Chapter 14
Thirteen
Gus
Gus snuggled deeper into the comfortable bed, the smell of bark and leaves heavy in her nostrils. Along with the scent of sap and tree. A heady combination that, along with the slight rocking sensation, succeeded in lulling her back into a deep sleep.
Dreams came and went as unbeknownst to her, time passed.
A day.
Two.
Longer.
All the while, energy steadily trickled into Gus’s sleeping body.
Its origin stemming from the rootlets and vines that had wrapped her in their calming embrace.
They strengthened her. Their essence refilling reserves she’d drained dry in a feat of madness.
All to protect a Tuann she had no business protecting. Who shouldn’t have needed it.
Gus’s forehead furrowed as that thought tried to intrude.
There was a reason she should be awake right now, but she couldn’t remember what that was.
Her thoughts proved slippery, sliding out of reach as exhaustion rolled her beneath its waves again.
More time passed.
Gus half roused at the tiny chirp next to her ear. Distantly, she became aware of the warm, furred body curled up in the crook of her neck, the creature’s tail draped over her throat as its sides vibrated in a tiny rumble.
The sensation was strange and unfamiliar enough that it cleared the last tendrils of fog from her mind.
“Wh—”
Gus broke off in a fit of coughing. Why did she feel so parched?
Her throat wasn’t just dry. It felt like sandpaper. Her lips uncomfortably chapped. Her tongue swollen and too thick for her mouth. Like it had been weeks since it last saw any sort of moisture.
Uncomfortable, Gus cracked her eyelids to find a chaterling regarding her from inches away.
“He—hello.” Gus coughed again, trying to work up enough spit to moisten the inside of her mouth. “How did you get here, friend?”
What a stupid question.
It wasn’t like the chaterling possessed words with which to answer her.
Gus looked past it, taking in the twilight gloom of her surroundings. Somehow, she’d managed to fall into some type of shaft built from the aerial roots of the dominus orbis terrarum.
Though she couldn’t figure out how she’d managed that. Or why she was dangling halfway down that shaft in what looked an awful lot like a hammock built from smaller feeder roots.
Her surroundings were saved from true darkness by the light trickling through the tiny gaps between roots.
How am I still alive?
Gus remembered the moments right before everything went black. Caius rushing to push her out of the path of the tree branch. The Tuann who’d taken advantage of his distraction. Her stupid attempt at heroism. The sensation of falling as she tipped over the spine’s edge.
Gus’s gaze drifted toward the top of the shaft.
I wonder if he survived.
She wanted to think he had. That somehow, he’d avoided being crushed and had used the chaos to escape.
Perhaps that was wishful thinking though.
It was much more likely he was dead. The chance of anyone surviving was slim to none.
Well, maybe Kira could have survived. Pallas too.
Actually, most of her siblings probably would have scraped through by the skin of their teeth. But that was them.
Caius was different.
Right?
Gus groaned, pressing the heels of her palms to her eye sockets. She didn’t even know why she cared. She shouldn’t care. Caius was nobody to her. A fleeting acquaintance who was bound to leave her company at some point or another.
It just so happened their parting was a little sooner and more violent than expected.
The chaterling made a questioning sound and pressed a paw to Gus’s nose.
“I’m fine.” Gus dropped her hands, staring up at the rippled ridges of the trunk’s shaft. “I’m fine.”
She would be fine.
Just like always.
People came. They went. That was how it had always been. How it would always be. Getting upset about it wouldn’t change that.
Gus forced herself to relax back into the aerial root hammock, letting it cradle her body as she gently rocked.
What now?
She had the proof that she wasn’t the mastermind behind this. She could send it to Ryan and Kira and then walk away. Forget Caius. The boy. Let the situation play out as it would.
Something in her balked at that thought.
Gus wasn’t particularly vengeful. Not like Kira and Jin or the rest of her siblings anyway. She was more a turn the other cheek and bury her head in the sand sort. But Mars and Cleo had crossed the line. She didn’t think she could live with herself if she let that stand.
“Something will have to be done,” Gus murmured before sighing.
