The Fire Sermon (38 page)

“You’ll both come with me, and if either of you makes a move I don’t like, he’ll be slit like a fish.”

I nodded fast. The man waved me forward with his knife, his other hand still wrapped around the twisted fishing line at the back of Kip’s neck. “Get forward where I can see you. Up the dune, that way, but if I see you taking off I’ll have his blood in the sand before you’ve gone five steps.”

I nodded again and took a few steps up the dune, the loose sand slipping away underfoot, sending me stumbling. I turned back but could barely glance at Kip before the man shouted at me again. “No need for you to be checking on your little mate, unless you want me to have his other arm off.” I turned away and scrambled farther up the dune. I thought of my own knife, in the side pocket of the rucksack slung over my shoulder. But even as I tried to work my hand inconspicuously backward into the bag’s opening to grope for the knife, I sensed the futility of it. The man wasn’t alone. I could feel someone else, in the long grass nearby, watching us.

The Alpha girl stepped out as we neared the top of the dune. She had her arms crossed at her chest, but the morning sun picked up the glint of sharp steel in both her hands. I was about ten feet beneath her, could hear Kip and the man stumble to a stop a few feet behind.

“You won’t get them both back to town alive. Not like that.” The girl’s tone was casual, conversational. She was tall, muscles visible under her dark skin, and wore a pack on her back. Her curly hair was pulled loosely back and twisted into a thick, high bun. She stood very still but seemed somehow relaxed, as if unconcerned with the tableau below her.

The man grunted and moved forward so that I could hear his breathing, and Kip’s, behind me. I concentrated on my right hand, moving with awful slowness into the pocket of the bag. I could feel the knife handle, just, and tried to grasp it with the very tip of my fingers, without reaching backward too obviously.

“I’m not sharing the reward with any stranger,” the man shouted up at the girl. “You find your own freaks. Soldiers said there might be any number coming in.”

“So they did. But you won’t be getting those two back alone.”

The man shouted again. “I told you, I’m not sharing the reward, least of all with some cocky girl. I got no problems here. You move along now.”

While he was distracted I dared to reach deeper into the bag. I had the knife now, its steel handle cool in my shaking fist.

The girl turned away. “I’ll leave you to it.” She began moving across the ridge, calling out over her shoulder: “Just as long as you don’t mind that the one in front’s already got a knife halfway out of that bag you didn’t see fit to take off her.”

I felt the jolt before I’d even registered that the girl had turned. By the time I looked down at my hand, my knife was in the sand. Beside it, buried hilt-deep, was the knife the girl had thrown. A little of my blood was splashed on the sand where the throwing knife had knocked my own blade from my hand, but I didn’t pause, just spun around to see Kip.

The man had jerked Kip back by the fishing line noose. The knife tip was lodged at Kip’s throat, where his neck was once again bulging above the line’s wire-tight embrace. I screamed, but the man didn’t even look at me, keeping his eyes fixed on the girl on the ridge.

She spoke, still unruffled. “You can slit his throat if you like, and I suppose there’s a chance you could catch the other one, and pocket the payment for her at least. Soldiers won’t be too happy, though, when they hear you killed one—you know the warnings about bringing them in alive. Or we can take them in together and score the reward for both of them, plus the bonus if the questioning turns up anything juicy.”

He grunted, but I saw the knife at Kip’s neck recede slightly. I was watching so intently that I could see the pale hairs on the back of the man’s hand, the dirtied leather wrapped around the handle of his knife. “Minus your cut, I suppose?”

She shrugged. “I’m not doing this for charity. You would’ve lost one or both if I hadn’t shown up. I’ll take half—but you can keep the bonus, if there is one. I won’t be sticking around long enough for the questioning to be done.”

The man released the fishing line and shoved Kip to the ground in front, where he landed on all fours, retching slightly. I ran to him and helped him free his neck from the tangled line. By the time I turned back, the man had picked up both knives from the sand and was examining the throwing knife carefully. “That’s a cute trick,” he said finally, stepping up to hand the knives to the Alpha girl.

He turned back to me and Kip, now standing up. “I’m guessing you two won’t be trying any more funny stuff with her around.” The girl didn’t acknowledge him, just stood, tapping her knife against the knuckles of her left hand.

