her instruments 02 - rose point

by M. C. A. Hogarth

  “Thanks.” Reese tied it in place, trying not to think too hard about what she was doing. Sascha would have made a joke about this; imagining it helped her finish the job. Then she started hunting through the tent for something to wrap around the Eldritch, who was going into shock, she thought. Keep things brisk. Keep them moving. “If it’s all right with you, I can rub your feet and arms until you can feel them? I can’t carry you and we have got to get out of here.”

  No response. She could hear him breathing, and it was a shaky, strained sound. She let him be and considered the wooden chest. If Irine was here... but she wasn’t. Frowning, Reese leaned forward and fingered the lock, testing its weight.

  It opened. She stared at it for a moment, then bit back an inappropriate laugh and flung the lid up. Clothes mostly too small for the Eldritch, but the robe might work. And there was at least one sash that could be improvised into underwear—that worked in books, so surely it would work in real life? She gathered them into her arms and turned... and dropped them, running to him and... and hell with the not-touching thing, and with her not being good at comfort, but her crew would say there was a time for hugging and this had to be one of those times. She closed her arms around his head as he shook, set her hand on the back of his head. The twins had once told her his hair was like warm silk. She didn’t want this to be the way she found out they were right.

  “Hey,” she said. “Hey. We’re going to get out of this. I promise. And you’re going to be okay.”

  He wasn’t crying. That would almost have been easier. The anguish she’d caught in his gaze before she lunged for him... surely tears would have helped wash it away. But this silent trembling was worse, somehow, much, much worse. She had wanted him to break down, to be normal, to be fallible and frangible. With every fiber in her, she regretted that desire. She would take his insufferable perfection and thank the bloody soil for every aggravating minute of it if only they could have avoided this moment.

  Reese rested her cheek on his hair and closed her eyes, let him lean on her as much as he was willing, and didn’t care that her thoughts were in his head. She hoped they hurt less than the ones he’d been thinking himself.

  “They do,” he whispered. When she raised her head and tried to look down at him, he said without moving, “Hurt less.”

  Very slowly she felt his hand come to a rest on her back. It was a very broad hand... and it was shivering.

  “It’s not your fault,” she said.

  “Oh no,” he said softly. “The bodies... they certainly are.”

  He expected her to falter, but she did nothing of the sort; in fact, she gripped his shoulders tighter and said, “They kidnapped and tortured you. Good bleeding riddance.”

  She didn’t understand, couldn’t possibly. And he needed her to. “I did it with my mind, not my hands.”

  A pause then, but so brief he almost missed it… and the scintillance of her aura, shot through with opalescent rays that had been buoying him up since she found him, remained undimmed. If the shadowed-steel determination beneath it grew more distinct, well, she could hardly be blamed for that. Some distant part of himself could float above his horror and consider the situation, find it untenable on her behalf.

  “I know I’m about two heads too short for this,” she was saying, “but can you lean on me to get up? For some reason the camp is mostly empty—we thought they were chasing you—and now I don’t know why they’re gone and I don’t want to be here when they get back. Ra’aila was supposed to bring the hunting party but I don’t know how long that’s going to take.”

  “Hunting party,” he repeated, but he forced himself to try rising. Reese helped, one hand lifting to his chest. “No!” he said, and she froze. He swallowed, eyes closed. Cleared his throat. “Not that side. There’s… a fracture there, or a tear. Near the sternum.”

  “Right,” she said, resting her small, warm palm on the other side. He staggered, almost taking her down with him; on the second try, he managed to rise completely, though there was not a part of his body that did not protest the effort, from the blinding headache to the angry fire of nerves waking in his feet. “The Kesh sent out a hunting party to find you and some super-valuable horse these people stole. I went with them.”

  “The ship?” he asked, hoping.

  “Not happening,” she said. “This valley’s too small to set her down, and the terrain between here and there would rip the landing gear off and send her rolling downhill. Can you stand?”

