Chapter 26
26
Toorin
“I don’t like this,” Juniper mumbled in the dark as Darwin and Bodie rowed the dinghy to the wharf early the next morning.
We’d had to guide ourselves between all the boats tied up in the harbor by what little light shone from sputtering lanterns and oil lamps set on their bows and sterns to keep other vessels from ramming into them in the darkness.
The moon had long since set, and the near-dark seemed all-encompassing. Somehow, Bodie got us to shore with only the briefest scrape of the dinghy’s hull on another boat’s rudder.
I yawned. Sleep had eluded me, and Marc didn’t help by keeping a closer eye on me than he had in a long time. I don’t know if it had been so long between episodes that he thought I was due for one, even though the whir in my chest had been steadier than ever before. Or maybe we were so close to the finish line that he feared losing me too soon.
I couldn’t think like that. I couldn’t live wondering if every breath would be my last.
At the wharf, Darwin wrapped the rope once around the cleat but didn’t bother tying it. Everyone disembarked, but Juniper, Darwin, and Lyric weren’t staying. I wanted them back to the relative safety of the Lark after we left. They’d gathered enough provisions the day before to last them a couple of weeks without going to shore and risking their lives again.
Juniper stared into the darkness toward the ramp to the wharf. “Are they here yet?”
“What if they don’t come?” Lyric asked.
I wasn’t going to entertain that option. “They’ll come.”
Bodie made a noise. I wasn’t sure if it was a grunt of derision or agreement. And I didn’t ask.
I turned to my crew, my hand on Juniper’s shoulder to get her attention. “No one leaves the ship alone.”
“Aye, Captain,” came the unanimous response from Lyric, Darwin, and Juniper.
“No shore trips unless you need a resupply.”
“Aye, Captain,” came the next round, though they sounded miserable, and I had to give Juniper’s shoulder a little squeeze to get her to repeat it.
I waited a beat before my next order. I wanted their full attention, and it was the one I figured they’d give me the most trouble over. I squeezed Juniper’s shoulder again and met Darwin’s eye, then Lyric’s. “And if we’re not back in three weeks, I want you sailing back to Toonu.”
“Aye—What?” Lyric stumbled over his words.
“Won’t happen, Captain,” Darwin said. “We’re waiting here until your return.”
“We may not return,” Bodie said. We’d talked about this last night. About what we wanted to happen if we never returned. “We signed the Lark over to the three of you. Yours fair and square. The papers are under Toorin’s bunk.”
Juniper shuddered. “I’m not touching that bedding. Nuh, uh.”
Marc stifled a laugh and said something that sounded like, “I don’t blame you.”
“The Lark is yours,” Darwin said. “It will be here when you return. Be it three weeks or three months.”
I was their captain. I knew better than to argue with them. Yet, I did. “You’ll run out of chips.”
Juniper laughed and moved away so she could look at me, her hand resting on her blade. At least, I think it did. It was hard to make anyone out in the darkness, but she wouldn’t be Juniper if she hadn’t. “I know how to survive without chips.”
“Us, too,” Darwin and Lyric said.
Moon and mars... how would I convince them? I flicked my gaze over the three of them. I couldn’t believe I would have to beg them to take the Lark. They wouldn’t have to sail her if they didn’t want to. They could sell her for more chips or credits than we’d ever seen. So, I tried something I seldom tried. “Please?”
They’d never seen me like this before. Practically begging for them to obey my order. I had expected nothing less than absolute loyalty from them, but that didn’t make this any easier.
Darwin put his hand on Juniper’s shoulder and walked her the step or two back to him, effectively taking her under his wing. “We’ll think about it.”
Lyric said something under his breath I didn’t catch as the blooming light of dawn started turning the inky black of night to gray.
“What’s wrong with you two?” Juniper glanced at Darwin and, when she didn’t get the response she wanted, looked to Lyric for support. “We can’t leave them here.”
Darwin whispered something in her ear. Probably for the best I didn’t hear it because it made her smile.
