Mutual Trust

by Lea Linnett

  Beside him, Bree nodded. “I know.”

  The transport whirred madly beneath them as he changed gear, and then they shot forward, heading west. No one followed them, and Marek heard a dull explosion in the distance as one of the enemy transports failed to take to the air.

  Abruptly, the sounds of battle fell away, and they were soon speeding away from the Barracks, the world darkening to a mix of midnight blues and rough grays. To the north, Marek saw the faint outline of mountains, and to the west, the sea.

  “How far?” he asked Bree, lowering his voice. The cockpit had gone silent except for the humans’ heaving breaths.

  “You can head north now. We’re far enough away.”

  She shuffled closer to him, pressing a kiss to his shoulder that he felt through his suit. Behind them, there was a soft intake of breath. Probably Torrin, as Noe had been unresponsive ever since they escaped the interrogation room.

  “I was worried about you,” Bree admitted as he turned the transport in an arc that was almost gentle. Her body was warm against his side, and it reminded him of just how cold the rest of him felt. His feet were numb from the snow outside, his hands stiff on the console.

  “About me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “I was almost surprised that Urek didn’t chain you up, after everything.”

  He hummed. “My brother is intelligent, and ruthless, but far too quick to think he has won.”

  “I don’t know about that,” she whispered. “I think maybe he wanted to believe you were on his side.”

  He glanced at her for a moment before his gaze flicked back to the air before them. He didn’t have a response for that, so instead, he cleared his throat. “Did you see what happened to Silas?”

  Her lips pursing, Bree looked away. “I didn’t.”

  “We could not go back for him.”

  “I know, Marek.” She was silent for a long moment, and then she said in a shaky voice, “Urek said… that Silas was the spy. The one who signaled him to reveal our location.”

  A lump formed in Marek’s throat. “That’s not…” But before he could deny it, he remembered Silas’ strange words just a few minutes earlier, and the apologies he’d agonized over when they’d talked in Marek’s temporary lab. He blew out a long exhale. “I don’t want to believe that.”

  “Neither did I,” Bree muttered. Her hand found his thigh, squeezing briefly. “But he helped us, in the end.”

  “And he helped me get the humans out,” he agreed.

  “I hope he’s all right.”

  “He is tough,” was all Marek could say, and then he glanced into the back, where the other humans had gone very quiet. “Are you both all right? Is anyone injured?”

  “Not injured…” Torrin replied gruffly. There was a shuffle of fabric as he pulled Noe closer to his chest, and Bree looked over.

  “Noe, are you okay?”

  The blond didn’t respond, and when Marek looked back curiously, he found her staring at the blood on her hand with wide eyes.

  At that moment, something shifted beneath them with a loud clunk, and the sound of wind whistling along their underside reached Marek’s ears.

  Something was wrong. Very wrong.

  The transport tilted, making Marek’s stomach lurch, and he wrenched on the console in an attempt to right them.

  “What’s going on?” Bree asked, her voice rising in panic.

  “I do not know. Urek damaged something, I think.” He gritted his teeth. “How much further until your village?”

  “It’s miles yet. A few hours walk past that line of mountains.”

  “Fuck. We won’t make it all the way.”

  “We will crash?” Torrin asked, gripping the woman in his arms a little tighter.

  “Yes, but I can try to bring us in low before it happens,” Marek said. “I just need to get us over this mountain.”

  They were losing altitude, the nose of the transport listing toward the ground, and Marek gripped the console so tightly that his golden knuckles turned pale. Something whined in the guts of their transport, followed by a rolling vibration beneath their feet. Marek’s ears popped, but he held on, his muscles straining as he fought gravity.

  The breath rushed out of him as they cleared the side of a tall peak, but it wasn’t clean. A low wing clipped the rocks, sending them spinning, and it was all Marek could do to hold on as they whirled around and around, heading for the ground.

