Into the Still Blue (38 page)

But now it seemed his search had ended.

Sable turned back to her, the look in his eyes restless, manic. “I had a field cleared this morning. It’s beautiful, Aria. It sits right beside a small river that flows down from the mountains. You remember my home in Rim? Proximity to water is essential to any prosperous civilization. I’m going to build a similar city, but I’ll improve upon it.” He smiled. “I’m getting ahead of myself. A city will come soon enough. First, we’ll dance on the very ground that will become the streets of Cape Rim. Then tomorrow we set about the work of establishing a new civilization.”

Finally, he turned his full focus on her and frowned. He seemed surprised that she wasn’t swept up with him.

“Aria,” he said, moving closer to where she slouched against the inner wall of the Hover, beneath the window where she’d last seen Perry’s ship.

Sable knelt, studying her. “Will you come with me tonight as my guest? I’d prefer to not to force you.”

She smiled. “And I’d prefer you dead.”

Sable’s pupils flared with surprise at hearing her speak. He recovered quickly. “That will change. One day it will be better between us.”

“No, it won’t. I will always hate you.”

“Will you be the only one, then?” he asked, eagerness tingeing his voice. “The only one I can’t bend to my liking?”

Aria couldn’t answer that question. If she told him yes, she would only feed his sick obsession.

Outside, Kirra approached with Marron. Sable must have heard them, but he didn’t turn to look. He kept his gaze on Aria, as if by the force of his intensity alone he could bend her to his wishes.

Kirra stepped inside, her red hair losing its brilliance as she moved into the shadow of the Hover. She had a nasty bruise over her jaw, where Aria had hit her.

Marron was disheveled and sunburned. He brought a trembling hand up, covering his mouth when he saw Aria. Did she look as dead as she felt?

Kirra’s lips curled into a cruel smile. “He’s here, Sable,” she said.

“Wait outside with him,” Sable replied. “I’ll be along soon.”

It was unnerving, the way he spoke with Kirra behind him while staring at Aria.

“She’s going to betray you like Olivia did,” Kirra said, anger seeping into her voice.

“Thank you, Kirra. Outside, please.”

Kirra shook her head at Aria and dragged Marron outside.

“Are you going to hurt him?” Aria asked when they were gone.

“Marron? No. I need him. I’ve called him here to get a status report. Nothing more.”

For a long moment, Aria just breathed as relief swept over her.

Kirra had stopped to speak with someone outside, her voice drifting into the Hover.

“How can you stand her?” Aria asked.

Sable smiled. “She’s served me for many years. I like her well enough, particularly when there is no one better around. Before you say anything, remember that she’s a Scire. Kirra knows where she stands with me and she accepts it.”

That word,
Scire
, took Aria right to Perry. She looked down at her hands, unable to hold Sable’s gaze.

“I’m tired, Aria. I want peace.”

“You want peace now that you have everything.”

“Not quite everything.”

She looked up. The desire in his expression nauseated her. At least he knew that. Her temper would tell him so without her having to say a word.

“We could accomplish great things together,” he said. “The Dwellers look to you as a leader, and you have the respect of the Tides. We can rebuild here. We can bring them together. Can’t you see it? Can’t you picture what we could be?”

“I can picture all the ways I want to end your life.”

Sable sat back on his heels, letting out a sigh. “You need some time. I understand. I’m in no hurry. You’ve suffered quite a lot.” He stood, pausing, his lips turning up. “I’ll send your father for you later.”

She froze, her heart squeezing in her chest. How long had he known about Loran?

Sable’s smile widened. “No need to worry. He’s a trusted warrior. A man of great character. That should make you very proud. He is very valuable to me. Almost indispensable,” he added with a smile. He moved to the ramp, turning back for one last comment. “Oh, and I’ve been meaning to tell you. Your friends who mysteriously disappeared? Roar and Soren? Not to worry. I’ll find them for you. My people are looking for them.”

Loran arrived to fetch her at dusk.

