What are you doing reminiscing?
Weaver shook his head. It was that cursed golden liquid, making him remember things he’d rather keep buried and making his heart soft as swamp sludge. Bottom line was he needed Eri, and her people invaded Refuge, so he shouldn’t feel a shred of guilt for making her decipher those symbols.
But Striver cares for her.
Taking his brother’s girlfriend made him feel like the slime on the underside of Jolt’s boots. Striver was still making him look bad after all these years. Weaver’s resentment swelled, predictable as the tide.
Striver should have let me be that day in the river.
He would have died. Think of all the suffering he wouldn’t have had to endure.
“Are we almost there?” Eri whined behind him like he was dragging her to the harvest fair. “My feet hurt.”
“We’re close.” Weaver turned just as Eri tumbled forward. He caught her in his arms, his face inches from hers. Dark circles ringed her eyes, her forehead was creased in worry, and her face was eerily pale.
I did this to her.
Remorse panged in his gut. He squeezed her shoulders and helped her up. “You okay?”
She pushed him away, disgust curling her beautiful lips into a frown. “Get away from me.” The thought of taking her back to the village and giving her back to Striver crossed his mind, just as an arrow cut through the leaves and dug into the earth in front of them.
Weaver’s heart sped.
Too late for redemption.
He straightened, stiff as a statue, and spoke without turning to her. “Don’t move a muscle.”
Holding up both hands, Weaver waited. People concealed by headdresses of leaves emerged from the forest and surrounded them in a semicircle. Crusty led them, and Weaver focused on his attention. The old man seemed to have a soft spot for Weaver, and maybe he could use that to his advantage.
“Come back for more, eh?” Crusty chuckled as the others pointed sharp spears at Weaver’s gut. Crusty clapped his shoulder. “Thought you were dead, weasel.”
“That’s Weaver.”
He chewed on some tobacco root and spit into the forest. “What happened to Snipe?”
Weaver shook his head. “Didn’t make it. He fell in the golden liquid.”
“Poor bastard.” A glint of excitement traveled across Crusty’s eyes. Since Snipe hadn’t made it, Jolt would promote him. “Gimme that shiny laser of yours, and we’ll call it even.”
Weaver handed over the laser. “I’ve come to speak directly to Jolt.”
Eri seethed.
Crusty shook his head, oily gray hair falling around his face. “Jolt’s been looking for ya like a mother boar over a younglin’. You’d better have something good for him.”
“This is real good. But it’s real secret as well.”
Crusty put up his hand and the people with spears backed away, giving them privacy.
Weaver leaned forward, suppressing the urge to gag as he smelled the man’s sour breath. “Not only can I give him the codes to the guns, but I have a linguist.”
Crusty rubbed the gray stubble on his chin. “A what?”
Weaver waved his hand in the air. He’d always thought Crusty was a bit slow. Although, no one in the Lawless lands lived to that ripe old age without some amount of cunning. “Never mind. A girl from the ship who can decipher those symbols he wanted me to learn.”
The old man blinked in surprise. “You sure ’bout that? ’Cause Jolt’ll rip that sweet little thing to shreds if he feels like it.”
An undercurrent of anxiety lined with guilt shot through him. Weaver took a deep breath. “I’m sure.”
“May fate work its will.” Crusty signaled the others and they walked toward camp in a rag tag parade, Weaver leading Eri like a new pet. Lawless leered at them as they passed, some making snide remarks about a curly red head. Although Weaver had been through this before, he couldn’t help uneasiness from creeping under his skin. Protecting himself was one thing, but babysitting a young woman, his brother’s potential love interest, was another. This time he was in over his head in waters filled with hungry leechers.
…
Eri tried to ignore the lewd comments that could only refer to things she’d never heard of in her sheltered life aboard the
Heritage
. Men dressed in rough leather breeches with sticks through their nose, ghoulishly painted faces, and muddy dreadlocks lined the streets, looking like a ragtag bunch of savages. As she passed ramshackle huts and muddy pathways filled with garbage and animal excrement, she wondered, for a moment, if it actually might be best for her people to take these guys out.
No, I’m not going there.
