Perry stood a head taller, but Soren easily outweighed him. His bones were buried deep beneath muscle. Perry seldom saw people that big. They didn’t have enough food to grow that thick. Not like in here.
“You approach your death, Mole,” Perry said.
“Mole? That’s inaccurate, Savage. Most of the Pod is aboveground. And we don’t die young. We don’t get hurt, either. We can’t even break anything.” Soren looked down at the girl. When he looked back at Perry, he stopped walking. It happened too fast, his momentum rocking him up on his toes. He’d changed his mind about something.
Soren’s eyes flicked past him. Perry drew in a breath. Woodsmoke. Burning plastic. The fire was heating up. He inhaled again, caught what he’d expected. Another Dweller’s scent, coming at him from behind. He’d seen three males. Soren and two others. Were they both sneaking up on him, or just one? Perry drew another breath but couldn’t tell. The smoke was too dense.
Soren’s gaze dropped to Perry’s hand. “You’re good with a knife, aren’t you?”
“Good enough.”
“Have you ever killed a person? I bet you have.”
He was buying time, letting whoever was behind Perry draw nearer.
“Never killed a Mole,” Perry said. “Not yet.”
Soren smiled. Then he surged forward and Perry knew the others would be coming too. He spun and saw only one Dweller, farther away than he’d expected, running with a metal bar in his hand. Perry hurled his knife. The blade sailed true and sank deep in the Dweller’s stomach.
Soren thundered up behind him. Perry braced as he turned. The blow came from the side, slamming into Perry’s cheek. The ground reared up and back. Perry wrapped his arms around Soren as he blurred past. He pushed but couldn’t bring Soren down. The Mole was made of stone.
Perry took a shot to his kidney and growled, waiting for the pain. It didn’t hurt as much as it should have. Soren hit him again. Perry heard himself laugh. The Dweller didn’t know how to use his own strength.
He pushed away, throwing his first punch. His fist smashed into the clear eye patch. Soren seized up, the veins in his neck standing out like vines. Perry didn’t wait. He put his full weight behind the next blow. The bone in the Dweller’s jaw snapped with a crack. Soren fell hard. Then he tucked in slow, like a dying spider.
Blood ran through his teeth. His jaw hung too far to the side, but he never took his eyes off Perry.
Perry swore, stepping away. This wasn’t what he had wanted when he’d broken in. “I warned you, Mole.”
The lights had gone out again. Smoke moved through the trees in rolls, glowing with firelight. He went to the other male to retrieve his knife. The Dweller began to cry when he saw Perry. Blood gurgled from his wound. Perry couldn’t look him in the eyes as he slid his blade free.
He came back to the girl. Her hair fanned around her head, dark and shiny as a raven’s feathers. Perry spotted her eyepiece resting on the leaves by her shoulder. He prodded it with a finger. The skin felt cool. Velvety as a mushroom. Denser than he’d expected for looking so much like a jellyfish. He slipped it into his satchel. Then he hoisted the girl over his shoulder as he carried larger game, wrapping his arm around her legs to keep her steady.
Neither of his Senses were any help to him now. The smoke had grown thick enough to cloak all other smells and block his vision, making him disoriented. There were no rises and falls in the earth to guide him either. Only walls of flame or smoke wherever he looked.
He moved when the fire inhaled. He stopped when it exhaled in bursts of heat that scorched his legs and arms. Tears streamed from his eyes, making it harder to see. He pushed on, feeling skitty and drunk from the smoke. Finally he found a channel of clean air and ran, the Dweller girl’s head lolling against his back.
Perry reached the dome wall, followed it. At some point there had to be a way out. It took longer than he hoped. He stumbled up to the same door he’d come through earlier, stepping into a steel room. By then every breath felt like embers kindling in his lungs.
He set the girl down, closed the door. Then for a good while, he could only cough and pace until the pain behind his nose let up. He swiped at his eyes, leaving a streak of blood and soot on his forearm. His bow and quiver rested against the wall were where he’d left them. The curve of his bow looked stark against the room’s perfect lines.
Perry knelt, wobbling as he did, and looked the Dweller over. Her eye had stopped bleeding. She was finely made. Thin, dark eyebrows. Pink lips. Skin as smooth as milk. His gut told him they were close in age, but with skin like that he wasn’t sure. He’d been watching her from his perch in a tree. How she’d stared at leaves in wonder. He nearly hadn’t needed his nose to know her temper. Her face showed every small emotion.
Perry brushed her black hair away from her neck and leaned close. With his nose blunted by smoke, this was the only way. He drew in a breath. Her flesh wasn’t as pungent as the other Dwellers’, but it was still off. Warm blood but a rancy, decaying scent as well. He inhaled again, curious, but her mind was deep in the unconscious so she gave off no temper.
He thought about bringing her with him, but Dwellers died on the outside. This room was her best chance to survive the fire. He’d planned to check on the other girl too. No chance of that anymore.
He stood. “You better live, little Mole,” he said. “After all this.”
Then he sealed the door behind him and stepped into another chamber, this one crushed by an Aether strike. Perry ducked through the crumbling dark corridor. The way grew tighter, forcing him to crawl over broken cement and warped metal, pushing his bow and satchel ahead of him, until he was back in his world.
