“Jelly,” Skipper said carefully. “We don’t need to do this—”
“I got a gun with six bullets, you got one with none. This meeting’s on my terms, now, cragnanny bitch. I just lost cousins in One Hop—my half-sister got raped so much she’s peeing blood—and you ain’t exactly scoring any points giving a shit what happens to this asshole.” She kicked the Skymancer again, making him whimper.
Skipper’s hand automatically tighted on the knife. “I told you he wasn’t the one who did it. He’s the one who stopped it.”
Jelly snorted. “Go look for those keys,” Jelly ordered. “Take a flashlight if you need one.” She yanked a black tube from her belt and tossed it to Skipper, who caught it numbly. “You ain’t back in two days, I’m killing him and heading north.”
She’s gonna go through my stuff, Skipper thought. She knew what that meant. Jelly wasn’t planning on letting them live. She’d find some excuse, some incongruency, something that supposedly didn’t add up, then, once Skipper came jogging back, dehydrated and exhausted, she’d execute them both and take their stuff, her conscience clean.
…exactly like Skipper had been about to do to Ptah, right before he showed her he could make water.
Stiffly, Skipper got to her feet, and, gripping the flashlight in a fist. “All right,” she said warily. “But don’t kill him while I’m gone,” she repeated. “You will regret it if you kill him.”
Jelly waved her off.
Then, taking a deep breath, Skipper turned to leave…
“And drop your knife,” Jelly said casually. “You won’t need it for a quick reconnaissance mission.”
Skipper felt her hands tighten on the knife, but she nodded and let it fall from her fingers, into the sand. Then, watching Jelly with barely contained rage, she turned to step into the darkness.
“You’re not back in two days, I’m shooting him,” Jelly called behind her.
“I’m going,” Skipper said, even though they both knew she wasn’t. Skipper wasn’t stupid enough to go running through the desert without supplies on the off-chance her stuff might still be there when she got back, and Jelly was too smart to think she would. This was a game Jelly was playing, one that would give her the excuse she needed to kill them both, and Skipper knew she was in a fight for her life, where any misstep would be fatal.
No sooner had she stepped out of sight than she heard Jelly shift against the sand and the sound of a bag being dumped out. When Skipper looked, she saw the Changer’s head was limp against the sand beside the fire, finally having passed out. He was bleeding from the wound in his arm, and, despite what Jelly had said, it wasn’t just a graze.
That bitch, Skipper thought, watching the woman’s shadow move against the banded rock as the scavver started to go through her stuff.
Carefully, quietly, Skipper slid into the darkness and around the camp as Jelly was distracted with her belongings, finding a rock lodged against the wall of the canyon.
Back under the ledge, Jelly chuckled and made a delighted, “Lip balm! I love this shit.”
Skipper knew she didn’t give a crap about the lip balm. She’s just waiting for me to give her an excuse to kill me, Skipper thought, watching Jelly feign interest in her stuff, giving Skipper an ‘opening’ to attack. It was a fool’s task, one that had a ninety-five percent chance in Skipper ending up dead and Jelly ending up with a bunch of new gear and a sad story to tell the other scavvers about the weird little cragnanny who had been working with the Changers all along.
Skipper’s eyes drifted to the shorn Skymancer, trying to decide what to do. He was utterly motionless in the sand, and she wasn’t sure if he was even still breathing.
That decided her. Skipper tightened her fingers on the rock, leaned back, and hurled it at Jelly with all her strength. She was running before the rock even connected, diving across the fire even as the scavver straightened from easily the rock, laughing. “You didn’t actually think—” She got cut off abruptly as Skipper hit her full-on, getting both hands on the gun and ramming an elbow into Jelly’s slackening face.
She wasn’t laughing when they both hit the ground beside the Skymancer’s limp body, rolling back and forth through the fire, screaming as they went for each other’s eyes and throat. Jelly maneuvered them so that Skipper ended up in the flames, forcing her to either let go of the gun or get charred by the coals. Skipper rolled away, picked up the knife she’d dropped, and, even as Jelly was raising her gun to fire at Skipper’s chest, threw the knife at the woman’s throat.
