Chapter 11 Keandra
Keandra
The farther we get from the capital, the less Tigris feels like a city and the more it feels like a living thing.
I keep my eyes on the window because it is easier than looking too long at Kaiven, and because every few minutes something outside changes enough to pull my attention back.
The roads narrow first. The carved stone edges disappear.
The ordered fields and neat compounds thin out.
Then the land opens all at once, and my breath catches so sharply I have to stop myself from making a sound.
It is enormous.
Mars always felt crowded, even in the poor districts where space was rationed and ugly and never really yours. Even the open places there had limits. Fences. Domes. Work lines. Transport lanes. Here, nothing looks held in by human hands.
The land rolls out in long wide stretches of gold grass broken by darker brush, scattered stone, and lines of trees bending in the wind. The sky feels too large for me to understand properly. It keeps going and going, blue deepening toward the horizon, pale clouds stretched thin above the plains.
I did not know land could look this open and still feel dangerous.
That is the part that unsettles me most. It is beautiful.
I can admit that to myself. More beautiful than anything I imagined while starving in my room on Mars.
But it is not soft beauty. Not safe beauty.
There is something hard under all of it.
The kind of beauty that would not care if I lived or died crossing it.
The transport hums steadily over rougher ground. I keep the shoulder restraint tight across my body and try not to grip the side frame every time the vehicle shifts.
Kaiven sits opposite me, silent more often than not.
The silence should be awkward. Somehow it isn’t.
Heavy, yes. Constant, yes. But not empty.
He notices too much for silence to feel empty around him.
I can feel when his attention lands on me even if I am not looking straight at him.
That should make me more nervous than it does.
I glance at him once when I think he is looking out the opposite panel. He isn’t. His eyes catch mine immediately. Amber. Bright. Too sharp to miss much of anything. I look away first.
Outside, something large moves through the grass far enough from the road that I almost think I imagined it.
Then I see it again. A herd, maybe. Except no herd on Mars ever looked like that.
Tall-backed bodies. Long necks. Horns curving back over their skulls.
Hides darker than the grass around them.
My voice comes before I decide whether I want to speak.
“What are those?”
Kaiven turns his head toward the window I am watching.
“Drenak.”
I wait, expecting more. When it doesn’t come, I look back at him.
“They travel in herds?” I ask.
“Yes.”
That is all. The answer is so brief I almost smile despite myself.
“That’s not very much information.”
Something shifts in his face. Not softness exactly. More like the edge of something held back loosens half a step.
“They are not aggressive unless threatened,” he says. “Their horns kill badly if they panic.”
I turn back to the window at once.
“That is more information.”
“It is the important part.”
I can’t argue with that.
The land keeps changing. In some places the gold grasses grow taller, almost silver where the light catches them differently.
Dark birds circle overhead, wings broad enough to cast moving shadows over the road.
In the distance, strange stone formations rise out of the plains.
Not mountains. Not hills. Sharp black and red rock like old violence froze into the ground.
There are rivers too. Not large ones yet, but narrow shining bands of real water winding through the land and catching the sun hard enough to make me stare every time we pass. Once I see broad-leafed plants crowding a wetter bank, taller than anything that should grow in open ground.
Everything feels too real. That is what keeps hitting me. Not a simulation. Not a managed dome. A world that grows and hunts and bleeds on its own.
The transport jolts harder than before as we leave the smoother road entirely and cut across rougher ground.
My hand snaps back to the side frame. Kaiven notices at once.
He reaches toward a panel beside his seat, presses something, and the suspension shifts.
The ride smooths slightly. Not perfect, but better.
I look at him before I can stop myself.
“You did that for me.”
“For the road,” he says.
But that is not true, and both of us know it. I don’t call him on it. I only nod and settle back into the seat.
A few minutes later, one of the warriors in the front passes something through the open gap in the divider. A sealed food container, wrapped to hold heat. Kaiven takes it, opens it, checks it once, then holds it out across the space between us.
“Tava.”
