“Are you sure we can trust them with our child?” the former Watcher asks.
“If I didn’t trust them,” the woman answers, “they’d already be dead.”
“I don’t doubt that,” he says, returning his attention to the woman. “How is the cavern?”
“It’s perfect. Large enough for the four of us, but far enough away from camp that we have privacy.”
“I know you can take care of yourself, but I feel great comfort knowing that several of those who have been with us for so long are close by.”
“As do I,” she replies.
Their new habitat had proven to be more than she’d hoped for. Large and spacious, the cavern contains a small waterfall at one end that spills into a shallow pool. Plenty of tiny grubs burrow inside the granite ceiling, casting their soft purple light from the maze of holes they leave in the rock. A small connected cave that’s big enough for the woman’s servant and the servant’s child to sleep in allows the woman privacy with her child at each morrow’s end.
Within a two-mile radius of their cavern, five healthy sustaining trees grow. All are bound by rope and have stakes with tubes attached to them stabbed in the bark. The tubes lead to sap transports, some old and weathered, some newly created in the Desert. During each Darkness, sap flows freely into the transports for all of those at camp.
The woman and former Watcher were fortunate to find an area with so many small caves inside a circle of hills. With plenty of trees close by, they have sustenance and dwelling space for fifty of their kind. Thirty Murkovin currently reside at the camp, including three who had been loyal to the woman and the former Watcher since long before he left the Delta for the last time.
Another Murkovin, the tallest the woman has ever known, lives in a cavern just a stone’s throw away from hers. He’d been an ally of the woman’s since long before she met the former Watcher, and he’s the only creature of the Barrens the woman has ever trusted without question.
The camp lies only one thousand miles north of the Desert, close enough to the hidden canyon deep in the sandy expanse that the woman can visit as often as she wants. With the woman’s traveling speed, she can make it there and back in a single morrow. Several times, she’d taken her child to the Desert to see his Mür.
“How goes it in the Desert?” she asks the former Watcher.
“We’ve completed one hundred transports. We’ll use fifty to store more steel sap. Fifty are for you to use.”
“Are they ready now?”
“You can have them picked up at any time,” he answers.
“I’ll send ten people who can blend their light back with you. Once they know the location, they can make several round trips.”
“Are you sure they can be trusted?” he asks.
The woman looks in the direction of the camp. “All of those at camp now can be trusted.”
“Do they know I’m from the Delta?”
“No,” she replies, returning her attention to him. “None of the new ones know. Those who’ve been with us since the early morrows know to hold their tongues.”
“I want the people of the Delta to think I’m dead and the creatures of the Barrens to believe I’m one of them. Never use my given name.”
“We never do,” she confirms.
“How many camps have you set up?” he asks.
“We have a total of forty. Between twenty and forty Murkovin are at each camp.”
He shakes his head with frustration. “That’s all?”
“We need more transports,” she says. “We don’t have enough for more camps yet. But the more camps we set up, the more Murkovin we’ll find who can travel and bring them here for training. Our numbers will soon increase much faster.”
The former Watcher moves to the front of the woman and grips her waist in both hands. “You’re our face in the wasteland. You know we need as many Murkovin as we can find.”
“We’ll find them all,” she says confidently.
Wrapping her arms around him, the woman leans forward and kisses him again. After their lips part, the former Watcher smothers her in a tight embrace.
“I couldn’t do any of this without you,” he whispers in her ear.
I know you couldn’t, the woman thinks to herself. And this part of the plan, I couldn’t do without you.
Chapter 10
After the sixty-ninth Darkness since our daughter’s birth comes and goes, I ask Larn if I can take the next few morrows off. He grants my request without asking for an explanation, but I’m sure he knows the reason why. I want to spend as much time as I can with baby girl while she’s still living with Sash and me. And even though it’s not customary in this world, I want to go to her Naming Ritual. Sash had explained to me that the only people who usually attend are the Keepers, children, Disciples, and mother and child.
Over the next two morrows, Sash and I spend every waking moment with our daughter. Breaking its consistent pattern, Darkness delays its next fall, allowing us a little extra time with her. We take her to the Tall Hill several times to play in the grass. Sometimes, we just lay her on her back and lean over her face to tell her how much we love her. She often swings her eyes back and forth between Sash and me and reaches her hands up to our faces. The almost omniscient smile on her lips seems to say, “I love you, Mommy. I love you, Daddy. Everything is going to work out for the best.”
We’re awoken to the seventieth Darkness in the middle of the Krymzyn night. Sash silences the screeching of the Swirls and ends their flashing red light by calling out, “Peace.” Lost in slumber, baby girl never wakes up.
While I go outside
