Dug blinked away his unconsciousness and put a hand on Talis’s shoulder at the base of her neck. “Talis.” He put his other hand on the side of her face, his calloused fingers rough against her cheek. The cuts over his eyes were gone. The life had come back to his features, but his eyes were pained. “You should not have come. I am ready.”
“No time for that.” Her voice cracked, and she cleared her throat to try again. “You’re not going to find a way out here.”
She raised her arm to show him the brand. “We’re not the ones Onaya Bone is furious with.”
He maintained his balance as the guards were forced back into them by a swell in the crowd. Reached out to grip her arm, pulled it closer for inspection. She hissed as her skin stretched. “Careful, mind you.”
He let go, and she held her hand over the burn, pressing it as if that would help the pain. For the first time, he seemed fully aware of the crowd. Of hands and faces turned toward Meran, and then of Meran herself.
“We’ve had a busy day,” Talis said, trying to cut off a poorly timed line of questioning.
He nodded, eyeing the guards who protected them. Probably the same guards who had tied him up on the platform. “You’re hurt,” he said.
She almost laughed. Him tied up there, surrounded by alien corpses, a surging crowd at his feet, and he was worried about her bruises. “Well, we gave better than we got.”
But had they? Silus Cutter was dead. She swallowed that thought unchewed.
They were almost halfway to the gate, but the crowd forced their pace to a shuffling crawl. Dug looked down at the brand on her arm again.
And then he noticed his own arm, smooth and free of scars. He ran his fingers across the skin, tracing the lines and symbols of his tattoo as if he’d never seen it before.
Talis took a hit to her ribcage and stumbled into Dug, gritting her teeth and biting down on a growl. The crowd was getting to be a bit much.
“If we ever get back to the ship, I’ll fill you in on what you missed,” she promised him.
Meran pushed forward, past them, past the guards. The crowd surrounded her, and for a moment Talis lost sight of the woman, even the blue light tracing across her skin. Talis urged Dug forward, shouldering her way through the masses and clenching her jaw against the pain as she fought the renewed fervor of the crowd around them.
Then Meran reappeared, her head and shoulders rising out of the crowd. Hands tried to cling to her as she seemed to levitate. The onlookers in front of Talis and Dug parted, and she saw the hard-packed sand of the street shifting and cresting, lifting up into a narrow ridge, elevated above the crowd. Atop the ridge, Meran turned to them and calmly waited for them to follow.
Talis and Dug left the guards behind, ascending the slope. It crumbled back to the ground behind them, and lifted to meet Meran’s feet as she walked confidently toward the docks. The crowd stumbled and fell as the ground moved, forcing them back.
“How is this possible?” Dug asked Talis as they walked single-file behind Meran.
Talis held up her hand for him to see the ring. “Looks like she’ll do what I want as long as I keep this on. Mostly. She gets a little creative with the ‘how.’”
“And where did she come from?” His voice was tense. “What gives her such power?”
Suddenly the ring felt too loose, and she closed her hand in a fist, squeezing until her fingernails cut into the palm of her hand. She increased her pace. She needed to be back on Wind Sabre. “It’s a long story, the telling of which deserves privacy and a stiff drink.”
Chapter 32
Cold air hissed through her teeth as Talis gently probed the purple flesh over her ribs with her index and middle finger. Meran perched on the counter along the med cabin’s bulkhead, watching her ministrations with the kind of interest that a cat would give a string in the wind.
A deep-chested chuckle sounded from the door. Talis whipped her head around, against the protest of an ache that had developed in her shoulders and neck. Dug leaned his tall frame against the bulkhead, hunched so that his feathered topknot didn’t bump against the Cutter-height doorframe.
He’d taken the account of their adventures in stride, from the conversation with Onaya Bone, to the Yu’Nyun simula and their crystalline engine, to Hankirk in the brig and Talis’s march into town with Meran. As far as he seemed to be concerned, the brand on Talis’s arm wiped away any question that she’d done the right thing. Except, maybe, leaving Hankirk alive.
She narrowed her eyes at him, but then gave him a crooked smile to match his laugh before turning her focus back to her bruises. She didn’t cover herself. She’d spent too much time in crowded crew bunks with Dug to worry over what he might have left to see of her.
“Any reason you haven’t had her heal that?” he asked.
Talis looked up at Meran. She’d honestly not even considered it.
Meran smiled at her. Closed-mouth, enigmatic. She answered, “I obey her will. Her concern was for her crew.”
“That sounds like our captain,” Dug said. A look flashed across his face faster than Talis could interpret it.
Meran had healed Dug’s wounds—old and new—and had gotten them out of town without hurting anyone. Stark contrast to her violence on the Yu’Nyun ship, which she’d blown up without hesitation. Yet when they returned to Wind Sabre, she’d played healer to Scrimshaw. Placed a brilliant blue hand on xist chest, and xe’d returned to them.
But the alien put a hand on hers before she took xist scar. Wanted to keep it, xe told her. Meran looked at xin a long moment, measuring xin silently, then accepted xist decision without
