Dead and Buryd: A Dystopian Action Adventure Novel (Out of Orbit Book 1) (28 page)

“I should go,” Georgianna mumbled, getting to her feet.

Halden reached out and took her hand.

“Gianna,” he murmured. “Come on, don’t…”

“No, it’s… I need to look for a herber for Jake. He’s good and he can learn.”

Raising an eyebrow, Halden gazed at her. He shook his head. Georgianna wrapped her arms around him in a brief, tight hug.

“Honestly, we’re fine. I’m fine. I’ll… I’ll think about what you said.”

Think about it, she wouldn’t stop thinking about it.

“Well, come back after you’re done. I’ll keep my mouth shut,” he said, brushing her hair back behind her ear.

She nodded, giving him a small smile before she turned and went back into the house to collect her bag and set out to find someone who would willingly go down into the tunnels to train Jacob.

 
29
Keep Him Dead

 
“I should go, yep, definitely should go.”

Georgianna leapt up off the bed, the Way notes slipping from her knees and littering the floor. Jumping over them and colliding with one of the metal drawers she’d not completely closed, she yelped, pain shooting through her hip. Pushing the heel of her hand against her throbbing flesh, she reached for Si’s elbow, gently urging him to stay put.

“We talked about this, Si,” she breathed, another gasp as she eased her hand over the curve of her hip. “Jaid wants you to stay with me for a while.”

A damp lock of hair slapped across Si’s nose as he shook his head. Pulling his arm out of her grasp, he took a step away from her towards the open door of the tunnel car. He wrinkled his nose and snorted, dislodging the hair.

“No, no, need to get going,” he insisted. “Counting on me, expecting me.”

He took another step and picked up one of the cantinas from the shelves along the wall, wrapping both hands around it and clutching it to his chest.

“Need to take water… long walk. Jaid… Jaid says long walks need water.”

Georgianna watched him cautiously, sidestepping until she could stand in front of the open door, a barrier to dissuade Si. He’d been much better once the pain of his wounds had subsided, but they’d been right about the damage the prolonged heat had done to his mind. Of the few times she had seen him, Jaid bringing him to the Way when she was on shift, he seemed agitated and confused, but thankfully, not often violent.

“Where do you need to go, Si?” she asked. “Wouldn’t you rather stay with me?”

“Can’t.” He clutched the cantina tighter to his chest. “Need to check on him, need to make sure. My job.”

Shifting her weight from one foot to the other, Georgianna pursed her lips, her eyes narrowing.

“Your job? Is this the job Beck gave you?”

His gaze finally settled, staring at the door as he nodded. His finger drew around the mouth of the cantina, feeling the screw threads on the cap.

“What was the job? Maybe I can help?” she asked hopefully.

He shook his head violently, locks of hair slapping across his face. She stepped back, balancing on the lip of the doorway.

“No help. No one to know,” Si muttered. “My job. Casey trusting me to keep him dead.”

Georgianna lifted her foot to step back, her boot finding nothing but air beneath it as she teetered back in the open doorway. She squealed, catching Si’s attention, and grabbed the edge of the doorway, clinging on as she righted herself back inside the car. Si watched her. His finger paused in its progression around the rim, his brow raised.

“Keep him dead?” She was confused. “Beck is alive, Si.”

“I know that!” he snapped before turning away, trampling the notes on the floor with his dusty boots. He lifted the cantina on his chest, resting his chin against the rim of the mouth. “Marshalls remain marshalls, dreta remain dead.”

“Dreta?”

The breath of a word slipped through her lips. She stared at Si. Her mind raced around Si’s words. Memories fell into place. She blinked, wondering how she had missed something so obvious.

“It was Cartwright,” she whispered. “Your job, it was Cartwright!”

Si spun on his heel. The cantina slipped from his fingers. In an instant he was before her, fingers grasping her wrists.

“You…” he sneered.

Georgianna wrenched her hands back. Yet he tightened his grip, tugging her towards him.

“Si, you’re hurting me!”

“You sold me out!” he snarled, ignoring her pleas.

Georgianna trembled in his grasp. She tugged away from him fruitlessly, shaking her head.

“No. No, Si, I didn’t,” she pleaded. “I heard about Landon the other day. Please, Si, let go.”

