Genna twisted her hands in her skirt and looked at the wall. “It’ll mean more mutated babies.”
“And when this batch of soy crops run out the colony won’t get fresh seeds from Eden or Elysium. There’ll be no tech plans from Olympus, no drugs from Aaru. Everyone will go hungry.” Wren touched Adler’s arm again. “Do you understand why we’re asking that you wait?”
Adler glared. “And if we wait too long and the Runners get killed? Convocation will punish us, the Grounders will have who knows how many wingsets in their possession and there’ll be war.”
“One day.” Genna straightened. “Give Orel one day to get the Runners out. He says he can do it. Once the Runners’re free we can tell Convocation what happened here. There’ll be a cost, but not so far reaching.”
Adler glared; then he wheeled back into the hut. “We’re giving them a day to get the Runners out,” he snapped at those inside. “I’ll go to Lake Lyot tomorrow.” He looked sourly at Wren who was hovering in the doorway. “We have news by twilight tomorrow, or I Run.”
Orel rose to his feet. “Big man, you’ll have good news by then.” His smile seemed to be for Wren alone. “Now, we have some planning to do.”
Chapter fifteen
Wren sat on the sun-warmed rock. Only the blinking of her eyes betrayed her alertness; she was watching the sun go down.
The rock beneath her legs had been steadily cooling as the afternoon wore on but it continued to radiate a gentle heat that soothed her still-tight muscles and made her unwilling to move.
They had talked until a howling dust storm had made speech impossible, and planned for every contingency imaginable. Her throat was hoarse and her ears felt abraded as if she’d been rolling in the sand that surrounded her. She was done with talking. Now she was just waiting for the sun to go down.
The door closed behind her and Raw stretched out next to her. She did not take her eyes from the sun. It had reached the top of the wall. The black stone cut a slice from the orb and swallowed it. No longer a perfect round, the sun continued to sink, sending a glowing line along the top of the biosphere, as if it was setting it on fire.
“Looking for the way in?” Raw squinted at the settlement.
Wren shrugged. Now the sun was nothing but a bright sliver and the wall’s shadow slithered over her rock. She pulled her feet up to her chin, needing to stay in the light for as long as possible.
“We don’t have to do this.” Raw’s words made her turn her head. When she looked back the sun was gone.
She allowed her legs to slide back onto the blackened rock. “Yes we do.” She looked at his frowning face. “At least I do. You don’t. Why don’t you go home, Raw?” His mouth opened and she pushed on. “You don’t know my mother, you fight with my brothers. You don’t like me. Why not just leave me here?”
Raw’s fists clenched on his thighs. After a moment he spoke. “I already told you, you saved my life. What kind of person would I be if I left you here?”
Wren swallowed. “Think of it as payment for what Chayton did to you. We’re even. If you want to, you can go.” She hesitated. “Orel will look after me.”
Raw snorted. “I bet.”
Wren narrowed her eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.” He turned his face away.
“Raw?” Wren frowned the question and he snapped a reply without looking at her.
“I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”
Wren snorted loudly. “He thinks I’m a boy. If he likes same-sex he'll get a shock.”
“Then I’ve seen the way you look at him.”
“I -” Wren fell into silence. Orel was beautiful, there was no denying it. How it must hurt Raw, who had once been handsome himself. Suddenly her chest bands felt tight and uncomfortable and she fidgeted, snappish. “What do you care who I look at?”
Raw shook his head still without looking at her. “I just don’t trust him.” Finally his eye met hers’ again. “I’m not leaving you alone.”
“He’s a Runner, Raw. Runners don’t betray other Runners. And he’s going to rescue my brothers.”
Raw’s eye twitched. “You’re trying to get rid of me because you want to be alone with him.”
“Yes, so he can figure our that I’m a girl and have me tossed from the top of the wall for blasphemy. You’re being ridiculous.” Wren ground her teeth. If anything she wanted Raw to stay. He was a breath of the familiar, a part of her home, and the way that he was trying to protect her made him seem much less hateful. But how could she tell him that.