“We should be going,” Marc said as I stepped back. The drovers wouldn’t wait all morning.
I hitched my pack higher on my back, my legs sore from all the walking we’d done the day before. I wasn’t looking forward to the trek ahead. I knew it would be brutal, but we had no choice.
You don’t have to get your heart back. The mechanical one is doing okay. It could last you months. Years even.
Marc must have seen the second thoughts scurrying across my features because he took my hand and said, “We’re going.”
I followed a step behind, my footfalls stuttering while his hit the wharf with the confidence I lacked. If anyone should be having second thoughts, it was Marc.
But he wasn’t.
He wanted this more than I did.
And that made me feel fucking selfish.
“Wait!” Juniper called out as we reached the walkway leading into the settlement.
I stopped and turned, my hand falling out of Marc’s.
“Take this.” Juniper unsheathed her blade and held it out to me in her outstretched hands.
“I can’t take your blade.”
“You want to come back, don’t you? To the L-lark?” her voice hitched, and I barely heard her when she added, “To us.”
“Of course we do.”
“Then take it. It’s much better than any of those blades I found yesterday.”
She continued to hold out her blade, the determination hardening her features. I’d take the blade, or she’d run me through with it. Maybe.
“Bloody boob.” A heartfelt thank you caught in my throat. She wouldn’t have accepted it anyway.
“Old cow,” Juniper tossed back.
I stifled my laugh and traded blades and sheaths with her. “I’ll bring this back.”
“You’d better.”
Marcelis
I heard the low grunts and bellows of the camels before they came into view. As promised, Jord arrived at dawn with Arren and Kenner and five camels in tow. All three people were mounted, looking completely at ease in the saddle.
They dismounted, and Kenner held the reins, or should I say the single lead rope tied to the halter of each camel? I didn’t know how that worked for steering, but I figured I was about to find out.
Jord held out his hand, and as promised, Toorin gave him the five remaining chips. Should we have held some of the payment back until we’d made it to Mercy? Maybe. Maybe not. I’d sleep better at night knowing they were paid rather than worry about them robbing us in the middle of the night.
No doubt there’d be bloodshed, and we didn’t need that kind of drama in our lives.
Arren took our packs and distributed them between the two pack camels. After securing everything, Jord had three camels go down to their knees, first the front end, then the back.
Moon and mar s, I wasn’t cut out for this.
Instead of the barest of instructions, Jord said, “Get on.”
Bodie, Toorin, and I eyed each other before Bodie climbed on. “See? Easy.”
Jord tugged on the camel’s lead rope, and the camel nearly pitched Bodie over his head when he went to stand. Bodie clung to the saddle horn and the camel’s neck before righting himself.
Toorin laughed, and I choked on a chuckle.
“Fuck you,” Bodie said through his smile.
Toorin and I mounted, more prepared for the tilt when the camels stood. And while the animals didn’t smell good, eight individual camels burned nostril hairs way less than a herd of them did.
Beside me, Kenner had a loose hold on one of the pack camels, and it sidled closer and closer to me. Either no one noticed, or no one cared.
“Um…” I uttered. No one heard me. Toorin and Bodie talked to Jord while Kenner and Arren mounted their camels.
“Greetings, camel.” I tentatively reached out to touch the fluff on top of its head. It raised his head and stared at me, eye to eye.
It must have liked what it saw because it laid its head across my thigh. Now, what was I supposed to do? I scratched the side of its neck as slimy camel slobber slipped down my inner thigh.
“Oi,” Kenner called out when he saw what was happening. It was the first time he’d said anything. I’d started to wonder if he talked at all.
He tugged on the rope, gently at first, but the camel wasn’t having it. The camel swung his head, fighting the tug, and nearly knocked me out when its jaw collided with the side of my head, giving me a rapidly growing knot on my right cheek and a face full of slime.
“Give me the rope,” I said. We didn’t need to wake the settlement or fight this camel all the way to Mercy because it thought it had found a friend.
Kenner glanced at Jord, who said, “Do as he says.”
