Chapter 11
SERA
When Kavor says we leave, I don’t argue. This might be the most frightening thing that’s happened so far.
We back away from the collapsed cistern channel, soft and slow, each step placed like the ground is listening with teeth. Maybe it is. Maybe everything on Tajss listens. Stone. Sand. Heat. Hunger. Alien males who hear your pulse change and then pretend they didn’t.
I keep my eyes on the ground because my body likes tasks better than despair. Dark shelf, safe. Pale stone, avoid. Dust slope, too soft. Cracked lip, no. Shadow leaning west, useful for six breaths, maybe eight if the sun keeps climbing slow.
It won’t. The sun never does anything slowly once it decides to kill.
Kavor moves beside me, silent and too aware. I feel him not reaching for me. That’s an absurd thing to feel. The absence of a hand. The restraint of claws. The space beside my body where he could interfere and doesn’t.
It bothers me. Everything about him bothers me. Especially when he learns.
Behind us, somewhere deep in the old passage, I hear dust shifting once more. I don’t turn because turning gives fear shape.
“We need shade,” Kavor says.
“I know.”
“Soon.”
“I know that too.”
His gaze brushes over me, then moves away before I can accuse him of anything. Smart male. Annoyingly trainable.
The western rim bends ahead, dipping toward a broken ledge where two slabs lean together, trapping a strip of shade between them. It’s not a shelter and definitely not comfort. It’s shade. On Tajss, those are different things.
I angle toward it. Kavor follows without question, which makes my shoulders tight.
He should be harder to move. He is too large to follow so quietly. Too dangerous to listen so well. A wall with opinions should not become a shadow because I point.
We reach the ledge with first heat crawling at our backs.
The shade is narrow, low, and full of red dust. One slab angles far enough to block the first sun, but not the second when it climbs. The ground beneath it is dark stone, cracked but solid. I test it with my heel, then crouch before my knees can decide they want permission.
Kavor remains at the edge of the shade for a breath too long, staring out over the open basin. No. Not staring. Watching.
His wings sit tight again. His shoulders set as if the sky has weight. One claw rests near the stone slab beside him, close enough to touch but not touching. Then he steps under the leaning rock.
The change is small. His breath lowers. His tail stills. His wings ease by a fraction. I notice. He notices me noticing. Neither of us says anything. Good. Some things are easier when left in the dark with the rest of the crawling creatures.
“We stop here?” he asks.
“For now.”
“How long?”
“Until my shadow says leaving won’t cook us before the next rib.”
He looks at the ground.
“At your shadow?”
“At its angle. Mine moves honestly. Yours has wings and lies.”
His gaze drops to the broken shape of his own shadow, horned and winged and too large across the stone. Something plays across the corners of his mouth.
“Useful distinction,” he says.
“I’m full of them.”
“Yes.”
I look at him and his face is serious. I hate that too.
I loosen the strap across my chest and lower my pack between my knees. The eastern death list presses against the inside leather. The map presses beside it. Records. Names. Routes. Evidence of everyone who learned something too late.
No glow.
The thought slips in before I can stop it. I shove it away. Failed hope is a waste of water.
“Food,” Kavor says.
My hand freezes halfway to the pack flap. Of course he heard the tiny change in my breath when I crouched. Of course he saw the shake I hid by reaching for my pack. Of course he thinks the answer to everything is putting something in my mouth until I stop arguing.
“I’m checking the map.”
“After food.”
“We need to know the next route.”
“We know enough to eat.”
“We need to know more than enough.”
“Sera.”
One word. Low. Not command exactly. Worse. Concern wearing command’s armor. I lift my eyes.
“Do not start,” I say, keeping my voice level and even.
“I have not started.”
“You’re preparing to start.”
“Yes.”
“At least lie,” I say.
“No.”
“Infuriating.”
“Yes.”
I pull the map free with more force than necessary, because the map deserves some blame for existing. I unfold the corner showing the western rim, the third expected sign, the quiet place.
The quiet place sits east of our line like a thought I should not think. The third sign is near it. The one we agreed not to approach until we understood why the first failed. And right now we understand nothing.
Nothing except no glow, black veins, and a rhythm that belongs to something that should not exist in old tunnels. My stomach twists. Food sounds impossible, and that is how I know I need it.
Kavor crouches across from me, careful with his wings under the low stone.
He should look ridiculous folded into shade too small for him, but he doesn’t.
He looks carved for impossible places. Dark scales.
Controlled claws. Eyes tracking my hands, not my face, as if the truth might be hiding in what I do before I decide what to say.
