Children of the Wastes (The Aionach Saga Book 2) (56 page)

Derrow got up and crossed the room to Savannah, a walk of
shame he seemed resolved to endure. “He doesn’t know any better. Is there an
outhouse or something we could use?”

Savannah’s look was sympathetic. “Even better,” she said. “We
have gravity plumbing in here. Composting toilets. Just down the hall and to
the left, there.”

“Thanks.” Derrow retrieved Jiren and guided him through the
room, a veritable maze of furniture and bodies.

“You gonna take ol’ boy out back and show him a thing or
two?” asked a minion. He was tall and clean-cut, with a wide mouth and thin
lips that wriggled when he spoke.

The others laughed, except for Arnie.

Derrow wasn’t amused, either. “You looking for a problem?
‘Cause I’d be glad to give you one.”

“Oh-ho, big dway making threats,” said the man, laughing.

Derrow turned toward him, blackened fists balled at his
sides. Raith saw where this was going, and he didn’t like it.
These are
small-town simpletons
, he wanted to say.
And above-worlders, for all
that. They don’t matter. What they say doesn’t matter. Leave them to their
petty insults and empty threats. You know you could end them in the blink of an
eye. You don’t need to prove it to anyone—least of all them
.

But Derrow Leonard wouldn’t leave it alone. Not when Arnie’s
minions were having a laugh at the expense of his best friend. He stopped,
halting Jiren by the arm, and stared at the tall man with the thin lips. They
stood there staring each other down for a good long while, neither man moving,
neither one speaking. Then Derrow did something Raith hadn’t expected. He
backed down. “Come on, Jiren,” he said, prodding his friend toward the hallway.

The minion gave him a smug grin, then nudged the man beside
him. “Guess we know how he got his hands so dirty.”

Raith saw Derrow’s spine stiffen as he inhaled a deep,
calming breath. He kept going, though, undeterred.

Raith took a breath of his own. He couldn’t help thinking
that if Derrow had been the one afflicted and Jiren had been asked to endure
the affront in his place, the confrontation may not have ended so peacefully.
Derrow
is coming into his own
, he thought. It was the first time Raith had seen
the younger man choose wisdom and restraint over headstrong reprisal.

When the two Sons were gone, Raith turned his attention toward
Savannah again. “The real reason we came here was to find out everything we can
about Glaive Industries. Who ran the company. What they did. Records of
projects they worked on. Contracts. Blueprints. Maps. Schematic diagrams. I
realize most of this may be proprietary information, but if we can piece
together the clues, there’s got to be something here that will point us to
Decylum’s location.”

“You left home without knowing how to get back?” she asked,
as though it were the most obvious mistake anyone could make.

“We knew how to get back,” Raith said. “Some of us did. We
brought two navigators and a commscreen. The Scarred attacked us outside
Belmond, and they both went missing.” Raith brought out the battered device
Edrie Thronson had retrieved from the rooftop the day they’d searched the
outskirts. The day Jiren Oliver had been killed.

“Oh,” Savannah said, taking it. “A lodwit.”

“What was that?”

“This is a lodwit. A long-distance wireless transmitter. We
have one in the study. Here, I’ll show you.”

The Sons burst into excited conversation.

Savannah brought Raith to the bookshelf, where she flicked a
hidden trigger behind one of the volumes. There was a click, and the shelf
creaked open like a door. The well-lit room beyond was half library, half
museum. Floor-to-ceiling shelves lined the walls, some packed with books,
others displaying artifacts and trinkets from ages long past. Tinted daylight
shone through thick glass skylights in the ceiling. In the center of the room
stood a desk and two rolling armchairs.

Raith spun in place, taking in the high shelves loaded with
books by the thousands. “I’ve never seen a collection this large. It’s
incredible.”

“My grandfather and great-grandfather were both huge
collectors. Dad hardly ever came back here; he said it reminded him too much of
his dad. Uncle Toler used to spend all kinds of time in here… for the same
reason.” She went to one of the shelves and lifted a commscreen off its display
stand, then handed it to Raith.

It was an older model, a boxy, heavy thing. On the metal
casing beneath the screen were etched the letters LDWT. Raith looked at his own
damaged commscreen, just now noticing the remains of the same letters. His
weren’t molded to the frame, though. They were stuck on, a decal which had been
all but scratched off. “Does it work?” he asked.

She shook her head. “It’s got a built-in power cell. The
rechargeable kind. You can’t really remove it without damaging the thing. We’ve
never tried powering it up. This was just one thing in my grandfather’s collection
of memorabilia. I mean, who would we call, if we got it to work?”

