“It’s not luck that made me rich.” She eyed me, and there was a sullen heat in her gaze that hadn’t been there before. “Call me Silk.”
“I will.” I turned back to the screen as Mira snorted. “There’s a lot here. Going to take a while, and we might be fighting the heat any minute.”
“Wait until dusk, and try again? How delicate is this setup?” Silk asked. Mira eyed the system with the wary eye of someone who knew technology was made to break. Nothing survived for long in the Empty. Except her.
“Might as well. I highlighted some files and dropped them to the side for later. Based on the names, some might be log files, but a few were pictures. Both could help, but photos were something to connect with. After my long sleep, I needed a line to the past. I unhooked the laptop and took it in my hand. “It goes with me until I can farm the drives, and then we’ll have to find a safe place for it.”
“It’s safe here,” Mira said.
“For now. We won’t be able to sit on this forever, and soon enough, someone will know,” I told her as we began down the stairs. I hadn’t seen Berec since the fight at Wetterick’s, and if one spy could make it inside the walls of Lasser’s place, then there could be more.
After a few steps toward the stairs, I was thankful to be leaving the roof. Even in the morning the sun was brutal. I had to either get tougher or live in a cave. Since I’m not a mushroom, that meant hardening to the world around me.
“Lady, I’m sure you’re really busy today. I’ll take care of Jack until later, when you return,” Mira said in a sweetly proper tone. I admired her maneuver, and grinned at Silk to take the sting from her dismissal.
I shouldn’t have worried. She gave us both a secretive smile and began putting on her disguise, left in a ragged bundle on the main table. Someone had cleaned it, which only served to make the clothing look weirdly cheerful given its ruined state. When she vanished into the disguise, she slipped to the door, stooping slightly and squinting in the sun under her hat.
Before she left, the fake beard lifted on her cheeks as she smiled. “Take care of him today. I’ll take care of him tonight.” With that, she was gone.
19
I passed the day learning my way around the post. Other than a few glares from people wearing Wetterick’s colors, I was treated well, Mira even more so.
“They don’t fear you,” she said as we examined a knife. The blade maker was an old man, his skin beaten to the color of copper by the sun, but his hands were strong as we watched him work a grinding wheel. He made knives from steel, iron, and everything in between, but it was a small, fat blade that caught my attention.
“Skinning blade?” I asked him, flipping the knife around in my hand. It had excellent balance, being made for use instead of show. Most of the things in the Empty were made for hard use, and his blades were no exception.
“Among other things. It won’t reach the heart of a beast, but it’s long enough to make them think twice before they eat you,” he said with a laugh.
I considered that. The blade would fit in my boot, and since I had room, it made sense. You can never have too many knives or too many ways to fight. “How much?”
He leaned forward with a conspiratorial wink. “Before you beat the shit out of Wetterick’s men? A hundred. Today? Thirty, and don’t tell a soul.”
I counted out the coins and put my finger to my lips, miming silence. “It stays here with us. My thanks.”
“Use it in good health, and if you don’t, then take the bastard with you when you go,” he cackled.
I threw him a jaunty salute as Mira led me to a food stall, the smell of cooking meat rising from a small hot oven. “Lunch first. Then we find you pants. You can’t wear something without enough pockets.”
“Why?” I asked her.
“The more you carry on you means reaching into your pack fewer times. Seconds count out there, Jack, and we—”
“Out there? We’re going back out into the Empty?” I asked.
“Aren’t we? Were you going to live here, under the shadow of Wetterick and Silk, until you get bored or run out of drives to search? It’s a big world, and you’re the only man who knows what was here before.” Her grin was impish. “Sorry. Can’t stop thinking like a scavenger.”
“No, you’re right,” I said, sighing. “I think I’m going to find answers I don’t like, and no matter what, this place isn’t mine. I need a home of my own.”
She looked down, uncertain for the first time since we’d met. “Will you be alone in this new place, or will you take Silk?”
I took her hands, standing in the blazing sun of an unknown sky. “I want you there, wherever it is.”
