by Chele Cooke
It was only when Lacie came down to the Way that Georgianna finally excused herself to head out. Lacie could keep Jaid company while the woman was unwilling to leave her husband, and Jaid would help Lacie if any emergencies came in.
Wandering through the Belsa territory, Georgianna made her way to the guard’s sight, coming up slowly to find Keiran sitting against the wall, his Tyllenich rifle resting across his lap. He glanced up, giving her a tired grin.
“How’s he doing?” he asked, shifting the rifle off to the side and patting the space next to him. Georgianna stepped over and pressed her back against the wall, sliding down to sit beside him.
“He’s…”
Georgianna sighed. Bringing her knees up towards her chest, she turned to look at him, resting her temple on her arms. Si had been agitated after the marshall had spoken to him, not to mention that Jaid had been rather indignant at being asked to leave.
“He’s still muttering, still thinks Alec will be down to see him any minute.”
“You didn’t tell him?”
“Couldn’t,” Georgianna explained. “The moment I even tried he got all freaked out, saying we’d sold him out. I had to change mid-sentence, telling him that Alec was on duty.”
“Didn’t know he even knew Cartwright,” Keiran admitted.
“All Kahle. Alec and my brother were good friends, back before all this.”
“Shit.”
Georgianna nodded.
Alec Cartwright had been another of those difficult disappearances. From what Georgianna knew, which was little, he’d been out on orders from Beck with another Belsa, Ashoke. The two of them had been scouting a building out and next thing anyone knew, Ashoke was dead and nobody saw Alec again. With a pass to get into the compound, Georgianna had kept an eye out for him, but with each trip, her heart sank and her guilt rose a little more. It looked more unlikely that any of them would see Alec Cartwright again. After a few weeks people stopped looking, his friends stopped expecting him to come back. Even his brother Landon gave up. Georgianna gave up on ever hearing his voice or seeing that look in his eyes when he believed she was being reckless. Alec Cartwright was dead. Now they just had to find a way to tell Si.
“Did you know him?”
Keiran’s tongue swept out, wetting his bottom lip before he shook his head.
“Not really,” he answered. “I mean, suns, it was two years ago. We may have had duties a couple times, but we weren’t friends or anything.”
Keiran was blunt, but Georgianna didn’t blame him: deaths were common, especially among the Belsa. If Keiran let every one of them get to him, he’d probably never pull himself out of bed. Better to care about the people he was actually close to, she supposed.
“Look, I’ve been thinking.”
Georgianna lifted her head and looked back at Keiran. He was staring at the wall opposite, his gaze occasionally flickering down the tunnel.
“What?”
He placed the rifle down next to him on the ground. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows against his knees, clasping his hands together.
“After Si and all,” he said slowly, “are you sure you should be taking that delivery?”
Georgianna stared past him down the tunnel, not sure what she was supposed to say. She’d agreed to take the packet into the compound for Taye and when she’d told Keiran, he hadn’t said it was a bad idea. If anything, he’d been amused that it had taken her so long to say yes, as if it was clear that this was the only option she would choose.
“I don’t…”
“Si was almost caught doing something, George,” Keiran interrupted. “He had to hide out for three days. If you get caught, you’ll already be in the compound. It’ll be a short trip.”
“I promised, Keiran.”
“I know, but he’d have to understand. Things change.”
“Not for him.”
Keiran let out a frustrated huff, wringing his hands tighter together. Georgianna was at a loss, she’d never seen Keiran worried, not about something personal. He had always been so carefree and charming, almost cocky even.
“It’s only small,” Georgianna assured him. “I can hide it under my clothes, it’ll be nothing.”
She let out a breath, leaning towards him. Resting her elbow on his shoulder, she gave him a bright smile.
“It’s adorable that you worry,” she murmured.
Keiran glanced at her and rolled his eyes.
“Yeah, tell me that when we’re sneaking stuff in to you.”