Raith knew who he would call. “May I… try?”

Savannah shrugged. “Go for it.”

Raith removed the back panel and set it on the desk. He
inspected the battery and decided it would be tough to charge the unit without
melting something, unless he could touch the leads directly. “I might be able
to make this work, but there’s a small chance I could damage it.”

She took it back. “Well, I don’t want you doing it then. This
is an important piece of my family’s history.”

“I’ll be very careful—”

“Okay, you know what? This isn’t working. I’ve let you into
my home, and now you’re messing with my stuff. This isn’t a flea market. You’re
obviously in some trouble, but I don’t know how to help you. These are all just
textbooks and storybooks and encyclopedias. Nothing like the sorts of things
you’re looking for. It could take weeks to go through them all, and I doubt
you’d find anything.”

“We’d still like to have a quick look around, if you don’t
mind.”

“I think it’s time for you to leave.”

“Please…”

“You heard the lady.” It was Arnie. Nosy, self-righteous
Arnie, who, from what Raith had seen, made Savannah just as uncomfortable as he
and the Sons did.

“Alright. We’ll go,” Raith said. Had he been a different man,
he might’ve simply snatched the commscreen and made a run for it. Instead, he
retreated from the study and led his men outside.

He didn’t blame Savannah for being wary. A bunch of strange
men were nothing for a young girl to feel at ease about. He was a little
surprised she’d invited them inside at all. Now he’d blown their last chance at
enlisting her help. Unless this orphaned teenage girl had a sudden and
inexplicable change of heart, Raith and the Sons were back where they
started—only now, they were further from home than ever.

CHAPTER 45

Whelm

The
calaihn
were always there, watching. Their
fires cast a never-ending glow on the cave’s rimy blue walls, a constant
reminder of their presence. Every so often, they’d send a group of scouts
around the bend to sit on the snake’s spine and watch the Marauders’ stronghold
as if it were a piece of artwork, or an animal carcass. They’d cock their heads
and speak to one another in tones too low to make out, even if any of the
ikzhehn
on the walls could’ve understood their strange lilting tongue.

While the
calaihn
maintained their siege, Lizneth
often wondered what madness had driven Ankhaz to build his stronghold in an
area of the caves with only one way in and one way out. It was more easily
defended that way, she supposed. And as she’d seen when the
calaihn
tried to advance along the snake’s spine, it was treacherous terrain—difficult
ground for a force of any size to traverse while under attack from the
defenders on the fortress walls. There were the escape tunnels, of course. But
as Deequol had told her, those were in no condition for use anymore.

With food in such short supply and Lizneth’s belly swelling
like a bittermelon these past weeks, she had been forced to tell Deequol she
was pregnant. He’d sworn he wasn’t disappointed in her; after all,
lecuzhehn
who bore litters without a lifelong mate were no rare thing in
ikzhe
society. But his demeanor toward her had been different since then; colder,
somehow.

She had spent as much time as she dared with Raial and Thrin
and Nawk at first, but that had ended a few days in when Rotabak discovered who
she was. He had been close to kicking her out of the stronghold until she’d
told him she
wanted
to go. That had made it seem like less of a
punishment. Rotabak had remembered Sniverlik branding her a
calai-thaligheh
and decided that since she liked the hu-mans so much, he would never let her go
to them. In the end, all he’d done was put a stop to her visits with her
siblings—except Deequol, who had insisted on being allowed to help her with her
chores.

Less than two weeks into the
calai
siege, the food ran
out. Soon Marauders were plucking grains of wheat and rice from the dirt on the
storeroom floors, tossing them into cauldrons of salty rime water to make thin
stews with a flavor Lizneth imagined hu-man
sweat
must taste like. They
began to hunt insects, going so far as to bore holes through the hard earth to
find grubs and larvae. Some tried to catch the flies that had descended when
the corpses started to rot outside the walls. One Marauder opened the gates
against Rotabak’s orders and dragged one of the villagers’ corpses inside. He
ate the rotting meat and divvied up the bones for others to gnaw on. For his
disobedience, Rotabak had him killed and eaten.

Lizneth had been so hungry she’d taken a portion of the meat
and sat behind a supply shed, devouring it ravenously. Poor little Ryn was all
skin and bones, so she’d given him a healthy cut and let him chew on the
gristle. She’d been ashamed and disgusted with herself afterward. But no sooner
had she digested the paltry meal than her shame was forgotten, and she found
herself craving more of it, eyeing everyone in the stronghold to figure out who
might be the next to die.

