Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) (35 page)

I shook my head. “I don’t think we can stop her. Besides, she’s right. We need to learn.” I reached for Windy’s lead, and we walked out into the early evening.

“Go on, take care of Windy,” he said. “I’ll start a fire.”

“You’re going to do this? Burn everything?”

He nodded, his face grim. “I trust Kayleen more than I trust those people.”

Well. When it came down to it, so did I. As I secured Windy in the corral and left her with her head buried in an armful of dried grass, I imagined that I was dropping locators I couldn’t even see into Windy’s food and water, into the dust of the pasture. I shivered at the idea that these visitors seemed more likely to kill us than Islandia with all of its dangers.

I found Liam standing by our outdoor fire pit, naked except for a drying-skin around his waist, watching the arms burn off of his favorite shirt. His jaw was set tight. He looked at me for a long moment, weighing his thoughts, or me, or both. “If what she says is true, we owe it to Artistos to attack now if we can.”

I sagged bonelessly onto one of the two rough-hewn benches by the fire, instantly light-headed. How could he say such a thing? “I don’t want to kill anybody. I don’t want the war to come back. It’s done. It’s over.”

The sheer unfairness of it, the enormity and stupidity, washed over me. Why couldn’t I just live in peace? That was all I wanted, to live in peace.

I cradled my head in my hands, focused on the rustling sounds of Liam feeding the flames and the crackling of the fire, sniffing as my nose was assaulted by the smell of burning clothing. Normal sounds, too: birds calling back and forth in the trees along the edge of the clearing, the wind shushing leaves against each other. Natural things that didn’t have someone else’s fight dogging their every move.

Liam leaned down next to me. “I brought you clean clothes.”

I nodded, keeping my head down. Tears stung my eyes. “Okay. Go jump in the water and get rid of the damned dust and I’ll change and watch the fire.”

He ignored me, settling his strong hands on my shoulders and quietly massaging them, working at the tension. The tears I’d been holding back flooded my eyes and spilled onto my hands and knees and onto the ground. “Why couldn’t it have been Joseph?” I missed him so much. And having the strangers be dangerous made it even worse that it wasn’t him. How could I face such a thing without my little brother? “Why not Joseph? Why these people?”

Liam leaned down and kissed my cheek. “I’ll go. Change, okay?”

I nodded, listening to his retreating footsteps. I stood and stripped, quickly, so violently I ripped the shoulder of my shirt taking it off. So I kept going. I ripped the fine green hemp shirt, the perfectly good green hemp shirt, and ripped it again, and again, throwing pieces no bigger than my palm into the fire. I watched each one catch and burn, and threw my pants and underclothes on the fire in a single big
heap and stood, naked, warmed by the flame as it burned my clothes and their dust.

As Liam came walking back, fully clothed, I bolted past him and raced for the water. He’d have to stay and watch the fire—I could be alone. I catapulted off a rock at the edge and dove into the darkening pool. Damn them. Damn whoever sent them. Damn whoever, anywhere, wanted to kill for no reason. I came up spluttering, my feet churning the cool water. I didn’t try to swim under the waterfall this time, but circled the edges of the pool, letting the powerful ripples of falling water keep me far away from the cascade.

There had to be another way.

After three long laps, I climbed onto a half-submerged rock near the gap where the water spilled out of the pool, watching it tumble past me and run down another meter of gentler fall into a stream. I looked up, waiting, alone with the waterfall until the first star shone brightly overhead.

Liam had laid out clothes for me. I pulled them on and walked back, slowly, wishing this stasis, this moment of not-war, could continue forever. But as I got back to the fire, all three of them—Liam and Kayleen and Windy—waited for me in a semicircle, firelight playing across their faces. I stood on the other side of the fire from them, thinking of Sasha driving my wagon and Paloma worrying about Kayleen and Akashi lecturing about living easily with the fearsome predators on Jini.

I said, “I’m going back there tomorrow. I’m going to make them love the people in Artistos the way that I do.”

K
ayleen rose and crossed to me, the firelight bright on her bare arms and feet, touching the ends of her dark hair. She folded me in her arms. “You can’t make them like the people on Fremont, Chelo. These people have no hearts. They came here to kill.”

