Beyond the Red Page 20

  The High Prince, apparently, isn’t as dense as Dima. “They would’ve caught me.”

  “Naï,” he says softly. “You could have left at any time. My man checked, and you aren’t being tracked—and likely haven’t been in well over a term. You’re clearly a fighter—perhaps even a warrior, and you know how to survive these lands. You’ve been free to go since the moment they removed the tracking nanites from your system, and yet you stayed. Willingly.”

  Something inside me twists—a tight energy constricting my lungs and sinking into my stomach. I don’t know how he sees right through me, how he can read me so easily, but my defenses are crumbling and I’m not sure how to keep up this front. Because he’s right. About everything.

  I turn to the window again.

  “I’m not trying to disarm you, Eros—I just don’t believe you want to see Kora dead any more than I do. And I believe in your heart, you know she’s out there, alive, and you can find her.”

  Inhale. Exhale. I don’t look at him. I don’t move.

  “You’re the only one who can find her. If you refuse, I won’t punish you, but I don’t believe she will last much longer in the desert without assistance.”

  He’s right, of course. And if he’s serious about caring about her, about wanting to see her safe …

  I analyze his reflection in the glass. Everything about him is eager, but in an earnest, worried kinduv way—not the manic rage that kept Dima obsessed. But even if he’s fooling me, even if he doesn’t have her best intentions in mind, if this conversation is going where I think it is, it might be exactly what I need. If I’m careful about this, I might just get the chance to go find Kora myself.

  Dead or alive, I have to know.

  “She won’t last,” I say. “If she hasn’t found them, she’s dead already.”

  Serek sits up and his eyes widen. “So you did tell her where to go.”

  I face him and cross my arms. “I can find her, but I’m not taking you with me. I’ll go on my own, on my terms, and I’ll bring her back to safety.”

  He hesitates. “How do I know that you will return her to me?”

  “How do I know that I should? I don’t know you. As far as I’m concerned, you’re just as much a danger to her as Dima is.”

  He frowns. “I would never harm her.”

  “Why not? She supposedly tried to kill you. Most would seek revenge.”

  “She didn’t try to kill me.”

  My brows lift, but Serek continues before I can speak. “I’ll admit that I initially believed it, but it didn’t make any sense. Why would she make an attempt on my life just before a possible engagement? If she didn’t want to marry me—which was entirely her decision—she could have said so and sent me home without an issue. My death wouldn’t have benefited anyone, and certainly not her, considering the wrath it would have brought upon Elja and her rule. But if Kora was the murderer, then it would benefit one man: the one who would inherit the throne when she was abdicated and put to death for her crime.”

  “Dima,” I say.

  He nods. “It’s the only scenario that makes sense. I don’t believe Kora was aware of the poison she was carrying.”

  I watch him for a moment. Nod. “Maybe you’re not as delusional as I thought.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Wasn’t a compliment,” I say without thinking. Not that I really care if I insult the high and mighty prince. He needs me too much to do anything about it.

  He arches an eyebrow and smirks. “You’re very bold.”

  The doctor beside me looks about ready to stab me. Bold probably isn’t the word he’d use to describe me. “I’ll find and return her if that’s what she wants,” I say. “But you won’t come with me, you won’t follow me, and if I think for a second you’re a threat to either Kora or myself, I’ll slit your throat.”

  The doctor’s face is flushed and he’s shaking with what I assume is rage when he opens his mouth, but Serek holds up a hand to silence him. “I agree to your terms to a point, but understand mine: I will give you three sunsets to find and return her safely. If you fail, I have the largest army on the planet at my disposal, and I will not hesitate to use it to find you.” The port slows to a stop and the door beside me opens. Serek hands me a small black and gold bag with straps. “Everything you will need to survive for three sunsets is in that bag. Bring her to safety, Eros, and I will owe you a debt.”

  I glance at the bag. “I don’t suppose you have a sand bike on hand.”