“Throw me the bag,” she said to me. I slipped it from my shoulder and tossed it on the ground where the knives had lain. The blood there reminded me to check my hand, but the bleeding had already slowed: just a small slice along my knuckle where her blade had nudged me as it dislodged my tenuous grasp on my knife.

The girl upended the rucksack, shook its contents loose: the blanket, the water flask that we’d refilled at the river that morning. I winced as the last of our jerky was dumped in the sand, then chastised myself: food was hardly our most pressing problem now. The girl scanned the items, then tossed me the empty bag. “Pack it up and bring it along.”

“Why give it back to her?” grunted the man.

“I’m not throwing away useful stuff. You want to carry it?”

He turned and spat in the sand, and the girl nodded at me to continue bundling the things back into the rucksack. When I stood again, the girl pushed Kip forward to join me. “You two stay in front, just like that. Keep it steady, and no talking, unless you want to catch a knife in the back of the neck.”

I tried to look at Kip without turning my head too obviously. There was still a raw mark encircling his neck, and his eyes were speckled with red where blood vessels had burst. I took his hand, felt him return my squeeze.

“Cute,” snorted the man from behind us.

Once we were over the top of the dune we could see the road below us. To the left it traced the back of the dunes, running parallel with the coast. To our right it led away from the sea to the higher country, lightly wooded. Descending the dune was easy, compared to climbing it, and twice the girl cautioned us to slow down, but when we reached the road, and the man shouted at us to go left, I reckoned our captors were at least ten steps behind us.

I kept looking straight ahead as I whispered to Kip. “There’s something about her. Something’s not right.”

“You don’t need to be a seer to tell that. Bright ideas?”

“I thought maybe I could fight him. But she’s another story.”

Kip touched his throat. “I wasn’t that crazy about him, either, to be honest.” He paused. “Where are they taking us?”

“There’s a big town, not far along here.”

“You can feel it?”

Aware of the scrutiny from behind us, I had to resist shaking my head. “Sort of. But mainly it’s the road—look at it. You don’t get huge roads like this in the middle of nowhere—there’s a decent-size town around, and not too far away.”

He squinted at the road ahead. “We could make a run for it, past that bend, when there are more trees about.”

“You’ve seen her do her thing with the knives. We’d be dead before we left the road.”

“If they get us back to the town, it’s finished,” he said. “Worse than dead, and you know it.”

“There’s something else going on, though. Something strange about her.”

“Apart from the whole bounty hunter psycho thing?”

“It’s something to do with Piper.”

Kip let go of my hand. “Piper’s not going to help us now. He’s got his own problems.”

“Stop talking, I need to think.” I could feel Piper’s presence—it was a certainty, as certain as the knowledge that he was still on the island. The road was smooth enough that I could close my eyes as I walked, to concentrate on what I was feeling. The moment I did, I realized what it was about the girl.

chapter 26

I’d turned to tell Kip, so when I heard the man’s shout I thought for a moment he was yelling at me. But the sound was cut short, and by the time we’d looked back, the man’s body was on the road, a dark patch spreading in the dust beneath his neck.

The girl still had her knife in her hand. Looking down with distaste, she knelt and wiped it, twice, on the back of the dead man’s shirt.

“Did you have to kill him?” I asked.

She tucked the knife back into her belt. “You want him spreading the word about who he’s seen?”

“Couldn’t we have tied him up or something?”

“He’d have been found. Or died slow, from thirst. I only did exactly what you were planning to do when you were going for your knife back there in the dunes. You should be grateful.”

Kip looked from me to the girl and back again. “Oh yeah, really grateful. You only did it so you can claim the reward yourself.”

“No.” I put a hand on his arm, addressed the girl. “You’re Piper’s twin.” I turned back to Kip. “Remember the throwing knife?”

“The knife she was throwing at you five minutes ago? Hard to forget.”

The girl interrupted us. “You two can argue later. For now you have to help me hide the body.” She grabbed one of the feet, began walking backward, hauling the dead burden toward the road’s edge. “But you’re right about my brother,” she said to me, without looking up.

I nodded, and bent to pick up the other leg. As the girl turned to look behind her, I saw several small knives hanging from her belt.

