Page 37 of C is for Captive

“That’s the one.” She set down her cup. “That’s it. That’s the name Krebb said.”

He looked back at the display, his fingers dancing over the controls. She came around behind the chair and leaned over his shoulder as lines of incomprehensible symbols appeared.

“Are those the coordinates?”

“Yes.”

A little thrill ran through her. They’d actually found it. He opened another file, then another. The third contained an image. She leaned closer, frowning at it. It looked like ruins.

“What is that?”

Pale structures rose from a mostly barren landscape at the base of a huge mountain range, softened by distance and weather. Some had collapsed almost completely. Others still stood, smooth-sided and strangely graceful, nothing like the squat industrial buildings of Port Rusk.

He didn’t answer, and when she looked over at him, he’d gone utterly still. Not thinking-still or angry-still or any of the other stillnesses she’d learned to read. This was something different.

“Brannik?”

He enlarged the image. On one of the standing walls, weathered but still visible, was a pattern of narrow curling marks. His hand rose towards the screen, but he didn’t quite touch it.

“I’ve seen those before.”

She looked from him to the row of symbols.

“What are they?”

For a long moment he said nothing, then his finger gently touched the faded marks.

“My mother had a book with similar symbols. It’s Aurelian writing.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

Valkesh was fourteen hours away. Brannik had checked the calculation four times. The first time was because Krebb’s navigation system was old and badly maintained. The second was because the coordinates came from a Grorn priest’s information network and trusting anything connected to Thressk was stupidity. The third was because twenty years of false trails had taught him that hope was a dangerous thing and numbers were not. The fourth time he had no excuse for.

Fourteen hours.

He sat in the pilot’s chair and stared at the small point of light on the navigation display. Valkesh. An abandoned settlement outside the northern trade routes. Images of pale buildings and weathered markings that he was almost certain he remembered from childhood, even though he couldn’t read them. Aurelian markings.

Twenty years of searching, and he had never been almost certain of anything. Everything had been rumors. A female with silver eyes glimpsed at a distant port. A trader who remembered a small pale passenger who’d paid in untraceable currency. A dead machine that had inexplicably awakened when someone touched it. He’d followed all of them, and every trail had eventually dissolved beneath his feet.

This was different. This was an actual place. A place that was fourteen hours away. He was very carefully not thinking about the fact that the image only showed ruins. His fingers tightened around the edge of the console.

“You’re doing it again.”

He looked over his shoulder and found Amy standing in the cockpit doorway. Every time he looked at her, he was still struck by the knowledge that she’d stopped disguising herself completely. She wore a pair of trousers they’d found in the ship’s storage, rolled several times at the waist and ankles because they had been made for someone considerably larger, and the thin shirt she’d brought from Port Rusk. Her hair hung loose around her shoulders. Her face was clean.

No hood. No stain. No bindings. Just a soft, pretty, and infinitely desirable female. Just Amy.

She carried two cups and held one out to him.

“What am I doing?” he asked, pulling his attention back to her earlier statement.

“Thinking loudly.”

“I am sitting.”

“Very loudly.”

He shook his head and accepted the cup. She leaned one hip against the console beside him and looked at the navigation display.