WARP world (43 page)

“Not a pilgrim this day, wise one,” Seg said, adding the referential. Age and wisdom were as one to the Welf. “But I’ll take the journey soon enough. Making my way to Y’idvaris, to collect my ma. She’s sickly and would make one last pilgrimage before she ascends to the Above, yup.”

“Ahh, good boy,” the blind Welf raised a hand and laid it on the girl’s head, almost as seamlessly as if he possessed sight. “First year for the grandbaby, properly blessed by our sacred fathers now, she is.”

The gresher stamped the ground and bucked its head.

“Must keep a-rollin’. Need to make it home in time for the fires.” He gestured roughly toward the back of the cartul. “Got a fine load of the blessed wood to burn for the Sky Ceremony. Abundance of the mother to you.”

With a rattling
Ayup
, the old man slapped the reins and the gresher resumed its amble.

“Was wondering, wise one,” Seg said, limping faster to keep up with the cartul, “if I could trouble you for a ride, since you be heading toward Alisir. I need to get passage to see my ma, soon as can be. Got no coin to spare but I won’t be a bother. Been walking day and night, got a bad case of footsores.”

“Not going as far as Alisir,” the old man answered, smacking his lips together then opening them wide to reveal a mouth missing all but a few teeth. He slowed the cartul, leaned down and whispered something in his granddaughter’s ear. She, in turn, whispered something back at him. He nodded and turned in Seg’s direction, “Come, come closer then, boy.”

Seg hobbled closer. He thought about the knife tucked into his pack and hoped he would not have to decide between two lives and his own survival. Even Outer lives such as these. As the man beckoned, he reached for the rail on the side of the cartul and climbed up on the step next to the driver’s box, then waited.

The man’s hand reached forward with practiced motions, found Seg’s hand, then his forearm. He pinched and squeezed. “Work the fields?” he asked.

“My Lord’s game collector, I am,” he answered, letting a note of pride enter his voice. “A huntsman.”

“Ahh, well and true on that,” the elder Welf nodded his approval. “Thought you too scrawny for a farmer.” His didn’t withdraw his hand, but moved it upward, along Seg’s arm, over his face, then stretched up to the top of his head. “Grandbaby says you’re strange tall and bright-eyed.”

Seg was quiet for a moment. He had already considered the answer but it was one that required the proper amount of hesitation.

“My da’s no Welf,” he said, with a cough to indicate his embarrassment.

The old man nodded and when he spoke his voice was softened, “Go on then. Not sure as the ride will be as fine as suits you, but there should be room enough. Move the wood aside if you likes. Few morsels in the bucket back there, don’t be shy.”

“Thank you, wise one,” Seg said, as he scrambled into the cart. “A child of the soil who keeps his eyes on the skies above needs no soft bed to sleep,” he quoted. He grunted as he tried to shift the heavy logs. They were embossed with some sort of Shasir runes he couldn’t translate, likely an old tongue. Perhaps they had some vita infusion in them, but without his VIU he would never know.

Unable to shift the weight, he simply curled up in the side of the cartul, well out of sight of passersby. He wedged the knapsack against the wall to at least provide his head with some padding. The rumble of the cartul was hypnotic; sleep claimed him within moments.

Twelve days.

In his small teaching office, Jarin sat and watched the amber flash from his comm, alerting him to urgent messages. However urgent, none of those messages contained the news he wanted. For once, he was content to hide from the World.

Twelve days since Segkel’s last contact. The raider lieutenant, Kerbin, had checked in at the scheduled times, but Segkel had failed to make contact. No word to the World, no word to the squad. He had vanished.

Theorists died on recon missions. Entire squads had been lost. It was singularly dangerous work, among the most hazardous duties People exposed themselves to, without the use of slave, proxy caj.

“He’s not coming back,” Jarin muttered, as he stared at the blank screen of his digipad. To accept the fact now would allow him to move on. Throughout his career, he had always worked with fallback plans and contingencies, but the CWA’s recent maneuvers constituted a new threat and left them with precariously little room for error.

Jarin considered the Guild students who were still in training, and the young, recently graduated Theorists. So few possessed the vital and defiant spark that would be necessary to spearhead change on the World. None possessed it in the quantity of Segkel Eraranat.

The boy had come to him in possession of all the necessary qualities; Jarin had only to shape and direct them. These others? He would have to breathe defiance and rebellion into them, along with a host of other traits.

“More difficult, but the work must be done.”

He reached across his desk, to the seldom used tumbler of thin liquor, to take a drink. His hand—wrinkles gathered at the knuckles, veins protruding, spots of age appearing like tiny islands—flashed its own warning. Time, another enemy.

He glanced at the comm again. Soon he would return to those important matters but, for now, he needed to choose the next young minds to mold and harness. Even if the fight was lost, it was not within the People to simply concede. He would find another to carry his hopes, and look for ways to reverse the course of history.

Twelve days.

His hand shook slightly as it traced across the digipad and queued up the student rolls.

S
ansin–Seg could scarcely believe he had arrived. A trading city, Ama had explained, with a mix of Welf, Kenda, and Damiar alike. Rundown hovels rimmed the outskirts to the north; Damiar estates spread across the south; in the center a cluster of markets, inn’s, shops and cottages. But for Seg, Sansin was the crossroads.