His grip on her wrists faltered, a spasm of uncertainty, or confusion, that gave her the chance she needed. Tugging herself free, she overbalanced, landing with a thump on the floor. Her breathing was ragged. Tearing her gaze from Si’s, she glanced around the car, making sure that there was nothing within reach he could use as a weapon. As she looked back at him, she cradled her hand in her lap, rubbing her fingers against the sore skin where she knew bruises would appear.

“Saw Alec?” he asked.

Georgianna shook her head.

“No, not Alec,” she corrected. “Landon, Si. Alec’s little brother. You remember, right?”

Si glared at her, but remained silent.

“There’s another drysta in the house with him. Her name is Nyah.”

“No, no others,” Si rattled. “Only Alec dead.”

Georgianna shifted her legs out from underneath her, moving herself into a more comfortable position. Between them, the papers lay scattered and crumpled on the floor.

“Nyah was bought after you were found,” she said, her panic subsiding as Si slipped back to sit opposite her.

He buried his head into his hands, hunching over his legs, and whined into his skin, rocking his body in a rhythmic bobbing. Tentatively, she reached out and laid her hand on his knee. Si froze, still as stone, but did not push her away.

“You’re confused, Si. It wasn’t Alec you saw, it was Landon.”

Si didn’t move, didn’t even breathe as Georgianna shifted a little closer.

“He was your job? Watching out for him?”

Finally, in a motion so small that she would have missed it had she not been staring at him so intently, Si nodded.

“Be… Beck told you where he was, that he’d been captured, didn’t he?”

“Safer,” Si breathed. “Stay dead, no one looks.”

He lifted his head, peering at her through his splayed fingers.

“No one helps.”

Georgianna let out a timid breath, staring at her fingers against Si’s knee. She had taken a guess, but never actually thought she might be right, that Beck would have known about Landon.

“Do you know his owner?”

“Maarqyn,” Si breathed. “Maarqyn Guinnyr. Mean. Cruel. Vtensu.”

She pulled her hand back from Si’s knee, her thumb coming to her lips where she chewed on the nail. Something wasn’t adding up. Si had been found the day after she’d seen Landon in the compound. Si had been missing for days; there was no way that he would know where Landon Cartwright had gone. Not unless someone knew before the sale that Maarqyn would buy the young drysta.

Were there more? Belsa they believed dead who had been sold in secret? Had Si been checking on all of them, and the damage of the heat had merged them into one singular assignment? Georgianna just knew one thing for certain: Beck had lied to her about more than Landon Cartwright.

 
30
Avoiding the Arrangement

 
Since her conversation with Si, Georgianna hadn’t been able to get his revelations out of her head. She avoided the Belsa encampment as much as she could. The moment Jaid had returned to take over her shift on the Way, Georgianna had excused herself, heading out into the camps. While her pride still smarted from Halden’s accusations, she figured that facing those feelings had to be better than confronting the Belsa marshall.

She couldn’t understand why Beck would be so keen on keeping these people hidden. She’d been suspicious since he told her that he wouldn’t help in Landon’s escape from Maarqyn. Now she could only wonder how many other Belsa out there had been captured instead of killed, and how many of them Beck had kept secret.

She hadn’t been able to get any more information out of Si, he was too confused and agitated by the time she tried to press him for more information. Georgianna knew that she needed more evidence before she approached one of the other Belsa about her suspicions, she couldn’t accuse Beck without proof. She realised that the only way she could do it was to wait until Landon was free. With Landon free, he would be able to tell the other Belsa what Beck had done: how Beck had left him with an Adveni to be tortured. Just a few more days, then all the lies would be out in the open.

While Halden was home—those few moments between him returning from work and Georgianna disappearing to return to it—questions bubbled silently between them. Halden didn’t dare mention Keiran or Alec, not in front of their father, and Georgianna didn’t want to share her confusion. Instead, they avoided it, and avoided each other.

