Dead and Buryd: A Dystopian Action Adventure Novel (Out of Orbit Book 1) (13 page)

“Then again, I’m sure I could come up with much filthier things,” he wagered.

Pulling back in an attempt to free her wrist from his grasp, Georgianna rolled her eyes. Keiran’s grip tightened a little and he tugged her closer. Shifting her weight against the hard ground sent a spasm of pain through her leg, but as he grinned as her, she couldn’t bring herself to pull away.

“I’m sure you could.”

“Come over tonight, I’ll prove it.”

Georgianna frowned.

“I have work.”

“After?”

“Will you still be awake? You passed out pretty quick last night.”

Keiran nodded as he leaned in, settling a soft kiss against her lips.

“Promise,” he mumbled.

“Alright,” Georgianna agreed. “But if you’re sleeping, I’m throwing cold water on you.”

His laughter washed over her skin, sending an excited tremble through her. Giving him one last, lingering kiss, she pushed herself to her feet, freeing herself from Keiran’s grasp.

The way Keiran could turn the tables on her so quickly was unsettling. She was sure that he knew how quickly he could twist her around to his way of thinking, especially when it meant being close to him. She enjoyed his company and never found herself getting bored, even when they disagreed.

As she stepped over his legs, Keiran reached up and caught her wrist.

“Think about it, alright, George?” he asked. “The note?”

Her mind was already made up. Georgianna knew that she couldn’t back down from her promise now, especially not after Taye had been so happy that she’d said yes. Though, the way Keiran’s gaze searched her face so earnestly, all trace of the dirty humour and the promise of pleasure gone from his eyes, she found her resolve faltering. Gulping back the rising lump in her throat, she nodded, and walked away before he could twist her further to his will.

 
12
A Promise Sold

 
It was a week before Georgianna was scheduled to visit the compound again, and no new emergencies came through to her tsentyl. Each day leading up to the regular visit, she could feel her stomach fall a little further, her heart rise a little higher in her chest. She didn’t tell anyone that she was getting worried that this would go wrong, that maybe this time she’d be caught. Each time she’d passed things into the compound before it had been messages, lines she could remember by heart from loved ones of those who had been buryd. She didn’t want to admit that maybe Keiran had been right, that she was risking too much for Taye. Though each time she thought about leaving the package behind, Taye’s face appeared behind her closed eyelids with the knowledge that his fear for Nyah would lead him to do something far more stupid than try to slip an innocent package into the compound.

Georgianna hadn’t opened the packet Taye had given her over a week before. Even as she walked the tunnel to the east, the slim, flat packet stuck to the underside of her breast, she didn’t dare look to see what was inside. She couldn’t betray Taye by looking at something that was obviously so personal and important that he could no longer keep it in his possession. Georgianna wanted to convince herself that the packet was nothing but a message of love, a promise of continued devotion, but there was something that fell from side to side when she tipped it that stopped her from believing this.

Despite the object being slim and light enough to conceal beneath her shirt, with each step Georgianna became more aware of its presence against her skin. The closer she came to leaving the eastern tunnel, the heavier and more obvious it felt. She stopped twice within the tunnel, and once again on the steps leading out onto the path, slipping her hand up beneath her shirt to ensure that the glue paste was holding it securely to her skin. There could be no leaving it behind so close to the compound. Even if she could have peeled it from her skin, she had nowhere to put the packet that the Adveni guards would not find.

As she was admitted through the gates of the compound, Georgianna’s heart fixed itself in her throat, making it hard to speak even as the guard asked her simple questions. It was Edtroka again, his deep eyes continually suspicious under his dark cropped hair. Georgianna followed him inside and emptied her bag like every other trip, trying to make easy conversation with the man though she had to think carefully about every word.

When his hands found her body, smoothing his palms over her skin through her clothes, checking for hidden weapons or items, Georgianna could barely breathe, sure that Edtroka would feel her heart pounding through her chest or one of the sharp corners of the paper packet. It was only once he deemed that she was safe to go in that Georgianna finally let out a relieved breath.

