Stitching Snow (19 page)

The men set up a camp with bags they brought from the transport. Blankets and meal-packs and I didn’t know what else.

A well-put-together kidnapping if ever I’d seen one, and it only got worse when Tobias sat next to me.

“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Essie,” he said. “We should be friends. I suppose in the spirit of friendliness, we can take this off.” He pulled the gag away from my mouth.

“What in blazes are you thinking?” I said, annoyed at the slight rasp in my voice. “The Candarans won’t just let you go.”

“I’m sure you’re right. Here I thought I was just coming to collect an unpaid debt, but then I get here and fi nd our friend 179

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Essie-the-Thandan isn’t a Thandan at all. You’re worth a lot more than some shuttle repairs, aren’t you?” Tobias was on a roll. First he wanted to use me to start a war with Thanda, and now he knew who I was. Maybe I was going to get traded to Windsong like a case of merinium after all.

No, because you’re going to get out of this.
We’d stopped for the night because the transport wasn’t equipped to navigate without roads, so it was too dangerous to travel in the dark. That gave me some time. Hopefully enough.

“You must be hungry,” Tobias said. “Here.” He held something like the nutri-bars we had on Thanda to my mouth, and I took a bite. A bit stale, but nothing wrong with it, so I took a second bite as well.

“It’d be easier if I could hold it myself,” I said.

“Oh, I’m afraid our friendship hasn’t reached that level of trust just yet. We’ll see how it goes.” I fi nished the nutri-bar without comment.
Wait for the right
moment, Essie. And that’s not when your temper’s charging up.

Dusk turned to full night with small talk about a game called morpek that meant nothing to me. Candara had no moons, so night in the wild was very dark. The Garamites had some portable electronic lights, but they didn’t cut the blackness by much.

I liked the wretched situation even less when I couldn’t keep an eye on my surroundings. One by one, the other men tucked in with their blankets nearby, but Tobias stayed on watch.

The darkness pressed in on me, not knowing what was out there, what unknown Candaran creatures might come for me in the night. My skin crawled. Now was the time, before my panic made it impossible.

“Tobias, I can’t feel my hands, and I have to go.” 180

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“You’re not going anywhere,” he said.

“Have you blazing Garamites innovated yourselves out of the need for biological functions? I mean I need to
go
.” He sighed and may have rolled his eyes. I couldn’t see. After a second, he leaned forward and fi ddled with my bindings, setting my feet free. He stood and pulled me up, activating a hand-held light.

“Move, come on.”

We walked deeper into the trees, to an area with some scrubby bushes, and he removed my wrist restraints before shoving me to my knees. “I’ll be right over by those trees, so don’t think I won’t hear if you try to sneak off.” I knelt there while he walked away, counting his footsteps as I rubbed my tender wrists and fll exed my hands, trying to get the blood fll owing. Thirteen. I could barely see his light if I peered over the shrub between us. Hopefully that was far enough.

My arms ached from my shoulders to my throbbing fi ngertips. I reached into my pocket and carefully drew out the wrist transmitter.

“Dimwit, no verbal response,” I whispered. “Tell Dane to track this signal to fi nd me. Two beeps to confi rm.” By the time the beeps came through, I’d covered the device with my hands, mufflling the sound. Now I needed to keep the signal going as long as I could. It had an open-transmission setting, but that particular model always slipped back to receptive mode eventually. The good transmitter had gone for a swim in the sinkhole with me. I switched it to the open mode and tucked it back into my pocket, hoping it would hold long enough for Dane to locate.

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I rustled around in the undergrowth a bit, stood, and took a few steps toward Tobias. He met me halfway.

“Feeling better?” he said as he put the restraints back on my hands—in the front this time, and not as tight.

“Much.”

We got back to the camp, and I watched where Tobias settled before picking a tree to sit against.

“If you’re waiting for me to fall asleep so you can take off, you’ll be waiting a long time,” he said.

“No, I’m not waiting for any such thing.” He stayed quiet, and I huddled against the tree trunk. Knowing I’d possibly set things in motion let me shake off worries of the dark and doze a bit. A reserve of energy had to be a good thing.