“Better make it alcohol when it’s me,” Georgianna teased. “This thing is tiny. No way there is actually more than a note inside telling Nyah that he loves her.”
Keiran’s eyes narrowed as he looked back at her. He sat up straight, and Georgianna’s arm slipped from his shoulder as he turned to face her a little better.
“Why don’t you just open it and memorise the note?”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why not? It’d be safer.”
Crossing her arms over her chest, Georgianna frowned back at him. The Adveni couldn’t read minds, she didn’t think even they had a machine for that. Still, the idea of reading a personal message from Taye made her feel dirty.
“It’s not mine. I can’t open and read Taye’s private words to her. It wouldn’t be the same.”
“Seriously?”
Georgianna shook her head, her nose wrinkled in disgust.
“Fine,” she argued. “What if it’s dirty?”
Keiran’s grin slid easily across his lips. In a single moment, all the worry and argument had melted away, replaced with a dirty smirk and a suggestive glance.
“Well, then you bring it to me and I’ll read it,” he answered, waggling his eyebrows.
Georgianna reached out and smacked him. If he thought she was letting him read Taye’s dirty messages to Nyah, he was going to be sadly mistaken. At her attack, Keiran laughed, grasping her wrist before she could pull away.
“Then again, I’m sure I could come up with much filthier things,” he wagered.
Pulling back in an attempt to free her wrist from his grasp, Georgianna rolled her eyes. Keiran’s grip tightened a little and he tugged her closer. Shifting her weight against the hard ground sent a spasm of pain through her leg, but as he grinned as her, she couldn’t bring herself to pull away.
“I’m sure you could.”
“Come over tonight, I’ll prove it.”
Georgianna frowned.
“I have work.”
“After?”
“Will you still be awake? You passed out pretty quick last night.”
Keiran nodded as he leaned in, settling a soft kiss against her lips.
“Promise,” he mumbled.
“Alright,” Georgianna agreed. “But if you’re sleeping, I’m throwing cold water on you.”
His laughter washed over her skin, sending an excited tremble through her. Giving him one last, lingering kiss, she pushed herself to her feet, freeing herself from Keiran’s grasp.
The way Keiran could turn the tables on her so quickly was unsettling. She was sure that he knew how quickly he could twist her around to his way of thinking, especially when it meant being close to him. She enjoyed his company and never found herself getting bored, even when they disagreed.
As she stepped over his legs, Keiran reached up and caught her wrist.
“Think about it, alright, George?” he asked. “The note?”
Her mind was already made up. Georgianna knew that she couldn’t back down from her promise now, especially not after Taye had been so happy that she’d said yes. Though, the way Keiran’s gaze searched her face so earnestly, all trace of the dirty humour and the promise of pleasure gone from his eyes, she found her resolve faltering. Gulping back the rising lump in her throat, she nodded, and walked away before he could twist her further to his will.
It was a week before Georgianna was scheduled to visit the compound again, and no new emergencies came through to h
er tsentyl. Each day leading up to the regular visit, she could feel her stomach fall a little further, her heart rise a little higher in her chest. She didn’t tell anyone that she was getting worried that this would go wrong, that maybe this time she’d be caught. Each time she’d passed things into the compound before it had been messages, lines she could remember by heart from loved ones of those who had been buryd. She didn’t want to admit that maybe Keiran had been right, that she was risking too much for Taye. Though each time she thought about leaving the package behind, Taye’s face appeared behind her closed eyelids with the knowledge that his fear for Nyah would lead him to do something far more stupid than try to slip an innocent package into the compound.
Georgianna hadn’t opened the packet Taye had given her over a week before. Even as she walked the tunnel to the east, the slim, flat packet stuck to the underside of her breast, she didn’t dare look to see what was inside. She couldn’t betray Taye by looking at something that was obviously so personal and important that he could no longer keep it in his possession. Georgianna wanted to convince herself that the packet was nothing but a message of love, a promise of continued devotion, but there was something that fell from side to side when she tipped it that stopped her from believing this.
