by Chele Cooke
Georgianna frowned and rested her cheek against his shoulder, staring blankly down his chest. Her fingers, caught in his shirt, pushed the material up just enough that her thumb could slide effortlessly back and forth across his skin.
“I was only thinking about it,” Georgianna murmured.
Keiran’s chest rose and fell with slow, deep breaths, but Georgianna didn’t dare move. She didn’t want to get them into an even more awkward conversation than they were already in. His hand came out from underneath his head and wound into her hair, tugging her head gently back until she could look up at him. Shifting his body a little further down the bed, Keiran smiled.
“Well, I suppose I should make the most of now, just in case,” he answered.
Then, without another awkward word between them, his lips were on hers, and all thoughts of travelling south were forgotten.
Leaving the tunnels, the morning sun was already high, radiating constant, sticky heat. Despite the fact that Georgianna knew she would be more comfortable in a short-sleeved shirt, one which allowed her skin to breathe, she had pulled on a thin smock that covered her from neck to wrists to protect her from the sun’s rays. The walk from the last tunnel exit over to the camps was long, and she couldn’t risk too much exposure, not in the mid-heat sun.
On either side of the beaten path leading out of the city and into the camps, buildings were being erected under Adveni supervision. Veniche of every race and tribe queued for hours in the early morning to get a place on one of the construction crews. Construction was high-paying work and places were limited and heavily controlled. Anyone with even the slightest mark against their registration was turned away, regardless of their skill.
Crossing her arms over her chest, Georgianna continued down the beaten path to the camps. They built up slowly: first the odd, outlying building, before these became more frequent until you were in the middle of a sea of houses and other small buildings.
While they were officially called “The Veniche Camps”, they were actually split into a number of smaller encampments that bled into each other as space became sparse. The Kahle, one of the largest tribes that used Adlai as a settling ground, were in the north and spread out towards the west, furthest from the city.
The Nerrin had taken over the south-west, and while the east held relatively neutral grounds to allow safe passage between the camps for all, there were a number of smaller tribes and nomad settlers who had taken up their own private space.
Near the main road through the camps, a woman was hanging out laundry while five children played in front of the house. From the fact that the children were all the same age yet looked absolutely nothing alike, Georgianna could only assume that this woman had been asked to look after children by other families while they went to work.
Further in, back from the path, a man was skinning a kill, the thick hairs of the pelt still dirty from the hunt. Beside him, a large dog lay chewing on one of the deer’s leg bones, paying no attention to the large amount of meat only a few feet away. Georgianna chewed on her bottom lip, watching out of the corner of her eye and taking note of the surrounding buildings. Having not been home in a few days, she didn’t want to take a large amount of meat if her family were stocked already, but it was useful to know who had meat in, just in case. Most people probably wouldn’t trade such a large kill so easily, but her medical supplies could prove a worthy trade if they didn’t know someone within their own tribe. Unfortunately, medics had been one of the hardest hit during the invasion, going in to help those injured and then being killed or captured by the Adveni. Luckily for Georgianna, she had been young and inexperienced, mostly kept back to treat the smaller wounds of those who managed to return from the fighting.
Georgianna walked though the neutral safety area and, passing between the buildings, into the Kahle encampments. With every home she passed, and every person outside who greeted her as if she were their own child or sibling, Georgianna felt the familiarity of home. Even before the Adveni had arrived and pushed the Veniche further out of the city by raising prices for land, the Kahle had camped in these spots. Their homes had been destroyed in the first attacks, but that sense of place could not be broken. So when the Kahle moved north to Adlai to resettle during the heat, they returned to the same area they always had. Georgianna was sure that her bed at home was still in the same place it had been when she was a child.
“Gianna!” a voice called, little feet rushing forward until a small body collided with her legs, wrapping its thin arms tight around them.
Georgianna almost lost her balance from the impact. Looking down, she smiled broadly at the ruffled brown mop of hair and the thin, smiling face hidden beneath it. She bent down and wrapped both arms around Braedon’s waist to lift him up against her body.
The young boy immediately wrapped his arms around her neck. Curling his short legs as far around her body as he could reach.
“You’re not meant to be learning, are you?” Georgianna asked, glancing at the boy suspiciously through the corner of her eye.
Braedon lifted his head and shook it vehemently.
“No, Grandda’ was tradin’, Miss Kadey lookin’ after me!”
“Well, alright,” Georgianna answered, glancing off to see Kadey Lane standing in her doorway.
Lifting a hand and waving to Kadey, Georgianna began walking back towards their home, Braedon in her arms.
“Where’s your da’?” Georgianna asked.
Braedon shrugged, which only meant one thing: her brother had a job from an Adveni. The only reason Halden wouldn’t share something with his son was because it involved things Halden thought Braedon was too young to know.
It was a short walk from where Braedon had collided with her to their house. On the front doorstep, Georgianna’s father sat with a hide across his lap, a thin knife in his hand which he was using to cut away the extra patches of fat and muscle.
Braedon, having grown up around such things, showed no disgust or queasiness at the sight, but instead began wriggling in Georgianna’s grasp until she finally put him down and the young boy could go running a little lopsidedly back towards his grandfather.
