When the Spirine collapsed, it pulled the garden down with it, burying trees and bushes and hills of manicured grass.

One tree was turned upside down, its branches lost under several tons of desert sand and gardening soil, so Olm had to sit in the shade of its roots, while he brushed sand off his saspiras. Back in the core, they sold for hundreds of synars, but the Queen’s garden (or what remained) was littered with the things. Liar’s peaches, they called them, for they had an utterly dull outer skin and were covered in a tough fuzz that did nothing to stoke one’s appetite. But a single bite revealed swirls of vibrant orange and pink, and the juice was sweeter than honey.

Despite the circumstances, it was hard not to close his eyes for a moment, and savor the saspira’s sweetness.

In his opinion, he’d earned a break. For two days, Caly had insisted they get up at dawn, as soon as the sun made it warm enough to work. So, they had worked each day until Olm was caked in sweat and dirt and the sand had caught in the little crags of his skin.

Today, even his muscles felt heavy. He had pulled an unspeakable amount of slagged metal and dead obsidian out of the crater, so he was going to sit in the shade, and catch his breath, and eat from the crate of liar’s peaches he’d found in some half-crushed store room until he could muster the energy to get back to digging.

The hardest part was ignoring the smell. Every xeno they found, they tossed into the pile, and after two days, the pile was starting to smell. At night, they froze over, but by midday, the flies buzzed as loud as a generator. Maybe I should find a different spot, he thought. Far on the other side of the crater. In the end, his muscles protested, and he couldn’t be bothered to move.

Besides, the flies weren’t harassing him. They had more than enough food.

When he finished his fourth saspira, and couldn’t fathom eating another bite, he groaned and picked himself up and went back to shoveling.

Between scoops of sand and dirt, Olm asked Caly, “How much longer?”

And she answered, the same as she always had, “Until we find him.”

“And if we don’t?”

“He was right behind us, Olm. All the way to the top.”

Olm didn’t remember much. He remembered sitting with his back against the crumpled wings of that door, staring up at the ceiling as it crumpled down on him. He could smell the sand, and the desert air, but he’d lost too much blood to get up, to walk away.

Then, there were voices. “This one!” Caly’s said, her voice muffled by the wings crushed between the jambs, “At least I think it’s this one.”

Olm moved out of the way, just as a high-pitched whisper sliced through the crumpled metal. Suddenly, the door was gone, and there was Caly.

She was holding up a bloodied, beaten xeno that looked an awful lot like Taws, if Taws had spent the night in a blender. His clothes were cut into strips, and hundreds of gashes laddered up his thighs, his stomach, his chest.

The three of them stumbled, and limped together. Somehow, Caly found the strength to keep them going. Olm’s nose guided them up through the collapsing hallways, beckoned onward by the scent of the desert above. And then…

“The last thing I remember,” Olm said, “Was almost getting crushed when the ceiling fell. We jumped. And we hit dirt. And I didn’t see the human with us.”

“He was there.”

“Two days ago, Caly. He was there, two days ago, when the Spirine fell.”

She said nothing.

“If it helps, I will help you hold a memorial.”

She flung another load of dirt over her shoulder.

Olm said, “If we ride those sleds we found, we can make ground with all this leftover gear. We’ve got battery packs. We’ve got food. We can make it to Blacktree by the end of the week, and hotwire a vehicle there.”

Caly rammed the blade of the shovel under a piece of slag and pulverized stone, and tried to leverage it with a determined snarl. It didn’t move. Her snarl turned into a kind of guttural scream. And then, it did. She stood up, heaving. “Have to keep looking,” she gasped, “Or else we almost died for nothing.”

“Well, I’m quite alive, thank you very much,” Olm tapped his chest. Underneath his tunic, that plug of obsidian had grafted onto his stony skin, almost blending in perfectly with the plates of his chest. Truth was, that one had always been the weakest of his hearts, but with the obsidian plug, it seemed to be pumping stronger than ever. Wonder how long that’ll last. He would utter a prayer to the ancestors, later.

Caly wiped the sweat out of her eyes. Her pale, azure skin was darkening from all the hours in the sunlight, and sand stuck to her hair. “You said we had to help him. You said that I had to stop thinking about myself, to stop asking if we could trust him—and to be someone worthy of trust. You said we were partners.”

