Stitching Snow (18 page)

I was terrifi ed Dane would kiss me again. I was also terrifi ed he wouldn’t. Mostly that he would and I’d have to hit him.

Maybe.

How does that make any kind of sense?

“Is everything all right?” he asked.

“Yes, it’s fi ne. Like I said, just going out to the park.”

“Want some company?”

“No. Thank you,” I added quickly. “I just need a bit of quiet to settle my wits after all the talking in circles in there.” The small smile he offered was one I hadn’t seen on him before, making me wonder when I’d started cataloguing his smiles. “Yes, they’re good at that, aren’t they? Enjoy your walk.” Before heading back to the council chamber, he brushed his fi ngers along my arm. So lightly, so gently, my usual instincts to lash out didn’t surface. I focused on the tingle his touch left behind, wishing it wouldn’t fade so quickly, and nearly changed 169

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my mind about letting him join me. Nearly. But better to do this alone.

Or so I thought. When I got to ground level and exited the complex, Cusser stood waiting for me.

“Cusser will accompany Essie,” it announced.

“Oh, will you? These new instructions from Dane?”

“Affi rmative.”

At least the drone was honest. “And if I told you to go shine your circuits because I’m fi ne on my own?” Cusser told me to do something much ruder than shining my circuits.

“I fi gured. Come on, then.”

The park soothed me and made me uneasy at the same time, particularly with the playing children. Cusser kept me anchored, though, one familiar thing in such a foreign place.

Maybe Dane had guessed at that when he gave the drone its instructions. The Candarans undoubtedly found the scene surrounding me commonplace. Groundskeepers tended to some damage from the latest quake—tears in the turf, small cracks in the decorative curb around a fll ower bed—while others trimmed the grass and added new fll owers.

What was it like to live on a world where the ground couldn’t stay put more than two or three days at a time? Where instabil-ity was so normal that only a fraction of the land was habitable?

What had it been like to grow up here?

I walked along a footpath, ignoring curious glances split evenly between the drone and me, until I reached a particular bench and sat down. Cusser settled next to me, inspecting its input/output ports, while I picked at the blue satin of the clothes 170

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I’d chosen that morning. A few minutes later, a woman with gray-streaked auburn hair approached and sat with us.

“Thanks for meeting me, Laisa.”

“No, thank you. I’m so sorry I upset you the other day.” I steadied myself, acknowledging that only part of me
wanted
to do this. The bigger part knew I needed it before we moved forward with the plan. I couldn’t talk to my mother; I
could
talk to her friend.

“You startled me, that’s all. I wasn’t expecting to run into someone who knew my mother. I wasn’t quite seven when she died. What do you remember about her?”

“I’m not sure words are adequate. Would you like to Transition?”

My hands jerked in my lap. “I’m not very good at it. And I can’t do it without touching.”

“That’s fi ne. Please.”

The last two people I’d body-hopped—Transitioned—had been Harper and Moray. Other than my mother, I’d never been in any head I really wanted to be in. Laisa had been Mother’s friend, though. It wouldn’t be like it was with Moray.

I reached over, lightly touching her hand. The next step was to search for the push-and-pull, but I didn’t have to. I didn’t hit an invisible wall like I had with Dane on the shuttle. So easy, hardly a thought, and I was there. Like Laisa’s own mind drew me in.

I sit quietly on the bench as the breeze wraps itself around my hair. The memory of Ametsa warms in my heart, where her daughter can feel it—where she can understand all of it.

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I do, Laisa! I feel how daring she was in the face of the
highest trees and walls, how brave she was when others made
fun of you. This kind of friend, I’ve never felt this. I never had
a sister. Your daughters—you see your friendship with my
mother when they play. You see my mother everywhere, just
like I hear her.

But Kip and Dane are wrong. There’s little of me there.

I pulled my hand away, pulled back to myself to catch my breath, and wiped away a threatening tear. It wasn’t the same as it had been with Moray, pushing myself, struggling to Tip him. My left-behind face hadn’t looked as blank, either. But it still took effort, leaving me with a heavy feeling in my limbs. It wasn’t natural like it had been with Mother, and that thought deepened the ache. Silence fi lled the emptiness inside me until I dared break it.

