Mirage (26 page)

Bouts all day! She shook her head and patted Tal. Equians and their stamina. How could anyone compete against a people built from horses? She turned to head up to Ring Three, but Scorch stood in her way. Up close, her resemblance to Karl Strand and Fathom was even more noticeable. If her eyes had the capacity for kindness, she’d look just like a female version of Karl from the photo they’d found. The one taken before his son had died and he’d apparently lost his mind.

“What do you want?” Aluna said.

Scorch laughed. “Why, to wish you well, of course. I hope you survive long enough to fight me.”

Aluna smiled. “Oh, I will. I’ll survive long enough to beat you.”

The humor disappeared from Scorch’s face. “Big talk from a fish who couldn’t even kill my brother when she had the chance.”

Aluna flicked her wrists and felt the smooth silver capsules holding her talons drop into her palms.

“Oh, yes, I’ve had time to hear all the news now,” Scorch said. “Trust me when I say you would never have left Mirage alive if I’d had my way.”

“You want to fight right now?” Aluna popped open her talons. She sat on Tal, a good meter higher than Scorch’s Human body. But Scorch herself was far from Human. “I’m only here for you. To end you. To drive another harpoon deep into Karl Strand’s side. You want to fight right now? Then let’s go.”

Scorch lifted a hand and pushed a lock of Karl Strand’s brown hair out of her eyes. A delaying tactic. Aluna’s suggestion had apparently taken her by surprise.

The fake smile reappeared on Scorch’s face. “Fight? Now? Why, that’s not how we do things in the desert, little fish. It’s good to see that none of the Equians’ honor has rubbed off on you while you’ve been here.”

“You are the last person in the world who has the right to lecture me about honor,” Aluna said quietly.

“You’d prefer my father did it?” Scorch said. “I admit, Father has always had an interesting take on the concept. But, no,” she said. “You’ll never see Karl Strand or be part of his glorious vision of the future. You won’t make it past these trials. I guarantee it.”

Aluna should have walked away. She had fights to prepare for, and Scorch was already in her head.

“You remind me of someone,” Aluna said, pretending to think. “Oh, that’s right! You remind me of your brother Fathom, right before I drove him to his knees.”

Scorch’s left eye twitched. Her fists clenched.

There
, Aluna thought.
Now I’m in your head, too
.

She nudged Tal, and the two of them kept walking. So Scorch knew about Fathom and HydroTek, beyond what they’d told High Khan Onggur back in Mirage. Even if Flame Heart won the trials, there was no way Scorch would let her or Dash or Hoku or Calli leave the desert alive.

Ring Three turned out to be a large circle of salty earth surrounded by a low wall of sandbags. Competitors prepared on one side of the ring while spectators stood on the other side, eating and drinking and placing bets. Clanking armor and the clop of hoofbeats filled the air. Aluna smelled horse and sweat, metal and oil. A few meters from the ring, Human and Equian vendors sold food to the waiting spectators, adding the scents of sizzling snake and grilled cactus to the air. She even spotted a few Upgraders mixed in with the crowd.

The Equian running Ring Three took her name and gave her a sash to loop across her body, shoulder to hip. It was light blue and gold, with a large golden sun sewn in the middle. She was officially a Flame Heart on the Path of Sun.

She scanned the crowd, looking for Master Sefu or Subira. They must have been assigned to different rings.
Good
. Then all three of them had a chance of making it to the finals. A Serpenti warrior named Okpara had been assigned to this ring, but no one considered his chances good — not even Okpara himself.

“No killing blows,” the Ring Three fight master said to Aluna. She wore rainbow colors in her head wrap, a sign that for the tournament, she owed allegiance to all herds and to none. An impartial judge. “You are allowed your horse and whatever weapons you choose. Should you and your horse become separated during the fight, only one of you can continue.”

Aluna nodded.

The Equian smiled suddenly. “They’ll try to spook your horse,” she said. “No one has ever competed with one before. They’ll go for her first, to weaken you right away.”

Tal snorted and reared her head back. Aluna put a hand on her neck to calm her. She needed them to think that Tal was just a dumb animal, not an animal with full Equian intelligence.

“Thanks,” Aluna said. “But why are you helping me?”

