by Jess Granger
“I think I like you,” Cyn said. “Get dressed. What I’m doing is right up your alley. It’s your chance for a little revenge against those scars. I’m wrapped up in some complicated business on this planet. But before I leave, I’m going down to the ground cities and smuggling out a couple of kids from under the nose of a flesh trader who sells them as whores,” Cyn confided, his tone turning serious. “That’s the truth.”
“What will you do with them?” Soren asked, still suspicious, but the threat he had felt had left. The man completely baffled him, but perhaps he could trust him.
“I take them to a planet whose people accidentally sterilized themselves trying to vaccinate against a plague. They need children to adopt so their culture doesn’t die. I give them the kids they desperately want, but the fun part is stealing those kids from the mudrats on the ground below us.” He strapped a knife to his thigh then seemed thoughtful. “Well, it’s rewarding so long as you don’t die or end up with large scars across your chest. That’s why I need your help. You in?” Cyn asked him.
Soren reluctantly stripped off his shirt and changed into the one Cyn had tossed on the bed. He couldn’t stand back while Cyani’s brother went on a potential suicide run to save a bunch of abused babies. The man was insane, but if he was anything like his sister, at heart he was noble. Soren chose to trust him, for now.
“I’m in,” he growled. “If only to keep an eye on you.”
“Good,” Cyn said with a smile. “Let’s see what else I have stashed in here.”
He sorted through a small arsenal of weaponry, and they both strapped enough knives to their various limbs to take out half the Garulen army.
“Only knives?” Soren asked.
“Fire off anything interesting in the ground cities and you’ll be mobbed for it. Knives aren’t in such high demand down there. You ready?” Cyn asked as he pushed into the cockpit and tapped quickly at the control panel. “Once we leave the ship, call me Cobra. If the Grand Sister decides to get her panties all bunched up again, I don’t want her or one of her bloodhunters to find me.”
“Understood.” Soren switched his translator to project Azralen. “I’m starting to think you’re a good man, Cyn.”
“Don’t spread it around, or I’ll lose my reputation.” Cyn slapped him on the back.
“Don’t make me change my mind.” Soren tied his hair back and pulled on a pair of thick boots.
The ship hummed and trembled, as if it was storing energy but couldn’t hold on to it. Suddenly a sharp crack sounded through the hull, like electricity discharging.
“We don’t have much time. The pulse will only disrupt the Elite monitoring systems for an hour.”
He dropped down the hatch and Soren joined him. In the shadows near a tangle of swaying vines, a dark-haired woman dressed all in black stood with her arms crossed. A scar puckered her pale skin on her lower cheek and chin.
“Asara, my pleasure,” Cyn greeted.
“I’m sure it is,” she grumbled. “You had to land on an Elite platform, didn’t you? Is landing in the mid-cities not enough of a thrill anymore? Who’s this?”
“He’s trustworthy. He’s here to help. Any news on hacking the array?” Cyn strode over to another small ship like the one Cyani had left in. Soren stepped up onto the hovering deck of the black vessel.
“It’s going to be impossible. We’d need tech we don’t have, or we’ll never be able to communicate with the mining bases. Uyl would need a com blocker that is already coded to the Azralen array at the very least,” she responded, her suspicious eyes never leaving Soren.
“I’ll work on that. How many this time?” Cyn asked.
“Three: one boy, two girls. The eldest carries,” the woman answered. “Be quick—I don’t know how long I can distract the Elite.”
“Just drop us down and lift us back up. That’s all I ask.”
“Yeah, right,” she huffed. “Hold on.”
The ship hovered over the edge of the white landing platform then plummeted straight down without warning at a gut-churning speed. Soren held on to the seat as they plunged into the darkness through whipping branches. The thick, humid air choked him with the smell of rotting vegetation and mold, but soon turned to a strangling odor of sewage and death.
The branches fell away until all that was left were ghostly pale trunks of enormous trees rising over stifled fires below. It was unlike any forest he had ever seen. The forests of his home world were open and full of life from the treetops to the rich soil below. On this world, the cities in the canopy choked out all life and light below.