Though she herself was thinning out, she caught more than one
Marauder ogling her swollen belly as they passed her in the yard. She had heard
of such savagery in some segments of
ikzhe
culture. Certainly it
happened among the burrow-kin, she had no doubt. Now that she’d taken part in
the practice, she thought maybe it wasn’t so terrible a thing.

Worse than starvation itself was the smell of fire-cooked
food, which wafted through the cave whenever the
calaihn
took their
meals. The scents of goat and lamb and desert hare enveloped the stronghold in
smoky sweetness, prompting every guard on duty to perk up and scent the air and
salivate. It was enough to drive Lizneth mad with hunger.

Talk around the stronghold turned from flippant defiance to
despondent pessimism. The same Marauders who’d cursed the
calaihn
and
sworn never to give in now spoke of opening the gates to let them inside. Where
once they had vowed to kill any
calai
who came within range of the
walls, the Marauders now wondered why the
calaihn
didn’t launch a final
attack and get it over with. Lizneth thought it was because the hu-mans wanted
to force the Marauders to surrender. The less fighting they had to do, the
fewer men they’d lose… and the more slaves they’d take.

Some Marauders held out hope for Sniverlik’s coming. The days
went by, and there was no sign of him or the armies he’d promised. As
discouraged as many became, Rotabak refused to budge. He would die here before
he let the
calaihn
take him to slave, he often said.

Then one day Rotabak came to Lizneth while she sat in the
outfitting chamber, mending clothes with a needle and thread. She gasped in
surprise when he grabbed her by the scalp and wrenched her head back. Ryn began
to bark and yip at him, but Rotabak growled at the pup to send him fleeing
beneath the table with a whimper.

“Your sister’s time is close,” he said, “and yours will come
soon after. Since Sniverlik isn’t here to punish you and your family for your
treasons as promised, I’m going to do it.” Rotabak’s grin was wild with hunger,
his lazy eye quivering.

Lizneth was long past the point of hunger pains, but she felt
her stomach tightening all the same. She kept silent, wincing as his claws dug
into her head-fur.

“Your every right is forfeit to the Marauders,” Rotabak went
on. “Because of your disloyalty and deception, your sister’s newbirths are to
be fattened up and offered to my
keguzpikhehn
for a meal when they’re
born. After we’ve eaten her young and picked our teeth with their bones, you
will tell her this punishment was your doing.”

Lizneth wanted to scream. She held her tongue as Rotabak
leaned in close, mouth watering, and whispered, “Your litter will suffer the
same fate, in its time. See that you take an extra helping the next time we
have a meal. I’ll make sure the cooks give you no trouble about it. I want you strong
and healthy when you give birth. And if you even think about defying me, I’ll
have that runt of a jackal skinned and spitted before you can blink.”

Lizneth felt herself breaking. The same part of her that had
been stretched to its limits aboard Curznack’s
Halcyon
was not so
durable anymore. Her body had grown frail and brittle, and with it the
foundations of her sanity. Beneath the thin black cloak she was mending, her
fingers found the dagger at her hip. Her hand wrapped around the hilt, sure and
steady despite the feebleness of hunger. If she could take it out, she could
reach backward and stab Rotabak in the gut…

He’ll notice
, she thought.
He’ll see. Before I can
draw the dagger from its sheath, he’ll suspect it. He’ll be ready for it
.
The idea was no good, she knew. She’d have to come up with another plan—a more
carefully thought-out plan, and one she could execute with minimal help.
Somehow, she already knew what that plan had to be.

That was why, after everyone had gone to sleep that night,
and the stronghold’s many doors and passages were guarded only by a skeleton
crew of tired, starving Marauders, she donned her cloak, lifted the black hood
over her head, and circled the yard until she reached the narrow strip of
saltrock between the keep and the rear wall of the cave. She had tried to make
Ryn stay in the common room and wait for her return, but her faithful pet would
hear none of it. When Lizneth dug in and began to climb, Ryn started whining.
She had to shush him several times before he finally quit.

That done, she turned her concentration back to the climb,
picking out each grip and foothold with careful precision. The first time her
protrusive belly scraped the sharp edge of a saltrock stone, she cringed and
nearly let go at the thought of splitting open like a sack of grain and
spilling out all over the sidewall. She would’ve worn her armor, except it
didn’t fit her anymore; it was too loose around the shoulders and too
restrictive in front. All she could do was hang on tight while the blood trickled
down and the stain spread over the waistband of her chinos.

Her arms were shaking by the time she reached the windowsill
above the stronghold’s rear staircase and clambered inside. She lowered herself
down and made a soft landing on the closest stair, falling to a crouch and
staying there for several seconds to scent and listen. The guards at the bottom
might scent her if she stayed too long, so she scampered up the steps and
ducked into the upstairs passage.