Crouched behind a towering statue of a Shasir priest, Seg lifted his bottle of water from his pack with trembling hands.

He had waited for sunset to pass through the city, adopting the half-Welf persona he had used to secure his cartul ride. With his two weeks growth of beard, threadbare clothes, tanned skin, affected stoop, and layers of dirt, he was close enough to pass for one of the lowest caste. Even so, he had believed every eye was on him, every footstep that of the authorities coming to seize him. By the time he had reached the far side, his mouth and throat were parched and his heart was beating so quickly his chest hurt.

The water was nearly gone but he guzzled it anyway. Water, at least, was never hard to find on this world.

The lantern lights of the city cast a glow by which he read the marker signs. Pointing one way, the sign to Alisir. That road would take him to the riverport city. From there, he still had to find Ama and free her, one-armed and his only weapon a knife. He leaned back against the cool stone and let the bottle hang loose in his hand.

She’ll die slow.

Dagga’s voice clouded his thoughts; he forced himself to focus.The other road marker pointed in the opposite direction, to Ymira. That path would take him to the Humish Valley and the rendezvous, which he had to make before sundown of the next day or be left behind on this world forever.

The mission was his priority, that was undeniable. But the vita readings he had collected from the Welf settlement at Ymira and the Alisir temple alone would be enough for House Haffset to plan a strike and reap a profit, not to mention any additional vita readings from Kerbin’s people. He had given Haffset a target and if he did not return to coordinate the raid they could make a success of it.

On the other hand, he had compromised the mission in one vital area: Ama. Because of him, she knew too much about the impending raid, and now she was in the hands of people who could actually use that knowledge to damage or thwart it. No one, not the most disciplined troopers, could stay silent indefinitely under torture. He and the rest of the recon squad had kill pills embedded in one of their molars for exactly those circumstances.

Ama had no such escape. Dagga could brutalize her endlessly–to make her talk. And he would.

The neck of the bottle was in a chokehold in Seg’s hand, he pounded the bottom against the dirt, then lowered his head and took in a deep breath of the hot, humid night air. His path was clear.
For the good of the mission
, he assured himself.

He replaced the stopper in the bottle, stuffed it in his knapsack, then brushed off his pants with his one hand. Knapsack cinched closed, he turned toward Alisir, the wisdom of his choice becoming clearer. The World would never know the reason for his sacrifice, his glorious career ended here, on a dirt road, but that did not detract from the importance of this moment.

He raised his chin, a hot breeze blew over him and his various aches and complaints all vanished. Ahead, the road was empty, a promising beginning. A twig snapped somewhere beyond the veil of trees, but he did not jump as he once might have. He was growing used to forest noises.

He started to rise. A hand slapped over his mouth and another latched onto his pack and tugged him backwards. His free hand released the pack as he shouted into the flesh. Fingers clasping the hilt of Ruch’s knife, he yanked it from his belt and spun to face his attacker. The knife came up in a wild swing, then he stopped as he looked into the eyes of his assailant. Chest heaving, the knife dropped from his fingers and he could do nothing but stare. Was he hallucinating?

“Ama?”

She raised a finger to her lip to silence him, then glanced at the thin slice across her arm and shook her head to fend off any concern he might have.

There was no thought in that moment. With his free hand, he grasped the back of her head, pulled her to him and pressed his lips to hers. A searing heat rushed through his body and with it the sum of his desires and fears. This was a new language, instantly learned. She wrapped her arms around him and dug her fingers into his back; her lips yielded completely to the force of his. The Bliss, which had overwhelmed him crossing to this world, had not come close to this moment of perfect fusion.

When they parted, he could not speak. His lips were open, her taste lingering there; he heard only the synchronicity of their breathing.

Around them, as if summoned by the moment, the hot summer wind blew more intensely, plucking at the edges of their clothing. Ama tugged on his sleeve and gestured for him to flatten against the statue with her. Seconds after they did, two constables walked past, only a few feet from the fugitives they sought. When the men were a safe distance past, Ama grabbed Seg’s hand and led him away, onto a narrow footpath and down to a creek.

“Where were you going?” she asked in a whisper that clearly conveyed disapproval.

The words snapped him back to reality and he blinked as if to clear his vision, hardly able to believe what had just happened between them.

“I…” he shook his head slightly, “I was coming to find you.”

“You have to get to the rendezvous!”

“Your knowledge of the mission could have jeopardized it,” he explained, uncomfortably aware of both the defensiveness and lack of conviction in his tone.

“You…” Ama’s rant halted, her expression softened. She opened her mouth to speak just as thunder cracked and rolled through the valley. “That road is a trap,” she said, and pointed toward the path Seg had been about to follow. “There are constables hidden all along it, waiting for you.” Any foolishness he felt was allayed when she added, “I’ve had the eyes and ears of my people helping me.”

Lighting forked down on the opposite side of the city, illuminating them both for one vulnerable second.

“Storm,” Ama whispered.

Seg’s body tensed instinctively at the word, and as if Ama had spoken a magic incantation the skies opened and rain poured down in torrential sheets.

“Come on,” she said, the noise of the tempest requiring her to raise her voice almost to a shout. “We better get to shelter!”

She scooped up both his pack and her own and jogged along the creek, away from Dagga’s trap. Seg followed, as the cold drops lashed his skin.