Unfortunately, avoiding Halden didn’t do anything to wash his words from her head. She didn’t want her brother to see her as a child, only doing things that made her happy. However, the more she thought about it, the more difficult it became to dismiss his opinion as big-brother ramblings. Even Liliah had claimed that she only did things until they stopped feeling good, and while Georgianna wanted to argue, she wasn’t sure that her friend was wrong. She’d tried using the fact that she went into the compound, that she was helping Nyah and Landon, but in the end, those things made her feel good about herself. She was even letting others take the risk by not being the one to actually get Nyah and Landon from the house and remove their collars. She would be in the compound, safe and sound, feeling good about it all.

What was worse though, as helping Nyah and Landon had good repercussions for other people as well, was that she’d not been able to stop thinking about what they had both said about Keiran. She didn’t want to admit it, but she did really like the man, more than she’d originally intended. She’d thought she could handle the no-strings, casual thing that they had going. However, more and more, she realised that she didn’t like knowing that Keiran was seeing other women when she wasn’t around, or wondering if he liked them more than her.

She wasn’t ready for a joining ceremony, that was ridiculous, but maybe someday she would be. Hard as it was to imagine, she was suddenly very scared that when that day came, Keiran would be gone.

As such, Georgianna had done the only thing she could think of that left her some semblance of control. She avoided him. She blamed it on avoiding Beck, she told herself that it was safer this way, but the hope constantly nagged at her that surely, if she didn’t see him, if she didn’t remember how well things worked between them, then it wouldn’t be as difficult to move on.

So far, the plan had fallen flat on its face. Every time she let her mind wander, it went straight back to Keiran. Georgianna knew that she’d have to see him eventually, especially since their plan was set for the next day, but she didn’t want to have to have that conversation with him that ended in “I think it’s best that we don’t see each other anymore”. Before they had that conversation, she could at least pretend that everything was fine.

Medics’ Way had been quiet, too quiet for Georgianna’s liking. She didn’t want to see people injured, but the lack of patients to check on or tend to was giving her far too much time to think, not only about Keiran, but of everything that could go wrong the following day. With each new scenario that came to mind, she came one step closer to backing out completely.

“Hey, George!”

Georgianna turned, her arms filled with bandages she’d been reorganising. Wrench was climbing into the car, a tyllenich rifle hung over his shoulder.

“Hi Wrench, how’s things?”

Wrench dropped himself heavily onto one of the makeshift beds, adjusting the tyllenich by his side.

“Good. Nervous about tomorrow.”

She wasn’t sure whether it was a statement of his nerves or a question about hers so she simply nodded.

“Anyway, I just came to get some more of that paste.”

“The hyliha.” She nodded.

Moving to one of the lined crates, she dumped the bandages into it without bothering to organise them. She picked up the box with the hyliha powder in it, and taking one of the small cloth bags, poured in a generous amount.

“You just need to add a little cold water,” she explained, tying the strings from the bag around it and grabbing the first dressing her hand found.

Wrench nodded, placing the bag and dressing in a jacket pocket. Giving her a grateful wink, he got to his feet.

“We’re all ready for tomorrow.”

“You found another absorber?” Georgianna’s voice filled with excitement and relief. Of the things Beck had refused to help them with, the second absorber had proved the most difficult to find.

Grimacing, Wrench shook his head.

“What are you going to do?”

“The charge might last enough for two collars,” Wrench explained. “They’re designed for copaqs, which give off a stronger charge.”

“It might last?”

Wrench shrugged.

“Can’t promise. Only thing we can do, I guess, is hope for luck.”

Georgianna nodded, but it didn’t ease her fears in the slightest. Wrench moved towards the door, stopping just as he was about to jump out, and glanced back.

“See you when it’s done, George,” he said with a cheerful smile.

Once Wrench had disappeared down the tunnel, Georgianna went back to her counting. However, the task was pointless, as she never got all the way through the box before she became distracted by her thoughts, and lost count. In the end, she gave up and simply organised them by size, which she could do without distraction.

The afternoon was slow going. Jaid was meant to take over at sundown, but Georgianna was considering telling her not to bother. After all, Georgianna would need to be here in the morning because it was easier to get to the compound from the tunnels than the camps. She didn’t have a shift in the Rion district, and didn’t exactly want to go crawling into Keiran’s shack. However, knowing that she needed sleep if she was going to be alert the next morning, Georgianna decided that she would simply sleep at the back of the train car with Jacob.