“Aren’t you meant to be with Kadey?” her father asked as the young boy ran into his eye line.
“Gianna got me!” Braedon exclaimed, pointing back at her.
Georgianna’s father lifted his head, smiling brightly at the sight of his youngest. Putting the hide aside, he got to his feet. Quickening her step, Georgianna moved over towards her father who placed his hands on either side of her face and kissed her forehead gently.
“My girl,” he murmured, smiling down at her for a moment before the hand from one cheek was gone and quickly came back with a light smack upside the head.
“Ow!” Georgianna complained, stepping back and reaching up to rub her head. “What was that…”
“You come home far too little!” he claimed, pointing at her. “Anyone would think I have no daughter, just sons!”
“Son, Da’, you only have one!”
“Sons run off and sleep in odd places, not daughters!” he claimed, narrowing his eyes at her.
Georgianna had received this talk many times before, and even though she was twenty-six years old, more than capable of looking after herself, she still frowned and chewed her lip at her father’s disapproval.
“You sorry?” he asked.
“Yes, Da’,” Georgianna mumbled.
Her father nodded slowly.
“Good!” he answered. “Now, help with the stew, will you?”
Georgianna rolled her eyes as soon as her father wasn’t looking, a motion that made Braedon giggle and cover his mouth. Georgianna smirked and winked at him, ruffling his hair as she dumped her bag on the ground and climbed past her father, who was taking his seat in the doorway again.
The house was cooler than it was outside. All the windows and doors were flung open to let what little breeze could be found circulate through the small rooms. In the back of th
e house, two large doors stood open, leading out onto a small patch of dried grass. Just past the doors, vapour swirling up into the air, a large pot stood above a small fire holding the stew her father had been talking about. Georgianna watched the boiling bubbles for a moment and moved over to the trunk in the corner of the kitchen. She lifted the lid and took one of the spoons from its place in the trunk. The lid dropped with a snap, and Georgianna dipped the spoon into the stew and sucked the juice from the back of the metal. It was decent enough, but the quality of the Lennox family cooking had definitely dropped off since her mother’s death.
Lifting the lid and removing the tray that lay across the top of the trunk, she placed it on the rough-hewn wooden table that took up most of the simple kitchen. The kitchen wasn’t used much anymore, the different pots and utensils that her mother had made such good use of during her life, abandoned. Her father preferred to make simple meals in large quantity so that they would last for a number of days.
She dug through the contents of the trunk, finally finding what she was looking for. Down near the bottom, clearly not used all that often by her father and brother, a small cloth satchel held a number of paper packets filled with spices. Her mother had been obsessed with collecting spices. Whenever the Kahle camped near another tribe, she would insist on going over with some trade in the hopes of finding something the Kahle couldn’t find on their trail.
Georgianna took each packet out in turn, carefully opening each one and sniffing it tentatively. She had never had the flare for cooking her mother had, no matter how much her mother had tried teaching her. Georgianna wasn’t good at automatically knowing which kind of spice a dish needed to really bring out the flavour, nor did she know how to counteract things when they went wrong. While Georgianna was a good medic, she was not good at reviving injured food.
She tested a number of spices and herbs, sprinkling them over the stew in turn. She closed each packet just as carefully as she’d opened it and placed them back in the satchel, going to the stew and stirring it carefully. Lifting the spoon, she sucked on the back thoughtfully, wondering what it was her mother would have done. There was something wrong with it: it was full and tasted of the meat, but there was something missing, some flavour that, as a child, would have had Georgianna initially wrinkling her nose.
Blinking for a moment, she wondered if it could really be that easy? She reached into the trunk and pulled out a dark green cantina. Opening it, she sniffed and immediately wrinkled her nose. Dark berry wine. That was it. She liked the taste of the wine, and she had certainly become more accustomed to it as she got older, but there was still that slightly acidic smell that she had never fully gotten used to.
She stood over the stew for a moment, wondering how much she was supposed to put in: too much and it would overpower everything; too little and what was the point? Grimacing as she tipped the cantina, she waited for three healthy glugs to spill from the mouth before she brought it away, replacing the cap and returning it to the trunk.
Her third tasting yielded better results. While it still didn’t taste like her mother’s—she was pretty sure nothing ever would—at least it tasted of more than meat and root vegetables. She stirred the concoction once more before placing the spoon to the side and returning to the front porch, leaning over her father’s shoulders and kissing his cheek.
“You smell like your mother,” her father commented with a fond smile.
“Of dark berry wine?” Georgianna asked.
For a moment, her father pondered the idea, before he slowly nodded.
“I think that may have been part of it.”
Georgianna climbed past her father and slumped down onto the dry earth near his feet. Braedon, who had been playing with a couple of carved wooden horses from Halden’s childhood, picked up his toys and rushed over, wriggling himself into Georgianna’s lap so that she could wrap her arms around his waist and rest her chin on top of his head.
“How’ve you been Da’?” she asked.