I stiffened in her arms. “I have to try.” I looked over at Liam, staring up at the dark sky. I spoke loudly, making sure he heard me. “If I run away from peace, if I don’t try, I will never, never be able to live with myself.”

Liam turned toward me, his face shadowed. The firelight made a halo over his head. “It’s my parents at risk, and Kayleen’s.”

He didn’t need to remind me Therese and Steven were dead. Besides, I cared for them all—Paloma, Akashi, Mayah, Gianna, Sasha, Sky …and he knew that. He damn well knew that. “It’s not that simple.” My words were sharp. “This whole thing is so stupid I can’t believe it. Why would anybody fly between planets to kill people they don’t know? There’s got to be more to it.”

Kayleen brushed the hair out of my eyes. I jerked away, wanting answers more than comfort.

Liam snapped, “You should hear Kayleen out. She’s learned a lot about them.”

I circled the fire, agitated. We were all upset, and falling apart was no way to stop a war. I sat down on one of the benches, looking up at Kayleen. “Tell me.”

She sat down next to me, crossing her feet near the fire. Her far hand twisted through her hair, and she drummed the fingers of her near
hand on the bench. She flicked her gaze between me and Liam. Her eyes looked saner than when we’d found her in the cave, but nearly as bad as they’d seemed when we first got here. Reading the Wind cost her. And this had cost her far more than soaking up Artistes’s data. Because of what she found? Because of the stranger’s web itself? I put a hand out near her drumming fingers, waiting for them to stop, then covered her hand with mine. “Go on, tell me what you saw.”

She cleared her throat. “The Islas Autocracy is another planet, like Silver’s Home or Fremont. Or Deerfly. They’re genetically changed there like us, and they trade information with Silver’s Home. They might even trade people, too, sometimes—but I couldn’t tell for sure.” She stuck her tongue out the side of her mouth, as if it might help her decide what to say next. “It’s a big place, and everything—everything—there is planned. Babies. Families. Buildings. Even trees and streams. They design it all.” She paused, rubbing her hands together in front of the fire. “Islas is drenched in data, but it’s not all free like ours. Everyone obeys. Not like at home, where they mostly obey, but sometimes they only pretend to, and really, everyone breaks some rules. At least the little ones.” She grinned at me. “Except maybe you.”

I laughed a little at that, and Liam looked over at us, but said nothing.

Kayleen got intense again. “On Islas, they believe in discipline. Doing what they’re told, all for the greater good of their society. They believe they’re right about everything.”

Liam threw another log onto the fire, sending sparks up into the night like stars. Kayleen tilted her head to watch them, then looked back at me. “You know how, early on, we figured out that on Silver’s Home, they sell their ability to change things and people? Well, these people call themselves Star Mercenaries, and they sell the ability to kill people. To fight wars.

“I don’t mean everybody on Islas. But it’s the Star Mercenaries that landed here. This isn’t our own people come back.” She pulled her feet a little away from the fire. “Islas looks down on Silver’s Home, thinks they’re soft and undisciplined. These people are doing a job.” She spat her next words out. “They refer to Artistos as a target, not a town.”

She pulled her hand from mine and went back to drumming, leaning
forward, staring into the fire. “They left probes—satellites, like ours, only littler—up in the sky on their way in, and they’re reading Artistos’s data as we speak. Half of Islandia is already included in their webs—and the webs are strong. Stronger than ours. They report more kinds of data, and they don’t seem to have any—”she closed her eyes, searching for the right word—“fragility.”

She shivered. “People like that wouldn’t come all the way here with a contract to kill and then just go away.” She looked at me. “So you see, it won’t help to talk to them.”

I could tell she believed it. But I couldn’t. We couldn’t wait for them to attack us or Artistos, but we couldn’t attack them until we tried to stop them. Or we knew we couldn’t.

Windy rested her head briefly on Kayleen’s shoulder, then withdrew a step, watching us.

Liam knelt on the ground near me, speaking softly, intently, one hand on my knee. “Everyone we love here is in danger. We have to warn them. We have to go back, soon.” He glanced at Kayleen. “But first, I want to hurt them.” He tugged at his braid, thinking aloud, his beloved, familiar face become a stranger’s. “We have weapons. Crazy-balls and those long sticks and that disruptor you wanted to try on the big demons.”