  “I think,” he said, eyes closed. He swallowed. “Captain. I need to see them. The bodies.”

  That made her aura contract, a fleeting hesitation. Her voice was guarded when she spoke. “This isn’t about you and that oath you took.”

  He had no idea what she was talking about until a memory skated through her touch into him: sitting in her quarters, reading the medical oath he’d be required to swear again if she took him on as a doctor instead of general crew. She’d been appalled, as the oath he’d chosen had been the most rigorously pacific of the group, and had required that he minister to the wounded in order of severity, friend—or foe.

  “No,” he said, hoarse. “No, it’s nothing to do with that.”

  “All right,” she said, though she was still uncertain, a queasy gloss over her steel-and-opal colors. “Here, hold on to the tent pole here...” She left him listing against it and brought back a robe and sash. As he stood, mute, she threw the robe over his shoulders and started arranging its folds. It made him aware that he was naked, and that she had a deep discomfort with nakedness. “It’s not long enough, but it’s something—”

  He touched her shoulder. “Thank you. The sash... has to go around the ribs.”

  “Right,” she said. “Just tell me what to do.”

  Somehow they managed, and somehow he stumbled behind her, waiting until she’d decided it was safe to leave the tent. The sun was too bright for the pain in his head, but he forced himself to open his eyes anyway. It took him a moment to find the bodies, but they were there. He staggered to the first, the guard alongside the tent, and fell to one knee beside it. He didn’t bother looking for a pulse. Pushing himself upright he found the next: dead also.

  “Hirianthial,” Reese began, but she didn’t try to stop him.

  He made his way outward. It was hard to tell, but it looked as if the dead were limited to a very small radius around the tent—beyond that, the bodies were unconscious, though in one case the man was comatose, not merely fainted. He kneeled beside the farthest body he’d found, leaning back until his heels pressed against the robe. Resting his hands on his thighs, he tilted his head up and closed his eyes.

  Past the headache, past the eye-watering pain of his injuries, past the welter of horror and disbelief, he could still feel the sun on his face, like a blessing he was no longer sure he deserved.

  She didn’t want to watch and couldn’t look away: the wind swept the edges of the robe around the kneeling Eldritch, and it was a ludicrous bright purple and it didn’t matter...nothing could make the tableau less poignant. The look on his face—

  —if these people had broken her Eldritch—

  Her telegem startled her by squawking. She grabbed it and flicked it on. “Blood and freedom, this is a bit of a bad time!”

  “Boss.” Sascha sounded focused. She didn’t like it when Sascha sounded focused. “Where are you?”

  Reese glanced at the tents and the scattering of limp bodies around them. “In the middle of the raider camp, why?”

  “There’s a receiver down there somewhere.”

  “A what?” She frowned, glancing toward the edges of the valley. Her skin was crawling: how long did they have before someone found them?

  “A receiver,” Sascha repeated. “One that only lights up when someone’s hitting it with a reflected signal at a very specific angle.”

  Her thoughts snapped back from the reverie. “What?” She hugged her arms. “No, no. You are not telling me that there’s an offwo
rld link between these criminals and...”

  “I don’t know,” Sascha said. “But it sure looks suspicious. I’m hoping you’re going to tell me we’re leaving soon?”

  “The moment we get Hirianthial into and out of their clinic,” she said. “I don’t think we can handle his injuries onboard.”

  His pause made her realize she hadn’t told him she’d found the Eldritch, and his voice when he spoke this time had gone from focused to that hot stiffness she associated with his anger. “How bad?”

  Watching the Eldritch bow over the last of the bodies, Reese said, “Bad in so many ways I can’t even describe them yet.” She shook herself. “Look, Sascha. I’ve got some horses to steal so we can get out of here. I’ll call once we’re back in town.”

  “Boss... make sure you come back in one piece. Both of you.”

