Finder's Shore (2 page)

Silence, sudden and loud. My breath is coming hard.

“It’s probably a false alarm. It happens sometimes.”

My legs feel boneless beneath me.

Brenon’s clipped tones snap the silence and a dozen scouts slip in single file through the gate. It’s barely closed behind them when Truso shouts, his voice an anchor I grasp onto. Bounding from one of the sentry platforms, he tugs at the gate latch. Brenon calls a warning but Truso ignores him. I snatch several breaths, willing my body calm.

“Are you all right, Ness?”

“I’m fine,” I say, though it doesn’t feel true. Ronan’s hand steadies me. I blink at the concern in his eyes.

Truso bellows my name as he strides back into the enclosure. At his side, a woman sags limply. I start forward. Her feet weave a staggering path as they cross the compound, scouts milling around them.

“Get her into the med room,” I say, my voice brittle in my ears, my mind already weighing explanations for the blood that soaks her clothes.

Truso’s face is clamped and tight as he lifts the woman — girl — onto the high bed. “Flet,” she says. “Please, look after Flet. I couldn’t stop the bleeding. I couldn’t!” She gasps for breath, her eyes flaring like those of a wild creature caught in a snare.

“They’re bringing him in now,” Truso says.

“Please.” The girl clutches my arm. “Flet.”

“Hush now. It’s all right. He’ll be here soon.” She slumps back against the pillows. “What’s your name?” I ask as I check her pulse.

“Her name is Hetti,” Truso says. “She’s been missing for a year.”

Our eyes lock and hold while I let his words expand till I have their full meaning. When I turn back to face her, my chest is tight with grief.

“Hetti, my name is Ness. I’m going to check your injuries. Is there anything you can tell me? Anywhere you hurt?”

Slow tears slide down Hetti’s cheeks, cutting a path 
through the grime. She smells of sweat and fear and blood. The last, at least, proves largely not her own, though there are bruises and cuts on her arms and face. Worse is the scarring I find. As I study the reddened line that circles her neck — from a rope, most likely — she reaches a clawed hand to my wrist. “They punished him for helping me. Please, you have to save him!”

I unlock her fingers and lay her hand on the bed. “I will. Just rest now.” I turn to Truso. “Can you find out where he is?”

He’s not long gone when the door opens, the intrusion causing Hetti to curl into a defensive ball. Jofeia looks first at the girl on the bed then at me. “Truso asked me to bring you these,” she says, setting a steaming kettle and a bundle of clothes on the desk.

I fill a basin and begin to wash away the blood and dirt that cakes Hetti’s skin. When I’m done she looks younger, which tallies if I understood Truso right, and Hetti was one of the girls living at Summertops when the Paras attacked last summer.

When Truso puts his head through the door, I glance at Jofeia. “Stay with her a moment.”

I join him outside the room. “How is she?” he asks.

“Exhausted and malnourished. There are some surface wounds, as well as older scars. Have you found the man she’s asking about?”

He gives a curt nod. “He has a gunshot wound. It looks bad.”

“Why didn’t they bring him in?”

Tino comes barging towards us, his face a tight knot 
as he pushes past and into the med room. “Hetti?” He grasps the young woman’s hand. “Het?”

Her eyes flicker. “Is Mam here?” With the word, her voice twists into a sob. I don’t think I fully believed it till then.

“Your mam is fine, Hetti. She’s in Vidya.” Tino drags a hand through his hair. “She didn’t want to leave, not without knowing where you were, but she couldn’t stay here. She’s safe.”

Hetti closes her eyes, tears spilling from beneath her lids.

“Are there any women she knows who could sit with her?” I ask.

“I’ll stay.” Tino’s voice is crisp.

I pick up my med kit. “See if you can get her to eat a little soup before she sleeps.”

Tino’s eyes never leave Hetti’s face. I lean close. “Hetti, I’m going to see about Flet. Tino and Jofeia will stay with you. I’ll be back soon.”

I have to jog to match Truso’s stride as he leads me across the yard. He stops in front of a squat shed. “He’s in here.”

“Why?” I ask, and there’s everything wrapped up in that single small word.

“He’s a para.”

Drawing a breath, I set my hand on the door. Flet lies in a crumpled heap on the floor of the shed. Ignoring the scouts who stand around him, I drop to my knees. “Flet?” His pulse is weak and fast. “Do we have to keep him here?” I demand. 

“We do.” The guard’s voice is expressionless.

“For now,” Truso adds. A muscle jumps in his jaw.

