This Shattered World (9 page)

If Jubilee’s dead it’ll be my fault.

When I round the corner, I can hear the thick sounds of fists and feet on flesh; not a sound from Jubilee, only inarticulate sounds of effort and rage from McBride. My heart stops, but my feet keep going—I burst into the cavern to find McBride slamming his boot into her ribs over and over. Using sheer momentum I slam him against the wall a few meters behind her. The air goes out of him with a grunt, and I twist to look back at Jubilee—that’s my mistake. With a heft of one arm, McBride sends me flying. I crash down beside Jubilee, the world spinning as my head cracks against the floor. She doesn’t move.

Then the others are there, and as Sean, Mike, and Turlough put themselves between McBride and me, Jubilee cracks open one eye to take a look at me. Her throat moves like she’s trying to swallow, and her cracked lips part, trying to make the shape of a word.

Romeo.

My breath comes out in a rush, hot relief flashing through my veins. She’s alive.

McBride gasps for air, and with Sean on one arm, Mike on the other, and Turlough pushing against his chest, he tries to surge forward. His gaze doesn’t waver—I don’t even think he’s realized we’re here, except as obstacles to what he wants. I hear Mike shout in pain as his bad knee gives, and I scramble to my feet, my back burning and my vision blurring for one dangerous moment. Before I can reach McBride, he’s grabbing for the stolen military Gleidel he carries, yanking it from its holster and spinning toward Jubilee. I leap for him again, shoving him back against the wall, so when his finger jerks at the trigger, the bolt dissipates harmlessly off the stone.

Sean wrestles the gun from his hand; the soldier crumpled at our feet didn’t so much as flinch in response to the sound of gunfire. McBride shoves me away, though he stays sagging against the wall, sucking in great lungfuls of air, grief etched all over his face. “You thought you could bring that—that
thing
here, to our home, and no one would find out?” McBride wipes a hand across his reddened eyes, all signs of the orator gone. If only the others could see him like this. See the insanity, the violence, lurking behind his calls for action. “Good thing Martha’s more loyal than you, you goddamn coward.”

“Get out.” My voice low with anger, I sound nothing like myself.

He shakes Sean’s grip off his arm, then lets Mike and Turlough guide him toward the tunnel. “Make sure McBride stays out there,” I tell them, my voice shaking with adrenaline. Sean stays to help me with Jubilee. We can’t leave her here, now that McBride knows where to find her. Sean wouldn’t condemn even a trodaire to that fate.

Jubilee is barely conscious as I untie her hands, and she’s murmuring incoherently—maybe in Chinese again, I can’t tell. There’s a storage room up closer to the harbor that’s been a cell for a long time now, for use if anyone got too trigger-happy and needed to cool their heels overnight. It was too exposed, too easy for someone to wander by and discover her, but now I wish I’d locked her there and left her unbound. No matter who she is or what she’s done, she doesn’t deserve to be tied down, unable to defend herself against a man half mad with grief and anger.

With Sean’s help I move her up to the storeroom, ignoring the faces that watch us go. They all know now who we’ve captured—there’s no point hiding her anymore. There’s a ratty mattress in the corner, and we lower her down there. Sean shoots me a long look and, without another word, vanishes again. I know he’s going to make sure that McBride stays where he is.

I pull a blanket over her still form before crouching beside the bed to study her face. The cavern’s bathed in the soft, eerie green glow of bioluminescence—the wispfire that grows all over Avon likes to cluster in these damp caves. But despite the poor light, I can tell her face looks ashen, her dark hair a wild tangle, so out of place on such a perfect soldier. My fingers twitch, wanting to reach out and smooth it back. Instead I run my hands down her side, keeping my fingers light. Her ribs are broken—that much is certain when her voice tangles in a sob at my touch. Her breathing is steady, so I think her lungs are okay, and she’s not coughing blood. The beating’s opened up the wound from my gun, though, and she needs treatment as soon as I make sure no one else gets the bright idea to take their rage out on her.

My gaze lifts to find her watching me through my examination, her brown eyes grave.

I was wrong
, I want to say, my lips frozen. I scan Jubilee’s bruised face, her lips parted and brows drawn. All she’ll care about now is that the Fianna tied her down and beat her. In a single stroke, McBride has managed to destroy any chance I might have had at convincing her, at convincing
any
of them, to listen to me.