The word is low and simple. He glances at the food, then adds in English, “Eat.”
I take the container carefully. Warm meat. Flatbread. Roasted root cut into thick pieces. The smell hits me before I am ready for it. My stomach tightens at once. I hate that he saw the effect.
The food is better than anything I have had in years. Seasoned. Real. Hot. I try not to devour it too quickly, but hunger and nerves have hollowed me out again despite the meals from earlier.
When I look up after the first few bites, Kaiven is watching me.
Not in the ugly way men watched women eat in the lower districts sometimes, as though hunger itself were shameful.
His face gives me nothing. But his eyes are fixed on the container, on my hands, on how quickly the food is disappearing.
Heat creeps up my neck.
“I’m not starving,” I say, and hear how weak it sounds the second it leaves my mouth.
His gaze lifts to my face.
“You were.”
Were. Not are. Something in my chest gives a small painful pull at that. I look back down at the food.
“Yes.”
He says nothing after that, and somehow the silence feels gentler than if he had tried to soften it.
When I finish, he reaches across for the empty container before I have fully decided where to set it. Our fingers almost brush. Almost. I feel that almost all the way to my spine. Kaiven passes the empty container forward without looking away from me.
Outside, the sun starts leaning lower. The light shifts from bright gold into something warmer and deeper. The grasslands catch it and start to glow from within. Shadows lengthen. The air through the filtered vents cools by slow degrees.
I don’t realize I have started leaning slightly toward the window until the transport takes a sharper turn and the light hits my face full on. Kaiven reaches up again and adjusts one of the overhead panels. A shade slides partway down, cutting the glare.
I blink.
“Thank you.”
He gives one nod, as if the adjustment needs no thanks, as if of course he would fix something uncomfortable if he could. That does something strange to my nerves. Not enough to make me relax. But enough that fear is no longer the only thing sitting inside me.
I keep watching the landscape until my eyes start aching from trying to hold too much of it at once.
Every time I think I have started understanding the scale, something bigger appears.
A line of dark trees twice the height of anything in the Mars domes.
A flock of winged creatures bursting out of the grass in black and silver.
A body of water broad enough to reflect half the sky.
Then, far off near a ridge of red stone, I see movement big enough to make me go still.
At first I think it is a rock. Then it lifts its head.
The creature stands on four legs, but its shoulder is higher than the transport roof.
Its body is massive and dark, thick ridges running along its spine, head too heavy to belong to anything gentle.
I cannot make out all the details from this distance. Only the size. The sheer size.
My hand closes around the restraint without thought.
“What is that?”
Kaiven looks where I am looking and answers immediately.
“Do not worry. It is too far.”
That is not an answer. I tear my eyes from the beast long enough to look at him.
“What is it?”
“A Morakar.”
The name means nothing. The size means plenty.
“Does it hunt people?”
“Yes.”
The word drops like a stone. I turn back to the window fast enough that I almost strain against the restraint.
The beast is only a dark shape against the land, but now everything has changed.
The beauty. The openness. The light. It all shifts under the knowledge that something large enough to tear open this transport walks this world naturally.
Kaiven’s voice reaches me a second later, low and steady.
“It is too far.”
I keep staring at the horizon.
“You already said that.”
“It matters.”
I swallow.
“Everything here can kill you.”
A pause.
“Almost everything,” he says.
That should not make me want to laugh. It almost does anyway, though the sound sticks behind my ribs and comes out as a shaky breath instead.
I look at him again.
“That was not comforting.”
“It was true.”
There it is again. That bluntness. That strange refusal to wrap anything in softness. I should hate it. Part of me does. Another part is starting to understand that with him, truth may be the closest thing to safety I get.
The transport slows as the terrain roughens again. One of the warriors up front says something in Tigris. Kaiven listens, answers, then looks back at me.
“We stop soon.”
“For what?”
“Water. Leg stretch. The engine needs cooling.”
That sounds reasonable until my eyes cut to the endless grass around us.