  Moments before they hit, he stabilized them, and they hit the ground belly-first and skidded sideways. Ice and snow blinded him. The transport jerked and juddered like a rattle in an infant’s hand.

  Bree’s hand tightened on his thigh as snow flew up all around them, and he covered it with his own, squeezing tightly.

  33

  Bree opened her eyes as an icy breeze whipped across her cheeks. Above, the sky was dark and still, punctuated by specks of snow that drifted down almost peacefully in the silence, melting on her face.

  She jerked upright, staring around at the inside of the cockpit. The transport’s nose was buried in the snowy ground, tilting her world at an angle, and the door she’d been thrown against had popped open, explaining the chill wind. In the backseat, the other humans were stirring, Torrin’s arms still wrapped around Noe like a shield and a line of blood running down the side of his face. In the front, Marek was slumped over the console, his scales as still as crystals.

  “Marek!” she cried, vaulting towards him. He stirred when she touched him, groaning softly, and a deep shiver ran through his body. Now that they were out of danger, she noticed that his heatsuit was as cold as her own. The scales on his neck were turning clammy, and when she took his hand, it felt like ice. “Marek, your suit. What happened?”

  He blinked at her, bringing cold fingers to her face. “You’re all right.”

  “Of course I am, but you’re freez—” She fell silent as his lips found hers, leaning into the kiss and sighing with relief when his hand found her waist. He was moving—he was alive. But when she tried to throw her arms around his neck, determined to share as much of the warmth from Torrin’s coat with him as possible, he winced. “Marek?”

  Blood soaked through his suit at the shoulder, his injury reopened by the crash, and Bree’s heart plummeted.

  “Your wound.”

  “It is fine,” he said softly.

  “But you’re so cold.”

  “My suit has no more energy to produce heat,” he said, just as a shiver rolled through him. “It was expected. I will be fine.”

  “This is not fine!” she insisted. “We have…” She looked out the door at the landscape, trying to identify a landmark in the darkness. “We have a couple hours’ walk at least between us and home.”

  He blew out a shuddering breath, and it puffed like a cloud around him. “That is a long way.”

  “Maybe we can shut the door again, and you can stay here while we go get help. Does this thing have climate-control?” she asked, looking around the cockpit.

  He shook his head and tapped a dial on the console. “It requires energy. Energy produced by a module that Urek destroyed.”

  Bree pressed her lips together. Behind them, Torrin and Noe tried to rise from the seat, but then Torrin groaned with pain.

  “Are you okay?” Noe asked, speaking for the first time. “Your leg…”

  Bree glanced down to find black-red blood shining on Torin’s thigh. Beside him, she found the culprit, a strut that had flown up through the seat during the crash. Torrin’s eyes hardened as he met hers. “I can walk once this is bandaged.”

  “I’ll help you,” Noe said, already ripping some material from her soft undershirt for bandages.

  “Help him, Bree,” Marek murmured. “I will feel better knowing you all got there safely. I do not wish to slow you down.”

  “What are you, delirious?” Bree asked incredulously, rubbing his scaled fingers between her hands. “I’m not leaving you here with no heat to be buried under the fucking snow
fall. And you’re too smart to need to resort to heroic sacrifices, so don’t start now.”

  Marek chuckled. “Maybe I wish to be heroic. There are not many stories about weakling halfbreeds saving the day in my world.”

  “Then be a hero now by not giving the fuck up,” she said, grabbing one of his feet. He grunted in protest, but she didn’t care that the soles of his suit were wet and slippery, dirt still clinging to the rubber as she tried in vain to warm them. He wouldn’t get far in the snow with these, and if he did, there was always the danger that he’d lose his toes. He would fair better than Urek or Peris, but even human limbs sometimes went gangrenous from prolonged cold.

  “Fuck it,” she said, shimmying out of Torrin’s coat. Leaning into the back seat, she used the broken strut to rip the coat in half and cut slashes in the fabric. Then, she wrapped one half around Marek’s foot with the fur on the inside, wrapping the single, deflated arm around his ankle and securing it as best she could in the makeshift button-hole she’d made.