Her only reaction was a squeeze of my hands, then she turned her eyes to the vendor, a woman with a greasy apron who watched us with a tender expression.
“It ain’t often love blooms over a stick of grilled rattler, but that’s just we have here, innit? Her smile was broad and filled with gaps.
“Snake, you say?” I took stock of the grill and held up four fingers. “We’re hungry. You know how romance can make you.”
The vendor waved a hand down her plump frame with extravagant motions. “Looking like this? O’course I know. Can’t keep the boys offa me.”
I bowed gallantly. “Naturally, my lady.”
“Save yer lies, charmer. I’ve got somethin’ special for the both of you,” she said, handing us four skewers with more meat than the others. “For clipping those oafs who run for Wetterick. Never liked any of ‘em. Take it and be off, but don’t tell no one. I got my reputation to care for.” She finished with a wink and a leer before turning away to shout for more snakes. In response, two kids began rustling under a table, casually bringing a live rattler up to meet its demise.
“Tough place,” I said, biting into the meat. It was good—really good.
“She likes you. It’s going to be crowded in our bed,” Mira said around a mouthful of grilled rattlesnake.
“Not enough room and I’m not her type,” I said as thoughts of what, exactly, I was going to do about Silk began to form.
“You mean she can’t put you on a stick and sell you?”
“Exactly.” I craned my head toward the south. There was dust rising in the sky. “Storm?”
Mira froze, eyes narrowed as she traced the line of dust. “It can’t be,” she breathed.
“What is it?” I asked, my senses shifting into high alert.
“It’s...a caravan. From the south?” Confusion colored her tone as people began to take notice, moving toward the southern gate like a school of fish.
“Why is that a problem?” I asked. When Mira looked up, her brow furrowed, head cocked in disbelief.
“There hasn’t been a caravan to the south for months. The last one to go out was assumed lost. Family named Harling, tough people but even the best traders can only survive for so long in the Empty. There’s not enough to the south for support.”
“If that’s the Harlings, how long were they out?” I asked.
She did some calculations, lips moving in silent awe at her conclusion. “Thirteen weeks. There’s just no way.”
I finished my lunch, tossing the sticks onto a nearby fire where some kids were heating up aluminum for reshaping. “Only one way to find out. Let’s go ask.”
She flicked her own sticks onto the fire and wiped her lips. “I’m not sure we want to know.”
20
Mira and I waited for the caravan to arrive, which took less time than I expected. Three wagons were led by ogres, their pelts dusty and rough with hard traveling.
There were six traders in all, including two kids who quickly broke the ogres loose, leading them to water and food. For some reason, I was happy to see that, even though when I made eye contact with a huge male ogre, I saw nothing like intellect in his docile gaze. The traders were swarmed by people, shouting and greeting them even as the more opportunistic post dwellers began waving coin bags around to secure the first cra
ck at whatever they managed to return with.
The leaders were a man and woman, lean and tough looking, wearing grimy leathers and battered hats with the same red sash, now faded to a sickly pink. I marked them as they opened the side of a wagon to a tumult of noise. It was filled with an array of goods, and only after waving a rifle did one of the traders get people to calm down enough that he could be heard over their roar.
“Get in line!” roared the man, a tall, skinny cowboy type with a vest that winked with metal scales. He had a gray beard and a bald head, and in between, the face looked mean as a badger. The crowd didn’t fall quiet, but there was enough order that he began shouting items for bid, apparently deciding that three months in the Empty was no reason to delay the wheels of profit.
“Follow me,” I murmured to Mira, who was watching the two traders slip away in the din. They made a beeline to what I knew was an open-air pub consisting of three walls and a lot of alcohol. “I think we’ll buy our new friends a drink. Harlings, you say?”
“Yep. Don’t know their first names, but they’re third generation at least,” Mira said, following me on an intercept course. “Wait—it’s Doss and,” she snapped her fingers, trying to remember the other name. “Got it. He’s Doss. She’s Fleura. They’re okay. Love to hear how they did it,” she said, watching them approach the nearly empty pub. They were smart. While everyone rushed their caravan, they could get quietly drunk.