Dozing only worked so well. The night grew cold, and the wrist restraints still cut painfully into my skin, like a year’s worth of blisters piled up all at once. Light tremors rumbled through the ground at least twice, waking me and putting my nerves back on edge.

Tobias did sleep eventually, but only after waking one of the others to take a shift. When I couldn’t even doze anymore, I kept myself busy imagining how I’d beat the smirk off Tobias’s face, every hit and dodge.

Night didn’t last forever, and compared to Thandan nights, Candara’s were brief. I looked up through the trees as the stars faded, and minutes later the fi rst bird chirps fi lled the air.

Then another chirp.

“Dane Essie fi nd Essie.”

That blazing heap of—

I didn’t get to fi nish the thought. Tobias knocked me over, 182

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pawing at me until he found the transmitter. He threw it down, crushed it under his boot, and hauled me roughly to my feet.

“Get to the transport,” he barked at the others. “Go! We’re getting out of here.”

We got through one clump of trees before light fll ooded the area, blinding me. The other men shouted in surprise, but Tobias pulled me close with one arm around my waist. My feet were free—I could kick him or break his toes—but I froze when something cold touched my temple with a high-pitched whine of energy charging. His gun. I blinked through the light, which came from distinct points around us. I could make out just enough to determine they were mounted to guns.

Way too many guns.

“Let her go, Tobias!” Dane’s voice, coming from the second light left of center.

“No, I think I’ll hold on to her for a bit longer. I wasn’t far off the mark on why you brought her from Thanda, was I?” The cockiness of Tobias’s words couldn’t hide the panic lacing his voice. His plans had just come unraveled and he was taking it hard. That didn’t bode well for the girl with a gun to her head.

He’d made a mistake, holding me at the waist. I had some range of movement, but the timing had to be right. I couldn’t see beyond the lights, but I knew Dane would be watching me, leaving the other men to the rest of the guards. I looked directly at the second light left of center and mouthed the word
three
.

“I’ll tell you what you’re going to do,” Tobias said.

One.

“You’re going to back away and let us pass.”
Two.

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“Or I’m going to put a hole in this pretty royal head of hers.”
Three.

I ducked.

Tobias’s arm tightened on my waist, so I kicked with one foot as I twisted to break his grip. Charges sizzled through the air above me and to either side. My maneuver left me off-balance, and I fell to my knees.

The lights changed to a more diffuse setting, and I blinked away the afterimages. By the time I could see clearly, Dane was kneeling with me.

“Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

“My wrists are blazing killing me.”

He looked down at the rough polymer restraints and pulled a knife from his boot, cutting me free. My wrists throbbed, then tingled as he held them, his thumb brushing across my old scar.

I couldn’t drag my eyes away from his hands, trying to fi gure why they were different from any other hands I’d known.

“Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.”

I fi nally raised my eyes to his. “They found out who I am.” Dane nodded, relinquishing my hands. “I noticed. We’ll make sure they haven’t told anyone else. Come on, our transports are this way.”

“Wait, I need to get something.”

I stood and turned around. Tobias lay crumpled on the ground, groaning as the guards trussed up him and his friends.

At least the smirk was gone.

Resisting the urge to kick him in the teeth anyway, I walked back through the trees and found the transmitter where Tobias had left it. His boot had smashed it into the dirt more than 184

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crushed it. I could stitch it up. When I turned, Dane was right there.

“Ready to go?”

“Defi nitely.”

Dane had brought much speedier transports than the utility vehicle. They would get us back to Gakoa before the sun cleared the mountains. I fi nally got a clearer look at Dane’s condition.

Particularly the purpling bruise around his left eye, which made my gut twist.

“What’s that?”

“What? Oh, in the park,” he explained, “one of Tobias’s friends got a lucky shot in.”

“And you didn’t bother treating it because . . . ?”

“We’ve been busy. They landed in another city a few days ago, and I didn’t fi nd out until an assistant told Lunak about a stolen utility vehicle. I’m sorry, Essie, I should’ve told Kip what happened on Garam.”