The ship slowed, and Soren had a fleeting memory of the failing gravity generators on the stingship. He couldn’t lift his hands off the seat as the weight of the stop forced him into a stoop. The pressure let up as the ship landed delicately on a platform slapped together from the hull of a rusted-out transport.
“Be careful, Cobra. They’re waiting for you at Cular.” With a nod, the woman took off again, shooting straight up out of the oppressive shadows. If the people here mobbed for a sono, Soren didn’t want to think of what they would do to get their hands on a ship.
“Welcome to the real Azra,” Cyn ground out. “Keep your eyes open as soon as they stop watering, and stay wary.”
Soren wiped his eyes as he adjusted to the rank smell. A city, if you could call it that, rose up out of the sticky black mud like rotting teeth in a rabid wolf ’s mouth. Buildings had been slapped together from garbage, the castoffs of wealth from above, to form ramshackle huts and alcoves of jagged metal. Rotting tree trunks thrust up out of the ground at odd angles, while bits of threadbare fabric hung over makeshift doorways.
A corpse rotted in the mud to their left. Soren stared, horrified as a red and black snake peered out of the gaping eye socket. The corpse’s pale lips had rotted back to reveal a cruel welcoming grimace.
Cyani had grown up here?
The stillness unnerved him as he jogged next to Cyn. He could feel desperate eyes, dangerous eyes, watching him from the concealing darkness.
Fires burned in upturned cans or in any large bit of metal with a basin. His foot sank into a deep bit of mud, and he could see living things churning just beneath the surface, bugs feeding off the wretched decay.
Cyn gave him a hand and pulled him out. This was far worse than the slave cells of the Garulen. At least they hauled out the dead. How could anyone live here?
They turned a corner into a sloppy street of sorts. “Soren,” Cyn whispered. “I’ve counted five armed men following us. Looks like an ambush. How do you knock people out?”
“They have to come close and face me,” he mumbled back. Awareness trickled down his spine as he pieced out the five moving shadows as well. “It is better if I can hit them all at once. We need our backs to a wall.”
“This way,” Cyn grabbed his forearm and turned them into a dead end.
They heard a chuckle, then an answering laugh. Like blood ravens circling wounded prey, the five men slowly emerged from the shadows.
“Stay behind me and close your eyes, just in case,” Soren warned. The dark shadows stalked forward. Firelight glinted off a jagged blade. He gathered his strength, waiting for the right moment. They had to come closer. He could see their eyes shining with cruel hunger.
“Uh, Soren, now would be good,” Cyn prompted as he reached for his daggers.
Soren pushed out with all of his strength. The flash of light illuminated the dark alley like a strike of lightning. One by one the men swayed and flopped into the squirming mud with a satisfying splat.
Cyn chuckled. “I wish I could take you along every time I did this,” he commented.
“I think I’ll pass on the smell, the rotting corpses, and the murderous gangs of thugs, thanks. The only reason I’m here is the children,” Soren responded as they ran out of the alley and down another shadowy street.
“Unfortunately it’s part and parcel, my friend.” Cyn ducked down, and motioned to Soren to stay put
as he peered around a corner. He climbed up the rusted plate behind them and onto a thin metal beam with silent precision. He crept across it until Soren lost sight of him. Soren pulled his knife. He heard a thump, a surprised grunt, and a body fall into the mud.
Soren turned the corner to see Cyn crouching over the body of a big beast of a man guarding the bottom of a staircase.
Cyn didn’t seem fazed by the body at his feet. “No matter what, don’t let yourself get wounded. The mud is toxic.”
Soren nodded, but didn’t say a word.
They climbed up the spiral staircase cut into the trunk of a long dead and decaying tree. The stairs felt spongy beneath his feet, and several had rotted toward the trunk until they were nothing more than a crumbling nub of soft wood, or a platform of springy fungus. Soren tried not to think about one giving way beneath him and throwing him down to his death. At the top perched a building, the only sign of any money in the area.
