. He's superior!”
“He's high-tier?”
“Yes, master!”
Oh, wow. Third-tier, I could claim, and he'd be worth the risk. A hundred Gorishes wouldn't fetch the kind of money a third-tier would—but if he's second-tier, I'll have a struggle on my hands. They're violent, hard to claim. He could pull a reversal, kill me, and get away. Is it worth it? Is he worth the risk?
I'll hate myself if I don't try. “Which way is he, Gorish?”
“He's—” Gorish stops and blinks. Thup-thup sounds to my left, and Gorish points and whispers. “He's looking at us, master.”
I bet he is. Well, little guy, your curiosity just cost you your freedom. I reach out with my mind and my will, trying to find that oddly incomplete sense of a Sundered One in the dark. Emptiness, heat, everything moist and muddy and alone—
Light jolts through my eyes, and everything spins.
Gorish stops me from falling, catching my waist with his suction-cup hands, but my head is coming off, I swear my head is coming off, and if he lets go I'll fall in the water, but if I don't let go of him I can't hold on to this new huge mind.
And it's huge, holes big enough to swallow and lose me, angles too sharp to touch without cutting, taste too foreign to fully know. First-tier? Has to be first-tier because he's too different from third to be second, and I cry out, shouting, screaming, twisting in Gorish's grip—
More shouts join mine, and more people grip me to pull me backwards because I am trying to hurl myself into the water to get closer to that mind.
No, no, he's made me insane! “NO!” Can't hold them both—“Somebody claim him!” I scream and loose Gorish with a flick of my mental wrist, and he makes all of one hop on his own before someone else claims him.
This new huge mind and I wrestle, but now, without distraction, he's mine.
I am whole. He is not.
Gripping where there is no grip, fighting where my will batters his, and he's losing now, losing. I fly up out of the dark as his empty spaces conform to me.
Mine. You are mine!
Suddenly, I'm back in my skin, kneeling in the mud, dripping with sweat and blinking white spots away from my eyes. It seems so much quieter, even though people are still shouting.
Don't care.
Come to me, Sundered One.
Come to me.
He lands in front of me with grace like gravity doesn't matter and a shape I've never seen, so human that if he weren't flawless ebony black and eerily lovely, I might be fooled. His hair is long and straight, the same black as his skin, and his irises burn bright orange. Sundered always go naked unless we force them clothed, but not him: he wears a short white kilt slung low and loose on his hips. “My lord.” His voice is young like mine, barely into adulthood. Like a human servant, he kneels.
First-tier. I caught a first-tier. Ung—my head is so heavy it's going to fall off my neck.
Gorish makes worried noises. My Travelers demand answers, shouting in the confusion. I can't answer yet. I can't take my eyes off him. I've bagged a first-tier Sundered.
From now on, everything in my world is changed.
● ●
● CHAPTER 2 ●
Aakesh
My sundered is a perfect point of in the eye of a storm. He doesn't move, but his mind isn't settled around mine. It shifts against me, claimed, but not calm.
I might not be able to hold him.
“Harry!” Demos grips my shoulder, shakes me. “Storm!”
What?
Thunder booms in the distance.
No. I struggle to function, to beat the dizziness, the fuzziness.
Demos' eyes are wide, and sweat slides down his shaved head toward the mud. “Harry!”
Thunder means rain and slick mud and sinking boats. “Up,” I croak, and discover I'm hoarse from shouting. “Get everybody up and packed. Direction?”
“It's coming from the south-west,” Demos says. “We're already packing. Harry, what the hell just happened?”
I'm the leader. Their safety is on me. We have to move before the rain gets here. “Later! No time now, go, go!”
His jaw tightens, but he obeys.
I can't stand.
My fists dent the mud. My body rocks in time with my straining heart, making my breathing stutter. Stand, Harry. I have to stand.
Wet footsteps, shouts, the low thunks of tools thrown into boats. Stand, Harry, before they think you need help! Lead! Lead!
“My lord.” My new Sundered crouches there, not smiling like Gorish, watching me with unblinking orange eyes.
He's first-tier. What can they do? How much power does he have? “What?” I manage between clenched teeth.
“My name is Aakesh.”
I didn't ask him his name.
We stare at each other, this Sundered who volunteered his name and me unable to think. That mind moves around mine, unhappy with my intrusion. He's barely a few feet from me, and I'm on the edge of the water. He could send me in there if he gets control with a reversal. I'd be killed before anyone even knew I was gone.
I have to hold him. “Aakesh,” I bark, forcing my throat to work. “You may not bring harm to me and my Travelers, do you understand? You're mine. No harm! That's an order!”
I may have gotten a little loud. My Travelers stare at me, backlit by the weirdness of storm-light.
Aakesh nods regally, like he's a king granting a favor. “Understood, my lord.”
What the hell have I claimed?
“Harry, we've got to get moving!” Demos shouts, and lightning strikes in the distance. White-purple threads dance over the water.
Son of a bitch, don't think about Aakesh now. Stand, Harry! Stand!