  “Trust me,” Reese said. “There’s a knife between me and anyone who wants to argue the point. Reese out.” She looked around and muttered, “Now if only I knew where the hell these people were so we could have the argument.” With Hirianthial occupied and obviously in need of privacy, she went hunting for transportation. The bandits’ horses were corralled near the back of the camp. None of them had rope or reins or anything she could use to catch one, but there had to be a way to attract a horse’s attention. Didn’t they like food? Maybe she could pull up some grass and offer it? She was just starting to walk that way when Hirianthial called, “Wait.”

  It hurt to hear how raw his voice was. She stopped so he could join her, his gait a jerky caricature of its usual grace. “Let me come with you,” he said. “I can talk them into helping.”

  “Talk one into helping,” Reese corrected. “Those things can hold two people, right?” She wished he wouldn’t stare at her like that; it made it too clear that his pupils hadn’t filled out again. “You don’t look like you can make it on your own. And there’s no way I’ll be able to stay on one of those things without a saddle. This is only day two of my education as a rider. I’m not up to circus tricks.”

  She thought he would argue. She wanted him to argue, wanted some sign of his usual obstinacy. But he just closed his eyes and said, “Very well,” and then trudged toward the corral. She scurried after him, packing her fretfulness away. Stay focused. Stay on target.

  Joining him at the fence, she said, “So... how do we do this?”

  “We ask,” Hirianthial said. His hands came to rest on the top bar, fluttering as he tried to breathe in and cut the movement off. The lines that framed his eyes spilled shadows, and she hated seeing them, evidence of pain.

  But then he lifted his chin and spoke no word, made no movement, did nothing. His eyes remained closed, and his expression...

  Entreaty was the word she wanted, too intimate to be witnessed. She blushed and looked away.

  A horse was trotting toward them. Not just any horse, but a bright white horse, fierce and proud and wild. He came to them not like a pet obeying a master, but like some sort of elemental summoned from thin air. And he walked all the way to the fence and touched his nose to Hirianthial’s arm. The Eldritch relaxed, opened his eyes, set a gentle hand on a long, pale nose. Would he? He did. He rested his head against the animal’s, and even bruised and exhausted it was a beautiful moment, pale faces, white manes, long milky lashes.

  “All right,” she managed. “I’ll… I guess I’ll go look for a saddle.”

  “No,” Hirianthial said, quiet. “This horse will take no saddle, nor any bit. But he’ll carry us.”

  Reese eyed the stallion uncertainly. “I’ve just had a day-long education on what happens to my backside when I ride on a badly adjusted saddle. I can’t imagine riding without one is going to be better—“

  “Nevertheless,” he said. “This horse will bear no saddle.” At her expression, he smiled a little, and she was so relieved to see him smile that she didn’t care that he found her objection humorous. “We will survive the trip, Captain.”

  “Better than we’d survive staying,” she said and sighed. “Fine. Bareback it is.” She glanced at the horse’s nearest eye and said to it, “Just go easy on me, all right? What I know about horses I could fit in a Flitzbe’s mouth. And Flitzbe don’t have mouths.”

  The horse regarded her for a few moments, then turned back to Hirianthial and brushed its nose against his arm.

  “Right,” Reese muttered. “Thanks.”

  Getting up on the horse was an exercise in itself. She went up first, with Hirianthial’s help; then he came up behind her, and she heard the hissed breath he tried to hide when he mounted. She forced herself not to tense her back and shoulders and looked between the horse’s small white ears until he settled, his thighs behind hers and his arms reaching past her sides to gather a handful of the mane. Loosely, she noticed. She would have to remember that if he fell unconscious and she was left to guide this boat on her own. Blood and freedom forfend. She was an adequate ship’s pilot, but she’d barely managed to make a horse go where she wanted with a pair of reins to steer it and a herd to lend some peer pressure. Managing a tackless stallion with a body slumped on hers sounded like a recipe for disaster.

  “You ready?” she asked, hesitant.

  “I was about to ask you such,” he answered.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  The stallion walked to the corral gate and stood alongside it as Hirianthial leaned over and undid the latch. As they rode past, Reese steadied herself and reached over, kicking the gate wide open.