Despite the object being slim and light enough to conceal beneath her shirt, with each step Georgianna became more aware of its presence against her skin. The closer she came to leaving the eastern tunnel, the heavier and more obvious it felt. She stopped twice within the tunnel, and once again on the steps leading out onto the path, slipping her hand up beneath her shirt to ensure that the glue paste was holding it securely to her skin. There could be no leaving it behind so close to the compound. Even if she could have peeled it from her skin, she had nowhere to put the packet that the Adveni guards would not find.
As she was admitted through the gates of the compound, Georgianna’s heart fixed itself in her throat, making it hard to speak even as the guard asked her simple questions. It was Edtroka again, his deep eyes continually suspicious under his dark cropped hair. Georgianna followed him inside and emptied her bag like every other trip, trying to make easy conversation with the man though she had to think carefully about every word.
When his hands found her body, smoothing his palms over her skin through her clothes, checking for hidden weapons or items, Georgianna could barely breathe, sure that Edtroka would feel her heart pounding through her chest or one of the sharp corners of the paper packet. It was only once he deemed that she was safe to go in that Georgianna finally let out a relieved breath.
The walk through the corridor to the block seemed to take forever, and when the door of the block finally slid closed behind her, Georgianna’s eyes instantly began scanning through the masses for that familiar face she needed to see.
Men came up to her for help, an infection here, a cut that needed stitches there, and with each patient, Georgianna wished that Nyah would come to her. She’d not seen the blonde, and like the trip over to the compound, each passing minute was making her anxiety to find Nyah that much worse.
She only had a couple of hours. Two hours to see whoever she could get to before she was expected to leave again. Time was ticking away and Georgianna’s hands were slowly becoming unsteady as she searched desperately for her friend’s girl.
Still, Nyah did not show her face.
Her tsentyl beeped, a warning that she only had a few minutes before she was expected to be by the door. Grabbing a slim, tall man by the arm as he passed, Georgianna looked at him desperately.
“Where’s Nyah?” she asked.
The man stared back at her blankly.
“Nyah!” Georgianna repeated quickly. “She’s short, maybe twenty-two? Blonde hair, pretty, in here for an attack on an Adveni!”
“Oh,” the man replied, lifting his head in acknowledgement. “She was taken, maybe two days ago.”
Georgianna stared at the man, her eyes wide as her frantic mind tried to figure out if Taye had been right that her punishment would not be permanent, if Nyah had really been freed for her crime.
“She was freed?” she demanded, she still holding his elbow.
The man let out a rough laugh and shook his head. He stuffed one grimy hand into his pocket, seemingly uncaring that Georgianna still had a hold of his arm. He dragged the other hand through a mess of long, matted hair.
“Nope,” he answered. “Sold. Fetched a hefty price too from what I hear.”
Georgianna’s mouth dropped open and for a moment, there was nothing she could do but stare at the man in shock. She couldn’t see how Nyah would have been sold. She had been in the compound for months, there was no reason they would have sold her so suddenly.
“Oi! Medic!”
The authoritative voice rang clearly across the block and all around, men and women alike hurried back towards their cells, away from Georgianna. Even the man she’d been holding on to wrenched his arm from her grasp and rushed back to a barred cell.
Georgianna, still stunned, turned her head to see the guard, Edtroka, standing in the block doorway, looking annoyed. Running with small, uncertain steps, Georgianna glanced desperately around the block, hoping for some proof that what the man had said wasn’t true. Hoping she would see Nyah up on one of the balconies, or peeking her head out of a cell.
There was nothing, only a sea of curious faces who watched as Georgianna gathered up her bag and returned to the block door.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbled to Edtroka, slipping past him and out into the corridor.
“You should be more careful with your time, Med!” Edtroka warned her as he returned her to the table.