The woman shrugged. “I like a good fight. It honors the sun, and it honors us all.”

Aluna touched two fingers to her heart. “I aim to give you one.”

The woman laughed and shouted, “Next!”

O
NCE ALUNA AND TAL
were off to the Path of Sun area, Hoku headed to Calli’s tent to work on his force shield and keep her company. Or maybe she was keeping him company. He pushed open the flap and almost smacked into Nathif. The snake-boy towered above Hoku and wore a wide grin on his face.

“You’re so quiet with your slithering,” Hoku grumbled. “Would you consider wearing a bell, or a tiny piece of tech that beeps every few seconds?”

“Keep joking, merman,” Nathif said, pushing a clump of blond hair away from his eyes. “After enough tries, you are bound to make a funny one.”

Hoku searched for a witty comeback but decided he was too tired. He actually liked the way Nathif teased him. There was no malice to it, and Hoku enjoyed the verbal sparring. At least he did when he was more awake. “I’m saving my brainpower to get this shield working.”

“Excellent,” Nathif said. “I hope your tech savvy exceeds your wit.”

Hoku opened his mouth in the hopes that something brilliant would suddenly appear there, but a weak voice from the back of the tent saved him.

“Hoku’s the smartest person I know.”

“Calli!”

Nathif’s grin grew even bigger as Hoku shoved past him. Calli sat propped up by pillows, her wings arrayed to each side, her eyes bright. He fell to his knees next to her.

“You’re awake!”

She giggled.

“Yes, I know that’s obvious now that I’ve said it,” he said. He stared at her, at her pink cheeks, her small smile, her hands wrapped around a piece of half-eaten fruit. “I have so much to tell you!”

“I have already told her about Flame Heart and the Serpenti,” Nathif said. “I am afraid I was not the most . . . calming image for her to see when she first opened her eyes. I thought she might like to know why a half-snake stranger was changing the dressing on her wound.”

“I wasn’t scared,” Calli said. “Well, not until Nathif started telling jokes.”

“You’re awake,” Hoku said again. It seemed to be the only thought in his head. “I can’t believe it.”

He heard Nathif chuckle. “I am an exceedingly good healer.”

The tent flap opened again. “Good thing, because you make a terrible doorway,” Rollin said. “Move aside, you wiggly thing, before I screw on my hook. Taken care of more than a few snakes in my day.”

“Hi, Rollin,” Calli said. Her voice rasped.

“Good girl, waking up,” Rollin said. “Can you walk? Sign-up for the Path of Moon only goes till high sun.”

“No,” Hoku said. “She needs her rest.”

Calli’s eyebrow quirked up. “I can speak for myself.”

“I . . . of course you can! It’s just that you’ve been so sick. . . .”

“She is weak, but the poison is entirely gone,” Nathif said. “The sooner she is up using her muscles again, the better.

“It’s okay, Hoku. Really,” Calli said. “I promise to drink lots of water and rest whenever I can.” She turned to Rollin. “Can you help me up? I think I can make it if I can lean on someone and if someone can carry the bow.”

“I will go register at the textiles tent,” Nathif said. “Now that my more important work is done.”

Hoku stood quickly and grabbed his sleeve. In the filtered sunlight of the tent, the pupils of Nathif’s eyes slitted into lines. “Thank you for saving her,” Hoku said. “I don’t how I can return the favor.”

“It was not a favor. Healing the body is what I do,” Nathif said. He started to slither out the door, then turned back. “Although I do enjoy a good sandwich every so often.”

After he left, Hoku grabbed Calli’s bow and Rollin helped her stand. Together, they walked slow as starfish to the “Gizmo Tent,” as Rollin called it, and Calli entered her bow.

Rollin had already registered her cooling device in the competition. Hoku wished she’d made an effort to clean it up first. A shiny knob and a sleek surface would have made it look so much more impressive than the bundle of exposed wires and grime she’d submitted. Still, it worked. And it used far less energy to put out a lot more cold than the Equian devices. It just wasn’t very exciting. He’d wanted her to enter her mechanical eyeball, but Rollin had just glared at him and screwed something dangerous looking onto her arm socket.