“And she never said anything about why she was leaving?” A smile played on her lips at some memory. “No. Like I said, just that it was to make things better. I’d thought perhaps she was coming here to Gakoa to work in the governing complex.

When I followed and couldn’t fi nd her, I imagined she’d joined the embassy on Windsong. Was she one of those prisoners taken years ago?”

“She died before that.”

The smile faded, replaced by warm sympathy in her eyes.

“I’m very sorry. I’m sure you miss her. I have, too.” I’d felt that when I Transitioned to her. The ache in Laisa’s gut resonated with my own. Before I could admit it, her gaze shifted to something behind me, and I turned. A commotion at the far end of the footpath sent people stumbling. Someone ran 172

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full speed, heedless of anyone else. Nearly half a link away, but I recognized the jacket. Dane.

“Essie!”

I could barely hear his shout, but the tone pierced me—a tone holding all the dread of Dimwit telling me “wrong way.” I looked around and muttered some of Cusser’s favorite words; I’d been too distracted by stories and memories to notice several of the groundskeepers working their way closer to us. Six of them.

One a very familiar Garamite.

Tobias had the look of someone wanting to collect a debt with interest.

I grabbed Laisa’s arm and stood, ready to run toward Dane and the safety of the governing complex.

“Not this time, Essie.”

Too late.

The “groundskeepers” dropped their gardening tools, and I spotted guns on their belts, ineffectively hidden by jackets. I knew they didn’t want me dead, so when all six came at me, I didn’t hesitate to lash out. Neither did Laisa, as she struck one of Tobias’s friends in the neck.

Maybe there was some truth to those rumors about Exiles all being fi ghters after all.

Six on two was still steep. Cusser tried to even the odds, engaging its new defense subroutine. It set two of its saws buzzing, keeping anyone from getting too close, and pulled a tack welder. As I gut-checked a man who swung for Laisa, I couldn’t help thinking I’d done a pretty good job with that little program.

Possibly too good. Cusser caught one of the men with the tack welder, burning a band of fll esh along his thigh. The man 173

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screamed and swore—Cusser swore back. Then the man pulled his gun, twisted a setting, and fi red.

I spun to dodge a right hook, so I heard before I saw. A terrible scratching squeal. The stench of melted alloys. Finally, my eyes found the source. Cusser was on the ground, a hole blasted straight through it.

All its lights were off. Dead.

I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t swallow, couldn’t think. In that frozen moment, Tobias clipped my head and everything swam.

Hands grabbed me, pulling me along. Dane shouted my name again, closer but not close enough, and my instincts took over. I twisted and jerked, but my equilibrium couldn’t take it, so I had to give that up. Every noise pounded through my head.

One set of hands dragging me disappeared with a shout, throwing me off-balance. Another yanked me back and then shoved me away with more shouts. I stumbled and caught myself on my hands and knees. After a few blinks, I willed my eyes into focus and looked up.

Dane had reached us, taking on several of the men at once.

I’d never actually seen him fi ght. When he’d pinned me in the shuttle, I hadn’t seen anything. When he’d laid Tobias fll at on Garam, I’d been busy with Harper.

He moved so fast, like he knew what the men were going to do before they did. Tobias took a swing, but Dane had already ducked, twisted, and pulled one of the other men into the path of Tobias’s fi st. As one man moved toward me, Dane pulled him back, spun him around, and smashed his nose with an odd forearm strike.

I tried to push myself to my feet so I could help, but then I 174

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saw Laisa sprawled on the ground, unmoving. My breath caught for the second time and my legs refused to support me. One of the men near her still had a gun in his hand.

There were too many, even for Dane. Tobias and one of his friends slipped away when Dane was busy with the others, hauling me off the grass and dragging me toward a hover transport with a tree logo painted on it.

I struggled, hoping to slow them down, but Tobias got his arm around my throat and pulled me along. I tried to look anywhere but at Cusser’s smoldering shell and instead saw Dane take more hits, making me fll inch. A crew of guards raced up the path, but they were too slow, too far away.