I overbalance. My head is too heavy. I stagger, and then I fall.
I fall toward the water.
I don't have time to scream. Something like a log slams into my midsection and lifts me, flings me, and the world goes upside down. I flip upside-down, take one strained gasp—and suddenly, I'm in my boat. Just there, paddle in my lap like nothing happened, bobbing up and down with the storm-bred current.
Aakesh is on the tufts a few feet away, looking at me with those orange eyes while his hair settles down around him like gossamer threads.
I stare back at him, my hands shaking.
“Harry, come on!” shouts somebody, I don't even know who, and I realize they're all pulling away from me. Paddling, moving, not waiting for the storm to catch them.
I stare at Aakesh a moment more before pushing off after the others. I have to catch them. Overtake them. I have to lead.
Aakesh saved me.
I didn't tell him to. He applied what I said, found connotations in my order. He interpreted. Sundered don't do that, their broken minds don't do that. How did he do that?
My hands are still shaking.
It's deadly-dark once we're away from the fire. If there are islands or tufts or anything else that might knock us out of our boats, we won't know it until it's too late. Rain starts to fall, lightly for now, mingling with my sweat. My back
strains and heaves as I pull ahead, passing the others, finally sliding past Tomas and Demos' brotherly two-seater and into the lead. It's my job to take the risk. If I flounder, they'll know not to follow me.
Movement catches my eye, something impossibly dark against the gloom: Aakesh. He moves ahead of us like he's dancing, flying from tuft to tuft, just close enough that I can see his hair falling around him like whispers.
Realization numbs me: his jumps are telling me where not to go. Where there's land for his feet, there's land to capsize my boat. I didn't command him to do that. I didn't even think of it.
“Master!” says Gorish, bobbing alongside my boat, unbothered by the storm.
Keep paddling, keep going, row, row, row. “Hi. What?”
Gorish swims along, beaming up at me. “You're so nice,” he says, and disappears back under the black water.
Huh?
Whatever, little guy. I have Travelers to lead.
The storm follows us, blowing around our perimeter and chasing us with death. Lightning explodes in the distance, leaping over the water like cracks in ice. Thunder echoes, and we row, nearly blind in the dark but for the silent guidance from my new Sundered One. I can't afford to question whether I can trust him.
My head stays too heavy, and my neck aches. A psychosomatic reaction. There's no physical weight in my head.
I still feel him.
Little by little, the rain slows down. Dawn tints the sky, washing away the storm. We've rowed the whole night, and the clouds are finally far behind us.
My arms, shoulders, and back hurt like I've been beaten. Did we all survive? Yeah—I see them all behind me. Demos and Tomas. Toddy and Sandra. Kaia, in a one-person skiff like mine. Jax and Sheldon. That's everybody.
Relief approaches, then recedes: we sailed in completely unexplored places last night. I don't even know where we are now. The Hope could have been there, or some clue to the Hope, and because it was dark, I missed it.
Could have. Might have.
Stop being paranoid, Harry. It's impractical to turn back, and your Travelers would doubt you. Focus on what's happening right now.
Aakesh looks stranger in the light of day, too dark to be anything but shadow come to life. Every movement is smooth, almost circular—like he's dancing to music only he hears, all the time. His long, slender fingers aren't like mine, even if they seem human. He watches me, unreadable.
“Aakesh.” My voice sounds tired.
“This way to landfall, my lord.”
I didn't ask him. He's anticipating, again. I'm suddenly cold. “How close are we to a city?”
“Six days' travel, my lord,” he says, for once not answering before I've fully asked my question.
Wow. We made impossibly good time last night. “All right. Starting tomorrow, I want you to guide us there. No tricks. No one gets lost or dumped into the water.”
He nods, turns, and hops, fine hair falling slowly behind him as he leads the way.
He interprets things. Anticipates. I've never heard of this in my life.
Focus, Harry. Once we reach landfall, we'll eat, then sleep. Everyone gets fruit, and we'll brew some tea. After a night like this, we deserve it.
Aakesh chose dry landfall, covered in crumbly dust instead of mud.
It's safe enough for me to take out my map.
I can't help feeling calm when I touch it, grounded, even anchored. The heavy parchment is thick and smooth against my fingers, and makes no sound as it unfolds. I prefer it to the thin, cheap paper that makes up books, exams, and bills of sale in the cities. Those things all fall apart within a couple years, but parchment lasts. Treated animal skin, it survives generations, utterly precious.
My sparse notes join my forefathers', marking broad expanses of emptiness with little black islands and big city dots. Carefully notated warnings indicate dangerous places, and angry red x's mark where the Hope of Humanity wasn't.
The Hope of Humanity is a myth, a legend. A panacea, maybe machine or maybe magic, or maybe just knowledge stored away for the future. It's connected to our wrecked Earth, showing up at the same time as the black water and the Sundered Ones in our history.
Nobody knows what it is. My family has searched for it for a long time, following hints of a story that claims the Hope can fix it all. It'll fix the water. Fix the Sundered. Fix us.