Its red brown walls looked like they had been painted with dried blood and sagged at odd angles, giving the building an uncanny resemblance to a lopsided, bleeding fungus on a rotting log. A relatively solid-looking landing pad seemed out of place as it hovered at the front of the building, while dim blue lights flickered inside.
“I need you to care for the children and get them down the staircase and to the ground. I’ll handle the guards. One of the kids is probably around thirteen—she’ll be able to help you, but I have no idea how young the other two are. They may be beaters.”
“Beaters?”
“Offspring of the whores,” Cyn growled. “They beat, cut, starve or brand the babies if one of the mothers steps out of line. That is, until the babies are old enough to start earning money themselves.”
“I’ll get them out,” Soren promised. He would protect them with his life and the fury born of knowing their darkness and pain.
“Good man.” Cyn swung one-handed beneath the support beams. He hooked a leg up and gave Soren his hand as he hung upside down by the crook of his knee. He punched through a trapdoor in the floor of the building and they struggled up through the hole, careful not to make any noise.
They crept down a narrow hall. Loose slats of boards let light through thin slits in the rotting wood. They reached a ladder and climbed up a level. A girl in her twenties met them. Her wide eyes betrayed her fear. Like an abused animal chained to its suffering, she moved with jerky, nervous steps. “Come with me,” she whispered, her pale face ghostly in the dim light.
She led them to a tiny room at the end of another long hallway. Cyn slowly opened the door. Three children huddled in a corner in the dark, their spindly limbs wrapped around one another. The eldest couldn’t have been more than fourteen, and yet her stomach was swollen with new life. She stroked the filthy hair of an eight-year-old girl with dark, haunted eyes, while a toddler boy with branding scars on his chest cuddled in her lap.
“Are you the Cobra?” the young girl asked.
“Yes,” Cyn answered. His voice sounded soft and almost melodic. He knelt down and smoothed a bit of hair from the girl’s forehead. “Do you know what I do?”
“Master says you steal children to eat them,” she said, lifting her small chin in defiance.
“Do you believe it?” Cyn asked.
“No,” she said. “He lies.”
“What do you believe, little one?”
“I believe you’re magic, and you will take us someplace pretty and safe. Is that true?” she challenged.
“It is,” he answered with his characteristic smile. “Every word. Are you ready to go?”
She placed her tiny hand in his. The pregnant girl nodded with tears in her eyes.
The woman who had led them cradled the boy’s face in her hands and desperately kissed him. “Go with the Cobra, my dear little one,” she whispered. “He will keep you safe.” The baby reached up and fisted his small hands in her hair.
“Mama go?” his weak little voice asked.
The house shuddered as the whine of ship engines filled the small room. Lights from one of the flying vessels shone through the slatted planks of the outer wall, casting the room in a frenzied light.
“The master’s back early,” the woman said as she spun in a frantic circle. She wiped the tears from her wild eyes and handed the baby to Soren. The little boy reached out for his mother.
“Mama!” he cried as he struggled. Soren snuggled him close to his body and stroked his greasy hair. The poor baby weighed nothing. “Mama, you go?” Soren couldn’t stand it anymore. He turned the boy’s face to his and sent him to sleep.
“We’re getting you out, too,” Cyn told the mother as she touched her baby’s face to make sure he was okay. Cyn grabbed her hand and placed a knife in it. “Ask for Ceer at the tavern in Ahul. Tell her I sent you. She’ll help you escape to the refugee colonies. If you want, I can leave your boy.”
The woman shook her head and clenched the knife. “No, get him out of this place. Please, I want him safe, to have a real mother.”
Cyn placed his hand on her cheek. “You are a real mother. When I can, I’ll try to get a com image of him back to Ceer. He’ll be happy.”
“I know,” she whispered. The thunk of men’s footsteps rattled through the timbers from the floor above. “Get them out.”
Without another word, Soren stepped forward and took the hand of the little girl. She looked at him with faith and trust he didn’t deserve. If fate never allowed him to be a father, he’d make up for it now.
