The other one, though, stayed, standing with his back to me, tail lazily stroking through the air. He cocked his head, and I caught the profile of his face against the faint light spilling in through the crack in the ceiling. Horns rose from his forehead, sharp and spiraling before curving back over his head. His eyes were as red as the lightning that marked his dark skin. He twisted more—no longer a silhouette—his face pointed right at me. All red glowing eyes and darkness.
My heart stuttered in my chest, fear curling through my veins and making my muscles tremble with tension. Any cold I’d been feeling was forgotten in the face of certain doom. Trapped with no way out, even my instinct to fight turned into a complete freeze. The moment stretched out, but he did not move, not even his tail twitched. He turned so abruptly after that prolonged stare that I nearly winced back.
Striding across the hold to the plundered emergency kit, he picked it up and snapped it shut. Then, casually, he hung it back on the wall where it belonged, as if nothing had happened. Without a backward glance, he strode to the hold’s interior door and out of it. I stared after him—at the still-open portal—and blinked, struggling for my brain to catch up to what had just happened. Did he keep my secret? Or had he not seen me after all? Why had he cleaned up the box before he left?
With more questions than answers, I slowly rose from my terrible hiding spot behind the Dragnell in stasis. The door to the hold was still open, and I had a feeling that was not a coincidence either. I didn’t dare to believe my good fortune, but even if it was a trap, staying in the hold wouldn’t do me any good either. I had to try.
There was no one in the hallway, but it was dark here, and things were hard to make out. I knew there was an airlock to my right, but they had sealed it after the attack that freed Nala. I turned toward it anyway and tiptoed silently down the metal hallway. Maybe they’d opened it back up so they could send out hunting parties. It was the only exit I knew about, so I had to give it a shot.
I was out of the hold—that was a good start. Now I just needed to figure out how to get off this ship and find help. Nala had been able to talk to her native guy, how hard could it be? And then I’d find Jasmine, too.
Chapter 3
Khawla
It took me a day and a half to reach the skyship through the snow without leaving any obvious trails. If the supposed survivors inside the wreck were awake, I did not want to lead them directly to my home. Nestled on the border between Thunder Rock and Sun Fang, the skyship was a huge, white mount, hulking over the now-frozen wetlands, foothills, and forest with its immense size. It was out of place, a blemish that disturbed the natural ebb and flow of the land. Unnatural and wrong.
There were no lights glowing on it, and it had been covered by a thick layer of snow, just like the rest of the world. If not for the remains of wooden walls built up against one side, I would not have known where the entrance was. A traveler could be forgiven for thinking the ship was a massive boulder, sitting crookedly on the edge of the frozen marsh. I knew better as I began to circle and observe from beneath the trees.
Some of Thunder Rock’s hunters would have come this way to set snares and traps to supplement our winter diet. They had not left any tracks or signs of their passing beyond the obscured traps themselves. The camp that had been struck on the hill overlooking the skyship was more obvious. Though gone now, it had left marks on the land that the observant tracker could still find: a tendril of fiber from a rope still clinging to a branch, the dips in the snow where firepits had been dug, and the absence of underbrush where wood had been cut for fire.
I spent a moment searching the clearing to assure myself I knew who had been here. The Shaman, Artek, had gone this way just before the start of winter, chasing after his human mate. A female I had briefly met while recovering in the Shaman’s home from my injuries. My hand touched the leather scrap covering my damaged eye as I recalled the pain of my wounds and my worry for my younglings. Kusha had only just died at the hands of Bitter Storm, and I had been mired in grief and guilt. Nala was mostly a blur, as was anything I may or may not have said to Artek.
This camp had housed many, but the most obvious signs were those of the dragon: the broken branches high up in some Darspines, and the deep imprints of paws beneath a thinner layer of snow under some still-leafy bushes. I had heard that Haven had come here, and I was not surprised by that. They were the only safe place for humans to live, so of course they’d come to rescue these new arrivals.
My gaze went from the evidence of the dragon’s presence to where the vague shape of the skyship wreck was visible through the bare branches. Rumors at Thunder Rock, whispered around the hunters’ campfires, said only a handful of humans had been saved. Thousands more might be locked inside that metal shell. Half of the hunters spoke about that with excitement, the other half with trepidation. More humans? For some—those who feared being cast out—thatmeant the possibility of a mate. For others—mated males—it was a threat.
I knew all too well what it was like to be other enough never to be welcome, or even to be considered dangerous. Not until I’d proven myself, over and over, as a hunter and tracker had I gained the respect of my peers.
Now the Queen had declared open season on anyone from Haven, and most especially on any humans. It was dividing our Clan, splitting loyalties, and I was starting to think that Zathar was right. We needed to change our way of life… but I couldn’t uproot my younglings, not after they had just lost their mother. They needed their home, their friends, and the familiar faces of the hunters who had helped raise them all their lives. They also needed me to return soon, which meant finishing this job to the Queen’s satisfaction.
Refocusing my thoughts, I put all the political issues from my mind. Track, scout, and hopefully tell the Queen and the superstitious hunters that there was nothing going on. I moved slowly beneath the trees, letting my body do its thing and naturally camouflage against everything I passed. My coils spread out to distribute my weight so that I left no trail. Though I had only one eye to work with, I flicked my attention between the skyship wreck in the distance and all the information that could be gleaned from my surroundings.