“No water,” Olm rumbled, “Probably no air down there. Stars, Caly, I wish he was alive, too, but he probably died the moment the rocks fell on him. Consider it a blessing. Now that I think about it, that Dys shell probably cracked open, and is leaking irradiated alien juice all over the place.”

“He’s not dead.”

Olm threw his hands up, “This is why Hrutskuld funerals happen before you die. Saves everyone time. No mourning. Very practical. Caly, I know you’ve been hurt before, but—”

“I’m not hurt. I’m digging.” She wedged the blade into the ground to prove her point.

“—but you can’t get hung up on the past, or on the people who hurt you. Or on the people who die on you, even the ones you were counting on—”

“He’s not dead.”

“How long do you want to stay here? Zyroc is expecting our debt tomorrow. Probably has a post on our heads already. And you know he’s not the only one. Maybe if we had a fleet of excavators, or a hover assist, or a magic wand to clear all this out. But we don’t.”

Caly wasn’t listening. She was bent over double, her hands wrapped tight around something stuck firmly in the dirt. She heaved and growled and used her weight to lever it up until it released with a slithering thwup, showering herself with a cascade of dirt and sand. Caly held up a staff, with black powder dripping from one end. Triumphant, she held it high, the effect diminished slightly by her having to spit sand out of her mouth.

Olm grumbled, “You don’t even know if that thing still works—”

She clicked some hidden part of it, and suddenly the ground started to shift. A pair of huge obsidian vines slithered up from the dirty sand.

Olm had to laugh. This was why he stuck with her. Her tenacity was endless. At least this time, Caly didn’t gloat. She didn’t even arch a cocky eyebrow at him. She just went to work.

So, Olm sidled up next to her, and helped her find places to dig. It was pointless work, but at least, he told himself, we might find some of Yole’s treasure still lying around.

***

Several hundred tons of debris later, the vines were starting to fracture. Cracks ran up their tendrils, and sometimes, when they lifted something too heavy, chunks of obsidian broke off and crumbled into dust. A few of them had simply stopped reacting to the staff. Yet, they continued to expand the sunken pit until they were surrounded by the half-melted skeletons of the Spirine’s halls and tunnels, a meaningless tangle of snaking metal and obsidian bones. At least his headache was gone.

Just before the evening sun set over the edge of the crater, they found a pocket, filled with sand and loamy soil. A sparkle caught his eye.

“Caly,” he said. Even Caly stopped to look. The sun hit it just right, and the sand shone with flecks of gold. He knelt down, and scooped it up, but what of the coins and jewels had been atomized. Turned to fine powdery dust that blew away in the wind. They dug out the whole room and came away with nothing solid, except for an old Synar coin, bronze and deeply tarnished.

350,000 synars. Each. That’s what they would have gotten for the Queen. Not to mention the fame and the media deals, if they had played their cards right. A real profit, for once. But without proof of her death, the Enforcers and Mayors would laugh in their faces at best, and arrest them for scavenging at worst. And somehow, Olm doubted a missing Spirine would constitute proof of the Queen’s death.

And yet … He ran his fingers along the cold, stenciled symbols on the coin. Olm couldn’t help but smile. All they had risked, coming here, and what had it gotten him? Nothing but a single Synar.

A single Synar, and both our lives.

There were worse rewards than that.

He flipped the lucky coin into the air, and let it fall into the front pocket of his smock.

***

On the third day, Olm found Caly cursing in one of the half-submerged tunnels. She smacked the staff in her hand, and waved it at a clump of vines the size of a house. With each wave, the vines lifted their lazy tendrils, and slumped back down.

It seemed not even the Dys-made artifacts could last forever.

“I’m not finished,” Caly said. Olm didn’t know if she was talking to him, or to the staff.

She twisted both hands around the staff, as if through sheer force of will she could make it work. To Olm’s surprise, the staff sputtered a cloud of black dust, as if it had only been choked up, and the vines lifted (and Olm felt a tug on the obsidian binding on his chest). Caly forked the vines into another pile of debris. They creaked and scraped as they continued to unearth the Spirine’s remains.