Everyone deserved a life, and what they did with it was their choice. Too long had she lived on a ship where everything had been decided for her, predestined. Now that she had a taste of free will, she didn’t want to let it go. Even if her awakening meant stumbling through a village of chaos and poverty.
Eri covered her nose with the side of her arm, blocking the dank smell of mold mingled with sweat. Compared to Striver’s village, this place looked like hell. People argued in the streets, calling out profanities, and children cried from the darkness of muddy, moss-covered huts. They walked to the back of the settlement where the husk of an old space ship protruded from the earth like a broken toy.
Holy Refuge, it must have come from the original space pirates.
She hadn’t believed it when Striver had told her there were other ships on Refuge, and the one they protected was the only one that could still fly.
Half buried in the ground, with moss draped over its wing, the ship looked like a forgotten dream, a remnant of a lost civilization. Maybe it was. As a man slapped a small boar on a rope, and a little boy stole a broken pot from a windowsill, she wondered if these Lawless people were civilized at all.
A guard stood on each side of the entrance to the ruined spacecraft. The one on the right whispered to Crusty. The guard jogged up the ramp.
Eri had a crazy hope that Jolt wouldn’t want to see them.
A minute later, the guard sprinted down the ramp, faster than he’d gone up. He nodded to Crusty and turned to Eri and Weaver.
“Jolt will see you now.”
A shiver tickled her spine. She remembered Jolt’s unforgiving, dead eyes from the swamp where she’d hidden with Striver in the tree.
If only I could go back to that moment and warn him about Delta Slip, tell him that I’m with him and not the people storming Refuge from above.
Weaver pulled the rope tied around her waist and she jerked forward, feeling unprepared for what lay inside.
Humid air reeking of smoke and mold bathed Eri as she stepped in. Her tired reflection stared back at her on wallscreens long dead. The technology was centuries old and outdated, with thick, clumsy wires leading into the ceiling and running along the floor.
“I thought you were dead,” Jolt growled from the captain’s chair.
Eri whirled around, feeling as though an icy hand clutched her heart. Jolt slumped in his chair, his face covered in shadows.
Weaver stepped between her and Jolt. “You lucked out. I survived.”
“Only to take my secrets back to the village.”
“They asked me nothing. It’s not their style to torture and interrogate.”
Jolt shifted in his seat, the plastic creaking. “Naive softies, don’t know what’s good for ’em. So they learned nothing of my plans?”
“Zilch.”
“And the code for the guns.”
Weaver pointed to his head. “Right here.”
Jolt held up Tank’s gallium crystal void ray, still shining without a scratch. “Give it to me now and you’ll regain my trust.”
Eri suppressed the urge to latch onto Weaver’s arm and tell him not to. Fear stalking the edge of her consciousness warned her not to draw attention to herself.
“Six, six, four, five, nine.”
Eri’s insides shriveled in defeat. Jolt pressed the buttons on the keypad and the laser buzzed to life. He pointed the gun straight at Weaver’s head and chuckled. “What’s to stop me from testing it out right now?”
Weaver pulled Eri beside him and she slanted back as far from his head as possible, not wanting his blood to spew all over her hair. “This girl here.”
Jolt leaned forward into the light. He grinned and the scar on his forehead glistened with a sheen of sweat. He lowered his laser. “What have you brought me?”
“A linguist. Using my knowledge of the Guardians and her skills from the ship, we can decipher the symbols of the golden liquid.”
Jolt scratched his chin. “Interesting. Very interesting.”
Weaver placed his arm around her. “Now if you’ll excuse us, I’d like to get right to those symbols in the cave.” Although Eri wanted to shrug his arm off like it was a cobra, she remained still. In this particular circumstance it was better to be
with
Weaver than against him. Weaver moved them both toward the ramp for the entranceway.
“Hold on.” Jolt’s voice sliced the air like an obsidian blade.
Weaver turned them around. “What is it now?” Although he sounded annoyed, Eri could feel his fingers shake against her arm. Why would he expose himself to this man? This village? It made Striver and his hometown seem like a dream.
“Crusty will accompany you. You’ve helped me out, I’ll grant you that. And returned with a promising piece of the game. But I still don’t trust ya.”
