Ohre (Heaven's Edge) (11 page)

Arvex argued. “I speak for my father and both your
fathers when I say you’re making a mistake! Am I the only one who thinks this is madness?”

No
, I might have said, if I cared a little more.

Tamn shifted to face them, then, keeping Qeya’s hand firmly trapped in his. I wished he could have seen the indecision in her face. She glared at the forest floor, lines appearing between her pale eyebrows as the heated voices increased.

“Enough!” Tamn stood between them and, as he was a head taller than either, seemed to bear more weight with his words. “We cannot pretend we’re living on
Datura 3
anymore. But Xame, you still must show respect for Arvex as our king. You said it yourself. Your brother and his father live inside of him as much as you. We cannot treat Arvex like a youngling. And this isn’t the old world. In this new world, we must adapt if we are to survive. Don’t forget it is because of the miners that any of us are alive now.”

Everyone turned to face us. I grimaced and tried not to visibly flinch under their too-knowing gazes. But when I turned to hopefully pass on some of the pressure to Adi and Remin, they were already heading back through the jungle, in the direction of the caves. I sighed heavily
and when I returned my focus, the elders were no longer staring. Qeya and Gem and Kahne and Bruv, however, had left the arguing adults and come to stand in front of me. I stood my ground, determined to face this without shame. Keeping my gaze locked with Bruv’s golden one, I saw myself at his age, once again. Except he would have a choice now, which way he was going to go. No clan or bleeding miners were going to graft and shape him into some mold other than who he was. He was, surprisingly, the first to speak to me. “Are you going back, with them?”

I glanced over to Kahne’s honest clear purple eyes, to Gem’s inquisitive and mud-painted face. Bruv was the only one who still dressed like a Royal. Kahne and Gem had clearly favored the looser animal skins of the Nuki. And Qeya…best not think about anything concerning her body at the moment.

“Well,” Kahne continued with false calm. “Are you going back?”

“Why don’t you come back with us?” Gem asked with excitement. “Or better yet, take me with you.”

“Gem!” Qeya scolded, and the twin who only belonged to himself now, bent his head slightly in respect to the Orona. “You will do no such thing! And he’s not leaving. Look, the others have already gone ahead… Or are you?” She hesitated to meet my gaze and I couldn’t blame her. I was having a hard time keeping my bothersome feelings out of the way. I was too afraid to open my mouth and start blubbering like a female.

And that was absolutely
not
acceptable.

I opened my mouth to speak, when Tamn called over to the children. “
Come, let the miner go won’t you? He’s obviously not staying, and we need to make for the village before nightfall.”

Arvex grumbled something under his breath, while Xame and Kall pressed their hands to either one of their king’s shoulders.

Gem pointed to me with the jagged jawbone of the beast I had first killed for them. “Remember, miner, you owe me one, having to put up with those furry pests in the village.”

Kahne whacked him in the chest with her fist, “Shut your trap, Gem! Min’s going to hand you your hide if you say one crude thing about the
Nukis.”

Gem pressed his lips together and a pensive frown crossed his brown face. I nodded to him, willing him to understand, and thought if there was any Royal youngling I’d gladly train in the miner ways, it was this one.

Tamn came up behind Qeya, pressing his fingertips casually against her neck and along her gills. She shuddered, her inner eyelids blinking as she turned to face him. I clenched my fists and was careful of activating my gauntlet to a more dangerous setting.

“Come. Arvex has finally agreed to the truce. The Var won’t be attacking us anytime soon.”

Qeya shrugged and glanced up at me one last time. “I wish I could believe that.”

Tamn frowned, his stoic features crumpling the instant she withdrew from his touch. “What do you mean?”

I felt pain watching them face each other again, only this time, I could almost see the peace they drew from each other’s presence. I knew as sure as I had back in the village after she woke up, they were better for each other. Tamn was the born leader their people needed.

I barely heard Qeya’s softly spoken words. “There’s something important that I need to do, Tamn, before I come home. Can you understand that?”

I blinked, the world around me crashing back into view with the same vibrancy as her red hair.

Tamn looked hard at me for a long moment before gathering her into his arms and kissing her fully on the mouth, and then replying, “Two nights. Then I come to the caves to fetch you myself.”

VIII

Dive

We walked together along the white sanded beach, with nothing but the sound of the rollicking waves to accompany our silence. Qeya limped from the wound in her thigh that had not yet healed. Every time she winced I flinched and remembered the sight of the Var’s spear shoved through her bleeding flesh. Just the memory made me see red again and long to raise the alien from the dead so I could kill her more slowly.

To the Royals, it made no sense that the war-loving Var looked so much like them, only harrier and uglier. It made even less sense that the Captain and his second had claimed two of their women as mates and brought them and their families back to live on the forest floor below the Nuki settlement. I could see this troubled Qeya most of all. She didn’t like change. She was made to be a creature of habit, obeying orders and learning how to give them. She might have been trained and fashioned to be solid and unchangeable as the earth, but I knew better. I couldn’t help but think of how much happier she would be living in the sea, with me. Not forced into a life of rules and endless duties. She was doing all she could to preserve their culture, but if their only surviving elders had embraced this world so fully, how could they do anything but adapt?

“Remin and Adi are going to live in the caves?” Qeya spoke at last.

I turned to face the open sea, not of a mind to think of the valley again, just yet. “Aye…” I spat on the sand and watched it sizzle faintly in the fading sun. “Fools have decided to mine the lower levels, as if everything we worked so hard to rebuild means nothing.”

