Текст книги "Broken Skies"

Автор книги: Theresa Kay

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“I don’t know.” At least he’s honest. Though I may have preferred empty assurances.

There are so many other questions begging to squeeze out of my mouth. Why did they do it? What do they want with him? Who did it? And is Jace even alive? Lir doesn’t have the answers to these questions though and, even if he did, I might not like them. I can’t afford to get sidetracked.

I look away and rub my eyes with the back of my hand. Get it together, Jax. No tears. “I don’t have one. A plan. Not really anyway.” I laugh nervously. “Just get my brother back or die trying.”

Grabbing the strap of the satchel, I pull it into my lap. “I’ve got a map. I know where to go.” Lir scoots across the ground until he’s next to me. The map rustles on my lap as I unfold it and point out our route to him. He leans closer, following my finger with his eyes, until I can feel the heat of his chest against my back. “Bridgelake is here, your city is here.” My finger jabs at each location. “We’re about here.”

“We’re moving west? That is the wrong direction.”

“Yes. Well, it’s away from the city anyway,” I say. “It’s to throw them off if they try to follow us. We’ll head west and then cut north here, near one of the red circles, then back east here. This road should take us almost all the way there.”

Lir nods. “How much farther should we travel tonight?”

It’s hours until morning and the longer I sit here, the heavier my eyes get. My joints are starting to ache, especially my shoulders. Hanging from a window ledge was not friendly to my arms. “Maybe we should rest for a bit now and then head out at first light?” I don’t really mean for it to be a question.

Lir shrugs, his shoulder brushing my arm with the movement. “Sounds good to me.”

I fight a sigh of relief when he moves away until he’s across from me again and opens his pack. Puffs of dirt drift up when he rolls out his sleeping bag. He slides inside and closes his eyes.

Lir’s breathing has evened and his body relaxed into sleep before I even move to get my sleeping bag. At least he trusts me a little, if only enough to fall asleep in my presence. I envy his ease as I toss and turn for at least an hour before falling into a restless sleep.

My dreams are filled with blood and knives, a bright white light and Jace’s screams. And then they’re not. Images of towering buildings and silver ships creep into my head, followed closely by bright green eyes and a single upraised eyebrow.

NINE

Sunlight filters through the leaves and onto my face, waking me up. I push the sleeping bag down and stand. My shoulders are still stiff, but I do a couple stretches and they loosen up. Clenching my fist a few times loosens up my sore knuckles. Flint has a hard head.

The woods are quiet and I look over expecting Lir to still be sleeping. He’s not there. “Lir?” I call out, but there’s no response.

He left? I thought we’d gotten somewhere last night, at least a tentative truce, a mutual reliance on each other, but I guess not. One of these days I will learn my lesson about being kind to people who don’t deserve it. Hopefully it’s the same day I learn the lesson about how to figure out who does deserve it.

Stupid alien. No, stupid me for taking him at his word. I broke him out of jail and this is how he repays me? By ditching me when we’ve barely gotten started? My plan, crappy as it is, will not work without Lir’s help to get me into the city. I’ve got to find him. Unused to the forest and somewhat injured, he couldn’t have gotten very far.

I pull on my boots and I’m into the trees in minutes. I scan the area, looking for the signs of his passage. A broken branch points me in the right direction and it isn’t long before I find a footprint.

I creep through the woods, carefully placing my feet so not to disturb the quiet. I’m not good with people, but I know the woods and I know how to move through the forest in near silence. A few minutes later, I hear a curse and scramble up a tree to get a better view. About twenty feet from my perch is Lir sitting on a fallen log. His face is pale and sweaty. He runs his hands through his hair and stands up, turning in a circle and looking panicked. He curses again and kicks the log.

My hands catches my giggle, but not quickly enough. He freezes, moving only his eyes around, searching out the source of the noise.

“Jax?” He scans the area around him. “Is that you?” When I don’t respond, he starts walking in my direction. “Who’s out there?”

I wait until he is practically underneath me before dropping out of the tree and landing on the ground behind him. He spins around, his eyes wide.