  “You’ll find a black cube inside the bag. Hold it in your fist until it glows, and toss it in the sand. When you’re ready to be found, activate the tracking unit on the bike.”

  “A cube?”

  Serek smiles. “Trust me.”

  “I wasn’t aware that kind of technology existed.”

  His smile turns to something more smug. Proud, even. “It didn’t. Until I programmed it.”

  Until he—what? I must look as bewildered as I feel, because Serek chuckles and adds, “I’ll explain it to you another time, perhaps. For now, I believe we have more pressing priorities?”

  I nod and step into the warm, soft sand. Close my eyes as the heat of the suns bathes over my skin and my lungs fill with clean, free air.

  “I pray Kala will show you great favor,” he says with a soft smile. “I’ll see you in three sunsets.”

  After removing my hood, they left me in a tent with the assurance that someone would stun me should I attempt to escape. I didn’t test them—I sat cross-legged in the sand, inhaling deeply through my nose and fighting nausea as I drew pictures with my fingers in the soft, red powder.

  My poor attempt at a distraction didn’t help, but there was very little I could do to combat the cold terror raging through my system, setting a tremor to my fingers, and twisting through my stomach. How long did I have before they killed me? And why hadn’t they done so already?

  I’m not sure how long I’ve been here. Time is deceptive when you’re bored, and even more so when you’re bored and waiting to die, a combination that leaves me pacing in the small confines of the tent. Voices drift through the air around me—children laughing, the patter of feet, the mumble of layered conversations I do not understand. There are two men standing on either end of the tent—their shadows paint the sand-colored fabric surrounding me, and their voices are loudest of all. I was an idiot not to ask Eros to teach me his language, particularly after learning he spoke mine fluently.

  I suppose I never thought I’d need to know it. How wrong I was.

  A third silhouette steps before the entrance of the tent, then ducks inside. This is a man I don’t recognize, and though I stand taller than him, he holds himself like one used to respect. Silver speckles his trim black hair and his eyes are hard, dark, and strangely small and angled. He is also clean-shaven and his skin is well-colored from the suns. How ridiculous it must have seemed to Eros that we would think the pale, bearded man was one from his camp.

  “My name is Gray,” he says in fluent Sephari. “I am to understand that you are ken Avra Kora d’Elja.”

  I swallow my fear and hold myself upright. “And you are the leader of the rebels?”

  “I’m an authority figure here.” He crosses his arms as his gaze rolls over me like a soldier sizing up an opponent. I’ve seen Eros do this several times—to every guard or stranger who looked at me for more than a couple breaths. “You’re younger than I expected.”

  I scowl. “And you’re shorter than I expected.”

  He makes a noise that sounds almost like a grunt, then lowers his arms to his sides. “I’ve been informed that a certain half-blood made you aware of our location?”

  “Eros told me you would find me if I traveled west.”

  “And where is the kid?”

  I bite my lip and look away, a sharp pang striking my chest. “He was taken prisoner just before I escaped. Without his help I … I wouldn’t be alive.”

  “Hmm.” He watches me for a mo, then nods.
“We’ve decided not to kill you, although there were many calling for your head all a-splatter.”

  I grimace slightly. “Thank you.”

  “We’ve decided not to help you, either. Whatever circumstances brought you to our lands unprepared are yours to handle. My men will bring you a single meal and water bottle, then we’ll return you to where we found you. The Big Guy will decide what to do with you.”

  “Who?”

  Gray arches an eyebrow. “You lot believe in a higher power, don’t you?”

  “Kala, of course.”

  “Right. That’s what I said.” He turns away and steps toward the tent entrance. “Enjoy your last meal.”

  I wait until Serek’s port is a dark speck on the horizon before pulling the black cube out of the bag, holding it until it glows gold, and tossing it in the sand, as instructed. The glowing square—which is less than half the size of my fist—bursts into a cloud of what looks like silvery-black dust as soon as it touches the ground. The dust molds and forms in the air into bits of polished black metal that come together and morph, creating a sleek black and gold bike that rises from the sand. I don’t get exactly how it works, but Serek said he programmed it, so it must have something to do with nanites.