“Understand this then.” Raw leaned against the hut. “The more of us go in, the better chance we have of some making it out. If I go in, your brothers have a better chance. So why are you trying to talk me out of it?”
Wren closed her mouth just as the door opened behind them.
“Sun’s down.” Orel nodded at the biosphere. “Time to wing up.”
As Wren lifted the tarp, the breeze caught her wings and they fluttered with welcome, pearlescent in the twilight gloom. Wren stroked hers gently almost as if calming them; then she unhooked them from the clips that held them secure.
For a moment they billowed and pulled, as if desperate to be away, but Wren held them to her chest. With a sound like a sigh they relinquished all but the fluttering edges of the wind and bent to her will.
“May I?” Orel took her wings and held them out, waiting for her to slip her arms into the straps.
Raw grunted and lifted his own wing-set. As he did so one of the pinions flopped and dragged on the rock. Wren gasped, her own half-worn wings forgotten. “They’re damaged!”
Saqr pushed his way from the hut. “Let me see.”
Wordlessly Raw handed his wings over and Saqr ran his hands over the weakened pennon. “How did this happen?”
Wren winced as she remembered their first flight, Raw’s arm being almost ripped from their sockets as he failed to get his wings to lock. Then she thought of all the punishment the wings had taken since: crashing into Tir Na Nog and fighting turbulence.
Next to her Raw rubbed his shoulder. “We had some problems on the way.”
“But he landed fine.” Wren pushed towards Raw’s wings. “He was wearing them then.”
“They’ve weakened. This strut -” Saqr flexed the light metal with one hand. “And here, see this connection? It won’t hold for a long flight.”
Wren’s eyes burned. As a future Sphere-Mistress she should be able to repair the wings. But if she tried, she’d give herself away: men didn’t repair their own graphene.
“Can Genna fix it?” Wren refused to look at Raw. He didn’t yet realise he could be stuck in Vaikuntha for the rest of his life.
Saqr rubbed a palm across his chin with the sound of a snake on sand. Wren watched him as though she could force his words to come out the way she wanted. “Not fast.” He shook his head “And not permanently. Right, Genna?”
The Sphere-Mistress stroked the wings. “I could do a patch job on the connection, but it’ll take me all day.”
Orel stepped into Wren’s line of vision. “We just need to get to the watercourse. Will they last that long?”
Genna nodded slowly. “Probably.”
“Probably?” Wren felt as if a hand was around her throat and her voice was high-pitched. “What if they fail?”
“Then I fall.” Raw swung the wings around his shoulders. He shoved his arms through the straps and tightened them in one smooth movement, as if he’d been doing it for years. “They’ve got me this far.”
“Raw,” Wren’s voice tailed off as if the hand around her throat had closed. She grabbed his arm. “If the wings fail you could die.”
“If we get caught on the other side of the wall I could die.” His green eyes glittered and Wren knew the words left unsaid. ‘and if anyone finds out what we’ve done.’
Then he gave a tight smile. “Anyway, you’re my partner. You think I’m going t
o let you go in there alone and unprotected while the Sphere-Mistress works on my wings?”
“I’ll be there.” Orel loomed on Wren’s left.
Raw’s eyes narrowed. “Like I said …”
Orel’s wings caught the breeze. The silver material swelled and glowed gold in the light from the hut. He looked heroic even with the offended frown that marred the smoothness of his forehead.
Casually Raw curled his hands into fists.
Wren gripped Raw’s arm. “If your wings break you won’t be able to get home.”
He hesitated and his scar darkened as he flushed. Then he looked at Genna. “If I let them break into Vaikuntha without me, you could fix my wings up enough to get me home?”
She nodded. “My patchwork would get you back to Elysium.”
“But if I stick with the plan and fly now and then they fail?”
She grimaced. “If this shears,” she indicated a point on the dragging wing. “I won’t be able to do a thing.”
