Twenty-Five #2
Twice, on the way to her orchard, she had to sit down and put her head on her knees for a few minutes.
A deep, bright ache ran up and down her spine, but it wasn’t a shooting pain so it probably wasn’t nerve damage.
Just muscles and joints inflamed and alarmed because some idiot had, after all, put a slug of metal through her side.
It would have been an astoundingly stupid way to die, not least because it would have consigned Garral and the others to death along with her.
One thing had to go wrong, Garral had said, and it had very nearly been her.
The only silver lining was that she had certainly presented the appearance that the attack was genuine.
She hoped the Sinen believed no one would be stupid enough to do what she did.
When she reached the orchard, it was muddy and fragrant and a little colder than she’d expected.
She sat under the living trees for a few minutes while she got back her strength.
From where she sat, she could see the place where she’d hidden the weapon.
There wasn’t a pool of blood beside it or a trail leading away, mostly thanks to the rain.
If the Carryx had thought to bring bloodhounds, her story would have a hole in it pretty quickly.
The trail created by your injury ends at the orchard you were studying, not the cave where you claim the violence occurred.
You will explain this. Lying was exhausting.
Probably the best thing to do was just claim ignorance.
There was an attack, she was injured so badly her memories weren’t clear.
She’d let Third Gardener figure it all out without her.
It would probably be more authentic than if she actually had an answer for everything.
Her eyes shifted to a smooth rock on the ground by the burned trees.
It was dark and shone like it was still wet, holding on to the rain when everything around it was at least half dried.
When her mind wandered, her gaze shifted back to it.
Something about it tugged at her attention like a kid clearing its throat.
When she felt like she had it in her, she levered herself up to standing and walked over.
Because of course it wasn’t a stone. It was the gun, out there in the open where she’d dropped it.
She scooped it up too fast, and the pain in her side made the world swim a little.
She turned back to look at the path she’d come by, but there wasn’t anyone on it.
A flock of the Euruk of Lydiándar were scissoring their way through the sky to the north.
They didn’t seem to be paying attention to her.
She wrapped her hand around the butt of the gun in her pocket.
Her finger brushed the familiar button of the trigger.
She hadn’t even thought to wonder where she’d dropped the damn thing, but of course it was here.
She walked to the tree where she’d put the cylinder.
The rock was there, and the mud she’d put over it had dried.
It might only have been her anxiety, but it still seemed too obvious.
Someone searching the site would find it too easily.
She flipped over the covering stone and put her hand on the cylinder.
It was still there, and still just a little bit warm, like an egg with something gestating inside it.
She lifted it out, hefting it. Feeling its weight.
She hadn’t screwed it all up yet. She’d come close, but it hadn’t gone wrong. She could still win. She’d just put the weapon in with her kit, and…
She wouldn’t, though. She thought of Third Gardener and its pet Rak-hund turning to watch her as she went. About the Sinen’s questions. If there was any day they were going to stop her on the way back to her bed and look through her kit, it was today.
But she needed to have it on hand when the time came.
That was the gamble. She stood for a moment. The breeze muttered in her ear. The leaves of the pear trees clapped like a thousand little hands, catching the light.
She put the cylinder back in place and tucked the gun in beside it.
She didn’t like the rock anymore, and the mud was too friable to cover it, so she picked up a handful of old leaves and dead grass and rained them down over the burned-out stump until all her contraband was lost in the pile. Then she did a little more.
The rain had thrown streaks of mud onto her kit.
She knelt in front of it. Her knees would get wet, but she’d live.
When it clicked off standby, the results on the pear sample were still there, but so were two alerts saying that further results would be suspect without calibration.
Fair enough. The equipment had been out in the weather for a while.
She started the resonance scanner on a tare run, then took her notebook out.
But when she opened the files, there was a new report already halfway through being drafted and not yet impressed into the archive. She opened it.
I know I shouldn’t do this, but I have seen the new camp. It’s not as far as I’d thought. When the time comes, you can start the process and run. I don’t want to wait until next life. Say you don’t either, and I’ll put the directions here.
I dreamed about you last night. We were in a palace, and we were safe. There were strawberries.
Jessyn smiled. There was a little warmth and a softness in her throat where she hadn’t noticed there had been only tension before.
It was a profoundly stupid thing for Garral to have done, sneaking back to the cave and putting the draft in her old notebook.
Who knew when Third Gardener would decide it was time to send someone into the cave to collect her lost gear?
It risked everything, the whole plan, and everyone, including her.
But here she was, touched and grateful that he’d done it.
She erased the draft, then paused. Should she?
Should she make the attempt, at least? She could try to escape the Carryx.
Even if she failed, the worst that could happen was she’d die here.
Or be recaptured and die on the ship. For a moment, she was in a different life, out among the stars as an immigrant spending her days among a branch of humanity she’d never known, never guessed at.
But whoever they were, they’d have food and drink, they’d sing songs that she could learn.
She would study their languages. All through history, people had made leaps of faith in the universe, remade themselves and their lives in ways that couldn’t be undone.
Many of those lives had been rich and beautiful and strange, and hers could be too.
They’d probably even have ways to synthesize her medication that didn’t mean growing her own.
And she would never go back to the world-palace. She’d never see her brother again. Never tell Dafyd Alkhor the secret she’d discovered: The deathless enemy were just humans in weird black regrowing armor.
She sighed, and the extra volume of breath was enough to make her side twitch in pain.
She wiped a tear off her cheek and started keying in a new draft.
Would he ever see it? When would the Sinen finally send someone to the cave to collect her lost notebook?
Garral sneaking back to leave her love notes was insanely risky.
Strawberries would have been nice.
She paused. For a moment, she let herself remember Garral’s body curled against her, the way he’d looked down when he’d told her about his wife on Anjiin and his lover in the Carryx prison world.
She thought about the shape of his mouth and how it had felt for her to admit to him that she’d been a little bit in love with Irinna.
She wept gently, but outright sobbing would have hurt.
Word by word, she erased the sentence until the draft was only a blank page. The resonance scanner chirped that it had finished its run.
“All right,” she said, and wiped a streak of mud off the kit with her thumb.
Preliminary examination suggests that the fruit trees in the orchard were cultivated as a food source. Furthermore, the molecular profile of the fruit suggests…