  I touch the steering unit and the thing wakes like a living creature. Golden light shoots across the slick black metal and it rises silently off the sand. I arch an eyebrow and lean closer, but the engine is a whisper, impressively quiet. I smile—Day would’ve flipped sand over this. It makes his treasured old girl look like a wheezy junker.

  I climb onto it and grip the handles as it rises a little higher. The controls are all in Sephari, so I can’t read anything, but Kora will know which button engages the tracking unit when I find her.

  And if I don’t find her, it won’t matter, because I won’t want it on anyway.

  I do look for the tracker just in case, but I don’t see the telltale blinking light anywhere, so it must be some sortuv internalized unit. But considering there’s no way I’ll be able to find Kora on foot, I’m going to have to take it.

  Plus I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t at least a little eager to ride this blazing amazing sand bike.

  Judging by the position of the four moons, I’m a little southeast off course to camp, but not so far off that it’ll take me days to readjust—in fact, if I hurry, I should be able to make it well before nightfall.

  The thing about Nomads is we never stay in the same place. We’re as still as the sand—we move with the wind and travel in bursts, not leaving a trace behind.

  The idea is never to settle in one place for long, so our location may never be compromised—not even the people know the route, just in case anyone is taken. But I know exactly where my former camp is headed, because Day was the one who planned the route for the next decade, and I was at his side when he did it.

  I’m counting on Gray not knowing I was present during the planning. Day never told him just how involved I was, because Gray would never approve. Gray never trusted me—no one ever trusted me except for the Kits. To everyone else, I was a soldier not because I was stronger, faster, and more equipped for the desert than anyone else, but because I had nowhere else to go. Nothing else to do. Gray believed it too—he never thought for a second Day would trust me with anything more than grunt work. Why would he? I’m not human, so why would they ever trust me?

  They never will. Nothing can change that I am, and always will be, half-Sepharon. I’m not one of them. I’m not one of anyone.

  I speed across the desert, my eyes on the northern horizon. After an hour, I recognize telltale landmarks—an outcrop of tall, weathered rocks that form a crooked finger pointing dead east; patches of bulbous, water-filled desert flowers essential for survival and waving blue prickleplants; a dried up oasis that was the center of camp two hundred years ago. Another five hundred leagues after the oasis, I turn off the bike and park it in the sand beside a striped, white flower and rock patch. Although Serek said the tracker wouldn’t be activated until I wanted it to, I refuse to risk taking it any farther. Camp should be about a ninety-minute jog from here—far enough that if I’m being tracked, they’d have trouble locating it without assistance, but close enough that I can return when I’m ready.

  I drink from the bottle in my pack, wrap a scarf around my head to protect me from the suns, and start running.

  It feels good to be moving again. My muscles ache as I run—I guess I’m not entirely recovered despite whatever serum they gave me—but they loosen over time and I’m soon moving like I did months ago in training. The suns are hot against my skin, sweat drips over my nose and runs between my shoulder blades, and hot air fills my lungs and makes me feel clean. Alive.

  I could run like this forever.

  I stop only to take water breaks and stretch out my sore limbs. My toes dig into the sand and the endless waves of desert have never looked so incredible. Something bubbles inside me—a latent excitement, the sense of being home—and I resist the urge to throw myself in the sand and bake in the suns’ rays.

  When the setting suns have painted the sky red and orange, I slow to a walk. The camp is about a league away—I know because the wind carries whispers now. Day could never hear the chatter in the air—he was convinced I was making it up until the blind test before my official promotion to soldier. Before being initiated into the army, every would-be soldier is blindfolded, taken to a random location within two leagues of camp, and left to find his way back. Those who returned were initiated. Those who didn’t were buried in waves of red, their bones picked clean by scavengers.