Her father shrugged. He looked older than he used to, far older than he should have looked. Georgianna could remember her father scooping both her and Halden up under his arms, carrying them through camp when they misbehaved. He wasn’t a giant, but he had seemed that way, the way he held command. His dark hair, the same as her brother’s, was now heavily sprinkled with grey, his beard going the same way. Yet his bright green eyes still sparkled with the energy of a much younger man. Despite his strength and skill with a weapon, Lyle Lennox had become a carver, taking wood and whittling it away to create useful objects. For his joining present to Georgianna’s mother, he’d made an entire cooking set, large enough for a family of six.
Taking one of the small wooden horses from Braedon, Georgianna galloped it across the boy’s knees and up his arm until she nuzzled it into his neck, neighing playfully. Braedon giggled and tried to wriggle away until Georgianna handed him back the toy.
Georgianna turned back to her father and frowned.
“Beck says hi,” she told him with a careful smile.
It was odd to think that her father had been friends with Beck, knowing the man now as the marshall of the Belsa. But apparently, when they were young, Beck Casey and Lyle Lennox had been thick as thieves. Beck had trained as a hunter and scout, Lyle as a carver and carpenter, but the two remained close whenever they were in camps. Now, however, the two barely saw each other.
“Of course he does, lazy bastard can’t get over here himself,” her father chuckled. “How’s that girl of his doing?”
“Lacie is great,” Georgianna nodded enthusiastically. “She’s a really fast learner.”
“Good. It’s about time you had an apprentice,” he claimed, pointing the knife he was using to clean the hide at her. “No good letting those talents go to waste.”
Nodding, Georgianna reached out and pulled her bag towards her. While her father hadn’t originally been happy to know she was visiting the Belsa to help out, knowing how badly the Adveni wanted them eradicated, he had slowly come around to the idea as long as Beck was looking after her. When Georgianna had brought back news that Beck had a young girl living with him, a girl the marshall was treating like his own daughter, Lyle Lennox had been over the moon. He wouldn’t tell Georgianna why, of course. He said it was none of her business unless Beck decided to tell her on his own, and that she was not to ask him about it.
“I still need to meet that girl,” her father announced thoughtfully, scratching the edge of his knife against his jaw. “Beck’s a good man, a loyal Kahle, but those tunnels are no place for a young girl.”
He looked pointedly at Georgianna and nodded very suddenly:
“You’ll bring her here! Lots of people to help out this way, you could call it work!”
“She’s wanted, Da’,” Georgianna lamented. “A drysta runaway.”
Her father tilted his head to the side and dug the knife a little further into the hide as he tried to think up a reasonable solution. After a minute, he finally huffed, which Georgianna knew to take that he’d not been able to think of one. No doubt it was annoying him. He wanted to meet his friend’s daughter.
“You know, you could always come down to the tunnels with me,” she suggested. Glancing beneath her eyelashes at her father, Georgianna quickly occupied herself with opening her bag, like her suggestion had been perfectly innocent.
“And risk being hauled off as a Belsa?” he asked. “Who will look after your nephew when I’m buryd, huh?”
Georgianna opened her mouth to argue but quickly closed it again, knowing it wouldn’t do any good. It wasn’t the first time she’d tried to convince her father to visit the tunnels and Beck. Scooping Braedon off her lap and onto the dried grass, she carefully got to her feet.
“I’m going to check on the stew.”
Braedon was sprawled on Georgianna’s lap asleep by the time his father returned home from work. Splattered with paint, Halden flopped straight onto the floor next to his sister and son. He rolled to t
he side, kissed Georgianna’s cheek in greeting, and immediately slumped onto his back again. Georgianna didn’t blame him. While she had spent a relatively relaxed afternoon with Braedon and her father, Halden had been working for the Adveni, probably ordered to work faster and harder every step of the way.
Georgianna carefully prised herself out from underneath Braedon, adjusting the boy to sleep on his father before she slipped out to the kitchen and ladled Halden a generous portion of stew. It was a little cold, her father having put out the fire beneath it an hour or so before, but Halden was grateful when Georgianna handed it to him and he took his first mouthful. As Georgianna curled up at her father’s side, Halden told them that he’d been working on one of the new buildings.
The older Lennox continued to whittle, refusing to tell them what he was making.
“Wood is a living thing, my little Gianna,” he used to tell her. “And like all living things, you can’t tell them what they should be. You can only help them find what suits them best.”
She had never really known what he had meant when she was a child, but it sounded very profound, so she’d never questioned him. Now, she thought she understood a little better. Just as she had decided for herself that she wanted to be a medic, and her parents had used their skills to help her along, Halden had decided that he wanted to work with horses. It had also been their parents’ acceptance of not forcing other living beings into what they might want that had stopped them from questioning the news that their eldest son would not join with a woman. Instead, at the age of nineteen, Halden Lennox had claimed that he was in love. Nobody had even known he had dated before.
His name was Nequiel. He was a nomad who had come to the Kahle to sell a foal. As Halden was working with the tribe’s horses, it had been Halden who had to look over the foal to see whether it was bred well enough to bring into the Kahle stock.