“Where were you going, Lir?”

Redness floods his face. “I needed to relieve myself,” he says to his shoes. “I got lost.”

I want to believe him, but should I? “You must have snuck away awfully quietly.”

“I did not want to wake you.” He’s still talking to his shoes, but he looks up and smiles sheepishly at me.

Whether he’s telling the truth or not, he must realize now that I was right when I told him he’d need me, that he can’t make it back on his own. “I’m sure you would have eventually wandered around in a circle and found your way back,” I say

“I suppose so,” he says. “But thank you for finding me anyway.”

We head back to our makeshift campsite and pack up. Rather, Lir tries to just stuff everything back in the pack and I roll my eyes and end up packing for both of us. You can’t just shove stuff in. It has to be folded and fit together, otherwise it just won’t work. He offers to carry the satchel as well as his pack, but I refuse. I’m holding on to the map. Lack of survival skills or not, he might still have a sense of direction.

Once everything is put away and my knife is back in its hilt in my boot, we set off; me, gauging direction by the angle of the sun, and Lir following along behind me.

Hours and miles later, I’m wiping my forehead with the back of my hand. The sun is high in the sky and even in the shade of the woods, it’s hot. I pause, waiting for Lir to catch up. His pace has been steady, but he’s obviously not used to hiking. He’s only about ten feet behind me now, but the distance has gotten bigger as the day has gone on. He hasn’t complained, just kept walking even though I’ve made a point of sending branches zinging back to hit him and not warning him about spider webs. That’ll teach him to try and sneak off. Or maybe I’m just being mean. Then again, maybe I was wrong to distrust him this morning.

What do they do in that city anyway? Doesn’t look like exercising is on their agenda. Or maybe it has something to do with the malfunctioning cuff. “What exactly does it do?” I ask out loud.

“Huh?” Lir stops beside me. His breath is coming a bit faster than normal and his hair has curled up even more with sweat and humidity, making the green in it stick out even more.

“The kitu? What does it do?” I ask. Jace is always telling me that I need to work on my people skills, that people can’t always follow what I’m saying when I only verbalize half of what I’m thinking. It’s never bothered me. Why would it? The only person I see on a regular basis is Jace. I guess I’ve always taken for granted the fact that he almost always knows exactly what I’m talking about. Maybe it’s a twin thing.

Lir narrows his eyes and edges back slightly. “Why do you want to know?”

The sharpness of the words startles me until I realize he must think I’m trying to interrogate him or something. I shrug. “I don’t really know much about you guys and, well, I’m curious. Kind of an annoying trait of mine actually. If I hadn’t been so set on getting a glimpse of an alien, Jace wouldn’t have gotten taken.”

“Why are you so interested? Most humans…are not very fond of us.”

I snort. “That’s true. Humans resent you for coming to our planet and then ignoring us, not even offering to help with our problems. I’m sure you guys have problems of your own though.” I glance at him and he nods. “Most even blame you for the Collapse, but I don’t know how you could be to blame for something that happened decades before you arrived…I’m not most people though.”

Lir smiles. “I am beginning to see that.” He motions for me to follow him and sits down on a log. I perch next to him. He stares at me with his brow furrowed before starting to talk. “The kitu is mostly a communication device. It allows us to link to each other and interact, but it can also boost my strength, allow me to move faster for a brief period of time, enhance my vision…” He stops and then shrugs. “I am not sure how they work.”

“So they’re like a physiological crutch?” Lir tilts his head to the side and gives me a strange look. I continue to be sure I’ve gotten it right. “It must link into your bio-mechanical and chemical functions or something. Either you have specialized functions that have developed to help you control the link or somehow the cuff must link directly into your biology. Perhaps even altering your basic make-up to allow you to use it.”

“That sounds about right,” says Lir, both eyebrows up in surprise. “How do you know so much about biology?”

“My dad taught me. He was a scientist, you know… before.” I push back the wisps of hair that have escaped my braid and stand up.

“Your dad sounds like an intelligent man.”