I reach into the food wrap. Dried meat. Seed mash. Two hard root strips. One strip of something pale that might have been edible before Tajss taught it humility. I sort automatically.
Larger piece to Kavor. Smaller to me. Root strip split unevenly. Seed mash divided in a way that looks fair, as long as no one stares too long. Water after, not before, because water before food tricks the stomach into thinking it has been promised kindness.
Kavor says nothing, but I feel him watching, so I keep my hands steady.
One portion. Another. Calculated. Clean. Efficient. There. Done. I push the larger share toward him. He looks at it. Then at mine. Then at me.
“No.”
The word is quiet. I smile without warmth.
“You haven’t heard what I’m offering.”
“I have seen enough,” he says.
“You’re larger.”
“Yes.”
“You carry more water.”
“Yes.”
“You’re stronger if something comes out of one of those tunnels to eat us.”
“Yes.”
I shove his portion closer. “Then your body is the better investment.”
His eyes change, not softer. More focused.
“I am not an investment.”
“Everything is an investment.”
“No.”
“That’s sweet. Wrong, but sweet,” I say.
His claws flex once against his knee.
“Do not make yourself smaller and call it strategy.”
Heat crawls up my throat. “Do not turn survival math into a moral injury.”
“It is one when the numbers always end with you getting less.”
“Because that is how numbers work,” I say.
“No.”
The word is as hard as stone. I lean forward.
“You think this is new because you got here yesterday and started growling at my meals.”
“I do not growl.”
“You do it with your face.”
His jaw tightens.
“This is how the City survives,” I say, keeping my voice low. “We ration by usefulness. Size. Labor. Risk. Recovery. Children first. Fevered next. Workers depending on route. Fighters if danger is likely. People who don’t need as much take less.”
“You need.”
“Less than you.”
“That is not the same as less.”
I hate him for the words. For the accuracy. For looking at me like the difference matters. I close my fingers around my smaller portion.
“If something breaches, you fight.”
“If something breaches, we are already late.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Yes. You believe your hunger is a tool.”
“It is.”
“It is a wound you keep reopening because others learned to call it useful,” he says.
The words are too close and make me go cold. Not skin cold. Deeper. The kind of cold that arrives when a wall cracks behind you and you know exactly what will fall if you turn around.
“You don’t know anything about me,” I say.
“I know you divided food with the same hand that reads death lists.”
My breath catches and I hate that too. I hate so much around him that there should be less room for fear. He reaches for the larger portion and pushes it back to the center. Not toward me. Not toward himself. Center. Neutral ground. Smart. And really, really annoying.
“We divide again,” he says.
“We do not have time for your feelings.”
“These are not feelings.”
“They look heavy enough to be feelings.”
“They are facts,” he says.
“Your facts are bossy,” I say.
“Your math is dishonest.”
His face is still. Too still. Controlled the way stone goes still before it splits.
“My math kept people alive.”
“Yes.”
“You don’t get to insult it.”
“I insult the lie inside it,” he says.
The shade feels smaller around us. Outside, the basin floor shimmers brighter. First heat thickens. The second sun is not visible yet, but I can feel its promise in the air.
We should eat. Move. Reach the next shade. Find something useful.
Instead, I am crouched under a stone ledge arguing with a Zmaj about whether hunger counts as service.
“What lie?” I ask.
“That you do not count.”
I look away too fast. His silence changes.
“I count,” I say.
“Yes. When there is work to assign.”
My jaw locks and he waits. He shouldn’t wait. Waiting gives me space to feel things I’m trying to starve. I reach for the food.
“Fine.”
He doesn’t relax. I take the larger portion and break it down the middle. Equal pieces. Almost. I shave a little from mine with my thumbnail and add it to his. His eyes narrow.
“What?” I ask.
“That was not equal.”
“You have excellent vision. Congratulations.”
“Sera.”
“You’re bigger.”
“We already argued that,” he says.
“And yet your body remains bigger. Stubborn of it.”
His nostrils flare. Not quite amusement. Not quite frustration. I have found a narrow ledge between the two. That’s okay. I can survive there. Kavor takes the sliver I added to his portion and returns it to mine.
I stare. He stares back.
“We can do this until second heat kills us,” he says.
I want to throw the root strip at his head, but that would be wasteful. I eat it instead. Aggressively. And he watches. Of course he does.
“This is strange behavior,” I say around the first bite.
“Eating?”
“Being supervised by a cave dragon with ration opinions.”
“Cavern Zmaj.”
“That is what you object to?”
“Yes.”