Raw looked at his feet, motionless as a rock in the wind. Then he raised his head. “I’m going with you. The wings might hold.”
Wren’s eyes widened. “They might not.”
Raw gave a lop-sided grin and she blinked with surprise at the unfamiliar expression. “Hey.” His eyebrows twitched. “I’ve been lucky so far.”
He started to buckle Wren’s straps for her. “Remember, the more of us go in -”
“The better chance we have of some making it out.” She shivered.
“Right.” He patted the strap over her chest and glanced at Orel. “Are we doing this or not?”
“We’re doing this.” Orel gazed at the biosphere and Wren’s heart gave a little skip as the wind lifted his hair from his forehead. She really had never seen anyone so handsome. Her breasts throbbed in their bands and quickly she looked away, allowing herself to wish for one short breath that she didn’t have to be disguised as a boy.
“See any guards?” Adler squinted in the same direction.
“I think we’re all right. They’re not looking down here.” Orel nodded towards the empty Runner platform on top of the black walls. Then he sidled closer to Wren. “Stick close.” He raised his voice so Raw could hear. “Follow me and do exactly what I do.”
“How are we getting into the settlement? You wouldn’t say inside.” Raw sounded angry.
Orel tilted his head slightly towards the hut. “We aren’t all Runners in there, remember? I need to be able to use this entrance again and there’re some secrets I don’t want to just hand over. Even if Mahad seems a decent bloke, he’s still only a Waller and Land-locked.”
Raw inhaled at the insulting term, and Wren quickly gripped his forearm. “Fair enough,” she said to Orel. “So we just follow you.”
“It’ll be obvious what you have to do.” Orel rolled his shoulders and moved towards the painted lines on end of the rock. Then he looked back at them. “Just make sure you do it.” He pulled his goggles over his head and started to run.
Wren’s eyes were drawn to him as his toes thudded on the stone. His thighs bunched beneath his tunic, revealed almost teasingly by his undulating wings. Her heart pounded in time with his heels as Orel spread his arms, flicked his wrists and locked the struts. His muscles tensed again as he leaped from the end of the rock, toes pointed like a dancer, wings flowing like dreams in Deimos’s starlight.
He swooped without hesitation into a funnel of air and ghosted swiftly into the darkness behind the hut.
Wren turned to catch Raw glaring poisonously. He pulled his borrowed goggles over his face. “Will we be able to fly in the dark?” he grunted.
Wren glanced at the audience hovering in the hut doorway and lowered her voice. “The sun's only just gone down, there's still warmth in the air and I think we're only going a short way." She looked after Orel. "We launch in order of seniority – you’re older than me, you have to go first.” His shoulders tensed and Wren almost stroked his arm. “You’ll be fine. Just do it like Orel.”
This time Raw’s grunt was wordless, but he straightened his back and turned to the launch lines.
Wren tensed as a shriek like a baby crying burrowed into her ears. The Creatures were back. She could hear them slither along the rock, a teasing of skin to stone, on and off, up and down. She grabbed Raw’s arm. His skin was warm, almost hot despite the rapidly cooling air. She heard him swallow.
“They’re waiting for a mistake.”
“Yes.” Wren nodded. “Are you sure-”
“Shut up.” Raw shook her off and without looking at her he took a deep breath and began to run. His feet hammered the rock like flatirons and his wings fluttered erratically as the damaged strut kept them from evenly scooping the wind. His head was bowed, and the tendons in his neck stood out even in the near-darkness.
Wren held her breath. If he slipped off the rock, if the wind did not take him, or the damaged wing failed, Raw would hit the sand. With the Creatures so close they’d never be able to rescue him. He’d be dead; bones at the end of another platform.
Heart in her throat, Wren saw Raw hit the red line; it was too late to turn back now, even if he tried to stop, he’d go over the edge. There was a hissing from the sand.
She gasped as Raw hurled himself from the end of the rock. His legs flailed over the drop and he tried to lock his wings. Wren heard the material snap and rustle and his yell of frustration carried cleanly through the desert air.