  I returned in less than an hour—the fastest any soldier had passed. I may not be fully Sepharon, but I guess I inherited enough of their enhanced senses anyway.

  But being a league away from camp means more than a short journey—it means I’ve passed into the surveillance border, where the soldiers lay hidden in the sand for hours, ready to shoot anyone who enters unauthorized.

  I may be one of them, but with the markings of a royal servant on my arms and the uniform of a slave, they won’t know it.

  I scoop sand into my palm and mix it with water until it forms a cold, muddy substance and paint a long vertical line on my chest, with two short horizontal lines near the top—the symbol of surrender. I draw it the best I can on my back, using my spine as a guide, though it probably looks terrible. With any luck, I won’t get shot from behind.

  I walk another half-league without interruption, which is unusual. I would’ve expected a visit from several soldiers by now, or at the very least a warning shot. The sands slide around me in silence until, finally, the hiss of sand slipping off shoulders and gear whistles through the air behind me. I spin around and meet the barrel of a phaser. But something’s wrong. The soldier looks barely older than Mal—and definitely not old enough to be carrying a phaser and patrolling the border alone.

  And he looks terrified.

  “Hello,” I say carefully. “My name is Eros. I used to live in camp with the Kit family.”

  “I remember you.” The phaser shivers in his grip and he holds it with both hands and sinks into a wide stance. The poor kid wouldn’t stand a chance against an actual intruder.

  “Great. I need to speak to Gray.”

  He hesitates. Looks at the markings on my arms. “You can’t if you’re tracked.”

  “I’m not tracked.”

  “All slaves are tracked.” I crouch to meet him at eye level. He jumps back, shaking from head to toe. “Don’t move!”

  “It’s okay,” I say, keeping my voice calm. “I just want to talk to Gray. I promise you, if I was tracked I wouldn’t have come here. I’m clean.”

  He hesitates. Squints at me. Bites his lip. “How do I know you’re not lying? Gray says all the slaves are tracked.”

  “They usually are, but the tracker didn’t work with me. Don’t worry about it. Do you have a com? I need to see Gray.”

  He shakes his head. “I don’t think you’re allow
ed in.”

  I take a deep breath. Try not to get impatient. “I’m part of the camp. Of course I’m allowed in—take me at phaserpoint if you want to, but I have to talk to Gray. Or give me your com, if you have one.”

  The boy hesitates, then takes a hand off the phaser and touches his ear. “Perimeter zone, sir. Eros is here and wants to talk to Gray.” Long pause. I rub my gritty fingers on my pants and hold my breath. “He says he’s not tracked.” A nod. Then he reaches into his pack and tosses me a black hood. “Put it on.”

  I catch it and arch an eyebrow at him. “I know where camp is.”

  “They said put it on or I can’t take you.”

  I roll my eyes and put the thing on. I don’t have the time to waste arguing with some kid who can’t even grow facefuzz. He shifts behind me and nudges me with the phaser. And so we walk.

  They bring me to the center of camp, to Gray’s tent. It’s too quiet, here. Wrong. There was always noise before, constant talking and laughing, grunting hodges and chittering fetchers in the livestock pen, shouting from the training grounds and the pop and crackle of people cooking over fires—but today all I hear are footsteps and muted conversations. The emptiness roils through my stomach like spoiled hodge milk.

  Supposedly I don’t know where I am, but the whole hood-over-my-head thing is for show because I was taught by the man in charge of security. I helped enforce the rules and train other soldiers. And considering who I am and what I’ve demanded, they’d take me straight to Gray.

  So I’m not the least bit surprised when he pulls off my hood and takes two steps back. Two soldiers who are actually of age stand at his side, which is still less than half of what his guard used to consist of.

  And then I realize. The raid that killed my family did more than burn a couple tents and take prisoners.

  “Have to say, I didn’t expect to see your face again after the raid,” Gray says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Nice tats.”