Kayleen added, “I can kill their nets. Once. I don’t know for how long.”

The last time I’d tried to talk us out of a fight, Alicia had intervened, threatened the whole Town Council in the amphitheater with a crazy-ball, made it impossible to find peace without threat. But Liam had been on the side of peace that time. I reached for words to sway him, speaking softly to keep his defenses down. “Akashi would not start with a fight. He would start with words.”

He turned away from me, his shoulders rigid. “What would you have me do? Just stand by until these people kill you? Until they kill my family? Apparently just for being here?”

Kayleen said, “I think they want to kill them because they aren’t altered.”

A short, hard laugh escaped him. “Funny—we’ve always been threatened because we’re altered. Now, they’re in trouble for not being altered.”

How could he be so dense? “That’s just two sides of the same stupid argument.” I frowned at his stiff back, struggling to understand. None of this made sense—fighting had never made sense to me. “Is that really it? Or is it because our parents want the planet? The land? Isn’t that what they came for?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

I turned back to Kayleen. “Kayleen? What do you think?”

She laughed, edgy and bitter, then threw her head back, brushing her hair from her forehead. The fingers of her near hand returned to drumming on the bench. “They came because they were hired to. They didn’t set up all that data to learn about Islandia. They’re watching Artistos, and they have a warning grid up in case any other ships or skimmers land here.”

Great. Were they expecting more people? More ships? I stared at the fire, my face warm, my back chilling as the night cooled. A fit mirror for my feelings, hot and cold, angry and confused, mad and resigned. “Who hired them?” The only people I knew with an interest in Fremont were from Silver’s Home. “Our parents?” No, that wasn’t quite right. They were probably dead. “Our parent’s people, anyway?”

Kayleen shook her head. “I don’t know. Probably.”

“What about our babies? Don’t we owe them a chance at peace? We can’t run away from these people; they’d find us.”

“Chelo?” Liam asked from across the fire, his voice breaking. “Chelo? What do you want me to do?”

Pain danced in his eyes, in the tight set of his features, and I knew we mirrored each other, both in pain, if for different reasons. “We said we’d decide everything together. Remember? What do you want?” I turned to Kayleen. “And you?”

Liam turned back toward us. “You’re right about Akashi. He wouldn’t start with a fight. But he’d have a fist prepared. He’d be ready for a fight in case they started it, and he’d be ready to strike if he thought he had to. That’s the way he’s always approached dangerous situations.”

I threw a stick on the fire, watching the heat rise like my own fears. “Liam? What do you want to do?”

“I want to know if we can figure out how to hurt them, and I want to be ready to.” He looked directly into my eyes. “I don’t want to hurt them, but we have to. We have to make sure they can’t hurt Mom and
Dad.” His next words came out slowly, as if they had to be dragged from him. “And I guess…I guess we can go back and talk to them first. It’s just—you were there. How can you think it will help? We don’t understand these people at all, and Kayleen’s right—they’re much more powerful than we are.”

“They could have killed us today, and they didn’t.”

“And they might kill you tomorrow. Who’s to say they’ll let us go again?” he said. “We’re damned lucky they let us go at all.”

Kayleen turned to me. “I don’t like it. But you know, we’re probably going to die anyway. No matter what we choose.” A tear ran down her cheek, sparkling gold in the firelight.

I held her hand to stop it from drumming, watching her face. Kayleen never sounded like this. Even though we’d been there and she hadn’t, she knew more about the strangers than we did. Being in someone’s data was surely more intimate than being in an awkward meeting.

Kayleen wiped the tear from her cheek with a quick jerky motion and reached a hand up for Windy’s nose. “If it matters that much to you to talk to them, go ahead. I know how stubborn you can be, Chelo. And I love you for it. But don’t trust them. Don’t you trust them.” She looked intent, her eyes drilling into mine, half her face lit by dancing flames. “Go ahead and try to convince them to love Artistos, but if that doesn’t work, we’ll have a backup plan.”

Neither of them sounded like they expected me to succeed. Maybe I didn’t expect to, either. But I had to try. I nodded, suddenly sympathizing with Hunter when he’d led the war against us. Against our parents. “All right. What do we have in our fist?”