Fledge (26 page)

Fuck, Isec, where are you? I wait. The silence from the com and the few people who pop up at the top who are not Isec make things worse. I scan, and scan and scan. "Isec!" I look around. "Isec! If you can hear me don't stop climbing, Isec! Keep going!"

I hear Tessen, Wyrd, and Kush calling for him too, encouraging him, and I smile. "He's gonna make it, I know he will." I let out a long breath and then I hear his tiny little voice. "Junco! I did it!"

I scream. "I knew you'd make it, I knew it!" I jump up and down and I can hear Kadian telling me not to fall, but all the pledges at the top are whooping now – we scream and dance at the top of our mountains and then the announcer comes on and tells us to prepare for removal.

We are whooshed down a tube and spit out onto a large web and I bounce into the others, happy at making it, happy my friends made it, and then I swing down to the ground and run towards the ledge. I hold back until last and then I hear Kadian asking me questions, and I dive like a swan down to the dorm a thousand feet below.

I land in a heap with everyone else and I take the com off my shirt as I walk into the lounge and see my feed live on the screens. Everyone is pointing at me and I look into the com and smile.

"Junco, what was the best part of Fight Five?"

"I made it, Kadian, and I didn't have to kill a single soul to do it. Goodbye!"

I push the off button and the feed disappears from the screen.

It's only then that I realize Joll is still missing. But am I surprised that I've already forgotten about him? Or that the rest of the team have also?

No. We all knew. Joll was already dead to us.

There is only one day between the Fifth and Sixth Fights, so we spend the next entire day in training. Ashur has gathered everyone in the gym, including me. Out of the original one thousand pledges, there are exactly thirty of us remaining.

The entire 039 is present, except Braun of course, fucking asshole. Plus four more teams that I've never met before. I've got Kadian on my com on my chest, as does Ashur. He says it's good PR. My wings are taped securely to my back, as are Ashur's. This can only mean one thing.

He paces up front screaming about how worthless we will be if the Aves are forced to take us into their Cluster. I stifle down a yawn and then kick Isec to pay attention when it's contagious. If Ashur sees him do that he'll make an example out of him.

"Junco!"

I turn back to the front. "Yes, sir."

"Up here with me."

I get up and go to the front. He pulls me over and stands behind me with his hands on my shoulders. "For the rest of the day you will fight, and watch your fellow pledges fight, an Aves warrior. You will watch with a critical eye. You will look for weakness and strength. And you will ask yourself for each and every opponent, will this person save my life if I have to be on their team? You will rank them in your mind. Yes or no. Yes, this person is as good as or better than me. Or no, this person will get us all killed."

They stare at him like he has three eyes.

"Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir!" they shout.

He growls, "As Lucan's personal warrior, I am the ranking captain and I choose to fight Junco." He turns me around. "Junco, we will finish that fight now."

"Yes, sir." I'd like to tell him to go fuck himself, but he wouldn't tolerate that shit in front of the other teams. So I suck it up and prepare to get my ass kicked.

I walk towards him and grab him with both hands, one behind the neck, the other on his bicep, and swing into a flying arm bar, taking him down and slapping him on the mat. I hear him laugh. "Jasus, fuck, Junco!" He gets out of it easily and I end up on the bottom, but I have momentum on my side and I use my shoulder to flip him again. He catches my foot and gets me off balance, but I get my other foot hooked around his neck and get him in a leg bar, pulling just enough to make him know I won this move. He's not done with me yet, and flips over, but I hold tight to his leg. He struggles for a second, scooting back and forth to break my hold, but I hold on.

He hooks his leg around my hip, grabs my other leg, and pushes my ankle back until I cry out. I bite down the pain and let go of his leg to make him change position. He doesn't let go and the pain is searing back through my joint. I feel the tendon stretch and I think for a moment he might actually snap it if I don't tap out.

His foot appears by my head like a gift and I snatch it up and hold on, pushing his ankle back now. He rolls over on my hips and I use the motion to swing him all the way over as I twist on the mat. My foot slips free and I smack him in the face with it and he laughs. I still have a hold of his ankle though, and I twist and his laugh is cut off. Asshole.

He uses his considerable weight advantage to swing free and now he's lying across my chest as I take a few seconds to catch my breath, then swing my right arm over his neck and fishhook him to at least pop myself onto my stomach. Unfortunately, he's got me in a good shoulder lock and he's practically sitting on my neck. I take another second to rest, then let him flip me over and squirm away, my smaller size giving me room and advantage that no other person in the room might have, except for maybe Isec.

And then I've got him face down on all fours and I absently log people cheering for me in the background. I mount his back and hold his head in a choke, but since I weigh almost nothing compared to him he simply stands up. I unhook my legs and push off him into a back flip, miss the landing and slide across the mat. I scramble up as he's turning and hook him in the jaw with my foot as I spin. I watch his head snap to the side and a small trickle of blood seep out of his lip.

I stop, bending over and breathing hard trying to catch my breath. The whole room has been stunned into silence as they wait to see if he will take me down.

"Junco," Ashur says over his own heavy breathing. "You're fucking amazing."

I laugh. "Yes, sir." We meet in the middle and bow.

He points to the water bottles stacked up on a table at the other end of the room and I go to grab us some when I hear him talk to the pledges in a low voice. "That, you worthless throwaways, is a warrior who could beat every ass in here. But before you go getting jealous, she's also the one who will save you when you need it. You all fucking remember that."