He had to get them out.
He led the children down the hall while Cyn branched off down a second passageway.
With great care, he helped the children and the mother down through the support beams and onto the staircase. He pressed his back against the trunk to let the pregnant girl slide past him so she could be in front. She shook so badly as she passed him he was afraid she would collapse.
He heard the sounds of shouting, of metal striking metal from the hall above.
The mother paused, and almost turned back like an animal running into a burning thicket. Soren took her arm and forced her down the stairs.
“Go,” he commanded her, knowing she didn’t understand his words. “Go.”
She flew down the staircase while he raced down with her. The rotting wood crumbled and compressed under his heavy steps, but he didn’t have time for caution. He’d have to cling to faith. A man charged up the stairs from the ground, brandishing a sharpened stake of metal. The pregnant girl screamed and fell down on the stairs, sliding toward the attacker. The step in front of them crumbled and Soren pushed forward, catching the pregnant girl as the child behind him clung to his thigh. The attacker lunged forward, his eyes wide with depraved victory as he rushed toward them.
Soren let his eyes flash, and the man stumbled and fell off the stairs to the ground below. The pregnant child screeched and jumped back toward Soren. He pushed her ahead of him and forced them to keep moving until they reached the ground.
The mother turned back to him. She took the boy into her arms. With a desperate hug and a kiss to his sleeping head she whispered to him. “I love you, baby. Know always I love you.”
“I won’t let him forget,” the pregnant girl assured in a shaking voice. “He will know who you are, and what you did for him.”
Tears streaming down her face, she pushed the baby back into Soren’s arms. She gave the others a quick hug and slipped into the dark shadows.
Soren led the two girls into a shadowed alcove. The pregnant girl looked fearfully up at him while her hand splayed protectively over her belly. The little girl curled into his side. Her trust in him unnerved him.
“It’s going to be okay,” he whispered to them as he placed the sleeping baby in the shaking arms of the oldest girl. It seemed like such an inadequate thing to say. They couldn’t understand him anyway. He unsheathed two of his knives. The younger girl flinched and cringed away from him. What had they suffered?
He knew. That was what killed him—
at the heart of it, he knew.
He took up a protective stance at the mouth of their small metal cave. They had to wait for Cyn before they could return to the platform. He would return. He was Cyani’s twin.
Just then Cyn leapt off the last few stairs and landed on a thick pipe with the grace of a cat. A streak of blood splattered over one side of his face. He wiped his red hands on his shirt. “Don’t worry, it’s not mine,” he mentioned as if he wasn’t wearing the brutal evidence of his deadly nature on his face. He really was Cyani’s twin. “Time to go,” he added. Soren took the baby back to save the girl’s strength. She would need it.
They raced through the shadows until they reached the platform. Asara waved a frantic hand to hurry them as she reached down to hoist the children onto the landing pad. The girls stumbled as she helped them into the pod. Soren lifted them onto the seats as he fell down, still clinging to the baby asleep on his shoulder. The rush of adrenaline made his muscles feel rubbery and weak. He could only imagine how the girls felt as they clung to one another.
“You’re a mess,” Asara commented to Cyn as she landed in the seat in front of the controls.
“It could be worse—you should see the other guy.” He shrugged.
“One less rat to worry about. Stash the children, and anything else you have that’s interesting in your ship. The Elite have ordered a search.”
The children clung to Soren as the ship shot straight up out of the darkness into the twilight of the branches. He stared in wonder at the floating cities built into the trunks and out on the limbs of the great trees. Above them light streamed through the green leaves of the canopy.
They came to a stomach-lurching halt at the glittering white platform where Cyn’s dark ship perched. The children couldn’t open their eyes in the glaring light. Soren had to squint himself as he helped lead the blinded children into the Serpent. Muddy tears streamed down their gaunt faces. Soren felt helpless to comfort them. They had probably never seen the light before. Some of the most glorious things in life could be painful. He had learned that lesson as well.
