Chapter 29
29
Toorin
I rolled over and kissed Marc awake as the early morning sun peaked over the distant dunes, already chasing the overnight chill away.
Since none of us had bouts of uncontrolled vomiting or diarrhea, or you know, were dead, we assumed the water was safe to drink. It could be a day or two walk to Mercy from the oasis, so we’d spent the rest of the previous day drinking our fill more than once.
Boomerang shifted behind us and stood, dropping Marc’s head to the sand. He cursed, and I kissed him again.
He smelled like light sweat and camel. Neither bothered me. “Time to get going.”
“Why don’t you wake everyone else up first.”
“We’re awake,” Bodie said. “And packed. We’re waiting on the two of you.”
I braced myself on one elbow and looked around. Bodie, Darwin, Lyric, and Juniper were all sitting by their packs, ready to go. “Why didn’t you wake us?”
Bodie took a swig from a full waterskin. “No one is in much of a hurry to leave here.”
Marc and I got up, shaking the sand from our clothes. My stomach growled, but it didn’t know we were out of food. At least not having to eat breakfast cut down on how long it took us to get going in the morning.
Packing up and filling our waterskins with as much water as possible only took a few minutes.
“Ready?” Marc asked as he shouldered his pack.
“Aye,” Darwin answered for the group. He retied the sash at his waist that I’d returned to him. No one needed a repeat of the day before.
The wound on my head had scabbed over nicely. Better than the slice on Marc’s thigh that had an angry red rim around the edges and gave him a bit of a limp. And it would take a bit longer for Bodie’s face to return to normal, but at least he could see out of his swollen eye now.
We set out on the far side of the pond, where the visible trail snaked up and over the dunes. The more we walked, the more the dunes flattened and the more defined the trial became. We stopped in the late afternoon at the first tree we’d seen since leaving Dry River and collapsed in its lackluster shade.
“Shouldn’t be much farther,” Bodie said.
Juniper uncorked a waterskin. “That’s what you’ve been saying all day.”
Boomerang nibbled on the tree’s leaves, the first bite of food since we’d started this ill-advised adventure. Then he called out, a deep grumble-rumble that made us all wary and stand.
Our hands went to the blades at our sides, not knowing if whoever approached was friend or foe. The heads of three, four… no five camels appeared in the distance. Boomerang hesitated, then ran to meet them.
I frowned.
“Do you think…” Bodie let the sentence drop. I knew what he thought, and as the camels and their drovers approached, I wasn’t disappointed.
I spat. “ Jord .”
Juniper drew her blade first. I waved at her to put it away. It wasn’t time for blades… yet.
We spread out and waited for Jord, Arren, and whoever else they’d picked up to meet us.
Jord pulled his camel up short and hopped off, a grin on his face I hadn’t expected. Arren held back, more cautious than her boss.
Jord met me with a handshake and slap on the back. “You made it, mate.”
Bodie scoffed. Darwin said, “Sod off.” And Marc looked at Jord like the brutal sun had addled his mind.
My right hand fisted. The punch came quick, a brutal blow to Jord’s jaw. It knocked him back a few steps. Arren pulled her blade. My crew pulled theirs.
Jord held up his hand. The two hapless riders alongside Arren looked like they wanted their hard-earned chips back.
“What’s going on here?” one of them asked.
“An unfortunate disagreement,” Jord said.
“ Unfortunate disagreement?” Bodie’s voice pitched to a near ear-piercing register. I couldn’t say I blamed him. Being left for dead once was bad enough, but twice had to stick in your craw. “You left us for dead!”
“ Unfortunately ,” Jord spread his hands magnanimously. “Yet here you are. No hard feelings.”
“When you’re ready to return, we’ll take you back,” Jord said as if that would ever happen.
I laughed. Bitter. Befuddled. “I’d rather die in the badlands than give you one more chip.”
With a negligent shrug, Jord said, “Suit yourself.”
Jord turned to Arren and tossed his head toward Boomerang. “Get a rope.”
Marc took hold of the short rope hooked to its halter. “No, you don’t.”
Arren stopped, rope in hand and one leg tossed over the side of her camel, waiting for Jord’s order.
“That’s my camel.” A simple statement. A very wrong statement.
Marc maneuvered the camel back a step or two and stood in front of it. “Not anymore.”
I stepped toward Arren. “But we’ll take that rope.”
She hesitated, judging me and the rest of my crew. We were tired, weary, and had been in much better shape when we started days ago, but they were also outnumbered. And by the way their hapless passengers glanced around as if trying to decide if they should run, they wouldn’t be any help if it came down to drawn blades.