Sniverlik’s bedchamber was located at the rear of the
stronghold. She’d kept an eye on the hallway during her many trips between the
mess hall and the outer yard, bringing bowls of watery stew to the guards on
the ramparts. Then one day she had overheard two Marauders joking about how
Rotabak’s head was getting so big he’d likely move into the back chambers if
Sniverlik didn’t return soon.

Under normal circumstances Lizneth never would’ve dared enter
here. It was too risky, even without Sniverlik around. She wouldn’t need to be
caught while she was there; her
haick
would give her away for days after
she left the room. It was fortunate that few had reason to come this way in
Sniverlik’s absence.

She pushed on the heavy door until it creaked open, bringing
into view a room larger and messier than she had expected to find. Sniverlik’s
sleeping nest was ample and thickly bedded, though the straw was damp and
rotten with age. Beside the massive hearth—the only part of the room made of
real stone instead of saltrock—sat a small desk and a short bench seat, both
made of rough-hewn ironwood. The dribbly stubs of a dozen candles lay strewn
behind the desk, while discarded bones littered the corners of the room, and a
handful of forged iron symbols hung from the walls. An overturned bucket, empty
but smelling of
krahz
, sat beneath the largest of these symbols, a
three-pointed star punctured by several small holes.

Lizneth didn’t know whether this had been Ankhaz’s original
bedchamber when the stronghold was built; she assumed Sniverlik had moved into
it when he rose to power, just as the Marauders had joked about Rotabak doing
now. If the escape tunnels really did exist, there must be an entrance—if not
in this room, somewhere nearby.

The hearth was the first place she checked. It didn’t take
her long to find the pair of grooves in the floor on which the hearth’s left
face slid sideways to reveal a hidden opening. The stone wall was heavy and
difficult to push. When she finally got it moving, she cringed at the heavy
grinding sound it made.

After the first few inches the stone began to slide more
quietly. She peered through the opening to see a tall, roughly ovular saltrock
tube snaking away into glowing blue darkness, sloping downward at a steep
angle. The tunnel’s air had a wet, fetid smell, and it was so thick with
humidity it was hard to breathe.

Her heart leapt at the discovery. It was the first stroke of
good fate she’d encountered in as long as she could remember. She pulled the
stone panel shut and retreated from the bedchamber, closing the door behind her.
Now she had only the long climb down to worry about before she was back in the
yard and out of suspicion’s reach.

Lizneth waited at the top of the stairs, listening. Voices
came to her from below, deep and gruff.
It’s just the guards telling jokes
,
she told herself. She needed to get to that window before it turned out to be
something else.
Like Rotabak moving in, the fates forbid it
…

The windowsill proved harder to climb up to than it had been
to lower herself down from. When she tried to grab hold from the stair beneath,
her fingers barely reached. The stronghold’s interior walls were smooth with
plaster, unlike the rough saltrock ledges she’d used for handholds and
footholds while climbing up the outside. Without the weight and bulk of her
belly she might’ve been able to pull herself up, but now it was no use.

“
Beh dyagth
,” she cursed, too loudly.

The voices at the bottom of the stairs went silent. Lizneth
heard the flat, sibilant sound of dry nostrils sniffing the air. Her mind
raced; there were two other staircases leading down from the upstairs hallways,
but those would both be guarded too.
The bench
, she realized.
Sniverlik’s
bench
. She could use it to boost herself toward the window, but only if she
didn’t get caught first.

Her footfalls rang through the empty stairwell as she
scurried to the top. Seconds later she heard the
stomp-bang
rhythm of
spear-wielding Marauders ascending from the foot of the stairs. She opened
Sniverlik’s door, slipped inside, and closed it behind her. She couldn’t spare
the time or the noise to open the tunnel entrance, so she dove into Sniverlik’s
nest and burrowed beneath it, covering herself with handfuls of limp brown
straw.
No one’s been searching for bugs up here
, she thought wryly,
feeling her fur crawl. Her every instinct was to scratch at the things
skittering over her skin, but the room’s door opened before she got a chance.

The butt of a spear clicked beside the soft thud of
footsteps. Again she heard it—
sniff-sniff
, like two sheets of fabric
rubbing together. Lizneth lay on her side, dagger-side up, her cloak bunched
behind her. She had no hope of escaping the room without the guard noticing.
The best she could hope for was that this damp, rotting straw was enough to
mask her
haick
, and that after a moment of scenting he’d go away.