I push to my feet in silence, ignoring the lead in my heart and setting the canteen down beside the bed for her. I have to get out there and try to limit the damage—I know what McBride will do if I’m not there to counter him. The light of the wispfire is dim, but at least she won’t be trapped in darkness again. Then I shut the door behind me and double-check the lock before I walk away.

They’re already fighting in the main cavern when I walk in. Sean and McBride stand toe to toe, two dozen others crowded around.

“And if they say yes to a trade, and we don’t have her alive?” Sean’s demanding, heated, ready to start shoving. “What then, genius?”

But McBride’s no fool. That’s exactly what he’s hoping will happen. Standing in the doorway, I ache for my sister. She’d know what to say to them. But she’s gone, and it’s left to me.

“We can’t kill her.” I stay in the doorway, fists clenched. “There are people here who have family in town. The last thing we need is for things to get worse, for the trodairí to start using them against us. We don’t want to break the ceasefire.”

McBride’s gotten himself mostly under control again, but his gaze when it swings around to me carries murder in it. If he hated me before for not being my sister, he despises me now for standing between him and the trodaire.

“What use is a ceasefire when we’re dying out here anyway?” He turns away from Sean, and the ring of onlookers parts so he can pace away a few steps. “How has our situation gotten any better in the last ten years? We never should have shied away from direct action.”

“This isn’t just any prisoner,” I point out, forcing my voice to stay low. “She’s Captain Lee Chase. Until we know what they’ll trade for her, we have to wait.”

“They won’t trade.” McBride’s voice is heavy with cold certainty, and I see more than a few heads nodding in response. “They’d rather see her dead than us getting what we ask for.”

“You don’t know that for sure. We’ve never had an officer captured alive. We’ve never tried this.” I step forward and they part for me, letting me walk toward him. “What if they’ll trade medical supplies, or send back prisoners? Kill her now and we lose those options.”

“Always dreaming. They’re not your friends, Cormac, they never will be. The trodairí are TerraDyn’s lackeys, and TerraDyn wants to hide Avon’s pain, their failure, from the rest of the galaxy. Nobody’s coming to help us. We have to help
ourselves
.”

“And we will, by…” My voice dies in my throat. Behind him I can see Martha in the doorway, and I know she’s come from the radio room. The tight lines around her mouth speak for her. One by one, the others follow my gaze, and she waits until silence has fallen. There’s an apology in her eyes when she looks at me, but she can’t change her message.

“Well?” McBride’s voice is rough. “What did they say?”

My gut twists, and all the aches and pains and exhaustion of the last day come rushing back at me, so I barely hear her reply.

“We don’t negotiate with rebels.”

One of her eyes is swelling shut, and the rise and fall of her broken ribs is painfully shallow. She’s awake when I ease open the door, but she doesn’t speak. I push it closed and cross over to sink down beside her on the stone floor. Her shirt is wet with blood where the wound in her side has opened up again.

My heart thuds as we stare at each other. The wispfire growing all over the ceiling washes her skin with blue-green light. Her dark eyes are wary, but not afraid. I’m beginning to think she doesn’t have that in her. “We’re keeping this door locked.” I break the silence, my voice rusty. “I’ve got the key, and I’m going to keep it with me at all times. That shouldn’t have happened.”

She shifts, trying to sit up a little straighter where she’s leaning against the wall, but says nothing in return. If she’s relieved, she doesn’t show it, gaze skittering away from mine to fix on the door. “You called him McBride.” Her own voice is hoarse.

I flinch. “Yes.” And I know why she’s asking. McBride’s been at the top of TerraDyn’s most-wanted list for the last decade. To someone like Jubilee, getting her hands on him would be like…well, like us getting our hands on
her
.

“He’s got one of our guns.”

“He likes the poetry of it.” Killing soldiers with their own weapons.

She speaks through clenched teeth. “He’s mad.”

No kidding,
I want to say. Instead I stay silent, reaching for the meager first aid supplies I’ve brought with me. She flinches when I reach for the bottom of her shirt, but she lets me ease the bloodstained fabric up and away from her skin. The gash my bullet made when it grazed her side is oozing, and above it I can see the beginnings of the sharp, dramatic bruising across her ribs. I wish I’d brought a lantern, but I don’t want anyone to catch me using our precious first aid supplies on a trodaire. Safer to work by the dim blue light of the wispfire. I clean the worst of the blood away with a boiled rag, then reach for a small tin in the first aid kit.

