ElyriasEcstasy (29 page)

“Is she who you think she is?” Gator asked.

It took Urna a second to realize the question was meant for
him. “Yes,” he said. Virge Temple was blinking, starting to look around. She
appeared to have no obvious injuries.

“Very well.” Gator fell in behind the second transport. They
were both driving ahead at a speedy clip. The street was giving out beneath
them but the oversized tires were handling the rougher terrain. “The Guard
won’t follow us,” Gator went on. “Their jurisdiction ended about forty yards
ago.”

Urna managed to crane around for a look, still holding Virge
bundled against him. Quite a contingent of Guard vehicles had indeed been
following them. But they’d stopped. It wouldn’t have anything to do with their
jurisdiction. The Guard policed the Safe. The Unsafe belonged to the military.
But really it was a matter of, if you didn’t
have
to go into the Unsafe,
there was nothing that would motivate you to do so.

Except, it seemed, salvagers. Urna settled back in his seat.
They would be under the Ship in a while. He was still prepared to do his duty.

What had brought out all those Guard at once? Had that
strange feeling that had overcome him outside of Gator’s house had some
significance? He’d felt an inexplicable certainty that somebody had seen and
recognized him. Maybe it was true. How, though, could he have known?

Now probably wasn’t the time to wonder. Virge was still
stirring in his arms. At last, gazing up at him, she managed to slur,
“Whuh—where, ur, are we going, anyway?”

Chapter Sixteen

Virge sat up, slid into the seat beside Urna. The jouncing
of the vehicle felt like it was bruising her ass. But she had an instinct, even
as full consciousness continued to return to her, that this wouldn’t be the
only discomfort she would feel tonight.

They were on what looked like little more than a path,
unpaved and thin. The stumps of trees stood here and there. Even this close to
the Ship people had harvested the wood, needing the material, scrabbling for
anything they could find.

Now she knew what a border town was like.

The shock of overturning in that car was fading. She had
already determined that she had no serious injuries. Urna was here. Urna was
also the one who’d caused the car’s tire to blow out. There were two others in
this big, rumbling vehicle.

Virge blinked, looked around, blinked some more.

Urna still had an arm around her and she liked the security
of that. Belatedly, Virge realized that during the last few hazy minutes he had
been explaining to these two others who she was. Apparently the Weapon’s
accounting had satisfied them.

“They’re not following,” said the woman in the adjacent
seat. She was craned around, looking behind. Virge didn’t know who that
they
meant.

“Never thought they would.” This was from the vehicle’s
driver. Virge had seen nothing of him but the back of his head and the broad
line of his shoulders.

“The Guard,” Urna said, leaning in toward Virge. “The local
unit from the town. They were about a minute behind you. Did you know anything
about them?”

Virge shook her head. “It was just me. Me and-and Tuck…” The
gunshot, followed by the sound of the tire blowing, then the car swerving,
tipping, going over. She shivered against Urna’s encircling arm. “I was with a
Guard in that car,” she said. Her tongue felt thick but she enunciated
carefully. “He wasn’t local. I was, uh, traveling with him. I was on the run. I
got this disguise. The fuckers burned down my lab.” It was all coming back and
she wanted to get everything out all at once. But it was disjointed, out of
sequence.

“Arvra’s stopping,” the driver said. A second later their
vehicle halted alongside a large transport with rusting flanks.

A figure sprang out from this second vehicle and Virge’s
heart surged, something close to joy suddenly singing through her veins. Bongo!
But how could…? First Urna, now
him
. But of course the two had been
traveling together. Virge shook her head even as a grin split her face.

Urna opened the rear door and Bongo scrambled halfway over
his lap to reach Virge, to throw his arms around her and plant several frantic
kisses on her. She giggled, despite her recent trauma. She was quite sure she
had never in her life been so happy to see the self-proclaimed mage.

“Bongo.”

“Virge! I can’t believe it’s you! What’d you do to your
hair? And this getup—”

Abruptly he was no longer hugging her. A hand had hold of
the collar of his coat and he had been yanked off and away. The hand belonged
to a man with gray hair even shorter than Virge’s. His dark eyes flashed.

“Easy, Hervo,” said a second person from the other vehicle.
She, in contrast, had a wild array of hair, a multicolored spray. “Don’t break
our navigator.”

The man, Hervo, let go of Bongo. He looked around. “Are we
safe sitting out here?”

“I’ll keep watch,” the woman next to Virge said. She grabbed
up what it took Virge a second to realize was a bow. With a quiver of arrows
over her shoulder, she opened the hatchway above her and climbed partway out
onto the roof of the vehicle. As she went, Virge saw the scar that marked her
face from ear to mouth.

