Windrunner's Daughter

by Bryony Pearce

  Wren inhaled nervously. The nauseating smell was less strong up here, but the air was still tainted and she shivered in her sodden clothes.

  “Here we go.”

  She hopped out of the way as Orel hurtled towards her. He hit the edge with one foot, leaped towards the next roof and opened his arms. Wren noticed however, that he kept his elbows slightly bent, allowing his wings a flavour of the blighted air, but not letting them fully engage. As he’d said, they lifted him just enough to bring him the last couple of lengths to the next house. A thud told Wren he had landed and his wings glittered as he shook the air from them.

  He gestured at her to follow but, instead, Wren tip-toed to the edge of the building and stood over the wet footprint he had left behind. The gap she had to cross was around four of her own body lengths. If she didn’t make it she’d crash through a criss-crossed boarded canopy before hitting the ground below.

  She took a deep breath. Orel had done it, and although she was smaller than him, she was lighter. Her wings could carry her.

  She turned her back on the drop and walked, as Orel had, to the far end of the building. Then she dropped into a crouch, took a deep breath, rose onto her toes and ran.

  The jump was easy; it was harder to remember to keep her arms bent. Her muscles wanted to listen to the wings; both demanded that she fling her arms outwards to catch a full lock, but Wren resisted.

  Even when her jump started to turn into a fall, she held steady until her wings billowed and powered her over the brickwork.

  Orel caught her as she crashed into him. “Okay?” he whispered.

  Despite herself Wren grinned. “Race you to the middle.” She broke away from him, stepped backwards and sprinted for the next roof, arms held crookedly outwards. This time she was lifting almost before she jumped and she glided higher with no jerkiness. On the next roof she barely landed – just let her toes touch the brickwork with the barest of brushes, before jumping for the next.

  In the corner of her eye she could see Orel one rooftop over. If she leaped diagonally she’d cut him off. Wren sprinted to the corner of the building and leaped across, almost swiping him with her wingtips as she overtook him.

  He was bigger than she and his legs were longer, but Wren was lighter and ultimately faster. Each jump took her slightly ahead of him until she looked back and found herself three buildings ahead.

  Then she gasped and her feet tangled together, dropping her full length onto the roof. Was that a figure behind them? Wren rose onto her hands and squinted into the darkness. But as soon as she tried to see more clearly, the figure, if it that was what it was, vanished into the shadows.

  Orel landed next to her with a gentle thud. “What happened?” He offered her a hand up.

  “I thought I saw someone.” Wren leaned around Orel still trying to see.

  He looked over the twitching canopies. “I can’t see anything,” he whispered.

  “Not any more.” Wren continued to glare into the shadows. “Could anyone be following us?”

  Orel’s frown matched hers’. “Maybe on the ground, but not up here, how could they be?”

  Wren shook her head. “I don’t know.” Then she straightened. “Look. There. Something moved.”

  Orel stepped towards the roof edge. “I still can’t see anything.” He clenched his fists and leaned into the darkness. Then he turned back to her. “The Runners are what’s important. If there is someone following us, wouldn’t he have shouted for the guards by now?”

  “I guess.”

  “Yer in a strange place. This must all seem very odd.” He gestured at the rustling settlement. “It’s probably just yer imagination. But just in case, let’s run faster.” He smirked down at her. “Or maybe you can’t go any faster.” He suddenly sprinted away from her.

  “Oh, no you don’t.” After a last quick glance behind them, Wren bounded after Orel. She’d beat him to the centre and they’d get her brothers out, strange pursuer or no.

  They stopped at the rooftop just before the giant pyramid. Now it appeared even bigger, rising above Wren’s head and taking up the whole world.

  “This is where we get off.” Orel slid off the roof edge, used his feet to create a gap in the canopy below and dropped silently through the hole. Wren followed him. As she dropped, Orel caught her by the waist then gently lowered her to the top of the ground floor. His hands pressed her wings to her sides and almost touched at her belly.

