Chapter 57 Cero #2
“Aiz never learned better,” Cero said now. “And that’s a failure of those around her, as well as her own.” He cleared his throat. “I need to talk to Karinna. Do you know where she is?”
Ruh smiled. “The Serran Range.” He pointed to the mass of mountains rising to the west and then scratched a map into the sand. “Close to a place called Atella’s Gap. It’s a bit south of here.”
“Thank you, Ruh.”
“That,” Ruh said quietly, “is something you never have to say to me.”
A few hours later, Cero found the Gap. Karinna spotted him overhead, and her thought was a clarion call.
The northeast edge of the fork in the river, she said. Beneath the fir tree.
It was a tight landing, and only Abzi waited at Karinna’s campsite. The cat ignored him for a full minute before sauntering over to leave her scent all over his legs and flop onto her back in a bid for pets.
He was kneeling down, obliging her with a vigorous face scratch, when Karinna appeared, armed to the teeth.
He took in the mud on her clothes, the twigs and leaves in her hair. “Did you get in a fight with a tree?”
“I was stalking a cougar who’s been pestering one of the mountain villages.” She shot him an irritated look. “Finally got him to agree to listen to me when the shadow of your Sail scared the lights out of him. I’ll have to start all over.”
“Good thing you love a challenge.”
She turned away from him, stripping off her weapons and cracking her neck with a wince. Cero had an urge to go to her, to massage away the knots in her shoulders. To pull her close and loose her braid and—
Karinna turned back toward him, and she must have caught the heat in his gaze. She flushed and busied herself with building up the fire.
“Your people have all packed up,” she said. “Good riddance, I suppose.”
“The Emperor was gracious,” Cero said. “And accepted our terms of reparations.”
“I hear there’s a trade deal,” she said. “You’ll be busy the next few years.” She spoke with a flat affect. Her mind was completely closed to him.
He sat on a rock beside the fire, across from her. “I should have said goodbye to you,” he finally said.
She shoved another stick into the flames and raised an eyebrow. “Is that an apology I hear, pilot?”
“Yes, rebel. And there’s something else that I’ve been meaning to tell you.” Spires, this was terrifying. Scarier than crashing into an ocean, or facing Mother Div. His heart thundered, his fingers tingled, and he wondered how this confounding slip of a girl could make him feel so unmoored.
“I lied to you,” he said. “When I told you our kiss was unmemorable and mediocre. It was neither of those things. Not for me.”
Karinna fiddled with the hilt of one of her daggers. “Not for me, either,” she said softly.
Abzi, dozing beside the fire, opened one green eye, as if wondering at the sudden tension.
Cero’s chest lurched as Karinna looked up and met his gaze. She let him in for a moment, and he felt the depth of her sadness. He’d been her friend, her first friend in so long, and he was leaving. She was afraid she wouldn’t have a friend again. She was afraid no one would ever see her.
“Karinna,” he whispered. “I see you. I will always see you. The truth of you is forever burned into my mind.”
She looked away, and he knew then that she hadn’t heard him. That she’d retreated into herself as she always did when she was hurt.
“You should go,” she said. “Your people will be waiting.”
“I’ll—be traveling back and forth.” He tried one more time. “To Kotama. Ankana. Antium.”
“You’ll need more variety in your wardrobe, then.” She cocked her head and ran her eyes up and down him. “Maybe some fur.”
Spires, she was impossible. “Can I visit you, sometimes?”
She shrugged. “Not sure what we would talk about, Tel Ilessi.” Her voice was cold, before she took a deep breath and forced a half smile.
“You’ll be busy, and I have my own path,” she said. “There’s no point, really. But I—I hope your people find peace in the Return and that those who have suffered no longer do. And—” She dashed her hand across her face quickly. “I hope you’re happy too.”
A braver man would have kissed her then. Drawn her to him and told her that happiness was holding her, learning the contours of what lay between them. Happiness was getting to witness her spikes and her fire and her softness, too.
But he could offer her nothing. His future lay far to the west, in a land yet unknown, with a broken people in need of healing. So instead of kissing her, he dug in his pocket. He’d refashioned the aaj into something she might wear. Something that wouldn’t be too heavy or too laden with meaning.
“I made it for you,” he said. A bead of Loha on a simple leather cord. “We can speak through it, if you like.”
But she took a step back and shook her head. “I must go,” she said. “Before that cougar decides to carry off more livestock. Goodbye, Cero.”
Then she was gone. The bracelet dangled in his hand as he stared after her. Abzi brushed against his ankle and glanced up, her gleaming eyes fixed on him. He wished his mindsmithing extended to cats. He’d give a lot to know what she was thinking.
She ambled past him and circled something near the firepit. Cero realized what it was a moment later. Kari’s scims. In her haste to escape him, she’d left them behind.
He considered them as Abzi watched, thinking her cat thoughts.
Finally, he knelt beside the scims and twined the bracelet through the tiny, diamond-shaped holes on one of the guards. Abzi purred in approval.
Cero gave the cat a final scratch and took to his Sail. He gasped as the updraft spun him high above the forest and then into the clouds, until he felt part of the wind itself.