  “What is this?” Marek asked as she turned to repeat the process on his other foot.

  “Boots. Kind of. Hopefully they’ll protect you a bit, although I can’t guarantee they’ll stay on.” She grinned up at him. “What? Too advanced for you levekk?”

  “You will be cold,” was all he said, touching her face again. It was like he couldn’t stop staring at her, drinking in her features like a man dying of thirst. “I do not wish you to suffer any more for me.”

  “If I choose it, it’s not suffering,” she snapped, tying off the second boot. She leaned up to kiss him again, and maybe she was starved of him, too. “And I choose not to stop fighting until you’re home safe with me.”

  “Bree…”

  “Trust me.”

  “Trust you with what, I—”

  “Trust that I can get us both home. You helped me escape—twice—and now I’m going to return the favor.”

  She couldn’t look away as he stared at her, even when Torrin and Noe started to slide out of the transport behind them. His eyes were bright again, his pupils fat and round and almost human, but his scales glittered in the meager light as the moon fought its way through the clouds overhead. He was perfect, inside and out, and Bree had to get him to safety.

  They slipped out of the transport with more ease than she’d expected, and for a while, Marek refused to let her support him. But after half an hour of slogging through the thickening snow in the dark, Marek’s steps grew shorter, his hands tucked beneath his armpits and his body stiffening.

  She clung to him, pressing her warm body against his side and wrapping her arms around him even though it slowed them. Nearby, Noe and Torrin walked similarly, the large man grunting every now and then when a rise in the land made his leg flare with pain. He had tried to avoid leaning on Noe, just as Marek had, but now his arm was slung around her shoulders, and she struggled under his weight.

  “We can do this,” Bree said, just loud enough to reach all of them. Everything was quiet, apart from the occasional whistle of the wind, the snow dampening the noise of their journey and sending any nocturnal animals back to their dens. Once, she had craved this silence. Now, she hated it. It was like being back in that lonely room in the mine, except now, all she had to focus on were her friends’ grunts of pain and discomfort, the slippery slide of the snow beneath their feet, and the full-body shivers rolling through Marek as he leaned against her.

  Bree shivered as well, the breeze slicing her skin, but she ignored it.

  Their progress was slow, and the first light of dawn was creeping over the mountains in the far distance by the time she recognized that they were close to their destination. The night lifted in increments, like a dark veil being pulled slowly aside, and the snow eased. Around them, she heard the first signs of birds and small animals waking up, and the occasional whump of snow falling off the tree branches.

  “We’re almost there,” she said to Marek, patting his hard chest. He didn’t answer, and she stopped, pulling him around to face her. “Marek? Marek, talk to me.”

  He didn’t, but his lips found her forehead, and they were cold as they brushed against her skin.

  With a jolt of panic, she realized his shivering had stopped.

  “Fuck!” she yelled, pushing them forward, and thank God his legs still seemed to work, although they did falter. She pulled his arm around her, half-carrying him on her back, and raced ahead of the other two humans. “You keep going,” she ordered, her chest heaving as she directed them into a patch of forest that she recognized. It was a degree warmer in here, the trees providing cover and shelter from the wind, but she didn’t dare slow down. “You’re about to see ancient humanity in its natural fucking habitat, Marek, so don’t you dare stop moving.”

  She just barely noticed his hand squeezing her arm through their limping gait, and she let that tiny touch raise her spirits. He was still there, still fighting, and she’d get him to her home. To their home.

  She wanted to cry when they broke through the trees and she saw the watchtower rising over the hill. They struggled toward it, cresting the final rise with labored breaths, but Bree didn’t pause at the top. She slid down it with Marek glued to her side, fighting for purchase on the slippery slope.

  “It is beautiful…” he mumbled in her ear as they descended, and for the first time in her life, she agreed with him.