“I’m sure they just want to stock up on their resources, before…” she trailed off and her brows drew together in pain. She reached for my arm unconsciously and gripped it.

I disagreed, knowing they had resources in plenty stored within the walls of
Datura 3
, but waited silently, patiently for the pain in her leg to pass. We stayed connected after this, her hand to my arm, even though she didn’t need my help as much as she wanted me to think. “Making the
Pioneer
heaven bound was all Adi could talk about, ever since we met up in the valley. The things she spoke of…made it seem as though it were life and death. Now she’s got the bleeding
mind
that thought up the design of both ships and she’s just happy to mine the caves?”

Qeya’s voice was weaker when she answered and I watched the way the sun caught her hair and made it glow like fire. “There is much potential here, Ohre. You saw the readings the
Pioneer
made on the mineral value. There’s enough here to build a whole new life, for all of us… And now that Remin and Adi have found one another,” she trailed off and blushed.

I was surprised she had noticed something that had taken me a lot longer to navigate to.

“Now that Adi has found her mate,” she added, “she might be more content to spend time doing ordinary things.”

The thought of Adi doing anything besides mining was laughable, but I saw how much Qeya wanted to hold onto her fantasies. I looked at her from the corner of my eye and smirked. “You talk like you’re trying to convince yourself, Navigator. But I’m not so sure. Shouldn’t we be worrying about the ones that shot us down? Who were they and why would they attack us, unless we were getting too close to something they were trying to hide?”

It wasn’t until I spoke the forbidden subject out loud that I wished I hadn’t. Qeya’s eyes glazed over with the same fear I had seen the day of the crash, when only my arms kept her body from flying across second deck. And it wasn’t until I’d said it that I realized I wanted to
know
why we were attacked, not just to learn the alien ship’s secrets, but so I could seek justice for everything that had happened. I vowed to myself then that if they ever dared show their faces on this rock, I would make certain mine was the last face they ever saw, to the last being.

“Are you going to stay here?” she asked in an even smaller voice. We paused again, farther down the beach than we had traveled before. Here the mountain nearly overtook the strand, so all that was left was a narrow strip of pure sand.

“Where else would I go?” Our eyes locked and I bowed my head with a smile and wrapped her under my arm, so our backs rested against the slick red rock. “I don’t belong in that valley, lass. And I don’t belong in those caves, neither.” Slowly, I lifted my eyes to the sea and told her what I only ever told Brien, and even he never heard the full of it.

“I was born in the seas of home world, far deeper than any of your kind could swim and still breathe. I remember the lights of our home and the other clans. I remember their faces and the fish we caught. I made my first hook from the bones of
behemoths
and used them to hunt even larger beasts. But those memories faded when our home exploded. Liquid fire came out of the earth and I swam as fast as I could to get away. All of my clan did, but I was the only one that survived, I guess. I kept swimming until I passed out and woke up in waters more shallow than any I’d ever breathed before.

“That was when I first saw the lights from the old palace. It was so different from anything we had built, or the other wild clans. We heard rumors of course, of our cousins who
had followed the pale ones to the surface. But it was legend to us, something we barely believed. How could anyone willingly leave the sea? I thought.

“I was caught by Old Brien. He never told me what he was doing in the abandoned palace that day, and I fought him like a
squish
on a hook until he clipped me in the gills. I woke up on land for the first time in my life and spent most of my life hating him for it.”

I gasped in an effort to breathe, as if the air was too light and too dry. My gills flared, needing to feel water again. I needed…

“Ohre?” Qeya stepped in front of me and slipped her hands on either side of my face. The sun melted into the sea behind her. Overhead I could already sense the gleam of the single silver moon. Her eyes shone brighter in the growing shadows, but her smile was sad. “Tamn was destined for me the moment I was born.”

I flinched but she kept me steady. I gripped the rock behind me to keep from gripping her by the waist where she would still be tender from the fight.

“I need you to understand. I failed my parents in so much. I fear that we are all going to fail them for good. I don’t know if we’ll ever make it to the heavens again and in case we don’t, I need to honor them in this. And I need you to listen and understand. That this is the last time I can give into this.”

Before I could reply she jerked me forward with more force than I had expected. I nearly toppled us both into the water, but she stayed firm as her lips moved against mine. When she parted, I was still gripping the rocks, afraid if I let go, I would crush her to me and refuse to release her.

“At least give me tonight,” I breathed and she smiled, nodded and pulled away. I frowned, curious when she stepped until her feet were in the warm waters, until she held open her hand. I could see then what she wanted.

We ran together into the sea. I didn’t know how far or deep we would swim this night. I thought if I swam long and hard enough, then she would never want to leave again either. If we never stopped, until we found the people who had abandoned their coral homes in the forest, then we could forget everything that waited on the land.

I would choose to remember home world as long as I lived, the seas and the home I knew as a boy. And I would always choose to remember the first time I saw her on
Datura 3
. I snuck onto third deck often, when others weren’t looking. It had taken me so long to learn to speak aloud that most of my own kind thought me incapable it. Silence allowed me to stow away in the kitchens, the only place where miners and Royals mixed. She and her brother were the youngest Royals I had ever seen. But I saw her sitting alone, first.

In my mind, I always assumed her kind incapable of feeling, they were so cold. Her hair caught my eye first, the same shade as the liquid flames that haunted my night terrors. But it was her face that compelled me to look twice. Tears had filled her eyes, something only the Royals could do, they said. And as she cried, she stared at the ship as if it were the most bleeding, wrenched thing she had ever known, as if she hated it as much as I did. She looked like she belonged to the sea. And I knew then that I would never love anyone like I love her, forever.