The tracks of a small hunter in the snow, the bigger trail of a herd of Arazal. Sleara, up in the trees, watched my progress with clever eyes and inquisitively twitching noses. There was a burrow of an Ayala too, opened just enough for the creature to scuttle out and reach its buried stashes to feed. Nothing to worry about, this was all exactly as it should be. Until, suddenly, my eye caught on something that was definitely out of place.
The tracks were odd, covered with sweeping strokes of loose snow. I crouched beside them to get a closer look and had to conclude that these were footsteps, steps someone hadtried to cover up. They had not done a bad job, either, but covering steps was not the same as not leaving any. From the size of them, they were fairly big, and they’d gone deep into the snow, too. When I pictured Nala, or any of the other human females I’d met, however briefly, I was certain they would not leave tracks of this size. Their feet had all been very tiny. A male, then? Or was it one of the other strange, ugly creatures that had arrived with this skyship?
I had not personally seen one, but I’d heard the reports from hunters who’d encountered one of their parties. They’d gone out onto the plains or into the wetlands to slaughter Vakarsa by the dozens. There hadn’t been any sightings all winter, though. These tracks also clearly indicated that only one two-legged creature had come this way. I lifted my head to taste the air with my tongue, but all my senses noted was exactly what I should be sensing: ice, the slumbering trees, the various animals I’d taken note of—nothing out of the ordinary.
I set out to follow these tracks, quietly moving through the woods toward the skyship the same way this creature had. When I reached the edge of the forest, the snow became much deeper, and the tracks much more obvious. Whoever had walked here had sunk with every step deep into the snow, and they’d given up on covering their tracks. I discovered the soft brush of a Darspine branch discarded by the tracks, probably whatever this person had used to brush snow into his footsteps.
Then I heard a noise and jerked my head up from the tracks to zero in on the sound. By the ship—I was certain of it—and it wasn’t an animal. This sounded like the hiss of functional relics. Discarding some of my previous caution, I hunkered low to the snow and sped along the obvious trail toward the ship. If this was whoever had walked here, likely, as no new snow had covered the tracks, I might still be able to catch them. At the very least, I wanted a look at who it could be.
I trusted my ability to blend with the terrain enough to approach the wreck. The unending cover of snow made it obvious no one had come through this way, except for the tracks. They went through the ruined palisade, where even with frost clinging to every log, the evidence of a fire was still obvious. Then they avoided the most obvious entrance to the ship, where a metal tongue, covered by snow, stuck out from the metal walls. Instead, they went beneath that metal walkway and under the belly of the ship.
I only hesitated a moment before following the tracks into the darkness. Wind had blown snow under the ship too, but it was not nearly as thick. Darkness didn’t bother my one eye either, and I turned my head left and right to take in the place. The ship was partially embedded in the ground on its belly, but thick, squat metal legs kept part of it upright on the uneven terrain. That’s how there was space underneath, though it was a tight fit, and I had to hunker down quite far.
That’s when I caught movement. It wasn’t far ahead, but so quiet that I would have missed it if I hadn’t turned my head that way at the right moment. A limb of some kind—black and red—sliding through an open hatch right in the belly of the metal hull above me. Then the hatch slid shut with a hiss that made more noise than the one I’d been tracking ever did. I was mildly impressed by that; I didn’t think I’d been this close on their heels.
Much more cautious, I slipped closer to investigate this opening. The sighting of something red and black came just a bit too close to what the hunters had been whispering about: ghostly apparitions in the woods, red lightning in the night. I had to investigate now that I’d confirmed such a sighting. The thrill of the hunt filled me then, pulling on my instincts and, at last, bringing me fully into the present. No longer was I thinking of my younglings back home; all I wanted now was to find out what I’d seen. Therehadto be a plausible explanation, there always was.
There was more information to discover in the tracks just beneath the now-shut hatch. No lights glowed here, as was sometimes the case with functioning relics. The skyship wrecks I’d scouted had all been as varied and different as could be, but these types of hatches were nearly always operated by buttons. I did not see any here, but I did have distinct prints pressed into the frozen ground and the thin layer of snow that had accumulated. Shaped like those weird feet the humans had, but bigger, and with many ridges along them. Not human, then? Something else.
There was also a scent that hadn’t blown away yet. Something dark, musty, not entirely unpleasant. It was confusing, because by all accounts from my hunters, those other ugly, strange invaders had carried a bad smell. So this was something else again. I was not happy about that; it wasn’t news the Queen would appreciate. The thought crossed my mind that this one might be petty enough to take it out on me when she didn’t like my news. Worse, she might turn on my younglings. At least the previous Queen had appeared completely oblivious to their existence.
So what was the next step? Circle the wreck, find more tracks? My quarry with the answers had gone inside, unless there were more of them out there. Normally, I might have taken the patient approach, waited things out, laid a trap. But too many warnings and threats to my younglings had made me impatient. I could not afford to stay away that long. I needed answers, now.
Against my better judgment, I tested the hatch with my hands and discovered a wheel I could turn to open it. No buttons, no relic after all, just a strange handle that worked without any of that ancient, mystical power that made so many of our relics work. Very well. That was good news; it meant I could open it whenever I felt like it.
