Jeran turns his eyes to me. “It wouldn’t have stopped Gabrien or my father. None of this was ever about my rank.” He looks down. “I didn’t want the reason I became Aramin’s Shield to be because of my family. As if they are the reason why the Firstblade approved of my fighting skills.”
A part of my heart resonates with his answer, and the words of Corian’s father come back to me.He felt sorry for you.
Adena reaches out to touch Jeran’s shoulder. He flinches, his mind far away. “Well, you’remyShield,” she whispers. “You should have told me.”
At that, Jeran gives her a wry smile. “Why? So you could scold me about it?”
“That’s exactly right,” Adena replies.
Jeran laughs, and in spite of it all, I can’t help smiling a little. At least they have each other; at least we are in this together. Red shifts against me, and I feel the trickle of his thoughts turn in my direction, enveloping me in its warmth. He doesn’t let on exactly what he’s thinking, and I can’t read it, but I do pick up in his emotions a sense of yearning. I stay quiet, too afraid to reach out through our link to ask him what he’s thinking. He doesn’t say a word either. Instead, we let the wagon fall back into its creaking rhythm as the horizon yawns ahead, each of us lost in thoughts about those we love.
We travel in silence until the first hints of dusk cast the landscape outside our wagon in deep blue. Adena is snoring softly, and Jeran’s head lolls from side to side in sleep, but Red stirs awake beside me.
“The warfront,” he says, in accented Maran, another word he’s learned in the past few weeks.
And sure enough, I can see the outline of one of our defense compounds in the distance. There’s another, farther in the valley, but even from here, I can see Karensan flags flying over it. A few more big pushes from them, and they’ll break past the last lines of our defense compounds, making it into the soft belly of Mara and the open lands between here and Newage. Sickness roils in my stomach.
The wagon finally lurches to a halt here, and an instant later, Decaine’s face peeks in at us through the canvas slit. “You’ll have to go on from here,” he whispers. “There’s a checkpoint I can’t cross.”
I nod, my bag already slung over my shoulders. Across from me, Jeran shakes Adena awake. “Thank you,” Jeran tells Decaine for me.He shrugs, but his eyes are already darting nervously around, eager to unload his illegal cargo.
The four of us ease out of the wagon without a sound into the tall grasses, where our shirts and pants blend us into the surroundings. There, we watch the wagon rumble away, Decaine hunched over his cycle as he pedals it back in the direction of Newage. I turn my attention to the defense compound some distance away. There’s a fence with a narrow rampart running all the way from one compound to the next a mile away, and the top of it is patrolled by the occasional soldier. Right now, it’s empty. We should have plenty of opportunity between here and the next checkpoint to sneak into Federation territory. I’m about to map out the route we should take when an image tacked up against the fence makes me blink.
It’s a sketch of the four of us, along with words written in bold black ink:
WANTED: FUGITIVES
Speaker offers 100,000 meins for the
Capture of
Talin Kanami
Redlen Arabes
Adena Min Ghanna
Jeran Min Terra
No one caught our wagon on the way up, but news about our escape has beaten us to the warfront.
I duck lower into the grasses, my heart racing. The defense compounds usually have lookouts with telescopes, scanning the area for Federation troops and Ghosts, but no doubt they’re now also searching for us.
“Now what?” Adena signs.
Jeran nods toward the woods, where the valley leading into the Federation’s territory begins to slope. “If we can make it into those trees,” he answers, “we should be able to get over the border before they can catch us. We just have to cross this grassland first.”
“The snipers will be aiming to injure us,” I add.
Adena nods back at Red. “Not him. He’s valuable.”
I’m not even sure if sniperscanhurt Red, not with his unnatural, armored skin and his weaponized body and mind. He may move so quickly that he can dodge the snipers’ bullets, could kill everyone at both defense compounds. But massacring our own side is not the goal we have today. Mara can’t afford to lose more Strikers.
Red.I nod at him, speaking through our link, and brush my fingers against his arm. He turns his dark eyes to me, and my chest tightens in fear for him.I’ll go first. Stay beside me.
He seems to know what my intentions are before I can properly articulate them.Stay beside me; shield us with your body so the snipers don’t try to hit us. Help us get through the valley into the Federation’s territory, while I keep an eye out for Strikers or guards that spot us. I can see the understanding in his eyes as he takes in my thoughts and makes sense of them as if our minds are one.
His gaze turns to the woods ahead. We begin to move.