Something cracked so loud, Olm felt it in his teeth. One of the thicker vines snapped in half and collapsed on the others.

Olm held his breath. Waited for Caly to scream, or to take out her frustration by smacking the staff against one of the slagged metal struts sticking out of the sand. Instead, she just stood there, frozen, with her lips pressed in a hard line. She didn’t blink. Her chest trembled. Olm could almost feel the storm of emotions raging around her. She stood, anchored by her stubborn refusal to give up, but unable to make her will become reality.

Olm padded wordlessly over to her. In one hand, he held out a saspira, a good one that he’d been saving for later. She barely looked at it. Her face was screwed up tight, her jaw clenched, and she started to argue with him, “I’m not finished—” until she saw the shovel in his other hand.

“If you’re with me,” Olm said, planting the blade in the ground, “I’m with you.”

Her tight expression broke, and she gave Olm a teary, exhausted smile.

“Here,” he pressed the fruit into her hand. “Eat. I’ll take over for a bit.”

Caly sat on the curve of some half-melted piece of alien plumbing, and devoured the saspira. A few minutes later, and with her patience restored, she worked on the staff until the weary obsidian tendrils crawled once more along the surface of the pit, sweeping away the rubble.

The two of them worked until the sun hung ripe like a golden orange on the horizon’s dark branch. Thin streaks of clouds, bathed in regal violets and red fire, mirrored the ripples in the dunes below. And still, no sign of the human.

***

Olm woke up to the sound of banging, interspersed with the pleading cries of a couran. “Please don’t do this to me. No, please—”

Thanks to the staff, the pit had grown several meters deeper. And the pile of recovered bodies could repopulate a village or two. It was a shame about the xenos, but they were damned long before the Spirine fell.

Whack!

“Come fucking on!”

To Olm, the staff looked like it always had: a black lacquered branch, polished from use. Its head, a twisting claw of hardened bark. Only, it no longer leaked that trail of black dust—not even a little cough of powder—and when she waved it, the vine at her feet gave only a sluggish salute before slumping back to the sand.

If there was a time for reason and rational thought, Olm had only to look at Caly’s face to know she was well past it.

The hrutskuld sat up in his handmade knapsack, not yet ready to face the cold morning, and rubbed his hands over his arms, trying to warm himself up. His breath came out in cold puffs that drifted up to the cloudless sky.

He watched. He shivered. He waited.

“What?” Caly shouted at him.

“Didn’t say anything.”

“But you’re thinking it. I know you are. I know, because I’m thinking the same damn thing. And this is my fault.”

She didn’t need any help hanging herself. In her heart, Caly already carried a rope ten klicks long and if that one ever ran out, Caly could accuse herself with nothing more than dry sand and thin air.

So, keeping his voice as neutral as he could, Olm asked, “What’s your fault?”

“Every single fucking time we try to do anything—anything—it’s ends up like this. You know what the problem is? The one thing that ties all these failures together? Me. He was right here. Why does it matter, anymore? I’m the problem. Doesn’t matter how hard I try, it’s never fucking—” she raised the staff over her head, “Enough!” She hurled the staff across the pit.

Olm shielded his eyes, so he could watch it sail over the pile of half-rotten xeno bodies (and the cloud of flies), past the archway that had once been the Spirine’s entrance, and bounce off the upturned roots of some waxy-leafed tree that had gone horizontal in the collapse. Wood rattled against root until the staff clanked against a twisted grate that was squeezed between a boulder the size of a house and a metal wall that had crumpled up like an accordion.

“Nice throw,” Olm said.

“Thanks,” Caly sniffed, and dusted herself off as tidy as a princess at afternoon tea. She must not have realized how much sand was in her hair. “Hand me the shovel, will you?”

Olm sighed. He almost believed she was ready. But this was Caly, after all, and Caly never gave up. Olm reached for the shovel, and stopped when he heard a sound from across the pit.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Clang.

CLANG.

A muffled, miserable groan.

Olm was on his feet as quickly as his body would allow (which, in the early morning cold, was about as swift as an oak tree lazily falling through the forest, with all the same snaps and cracks). By the time he got there, Caly was already straining to shift the grate. Olm added his strength, and together they heaved it off the body.