How or why doesn't matter. Questions aren't really encouraged among the Iskinder bloodline. We paddle the world, scavenging salvage, and looking for the Hope. It's what we do, what my father did, what I do, and what my son will someday be expected to do. End of story.
It's not what I wanted to do. It doesn't matter. The Sundered are going extinct, and once they do, we will follow. Someone has to try, and nobody else believes.
A familiar funk of fish surrounds me. “What is it, Gorish?”
“You're nice. Won't forget, nice master,” Gorish whispers.
That's the second time he's said something like that. I look up, tearing myself from the blots and squiggles on parchment. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Nice,” Gorish says, and he reaches out with his little suction-cup fingers as if to touch my face.
I stare at him.
He drops his hand. “Bye!” he squeaks, and bounces off.
What the hell was that about?
Aakesh crouches nearby, his toes teasingly in the first inch of black water, his orange eyes steadily locked on me. Gorish splashes over and squats behind him, deeper in the water, like a servant following him around or something. Now they're both staring at me.
Whatever.
“Harry,” says Demos, and offers me an apple.
It's the most delicious thing I've ever had.
It's a mush apple. It's brown, and the skin's wrinkled, but it doesn't taste like mud or boiled fish. It tastes like bliss, and I know what that means: it means we've been out here long enough, and it's definitely time to get to the city.
Six days.
I'll find the Hope someday. I will. But I need my Travelers to do it, and my Travelers need a break. “Gorish, Aakesh. Gather the water.” Time for a bath.
My head is heavy. My thoughts are slow. When we get to the city, I'm selling Aakesh at once. Someone who makes a living out of this kind of thing can have him, and I can get back to business.
“Master!” Gorish's voice slices through my skull, making it heavier even though he's not mine.
Who claimed him? Well, everybody. They keep handing him off to one another, practicing. Once we're out of school, most people never get the chance to claim Sundered. They're too valuable for anyone but politicians and people with money to have, so I can't blame my Travelers for playing around. I just don't want them getting too rough. “Kaia.”
She stops in mid-laugh, Gorish dancing in front of her like a marionette. He ducks like he was caught doing something wrong.
I'm too tired to deal with childishness. “Kaia, just leave him alone. He's had a longer day than we have, okay? If you use him up, I'm taking it out of your cut.”
She pouts, sticking out that lower lip of hers, but she obeys. I'm younger than she is, younger than most of them, but they still obey.
“So nice, master,” Gorish says warmly enough to make it weird, and bounces into the water with a splash.
I'm not your master anymore, buddy. You really must be broken.
We make good time before landfall, and I almost swear I can see a faint outline of city walls in the distance. I even imagine I can smell it, impossible as that is. My own brain works against me.
I wonder which city this is. My guess is Danton, which I haven't been to before, but if it's anything like the cities in this region, it's ugly, nasty, and it stinks, but it's better than nothing.
One of these days, I’ll have to choose a city and a woman in that city to continue the family line. I'll take the few years necessary to make a baby teach the baby how to read maps, and then leave the baby with my maps as I continue to explore. I'm just n
ineteen. I can put off heir-making a little longer, can't I? And who knows? If I find the Hope, I don't have to make one—or I don't have to look at family as continuing the legacy. I can have a family like a normal person. I can make a home.
I'm getting ahead of myself. There are too many blank spots on my map.
“You all right?” says Sandra quietly.
She has good timing. Her voice pulls me out of my gloom. “Yeah.”
She nods, but I don't think she believes me.
Toddy bounces over to crouch next to her, his smile crooked and playful. He's fifteen. A baby. This is all still just a great adventure to him. “You sure you're okay, Harry? You don't look okay.”
I bet I don't.
Aakesh crouches there with his toes in the water that would kill us. He's not doing that by accident. My claimed, leashed Sundered is mocking me.
“Harry?” Toddy really sounds unsure.
“I'm okay, guys. Get to work with the others, okay? Help get the tents set up. You had a turn with Gorish yet?”
Toddy looks so happy. “Yeah! I did great!”
“Ugh, no,” says Sandra, making a face.
No idea what her problem is. I can't help a little smile for Toddy. “He likes you?”
“Likes me?” Toddy looks so confused. “I don't know. Why?”
As if the Sundered can't like or dislike. As if they aren't alive.
Whatever. That's the school system's fault, not mine. “Hurry with the tents. We need to sleep soon.”
“Yes, sir, Harry, sir!” Toddy says, and salutes just for fun. I salute back. It makes him happy. He goes away.
Sandra watches me a moment more, then leaves without a word. There's dried mud in her light hair.
My smile is heavy, heavy like my head, and it falls away. I need a break.
City, whichever you are, here we come.
On the third day, I can definitely see the city walls from my skiff.
That's impossible.
It was six days away. Aakesh said so.
My Travelers know something's wrong. They all wear the same spooked expression, though none of them say what's wrong out loud. We covered way more ground than we should have. But we didn't do anything differently. We rowed. We slept. We ate. Aakesh showed us landfall each night.
The Sundered Page 2
