Killers, Traitors, & Runaways

by Lucas Paynter

  Inside the ship, everyone was preparing to depart. With so much commotion, Zaja was able to slip unnoticed into an empty cabin. She locked the door and promptly shed her coat, then found a wooden hand mirror left behind by one of Longhart’s crew. She twisted the mirror frantically and uncomfortably, trying to get a decent view of the back of her head.

  “I knew it.”

  She placed the mirror face down in disappointment. A small patch had formed on her scalp, dark as the ones on her belly. The hairs that had torn loose would never grow back.

  “It’s a necessary sacrifice,” she reminded herself.

  After several minutes of checking, she concluded that no other spots had recently appeared. No more hair was going to fall out, and the patch on her head was easily concealed. She didn’t want anyone to see it; she hated being fawned over.

  “Yo, Zaj!” Jean pounded abruptly the door. “You masturbatin’ in there or somethin’?”

  Zaja’s heart nearly stopped at the interruption, before her surprise turned to bewilderment. “Ah—what?”

  “Just checkin’. Accidentally walked in on Cha—actually, forget that shit. Ali says we’re about to shore up. Might wanna find somethin’ to hold onto in there.”

  “Alrighty,” Zaja replied flatly. “Thanks.”

  There was a support beam just a few feet from the inner hull that Zaja could brace her legs against. She settled in and held fast, and not long after, the ship began to tremble—lightly at first, but with increasing roughness. Then, with a sudden jerk, it all came to a stop. The ship creaked as it settled in, and Zaja felt a return to stability she hadn’t known for weeks.

  As she stepped out of the room to gather her belongings, she nearly collided with Chari, who was hurrying down the hall.

  “Sorry about that,” she said as she tried to slip by.

  “Actually, Zaja—have you a moment?”

  Zaja halted, and forced a smile as she turned back. “What’s up?”

  The concern on Chari’s face made Zaja worry she’d seen the newly formed blemish. “I wished to make certain you’ve been feeling alright. Since our retaking the ship, you’ve worked yourself half to death, all after a massacre we both had a hand in.”

  Zaja felt an inward sigh of relief at Chari’s ignorance. She recalled the clash with Longhart’s crew only vaguely—chaos and noise and an embarrassing feeling she hadn’t done her share. It had been a crew of dozens, but the ones Zaja had dealt with, she could count on one hand. She didn’t want a bloody tally like Poe had, but Zaja knew she’d let both her hesitation and the storm hold her down.

  “I’m doing my part, that’s all,” she assured Chari. “We spent almost a week in that cell. I was getting restless.”

  Chari looked at Zaja as though she didn’t quite believe her. Even so, she eventually gave way and nodded. “It may be I’ve thrust my own worries upon you. I’ve not slept so well these last few days.” Zaja rubbed Chari’s arm to comfort her. “Dreams haunt me of a return to TseTsu. In them, I am armed.” She placed a hand on her rifle. “My laity gathers and taunts me for my powerlessness. I raise my rifle at them. I…”

  She could no longer speak.

  Zaja looked her in the eyes. “That’s not you,” she assured her. “Killing a few people doesn’t automatically make you a killer.”

  Chari was clearly bothered by this interpretation. “Um … it rather does, technically.”

  “You know what I mean,” Zaja said dismissively. “Even if we end up going to TseTsu, you’ll be okay. You’ve shown compassion and looked out for all of us through thick and thin. I don’t think you’re the kind of person who could enjoy hurting people.”

  Chari didn’t seem any more assured, but Zaja needed to excuse herself. “I have to get my stuff together—but no regrets, got it? Be glad you’re here.” And as she turned away, she confidently added, “I know I am.”

  * * *

  The Red Coast lived up to its name; its sands were a rusty color, lighter at distance, darkest where the water touched. Shea had waded from ship to shore and was soaked halfway up her torso, her clothes clinging to her skin and letting the cold wind through. When she reached the tide’s edge, she fell to her hands and knees and buried her fingers in the sand, squeezing until the coarse granules slipped through. Any doubt left in her mind had been erased: she was a deserter now, and worse still, a traitor. It sickened her to remember the things she’d done to come this far, but if anyone had offered Shea the chance to take it all back, she’d have declined in an instant.