Taws was curled into a ball, lying in a pocket between the crumpled wall and the boulder, and when the light of day struck him, he curled even tighter.

“Ughhhhhh,” Taws let out a pained moan.

“Is he hurt?”

“He’s moving.”

Caly sniffed, and wrinkled her nose. “He smells awful.”

“Ughhhhh.”

“Taws. Can you get up?”

No answer. Olm knew a basic first-aid test, one that was as old as time, but not necessarily endored by actual medical professionals: he poked Taws in the ribs.

“Leave me alone,” Taws said, his voice muffled.

“He’s fine,” Olm said. “Taws, you’re fine, aren’t you?”

“Leave me here to die.”

“He’s fine,” Olm said to Caly. Then, he put a hand on Taws shoulder and shook him. “Get up, human. You have any idea how lucky you are to be alive?”

“I can’t, I can’t—” The human tucked his head into his arms. And when that didn’t seem like enough, he buried his face in a berm of dirty sand and let out a strangled cry. Olm wasn’t sure about human anatomy, but he was pretty sure they weren’t supposed to swallow that much sand.

Olm tried to turn him over.

“No!” the human shouted. Olm jerked his hand away like he’d just discovered the human was actually a nest of snakes.

“The sand storms will bury you,” Olm said. He thought it was a very logical thing to say, and was sure if someone had said it to him, he would’ve stood up and brushed himself off.

The human, however, responded only with the word, “Good.”

“You’ll die.”

“Good.”

“How is that good?”

“I deserve it.”

“Says who?”

“You’re all dead. You’re all dead because of me.”

Olm looked down at himself. At Caly. “Are you dead?” he asked her.

“Nope.”

“See, human? Everyone’s fine. We’re all fine, thanks to you.” Olm looked over his shoulder, at the swarm of flies and the pile of bodies (and assorted body parts), just beyond the edges of the pit. “If it’s the Queen’s slaves you were worried about, I think you did them a favor. The only thing keeping them alive was, well, it was Dys, human. It crawled up into the Spirine, and it took her, that Yole, and you stopped it. Reckon that makes you the greatest killer in the whole Synod—”

But Taws was groaning so loud now, Olm had to shout to be heard. Yet, when he did, the human clapped his hands over his ears and writhed like every word was a hot poker pressed into his flesh, and he buried his face until it looked like he was trying to commit suicide by sand drowning.

“Olm,” Caly said.

“What? What did I do?”

Caly just shook her head, her mouth twisted in thought. She was perched on the twisted catwalk, her head cocked to one side, studying the human.

“I’ve seen this before,” she said. “On Safar.”

“The Pits?” He grimaced. Even now, it was hard to say that name without getting the raw taste of his own blood (or the texture of that protein-dense soup they called gladiator’s mash) in his mouth. “You saw this in the Pits?”

“Yeah.”

“Who?”

“It was me,” Caly said. She slid off the metal grate, and paced a slow circle around the human (who was curled so tight, he looked more like a sun-tanned shrimp than a couranoid xeno). She crouched down between him and the sun, so that all Taws would see was her dark silhouette, the outline of two horn stumps jutting up from her cropped hair, and the too-bright sunlight behind her.

She stared at him. Not that death stare, nor that withering one that said “Are you really this stupid?” and worked wonders on the local merchants.

No. Caly just frowned at him. Squinted, and frowned, until the human couldn’t bear the weight of her stare any longer, and gave a begrudging, “What?”

“It hurts, doesn’t it?” she said.

He said nothing.

“It’s been hurting a long time, hasn’t it?”

A thoughtful pause. “Yes.”

“Like you’re being crushed.”

“Yes.”

“Like the whole universe is against you, and it doesn’t matter how much you push, it’ll never be enough to change anything.”

Taws gave an imperceptible nod of his head.

“Can you get up?”

Another pause. “I don’t think so.”

“Can you try?”

The human didn’t move.

“Are you trying?”

“Yeah.”

“Too heavy?

“Too heavy.”

Caly nodded knowingly. “That’s fine, then. You don’t have to move. Tell me how you feel.”