“What are you doing?” Kip shouted. “It doesn’t make any difference whose twin she is. She’s an Alpha. Hasn’t Zach taught you anything?”

The girl looked up. “You’d better learn to keep your mouth shut about Cass’s twin, if you want to keep the two of you safe.”

“Because you’re all about our safety, you are. Cass—she threw a knife at you, for crying out loud.”

“I know.” I dropped the dead leg and held up my hand, showing him the neat slice on the knuckle, already clotted. “I should have realized then—she could have put it right through my hand. But she barely scraped me—just knocked my knife out.”

“Why do it at all, if she’s on our side?”

She laughed. “I didn’t like her chances of taking him on.” She glanced down at the body. “And I didn’t want to tackle him while he had a knife to your throat. So if you’re done bitching, give us a hand to get this done.”

Kip looked at me, but I’d already picked up the man’s leg again and, with the girl, was dragging him clear of the road. Kip called after us: “What’s your name, at least?”

“Zoe,” the girl said. “And I know who you are. Now kick some dirt over that blood trail. They’ll find it if they come with dogs, but it might buy us some time.”

We didn’t dig a grave, just found a hollow by a fallen tree, the best we could manage in the sparse cover. Before we covered him with branches, Zoe checked his pockets and, with a flick of her knife, slit the cord holding a small leather purse around his neck.

“It wasn’t enough to kill him—you have to rob him, too?” asked Kip.

“If I hadn’t killed him, you’d be in a Council cell by the end of today. And when they find him, we want it to look like a robbery.”

“You think they will? Find him, I mean?” I asked.

Zoe emptied the purse, pocketed the few coins, and threw the purse down next to the man. Crouching again, she freed the knife still clutched in his hand. “Bound to. We’re not half a day from the town. But with everything that’s going on around here at the moment, they might not come looking right away.” She passed the knife to Kip, who grimaced, but tucked it into his belt.

“Everything that’s going on?” he asked.

Zoe kicked some fallen brush over the body. “Council soldiers came through yesterday. Put word out all along the coast that there might be Omegas landing by boat. Offered a bounty. Most of the Alphas for fifty miles are out there now looking for you.”

“Us in particular?”

Zoe shook her head. “No—the bounty was for any Omegas on the move near the coast. This idiot”—she threw a final branch over the body—“didn’t know he’d struck it lucky. But Piper had told me about you, so I knew what to look for. Then, if I wasn’t sure enough already, I recognized Piper’s knife,” she said, taking from her belt the one she’d knocked from my hand earlier. “Wear it on your belt from now on,” she said, thrusting it back at me. “If things are kicking off, you don’t have time to fish it out of your bag.” She surveyed the partly concealed body a final time. “Now we move.”

“Why didn’t Piper tell us about you?” I asked as we followed her.

“Did you ever ask?”

“No. I don’t know why.”

“I do. Because you’d assume an Alpha wouldn’t have anything to do with him. With what he stands for.”

I didn’t argue with her. “But why didn’t he tell me anyway?”

“From what I hear, you weren’t exactly forthcoming about your twin, either.”

“It was too dangerous,” said Kip.

“Exactly. That’s why we don’t spread the word around. I’m only useful as long as people don’t know who I am, what I do. You think the Alphas are hard on the Omegas? They’d be even less generous if they caught one of their own kind working with the resistance. And even those few on the island who know aren’t crazy about it.”

For the rest of the day we walked, virtually jogging whenever the scrubby terrain allowed. We tracked our way back toward the river near where we’d landed, then headed upstream, into rapidly thickening forest. When the sun was high we ate the jerky while we walked, brushing off the sand as best we could. I could still feel it crunch between my teeth. We hardly spoke, barring hurried consultations between me and Zoe about direction. Only when it was reaching full dark, and the forest was thick around us, did we stop to rest.

Zoe left the small clearing to fill the water flasks at the river, which was still audible to our right. Kip and I sank down into the loamy dirt and leaves.

“Would you have killed that guy?” he asked me. “If you’d gotten your knife out?”

I shrugged. “I would have tried. I hate the thought of it—killing him and his twin. And I don’t know if I could have managed. But I would have tried.”