Camels weren’t cheap, but was it worth serious injury or losing his life?
Finally, Jord said, “Have it yer way.” Not exactly coerced, then again, not exactly of his own free will either. “Give them the rope.”
I took the rope from Arren and handed it to Marc, who replaced the short, frayed rope with the longer length. There had been no need to lead Boomerang out in the badlands, but I had no clue what would happen once we got to Mercy.
“How much farther,” Bodie asked.
For a second, I thought Jord wouldn’t answer. He walked back to his camel and mounted when it kneeled on the ground. It stood. Only then did he answer. “A few hours. Maybe more.”
Lyric and Darwin headed down the path, eager to get to Mercy. As they passed the riders, Lyric said, “Luck to ye.”
Juniper snorted, apparently having held her tongue as long as she could, “Aye, mate, yer gonna need it with these two.”
The color drained from the men’s faces as Jord and Arren urged their camels forward. The other camels followed. One of the men said, “What does that bloody mean? Jord? ”
Jord waved a dismissive hand and kept going. Short of jumping off a moving camel, the men had no choice but to follow.
Bodie, Marc, Boomerang, and I followed after the other three.
“How’s the hand?” Bodie asked.
I shook it, feeling the reverberating pulse in my sore knuckles. “Hurts like a bloody bitch.”
Bodie chuckled, then sobered. “What will we do with the camel when we get to Mercy? Maybe you should have given him back.”
“I’m not giving him back.” Marc’s hand tightened around the rope, even though Bodie wouldn’t dare take the animal from him. Marc looked back at me. “Don’t worry, I’ll think of something.”
I raised my hands. “I’m not worried. Having a camel is the least of our concerns.”
Marcelis
At first glance, Mercy appeared to be much more prosperous than Toonu. Even the fringe around Mercy didn’t have the grunge and utter despair it did back in Toonu.
But that was on the surface.
Walking down the main road and looking down the alleys, the plumb shacks turned crooked. The metal roofs turned into reed ones, or in many cases, weren’t even there.
Mercy even had its unique smell, an interesting mix of burned camel dung, detritus, and... unfulfilled dreams?
A scuffle broke out between two women. A shout. A push. A shove. Blades were drawn. A head rolled to a stop in a divot in the dirt road.
Nobody watched. Nobody cared.
Except our group.
Juniper turned around, her eyes wide. She’d seen a lot in her short years, no doubt. Had to do a lot, and the badlands had been no exception. But even on the Toonu fringe, even in the dunes, life hadn’t felt so brutal at its base.
Bodie turned away from the gruesomeness. “Where’s the hospital.”
“Forget the hospital.” Ahead of us, Darwin stopped and let us catch up. “We need food. And drink. And rest.”
Juniper held her stomach and hitched a thumb over her shoulder. “After that?”
“Especially after that.” Toorin sounded normal, but his skin had that green hue around the gills.
“Agreed,” Lyric said, the two halves of his sliced skirt flapping in the light breeze.
We already had the sun low at our backs. And fuck, I was hungry. “One more night won’t hurt, yeah?”
Toorin put his arm around my neck and kissed my temple. “One more night works for me.”
“What are we doing about that?” Darwin waved a hand in the general direction of Boomerang.
I glanced up and down the main street until I caught sight of a corral not too far away. “I’ll be back.”
Toorin stopped me and pulled out his pouch of chips. He pulled the good ones aside—we needed to save them for our return to Dry River—and handed me a few pockmarked boards with rusted solders. “You’ll need some of these.”
“I’m not taking your chips.” I pulled my blade from my belt. I hated to give it up, but it was all I had.
“Not that one.” Juniper stepped in, reaching behind her and pulling a short blade from her waistband. More of a shank if you asked me. “Give them this. You might need yours.”
She was right. I wanted to refuse, but I didn’t. “Thank you.”
Her smile turned shy, and when I thought she’d say something sweet, she said, “Hurry up, I’m starved.”
I jogged over to the corral, the cut in my leg making my gait uneven, though, after the last month or so, I’d gotten pretty good at ignoring pain.
“How much to keep him for a few days?” I asked the young girl, who was probably younger than Juniper.
She dropped the dried camel dung she’d been cutting and stuffing into a crude fabric sack to sell. She took my measure, looking me up and down and assessing what I could have of value. “It’ll cost ye.”
I held out Juniper’s dagger. She ran her finger along the spine without picking it up. “Three days.”