“What’s that?” There’s an edge to her voice as I prize the lid free and sniff the brown muck inside to test its freshness.

“Microbiotic mud from TerraDyn’s seeding tanks.” I’m trying to concentrate on the wound, and not Jubilee’s bare stomach as I run my fingers across her skin and test for the heat of infection.

“Mud.” Dubiousness cuts through the pain in her voice; she’s eyeing me like I’ve lost my mind.
Maybe I have.
Her face is flushed—with anger, no doubt, or pain.

I pull my hand away and scoop out some of our makeshift antiseptic. “Mud,” I echo. “It’ll help keep infection away.” I carefully start to smooth it over the wound as she flinches and hisses with pain. Her skin twitches under my touch, and when I glance up, she’s staring intently at the ceiling with her lip caught between her teeth.

“The light,” she says finally, voice tense with pain, but softer now. “How do you do that?” Her eyes are on the bioluminescence lighting the cavern.

Though her face betrays little except that she’s braced against my ministrations, her gaze is softening, eyes sweeping across the ceiling with something like wonder. In this moment she could be one of us. I don’t think I’ve ever seen an outsider admire any part of Avon before.

“It’s a kind of mushroom or fungus,” I say, trying to focus on what I’m doing; it’s hard not to watch her face. “We’ve always called it wispfire.”

She’s silent for a long time. “It’s like a nebula,” she murmurs, almost to herself. I risk another glance at her, and though her eyes are glazed a little with pain, she’s still gazing upward.

“A nebula’s something in the sky, right?” I reply, keeping my own voice low. The distraction is making this process easier for her, and I want to get through it as quickly as possible. Or—and I can barely admit it even to myself—perhaps it’s because this softer, quieter version of Jubilee is fascinating. “I’ve wondered before if that’s how starlight looks.”

She blinks, refocusing with some difficulty on my face. “You’ve never been off-world before.” It’s not quite a question—but she’s surprised.

“How would I get off-world?” Despite my good intentions, I can hear the bitterness in my voice. “Avon’s my home, anyway. Clouds or no clouds.”

I’m bracing myself for a snapped retort, but it doesn’t come. I wipe my fingers clean without looking at her face, replacing the tin in the kit and reaching for the bandages instead.

“I’ve always thought nebulae were beautiful,” she says finally, her voice still quiet. She sounds tired, and I can’t blame her; the injuries I’m treating make my own side ache in sympathy. “When a star dies, it explodes; a nebula is what’s left behind.” She’s still gazing up at the blue-green swirls on the ceiling. “Eventually new stars grow inside them, from what remains of the old.”

“A pregnant star.” I smooth the adhesive bandage over her side, grimacing when she flinches. “I like that.”

The strangeness of the conversation seems to strike her at the same time it strikes me, and she cranes her neck to look down at her freshly bandaged side. “Look, why are you doing this?”

“Because not all of us are like him,” I reply, keeping my voice carefully even. “Some of us realize that just because it’s easier to pick up a gun and shoot than it is to talk, doesn’t make it right.”

“And yet you work with men like McBride.”

“You think I don’t know we’d be better off without him?” As though patching her up was keeping my frustration at bay, now it comes surging back. “If it were as simple as taking him out into the swamp one night and ending it, maybe it would already be done.”

She’s recovering from the pain, her voice growing a bit stronger now that I’m done with my work. “So why don’t you?” she challenges.

“The alternative to fighting will take years,” I reply, suddenly feeling the weight of it, the exhaustion from trying to keep what little control I have over my people from slipping away. “McBride has got them thinking that if they fight hard enough, they can change Avon tomorrow.”

“That’ll never happen. You’re outnumbered. Outgunned.”

“No, really? I hadn’t noticed.” I toss the bandage wrappers back into the kit and lock it shut with a snap. When I turn back, she’s still watching me. Her eyes are bright with pain, but clearer now—thoughtful. I sigh. “McBride’s waiting for something,
anything
, to give him an excuse to fight.”