The walk through the corridor to the block seemed to take forever, and when the door of the block finally slid closed behind her, Georgianna’s eyes instantly began scanning through the masses for that familiar face she needed to see.

Men came up to her for help, an infection here, a cut that needed stitches there, and with each patient, Georgianna wished that Nyah would come to her. She’d not seen the blonde, and like the trip over to the compound, each passing minute was making her anxiety to find Nyah that much worse.

She only had a couple of hours. Two hours to see whoever she could get to before she was expected to leave again. Time was ticking away and Georgianna’s hands were slowly becoming unsteady as she searched desperately for her friend’s girl.

Still, Nyah did not show her face.

Her tsentyl beeped, a warning that she only had a few minutes before she was expected to be by the door. Grabbing a slim, tall man by the arm as he passed, Georgianna looked at him desperately.

“Where’s Nyah?” she asked.

The man stared back at her blankly.

“Nyah!” Georgianna repeated quickly. “She’s short, maybe twenty-two? Blonde hair, pretty, in here for an attack on an Adveni!”

“Oh,” the man replied, lifting his head in acknowledgement. “She was taken, maybe two days ago.”

Georgianna stared at the man, her eyes wide as her frantic mind tried to figure out if Taye had been right that her punishment would not be permanent, if Nyah had really been freed for her crime.

“She was freed?” she demanded, she still holding his elbow.

The man let out a rough laugh and shook his head. He stuffed one grimy hand into his pocket, seemingly uncaring that Georgianna still had a hold of his arm. He dragged the other hand through a mess of long, matted hair.

“Nope,” he answered. “Sold. Fetched a hefty price too from what I hear.”

Georgianna’s mouth dropped open and for a moment, there was nothing she could do but stare at the man in shock. She couldn’t see how Nyah would have been sold. She had been in the compound for months, there was no reason they would have sold her so suddenly.

“Oi! Medic!”

The authoritative voice rang clearly across the block and all around, men and women alike hurried back towards their cells, away from Georgianna. Even the man she’d been holding on to wrenched his arm from her grasp and rushed back to a barred cell.

Georgianna, still stunned, turned her head to see the guard, Edtroka, standing in the block doorway, looking annoyed. Running with small, uncertain steps, Georgianna glanced desperately around the block, hoping for some proof that what the man had said wasn’t true. Hoping she would see Nyah up on one of the balconies, or peeking her head out of a cell.

There was nothing, only a sea of curious faces who watched as Georgianna gathered up her bag and returned to the block door.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled to Edtroka, slipping past him and out into the corridor.

“You should be more careful with your time, Med!” Edtroka warned her as he returned her to the table.

As Edtroka rechecked her bag and felt his way across her body to ensure that she wasn’t sneaking items out of the compound, Georgianna’s heart once again rose into her throat. She didn’t breathe in, though her body screamed for oxygen, terrified that a single breath would give away the packet beneath her shirt. Edtroka found nothing. She followed him mutely as she was escorted out of the compound and down to the gates, and was left to return to the city in the burning sun. So distracted was Georgianna that she almost walked straight past the tunnel entrance before she remembered to turn and go inside.

Once in the tunnel’s dark shade, she took a seat on the bottom step, leaning forward and resting her head in her hands. She let out a wracked sob, pushing all the air from her body, letting relief flood in and fill the spaces left behind. Blood thudded through her ears, pulsing past her temples under trembling fingers.

She had said that it would be alright. She had promised herself that there would be little risk. It was only as she’d been standing there, watching Edtroka search her bag, feeling his sweeping check over her hips and down the small of her back, that she realised just how close she had come. One wrong rustle of material, and she would have been walking back into the block. One sharp edge of the packet, and she would never see her family again. One wrong word, and she would be sold as a drysta… Just like Nyah.

There was no way she couldn’t tell Taye what she knew, that Nyah was out of the compound, but sold as a drysta to an Adveni. There was no way she would be able to lie and tell him that Nyah loved the packet and sent back promises of continuing love. If she told him those things, Taye would still believe that Nyah would one day be released. He would ask Georgianna to keep checking on Nyah and her growing guilt would stop her ever wanting to see her friend.

