Auby distracted me from the disturbing surge of pleasure I felt at having Levant do such a menial task for me, happily. “I have been built in a Vakarsa’s image for its thick pelt. I am perfectly insulated. My sensors are designed to pick up energy signatures exactly like this one, too. I can find the source.” The little cowcalf looked like it should be awkwardly bumbling around his mother’s six legs, not cavort across an arctic ice field. I was going to take his word for it, though. I was pretty sure that, out of the three of us, I was going to be the one hating it the most to be outside.
It appeared that Levant had a big backpack of supplies ready and waiting, possibly always prepped for tasks like this. When the three of us went through the first set of tent flaps into the temperature gate, he strapped it on. It was almost as big as I was, with poles strapped to the side, so I assumed it held a tent. Clever, because you couldn’t risk being trapped outside without being able to take shelter.
It was so cold outside that I nearly froze in place as I took my first step. The air burned as I breathed in, and I hurried to adjust my fur collar with clumsy, mitten-clad hands. Without goggles to protect my eyes and aid my vision, I could barely see a thing at all. Unfairly, it appeared Levant had an adaptation that aided him here: a pair of semi-transparent eyelids that slid protectively in from the corners of his eyes.
“Nictitating membranes,” he said when he saw how I was wiping snow from my eyes. “They are really a desert adaptation, but they work for a brief while here, too.” He hesitated, his hand catching my shoulder and squeezing, his large body towering over mine on the thick coils of his tail. I knew that kind of posture well. This was when the big men would patronizingly assure me there was no shame in backing out now. The weather was extreme, the journey tough, and I was just a tiny woman.
Levant lowered slowly, strands of his hair whipping in the icy winds, and he tucked them carefully into his own hood withfingers wrapped thickly in fur, just like mine. “Felicia, you set the pace. I am unfamiliar with your limits,” he said after a long moment. Then he tilted his head, which I saw mostly because the angle of his chin horn changed. “Auby, you take point. Watch Felicia.”
All that affronted anger, that easily hurt pride, fizzled and went out. Huh, I was certain he’d been about to tell me to stay behind. Why hadn’t he? I didn’t want to immediately think he was different, or that he simply didn’t think I was strong enough because we were different species. Something had gone on inside his head in the span between when he cupped my shoulder and when he actually spoke.
Whatever it was, I wasn’t going to let him change his mind. I set out briskly through the snow, at a pace that would keep me warm from the heat my muscles generated and that I knew I could easily sustain. I was a highly trained athlete. Before stasis, my job as a test flight pilot had demanded that I keep myself in peak form at all times. If I didn’t, I couldn’t sustain the g-forces a ship or a jet could generate, and I’d be outcompeted by my male colleagues.
Still, it was tough; I wasn’t used to walking in snow, and I wasn’t as strong as I was used to being, thanks to stasis. It should have maintained my muscle mass perfectly, but if it was true that I’d been out for a thousand years, it was no wonder it hadn’t gone perfectly. Had stasis even been designed to last that long?
The snow layer was only a few inches thick; below that, the snow had frozen into hard-packed ice. That made my footing surer. Auby’s dark purple fur was also easy to keep track of. It might be night out, but it was not dark exactly. There was simply toomuch white everywhere for that, so it felt more like a dark, gloomy gray.
The dark hole that abruptly appeared ahead of us was like a gaping maw in the dark. For a horrible moment, I thought it was a mouth, and then I wrongly assumed it was a hole in the ice that led to the water below. It wasn’t until Levant went right up to the edge and laid hands on what appeared to be some kind of winch that I realized where we were. This was the hole that led toward my ship. They’d been right, the energy signature Levant and Auby were picking up came from theFuture.
“Down?” I asked. Auby sounded muffled by the snow when he confirmed our direction. Levant did not even seem to need that kind of instruction; he was already readying ropes along the pulley system. I eyed his setup carefully, worried it wasn’t safe, but it all looked in order. Crude, made of rope, bone, and leather, but definitely built exactly the way I’d expect a winch to look.
“I will hold you, Auby,” Levant said, and to my surprise, the little cow trotted over immediately. Any fear of Levant deactivating him was clearly gone. Levant looked sweet with the calf in a one-armed hold against his left shoulder. “You hook up like this, Felicia. We will go down, all three of us together. It is deep. You must let me steer.” I didn’t like trusting someone else to do that, but Iwasveryanxiousto get down to the ship.
I discovered it wasn’t hard to trust Levant as he hooked me up with straps to his. It wasn’t until the three of us swung out over the hole and began lowering steadily that I realized how intimate this was. How did I keep ending up in situations that reminded me—and my crazy libido—how attracted I was to him? But hanging over a hole as deep as a skyscraper, held steady with histail, and guided by his impressive upper-body strength… yeah, it did the trick.
Damn if it wasn’t both terrifying and hot to trust a man and his biceps to guide us safely to the bottom. Of course, Auby seemed oblivious to the sexual tension and the way Levant kept staring into my face like I was the most precious thing he’d ever seen. The little cow-bot was babbling about the winch design and the depth of the hole as we progressed. Typical robot-like utterings, but they were interjected with much more humanoid humor and glee. Stuff like: The snow tastes weird. I should analyze its contents. Do humans have snow fights? I love snowballs! They crunch funny in my maw.
I was extremely grateful Auby was there, or I might have pulled Levant close and fatally distracted him by kissing his dark mouth. Thank God we reached the bottom of the long tunnel that went nearly straight down. It wasn’t until we were near the bottom that it curved and became a bit of a slide we rolled down.
