Rhazek
The second tracker wakes hungry.
It runs through the old scar before the broken core finishes dying in the sand. Not pain. Pain is simple. Pain is honest enough to strike where it means to strike. This is colder, thinner, a wire pulled through flesh that no longer belongs to the one inside it.
The first fragment lies in pieces at my feet.
Its black casing has split open, spilling green fire into the red dust in threads that hiss when they touch stone.
The warriors hold back. Good. Fear can be useful when it keeps hands attached.
Renn has one arm across the younger route runner’s chest to stop him from stepping closer.
Syin’s blade remains angled toward me, because suspicion is the only part of this mission he has decided to perform perfectly.
Kessa stands too near the dead core.
She is staring east, not at the fragment, her face tight in concentration. Dust clings to her cheek. Blood darkens one sleeve from the cut she earned when the core burst and spat shrapnel like an angry insect. Small wound. Shallow. Not dangerous, if she keeps distance from the green light.
I know this because I noticed too quickly.
“It woke the second,” she repeats, louder so everyone hears it.
Everyone goes quiet.
“Where?” Syin asks, turning toward the ridge.
Kessa lifts one hand, then stops. She flexes her fingers once as if reaching for a map only she can feel.
The humans look at her with worry they try to hide.
The Zmaj look at her the way warriors look at a new weapon they have not decided whether to carry or bury.
I hate all of them, which is inconvenient because they are not wrong.
“South of the broken cistern markers,” she says. “No. Past that. Lower.”
“Lower?” Syin asks.
“There are shelves under the ridge,” she snaps. “Old collapse lines. Sink pockets. Zemlja channels. Sorry the floor didn’t write labels for you.”
Orek makes a sound that dies before becoming amusement. Syin’s tail lashes once, but he does not waste time being offended. That may save his life.
“We go,” he says.
“No,” I say.
His blade comes up another fraction. “You do not command here.”
“No,” I answer. “I survive here.”
Kessa turns on me. “If you have a better idea, bleed it out fast.”
Her anger is brighter than the green fire dying in the sand. I should not feel it as warmth. I should not feel anything but the wire under my ribs and the second tracker tugging in a rhythm made from ownership.
Once.
Pause.
Again.
The scar beneath my binding answers. I keep my face still. In the arena, a male who showed what hurt him only taught the crowd where to cheer.
“The second point wants us to run directly toward it,” I say.
“Things usually prefer not being destroyed,” Kessa says. “I find that common in annoying objects and people. And weird sky trash.”
She adds the last as she tears her eyes away from me, returning her gaze to the desert ahead.
“It wants haste. Haste opens groups. Splits command. Separates the useful from the guarded.”
Arcan would like that sentence, I think. He would polish it until it became law.
Syin’s eyes narrow. “You speak as if it thinks.”
“It does not need thought. It has programming. Programming is often more dangerous. It cannot be insulted into stupidity.” I glance at Kessa. “Unlike some enemies.”
She narrows her eyes right back. “Was that a joke?”
“No.”
“It limped.”
“It was an observation.”
“Your assessments need a healer.”
A sound catches in my throat. Not laughter. Laughter was taken and sharpened on Krix until it belonged to crowds, owners, and fools with coins. But this almost becomes something near it, and that is worse. Much worse. The second tracker pulls again, punishing the lapse.
Green heat crawls beneath the plates at my throat. Kessa sees. Her gaze locks there before I angle away.
Too late. Again.
Syin sees her see it. His blade shifts toward me. “Explain the glow.”
“No time.”
“That is convenient.”
“It is honest.”
Kessa steps between the words, not between the blade and me. She is learning. Or she is careful enough not to look protective where witnesses can turn it against her.
“If the second tracker is bait, what does the trap want?” she asks.
Good question. The kind of question that keeps breath in lungs.
“Value,” I say.
“That is not an answer.”
“It is the only answer that matters.” I turn toward the broken basin and force myself to look at all of them instead of only her.
“Hunters do not begin by attacking walls. Walls are loud. Walls gather defenders. A bad hunter strikes walls first and dies proud. A good one marks what a place cannot afford to lose.”
Renn’s young face hardens. “Children.”
“Yes.”
The humans pale. I keep going because fear that remains vague becomes panic, and panic opens doors faster than blades.