Georgianna blinked. In the shock, she’d completely forgotten about the packet glued to her body. Reaching under her shirt, Georgianna tugged the packet from the underside of her breast, hissing as the paste pulled painfully on her skin.

With the packet in her fingers, Georgianna wondered if she should return it to Taye untouched. Whether she should leave it closed so that he could keep his privacy with Nyah. However, curiosity got the better of her, and sadness at Nyah’s situation made her unwilling to fight the urge. She carefully opened up the packet and tipped the contents gently out into her hand.

It was less than she thought had been inside, but the single item unfortunately meant that much more. In her hand, a perfectly woven grass joining ring lay against her palm. Yellow from the sun and being disconnected from the earth, the grass had grown delicate and brittle. Georgianna could only wonder how long Taye had kept the ring in his possession, hoping for Nyah’s return to him. The grass ring was only symbolic, used for the ceremony. Afterward it would be replaced with one made of silver. The grass was used to show that everything, all natural elements from the grass to the sky, would know of their joining. It was an old tradition, one that had mostly gone out of fashion since the Adveni had arrived, but the meaning was clear just the same.

As Georgianna turned the ring over in her fingers, she looked at the other item that had been in the packet. On a small, torn piece of paper, in Taye’s almost illegible handwriting, he’d scrawled a Kahle promise.

 
I love you above all others.
Under sun and moon, you will be the only one.
My ship to carry my heart
I join myself to you for now and ever more.

 
Georgianna remembered the promise word for word, even before she’d finished reading the first line. It had been used in every ceremony she had ever attended, including that of her brother to Nequiel. In the darkness of the tunnel, alone and holding a joining ring that did not belong to her, a ring that might never be placed on the finger of the person it was intended for, and thinking of all the rings that now lay cold on lost partners’ hands, Georgianna wanted to cry.

 
***

 
She was unsure how long she sat on the steps leading down into the east tunnel, but when a group of five Adveni came down the steps behind her, Georgianna leapt to her feet to get out of their way, keeping the grass ring and the paper slip concealed tight in her fist.

Marching amongst the Adveni men, Edtroka looked at her with an odd expression. Cold and calculating, in the moment his gaze met hers through the shadows, Georgianna feared that he knew exactly why she had been sitting on the steps. Stepping a little further away, but unable to break the guard’s gaze, Georgianna watched him until he finally turned away, making a crack in Adtvenis that had the other men laughing.

They barely looked back as they disappeared down the tunnel, and though Georgianna knew most of them would barely think to check for her presence behind them, she waited a full ten minutes before she made her own way back into the city.

When she came to the place where the eastern tunnel intersected with the main line, Georgianna paused. She wasn’t sure what to do, whether to head south and find Taye to tell him what she knew about Nyah, or to go north and seek council from Beck or one of the other Belsa. In her heart, she knew that Taye deserved to know the truth as soon as possible, but the fear that he would try to do something was now stronger than ever. She knew that if Taye decided to try to free Nyah, there would be no words that could put him off finding out who had bought her.

Georgianna wondered if it might have been easier if Nyah was gone, if they’d never known what had happened to her. There wouldn’t be a chance of freeing her and Taye would have been able to move through his grief, like her father had done, like her brother had. Georgianna knew that the chance of merely seeing Nyah again was enough to fuel him, and there would be nothing she could do to stop it.

Unable to stand at the intersection all day deciding what to do, Georgianna made her turning and began a slow progression through the throngs of people.

The man standing guard was nobody Georgianna knew, and she was submitted to a search and a call-in before she was allowed passage. In the Belsa tunnels, her footsteps slowed the closer she came. Having lost friends, lost her mother; she knew the pain of not knowing what had happened to them and the devastation when the truth was revealed. It was torture, one that Taye would now feel sooner than Georgianna would ever have wanted for him.