I compress my lips and lift the man’s ragged shirt. The bandage beneath is dark with dirt, dried blood caking it to his skin. As I begin to pry it free, a fresh runnel of blood seeps sluggishly down his side. “I need hot water, sterile swabs, bandages. And light. Can we at least open the door?”

I look up in time to see one of the scouts shake his head. Truso speaks up. “We can run a line from the barn. I’ll see to it, and the rest.”

I turn back to my patient. “Flet? Can you hear me? I’m going to look at your wound.”

There’s no reply. Unfolding the knife I carry on my belt, I slit the fabric and peel the encrusted bandage away from his torso. “Hetti says that he helped her escape,” I say, to no one in particular.

The skin surrounding the wound is inflamed. As I depress it gently, Flet mumbles and jerks. “It’s infected. He needs a bed — this floor’s filthy. And clean sheets and blankets.”

The door opens as I speak, spilling light across Flet’s torso. “Planking on trestles might be the best we can do,” a voice says. Startled, I look up. “Sort it, would you, Sorley? And fetch a squab and bedding from the bunk room.” Brenon acknowledges me briskly as one of the guards disappears to do his bidding. “Anything else you need, Ness?”

Holding myself tight, I raise my chin. In the past, Brenon and I have fallen out over his treatment of 
prisoners. At Home Farm, the paras taken prisoner were interrogated then shot — but it’s not only the way they were treated that I remember. I’m still haunted, some nights, by their brutality towards the people living at Summertops. “He has an infected gunshot wound. He won’t be answering questions for a while.”

“I didn’t suppose he would.”

“He should be in the med room. Hetti says he was wounded helping her escape, which I’d say puts him on our side.” If there’s anything as simple as sides.

Flet groans and mutters something under his breath.

“Until everyone understands that, he’s better off here,” Brenon says. I frown, uncomprehending. “You met Varn earlier. Not everyone sees the world as you or I might.”

I’d not have put Brenon’s view and mine together in the same breath. “But you’re in charge.”

“We’re not under martial law. I’m in charge of what happens to him only if he’s my prisoner.”

For a moment I wonder whether I’ve remembered Brenon wrong, then Sorley and Truso return and there’s no time for contemplation. As I begin a careful exploration of the wound in Flet’s side, I tell myself it’s no different to the injuries I’ve dealt with over the past year of clinics in Vidya, though it is. None of those was caused by a rifle.

Flet is lucky the bullet missed his arteries and organs but he’ll need more luck yet. I remove the fragments of cloth that were carried into his flesh and do my best to piece him back together. Given that infection is already established, I wonder whether he’ll have the resources to fight it. 

As I tighten my last stitch, I meet Truso’s gaze. “He’s lost a lot of blood.” He lost more while I worked on him, but that couldn’t be helped. “If we can beat the infection, he has a chance.”

“What will you tell Hetti?” Truso asks.

“Just that.”

Leaving Sorley in charge of Brenon’s prisoner, Truso leads me outside. “You did well in there,” he says. A sentry peers at us as we cross the compound. Truso sighs. “I’m sorry, Ness. This was the last thing I thought you’d have to deal with when you came back to us.”

“It’s all right.” I wipe a stray hair from my cheek with the bloodied side of my wrist. “He was injured, that’s all. And I’m a medic.” The sky is beginning to lighten. “I need to change. You too.”

Truso glances at the blood on his shirt then towards the bank of solar panels above the shower block. “The water will be hot,” he says.

Hetti is sleeping when I slip back into the med room. I place two fingers on her brow, relieved to find it damp but cool.

Tino stirs and straightens in his chair. “How is he?”

“Flet? I’ve done what I can, but he has a hard road ahead of him.”

He scrubs a hand across his face. “How long ago was he shot?”

“Several days — three at least, possibly more.” I try to recall Amar’s charts on the progression of infections in untreated wounds. “Not more than five.” 

Tino scowls. “Whoever shot him might not be far away.”

It’s a possibility I’ve had no time to consider, but it makes sense. “Neither of them was in a state to travel fast.”

He stands abruptly. “I need to talk to Brenon.” His eyes stray to Hetti.

“I’ll stay till you get back.”

He hesitates. “I promised I’d be here when she wakes. She doesn’t know anyone else. They’re all new settlers.”

It’s not disparagement, exactly, that I hear in his voice, but there’s judgement in it. The community at Home Farm had to me felt chastened by its experiences of last summer. Summertops feels close to being destroyed.

Stifling a yawn, I resign myself to discomfort and sink into the chair that Tino vacated, shrugging a blanket around my shoulders. I don’t know how long I doze. When I wake, Hetti is stirring, surfacing from a nightmare.