  When he released her he remained where he was, so close that Wren’s breath fogged on his wings. He tucked a tangle of hair behind her ear and then turned away.

  “Nearly there.” He dropped the final storey to the ground and held his arms out for her.

  Wren dangled from the roof and let go, trusting that he would catch her. Again Orel paused before releasing her. Then he faced the pyramid. Only the bottom level of the building had windows and when Wren peered to her right, she saw faint light illuminating the street with stripes. Her heart started to pound. Those windows were barred.

  “There! That’s where they are.” She started forward and Orel seized her, enclosing her so that her back was pressed against his chest.

  “Wait and watch a minute. They won’t be alone.”

  “All right.” Wren subsided into his arms then she craned her neck backwards. He was hunched over her and their position put her lips were a breath away from his.

  “Wren,” he croaked. “You are a girl aren’t you?”

  “I-” Wren was caught between the need to run and the desire to stay. The possibilities made her gut tighten.

  “It’s all right.” Orel’s breath warmed her neck. “I knew from the moment I saw you.” His mouth twitched into a smile. “I know a girl when I see one.”

  Wren twisted to face him. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

  He shrugged. “I guess if you had already got here, you had already proven you could Run, right?” His thumb touched her cheek and she froze. “Anyway, you’re partner-Running, it isn’t like you’re alone.” He stroked his thumb down to her jaw. “And you’re better than he is.” He trapped her chin in both of his hands. “I’ve seen you Run, you’re better than a lot of grown Runners out there.”

  Finally, his lips closed the tiny distance between them and his insistent hands pulled Wren to her toes. She gasped into his mouth. Her eyes closed and her whole body tingled with a new awareness.

  Then rough hands grabbed her from behind and she was dragged into the open.

  Chapter nineteen

  Orel’s yells faded behind her and Wren struggled, frantically kicking but still keeping silent as if her quiet would prevent more security guards joining the mêlée.

  Hard hands closed around her shoulders, more around her hips and legs and she was carried, squirming, trying to see what was happening to Orel as he disappeared into a wall of bodies. Everything was happening so fast. How had they been caught so easily?

  Finally, Wren found her voice. When she started to scream the guard holding onto her legs pinched her calves and tears came to her eyes. Still she kept shouting for Orel. Her wings were dragging in the dirt, tangling in the feet of the men who carried her, as if they were trying to save her. What if they got damaged? She struggled more frenziedly. Who would rescue her brothers now?

  A heavy door slammed opened and the men manoeuvred to get her inside. Wren looked up, desperate for a last glimpse of the sky. Phobos winked at her through the Dome, then the ceiling closed overhead, the door slammed and the sky was gone.

  The men dumped her in the centre of the room and stepped back. Wren leaped to her feet, already looking for a way out, but she was surrounded. She turned to the doorway, looking for Orel, but the door remained stubbornly shut. Had he escaped, or were they taking him somewhere else?

  She didn’t want to be alone. Her knees shook, almost unable to hold her weight, but something told her she had to remain standing.

  She wrapped her arms and wings ar
ound her chest and her eyes darted around the room. There were five men with her: two by the main entrance, one by the barred window, two by another door in the rear of the room. The room itself was empty, apart from a desk and chair at one wall.

  The Vaikunthan guards had the look of brothers, dark eyed and thick necked, but Wren noticed their flaking skin and red-rimmed eyes. Two had weeping sores around their mouths. She didn’t want to feel anything for them, but it was obvious that they were sick, exhausted and scared. Her heart shrivelled and she turned, trying anxiously to keep each of them in sight.

  The one by the window stooped like a gingko in a storm. Then he coughed into his hand.

  The plague! Automatically Wren covered her mouth with one sleeve.

  Fury in his eyes, the coughing man lurched across and, half choking, pulled her hand from her mouth. Wren flinched back from him as he raised a hand to strike her and the door in the back of the room opened.