  “Shall we carry on, or settle here?” Chari asked.

  “Day’s wastin’,” Jean replied. “Which way, Ali?”

  This deference unnerved Shea, who’d only ever held the lowest rank of service and was unused to being treated as such an authority. She hardly felt qualified now, for all she had was a compass and Captain Longhart’s map, whose intelligence would fail long before they got near Thoris. Just the same, she unrolled the map on the coastal sands and lit a recently pilfered cigarette as she began to study it.

  “Avoid here,” she said, signifying a radius of terrain. “Near Briss border, might get hot. No roads, either—don’t know the terrain. Bit of a spot, if we have to hide.” She traced her finger through a potential route, but ran afoul of a river canyon. “Bridge there, could be manned.”

  “No fuckin’ bridges,” Jean said firmly.

  “How about here?” Zaja asked, tapping a spot further inland. “Puts us more in line with that chunk of land south of Thoris, right?”

  “Atvuon Peninsula,” Shea said. She studied Zaja’s suggestion for a moment, then shook her head. “No good. Runs through Briss territory.”

  “Does it get us by the border?” Flynn asked.

  “Does. Still Briss.” She ruminated for a moment. “No towns—nothing mapped, ’least.”

  Shea went through a second cigarette before charting an adequate route, one whose safety she still had almost no confidence in. In the past, surer hands had planned things for her. Shea had only ever charged into the fray, and reluctantly at that.

  As she folded up the map and placed it in her satchel, Flynn smiled at her and asked, “Are we ready to go, Private den Vier?”

  “Odd, hearing that said.” She couldn’t help but smile back.

  The foliage bordering the Red Coast was lush and dense, and just for stepping inside, it felt like the day had turned late. Both the sea and their ship vanished after a short distance, and with them the last tethers of Shea’s homeland. She walked on in silence for a while, puffing away on her cigarette. Shea may have traced the route, but it was Flynn who was at the fore of the group, and though she was following his lead, she realized she still hardly knew him.

  “Oi, Flynn,” she said. “First we met, spoke—you were vague. Tell us now, where are you from?”

  Her question seemed to amuse him. “We travel together across Tryna, sail the oceans, and perform a mutiny … and now you ask?”

  “Tried to figure myself, but things with you don’t add. Jean ‘n you broke from ‘Earth,’ right? Thing is, you look like mine. She don’t.”

  Flynn smiled in reply. “If I asked you to picture me differently, Shea, could you? With eyes and ears like Jean’s, without all the little things you and I have in common that our companions don’t?”

  Shea shook her head. She tried to imagine it, but the Flynn before her was the only one she’d ever known.

  “I wasn’t always like you,” he went on. “And when I changed, I never thought I’d pass for normal again.”

  “Seem normal here,” she replied.

  “Which scares me. I could become dangerously comfortable here.”

  “Even with all the war?” she scoffed.

  “War is opportunity. It brings suffering and that makes people desperate, or vulnerable to their own good intentions. Even the best people d
o terrible things in the name of war, and those that don’t have terrible things done to them.”

  Evening came as a distant light appeared just ahead. An unfamiliar breed of tree grew in these woods: hollow trunks encompassed by a latticework of smooth bark. The light came from paper lanterns, housed in these strange trees, which encircled a clearing whose reddish sands were tinged with gray. They flickered faintly, and had clearly been burning for some time.

  “What are these?” Zella asked as she walked up to one. Soot had been piled in each of the trees, spilling through the gaps in the bark, and providing a mound for the lanterns to rest on. She took some in hand, pinching it through her fingers.

  “Pyre trees,” Shea explained. “Cavo soldiers died here. Ashes spread, lamps set in memory. For all the soot, likely recent.”