“Leaders. Healers. Bonded pairs. Anyone who can sense the signal. Anyone who can tell others where to run. Anyone whose blood, memory, or body proves Tajss is not ash.”
Kessa’s mouth presses flat. “You’re describing people.”
“Yes.”
“Like inventory.”
“Yes.”
She glares at me. “Do you always answer like someone carved the soft parts out of you?”
The question strikes harder than it should. The soft parts were not carved out. They were measured, named, priced, and used until keeping them became a liability. That is not a thing I will explain in red sand while the second tracker calls through my blood.
“I answer in ways that keep people alive,” I say.
“No,” she says. “You answer in ways that keep people distant.”
Silence lands around us. Even the dying core seems to quiet for it. Sharp little human. She should not see that much.
Syin’s growl saves me from choosing between truth and cruelty.
“The longer we stand here, the more time the second tracker has.”
“The direct route is what it wants,” I say.
Kessa drags her attention off me and looks toward the south ridge. Her expression changes, anger folding under function. I watch it happen and recognize command without title. She is afraid. She is angry. She moves anyway, turning fear into path, path into instruction.
“There’s another way,” she says.
Syin looks at her. “How much longer?”
“Longer enough to make you scowl, shorter than dying,” Kessa says.
“Kessa.”
“Fifteen minutes if the old spillway hasn’t collapsed. Thirty if it has. Forever if a zemlja decides we look interesting.”
“That is not reassuring.”
“I didn’t say it to comfort you.”
Renn coughs into his fist. Syin ignores him with discipline I nearly respect.
Kessa crouches and draws in the sand with the tip of her small knife.
The knife is still ridiculous. Small and practical.
Not made for fighting or war. At best it is good for cutting cord and scraping ration seals and doing desperate things to eyes if necessary.
She sketches a basin curve, three stones in a broken line under the ridge.
“Direct route takes us over hardpan with hollow spots beneath it. If the fragment attracts zemlja the way the ship did, it will pulse when we’re halfway across open ground. No cover. No side cut. Bad ending, educational for nobody because we’ll all be dead.”
“Your alternate?” Syin asks.
“Old spillway. It runs under the south shelf and comes up behind the lower marker field. Narrow. Bad footing. Cooler. More cover.” She looks at me. “Can the fragment hear through stone?”
“Yes.”
Her expression says she would like one day with less bad news.
“Better through open air or old channels?” she asks.
“Old channels, if they contain conductive stone or water memory.”
“Water memory,” she repeats. “Of course water can have memory. Why not? Even the floor has opinions.”
“It leaves mineral trace from old flow paths.”
“I liked it better when it was poetic and stupid.” She taps the rough line she drew. “The spillway is dry. Mostly. The old channel curves. If the fragment is listening along straight signal routes, the stone bend might make us harder to mark.”
It might be, and that is the best answer we have.
“That route is better,” I say.
She looks up at me, surprised before she can hide it. “You agree?”
“Yes.”
“That feels unnatural. Are you dying?”
“Yes.” She looks ready to argue. The others freeze. I let the word sit for half a breath, because if they are going to drag me through the desert, they should understand the problem. Then I add, “Slowly.”
Merra is not here to curse at me, so Kessa does it for her under her breath. The words are inventive. I catalogue none of them and remember all of them.
“We all die slowly,” she snaps. “Try not to make it a scheduling problem.”
“I will attempt courtesy.”
“Start by not bleeding on my route.”
“That may be ambitious.”
The tug pulls through the scar again. My knees almost bend. Almost. I lock them before anyone but Kessa sees.
She looks worried for a breath. It is not softness. Soft would be simple and she is not. It is the look of someone finding a weak beam in a ceiling crowded with children. Concern sharpened into irritation because irritation is easier to carry.
“You need water,” she says.
“I need the second core broken.”
“You need both, which is inconvenient because I only packed one and it wasn’t alien disaster.” She jerks her chin at one of the route runners. “Lio, water.”
The young human hesitates with his skin gone pale under dust. He looks at me as if my teeth may detach from my face and chase him. Sensible. Still, he unhooks a flask and passes it to Kessa, not me.
Kessa holds it out. I do not take it. I keep refusing the water. She narrows her eyes.
“It’s water, not a marriage contract.”
“I know what it is.”
“Then take it.”
“No.”
Syin makes a low sound. “Enough delay.”
Kessa ignores him, focused on me with a precision that strips hide. “Why not?”