“Doss, Fleura. Mind if we buy you a drink?” I asked when we were a few feet away. The barkeep watched us with a neutral expression, unsure of our intentions and not about to intervene if he didn’t have to.
Fleura spoke first. “Depends. We’ve been out for a piece. If you want us to talk before we wet our throats, you can fuck right off.”
“I wouldn’t dream of it. First three rounds are on me, you talk when you’re ready.” I held out a handful of coins to the bartender. “What’s your name, friend?”
He took the coins, smiling with the look of a man who made his bones for the day. “Call me Croc.”
“Got it. Drinks for my new friends, and anything Mira wants. Anything cold back there?” I asked.
“Not cold, but cool. Got a sunken cellar. Summer beer is good now, will be for a few more weeks,” Croc said. He was pulling cups up from a motley collection.
“Sounds good. Friends?” I asked the Harlings.
“Same,” Doss said. His voice was deep, the words rolling.
“Summer beer and salt,” Mira said, linking arms with me as I laughed. “We might be here for a while. Doesn’t hurt to prepare.”
“A seasoned vet. I like you even more,” I told her. She gave me a sidelong smile that made my heart race a bit. I liked being the one it was intended for.
Croc poured, delivered, and we all sipped after a cursory toast. The Harlings were sunburned, a bit on the thin side, but no worse for the wear considering their time out in the desert. Something didn’t add up, and they watched me watching them.
When he finished his first mug, Doss took an unseen cue from his wife, wiping his mouth with a rueful swipe of his battered knuckles. “Guess it’s me, then. Croc, two more, and I’m buying. This might take a bit.”
“That good a story?” Mira asked, earning a pair of nods from the traders.
“And then some. Before I say anything, who the hell are you?” he asked me. It was a direct question rather than an angry challenge, and I took it as such.
“Jack Bowman,” I answered him simply, volunteering nothing.
“So you say. Mira, where did you find him?” Doss asked. At Mira’s reaction, he winked. “I know you. Watched you and your sister selling iron and steel before you were old enough to have a beer. How is she?”
“Dead,” Mira said flatly.
“I’m—I’m sorry,” Doss said. Fleura’s eyes softened, but only for a moment. It was a hard place, and they knew death.
“I’d be dead, too, if Jack hadn’t been there. As to where I found him, that’s not my story to tell,” Mira said, leaning a bit closer.
I knew information was power, but I stood to lose nothing by telling them what they would hear as soon as they went out into the post.
“Mira and Mel extracted me from a Hightec sleeping chamber. I woke up, sort of, in your world, but I’m from the past,” I told them.
Doss put his beer down slowly, his eyes clouded with anger. “Thanks for the beer—”
“Then I killed some stinking fucker named Hardhead, cut his namesake off and threw it at Wetterick’s feet for the reward, but not before I took his enforcers out. You see, when I was dreaming away the years while your virus ran wild and you decided to live like animals, my body was changing, courtesy of a cutting-edge technology called nanobots. In my blood, you know? Like a virus of my own, but instead of making me a corpse, this one makes me strong. It makes me fast. It makes me able to tell when a well-meaning trader is reaching for his gun under the bar, and it would let me break his fucking arm off without spilling a sip of my beer.”
Doss stopped moving, his jaw hanging open in shock. Fleura did her best impersonation of a statue, and after a moment, Croc started breathing, too. Only Mira was unaffected, finishing her beer and lifting the mug for a refill.
“Dusty today,” she said. Croc filled her mug without a word, stepping back to watch with a gaze of feline intensity.
“Who is Hardhead?” Fleura asked. It seemed to be the least understood of all my wild claims, so she took the obvious route and started there. Doss just watched me, hands motionless on the bar like a pair of sunburned gloves.
“He was a maneater. Some kind of rhinoceros thing, part human. Half again as tall as me, and covered in the blood of Wetterick’s men when I took him. The reward was a thousand imperials. I’ve spent several hundred on armor, but I need other things, and I’ve got coin to spend. Wanna stop fucking around and tell me what you found?”