“He was.” I look away and sigh before straightening my shoulders and changing the subject. “I don’t think we should try to travel too much farther today. It will be dark before long and I’d like to try to set a few snares,” I say, smiling. “Fresh rabbit is so much better than dried.”

Lir’s eyes sparkle when he returns my smile. “I’m sure you could make a great meal out of anything.”

After that, Lir keeps pace with me, though that might have more to do with me actually being nicer to him than anything else. I point out various features of the forest and explain some of my navigation methods. He seems particularly interested when I start going over the edible plants and how to find water. It gives me a small thrill to have him focused so intently on me and I end up smiling and joking more than I normally would. That worries me. Lir laughs more too. I like the sound and that downright terrifies me. I shouldn’t be getting attached. I shouldn’t be enjoying his company. Even so, the air feels clearer now, like we’ve moved past a simple truce and into some sort of friendship.

* * * * * * *

The night brings with it a drop in the temperature and a new sense of hopelessness to me. We huddle close to the small fire I built, a rabbit roasting on a stick across it. Every time the fire sizzles, my stomach rumbles. We ate only a little bread and some berries I found for lunch. The food I packed is already running low. I set five snares, but only caught one small rabbit. It will have to do.

The flames reflect off Lir’s eyes, lighting up the golden ring around his pupils so it almost drowns out the bright green around it. He was impressed that I actually caught anything with my ‘primitive hunting techniques’ as he called my snares. When I pulled out a lighter for the fire he half gasped. He must have expected me to rub sticks together or something. I rolled my eyes. Cleaning the rabbit, something I’ve done since I was eight, made him go pale and look away. He’s not looking away now though. His stomach’s growling nearly as loud as mine as he watches the meat crisp.

The silence between us tonight is different, somehow softer. We’re both dirty and tired, but I’m clearly in better shape than Lir. His injuries from the soldiers remain. Though it’s not swollen shut, his left eye is shadowed in bruises. His lip is split and there’s still blood on the side of his face from his beating. At least his knife wound hasn’t reopened. My stitches have held it well, but the edges of the wound that I can see are red around the black thread.

I need to find us somewhere to get cleaned up tomorrow. Water alone might not hold off infection, but it couldn’t hurt to clean his wounds and bandage his arm with something other than the dirty piece of fabric he has wrapped around it.

So many things could go wrong out here. What would I do if he got sick? Does his body even work like mine? So far his injuries haven’t healed at super speed or done anything else out of the ordinary, but would I even know if something were wrong? More importantly, would Lir tell me if something were really wrong?

Too many questions. Too many worries. I run a hand down my face and my stomach speaks up again, a loud noise in the quiet night. There’s an answering noise across the fire and I grin. He’s hungry and he’s been eating and drinking, so he can’t be too bad off. Lir looks up and smiles at me, one side of his mouth turning up and a sparkle in his eye. My original assessment of him really is spot on. He’s beautiful.

During the day he looked at home in the woods, the green in his features blending with the forest. Now, the firelight brings out the gold and, even dirty and exhausted, he shines. Too caught up in everything else, I hadn’t noticed it last night. He has an inner light that is nowhere near human and I think it should bother me or maybe scare me, this otherworldly illumination. But all I want to do is move to him and bask in it. I’m drawn to him in a way I don’t understand. That’s what frightens me.

And now I’m staring. The eyebrow goes up and heat floods into my face. I busy my mind and my hands with pulling the rabbit away from the fire. I divide the meat and pass a little more than half to Lir without meeting his eyes.

It’s hot, really too hot to eat yet, but my stomach doesn’t care. The grease burns my fingers as I shovel the meat into my mouth. It’s gone much too soon and I’m not even close to full. Even with the mishap in the market, I should have found a way to bring more food. We’re going to have to live off the land when the food in the pack runs out and we won’t be in the forest forever. I didn’t really think about how long this trek would take, how much physical exertion would eat into our supplies, hell, I didn’t even really think about exactly how much two people would need to eat. Just another example of my poor planning.