I twisted as we neared the vehicle, trying to see how badly Laisa was hurt. Maybe it wasn’t that serious. Maybe she’d just been knocked out with a blow to the head.

Please, let that be all.

Dane dropped the man with the burned leg and one of his friends, then fi nally spotted me as the other two ran for the transport. He moved to follow, but they were already shoving me inside. I was too far away. One of the men fi red a wild shot at him that was more than a few sniffs off target, but it was enough to stop my heart.

The door closed, and no amount of shoving or kicking could keep Tobias from speeding us away. Two of the men pinned me to the fll oor while the third bound my hands and feet with polymer bands and gagged me with a strip of cloth tied around my head. He pointed some kind of gadget my way and declared me “clean.” At that point, I settled down, conserving my energy for when it could do me more good.

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As we sped away, I laughed just a little, causing the men to look at me like I’d come unhinged. It kept me from crying.

People thought I was kidnapped eight years ago. Now, for the second time in less than a season, I actually had been.

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I’D HOPED THE CANDARAN GUARDS

would get to a ground

transport of their own and quickly catch up, or have some solid way of tracking us. As over an hour passed without a hint of rescue, I gave up that idea. The vehicle Tobias had stolen was common enough. It was certainly authentic, judging by the faint smell of fertilizer and grass clippings lingering throughout the interior. The Garamites were good with tech, so they’d probably disabled any identifying tags or locating signals.

After some initial protests about leaving the other two men behind, which Tobias vehemently shut down, the Garamites kept quiet. With the gag, I couldn’t ask questions or make demands.

They kept me on the fll oor in the back, so I couldn’t see where we were going. The best I could do was twist around to change the position of my legs once in a while and try not to rub my wrists on their too-tight bindings.

Despite my efforts, my legs cramped and my wrists became sore with threatening blisters. That’s when dark thoughts crept S T I T C H I N G S N O W

into my mind. What if the Exiles couldn’t fi nd me? What if Tobias had a way to get me off Candara? What if I couldn’t keep them from starting a war with Thanda?

When I closed my eyes, I saw Dane’s as he tried to reach me, knowing he’d be too late.

That knot behind my ribs was back, and it had nothing to do with the hits I’d taken.

He’d fi nd me.

Meanwhile, there was something very familiar about the homicidal feelings rising in my gut. The same feelings I’d had when Dane fi rst abducted me.

I was much less confl icted about directing them toward Tobias and his friends.

Right when I thought my legs would fall off and my wrists would explode, the transport stopped moving. The men got out, opened the hatch in the back, unfastened my foot restraints, and dragged me from the vehicle.

Tobias had stopped the transport in a cave, but we didn’t stay inside. My legs didn’t want to cooperate, feeling as gelatinous as the harri-harra sludge down in the mines. Two of the other men supported me by the arms, hauling me from the cave to a grove of trees. I took in everything as quickly as I could.

The city had disappeared. Not a sign of it anywhere. The sun dipped toward the horizon, and I couldn’t see any other source of light.

I had no idea which direction we’d gone from Gakoa, how close we were to any other cities, whether there might be rural 178

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settlements nearby, whether we’d left the populated province altogether. Nothing. For all I knew, we were in one of the quake-heavy regions with a sparkling name like Gaping Chasm of Death. Not an inspiring thought.

As the men deposited me at the base of a tree and refastened the restraints, I felt something jostle against my leg.

My wrist transmitter. Dane had given it back days ago with an apology for breaking the fastener. I’d been too busy to fi x it and had just carried it in my pocket. The Garamites’ signal scan when they took me hadn’t picked it up since it wasn’t broadcasting. Or maybe just because Thandan junk-tech was beneath their notice. If I could activate it, someone might be able to trace the signal.

It wouldn’t happen anytime soon with my hands bound.

And if I wasn’t careful, Tobias and the others might hear Dimwit’s response—I couldn’t exactly count on the drone to be dis-creet. And Cusser . . . Cusser was beyond hearing me.

No tears, Essie. Not now.

Step one was to get the restraints off.