I gestured to one of the guards to hand me a medical kit.

The supplies were unfamiliar to me, but Dane pointed out the transdermal rejuvenator. I activated the device and worked it over the bruise, watching it slowly fade, trying to tell myself it was no different from treating the gash on his head when the shuttle crashed.

But it was completely different.

Avoiding his eyes was impossible, especially when they stayed locked on me. They set something jittering under my skin. I felt other eyes, too. Some of the guards, but they turned 185

S T I T C H I N G S N O W

away when Dane glared. I needed a distraction, and the medical kit in my lap reminded me of a question plaguing my mind.

“Laisa . . . Is she all right?”

“I don’t know. I had her taken to a hospital and made sure the best doctors would see to her. But then we left, and I’ve been looking for you since.”

He didn’t say so, but if they had to send Laisa to the hospital, she hadn’t just been knocked out. I pushed the possibilities out of my head, but that left a question I likewise didn’t want to ask.

“And Cusser?”

He shifted, taking the kit from me. “You saw him. I think he can be repaired—I’m sure he can—but it’ll take some time.” Silence fell as he healed my wrists, and I made no attempt to break it. I had no words left.

We arrived at the governing complex. Dane insisted I get some rest while he fi lled in the council and got a report from the hospital. Regardless of his insistence, I had better things to do than sleep or deal with the bickering old leaders.

I went to the spare lab where Cusser had been stowed.

My drone with the dirty vocabulary, downgraded to a pile of scrap metal. The blast had decimated several core components. There wasn’t enough left to even run diagnostics. And it would need major body reconstruction. Maybe Cusser could be repaired, but I couldn’t do it alone—I needed the rest of the drones. Clank could do the welding, and Clunk could fabricate components with absolute precision. Replacement parts, recoding . . . Whirligig had backups of all the drones’ programs.

Ticktock knew better than I did how all the processors, power supplies, and relays fi t together. Zippy would salvage every possible bit from the damaged originals. . . .

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But they were behind me, planets away. The wrong direction. Even if it worked, there was no guarantee Cusser would be the same again.

I should’ve made it stay at the complex. I should’ve designed the defense program better, knowing the kinds of weapons people like Tobias used. I should’ve paid more attention.

I shouldn’t have gone to see Laisa at all.

The door opened behind me less than an hour later.

“Laisa?” I knew the answer just by looking at Dane’s face, but I had to hear it anyway.

“She died. At such close range, the damage . . .” Everything spun, but I kept my feet. I remembered being in her head, being
her
. “She had family. A husband, children.”

“Yes.”

Dead. My mother’s friend, a mother herself, was dead because she talked to me. Because she dared to get in the way.

Because death had failed to claim me eight years ago and now mocked my survival.

Dead because I wasn’t where I was supposed to be.

Do what needs doing.

I traced my fi ngers along the edge of the blast hole in Cusser.

There would be no repairing it. It wasn’t what needed doing.

“Get everything ready,” I told Dane. “We’re leaving for Windsong.”

187

18

LESS THAN A DAY LATER,

the shuttle launched. And not

Dane’s shuttle. We took Tobias’s—now that he was in lockup, he wouldn’t need it. The shuttle had a similar design but was larger, with four side compartments—two to each side—and a heftier engine. Besides, Tobias had already done the hard work of giving it a generic, untraceable registry.

We even had permission to do it. Since Garam had no cen-tralized government, the council talked to Brand as a senior member of Tobias’s colony. The Garamites weren’t thrilled with the way Dane and I had left, but Brand said Tobias had acted without forethought. Killing a bystander disgusted him, so we should take whatever advantage we could from the tragedy.

What Brand called “lack of forethought” I called being out-right unhinged, but the result was the same. On the positive side, some subtle questions confi rmed no one in Brand’s colony thought I was anything other than Thandan.

Kip didn’t want us to leave so soon, or at least not without R.C. ll E WI S

him. He knew coming along was impossible, though. Olivia knew his face. Besides, he’d be needed with the fll eet waiting for us.