As Edtroka rechecked her bag and felt his way across her body to ensure that she wasn’t sneaking items out of the compound, Georgianna’s heart once again rose into her throat. She didn’t breathe in, though her body screamed for oxygen, terrified that a single breath would give away the packet beneath her shirt. Edtroka found nothing. She followed him mutely as she was escorted out of the compound and down to the gates, and was left to return to the city in the burning sun. So distracted was Georgianna that she almost walked straight past the tunnel entrance before she remembered to turn and go inside.
Once in the tunnel’s dark shade, she took a seat on the bottom step, leaning forward and resting her head in her hands. She let out a wracked sob, pushing all the air from her body, letting relief flood in and fill the spaces left behind. Blood thudded through her ears, pulsing past her temples under trembling fingers.
She had said that it would be alright. She had promised herself that there would be little risk. It was only as she’d been standing there, watching Edtroka search her bag, feeling his sweeping check over her hips and down the small of her back, that she realised just how close she had come. One wrong rustle of material, and she would have been walking back into the block. One sharp edge of the packet, and she would never see her family again. One wrong word, and she would be sold as a drysta… Just like Nyah.
There was no way she couldn’t tell Taye what she knew, that Nyah was out of the compound, but sold as a drysta to an Adveni. There was no way she would be able to lie and tell him that Nyah loved the packet and sent back promises of continuing love. If she told him those things, Taye would still believe that Nyah would one day be released. He would ask Georgianna to keep checking on Nyah and her growing guilt would stop her ever wanting to see her friend.
Georgianna blinked. In the shock, she’d completely forgotten about the packet glued to her body. Reaching under her shirt, Georgianna tugged the packet from the underside of her breast, hissing as the paste pulled painfully on her skin.
With the packet in her fingers, Georgianna wondered if she should return it to Taye untouched. Whether she should leave it closed so that he could keep his privacy with Nyah. However, curiosity got the better of her, and sadness at Nyah’s situation made her unwilling to fight the urge. She carefully opened up the packet and tipped the contents gently out into
her hand.
It was less than she thought had been inside, but the single item unfortunately meant that much more. In her hand, a perfectly woven grass joining ring lay against her palm. Yellow from the sun and being disconnected from the earth, the grass had grown delicate and brittle. Georgianna could only wonder how long Taye had kept the ring in his possession, hoping for Nyah’s return to him. The grass ring was only symbolic, used for the ceremony. Afterward it would be replaced with one made of silver. The grass was used to show that everything, all natural elements from the grass to the sky, would know of their joining. It was an old tradition, one that had mostly gone out of fashion since the Adveni had arrived, but the meaning was clear just the same.
As Georgianna turned the ring over in her fingers, she looked at the other item that had been in the packet. On a small, torn piece of paper, in Taye’s almost illegible handwriting, he’d scrawled a Kahle promise.
I love you above all others.
Under sun and moon, you will be the only one.
My ship to carry my heart
I join myself to you for now and ever more.
Georgianna remembered the promise word for word, even before she’d finished reading the first line. It had been used in every ceremony she had ever attended, including that of her brother to Nequiel. In the darkness of the tunnel, alone and holding a joining ring that did not belong to her, a ring that might never be placed on the finger of the person it was intended for, and thinking of all the rings that now lay cold on lost partners’ hands, Georgianna wanted to cry.
She was unsure how long she sat on the steps leading down into the east tunnel, but when a group of five Adveni came down the steps behind her, Georgianna leapt to her feet to get out of their way, keeping the grass ring and the paper slip concealed tight in her fist.
Marching amongst the Adveni men, Edtroka looked at her with an odd expression. Cold and calculating, in the moment his gaze met hers through the shadows, Georgianna feared that he knew exactly why she had been sitting on the steps. Stepping a little further away, but unable to break the guard’s gaze, Georgianna watched him until he finally turned away, making a crack in Adtvenis that had the other men laughing.