“Out there?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
The answer slips out so fast his brows shift by the smallest degree. I hear myself and drag in a breath.
“I mean…”
“You mean no.”
Heat floods my face.
“You just told me there are things here that hunt people.”
“There are.”
“And now we are getting out.”
“Yes.”
“This is not making me feel better.”
Something very close to amusement touches his mouth and is gone before I can be sure I saw it.
“The stop point is chosen,” he says. “You will not wander.”
“I was not planning to wander.”
“Good.”
The transport rolls down into a low stone hollow bordered on one side by darker trees and on the other by a narrow stream shining over red rock.
The place is beautiful in a way that does not help me at all.
Too open. Too exposed. Too quiet. The engine powers down gradually, ticking and humming as heat escapes into the evening air.
One warrior climbs out first, then the other. Both scan the area immediately with the kind of efficiency that says this is routine for them and never routine for the land.
Kaiven unfastens his restraint and stands. Everything in me goes alert just watching that simple movement. He reaches into the overhead storage, pulls out a dark wrap of some kind, then looks at me.
“Come.”
I stare at him.
“This is where I die.”
“No.”
“You sound very sure.”
“I am.”
That should not matter to me this fast. It does anyway.
I unfasten the restraint and rise more carefully than I want him to notice. My legs are stiff from the ride. The floor feels different now that I am standing in the transport with him looming close and the open door spilling Tigris air inside.
When I step down to the ground, the first thing I notice is the smell. Cooler than before. Water. Stone. Grass. Damp earth. Something flowering nearby. Something musky and distant that makes my pulse jump until I realize none of the men are reacting to it.
The second thing I notice is the sound. No city noise. No engines except the cooling transport. Just wind through the grass. Water over rock. Insects or birds or things I cannot name calling from farther off.
It is too quiet in all the wrong ways.
I stay very close to the transport without meaning to.
Kaiven notices. He says nothing about it.
Instead, he goes to the back compartment, opens a side case, and brings me a water skin already opened for drinking.
I take it with both hands and drink too fast, then force myself to slow down.
The water is cold enough to make my eyes close for one second.
When I open them, Kaiven is standing there. Watching.
“More food when we stop tonight,” he says.
Tonight. That word lands hard. Like this is only one stop among many. Like I have already been absorbed into the rhythm of his road and his plans and his idea of where I belong at the end of the day.
My fingers tighten around the skin.
“How much farther?”
“Before dark, we reach the night camp.”
Night camp. Not a hotel. Not a city house. Not walls. Another part of his world I do not understand.
I look around again. At the long gold grasses moving in the wind. At the trees. At the stream. At the two warriors keeping loose watch while pretending not to. At the king standing in front of me, as if all of this is ordinary because to him it is.
The fear is still there. But under it now is something else.
Something quieter. Because every time the world shifts into a new kind of too much, Kaiven adjusts something before I have to ask.
The ride. The light. The food. The water.
The pace. The way he tells the truth without making me feel stupid for not knowing it.
The road feels less hostile when he is the one deciding where I step. That realization unsettles me almost as much as the Morakar did.
Kaiven takes the water skin gently but firmly from my hands when I finish and secures it back into the case. Then he holds out the dark wrap.
I look at it, confused.
“The air cools fast after dark,” he says. “Put it on.”
I take it and unfold the fabric. It is heavier than it looks. Softer too. A travel mantle sized for someone bigger than me. Probably him.
The thought hits me a second before the scent does.
Rain. Smoke. Green things. Him.
My face goes warm again.
I wrap it around my shoulders because the temperature is already dropping and because refusing would be stupid. The fabric hangs too large on me, nearly swallowing my hands.
Kaiven watches me settle it, then turns his head toward the darkening plains as if he has not just put part of himself around my body. Maybe to him, that means nothing. Maybe it means exactly what it feels like. I do not know which answer unsettles me more.
When he motions me back toward the transport, I go without argument.
This time, climbing inside does not feel like stepping into a machine. It feels a little too much like stepping back into his protection.