Why was it so hard to have a peaceful life? All she wanted was her bed and her plants. But noooo, everyone kept dragging her into things she didn’t want to be dragged into.
“Should have escaped on my own years ago,” Gus grumbled, setting the hammock to swinging as she sat up and dangled her legs over the edge.
The chaterling mrphed a protest before leaping off her to glide over and perch on one of the roots of the trunk.
“My life would have been so much simpler that way.”
There would definitely have been less baggage.
Gus accessed the scroll around her wrist. “First things first.”
She needed to get that proof sent before anything else happened. If Ryan hadn’t freed himself already, he would soon. Even now he could be on her trail. She needed to head him off before she lost her head.
How long had she been out anyway?
Judging by the complete lack of headache or general weakness that usually accompanied a ki burnout, she was guessing a while.
Hours, most likely.
A second later, she realized how far off base she was as she got a look at the station date and time.
“Four days?”
Gus’s eyebrows rose. That must be some kind of record.
Exactly how much of her soul’s breath did she sacrifice trying to save Caius for her to be out that long?
There was a note of wonder in her gaze as she studied the shaft she’d woken up in, finally realizing what about its presence bothered her. For her to be unconscious for that long, she would have had to drain herself nearly dry.
How then had she survived?
If she’d gone over the spine’s edge while conscious, there would have been a chance. She would have figured out some way to save herself.
But she hadn’t. She’d passed out the second she began tipping backward. Long before Titan’s Lord somehow caught her, stopping her descent without killing her or breaking any bones. Then it had grown a shaft around her to hide her from her enemies.
All acts that pointed to an intelligence and personal agency far beyond what a tree—even one as unique as dominus orbis terrarum—was capable of.
Never before had the flora she interacted with moved on their own.
No, that wasn’t necessarily the case, Gus corrected a second later. The choko tree that had offered its essence to Caius had done something similar. In both cases, the trees had responded to her needs before she voiced them.
That wasn’t just unusual. It was unheard of.
A new facet of her abilities maybe?
Whatever the case, it would require further study before any answers could be obtained. For now, she had more pressing concerns. Like ensuring Ryan received her proof before he set the rest of the forty-three on her.
No easy task given how they had left things.
The best way to ensure he got the information she’d acquired and actually reviewed it would be to send a runner.
Gus rejected that option before it could fully form. The chances of him killing anyone she sent were too great. Given what was happening with Belladonna, Gus wasn’t sure who she could trust anyway.
That left the same avenue of contact Ryan had used to notify Gus of his impending arrival.
Risky, since she had no way of verifying if he got the message, but it would have to do.
Creating an encrypted page only accessible via the link she placed on the message board was easy. After that was done, she finally got around to examining the notifications that had been flashing in the corner of her screen since opening her scroll.
One was a message from a contact. The rest were station bulletins. The red lettering denoted them as being of the highest priority.
Idly, she clicked on one.
“Station incident—all citizens are advised to steer clear of the spine and deck 16 until further notice.”
Gus stilled.
Deck 16?
That was where she’d left Anandra.
There was no way. How would they have known where to find him?
Gus had made sure to wipe her tracks, going so far as to avoid all cameras on deck 16 that would have led back to Natalie’s. She’d even taken one of the smuggler paths down to deck 11 to further muddy the water.
It shouldn’t have been possible. They couldn’t have found Anandra.
And yet, there was a sinking sensation in her stomach that said they had.
Gus shook herself. You don’t know anything yet.
This could have nothing to do with her or the kid. The pirate clans and station gangs regularly launched attacks on each other. Sometimes they got out of hand, resulting in parts of the station being shut down until the situation could be brought back under control.
Gus scanned the rest of the bulletins.
There wasn’t much more of note. The powers that be had framed what happened in the government district with Titan’s Lord as a freak accident.
No surprise there. In their place, she would have done the same.
No one wanted to freak out the tourists or risk people outside the station realizing there’d been some kind of attack.
The shipping conglomerates and mining companies might decide Titan was too dangerous to send their cargo through.
That could cripple the station’s economy.
She was more interested in the information coming out of deck 16—or rather the lack of it.