“He knows,” Aria said, as he walked up the ramp.

Loran crouched in front of her. “Yes.”

“You’re in danger because of me.”

“I want to be.”

“You
want
to be in danger because he knows you’re my father?”

“I’d prefer that he didn’t know, but he does. It was bound to happen. He was bound to scent how I feel. He is like all Scires . . . a master at using leverage to get what he wants. An expert manipulator.”

“Not all Scires are that way,” she said.

“No . . . you’re right. Not all.” With a sigh, Loran sat. “Sable applies pressure on the psyche,” he said, his voice unhurried and soft. “He’s very pleased to have learned that we’re connected. I have the respect of his soldiers, and he is wise enough to know that he needs me to keep order. And now he’s confident that I won’t step out of line. He has found a very big weakness of mine.”

“Would you have stepped out of line?”

“Never before,” he answered quickly. “But recently . . . recently someone I met has me asking questions about integrity and what it’s worth.”

“What is it worth?”

“A great deal.”

“So now you’re questioning him, but he has a means of controlling you . . . and that’s me?”

Loran shook his head. “You misunderstood. I’m not questioning
him
. I’ve always known who he is. What I’m questioning, thanks to a girl with a tooth-rattling kick, is who
I
am.”

She hugged her knees, unsure what to say. She’d hoped that finding her father would lead to her knowing herself better. She’d never considered it might also happen the other way around. “So . . . who are you?”

His gaze fell to his boots. “I don’t know where to start, Aria. This is new to me. I want to tell you so much, but I don’t want to burden you with more than you want to know.”

“I want to know everything.”

He lifted his eyes, and Aria saw a change in them. She thought it was surprise at first. Then she realized it was tenderness.

“My family,” he began, “and yours, has been in the service of the Horn Blood Lords for generations. We are soldiers and advisers who hold the highest military positions. It’s the life I was born to, the one I knew I’d lead eventually, but twenty years ago, when I was close to your age, I wanted nothing to do with it. When I asked my father for a few years to be on my own, he granted me one. It was more than I had expected.”

Loran had music in his voice. It was beautiful.

“I’d only been traveling a month when a Hover chased me down on the edge of the Shield Valley. I found myself inside a Dweller Pod, a place I’d only ever heard about in rumors.”

Loran glanced behind him, out to the beach. “There is no forgiveness in the north. We do things a certain way, as you know by now. So when I was taken captive, I expected something along the lines of what happened to Peregrine. Your mother was the first person I saw when I came to. She did
not
look frightening.” He smiled to himself then, lost in an image of Lumina that Aria wished she could share. “She promised I wouldn’t be mistreated. She told me I would go home one day. I heard sincerity in her voice. I heard kindness. I believed her.”

As he spoke, Aria felt like she was wearing a Smarteye. Part of her listening to Loran. Part of her in a Realm in which Lumina was a young researcher, fascinated by an Outsider.

“From that moment on, I didn’t worry. I had left Rim to see what was different from what I knew.” He lifted his shoulders. “I couldn’t have landed in a better place.

“Her studies dealt with adaptations to stress. Dwellers, she explained, had less resilience to it than we do. Sometimes she’d put me into simulations in the Realms, but most of the time she asked me questions about the Outside. Eventually, she was answering
my
questions.” He ran a hand over his jaw. “I don’t know the exact moment that I fell in love with her, but I will never forget the moment she told me she was with child.

“As much as I cared for her, Aria, and I did, very deeply, I realized I would never be accepted into her world. Her people would never be mine. She couldn’t come to the outside with me, either. I knew that, but I still asked her a thousand times. But she wanted our child to grow up in safety. In the end, we both agreed the Pod would be the best place for you.”

Aria bit her lip until it stung.
Our child
. For a few seconds, the words flapped around her mind like bats. “So you left?”

Loran nodded. “I had to. When I returned to Rim, I’d been gone exactly a year. Leaving her was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”

A sense of unreality seeped through her as she stared at him. Her eyes filled, and her lungs felt like they were going to explode.