“I’m going to stay here,” Calli said after she’d gotten her sash. “Rollin and I can be called up to demonstrate anytime today or tomorrow.” She reached over and squeezed his hand. “Don’t worry. It feels good to stretch my wings.”

“Take care of her, Rollin,” Hoku said. “And, Calli, don’t let Rollin start throwing things at the other competitors. She has a bad habit.”

“Good habit, if you ask me,” Rollin grumbled. “Now, go get that shield working. Pretty pieces of metal that lie there and fizz aren’t going to do Aluna any good.”

He wished them luck and left, an odd pang in his chest. Maybe he should have entered the tech competition after all. Everyone thought his force shield would win, assuming it worked. No one had ever had that much faith in him back in the City of Shifting Tides. To win something like this — entirely on his own — would have been big.
Great White
big.

He changed course and headed toward the Path of Sun rings. He didn’t get far before the smell of sizzling scorpions hooked him and reeled him in like a fish on a line. His feet took him to a cluster of vendors strategically located between the fighting fields.

“Tadder’s tasty treats, renowned throughout the desert,” a Human man called. “Thunder Trials special, a stick of five scorpions for the price of six!” The Equians crowding his tent laughed. “I kid, I kid. I’ll give you five for six tokens, I mean. That’s how generous I am. After you eat ’em, you’ll want to pay me ten. That’s how good Tadder’s tasty treats are!” The Human, probably Tadder himself, was a burly walrus of a man, with curly brown hair poking out from his head wrap and covering his face from his nose south.

Hoku’s nose pulled him toward the tent. He squeezed his way to the front of the line, not trying to cheat, just trying to get a better look at the food sizzling on the grill rock. Sometimes being a scrawny Kampii in an ocean of horse-people was a good thing.

When Tadder saw Hoku, his face brightened. “Ah! A two-legged friend, here to sample my food. Excellent!” He turned to his Equian cook. “Tend the masses for a minute, Jochi.” He motioned for Hoku to join him at the side of the counter. “So, what brings a young Kampii to my booth?”

“Well, tasty treats, I guess,” Hoku said.

Tadder laughed. He reached over and plucked a skewer from the grill. “A present for the new Flame Heart.”

Hoku accepted the gift and bit off a scorpion head. They tasted a lot like shrimp, but better. He moaned in appreciation. “Join us,” he blurted out. “Join the herd. You can enter the Path of Moon and compete in the cooking competition. Your food is incredible. You’re sure to win. You probably hate Scorch, too, right? Won’t be much need for vendors if she ruins the desert.”

Tadder scratched his beard, and Hoku tried to ignore all the grit and gunk that fell out of it. He ripped the scorpion’s tail off and sucked the meat from the husk. This was the best idea he’d had in ages. If Tadder joined the herd and won the cooking trial, it would almost be as if Hoku himself had won.

“Thanks for the interesting offer, but no,” Tadder said. “I don’t like the lady or what she has planned, but joining a herd isn’t the answer for me. I’m not Equian, not Aviar, not Serpenti, not Fish-Person or Kampii or whatever. I’m not one of those splinter tribes, those LegendaryTek colonies. I’m
Human
. We’re a scattered bunch, more ragtag than not, but we’re still proud of what we are, and that’s
free
. So join your herd and play your Equian games, but don’t expect us Humans to do the same. We haven’t adapted ourselves to live in special places. That makes us weaker when we’re in those places, but we’re not trapped. We can go wherever we want, and we can live there, too. So, yeah. The answer’s no.”

Hoku found Aluna at Ring Three, standing next to Tal and the Serpenti Okpara. He was going to tell her about Calli, but she seemed so focused on the fight. He didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize her focus.

“Fire Tail versus Cloud Hoof,” Aluna said. “Fire Tail is allied with Red Sky, and Cloud Hoof is siding with Shining Moon. It’s not supposed to matter, but everyone is saying that the bouts this year will be about more than just bragging rights.”

Hoku watched the two Equians enter. The Fire Tail woman looked muscular, and her spear seemed nicked and battered. She’d clearly seen some real fights in her day. The Cloud Hoof boy was young, maybe only Aluna’s age. The fight master announced the competitors’ names and herds. The two Equians bowed to each other. The fight master yelled for the match to begin, and all signs of formality disappeared.