We disconnect Kadian and sit down on one end of the gym to untape each other's wings and cool down. The remaining pledges repeat what we just did. The other Aves are really more into punching, flying and kicking than the grappling stuff Ashur and I did and most of the pledges suck so bad the entire encounter lasts for mere seconds. But some, like the biggest guy called Annun and a few of his buddies, and Kush, do OK, if not well.

It doesn't take long to see what Ashur's point was in facilitating this exercise. Some of the remaining pledges are very weak candidates to be warriors. And Isec's shortcomings are so painfully obvious I can't bear to watch and instead I head to the stairs and go outside to smoke. Ashur doesn't follow me.

I lie on the grass in what seems to be the late afternoon sun and after a few minutes Kush finds me. I look up at him as he approaches and pat the ground next to me. "You looked good today, Kush."

He smiles as he sits down. "Where did you and Ashur learn that stuff, Junco?"

"What stuff?"

"Those fighting moves?"

"Oh, it's a specialized art on Earth. You don't have jujitsu here?"

He shakes his head. "Never heard of it."

"Well, shit. You guys should get some teachers. It's pretty fucking useful for close combat like that."

"Where did Ashur learn it?"

I shrug. "I dunno." I puff on the cigar and then blow out some rings. "Watching me, I guess."

He's silent for a while so I fill in the gaps. "The 039 were my watchers on Earth." I look over at Kush to gauge his reaction but he's a blank. "He had years to see what I was up to, so I guess it just interested him and he decided to teach himself."

"Hmmm."

"What?"

"He's pretty infatuated with you, Junco."

"Kush, he's my captain. I'm his nine. He certainly loves me, but he's not in love with me if that's what you're getting around to."

"He definitely could be, that's all I'm saying. One word from you would be all it takes."

I shrug and blow smoke rings. I'm not even remotely interested in having this conversation with Kush and I let the silence hang until I hear Isten calling me to come back upstairs from the door.

I leave Kush out there on the grass.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Later, Ash and I are sitting in the lounge as we watch a horror screen. "Go take a shower, Junco. What are you waiting for?"

I look back at the showers and shake my head. "I don't like to shower with people here. It feels weird. Especially with Isec and Kush, ya know?"

"You're suddenly shy?" He grins at me and laughs. "That's a first."

He's right, too. I've never been shy about my body before. "I know. I just don't feel comfortable with these guys. It's too personal."

"I was gonna take you out to dinner."

"I'll eat later, I want to go look at the church again. Wanna come with me?"

"No, I'm hungry and I'd rather go out to dinner."

"No one's stopping you, go."

He looks sideways at me. "Why do you want to go up there?"

"Because it's strange, why is it here? I asked Isten but he ignored my question." I pull out the prayer card that I've been keeping in my pocket and hand it to him. "I went in there that night that you programmed my com. I followed Isec up there and I found that prayer card."

He reads the poem. "Huh. Never heard of this one before."

"No? It's an old Earth poem, Ashur. Don't you think that's weird?"

He flips it over to look at the syrinx on the front. "Is it a famous poem?"

I shrug. "Not really. Maybe it was once, but it's a few hundred years old or something."

"How did you know it, then?"

"See, that's the thing. I had to memorize this poem in school, Ashur. Was assigned it in sixth year, right before I went off to cadets."

He hands it back to me and I pocket it. "Well, you don't ever want to ask Isten about the syrinx, Junco. He's worthless about religion. Refuses to even talk about it. But the syrinx was an ancient…" He looks up and struggles to find the correct word. "I guess the only proper way to describe her is the Fallen Archer."

I stand up and grab his hand. "Come up there with me."

He scowls. "Will you take a shower and go eat with me afterward?"

I smile and nod and he gives in.

Ashur stands behind me as I bend down to pan my fingertips across the ancient markings around the wooden door frame.

"Well, are you gonna go in?"

I look up and shake my head. "No, it scares me."

"Junco–"

"I just want to see if I can read this." I point to the markings.

"It looks like chips in the wood to me."

"It's not, it's ancient Sumerian cuneiform."

"Oh, well that explains it." He shakes his head and laughs.

My finger traces the various images, ticks, and lines one graphic at a time and I reach back in my memory to find the key. It's far back, from grade school, year three or four maybe, but it's there.

"Junco, can you really read that shit?"

I open my eyes and Ashur is bent down next to me, his face right up to mine. "I could, if I had enough time. I have the key in here." I say, tapping my head. "My father took me to the British Museum once, for birthday week. His friend was some big-shot curator guy in the Ancient Near-East section and he gave me this book that had worksheets and stuff."

Ashur looks at me strangely.

I shrug. "I can't help it, I just remember weird shit like that. Plus, we had like a whole semester on it in regular weekday school. Learning gods and goddesses and stuff. Like we do the Greeks. But this door is odd, because these markings are a mixture of several different forms. It encompasses the entire span of ancient Sumerian writing stretching over a period of almost four thousand years."

"What's it say?"

I smile because he's interested now, he can't help it. "I don't really know, I'd have to decipher each one, then try and apply it in context. I'd have to go back and read the books about the mythology to make sure it was correct. It would take months, years maybe."

His fingers pass over the carvings. "Oh, well, it is kinda cool."

"Don't you have anyone who can read this, Ashur? I mean, surely you must have some book or something that tells what it says."

He shrugs. "Yeah, maybe. I could look into it if you want."

"I do," I say as I look into his eyes. They are green like Tier's and they glow a little as we stare at each other. I break away first. "The thing is, Ash, when I went in there to pray, I prayed to be brave when the time comes. I said,
Please let me accept my fate with courage. Let me be brave in the end.
And I got an answer."