Doss snorted. “You say you slept in some—”
“Where I slept doesn’t matter. My coins do. They’re real, and I don’t give a fuck if you believe me or not. Can’t say I’m happy to leave my entire world behind only to wake up in a flyblown shitheap where people fight over scraps at the foot of a third-rate warlord.” I looked at Mira, then took her hand. “Though I can’t say there aren’t parts of this time that don’t catch my eye.”
Mira almost blushed. It was cute, and I had to fight to keep looking like a hardass.
After a long pause, Fleura spoke first. “Tell him. About the guns, and the rest of it.”
Doss drummed his thick fingers on the bar, thinking. He was arranging things by importance, deciding what to tell me, what to hide, and what to save for when it came time to exchange money. I could respect that, so I held my tongue.
“We found some guns, and a lot of ammo,” Doss began.
“But that’s not what you want to sell me,” I told him, watching his face for signs of agreement. I got it in the form of a terse nod. “What else?
“Not sure I can sell it to you, but I damn sure don’t want to share it with anyone else,” Doss said. He finished his beer, looking at the chipped mug. “We were dead. Out of water, starving, and truly fucked. Then, we saw trees.”
“Trees? To the south?” Mira asked. “How far south?”
“About six hard days, just past a washout that wasn’t there a year ago. Rough going, but we were pushed east by a sandstorm that blew hard for nearly a week. At ten clicks a day in total blindness, well, you can guess how far off path we were. I can only estimate, and even then our track back was purely by starlight.”
“Seven days in a storm?” I asked. I’d seen sandstorms, but they rarely lasted more than a day or so. “How did you survive it?”
“We didn’t. Not all of us, anyway. We lost six wagons and thirteen people, almost all of the beasts and...three of our children.” Doss paused to squeeze Fleura’s hand. Her eyes were bright with tears, and she looked away, unwilling to share her grief with strangers.
�
��I’m very sorry,” I said, meaning it. I didn’t have children, but I knew loss. I suspected I would never know their pain, only an echo in the blood of what they were going through. “How long did it take you to get back?”
Doss wrinkled his brow, doing internal calculations of a trip that nearly killed them all. “Two weeks, traveling day and night to make sure we didn’t run into another storm.”
“A question?” Mira asked. Her head turned south, eyes unfocused. “What was in the trees?”
Doss and Fleura shared a look, then took long pulls at their beer. After a moment of rubbing her hands together, it was Fleur who spoke, her voice low and uncertain.
“Not what. Who.” She turned her mug in nervous hands before speaking. “There aren’t many of them, but there’s something wrong with the whole place. They took us in, fed us, and made sure we didn’t stick around for any longer than was necessary.”
“People?” Mira asked.
“If you can call ‘em that. They’ve been planting those trees for a few years, I guess, and no one knew. Who would have thought to look there for anything alive? It’s in the heart of the Empty. Only thing out that far is death, and then once you get past that, the ocean,” Doss said. “I’ve seen people who were dying. I’ve seen ogres that were still-born, all wrinkled like cats, hairless and broken. Something is changing those people, and the only thing they would tell is was that it was in their blood.”
“They want it to happen,” Fleura said.
“What?” I asked, unsure what she meant.
When she looked at me, I fought the urge to move back, her gaze was so intense. “They want whatever is happening to them. I think they’re doing it to themselves, and it’s because of that place. There was plenty of water, and we’d watch them work all morning, filling ditches and pipes. They’re building an island of green like their own personal jungle, and they don’t want to share it with anyone else. I got the feeling if we stayed any longer, we wouldn’t have left at all. Everything about it seems wrong. The shape, the patterns...it’s a haunted place and I don’t have time for ghosts. I do now, after being there. The ruins of Alatus are just humps in the sand and broken walls, so we never thought to look beyond them. That’s where this place is. Beyond Alatus, which everyone knows is played out. Hasn’t been anything of worth there since before my grandmother first put to the Empty.”
Future Reborn Page 13
