Windrunner's Daughter (17 page)

“Lie down.” Raw cracked his knuckles.

Genna frowned. “You’d better take them clothes off first, Runner.”

“Of course.” Wren looked at Raw with frantic eyes. If she took her clothes off everyone would see her breast bands. Raw hadn’t given her away yet, so maybe he wasn’t planning to. He had to get her out of this.

Raw’s mouth twisted in what Wren could have sworn was a wry smile; then he pulled his own shirt over his head and handed it to her. “Here, put that on. You can wear it as I rub you, keep warm.” He looked at Genna with an easy grin. “He feels the cold.”

Genna nodded, she hardly seemed to notice Raw’s scarring, her eyes instead focused on the crags of his chest.

For some reason Wren was compelled to turn away from Genna’s flirtatious expression and her eyes fell on the shirt in her hands, still warm from Raw’s body. She crumpled it between her fingers and shivered; it would almost be like wearing a piece of him. Resignedly, she pulled it over her head. It settled around her like a tent. Underneath its folds she started to undo her buttons.

Although she had warmed up since coming inside, her fingers tingled. After a moment of fruitless fumbling a large hand covered hers’. “Let me do it.”

It was Raw. “I don’t think so.” She continued to scrabble stubbornly beneath the shirt.

“For the Designers sake,” he hissed under his breath. “I’m going to rub you anyway, let me undo your damned buttons.”

Wren flushed angrily. Her eyes were level with Raw’s naked chest and she glared at the hairs frosting his skin, refusing to meet his eyes as he deftly unbuttoned the toggles beneath his shirt as though she were a three year old.

“What about your trousers?” He looked at her legs.

“I’ll manage,” Wren snapped. She pulled at her laces, swearing under her breath, until they came apart; then peeled the trousers away from her clammy skin. The material stuck on her boots and she kicked at it crossly.

Raw caught her under the arms and, before she could shout at him, dumped her on the bench. Then he knelt down and dragged her boots off, pulling her trousers after them with one fast yank.

Wren went still.

The heater burned her back. In comparison her front felt cold, yet her cheeks still burned. She clenched her fists impotently. She had to let Raw rub her or the others would get suspicious. If they found out she was a girl … she took a deep breath. For her mother, she could take the humiliation.

Narrowing her eyes in silent warning, she swung her legs over the bench and awkwardly lay down. Every muscle protested and her skin tightened as her chest met aluminium already warmed by Raw's body.  

For an age nothing happened. Having closed her eyes in miserable anticipation, Wren cracked them open. Raw was standing above her, holding his hands an inch over her shoulders, as if he was touching some part of her that she couldn’t feel, almost as if she were still wearing her wings. The light reflected from his eyes and brightened them; underneath them his scars were dark. Wren turned away once more, not wanting to see the evidence that her partner really did have every reason to hate her family.

As his fingers dropped onto her shoulders she immediately tensed. Every muscle shrieked at her to get away. She forced herself to lie still and to submit to his hands on her back. At least she was wearing a shirt.

But his palms burned through the material as if it was melting ice. She could feel every callous on his fingertips, every tiny change of pressure as he moved.

First he rubbed her shoulders, working on the wing-made knots as if he actually knew what he was doing. For ages it felt as if he was pressing on bruises and she groaned as lumps of tension moved under her skin. Her own muscles popped and stretched but finally her shoulders stopped hurting.

As she let herself sag on the bench she heard Raw’s weary exhalation and knew it was tiring him out to be working so hard, and probably hurting his own shoulder.

He lifted his hands and she felt the loss of them for a moment before they returned and started stroking the knots in her spine.

When he had forced her back to loosen, Raw moved to her arms.

It was quiet in the hut. The other Runners had retreated to the edges and corners and she knew some were working. One hummed under his breath.

Raw laid Wren’s arm back on the bench and pressed her wrist between his palms, lengthening the tense ligaments and kneading as he worked his way up her fingers.

Angrily Wren snapped her eyes shut.

Suddenly his hands moved again. This time he lifted her foot from the bench and started to work his way up her leg. There was no way she was going to relax now, not with his hands so intimate.

He kneaded her calf, then, hesitant as if he was reluctant himself, he moved up to her thigh. As her heart pounded, Wren turned her face to the heater and inhaled hot air until her head started to spin.

Suddenly a gust of rain blew into the hut as the door slammed open.  