  Wren’s eyes flicked to the swinging door and stayed as a man emerged from the darkness. A satchel hung from his neck and his eyes drew the shadows until his face looked like a skull beneath his bald crown.

  “Lister,” Wren murmured and the guard dropped her arm and scuttled from her side.

  The Lister ignored her. Instead he stumbled wearily to the desk, lifted the satchel over his head and dropped it on the wooden tabletop. It landed with a thud and settled with a puff of air, as if it were sighing.

  Freed of his burden, the Lister stood a little straighter. Then he turned and looked at one of the guards. “You did as ordered?”

  The guard gestured towards the middle of the room, where Wren stood, still trembling with damp-infused cold.

  With a whisper of flesh on flesh, the Lister rubbed his palm over his bald head; then he crossed to her. “You shouldn’t have come here.” He took her chin in one hand. “Yes, I see it now.” He nodded. “The Councillor can use this.”

  He turned his back, dismissing Wren. “Usual procedure. Take the wings. Put the Runner in 7b.” He remained standing with his back to her. “There’s a space in Cell Three.”

  The coughing guard returned to her side, spat and gripped her elbow painfully. “Three’s occupied, Sir.”

  The Lister’s hand hovered over his satchel. “After dawn it won’t matter. For now let the little beast have company.”

  Instinctively Wren had started to pull free of the guard’s sweaty fist, but the Lister’s words stopped her. “What do you mean, it won’t matter after dawn?”

  The Lister’s hand rested on the satchel now, as if it was too heavy to raise. “At dawn the whole settlement will hear who caused the plague.”

  “You found proof?” Wren whispered. “Runner’s did this?” All she could see was her mother’s face.

  The Lister ignored her question and Wren was driven into a short corridor. At the end was a gaping storeroom piled high with wings.

  Time seemed to slow as Wren took in the sad condition of the discarded beauties, dumped any which way. She inhaled and her fists sprung closed: the room had been used as a toilet.

  Incandescent with rage, Wren struggled wildly. The guards fought to restrain her as she battled to reach the wings she had spent her life maintaining.

  “Stop it, beast.”

  “Well, this proves it, don’t it?”

  “Let me go.” Wren flinched as one of the guards laid greasy fingers on her chest array. “Don’t touch my wings,” she shrieked, but he mercilessly unbuckled the straps and pulled them free, adroitly avoiding her thrashing limbs.

  As the man lifted her wings from her back Wren felt suddenly exposed. The air cooled the wet patches of her shirt and she felt unnaturally light.

  In the guard’s arms her wings were lifeless. He wasn’t holding them properly and his fingers left greasy smears on the graphene.

  “You’ll break them,” Wren sobbed. But the guard ignored her and tossed her wings over-arm into the storeroom, where they cart-wheeled over the pile and clattered towards the back where they stopped with a sickening crunch.

  Wren gasped and slumped in the men’s hold. Bereft of her wings she barely protested as they dragged her along a second corridor.

  Finally they stopped outside a repurposed airlock with a number three daubed on it. Dried crimson paint had dripped down the metal like blood. The guard palmed the reader and it slid open. Wren had no time to peer inside. A hand shoved her in the back and she flew forwards. As she fell against the far wall the door slid shut and she heard the locks click into place.

  In every way possible, she had failed.

  Although Wren wanted to curl up and die, she forced herself to remain upright. The Lister had said something about ‘company’. Was there another Runner in here?

  Slowly she took in the cell. The musk of body odour irritated her suffering nostrils and the stench of a full toilet burned the back of her throat. The smell was shatteringly bad, but it finally chased away the taint of sickness that had lined her tonsils since she landed.

  And there was something familiar about the scent, Wren took a hesitant step towards the window where light from a distant alcove ignited the bars and created a striped pattern on the floor.

  There were two figures in the cell with her. Neither seemed particularly large; young Runners, she was certain.

  Then one of them stepped across the light.

  As if hurled from her feet Wren threw herself at the Runner and wrapped her arms around his neck. Sobbing she buried her nose into his collar. He smelled as if he hadn’t washed in a week, but it was her brother - it was Jay.