I lay my palm on her shoulder. “You’re safe,” I tell her.

She stares at me, wild-eyed, fighting her way back to remembering where she is. “Where’s Flet?”

“Sleeping, same as you’ve been. You’re both exhausted.”

“But he’ll be all right?”

“I can’t promise, Hetti. I’ve done my best. He’s lost a lot of blood.”

Her eyes seem to take up half her face. “Where’s Saice? Saice was medic at Home Farm.”

“She still is. I worked with her last summer. When I was just starting my training,” I add, because it’s true in a way.

Hetti’s eyes dart around the tiny med room. She’s 
younger than me, but the fear in her face is something I know. “Last summer was when they attacked us. My father —” her voice breaks. I reach for her hand and she clutches it tight. “They made me go with them. I didn’t want to. I didn’t want any of it.”

“I know,” I tell her. “It wasn’t your fault, Hetti.”

A sob escapes her. “Cort said it was.” As her words stumble into tears, I think longingly of Jago, the city’s archivist, who would have known what to say to soothe Hetti’s pain. But Jago died last winter, before I had a chance to see him again, his old lungs unable to battle their way past an infection that had settled in his chest. Saice said he was at peace when he died, and I believe her — but it doesn’t make my grief for the old man any less.

“You said Flet helped you,” I say gently.

She crumples the handkerchief I pass her. “After … after …” Tears spill from her eyes. “He said it was me — my fault. But I wouldn’t have hurt her.” Snot drips from her nose and she sniffs.

“Flet said what was your fault?”

“Not Flet! Flet wouldn’t say such a thing. Cort.” She spits the name. “She was so small,” she wails. “I only held her for a minute before they took her away. He said that I … that …” Her voice disappears in her hands.

A suspicion is growing inside me. “Who did Cort take?”

“My little girl. She never even had a chance to cry.” She grips my hand. “I didn’t want her at first, I didn’t want any part of him, but after a while it meant that Cort left me alone. That’s when I started to love her.” One arm hugs her belly. “But she was too small. She should have waited. 
Cort said it was my fault. He said if I was no good as a breeder, the others might find some other use for me.”

She stops again, while my imagination fills out her words. “Who is Cort?”

“A Levine. One of the leaders. He led the brigade’s attack on Summertops.”

“And got away,” I murmur.

“He took me and two of the men. He told the others he’d be back, but that he wasn’t leaving me to chance.” Her face contorts. “He meant to the rest of them. I was lucky, in a way, that he wanted me for himself. My mother —” Her emotions overwhelm her again.

“Your mother is living in Vidya. She’s doing well, Hetti, she works in the kitchens. I saw her just a few weeks ago. She’s fine, and she’ll be even better when she learns that you’re alive.”

The girl stares at me. “I hate him,” she says. “I want him dead. Dead like my little girl.” She weeps again, violently, then as suddenly stops. “Promise me you’ll save Flet,” she says, her voice strident.

“I promise I’ll do my best.” I untangle myself from her grasping hands. I don’t wonder that Hetti seems a little unhinged after all that she’s been through. “For now, I’m going to give you a drink that will help you feel better.” I mix a dose of sedative.

Suspicion flits across her face as I raise the cup. “Flet would want you to get strong again,” I tell her, and feel her relax beneath my hands.

“He helped me escape,” she says.

Once she’s fallen asleep, I peer out the door. The 
scout leaning up against the wall straightens. Yesterday I treated him for boils. It seems a long time ago. “Brenon’s orders,” he says. “I’m to fetch anything you need.”

“I need to speak to him.”

“Right here,” a voice answers. I look up to see both Brenon and Tino striding towards me.

“I’ve given her something to help her sleep,” I say, trying to gauge from Tino’s face whether Hetti told him her story. If she hasn’t, I must. It’s not a task that I relish.

His big fists clench as I finish. “She’s only a child herself!”

“This Cort took her back to the Paras’ base?” Brenon asks.

“It sounds like it. She said he was one of their leaders.”

“Which means it was no breakaway group.” Brenon’s mouth tightens as he weighs the implications. “I’ll speak with her once she’s rested. Have you slept, Ness?”

I shake my head. “I’ll check on Flet first.”

“Make sure you get your head down straight after. You look exhausted.”

As the guard ushers me inside Flet’s dark cell, I wonder whether Hetti’s testimony will protect him from those who wish him ill, and whether Tino is among them. I know from experience that being an outsider can be hard. Strange that I should no longer feel an outsider here, but only now, when I know for certain I won’t stay.