Answering Hervo’s question, the broad-shouldered driver
said, “We’re far enough from the Guard that they won’t pursue. And we’re not
close enough to the Ship yet to seriously worry about Passengers. Pelkra’s
right. She can keep watch.” He had turned around as he spoke. He had rugged
features, Virge saw, not dissimilar to Tuck’s.

Tuck. Had he survived the car wreck?

The woman with the vivid, unruly hair stepped up to the open
rear door and gazed in at her. “My name’s Arvra. This is my crew. You want to
tell me—quickly and very truthfully—who you are and what you’re doing here
wearing a Guard uniform?”

Arvra had presence, a sure air of command. Virge found it
easy to obey her, to order her thoughts and provide the necessary explanation.
Urna and Bongo corroborated where appropriate.

Finally Arvra nodded. “Well, you’re along for the ride,
then. We’re going salvaging. Your only other choice is to walk back to town.”

Virge looked out the windows at the surrounding wasteland.
“No thanks.”

It got another nod. “Thought as much. Okay, let’s get
rolling. We got a ways to go.” Arvra turned and marched back to the six-wheeled
transport. It was as big as this rig was. Good for collecting scavenged goods,
Virge judged. Without being told, she guessed that this wasn’t Arvra’s first
raid. It was as obvious as the fact that this wasn’t any sort of authorized
operation. Still, Virge thought, she’d rather throw in with these people. Going
back to the town, into the waiting arms of the Guard, wasn’t an option.
Besides, these weren’t all unfamiliar faces, were they?

Bongo blew her a kiss, which she returned, as he climbed
back into the other vehicle, along with the man called Hervo. Gator—his name
had emerged during the brief questioning following Virge’s full accounting of
herself—put their transport into motion again, falling in behind Arvra’s
vehicle.

Virge turned to Urna, feeling almost wholly recovered from
the accident. “Tell me,” she said quietly, “did the Guard I was with, Tuck, is
he—”

“He was breathing when I hopped out and collected you.” A
pained look passed over Urna’s elfin features. “I’m sorry. It was past the last
second, though. I fired.”

“And you’re a hell of a shot, Weapon.” Again she was able to
summon a grin. “Are you aware of the lengths the Toplux is going to in order to
get you back?”

“He’s shut off the Safe’s power.” Urna nodded. “I know. I’ve
got lots to tell you too. About how Bongo and I got here. What we’ve seen. What
this salvage operation is really all about.” He put a hand to his temple. A
mild wince narrowed his dark-blue eyes. But the discomfort, whatever it was,
seemed to pass immediately. “I hope we get the time later on to catch up.”

“I hope so too,” Virge said, more solemnly than before. She
looked ahead, saw the Black Ship looming nearer. It was already impossibly
huge. What was it going to be like to actually be
underneath
the
monstrous thing?

She would find out. She was going on a salvage raid.

* * * * *

When you go into the Unsafe you’re never alone.

The thought thumped in Urna’s head, so deliberately
articulated he suspected it was something he’d heard or said before. An adage.
Or if it wasn’t, it was one that would’ve been apropos among the
Shadowflash/Weapon teams back on the training grounds at the Citadel’s military
facility.

Maybe, though, it was just something he’d scribbled on the
walls of his old quarters. He had done that obsessively and, it had seemed at
the time, without any sure purpose. Just fleeting thoughts that had come to
him, ones he’d felt compelled to smear his walls with. Why had his superiors
let him get away with it, considering how strictly the lives of Weapons and
Shadowflashes were regulated? He didn’t know. Maybe they’d been hoping it would
be some kind of insight into his mental state, a marker. If so it had likely
been a haphazard one at best. Maybe they had just figured the scrawling would
help him in venting stress. The same way they turned a blind eye to all that
fucking he and Rune had done.

You’re never alone—

He was feeling the mental twinges again, the disorientation,
but he resisted it, fought it down. Whatever it was, now wasn’t the time for
it.

Rune. His Shadowflash. His sightless-sight. Rune was the one
who had always guided him to the Passengers. He had been more than a guide. And
more than a lover too.

Their convoy of two was nearing the true edge of the Unsafe
now. Above, the Ship glowed and writhed. The terrain was rough but Gator kept
them moving as steadily as possible. Pelkra, with her bow, was still perched on
the roof, legs dangling, feet resting on her seatback. Urna would need to get
up there himself in a minute or two.

He was still astounded that Virge Temple had reentered his
life in such a spectacular way. As with his meeting up again with Arvra, it
seemed to buck some cosmic percentage. But fate, evidently, played by its own
rules. Besides, Virge had been fleeing to the border, she’d said. Why should
she
not
flee to this particular town?