“What is it, Aria?”

“I lost my mother, and I lost Perry. If I started to care . . .”

Her tears came like a torrent. They came so violently, with such an eruption, that she could only yield to them, letting the pain shake her, unravel her piece by piece.

After a long while, her grief shaped into something different.

Surprise.

Loran’s arms wrapped around her, holding her. When she looked up, she saw concern on his face—
intense
concern— and a flicker of something else.

“I’m sorry you’re hurting,” he said, answering her unspoken question, “but this is my first act as your father. At least it feels that way to me. And it’s . . . very fulfilling.”

She brushed her fingers over her eyes. “I want to try. I want to give us a chance too.”

They weren’t the prettiest words she’d ever spoken, but they were a start. And judging by Loran’s smile, they were enough.

They turned toward the open hatch at the same time, following the sound that carried from outside. Drums pounding in the distance.

“We’d better go,” Loran said.

Sable’s party had begun.

The clearing in the woods was much larger than the one at the heart of the Tides’ compound. It was bordered on one side by a river that stepped down the hill as it wove around smooth boulders. Lush foliage decorated the banks, and trees bowed low, trailing their branches in the burbling water. It couldn’t have been more unlike the deadly cold and stark alpine shores of the Snake River.

Around the area, torchlight wavered. Night was falling, the deep blue sky pierced by the stars that flickered to life one by one. Aria heard music. Two drums beating a rhythm, and strings as well. A few instruments had survived the crossing, then.

Sable was right. This place
was
beautiful. This land
had
promise. But she couldn’t separate the suffering of the people from the beauty of the place.

Across the field, the Tides gathered in subdued groups, standing, sitting in circles. Her eyes moved over them, her stomach twisting with anger. They didn’t look like guests at a party or like proud founders of a new settlement. They looked like what they were: captives.

Her gaze landed on Hyde. He was so easy to spot, tall as he was. Hayden and Straggler were scattered elsewhere, one close, the other across the field, near Twig. The remaining members of the Six looked lost without Reef, Gren, and Perry. Without one another.

Aria located Marron with a circle of children around him and saw Molly and Bear there too.

Sable’s people stood like watchdogs, strategically placed around the clearing, imposing with their weapons and black uniforms, horns twisting in sinister patterns on their chests.

“Great party,” she said.

Beside her, Loran said nothing.

As they walked toward the center of the clearing, where a table sat up on a dais, she spotted Caleb and Rune with a few other Dwellers. Of the thousand or so people in the clearing, the Dwellers made up a fraction. So much for their supposed superiority over Outsiders.

“Aria!”

Talon ran over, Willow on his heels. He wrapped his arms around Aria’s waist.

“Hey, Talon.” She held him for a second, feeling better than she had since she’d left the cave. And keeping him close meant keeping Perry close in some way too.

Not far off, a few of Sable’s men watched them.

“We don’t know where Roar is,” Willow said. “No one’s telling us anything.”

Her eyes were puffy and scared. She didn’t look like herself.
No one
looked like themselves.

“He’s fine,” Aria said. “I’m sure he’s fine.”

“What if he’s not!” Several people looked over at Willow’s raised voice. “What if they shot him?”

“They didn’t.”

“How do you know? They shot Reef and Gren. They shoot everybody!”

A low growl drew Aria’s attention to Flea.

“I will have that dog shot as well, if you can’t control him,” Sable said as he walked up. He spoke evenly, like he was stating a fact.

“I hate you!” Willow yelled.

“You can’t do that!” Talon yelled. Flea’s barks became grittier and louder. Hyde came over, drawing Talon and Willow away. Hayden picked Flea up and carried him off.

Aria couldn’t believe that only the children would stand up to Sable. This place, which should have meant survival and freedom, was a prison.

Sable’s gaze fell on her. He smiled and held out his hand. “Join me? I have a special place set up for us.”

She took his cold grip, only one thought in her mind.

Sable needed to die.

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