Wren lurched onto her elbows; had Saqr brought her brothers?

Chapter thirteen

A stranger walked in. No older than Colm, he was cleanly shaven and his skin looked silk-smooth under a light scattering of stubble. His curls gleamed in the lamplight. He was flawlessly beautiful.

Wren’s mouth went slack as he shook back his hood. Then he shrugged off his tunic to reveal wide, Runner-muscled shoulders and hung the garment on a peg behind the door.

Genna embraced him tightly. “Orel. What did you find out?”

Orel’s eyes went to the tableau by the fire. “Later, Sphere-Mistress.” Shaking Genna off like an old coat, he strode forward with his eyes on Wren.

Raw still had one hand on her leg. As Wren writhed, trying to feel less exposed, Raw half raised his other hand to greet the newcomer.

Orel’s eyes never left Wren’s. They were dark as sin and glinted with un-nameable mischief. A frown flickered over them as he gauged the weight of Raw’s hand on Wren’s skin, as if he somehow shared her fury at such intimacy.

Finally he slid his gaze from Wren to Raw. “Who are you?” he demanded.

Raw subtly shifted so his muscles caught the light and his scars slid into shadow. “I’m a Runner. Who’re you?”

Orel ignored him and looked back at Wren with the same question in his eyes.

She fidgeted under his gaze. “I’m a Runner too.” Snappish under his scrutiny she sat, pulling her legs up under Raw’s shirt.

Orel raised his eyebrows. “If you weren’t Runners you wouldn’t be here. I asked
who
you were.” He narrowed his eyes in the direction of Wren’s legs and she tightened her hands over her calves.

“I’m Wren,” she stuttered.

Raw placed a hand on her shoulder. “I’m Raw. We’re partner-Running.”

Wren shook him off and glared at Orel. “Happy?”

Orel’s chin dipped. “In from where?”

Raw growled and Wren just knew that behind her back he was flexing his fists. “We’re from Elysium.” He spoke through clenched teeth.

“I thought I knew all the Elysuim Runners: Chayton’s family.” A frown creased Orel’s forehead.

Wren nodded quickly. “I’m the youngest.” Her head span as she tried to remember the story she had planned. “I've been ill, haven't seen many people. Raw's from Cockaigne, he came to see about courting our sister. It’s our first partner-flight in this direction.”

Cockaigne and Paradise were the colonies furthest from Vaikuntha. Cockaignians were known for their reclusiveness, its Runners least likely to be known to those here. Wren couldn’t remember the last time a Cockaignian had landed in Elysium. Still there was a huge risk: a one in ten chance that the Patriarch had Run from there to partner Genna.

Orel said nothing, his chest rose and fell as he watched her with those intense brown eyes. Under his scrutiny, Wren had to force herself to remain still. But she jumped when the door burst open once more.

A gust filled the room with dust and Wren began to cough as Saqr stomped in, leaving smears of red sand on the blackened floorboards.

He wasn’t alone. A figure lurked in the darkness behind the door, but Wren’s tearing eyes and the smoke from the fire meant she couldn’t see who it was. She rocketed off the bench. Her newly loosened muscles obeyed her much more easily, but still she lurched across the room. After such a long time lying down she was unsteady on her feet and she stumbled.

Orel caught her with one hand. His fingers closed around her arm like a bracelet and he raised his eyebrows as his fingers almost closed around her bicep.

Her skin tingled and she met his brown eyes. For a long moment neither of them moved; then Orel released her arm. Wren licked suddenly dry lips and resumed her run forward. But quickly she saw that the figure Saqr had brought was taller than Colm. This was not her brother. Her feet stuttered to a stop.

“Lister.” Genna blocked Wren’s view of the man who was now sweeping off his long coat.

“I’m not staying.” His voice was smooth as soy-cream.

Wren turned to Saqr. “Did you find news of my brothers? Who’s
this?”

Saqr nodded slowly. “This is the Lister.”

“The Lister?” Wren felt like a puppet with no strings, unsure where to go. Her eyes automatically looked for the familiar and Raw slid from behind the massage table to stand by her side.

“What does that mean?” he asked.

Ignoring the question, the Lister stepped into the light and Wren’s eyes widened; she had never seen anyone so completely bald. The light burned on his pate and shadows clung to the contours of his forehead and deepened his eyes.