“You’ll be without him,” she said to him now, softly, as if
she’d searched for the right words. Her voice shook a little and she seemed
embarrassed by it. She cleared her throat, making an obvious effort to reclaim
her dignity. “You’ll still be able to do your job. Protect these people. Won’t
you?” She finished much more steadily.

Her face was different, he’d noticed. Not any result from
the car flipping over. Rather, she appeared to be wearing makeup or something.
And that shorn hair was still a jolt, considering how full and beautiful it had
been.

Urna knew what her words meant. He said, “I can still fight
without him.” It wasn’t a defensive statement. He appreciated that she hadn’t
actually used Rune’s name. And because he wasn’t the curt, heartless individual
he had once been, he added in assuring tones, answering the question she’d
really
been asking, “I owe you my life. I won’t let you down.”

“Good.” Virge smiled.

Urna returned it then climbed up through the hatch over his
head. He had his gun in hand. It was still warm from the earlier discharge and
he could detect the faint sting of burnt powder. An odor Rune would’ve been
able to scent from the pinnacle of the tallest tower.

He settled into place. Pelkra, a few feet away, had the bow
in her lap, an arrow already partly nocked. Ahead, Urna saw the older man,
Hervo, nesting high in his seat in the lead vehicle, crossbow at the ready.

It would make for a fair amount of firepower, particularly
if these other two were as good with their weapons as Urna suspected they were.
They definitely had a chance against the Passengers they were sure to
encounter. He sincerely hoped that what he’d said to Virge was true—
I won’t
let you down.

Above, the Black Ship, destroyer of ancient Elyria, loomed
like a permanent nightmare. The air was growing chillier. Already the stars
were nearly gone. A new sky was swallowing the old. Less than half a mile until
the crossing into the Unsafe proper.

The Weapon waited to carry out his duty.

* * * * *

“Praise the Farsafe
…
”

Arvra heard the fear, quivering but controlled, in the
mystic man’s voice. Bongo was sitting beside her, his map laid before him.
Green eyes looked ahead, looked down, flashed up again.

They were coming under the Ship itself now. The
no-man’s-land was behind them. Ahead and around spread the Unsafe itself. The
only trees visible were stunted, twisted things that looked poisoned. The
ground was gray. There wasn’t any evidence of ruins yet.

Bongo nodded. “Straight ahead for a while.”

Again Arvra heard his unease. He’d probably expected their
crossing over into the Unsafe to be marked by some kind of event. A blare of
ominous music maybe, or a great flash of cold light. For Arvra it was nothing
more than the usual sense of foreboding. Just a feeling in her chest. But that
was natural.

The transport went over a bump, jostling them all. The
phosphorescent glow from above intensified slightly, and that was that.

“Welcome to the Unsafe, Bongo,” Arvra murmured cheekily.
“How does it feel?”

“Great. Just…great.”

Arvra couldn’t quite hide a grin. Guiding the vehicle
easily, she touched a control. The headlights sprang to life. They were of a
harsh intensity. “Light will keep most Passengers away. They don’t like it, not
this kind of light. We go in and get out fast enough, we might not see a single
beast. Kind of disappointing, really.”

“You don’t have to,” Bongo said.

“What?”

“You don’t need to baby me. I’m scared. I admit that. But I
insisted on coming along and I’m standing by that. No matter what happens.”

Arvra didn’t respond but she was impressed. Maybe these
Order of Maji characters were all made of tough stuff. Certainly Gator, who was
staying right on her tail like he was supposed to, was a rugged piece of work.
The other vehicle had its lights blazing now too. That stark illumination would
help keep off the Passengers, true, but it was no guarantee.

Ahead, in the distance, were the first signs of the Unsafe’s
previous occupation—buildings on the horizon, just dots from here.

Bongo, she noted, had already seen them. Good eyes. It might
just be that he would prove truly worthwhile on this operation.

“I do have a question,” he said, looking up from his map
again. “How do we get back?”

Behind, she heard Hervo grunt. Her eyes widened. “That’s not
the kind of question I really want to hear from my navigator.”

“What? No.
No
.” He waved a hand, looking embarrassed.
“I don’t mean that. I know the way there, the way back. What I meant was, how
do we get back into your town? With the Guard on alert. They saw us leave.
They’ll be waiting for us to come back, right?”

“They saw these vehicles,” Arvra said. “So what? We keep
them hidden, as you saw when we collected this one. The Guard didn’t see
us—except maybe for Urna.
That
might complicate things. But getting
back? We can roll out of the Unsafe a couple of miles to either side of the
town and the Guard are never going to know. Then we can smuggle the goods into
town at our leisure. And you Maji people can take your guns wherever you were planning
on taking them. Don’t worry about what’s behind us right now.”