“Water and food?” Boomerang deserved a full belly. I didn’t want him standing in a corral for days without basic care.
She palmed the dagger and stuffed it in her waistband. “Two days.”
“All he can eat.”
With reluctance, she said, “All he can eat.”
I handed over the rope, looped an arm around the camel’s neck, and gave him scratches on his chest where I knew he loved it most before giving him a pat on the rump. “I’ll be back.”
“It’s just a camel,” she said.
“No.” I couldn’t not correct her. “It’s my camel.”
Boomerang must have smelled the hay or didn’t care about me nearly as much as I thought he did because he followed her into the dark stables and didn’t glance back.
I returned to find everyone in the bar. The bar had mead that wasn’t too watered down, food that wasn’t too rancid, a bathhouse with water that wasn’t too dirty, and three rooms to split among the six of us that didn’t cost us too many of our remaining chips.
We didn’t even make it to the part of the evening where the patrons got too drunk and too loud before we trudged up the stairs to our rooms, the pure exhaustion and full bellies sucking us into slumber.
In the hall, we opened all the doors to our rooms. All double beds, if you could call them that. You could fit two people on them if you didn’t mind practically laying on top of each other.
“Great,” Juniper mumbled. “Lyric’s sleeping with me. He’s my only chance of not getting rolled off the bed in the middle of the night.”
Bodie tossed his pack in the middle room and to Juniper said, “You take the one on the end. I’ll sleep on the floor with these two.”
“You could sleep in our room,” Toorin offered Bodie. Not that our room was any bigger or our floor any more comfortable.
“Gross,” Bodie said.
“Bloody boob.” Toorin tossed his pack in the first room. It landed with a thunk in the corner. “It’s not like we’re going to have sex—”
Bodie covered his ears. “La, la, la, la. I can’t hear you.”
Darwin followed Lyric and Bodie into the middle room. Juniper gave us one of her negligent shrugs. “He’s not wrong.”
“Be nice, or we’ll save a chip and have you share our room.” Even when he tried, Toorin couldn’t sound stern with her. The pisser of it was, she bloody well knew it.
Shuddering, Juniper disappeared into her room.
Once the door closed behind us, we didn’t even bother lighting the lamp. We stepped out of our battered boots, struggled out of our damp clothes from the wash we gave them after our baths, and collapsed on the bed in a heap of arms and legs and soft dicks.
The thin straw mattress was lumpy, and thicker stalks poked through the fabric and scraped our skin. Still better than a night in the badlands with the hungry sandfleas and onerous outliers.
“Stop scratching.” Toorin laid a gentle hand over mine. “You’re going to make yourself bleed.”
“I don’t know why the bites are bothering me this bad. The bugs aren’t even crawling on me now.”
“We were too busy trying not to die before to worry about the flea bites.”
Hours after arriving on the Mercy fringe, lying in a bed seemed surreal. “Was it all a nightmare? Did we wake up in each other’s arms from a fevered dream?”
Toorin’s hand traced down my hip to my thigh. The gentle gliding of fingers drew my blood with it. “This wound on your thigh proves it was all too real.”
I traced the wound at his temple. “And this.”
He braced himself on an elbow. “I should get the salve before—”
I pushed him onto the mattress, my other arm curling under my head because it cost extra for pillows. “I already took care of it. But thank you.”
I pressed my lips to his, expecting that to be the end of that, and delighted to find out, in this case, Toorin didn’t meet my expectations.
As always, he exceeded them.
His hand went to the back of my neck, and he deepened the kiss until we were both breathless and hard. I took Toorin in hand. I’d never tire of his hard length in my palm, of the slide of his foreskin down his shaft, of the pearl of precum that leaked from the tip every time I touched him.
With a groan that had always sent sparks directly to my dick, Toorin rolled on top of me and settled between my legs.
“I thought we weren’t having sex.” That wasn’t a complaint. But with the thin walls of the rooming house, the raucous drunks downstairs sounded close enough to be in the next room.
Toorin shifted and ground into me. “I lied.”
I must have gone stiff because he pulled back. “What’s wrong.”
I hated to break the news to him, but better he find out now instead of later when all I wanted was him inside me. “We don’t have any lube.”
And yeah, I sounded like a whiny little spawn.
Moonlight streamed through the mostly square hole in the wall, serving as the room’s window. Toorin’s teeth flashed in the glow. “Not a problem.” He kissed my sternum and slowly started working his way down. “I can make you come with my mouth.”