At first she thought he must be old, but then she realised that his eyebrows were black as beetles and she saw that as he stalked towards the table he moved purposefully, like her father.

Her eyes fixed on a bag that dangled around his neck.

When he reached the table, the Lister lifted the bag over his neck. When it thudded onto the wooden surface he rubbed his shoulders and relief lightened his expression, as if the bag weighed more than it seemed.

As the Lister opened the flap Wren leaned forward to see what was inside.

The bag contained a simple flat screen; solar powered, useful for doing straightforward calculations and containing information, notes and the like, that would be uploaded to central data banks later on. There weren’t many operational ones left; Wren had only seen a couple of them in the hands of the Green-men at Elysium. They had run out of the components to repair them fifty years ago. To have one, this Lister had to be more important than he appeared.

The Lister pressed a button on the side and the screen brightened. He flicked to an application and opened it out, pulling the device to his chest to hide it. He sniffed at Wren and Raw. “You’re looking for your family?”

Raw’s hand folded around Wren’s wrist and she let it stay. She nodded her reply, barely breathing.

The Lister grunted. “You think they arrived a week ago?”

Wren nodded again, her voice caught.

“Give me their names.”

Wren forced her words free. “Colm and Jay. M-my father’s Chayton.” She leaned closer, leaving Raw’s hold. The fearful catch in her voice sounded strange to her ears.

The device uplit the Lister’s face as the screen glimmered with a brightness that reminded her of the glow tubes in the CFC factories. He scrolled down pages, searching.

Wren edged closer and he turned and glowered, forcing her back into Raw’s aura.

The Lister stopped reading, pursed his lips and sucked air through his teeth as if he was considering withholding what he knew. Finally he spoke. “Two of those Runners are here: Jay and Colm. Arrived seven days ago. Being held in block 7b.”   

He switched off the flat screen and closed it back in his bag. Wren flinched as if her brothers themselves were being shut inside.

Part of her wanted to spin around the room; after all her brothers were alive and she knew where they were. But her feet froze to the ground as a nameless dread deadened her body. “What do you mean
being held
?” she whispered. “When can they come home?”

Raw’s breath warmed her newly shorn neck which now seemed sensitive to every disturbance in the air.

The Lister sniffed again. “What’s
your
name?”

Wren curled her tongue around the information. Suddenly she didn’t want to give her name to this man; she didn’t want it trapped in his bag.

But Genna answered for her. “His name’s Wren, in from Elysium.”

Wren cut her eyes to the Runner woman, then straight back to the Lister.

He nodded, as if committing her name to memory. “Well, Wren, your father never landed here. Presumably his route took him towards a different colony, perhaps Tir Na Nog.” Another curl of his lip showed Wren what the Lister thought of that.

She opened her mouth to tell him exactly why she knew that was impossible, but for some reason Raw closed his hand tighter on her arm. Instinctively she obeyed his wordless warning and remained silent about the twinkling colony.

“Your brothers are being held with the other Runners who have landed on the main wall - in quarantine.”

Raw’s sharp breath seemed to suck the air from Wren’s canister. Her chest tightened. “In quarantine?” She spun to face Genna. “What’s going on?”

The Sphere-Mistress twisted her hands in her rumpled skirt. “We were going to tell you after you’d rested.” She gestured helplessly. “There’s an illness in the biosphere. It spread through the streets like a dust storm.” She gave a little moan. “It starts with a fever and ends with death.”

“For everyone?” Raw asked, weak voiced.

“So far.” The Lister sighed.

The illness started with a fever? Wren thought of her mother. Then she thought of Tir Na Nog. Had they poisoned their own air, or had something
else
killed them?

A whimper tickled her throat and impulsively she clawed backwards until she felt Raw’s arm under her own. His hand closed around hers’ and she dug her nails into his flesh.

“That was why you couldn’t land on the main platform.” Adler was saying. “No-one, but the Lister is allowed in or out of the town till this thing burns itself out. The Lister’s got a free pass because well, we need someone who knows what’s going on everywhere. You don’t think there’re usually this many of us in this hut, do you? Most of us are Runners who were out when quarantine started. Your friend over there …” He indicated the smiling man, whose face was dropping. “He’s a Waller, his job is to make sure the wall remains air - and Creature - tight. A Grounder, not a Runner, but he was stuck outside, same as us and can’t go back in.”