Wren’s fists clenched beneath her chin, she couldn’t tear her eyes from him. She heard the watching Runners surge forwards as one, almost as though they would catch him and bring him back. She didn't turn.
Raw kicked his legs, thrashing at the wind as if it would help. A gust caught his good wing and pulled it outwards, swinging him up and away from the sand. He flicked his left wrist again and again, trying to force the wing to lock the way it should, but it remained only half extended, slack where it should be stiff.
“We should never have let him try with those wings,” Saqr cried.
Wren’s breath had stopped in her throat. Raw started to spin back towards the desert and Wren’s eyes widened as the hiss she had heard sounded again, louder.
And then the wing locked.
Skimming the sand, Raw finally released his own relieved cry as the gust pulled him upwards. Throwing himself this way and that, he fought to find the weakening thermal that had carried Orel.
Eventually he stopped fighting the currents and found his way, gaining height as he spun past the hut.
Shakily Wren released her breath. Genna had pushed to the front of the group and was watching her warily. Wren pulled her own goggles over her eyes, trying to banish the sound of hissing from her ears. She gave Genna a little wave, shook her arms and touched her toes, overcome with gratitude for the massage and rest that had loosened her muscles. Then, with a little hop, she started to run towards the slashes of colour.
Wren’s wings filled and lifted behind her. Their noise encouraged her onwards like whispers in her ears “time to fly.”
She looked at her toes, which were barely brushing against the rock as she fairly flew along.
First she saw the blue line; grey in the shifting darkness. Then just one step later a stripe that seemed black: the red. If her take-off failed now, she would fall, a long drop with a short ending.
The hissing intensified as she came to te green stripe, threw her arms out to her sides, felt both wings click into place and leaped.
There was a flash beneath her and Wren’s eyes widened. Had she really seen a gaping saw-toothed maw surrounding a throat bigger than she was? She stared at the sand which was innocently sinking into a new depression. Whatever she had seen had vanished as swiftly as it had come.
Unearthly shrieks filled her ears, seeming to echo from the very walls of Vaikuntha. Briefly her arms vibrated as she withheld a turn. Her body wanted her to head home, away from the Creatures who lived so close here, the Runners
who had been forced into a tiny hut, the dying Grounders and the situation that felt like the start of a war. But she overrode her impulse and veered.
Immediately the air around her warmed slightly. She was inside the thermal that had carried Raw and Orel away. She allowed herself to relax and turn her head, searching for them.
The darkness had grown and all she could see were flashes of Phobos’ light from silver as the two Runners circled a little way above, waiting for her to join them.
Her eyes flicked to Vaikuntha. Along the length of the wall searchlights blossomed, but as the edifice curved towards the uninhabited desert, the light spots scattered and it went almost black. Assuming Orel headed in that direction, how would she and Raw be able to see him? And how long would the cooling air hold them up?
A flash of colour to her left told her someone had dropped and was pacing her. She glanced across to check the smoothness of his flight and her lips pulled into a grin: it was Orel. She dropped her head, presenting as small a target for the wind as possible. Then she pointed her toes and bent her arms into a slight vee. The wind rushed faster over her face and whistled like an accolade. Orel started to fall behind and she chuckled.
Then something made her look up. Orel had caught a higher, faster current and was above her. She raised her torso, seeking the same height and Orel rolled. Starlight shimmered from the tops of his wings, The light of Phobos burned in his goggles. He looked almost inhuman.
She tipped her shoulder and rolled her wings back at him. The rushing wind tried to tumble her but she merely rolled back.
Then she caught sight of the wobbling figure dropping behind. They had almost lost Raw. Immediately she slowed until he had caught up.
When she turned again Orel had been swallowed by the darkness.
“Orel?” she panicked.
“I’m here.” His voice floated from her right.
“How do we know where to go if we can’t see you?”
There was silence for a moment and she glided directionless, hoping he was still on her wing. “Orel?”
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