Poison Tree

residents who did not want to be found. She wasn’t going to give her father a chance to track her down until she was sure he was going to follow the laws.

It has been six years. You were sixteen when you saw him last, she told herself as she punched in the numbers with trembling hands. She never wanted to see him again, never wanted him in her life. But was she so much of a coward that she couldn’t call him, even if it meant Jeht and Quean would someday have a home again?

She sat in her car to make the phone call so she would not risk anyone walking up and greeting her or saying anything that might tip her father o about where she was. She wrapped herself in noble motives and precautions, but the instant she heard his voice on the phone, she felt like she was standing before him again, looking up at him, powerless and frightened.

“Divai, Father,” she said, her voice barely a whisper.

There was a pause before he replied to the greeting. “La’he’gen-ne’rai.” The response was as formal as her own words. He greeted her as daughter, though his tone was cautious. And immediately, he asked, “Where are you?”

“I won’t tell you that yet.” It was so hard to say those words. “I need you to—”

“Is someone holding you against your will?” he interrupted. She tried to answer, to tell him no, but he spoke over her. “If they are, if anyone has put a hand on you to hurt you, I will—”

“I need you to listen to me!” she shouted, barely able to hear her voice over her own pulse.

“I need you to tell me where you are,” he replied.

She hung up, her heart pounding in her throat.

She was crazy to have tried.

Stupid.

She dismantled the phone with shaking ngers and crushed the delicate machinery, leaving nothing for him to trace. He might have cared about the cubs in other circumstances, but he wouldn’t listen to anything Sarik had to say until he had her back in his possession. Was it her responsibility to sacri ce her own life and freedom just to explore the possibility that her father might be willing to help?

Not wanting to risk running into Christian, she returned to her room instead of going to the children with yet more frustrating news. Jeht needed some time to process what she had told him, and she needed to wait until she had shut her panic down before she faced him again.

When Jason found her, she was calmly checking messages and emails. She had been networking for days, trying to make contact with someone who might have ties to the

Mistari main camps. Her mailbox was full of apologies and dismissals.

“How’s it going with the cubs?” Jason asked, looking over her shoulder at the latest email, with its hostile message: How could you want to send children back to that barbaric culture?

Unfortunately, individuals who had willingly left the Mistari tended not to have a high opinion of their ways.

“Not well,” she admitted. “Jeht and Quean don’t understand why someone would willingly leave, or why I would choose not to go back, so it’s hard to explain why I haven’t found a way to get them home yet.”

“Yeah,” Jason said, his gaze distant. “I remember what that’s like.”

Jason had saved Sarik’s life, after she had stupidly walked into his master’s territory when she was sixteen. After they rst ran away, they had clung together not out of any a ection, but because neither of them knew how to survive without someone to ght—and they had fought, brutally, physically, and verbally, time and again, until they realized they were echoing everything they had been taught and wanted to get away from. They had joined SingleEarth with no real expectation of nding anything there for them, but they hadn’t known anywhere else to go.

Sarik hadn’t spoken to her father since, before today. He wasn’t the type who would be proud of her work at SingleEarth. He would be disgusted and order her home immediately, and if she refused, he would exert his signi cant physical and political power to get what he wanted. There was no relationship she could maintain with him in which she was not a terrified subject under his rule—which meant it was better if he never knew where she was.

CHAPTER 9

THOUGH CHRISTIAN WORE his detached-and-bored expression during most of Lynzi’s “tour,”

Alysia could tell he was intrigued by the shooting. Had it been intended to warn Alysia, scare her, draw her out, or drive her away? Given that her own weapons had been used, someone was probably planning to frame her, but who would hate her enough to want to implicate her, have the talent to make the shots, and yet care enough to avoid any kills?

And where was the follow-through, the pointed finger directing blame her way?

She wished she could discuss all the possibilities with Christian.

They found Ben camped out in the cafeteria, swearing at a laptop.

“I thought you were heading home,” Alysia said.

“I am. Will be,” Ben answered. “I’m waiting for the IT monkeys to show up so I can tell them what’s going on. We’ve got a root kit to clean up, and probably about a dozen computers that need to be quarantined, formatted, and reimaged. Maybe more. They’re going to have to rebuild the entire network.”

“Glad I’m not on that job,” Alysia admitted. “How did you get out of doing it?”

“I o ered to nuke it from orbit,” Ben answered. “Central said they’d send in a cleanup crew. I got shot, remember? Hey, is this the big, bad mercenary the guards are all on edge about?” he asked, looking up at Christian. “Did you want to know more about this critter?

As best as I can tell, it came in as a fraudulent update. Added itself to the security suite’s whitelist and then downloaded a handful of patches so it could—”

Christian shook his head, cutting Ben o with a, “Thanks. I already have the information

I need.”

Alysia had explained that a computer virus had been planted and how it had an impact on everyone’s movements that morning; that was as much as Christian wanted to know.

His eyes had glazed over when Ben started talking root kits and patches.

“You’re really leader of Frost now?” Alysia found herself asking as they moved on.

She didn’t care if Lynzi heard the question. Watching Christian with Ben had o ended her in a visceral way.

Of the three Bruja guilds, Frost had traditionally been the stereotypical redneck cousin, specializing in hand- to-hand combat and brute force without the nesse or standards of

Crimson or Onyx. Alysia, however, had spent most of her time in Bruja trying to convince the guilds that they needed to move into the twenty- rst century, a notion that had terri ed most of the old-guard leadership. As a result, Frost was now the most technologically advanced of the guilds—or had been before she left, before a hunter who didn’t know a monitor from a microwave took over.

She was appropriately chastised as Christian replied, “Someone needed to take it after

Sarta left.” He didn’t say the rest aloud, which was And you weren’t there.

“What does leadership mean in a group like Bruja?” Lynzi asked. “Would the leader of

Onyx have the authority to order members to stay away from us, if we could make it worth his while to do so?”

Christian shook his head. “Kral wouldn’t make that deal, and he wouldn’t be able to enforce it if he did. Leaders are responsible for intervening if the guild’s reputation is threatened or if we are exposed to the wrong people, not for policing the actions of individual members. Not so di erent from a Haven mediator, in a way,” he added, with a pointed look to Alysia.

“I think SingleEarth’s response to a threat is probably subtler than Bruja’s,” Lynzi observed.