“I know.”
“But you’ve been hurt. Hurt and healed. Impossible! Your kind does not possess this ability. I would have noticed.”
“Yeah, about that. It’s all part of this new weirdness.” Margot glanced at the guards now almost upon them.
They seemed unsure of exactly what to do, given the collar around her neck. But it would only take a moment for them to decide to investigate further. And more attention wasnotsomething she wanted.
“I’ll tell you all about it later, okay?”
“Hey, you there! Move along! There’s no talking with the prisoners!”
Right on cue, Margot thought, flashing the old woman an apologetic look and stepping back.
“Later,” she said, then walked away, leaving a very, very confused Skrizzit in her wake.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Night had finally fallen as Margot trudged through the camp after being run off from her talk with Floxxia, and she was more than a little bit lost and rudderless. She’d been rudely yanked from her idyllic life with Braxxos and thrust back into this place. This stinking shithole of a mercenary camp. And unlike last time, she was not receiving any special treatment. In fact, it was quite the opposite.
Exhausted from the ordeal, she’d initially bypassed the dining area entirely and gone to walk aboard the ship but found herself given a stern warning that she was most definitely not welcome on board. Her living arrangements were made abundantly clear. She could sleep wherever she could find a spot, but not aboard the ship, and not in the men’s tents, as if she would want to do that anyway.
That meant she was left to her own devices, wandering aimlessly without a private place to call her own, nor a bed on which to lay herself down to rest. Given the lack of a proper bunk, she decided that going to bed on an empty stomach made no sense if her body was going to have to deal with the night airand hard ground. Skipping nourishment was not a decision she could afford to make.
As it turned out, the kitchen staff didn’t quite know what to do with her when she turned up looking for food. They weren’t the usual sort of brutes working for Gromm, though they were still very uncouth and rough individuals. But as they’d been essentially demoted to cooking duty, they were a bit out of the day-to-day drama that was part of the rest of the gang’s routine. And as such, Margot was able to convince one of them to load her up with a rather heaping tray of food.
She didn’t know if she’d be able to pull off such a trick again come morning once everyone had the benefit of a proper briefing on their returned guest-turned-prisoner, but for now she’d make the most of it.
Stuffing her face as best she could as she walked, Margot ate her fill of the over-salted and partially processed meal.
Do what you have to, she reminded herself.Keep your energy up.
She waited until most of the men were in the dining tent before she made her move. She hurried to the holding pens, moving right to the bars.
“Floxxia,” she called out. “Take this.”
The old woman and her cellmates reached through the bars and cleared her tray in an instant, leaving it as clean as bones in piranha infested waters.
“Are you going to be okay?” the old woman asked between grateful bites.
“I’ll be fine. Look, I’ve gotta go. If I hang around, they’ll realize what I did. I’ll try to bring you more tomorrow.
“Thank you. We all owe you our gratitude.”
“Hang in there. I’ll see what I can wrangle up in the morning.”
With that Margot hurried away, not risking waiting a moment longer in case any of the guards happened to meander this way, though she was pretty confident they’d all either be cleaning up from the day’s bloodshed or stuffing their faces after the lengthy excursion. What tomorrow might bring, however, was anyone’s guess.
She walked the camp for a while, finding it much easier to avoid notice by sticking to the shadowy dark areas now that night had come. The camp was illuminated, naturally, but not much. Gromm provided enough light to move around but not much more. Ever the penny-pincher, even when it came to basic comfort equipment for his men, it seemed.
And speaking of men. Now that she’d had a better look around, it really did seem that quite a few were missing. Had the fight with those other aliens been bigger than she’d realized? Unfortunately, there was no one she could ask. The men hated her, and Rylinn was now and forever at the top of her shit list.
Reluctantly, she headed into the area of the woods where her collar would not shock her. It was dark out there, but unlike the men relying on technology, she had learned a better way. She was one with the forest, at least significantly more than anyone else in the area.
She was careful to avoid the perimeter trees, not wanting to accidentally stray outside her containment area and get a nasty shock. She spent nearly an hour simply walking the area, taking in the terrain, noting the plants and even occasional wild animals who watched her with great caution. For them, these people were danger, and she was with them. Smelled of them. And until she somehow broke free, she would be seen as one of them.
Margot stopped at the base of a squat tree with broad branches that spread wide. “You’ll do, my friend. You’ll do just fine.”
Without any delay she scampered up into the lower limbs, moving slowly higher until she found a comfortable crook in a few branches high enough from the ground to provide her protection from both animals and men alike.