I’m going to end up getting both of us killed. All three of us really if I’m not in time to rescue Jace from who knows what. My eyes sting and my stomach rumbles, quieter now but still audible.

“Here, Jax.” Lir leans across the fire with some rabbit in his hand. “I’m full.” He’s lying. I know he is, but I take the food anyway.

“Thanks,” I mumble.

Still short of sated, I wipe my greasy fingers on my jeans and pull out my sleeping bag. I spread it next to the fire and snuggle down into it. Fall weather would choose to finally arrive when I’m stuck out in the woods. Everything seems to be working against me, even the temperature.

The rustle of leaves to my right signals Lir settling into his sleeping bag. His breathing evens out quickly. Looks like another night of easy sleep for him while I’m left lying here staring up at the stars, the scenarios of all the things I should have done differently playing on repeat in my mind.

The bright twinkling lights look so close, but they’re really millions of miles away from me. Jace feels just as far away as those stars. Only the second night since it happened that Jace isn’t here to hold my hand while I fall asleep to chase the nightmares away and I’m already losing it. The burn in my eyes overflows into tears that trickle silently over my cheeks and down to the ground.

“Would it help if I told you I was scared too?” Lir’s voice is soft, just barely carrying over the fire to my ears. Not asleep then.

I don’t answer. I can’t, not without giving in to the tears, without admitting how weak I am. If he had any idea how broken I am… he has followed the Bridgelake nutcase into the woods, trusted her to know what to do. I’d be scared if I were him too.

There’s a puff of air across my face when Lir’s sleeping bag flops down next to me. What is he doing?

“Is this acceptable? Me over here instead of over there?”

I just nod, still not trusting my voice.

He settles down to the ground beside me. There’s still a few feet between us, enough for me to be comfortable but not so much that I want to scoot closer. “It will all work out,” Lir whispers before making himself comfortable and falling asleep. For real this time. I checked before closing my own eyes and counting my breaths to help me drift off.

Without Jace, the nightmares come back again. Hot breath. Long red hair twisted around a fist. The knife. The blood. The images retreat though, rather than lasting all night long, and are replaced with new ones. Firelight. A long red braid trailing down my back. My smile. My laugh. A feeling of amusement at my narrowed eyes and my hands on my hips.

TEN

I crack one eye open. It’s not quite dawn, but it isn’t far off. The dreams weren’t so bad last night and I actually feel rested, something I normally can only achieve with Jace’s presence to ground me. It isn’t until I go to sit up that I realize Lir’s fingers are wrapped around mine. Did I reach out for him in my nightmares or was he trying to comfort me?

Yanking my hand away is what I should do, but the press of his palm against mine is too tempting. The touch of another’s hand, such a simple thing, anchors me and helps to clear my head. Sure, people other than Jace have touched me in the past year, but they stick to my arms or shoulders and I have to brace myself in case I start to lose it. It’s that way even with Flint, who’s like a second brother to me, though he’s the only person besides my actual brother who I will voluntarily touch. Until now that is. Just lying here and being able to revel in the feeling of someone holding my hand without reminding myself to breathe or listening to my pulse thunder in my ears… I can almost feel normal and whole.

With that thought, I finally snatch my hand away. Lir’s hold tightens briefly as my fingers leave his, but he doesn’t wake. His touch is a luxury I could get used to much too easily and it’s bad enough that I need Jace to get a good night’s rest. I can’t afford to become dependent on someone else, especially someone I’ll never see again once this mission is over and someone who already has some sort of unexplainable draw for me.

I don’t get up though. Instead, I roll onto my side and run my eyes over his face. He looks so peaceful that I just lie there and trace his features with my gaze. The bruise around his eye is already fading to yellow and I know enough to realize that means the E’rikon must heal faster than we do. At this rate he’ll be back to normal in only another day or two. I guess I don’t have to worry about his arm as much as I thought I did. It’ll heal up just like the rest of him.

His hair just barely brushes the tips of his ears before curling upward and this closely I can see that the hair is actually gold at the root, only turning green after about an inch of growth. It’s not a dye job. Not even the strongest dye would be able to cover that metallic gold color, so his hair must grow like that. Gold blending into green like his eyes… and the scales on his back.

