Rhazek
The receiver is beneath a flat stone shelf, but the true line runs beneath it and east. Toward a narrow cut between two salt shelves where the air smells of hot metal.
Kessa sees the same thing a breath after I do. I know the moment she sees it because all humor leaves her face and calculation takes its place.
“We don’t cross the shelf,” she says.
Syin’s blade is already out. “Then we circle.”
“No. Circling draws a clean arc. It wants arcs.”
“It does not want,” I say.
She glances at me. “Fine. It records arcs and targets clean fools. Better?”
“Yes.”
“That was a very annoying yes.”
Orek makes a low sound from behind us and we both turn.
Three small striped shapes peer from the shade line to the west. Kedis. Different ones, or the same disaster with friends. Probably drawn by bright metal, noise, and the ugly luck that seems to have attached itself to this mission like a burr.
Lio sees them and turns pale. Maro sees Lio’s face and turns before anyone speaks.
“Oh,” Maro says. “Good. More stomachs.”
The receiver pings and the kedis flinch.
The sound’s pitch is at the edge of nerves. A vibration that makes scavengers turn toward whatever their bodies mistake for food. Kessa’s expression hardens.
“It’s ringing a dinner bell.”
“Yes.”
“Can we break the bell?”
“Only if we reach it.”
“Of course.”
The kedis disappear from sight.
Kessa moves toward the narrow cut. I catch her wrist before I decide whether catching her is wisdom or instinct. The pulse, not the hook, burns in my chest. I push that aside. This is not the time for such things. She looks down at my hand and I release her.
“Trap,” I say.
“I assumed. Be more helpful.”
“The receiver will read pressure on the salt crust. It may not read weight through stone.”
Her gaze snaps to the ridge beside the cut. “High path?”
“Too exposed.”
“Low crawl?”
“Too narrow for wings.”
“Conveniently, I don’t have wings.”
“No.”
She purses her lips and narrows her eyes.
“Don’t start.”
I hear the old command in my voice then. No. Stay. Back. Words owners use because they are shorter than fear. I swallow them.
“The low crawl fits you and the runners,” I say. “Not me. Not Syin. Renn maybe, if he folds. Orek no.”
“Then we split.”
“Bad idea.”
The kedi reappear, closer.
“Most of mine are.”
A kedi yowls when Syin slams his lochaber haft into the sand in front of it. The little creature ricochets away in a blur of stripes and insult. The receiver pings again three quick pulses.
The kedi jerk toward the sound. Not thought. Signal. Nerve. Meat.
Kessa signs to Lio and Maro. They move at her command.
I understand her plan too late. The runners drop low and vanish into the crawl cut. Kessa follows. Syin snarls her name. She ignores him because she is wise in many forms of survival and foolish in several others.
I step toward the cut, but the blood relay under my ribs seizes as the receiver finds me.
Green light runs beneath my skin, rib to throat, not bright enough to blind but sharp enough to taste. My legs threaten to buckle. I lock them.
Renn swears. Kessa’s voice comes from inside the crawl, muffled but close.
“Do not bleed on anything important.”
“Define important,” I force out.
“You. Annoyingly.”
The receiver pings again. This time, the relay answers through my hand. Green flickers beneath the burned edge of my bracer and leaps toward the salt crust at my feet. Not a line with thought behind it. A contact seeking circuit. Power looking for completion.
I drive my claws into the rock wall instead of the ground. Pain clears the command. Syin sees and understands. Good. Let him see that restraint is work.
In the crawl cut, stone scrapes. Lio curses. Maro says something about hating every profession he has ever admired. Kessa shushes them both. Then the salt shelf lights.
Green threads crawl beneath the crust, showing every place we stepped, every pause, every retreat, every route choice since the tracker broke. A map, but not of the City. Of us.
The crash basin. The burn flat. The kedi chase. The salt hollow. The false dust path. The split. Our mistakes.
Kessa emerges from the far side of the crawl with dust in her hair and fury in every line of her body. She sees the lit salt shelf and stops. For three breaths, no one moves except the kedis.
Kessa looks at the glowing paths.
“The enemy has a map,” she says.
No one answers because there is no answer to give.