Part 13 (2/2)
”I'm aware of my position, Wren'.”
”Are you? The guides-they know you have ten years' experience; the mere guild lists you with thirty. A new ID dot; a history that's not yours-so far, the guides have never looked beyond the ratings to find you, but that 'so far' is as much protection as you'll ever have-unless you make a deal with the s.h.i.+elds.”
”Sure,” she retorted. ”And what have I ever had that they want? I'm a guide, not a guilder. I've got nothing but my past and a cougar d.o.g.g.i.ng my heels. I'm not trained to follow a blackjack thread. I don't know any alien zeks. I'm the one on the grayscale, Wren. h.e.l.l, why don't I just call them myself and show them just how badly I've broken the Pact?”
”You might as well,” he snapped back. ”Running scared of your demons-that's the fastest way there is to lose your grip.”
Her lips tightened. ”And you're not afraid of your past? Of your demons?”
”Afraid? No.” His voice was flat. ”They don't own me. Not like you: you're letting your fear move you without direction.”
She smiled bitterly. ”The mere guild gives me direction with every contract And it is they, not my demons, who own me, Wren-as much as I allow it.” She stared out at the lake. It looked like a piece of sky, fallen between the hills and trapped by the wind in the valley. She rubbed at her wrists again, chafing the skin on the cuff of her blunter. ”The meres--they own my future, too,” she said, more to herself than Wren. ”But only because I haven't figured out how to get it back for myself.”
His cold eyes flicked to the set of her face. ”You tried for twenty years to fit the mold of the guides, and it got you only chains.” He motioned with his chin at her wrists. She stilled her hands abruptly. ”You try now to fit the mold of a mere, and your inner self fights that as much as you deliberately guide us. Look at you. You hide your wildness in motion- constant motion. You dance in every firepit you see. h.e.l.l, Feather, you dance in the wind when there aren't any flames for the oils of your skin. I look at you and all I can see is that your biogate is always open now.” He nodded at her automatic denial. ”The cats- they move in your mind. I can see it, Feather-in your eyes, in the movements of your body.” He spat a seed over the lip of the trail and watched it whipped away by the wind. ”You can't always hide in action, Tsia-guide. You run too far forward before your past steadies up, and you fall off the edge of your life.” The stillness of his expression seemed somehow brutal on his birdlike face. ”If you're not more careful, someday you'll wake up with your demons staring you in the face.”
”I wish they would,” she whispered. Demons, dreams, and memories... There were people in her past. A sister who had fled to the cold depths of s.p.a.ce. An old friend, lost to the tradelanes... There were the cats around her, forbidden to her by the guides whom she defied with every breath. She clenched her fists inside her blunter and stared up at the sky, ignoring the rain on her face.
Wren followed her gaze. His voice was quiet. ”You think about the things you've lost. You hang on to your memories like a tiny spider, tugging on a wind-torn web.”
Her eyes were tight with pain. ”What else do I have?”
”You have nothing.” His voice was flat and abrupt. ”Nothing,” he repeated harshly, ”that you don't make for yourself. You made your past, but no one else's. Take your sister: you hang on to her as though you could fix her life, but you didn't make her problems. Your problems are here-now-in getting us to the freepick stake. In dealing with that cub. Your sister's problems-they're not yours, but hers, to solve-” ”No, Wren-” Tsia cut in. ”We're family. Her problems are as much mine as hers. She didn't ask to be caught by whatever or whoever trapped her. And somehow, she was persuaded to give up everything that had ever been important to her.” She shook her head. ”Every com we had, there was denial in her voice of what she was doing to herself. I could hear it. Feel it in every word she spoke.”
”She abandoned you. You owe her nothing.”
”You've never spoken of your own family, Wren,” she retorted. ”What is it you reject in them?”
”I gave them up a long time ago.”
”I gave up my past, my guild, and my life,” she said softly. ”I refuse to do the same with my family.”
Wren glanced over his shoulder to see if Nitpicker was finished sealing the holes in her trousers, then spat his last seed. ”Seems as if, with your gate and all, you'd be able to tell just how strong your sister's rejection is. Just how futile it is to fight it.”
”I can tell,” Her voice was low. ”Sometimes, I can almost feel her. As if she were close enough to touch. As if, were I to scream her name loudly enough, she would answer through the wind.”
Wren glanced at her face. He could almost see her stretch through her gate. See the animal snarl that shaped itself on her lips. ” 'O tiger's heart,' ” he murmured, ” 'wrapped in a woman's hide.' ”
Slowly, she turned to face him. One hand rose to his chest, her fingers curled like a claw. She rested it on his sternum till she felt the cold power of his biofield like the rain that slashed her skin. Slowly, her eyes cleared of the glints that sparked in their dark blue depths. She said nothing, but when he turned to go back to the cave, she followed without a word.
”The freepick stake is just over the ridge,” Striker said to Kurvan as Tsia stepped back in the cave. ”Why not hike it?”
Kurvan frowned. ”We lost every scanner but the one Bowdie was carrying on his harness. How do you expect to pick up a trail? The node's still down, so we can't call up a map overlay. And with this storm, it's not as if the paths are clearly marked.”
Striker pointed at Tsia with her sharp chin. ”We've got a guide. That's part of what we pay her for- pathfmding. You got a guess, Feather? About how far it is to the freepick stake on foot?”
”As the crow flies, about twenty kilometers,” Tsia forced herself to respond. 'Thirty-eight to fifty by trail.”
”It's only midmorning now,” Striker said. ”We could make the stake by tomorrow's dawn.”
Nitpicker got gingerly to her feet, wincing as the movement pulled on the fresh skin grafts. ”There's
more than one trail?”
”Five,” Tsia returned. ”Three will be impa.s.sable-there's been six solid days of rain-and most of the cable bridges will be under water, if they haven't been torn away by snags.”
”You've hiked these trails yourself? You know them in storm conditions?”
She gave the pilot a faint, twisted smile. ”Daya has always d.a.m.ned the fools who hike trails like these in
storms.”
Doetzier gave her a speculative look. ”Not that you haven't done it yourself?”
Tsia shrugged. ”Fifteen, sixteen years ago, I spent a few months out here, working with a friend. I know
three of the trails in this area well; one trail somewhat, and the fifth trail I crossed only once.”
”Fifteen years is a lot of time for change,” he remarked.
”I ran each of those main trails over a dozen times. Mud can't hide my landmarks.”
” 'Brush grows and snags burn, but the peaks remain the same,' ” quoted Striker.
Doetzier regarded Tsia curiously. ”Why run a trail so many times?”
”I had a Gea contract to track the shaper swarms as they came across the ridges.”
Bowdie raised his brown eyebrows. ”I've been on this world two years now and I've never seen any
chameleons, let alone a shaper.”
”A mere who sees a shaper is in a world of hurt,” Wren commented. ”Better to keep your eyes closed and miss them by a mile.” Tsia nodded. ”If you're not out in the right weather, it's not likely you'll see them unless they're attacking for food, or you're in the path of a swarm. Remember when SarabCo came out with their new e-wraps- the kind we use now for camo? Power and sensor strips sewn in; configuration threads, blunter fabric... Lots of advertis.e.m.e.nt-new technologies, new materials. People here on Risthmus just shook their heads. An e-wrap that changed shape, not just color, to match your terrain? Shapers have been doing that kind of camouflage for millennia.” She glanced outside at the rain. ”In this weather, they'll be hungry. You'll probably stumble over a few on the way.”
”Just what we like,” Striker muttered. ”Venomous scenery.”
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