I push myself up on one elbow and lean forward. Without the high collared jacket he was wearing before, the scales are clearly visible. I was too busy studying the ones on his back before to notice that the scales also flare out at the top and edge into his hairline and behind his ears. They’re fainter the farther up they go and almost entirely gold by the time they disappear under his hair. Could it be this gold…base… that gives him that subtle glow? Would all of them look a little shiny up close or just the ones with the metallic colors?

Lying back down on my side, I move closer and examine his forehead. His skin does have a very faint gold sheen to it. So it was probably this that reflected the fire light last night and made him appear to be illuminated. Good to know I’m not entirely crazy.

When I bring my eyes back down, Lir’s awake, his eyes little more than an inch away from mine. He blinks slowly once and my body startles into action, pulling my face back. I scramble out of the sleeping bag and turn away without a word, a hot flush of embarrassment building a fire behind my cheeks.

“Jax?”

I don’t turn around. “I was just, uh, checking your injuries. Looks like they’re healing nicely. We should probably still try to find someplace to clean your arm today though.” Holding my breath, I set my shoulders. Please don’t say anything. Please don’t say anything.

“Sounds like a plan,” he says slowly. Rustling signals his exit from his sleeping bag. “Should we pack up or eat first?”

“Pack,” I reply immediately. It’s as if he knows I needed something to do with my hands to distract me from what just happened.

By the time we both have our stuff folded or rolled neatly into our packs, I’m calm enough to meet his eyes without getting flustered. I pull out the map and estimate our location before we set off.

The hike today is a little more difficult, the trees closer together and the incline steeper. What the route lacks in ease, it makes up for with isolation. We’re quite a ways from any large settlements and those humans that chose to live on their own normally stick to the abandoned towns rather than deal with the wilderness. At least I hope so. After Lir’s reception in Bridgelake, I’d prefer not to run into anyone else, human or alien.

Despite the rough terrain, I set a fast pace and Lir lags behind early on. I make sure to keep him within sight, but I’m well in the lead. It’s midday before I slow my steps and sit down up against a tree. Lir joins me a few minutes later.

“Perhaps after our rest you could slow down a bit so I am not constantly in fear of losing you?” A bead of sweat trails down his neck and he’s slightly out of breath. He must have sped up when he saw me stop. “All either of us needs is to get injured because we’re rushing.”

He’s right. I’ve been punishing myself for my fascination with his touch and his skin this morning and I didn’t even take into account that it made Lir suffer too. It’s not his fault that I wish I’d gotten a chance to run my finger along his cheek to see if his skin felt any different.

I close my eyes and bite my lip. “Sorry. I didn’t really think about it.”

“I realize that this is…uncomfortable for you, but you are going to have to trust me and—”

“Just like you trust me? What happened to the guy who thought I was going to seduce information out of him?”

He cringes. “That was… a mistake and one that I’ve already apologized for. Today you have pushed yourself to the brink of collapse just to get out of speaking to me. I am not someone you need to fear. If I desired to harm you, haven’t I had plenty of opportunity?” One finger under my chin, he pushes my face up. Instinctively I close my eyes and prepare for the creeping chill of fear…but there’s nothing but a warm calm flowing through my limbs. I slowly open my eyes and he smiles. “I will not hurt you. If you’re curious, please just ask. I much preferred our conversations from yesterday to the drudging silence this morning.”

“Okay.”

Lir stands and reaches a hand out to me. I eye it for a moment before accepting it and allowing him to pull me to my feet. Trust has to start somewhere I guess.

* * * * * * *

It’s still cold once the sun goes down, but our campsite doesn’t feel quite as dreary. We had stumbled across a stream and, although the water was a bit chilly, I’d certainly underestimated the effect feeling clean could have on morale. Even better, the stream fed into a small pond that had a bunch of watercress growing in it and my snares had managed to snag three rabbits. Dinner is actually going to fill our stomachs and there will even be leftovers for tomorrow.