  The brown buildings were built in nested circles around the town square, with the watchtower spearing up out of the ground near the center. The design was practical, meaning archers could stand in the watchtower and shoot over the heads of those crouched on the roofs below, but with snow dusting the tops of the buildings and the sky glowing pink and green behind it, it was almost picturesque.

  “Help!” she yelled as they broke past the first line of houses, making a beeline for the town square. Her father’s house was in the second row from the center, and he always kept the fire built high. “Help! We need help!”

  Doors banged open and voices called out as the village came to life. By the time they staggered to a stop in the village center, a crowd was milling around them—husbands and wives with weapons in hand, sisters clutching pajama-clad siblings to their skirts and grandparents peering out the windows. Somewhere, some dogs had started barking.

  “Where’s my dad?” she called out, trying to move towards his home, but the group pulled together, staring at the alien in her arms. “Dad!”

  A wave of whispers rushed through the crowd, some of them murmuring her father’s name, but no one moved to fetch him. Bree swallowed down bile, all too aware of how cold Marek felt in her arms.

  “Would someone please find my dad? We need his help!”

  Nothing happened, and Bree’s chest clenched.

  “Bree?!”

  All the air rushed from her lungs as Jacob broke through the crowd, his jacket askew and his mousy hair a mess. A smile broke out on his face at the sight of her, but then his gaze flicked down to Marek, and he halted so suddenly, his feet almost went out from under him. He stared at the two of them, his blue eyes wide. “Bree? What’s going on?”

  “Help him! Please, Dad, he needs warmth, he’s hypothermic!”

  He blinked at her, the picture of shock, but then shook his head and stepped forward. “Come on, get him inside.”

  “You’re going to take one of them into your home?!” someone shouted.

  “Where are the fighters?” said another. “We heard gunfire days ago!”

  “Leave it out here!”

  Jacob paused, his indecision clear, and Bree’s heart sank.

  Was this going to be the Barracks all over again?

  “Dad, please,” she whispered.

  After years of trying to spend as little time in the village as possible, Bree finally saw how stupid she’d been. In the Barracks she had allies, soldiers like her who at least respected her for her skills, even if they didn’t understand her. But here in the village, she was an outsider. She’d pushed the to
wnspeople—and her family—away, refusing to take help from those who thought her obsessed and deranged, or wild, like her mother.

  But she couldn’t do everything alone. She’d thought that made her weak, especially in the levekk mine, and maybe it did. But Marek had let her lean on him. He’d helped her. She felt stronger with him there.

  Now, all she could do was wait for the man whom she’d kept at arm’s length for more than half her life to make his decision. She couldn’t save Marek by herself. She needed her family.

  The crowd was growing quieter, calls turning to mutters, and she saw her father look back at them—at Sinead, who stood at the front with one of her fiery-headed children clutched against her pregnant belly.

  Her step-mother nodded, and Jacob sank down beside Bree, putting his arm under one of Marek’s. “Help me move him inside. The fire’s going.”

  “Thank you,” she breathed, before they heaved the hybrid between them. There were curses and complaints all around them, but her father ignored it all, and Sinead moved ahead to open the door to their home.

  Bree’s home. And hopefully, from this moment on, Marek’s as well.

  34

  “You know, I think that’s the first time you’ve called me ‘Dad’ since your mother… left.”

  Marek kept his eyelids shut as Bree’s clear, bird-like laugh washed over him. “Is that why you let us in? Because I called you ‘Dad?’”

  “No,” said the first voice—a male. “Seeing the way you held him in your arms, I guess I thought maybe he’d taught you something.”

  “About what?”

  “I dunno. Something good, though.”

  A moment of silence, and then, “He taught me how to exploit the levekk’s weaknesses in a fight. Does that count?”

  “Maybe.”

  The two voices laughed softly at that, but Marek kept his eyes shut. It was… kind of nice. To just listen to Bree speak. She sounded relaxed, her voice warm. Even if this was just a dream, it was nice to think that she had made it home safe. That she could be with her family in the end.