Jelly’s eyes went wide and she stiffened, the gun jerking in her hand.
Skipper ducked as the revolver went off, chipping the rock behind her head.
Jelly, choking on her own blood, gagging, followed Skipper with the gun and fired twice more as she ducked and ran across the camp, cold blue eyes filled with spite. Skipper could tell the scavver wasn’t going to die quickly, not with where the knife had hit her, and she still had enough bullets to finish off both her and the Skymancer. Desperate, now, she rushed in to tackle her.
The gun went off by Skipper’s left ear, making everything go silent on that side before Skipper twisted it out of the woman’s grip and threw it into the night. Jelly gurgled something profane and reached for Skipper’s eyes with her thumbs. Skipper shoved Jelly to the ground, yanked the knife from her neck, but when she went to stab her again, this time Jelly grabbed the weapon and ripped it out of her hand, throwing it out into the darkness with the gun. Then she crawled on top, got her hands on Skipper’s face, and started to force her dirty thumbs into her eye sockets. Skipper kicked at her, over and over, but the woman held on tight, her thumbs going deeper.
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Blind, in desperation, Skipper’s fingers found the rock she’d thrown at Jelly’s back and tightened on it like a lifeline. Dragging it into a fist, she raised it up and slammed it into the side of the woman’s head, knocking her off of her, but not away. Still unable to see, she hit her again and again, until the woman’s hands finally released her face.
Blinking back tears, unable to see more than vague shapes, Skipper crawled away in a panic, trying to put distance between them before Jelly recovered enough to pull her own knife.
She needn’t have worried. Jelly was curled into a ball at the edge of the firelight, choking, her breath coming in a pitiful rasp, obviously dragging more blood into her lungs than air. Skipper got up slowly, watching the scavver as she moved towards the gun. The woman’s blue eyes were wide as she followed Skipper’s movement across the camp, but she clearly didn’t have the strength to try and stop her.
Skipper found the gun, brushed the sand off it, and raised it at Jelly’s head.
The woman made a croaking plea a moment before Skipper pulled the trigger.
The scavver woman went stiff, her moccasins jerking with the shot. Blood began seeping from the hole in her temple and her body began to shudder in death.
Skipper collapsed to her knees, panting, still blinking hard, her left ear still ringing and deaf. She knelt there, trying to get her heartbeat under control, before she dragged herself over to the unconscious Skymancer.
“She shot me again,” came a quiet whimper from the ground. More quiet than it should have been, as she could only hear from her right side. “A second time. When you guys were clawing at each other.”
“Hold on, we’ll get it,” she said, her lips tight as blood trickled down her own forehead where Jelly had gouged her. She untied his bonds, gently helped him lower his limbs to the ground, then went to the dead scavver and unceremoniously cut a piece of the woman’s shirt to use as a tourniquet.
The first gunshot was bad…but the second was worse. The second was in the guts, and Skipper knew from experience there was no recovering from that. She hid her dismay, however, and wrapped a few bandages around it. It wasn’t bleeding bad externally, but she knew whatever damage the bullet had caused would have done so on the inside.
Ptah watched her work in mute silence, his eyes finally falling on the scavver’s corpse. Tufts of his glasslike hair were still poking from her belt pouch.
“They all gonna be like that?” he eventually asked, once Skipper had got the bleeding in his arm stopped. “Just walk up outta nowhere and start shooting for no reason?” His jaw was set in a grim line.
“She had a reason,” Skipper said. “She wanted our stuff.”
“Ah.” That didn’t erase the darkness from his face.
“We were leaving a pretty big trail,” Skipper said. “And scavvers have a reputation. They’re…well…opportunists, for the most part. We need to get out of the wash, away from the sand. Harder to track us up there on the rim.”
“Show me the cave first,” Ptah insisted. He glanced up, his yellow eyes meeting hers in a misery-streaked plea. “I can feel it up ahead. It’s pulling me. Like…” He swallowed and looked back at the dead scavver. “…like my mother used to.”