He tossed me the end of the rope, and I gave what I thought was a reasonable length. I wanted my new friend to be able to walk a few feet to the side or to the rear to give both of us some space.
Too bad no one explained the concept to the camel.
It walked beside me, its side bumping my leg or its head resting on my shoulder. We’d barely made it past the outskirts of the settlement before my shoulder became as slobbery as my trousers.
Then it burped in my face, and I thought I’d lose everything I’d eaten this past week. I covered my nose with my shirt. “Look, mate,” I told the camel. “You can’t be doing that.”
I would have dropped the rope if I hadn’t been afraid he’d run off with our gear. However, with my luck, the camel would stick to me like fine sand on sweat.
Toorin turned in his saddle to glance back at me.
“Don’t laugh,” I said.
“No one’s laughing.”
Bodie laughed until it turned into a wheeze. “I am.”
“Bloody bastards, the both of you,” I growled. That only made Bodie cackle.
It didn’t take long for civilization to fade away behind us, for the dense trees to turn sparse, and for the mottled shade on the trail to turn to full, scalding sun.
Soon enough, the packed dirt morphed into soft, shifting sands. We were deep into the badlands when the sun sat at its zenith in the sky.
Jord’s crew rode ahead of us by about a hundred yards, but when you could see for miles, we weren’t concerned about getting lost. I’d caught up with Bodie and Toorin long ago, and the weirdly infatuated camel had settled down, though he kept a close eye on me.
“This is giving me flashbacks.” Bodie shivered as he scanned the area.
“Tell me about it,” Toorin said. “Where the reapers dumped us wasn’t near this sandy, but the desolation, the isolation…” Toorin shook his head as he tried to recall more descriptive words. “I don’t see how we walked out.”
Bodie reached over and clapped Toorin on the shoulder. “Hey, we’re survivors.”
Toorin met Bodie’s eyes, then mine. “We are.”
We continued riding. The sand getting deeper, the sun getting hotter, our throats getting drier. It got so bad that my saliva dried up, and I couldn’t spit the sand out of my mouth.
Jord and his crew stopped ahead, and we pulled up beside them. I dismounted my camel and took two steps before understanding why traversing the badlands on foot was such a terrible, perilous idea.
It wasn’t that the camels traveled fast. It was that they didn’t slide three steps back for each one they took forward.
The drovers had the camels lay down on their chests in the sand with their front legs tucked in and tied a rope around one of their bent front legs to keep them from running off. If I were them, I’d be happy not to be walking anymore.
“I’m dying,” Bodie said. “Where’s the mead Lyric packed?”
Toorin dropped to his ass in the sand and shielded his face from the sun with his arm. He pointed to the other pack camel. “That one.”
“I’ll get it,” I said. Bodie didn’t look any better than Toorin did. I retrieved the waterskins and handed them each one. “You two are scaring me.”
Not that I wasn’t tired and borderline dehydrated. Riding camels through the badlands took much more out of me than I’d expected. But Toorin and Bodie looked a few degrees worse. And as much as I worried about Toorin’s heart giving out, I also had to remember that Bodie had leaky mechanical kidneys that weren’t doing him any favors.
“We’ll be fine,” Toorin said.
Of course, that’s what he always said. And he’d been right so far. I just worried about the time when he’d be wrong.
When Bodie tried to hand the waterskin to me, I shook him off, even though my lips were chapped and my tongue had already tried to glue itself to the roof of my mouth. “You need to keep drinking. We don’t want your kidneys rusting over.”
Bodie chuckled. “I don’t think that’s how that works.”
“Then how does it work?” Toorin asked, the mead finally working its way into his system and putting more color into his wind-chapped cheeks.
“No clue,” Bodie said.
Toorin took my hand and pulled me down beside him, my trouser fabric stiff with dried slobber.
I drank my share of the mead, and we each took a piece of Jord's unleavened bread. Too soon, Jord whistled, and we clamored to our feet again, our bodies stiff from the hard saddle.
“If the dehydration doesn’t kill me,” Bodie muttered. “These fucking saddles will.”