Kessa
The thing in him responds to me.
My mouth is drier than ever and my pulse thunders.
I’d like to have a private collapse about this.
Possibly dramatic. There’s a nice salt hollow available, good acoustics, very little foot traffic, and only six witnesses.
They’re armed, but that’s fine. Sadly, the universe refuses to agree with my having a breakdown.
So I take a deep breath, shake my head, exhale all my regrets and get to work.
“Worse song,” Maro repeats from above the hollow. “I’m afraid to ask whether that was poetry or strategy.”
“Yeah,” I say.
Lio looks down at Rhazek. “That was not an answer.”
“It was the only one available,” Rhazek says.
The salt hollow dampens Rhazek’s blood relay but doesn’t silence it. That’s irritating, horrifying, and useful. If the receiver pings, the relay will twitch toward it. If I stand too close, it will twitch toward me. If I speak in command rhythm, it may record that too.
So I stop giving vocal commands and switch to runner signs. Two fingers down. Left spread. Hold shade. Watch dust.
Lio answers with a sign from above. Maro copies it half a heartbeat late but correctly. Good. Panic hasn’t overridden his training.
Syin crouches at the hollow mouth. “Explain.”
“I am making the signal less clean.”
He narrows his eyes. “By refusing to speak.”
“That has been suggested to me many times before. Today it’s tactical.”
Rhazek sits inside the salt circle, jaw tight, one hand braced on the stone.
The damaged wing lies close to his back.
Every few breaths, the green under his ribs gives a faint pulse beneath the salt cloth.
Not bright enough to call the sky. Bright enough to make my pulse notice and act like an idiot.
“Can you feel direction?” I ask.
He closes his eyes, which I hate because it makes the hard lines of his face less guarded for one breath. I’m having enough problems without discovering softness under all that enemy-shaped control.
“South,” he says. “Then east. Not far.”
“Define not far.”
“Far enough to regret.”
“Excellent. I love precision with an emotional garnish.”
Orek’s voice comes from above. “Dust line.”
Everyone shifts.
I climb out of the hollow before Syin argues. The land south of us breaks into shelves, shallow cuts, and heat shimmer. For a moment I see nothing. Then the dust line rises, thin and regular, beyond a low ridge.
That’s not wind; it’s a pulse made visible.
Once.
Pause.
Again.
The relay below us answers. Rhazek doesn’t make a sound, but the salt crust around him clicks. Lio swears softly. I point and signal to hold.
The dust line fades.
“Mechanical burst,” Rhazek says from the hollow. His voice is rough. “Receiver checking range.”
“Good. It checked wrong.”
Syin looks at me. “Did it?”
“Mostly.”
“Mostly is not a word I enjoy in war,” Syin says.
“Then you’re going to have a terrible afternoon.”
The receiver pings again. The dust line lifts farther east this time. It’s not thinking, it’s sweeping. That helps. Thinking enemies make grudges. Mechanical ones make patterns. Patterns can be poisoned.
I draw two route lines in the dirt. One real, one stupid. The stupid one goes through open glare, loose salt crust, a stone shelf too thin to hold Zmaj weight, and a stretch of ground I would not trust with a dead insect. Rhazek opens his eyes and looks, frowning.
“No one would take that route.”
“Exactly.”
“Then why draw it?”
“Because the receiver doesn’t know me. It has samples. Not judgment.”
He jerks his gaze up to me, eye sharp.
“You want to feed it an impossible Kessa.”
“I want to feed it a Kessa who makes bad choices.”
Maro says, “That seems easy. I have notes.”
Lio elbows him. I hide a smile because it’s absolutely not the time for humor, which makes it more necessary.
“Throw mineral specks. It will confuse the signal,” Rhazek says.
I stare for a moment, trying to decipher his reasons and reasoning both, but I can’t see anything beneath the words so I nod.
“We move in two lines,” I say, signing as I speak to fracture the pattern. “False sign first. Real feet second. Lio and Maro mark the impossible route with mineral dust thrown from a distance. Nobody steps on it. Nobody bleeds on it. Nobody yells my name unless the sky actually falls.”
“Define actually,” Maro says.
“You can figure that one out.”
Rhazek rises from the salt circle. It costs him. He catches his breath, then steadies himself. The relay pulses, softer now that it is smeared by salt and ash.
“You should remain here,” Syin says.
Rhazek looks at him. “No.”
“Your body is the line.”
“And if the receiver pings while I’m out of sight, you will not know which direction it pulls.”
Syin’s tail scrapes the stone. He hates the logic. I know because I hate it too, and not just because he’s right, though that doesn’t help.
“He walks,” I say. Rhazek looks at me. I don’t look back. “Not because he gets to make another secret decision. Because I need the compass where I can see it.”
“I am honored,” he says.
“You are equipment-adjacent. Don’t get sentimental.” He gives me a dry look, then the relay pulses. I point at him. “Also stop enjoying this. It’s bad for signal discipline.”
Even Syin looks away as we leave the hollow and move toward the dust line.
The desert shifts from red to white underfoot.
Salt crust breaks with soft snaps. The heat becomes brighter, meaner, bouncing up from the ground until my vision swims. Lio and Maro move ahead in staggered bursts, tossing small puffs of dust along the impossible route, marking a ghost path no sane runner would use.
The receiver pings.
The dust path answers, not because it’s alive, not because it believes our lie, but because the mineral flecks Rhazek told us to scatter catch the pulse and throw it back wrong. Green light flickers beneath a flat stone south-east of us. There.
Not where the dust line pointed. Where it came from. I grin despite myself. Rhazek sees it and looks deeply concerned.
“What?” I ask.
“You are pleased.”
“I like solving problems.”
“You also like danger.”
“I like danger contained in useful boxes.”
The flat stone clicks.
Once.
Pause.
Again.
Suddenly the whole salt shelf hums beneath us. My stomach knots and my grin dies. The receiver didn’t take the bait. It found the box.