I teach Lir about the different sizes of firewood, show him how to build the fire and even let him start it. When I offer to show him how to clean a rabbit though, he declines, saying, “I do not believe that is a skill I will ever need.”

“What do you guys normally eat? Obviously not fresh game, but what else is there?”

He lets the silence draw out for a while before answering. “As you know, we stay within the city and are restricted by that...limitation. We primarily eat vegetable matter that is grown hydroponically. Meat isn’t something we cultivate so much as synthesize. We require very little of the synthesized compound as it is highly concentrated.”

“I bet it tastes like crap too.”

A laugh bursts from him mouth and he nods. “Very true.”

“So, if you have everything you need in the city, what were you doing out here?” He opens his mouth, shuts it again and presses his lips together, obviously uncomfortable. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“It’s not that I do not want to, more that it is complicated and there are things… that have changed and—”

He hasn’t pressed me on my issues, I won’t press him on his. “Don’t worry about it.” I take a bite of a rabbit leg. “So tell me about the scales.”

His brow furrows. “What about them?”

“Like do they mean you’re reptilian or something? Cold-blooded?”

“Reptilian?” Another laugh escapes from him. “The scales are more ornamental than anything. The colors are determined by our family line, so anyone can tell just by looking at me that I’m of Vestra and Linaud descent. Well, any E’rikon could tell at least.”

“Does that mean everyone with the same color is related?”

“To a point, yes.” A wrinkle forms between his brows and he thinks for moment before continuing. “But there are degrees of color and even differences in the shades that we would recognize that a human would not. For example, one of the males from the clearing whose coloring you probably saw as silver, actually has a distant relation to the Linaud line.”

“His hair did have a gold tint to it,” I say.

Lir eyes widen in surprise. “Interesting. I was always told most of the more subtle color variations were not visible on the human spectrum.”

I shrug. “I just have good eyes. Jace does too. He’s the best hunter in Bridgelake because he’s fast and has near perfect aim.”

“Impressive.”

“My dad always called me his little redtail.” He looks at me blankly. “It’s a type of hawk. Hawks have great vision…”

One of his hands comes up and rubs a strand of my hair between two fingers. “And you are red.”

My eyes are so transfixed by his hand in my hair that I miss what he says next. “What?”

“I said, it’s a beautiful color. If you were E’rikon, you would be of the Reva line.”

“Oh.” He’s still staring at my hair and running his fingers across it. When he turns his eyes back to my face, the intensity there freezes me in place. My mouth goes dry and I’m struggling to swallow, not from fear, but something else. Heat gathers in my stomach and races down my arms to my tingling fingertips. Lips parted, I raise one hand and reach toward Lir’s cheek. A green branch pops in the fire and my hand jerks. What am I doing? I avert my eyes and twist my hands together in my lap.

Releasing my hair and with one brisk shake of his head, Lir stands and walks over to the packs. “Are you ready to get some rest?” I nod and manage to stammer out a yes. He pulls both sleeping bags out and lays them side by side. “Last night… I thought… but if you’d rather…” He gestures from one side of the fire to the other. “I can…”Under almost any other circumstances, I’d laugh at how flustered he is.

“No it’s fine.” I slide into my sleeping bag beside him and lie on my back with my arms crossed over my chest.

Slipping into his own sleeping bag, he settles in next to me. “May I ask…the nightmares are they—”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

He simply nods and closes his eyes. I can’t help but notice the hand he leaves extended out between us. I can help my urge to grab it and I dig my fingertips into my biceps. instead Soon after, he has drifted off and I’m left staring up at the stars through the tree branches.

Unwilling to subject myself to the dreams if I don’t have to and maybe even a little because I just crave the comfort and connection his touch brings, my hand finds his as I surrender to sleep.

This night is not so bad. The flash of a knife. Ice and fire in my veins and then I’m flying. Swooping, drifting, diving, a hawk on the wind with wings outstretched. Peaceful blue sky with white puffy clouds. I’m looking down on myself with my red, red hair and a smile on my face.