  “So did these guys win or lose?” Jean asked.

  “Wouldn’t know. Living graves, these. Not about glory or shame.”

  Shea walked up to inspect one of the lanterns, which had a soldier’s name written on it. The characters were unfamiliar, though; Shea couldn’t read Cavonish, so she said nothing.

  “A clearing as this would serve ideal camping grounds,” Chari suggested. “Do these ‘Cavos’ inspect these grave sites frequently?”

  The lantern’s flame flickered weakly.

  “Don’t know.”

  “Then we shouldn’t stay,” Poe said. “Not unless we wish to combat their surviving families.” He continued down the trail without another word. One by one they followed, the ashes of dead soldiers in their wake. Shea reached up her sleeve, found her private’s stripes, and tore them off as she would a bandage, letting them fall behind her.

  * * *

  The journey into the heart of Cavonia stretched on for weeks, for its forested wilderness was vast and shadowed. Local superstition kept civilization at bay, and if not for the sound of distant gunfire, Jean would have thought the land uninhabited. These days of walking in peace and living off the land were not to last.

  At first, it was just a road, dusky and forgotten. The next one was better used, with a single patrol surveying it nervously. The more the wilderness faded, the more the roads were maintained and frequented by soldiers. The group made quick dashes when the coast was clear and endured extended waits in the foliage while yet another unit marched diligently by. Whatever wars the Cavonish now fought, they’d kept them from spilling into their own territories.

  Once, as they ducked in hiding, Jean’s impatience threatened to boil. “Oughta just charge in, smash ’em, break through,” she muttered.

  “Daft,” Shea muttered. “Have half the Cavos on our tails.”

  Jean knew, and did nothing. But she loathed cowering from threats, and these soldiers would only meet them as enemies. Her palm hovered near the soil, and she was tempted to rattle their ranks and give them something else to worry about.

  Shea saw this and shook her head. Jean clenched her fist in frustration.

  If these difficulties were limited to the roads, it would have been enough. But as civilization expanded around them, safe places became fewer and fewer. Towns and any other signs of life had to be skirted, and the soldiers began patrolling more than just the roads to keep their populace safe. They were searching for spies, and forced the group to scatter and hide more than once, setting them back hours or sometimes even days.

  By the time they reached the northern borders, the cannon fire in the distance came to Jean as a relief, like a welcoming ceremony into new and more hospitable lands. It was naïve thinking, but Jean wanted to stop hiding and stand her ground.

  After a lengthy trek down a steep canyon, she got her chance.

  The group came to the edge of a battlefield where two sides were ruthlessly exchanging gunfire. The conflict zone was a maze of towering stone formations, whose dusky edifices were being chipped away by the shots. Both sides were using the formations for cover.

  “Cavos,” Jean observed, recognizing their uniforms. The other side was unknown to her.

  “Marvelous,” Chari grimaced. “How are we to get through?”

  “Do we have to try?” Zella asked. “We don’t have to engage them—we could double back, find another way.”

  “We? Rather generous, to count yourself among us.”

  Jean ignored the bitter exchange in favor of the battlefield. With its breadth and the storied columns, it was difficult to see how many were fighting out there. The Cavonish appeared to have suffered greater casualties, but even that information could have been altered by a better vantage point.

  “The terrain is too steep to fall back,” Flynn pointed out. “And the walls around us are too sheer.”

  “Got cover here,” Shea suggested, indicating the row of boulders that hid them from the conflict. “Wait till they stop.”

  “How long could that be?” he asked.

  “Hours. Days. Depends. How many soldiers, how many pellets? Reinforcements, resuppliers.” After an uncertain pause, she added, “Didn’t say it’d be quick.”

  Chari gave the field another look. “We should at least be grateful they’ve not developed more sophisticated weaponry.”

  “Even with flintlocks, they’re still doing a number on one another,” Flynn replied.

  Poe leaned in for a look, and Jean studied what he saw: there was a pillar not far from their cover that shielded them from one side and seemed to be a blind spot from the other. A little further in a pair stood side by side, with a window of safety between them.