Tangled in tail and arms, with a mouthful of snow and fur sticking in weird places on my face, we landed. For a moment, neither of us moved. Then Auby wriggled out from between us and trotted away with a casual, “This way, friends. We’re getting close! Oh, this is so exciting!” He was oblivious to why I remained sprawled on top of Levant a little longer, and why Levant didn’t move a muscle but lay there watching me. This probably went into the category of: if it pleases you, you may do as you wish. It was much more of a turn-on seeing that in his pretty eyes when all I wanted was to lie on top of him. We were definitely not going back to that moment where I puked on his tail. Nope.
A short while later, we were both up and hurrying after Auby. Our clothing was covered in snow, and Levant was still trying to dust it off me as we walked, using a coil of his tail and a large hand. His huge backpack of supplies was dusted with the most snow, so it looked kind of like he was carrying an entire fridge on his back. It would be comical if it wasn’t so impressive.
I did not recognize the section of tunnel we were moving through, but when something in Auby’s pace changed, I knew we were getting close. TheFuturewas nearby.
Chapter 7
Levant
Felicia’s ship was exactly where we’d left it a couple of hours ago. It was still as impossible to me to get it out as it had been when I’d first found it, but somehow, Felicia seemed more optimistic about it. She was standing in front of the narrow hole I’d dug to reach the side panel of the ship. She was murmuring about what a shame it was that I’d damaged her ship to get to her. I did not share that opinion.
If I hadn’t dug her out as quickly as I had, her stasis pod would have failed before I could wake her. She would have died. It would have taken weeks to hack through the ice to reach the hatch and free it enough for it to open. Her stasis pod had been at risk of failing even during the short trip I’d needed to make to get supplies. I’d powered it with a battery of my own to make sure it couldn’t, and when I explained this, she nodded, but she still looked unhappy.
“I believe you,” she said, her hands on her hips and her stance wide-legged. She had her head cocked to the side as she stared at the hole in the ice and traced the shape of the ship visible in the light of the lantern I was holding. “Just, something dug this tunnel, right? So if something can do that, can’t we use it to dig out theFuture?” I’d learned that was the name of her ship, but it was still a little confusing. The ships at the Shaman Training Grounds also had names, but they werenames, not words. The healing ship aboard which the three Shaman Elders lived was called the Amarathas, for instance. It meant nothing; it was just a name.
“Because what dug this tunnel is a Revenant,” I said to her, and when she gave me a blank look, I was forced to explain further. “The Burrowing Revenant seems to roam the North Pole. It dug this tunnel and then went in that direction. It is like a force of nature; you cannot control it. It just does.” Auby was watching carefully where I pointed, his head tipped back at an awkward angle, ears drooping as he did so. I had a feeling he was thinking things behind those lavender eyes that were distinctly Revenant-like—whatever they were.
“Some Revenants are built for death and destruction; others, like this one, simply for destruction. They do; they don’t think.” I wasn’t explaining it right. I knew most Revenants were machines of war, and the Burrowing Revenant was not, it was a machine built for a different purpose, but it still roamed, still destroyed. Beyond the mountains of the Bitter Storm Naga, entire plains and forests were uninhabitable because of roaming Revenants. I’d never heard of any Shaman managing to study one up close, let alone control one. Having Auby around was a novelty that would require further study. It was like the Revenant Corin controlled at Haven, though I knew that one could not talk.
“I believe only the smaller ones,” I pointed at Auby, “were built to be controlled or to coexist.” Auby said nothing; he sniffed with his pink nose, and it sounded exactly like the sniff of a Vakarsa calf. Cute, soft, but in his case with a hint of disdain. Like I’d been babbling out of my neck, but he wasn’t going to bother correcting me. I gave him a glare, but he resolutely turned and plunked his furry rump onto the ice, his back to me.
“That’s ridiculous,” Felicia said. Heat instantly crawled up the back of my neck and heated my cheeks. I could handle the littleRevenant disagreeing just fine, but my mate? Expression tight, I flung out a hand and gestured for her to start talking. She was grinning as if she very much liked calling me out, and that was… pleasing? It was strange, but knowing that she enjoyed pointing out the flaws in my knowledge took the sting out of being told I was wrong.
“Someone had to have built that Revenant if it’s not a living creature but a machine. And there’s only one reason to build a machine: a purpose. So what is the purpose of this Burrowing Revenant? Someone, once, had to have controlled it, programmed it to do what it does. Right?” I cocked my head and nodded as I let her words sink in. Yes, that was all true. My ancestors had built the war Revenants to fight a civil war. The Naga-shaped Revenant that had haunted Ahoshaga had been built by a Naga who thought it was his way to live through the Calamities, to live forever. These Revenants had a purpose.
My eyes went to Auby. He no longer appeared to be sulking, but now stood on all six legs, ears pointed up as if he were listening to something in the distance. Auby was built to be someone’s companion, and he had been built to protect and assist. I had already discovered it was as easy to trust his programming as it was to trust that of my tablet or my ship to do what they were designed to do. It was just a very novel idea to think you could perhaps access the programming of a Revenant as big as the Burrower and make it do your bidding.
Could we dig out her ship if we had the Burrower at our beck and call? Perhaps. The question was, why would we? Felicia had nothing to go back to. Her world had moved on without her, and a thousand years was a very long time to be gone. Everyone she’d ever known was dead. Here, on Serant, there was me—her fatedmate. And I was the most devoted mate; why would she want to leave?