Straightening, he drew a deep breath of the night. Welcomed the clean air into his singed lungs. Alarms broke the silence, first muted through the rubble, then blaring all around him, so loud he felt the sound thrum in his chest. Perry looped the strap of his satchel and quiver over his shoulder, took up his bow, and pulled foot, sprinting through the cool predawn.
An hour later, with the Dweller fortress no more than a mound in the distance, he sat to give his pounding head a break. It was morning, already warm in the Shield Valley, a dry stretch of land that reached nearly to his home two days to the north. He let his head fall against his forearm.
Smoke clung to his hair and skin. He scented it with every breath. Dweller smoke wasn’t like theirs. It smelled like molten steel and chemicals that burned hotter than fire. His left cheek throbbed, but it was nothing compared to the core of pain behind his nose. The muscles in his thighs twitched, still running away from the alarms.
It was bad enough he’d broken into the Dweller fortress. His brother would cast him out for that alone. But he’d tangled with the Moles. Probably killed at least one of them. The Tides didn’t have problems with the Dwellers like other tribes did. Perry wondered if he’d just changed that.
He reached for his satchel and rummaged through the leather pack. His fingers brushed something cool and velvety. Perry swore. He’d forgotten to leave the girl’s eye patch behind. He brought it out, examining it in his palm. It caught the blue light of the Aether like a huge water droplet.
He’d heard the Moles as soon as he’d broken into the wooded area. Their laughing voices had echoed from the farming space. He’d crept over and watched them, stunned to see so much food left to rot. He’d planned to leave after a few minutes, but by then he’d gotten curious about the girl. When Soren tore the eyepiece from her face, he couldn’t stand by and watch any longer, even if she was just a Mole.
Perry slipped the eye patch back into his satchel, thinking to sell it when traders came around in spring. Dweller gadgets fetched a sizey price, and there were plenty of things his people needed, to say nothing of his nephew, Talon. Perry dug deeper into the bag, past his shirt, vest, and water skin, until he found what he wanted.
The apple’s skin shone more softly than the eyepiece. Perry ran his thumbs over it, following its curves. He’d bagged it in the farming space. The one thing he had thought to grab as he’d stalked the Moles. He brought the apple to his nose and breathed in the sweet scent, his mouth filling with saliva.
It was a stupid gift. Not even why he’d broken in.
And not nearly enough.
Chapter 4
PEREGRINE
Perry strode into the Tide compound near midnight, four days after he’d left. He stopped in the central clearing, inhaled the briny smell of home. The ocean was a good thirty minutes’ walk to the west, but fishermen carried the scent of their trade everywhere. Perry rubbed a hand over his hair, still wet from his swim. Tonight he smelled a bit like a fisherman himself.
Perry shifted the bow and quiver over his back. With no game slung over his shoulder, he had no reason to follow his usual path to the cookhouse so he stayed where he was, taking in fresh what he knew by heart. Homes made of stones rounded by time. Wooden doors and shutters worn by salt air and rain. As weather-beaten as the compound was, it looked sturdy. Like a root growing aboveground.
He preferred the compound like this, in the dead of night. With winter coming and food in such shortage, Perry had grown used to anxious tempers clotting the air during the day. But after dark, the cloud of human emotions lifted, leaving quieter scents. The cooling earth, opened like a flower to the sky. The musk of nighttime animals, making paths he could follow with ease.
Even his eyes favored this time. Contours were more crisp. Movement easier to track. Between his nose and his eyes, he figured he was made for the night.
He drew in his last breath of open air, steeling himself, then stepped into his brother’s home. His gaze swept over the wooden table and the two ragged leather chairs before the hearth, then rose to the loft nestled against the roof timbers. Finally he relaxed as his eyes settled on the closed door that led to the only bedroom. Vale wasn’t awake. His brother would be asleep with Talon, his son.
Perry moved to the table and inhaled slowly. Grief hung thick and heavy, out of place in the colorful room. It pressed in along the edges of his vision like a bleak gray fog. Perry also caught the smoke from the dying fire, the tang of Luster from the clay pitcher on the wooden table. A month had passed since his brother’s wife, Mila, had died. Her scent was faded, almost gone.
Perry tapped the rim of the blue pitcher with a finger. He’d watched Mila decorate the handle with yellow flowers last spring. Mila’s touch was everywhere. In the ceramic plates and the bowls she’d shaped. The rugs she’d woven and the glass jars full of beads she’d painted. She’d been a Seer. Gifted with uncommon sight. Like most Seers, Mila had cared about the looks of things. On her deathbed, when her hands could no longer weave or paint or mold clay, she’d told stories and filled them with the colors she loved.
Perry leaned his weight on the table, suddenly weak and weary with missing her. He had no right to brood, with his brother who’d lost a wife and his nephew who’d lost a mother hurting far more. But she’d been his family too.
He turned to the bedroom door. He wanted to see Talon. But judging by the empty pitcher, Vale had been drinking. A meeting with his older brother now would be too risky.