  “We might use that avenue to sneak in and assassinate the aggressors—” Poe started, indicating the Cavonish.

  “And be shot to death,” Zaja finished. “No thanks. Not looking to die early.”

  “Think I got a way.” Jean beckoned the others for a closer look. “See that formation there? And those two, down that way?”

  “Blind spots,” Flynn caught on.

  “A sound tactic, save that we’d be shredded moving from one to the other,” Chari said. “We would be open targets to both sides and they would know us neither for friend nor foe.”

  Jean grinned with devious pride. “That’s why I’m gonna give ’em a bit of a tremble.”

  Zaja’s eyes widened with concern. “Won’t that knock the formations down?”

  Jean turned and looked back at the battlefield. The formations were old, broad, and part of the ground itself. She knelt and pressed her hand to the stone, sending subtle waves through to feel the weaknesses in the terrain. The formations seemed as firm as they looked, though to be certain she would have had to touch them directly. This would have to do.

  “They’ll hold. Just gonna give a jolt, startle the fuckers long enough to dash through.”

  “And no one dies needlessly?” Zella asked, before Jean flashed a scowl that provoked a reflexive, “Sorry.”

  As the others weighed the pros and cons of this action, Jean remembered the train ride from Annora and what she’d told Leria. I ain’t a monster. This belief stayed with Jean when a consensus was reached, and she vaulted from cover and advanced in a crouch until she was as close as she could safely get.

  Jean knelt, pressed both palms to the earth and felt the vibrations form just below her elbow, before traveling down the bones of her forearms and exiting through her palms. It was a different show of force needed to rock the terrain rather than rupture it, and as a powerful earthquake took hold of the area, the formations danced and rubble rained down from them.

  The gunfire ceased.

  While her allies came out of hiding, Jean hurried ahead, but hadn’t even reached the first pillar when a shot rang out, followed swiftly by another as the battle started up again. When she glanced back, her friends were silently urging her to return, but Jean just rolled up her sleeves and pressed her hands down again.

  “Little longer,” she vowed in agitation, and everything shoo
k again, the formations dancing more wildly than before. And again, the gunfire ceased. Once more, her allies hurried to join her; this time, Jean reached the first pillar. Confident that she’d succeeded in creating the opening they needed, she advanced for the second blind spot, the paired formations ahead.

  Another gunshot rang out.

  Jean scrambled for safety; half her company had joined her, but the others were forced to fall back. A hail of shots had erupted between them, keeping them apart.

  “They see me?” Jean asked as she tried to peek out, but there was no safe view. “Or are these fuckers stupid enough to ignore the ground beneath their goddamn feet?”

  She was uncertain what to do. One of those who’d joined her was Shea, and she clutched a pistol nervously with both hands.

  “No,” she concluded. “Ain’t gonna let my friends—or Poe—get killed savin’ my ass.” She closed her eyes and breathed deep, kneeling down once more.

  “Little harder, fuckers,” and the earth shook anew. Jean shuddered and tensed with each wave of force. She didn’t stop until she heard nothing, save the groan of the earth around her. Her anger subsided just as a nearby formation finished crashing down.

  The fighting had ceased.

  She stepped out from safety to discover that the distant formations had shattered at their bases and fallen like fresh timber. She had misjudged their stability. Badly. The only sound she heard now was the dust settling. That a body? she asked herself. Blood? It was hard to tell, for the dusky stone itself was as red as blood. Jean pressed forward—she had to see, had to know.

  Flynn grabbed her by the wrist and wrenched her away.

  “Fuck did I do?” she asked softly.

  Flynn spoke, but he sounded distant and broken. “Have to go…” he told her. “…no time…”

  “Didn’t mean to…” She felt like a little girl again, with all the terrors that came with it. “Was only tryin’ to scare…”

  She should have fought free, taken a look, but her strength had left her. She could only peer through the dust as Flynn led her away.