  “What the …?” Jay tried to push her off, but she clung on.

  “I’m so happy to see you.”

  “Who are you? Colm get him off me.”

  “Colm!” Immediately Wren released Jay and looked for her older brother. At first she could see nothing, but his eyes glittering through the darkness.

  Colm was watching with his usual serious expression, but in response to Jay’s outrage, he stepped into the light. Wren clutched her throat. His cream jerkin had turned to grey and a yellowing bruise flowered on his cheekbone. He still wore his full mask, and it covered his face so that she could not tell what he was thinking.

  Unable to control her feet, she ran towards him but he raised one hand. The gesture was so like their father’s that she almost skidded as she halted her charge. “Colm, it’s me.”

  Silently he rubbed his thumbs over his curled knuckles and made no move towards her, but Jay’s gasp echoed through the cell. “Wren?”

  “It can’t be.” Colm rushed forwards and lifted her to her toes. His eyes widened. “It is you.” He shook her, hard and her head snapped back and forth, a sharp headache crackling at the base of her skull. “How did you get here?”

  When Wren didn’t answer, his eyes blazed with fury. “You took Jay's training wings. How could you?”

  “Colm …” Jay tailed off.

  Colm dragged her so close that his words left spit on her cheeks. “You’ve no respect for your family or Runner-law. For Skies Sake, Wren, was it worth it? You’ll die for this.” His jaw tensed. “Then what happens to Avalon? There’ll be no next-gen Sphere-Mistress. You selfish brat.”

  Wren tried to wriggle free, but he gave her another hard shake. “Father’s not due back from Convocation for ages. Is that why you did this? Did you think no-one would find out?”

  “I had no choice.” Wren twisted under his grip to find Jay. “Do either of you have the plague?”

  Jay blinked and answered her in a strange high voice. “No. We’re fine.”

  Colm’s eyes were, in shape and colour, just like their mother’s, but the beetling brows curving over them were their father’s, as was the expression burning in their depths. “What do you know about the plague?”

  Wren swallowed. “Mother has it.”

  Colm released her and rocked as if she had swung at him with a joist. “And you just left?”


  “You don’t understand,” she cried. “Father’s still away, you never came home. I needed help.”

  Jay wrapped his arms around his chest. “What about Win?”

  With a shudder, Wren thought back to her humiliation at their grandfather’s hands. “You think I didn’t try? He sent me away. The Grounder Doctor just gave me a few analgesics and they wouldn’t let me call Lake Lyot on the communications array. What would you have done?”

  Colm bumped onto the bunk by the far wall and his shoulders hunched.

  “Colm?”

  “This is my fault.” He spoke through his long fingers. “We should never have landed here.”

  Jay backed against the airlock door. “You know it isn’t your fault.” His eyes were hunted. “Colm wanted to wait because he wasn’t sure of the flags, but I was so damn tired. I went to land and Colm had to follow me, he’s my partner.” He gulped. “How is Mother?”

  Wren closed her eyes. “She’s dying.”

  Colm sighed. “And you didn’t know how to read the flags.”

  Wren shook her head. “I didn’t land here. We broke into the colony to rescue you.”

  “We?” Colm frowned.

  Wren opened her mouth; then closed it again. He couldn’t know about Raw. “Me and one of the local Runners, Orel.”

  Colm nodded. “I know him. Why would he want to rescue us?”

  Wren swallowed. “We didn’t just come for the two of you. The Council here are going to blame the Runners for spreading the plague. We think they’re going to execute you … us.” Colm hissed through his teeth and Wren nodded miserably. “We’ve got till dawn.”

  Her brothers leaped up and scanned the cell as if a way out would present itself. Restlessly Jay’s hands searched the airlock door as if the metal would melt under his touch.

  Colm’s cheeks were so pale they looked transparent. “Father was right. They think they don’t need us any more.”

  “What are you doing, Wren? Come to the greenbelt.”