  “Make it harder for them to catch up with us,” she said.

  “It’s likely those are spare mounts,” Hirianthial said.

  Reese set her shoulders. “I stand by it. Better free than owned by those people.”

  No argument. She let out a breath as the horse picked its way through the camp, hooves sounding a hard tattoo against the dry ground. Riding bareback felt a lot more precarious, except that she was enveloped in Hirianthial’s body. If she’d been willing to lean back, she could have put her back all along his stomach; as it was, his arms and legs were cradling hers. He was close enough that she could feel how shallow and controlled his breaths were; could smell the acrid sweat and blood, see the dried flakes of it scaling his arm. And all of this while partially nude, in a race that could sense thoughts through skin and had even more of a problem with touch than she did. She frowned at the view past the horse’s ears. No doubt he could tell what she was thinking, and while injured and sick—it had to be uncomfortable. She knew that now, having been browbeaten by Kis’eh’t into doing at least some basic research on esper abilities.

  Well, she could at least do something about that. Think happy thoughts. She had good memories, didn’t she?

  It seemed strange to realize that... she did. A few years ago she would have had to work harder to mine them from the rubble of the life she’d been desperately holding together. Now she could see the value in the smell of hot coffee. Be grateful for naps with Allacazam in her hammock, dreaming alien dreams of burbling brooks and rustling willows. Now she could sense the friendship in her crew, extended to her as well as to one another, and be glad to have them—be glad even of the twins’ exuberant hugs, and Kis’eht’s wry comments and Bryer’s trenchant if frequently strange advice. She could even, if she was calm enough, think back to Mars and be grateful for the memory of a wind through the eucalyptus she’d loved as a child, for the rich crimson earth and the distant earthrise, pinprick bright in a pink sky.

  Reese wrapped herself in memories so deeply that the yelling seemed surreal: another dream, but a negative one, intruding on her disciplined mental state.

  “We’ve found the missing raiders,” Hirianthial said behind her, and the stallion vaulted forward and charged through a fight being waged with arrows, swords and palmers. Before she could protest—or scream—they’d broken through the fight and were pounding down the slope.

  “Are they chasing us?” she asked, shaking.

  “I would prefer not to discover they w
ere by slowing enough to be captured,” he said, and something in his voice....

  “No,” she said. “Me neither.”

  They rode until Hirianthial began to sag, and then the horse slowed down by itself: magic, or maybe it could read thoughts. For all she knew, there was some mystical horse/Eldritch bond she didn’t know about. But it was walking slowly amid the brush when she felt him lose consciousness. The sudden weight on her back made her grunt, but she reached behind herself until she could feel his side and steadied him as best she could.

  The horse eventually stopped. She was trying to decide how to get them both off his back when she heard hooves. A lot of hooves. She grabbed for her knife, startling the horse, which sidestepped. “No, no,” she hissed. “Don’t do that. Please! Or no, wait. Can you run?” She tried pressing her knees against its side and was ignored. “No, really, we need to get out of here—!”

  “Was our company so bad, then, Captain?” the Kesh called.

  Reese froze, then said, “Oh, freedom bless. Shamil! Help?”

  What would have taken far too long had she done it alone was the work of moments when the group converged on her. She was lifted off the stallion, Hirianthial borne away to a flat patch of ground where the healers that had come along could assess him, and someone else led the very valuable horse away to be brushed and fed and whatever else it was horses needed.

  “So you’re not being followed,” Reese said to the Kesh as she sat by the firepit.

  “Not by that group, anyway,” he said. “I’ve left most of our people behind to lead the prisoners back to the town. The rest of us came looking for you.”

  “Me... and the horse,” Reese guessed, wry.

  “And the horse,” he agreed, pouring himself a cup of coffee. He offered her a mug, which she accepted. “He’s worth a great deal of money. It would be a little like you abandoning your ship somewhere, not caring where it had gone.”