“Fair enough.” Weaver bowed his head. His hair tickled the side of Eri’s cheek and she tilted her head away again.
“And a message for pearl-berry curls.” Jolt’s gaze stung her composure and her skin crawled with prickles. She wanted to flee from that hunk of junk space ship into the jungle and climb a tree to get away. “If you fail to decipher that code, I’ll have Crusty knit a nice sweater with your hair.”
She must have winced because he laughed at her response and waved his hand. “Out with ya. We don’t have all day.”
They walked down the ramp and Eri pinched Weaver.
Weaver shrugged his arm off her shoulders. “Ow, what was that for?”
She grabbed him and pulled his ear close to her lips, whispering, “I can’t believe what you’ve gotten us into.”
“Just decode the symbols and you’ll be fine.”
“Fine?” She wrinkled her nose at him. “After I decode the symbols we’ll both be
dead
.”
His voice fell to a whisper. “Didn’t you hear me the first time when I said I had a plan?”
“If you don’t tell me what it is, I can’t help either of us.”
Weaver opened his mouth to respond, but Crusty met them at the bottom of the ramp and growled. “Looks like I’m your babysitter.”
“More like warden,” Eri spat out, frustration bubbling up inside her.
Crusty smiled, undeterred. “Whatever you want to call it. Come with me.”
They stomped through dense jungle to the cave. Eri’s feet already hurt from the day’s trek, and now they swelled in her boots. She started daydreaming about her sleep pod on the
Heritage
and had to remind herself that she’d probably never sleep in it again.
If she wanted to be with Striver.
It was a big
if
hanging on so much: her ability to escape, what Commander Grier had planned, if they both survived this planetary war. She needed to take her life one step at a time. Decode the symbols, get herself out of the Lawless lands, and then think about her feelings for Striver. The seemingly insurmountable odds made her stomach churn with doubt.
Just take it a day at a time. Step one: don’t get yourself killed.
The last thing she wanted to do was crawl through the cave infested with spidermites.
Again.
Eri braced herself, summoning courage from the deepest corners in her heart. With Crusty’s spear stuck in the hollow of her back, there was no way out of it. If she wanted to see Striver again, she had to decipher those symbols, or at least look like she was working on it. Besides, the symbols had tickled the back of her mind ever since she laid eyes on them, and the linguist part of her wanted to know what they were.
She entered the cave, following Weaver’s torch as it cast flickering shadows on the rock. Although she had more light to find her way, she decided she preferred the dark. Every flicker showed cracks full of spidermites’ legs and walls crawling with colorful beetles and white worms squiggling up trickles of water.
The golden light leaked from afar, and she scrambled toward the glow. Crusty followed close behind, cursing the spidermites.
The cavern looked like it had the night they’d invaded, with laser blasts blackening the rock. Eri felt as though she’d taken ten steps back instead of forward. Just a few days ago, they were all free, and here she was now, a crumb in the Lawless’s jaws.
Use your predicament to your advantage. Remember, you wanted to spy.
Swirls in the liquid followed her as she walked along the symbols. Eri couldn’t decide where to start.
“Does any of it mean anything to you?” Weaver whispered.
Eri cast a glance at Crusty. The old man found a hollow in the rock and slumped down, whistling to himself. Together, she and Weaver could take him, but first she needed Weaver on her side.
“Not yet. Give me some time.”
She knelt down and traced her fingers over a
Y
symbol with spikes coming out of the right side.
Using the sand around her feet, she began scribbling notes. “You told Jolt you knew the Guardians’ language. Show me what you know.”
Weaver shrugged. “It’s not anything like these symbols. I only told him to keep myself alive.”
“Show me anyway.” Eri stared into his dark eyes, pleading. “I’ll need all the help I can get.”
Weaver sighed and plopped down beside her. “Okay. But we’ve got to make this quick. I’m not sure how much time Jolt will give us…”
Lavender blossoms drooped to his knees underneath a whispering breeze. The low harvest sun cast the meadow in a sheet of amber gold. Weaver held a bouquet, stems pricking his palm. His fingers bled as he removed every thorn. He sucked on his cuts, wondering how he’d summon the courage to speak with Riptide.