Skipper had been ready to skip the cave entirely, opting for the safety of the rim, but hesitated at the sheer desperation in his face.
Against her better judgement, she nodded. He’s not long for this world, she thought, with pity. Might as well give him what he desires. “Can you move now?”
His glowing yellow eyes flickering back to the corpse of his would-be murderer, he face tight in bitterness. He nodded.
“All right,” she said, her body still trembling from the fight, her eyes still not focusing right, “Let’s get out of here, just in case she had friends.” She kicked out the fire, picked up their gear—everything she could carry, since it was clear Ptah was barely holding onto consciousness—and got them moving up the wash, in between the towering rock walls of the canyon.
Behind them, Jelly’s body lay where it had fallen, face up, staring at the stars.
#
Skipper got Ptah up under the final ledge carved by eons of floodwaters, then, scraping away the sand and rocks she’d surreptitiously placed at the back corner to conceal the cavern beyond, she made a big enough hole to climb through, then pushed and pulled him down and into the cave that the millennia of water had carved into the rock.
Inside, she grabbed her flashlight and flipped it on. At her feet, the Skymancer’s body slumped over itself, his eyes closed. She grabbed him by the shoulder, fingers hitting the heavy collar. “Ptah!” she snapped, shaking him.
He grunted and looked up, disoriented.
“We’re here,” she said, pointing to the little chamber in the back, where a soft glow illuminated the cavern beyond her flashlight. The tiny room in the back of the cavern, just as she remembered, wasn’t crafted of rock and time, but instead of some glimmering silver metal.
That made him immediately perk up. “Help me up.”
She allowed him to use her to balance as he dragged himself to his feet, then helped him stumble into the back of the cavern and into the little room with the square-cut walls of silver and gold.
Inside, the glowing blue jewel hovered where she had left it, floating over the golden pedestal in the center of the room.
“Can you hear that?” Ptah whispered, mouth open in obvious awe. “It’s talking to me…” He cocked his head, a little frown on his face, then he glanced down at his stomach. “It’s saying I’m going to die.”
Skipper grimaced, but didn’t deny it.
“…unless…” He cocked his head again, strain making sweat pop from his brow. He swallowed, then jerked and glanced at Skipper. “It says you can save me.”
“How?” she asked, though she wasn’t too hopeful. She had smelled shit before she bandaged his gut.
“It says…” Ptah grimaced and reached for his head with a groan. Bending under some deep inner strain, he gasped. “Says…the collar blocks…but you…” He collapsed to his knees, panting, both hands on his temples. “You have to grab it.” His eyes were wide. “It’s been trapped here.”
Skipper wasn’t about to free some evil spirit from its tomb, and she said so.
“No,” Ptah said, shaking his head hastily. “It’s a…truce. Some sort of truce. It’s saying there was a pact…” He gasped and dropped to the floor, his hands splayed on the stone, arms trembling.
“What?” Skipper asked, nervous.
“The contrabrace,” he whispered. “The harder…it tries to talk, the worse…it hurts…” He shuddered and squeezed his eyes shut. “And whatever it is, it’s trying really hard. Saying…something about…shared…dominion.” He gasped like he was being stabbed. “I don’t understand!” he shouted, clearly addressing the room itself. “Please, it hurts, I don’t…” He blinked up at her, a look of horror on his face. “You can’t hear that?”
“I hear a hum,” Skipper said, watching the crystal warily as it spun lazy circles in the air. “No words.”
He groaned. “It’s a pairing. It’s saying it’s a pairing. Two peoples in a truce. Ambassadors. No, wait…refugees… No, there were two, now there’s just one… I don’t understand!” He shrieked the last, tearing his claws against the stone, then bent his head to the floor and started to scream like he were being skinned. “I don’t understand…” he whimpered.
“Tell it,” Skipper said, drawing her bow and aiming it at the gem floating over the pedastal, “that it starts talking all quiet-like, or I’m gonna shoot it off its pedestal and drag us both out of here and seal it in here for another twenty years.”