“Why does that matter?”

“Because I’m going to help you. And I can’t do that, unless you tell me what’s going on.”

“You—” he lifted his head. And stopped. His head fell back to the sand. His lips were so dry and cracked, the sand wouldn’t stick to them. He curled tight again, and Olm didn’t think the human would say anything more.

But Caly waited, so he did too.

Sand, carried by the wind, peppered Olm’s face. He wiped it away.

And still, they waited.

Then, the human spoke. “I let it happen. I knew I should’ve stopped it. And I keep telling myself I tried, but I didn’t. My hand just … did it for me.” Even now, Olm noticed the human’s fingers, twitching at his side. “200 billion humans have ever lived. Ever. And that’s nothing. Not even a drop, compared to how many of you will die. Oceans will run red with your blood. Planets will become graveyards. The Synod will tear itself to pieces. And I couldn’t even save one life.”

Caly said nothing. Didn’t argue, which was odd, because even Olm wanted to say, “You saved our lives, didn’t you?”

But Caly was really listening. Not calculating. Not scheming. Just sitting on her heels, and listening. It had been a long time since he’d seen her do that, so Olm kept quiet.

“What good is a gun that won’t shoot?” Taws said. “Leave me here with the rest of the trash.”

Olm let out a low whistle. Caly shot him a look, but Olm just shrugged. “What? It was a good line.”

She fixed her attention back on the human.

“I’m guessing,” Caly said, “You’ve never been this far from home, have you? I’m guessing, back where you come from, you had a whole mess of people to watch you, support you, keep you from failing too hard. You know what that makes you? A beginner. An amateur, at best. Me? I’m a fucking failure artist. A life-long professional. Now, I’ll give you credit,” She scanned the crater. Semi-melted struts and beams jutted up from the dirty sand, like bones in the desert, “I’ve never seen someone crash and burn this hard. Took out a whole Spirine on your way down. But listen to me, human, I reckon Olm and I fucked up more times in the last month than you have in your entire life. Before we ran into you, we were broke, debt up to our eyeballs, eating stolen jerky and tortillas you could chip your teeth on. And all we could do was hope nobody recognized us when we walked into town. Right, Olm?”

“The Mayor of Yonder said if he ever saw our faces again, he’d rip them off himself.”

Taws lifted his head, sand stuck to his cheek, and squinted at the two of them. The sunset glinted in his dark eyes.

“Now,” Caly continued, “Let’s say for a moment you’re telling the truth. About this super secret, un-heard of planet filled with xenos like you—”

“Not a planet. A cluster of galaxies.”

“Sure, whatever. Somehow, you and yours have been hiding out from the rest of the Synod for untold eons in one of the Black Lakes. And somehow, you developed faster than the rest of us.”

“Yes.”

“OK,” Caly said doubtfully, “Let’s give you all that. Now, this Agency of yours. What do you think they would have done if you had saved the First Arch instead of shooting him?”

Taws considered this for a moment. He could sense the logical trap, but he couldn’t deny it. “Another agent. They would have sent another agent.”

“And another. And another. Am I right?”

Taws nodded reluctantly. “I guess.”

“You guess? Or you know, for certain.”

Taws wiped the sand off his cheek, and sat up. “I know.”

“And was this your plan, or the Agency’s?”

Taws nodded.

“Then you can see how it looks a little far-fetched when you say it’s all your fault.”

“I knew what to do. I had the chance. I could see it, right there. And I couldn’t stop it.”

“Well,” Caly said. “You had one chance. What if you had another?”

Taws dragged his fingers through his hair, hard, and shook his head, as if to say, “There is no second chance.”

“I’m going to level with you, human. I wasn’t sure you were telling the truth about what you did. Still not. But I didn’t believe Olm, back at the arena, either, because what you did wasn’t possible.” She hissed out a laughing, bitter breath, and shook her head. “But maybe, I should’ve listened harder. I saw what you did down there. The fact is, you killed a Spirine. You held back a Dys. Do you have any idea how long it’s been since anyone’s even seen one of those things? Never. That’s how long.”

“Made no difference. I couldn’t save her.”

“She was gone long before you got here. Cursed by the Dys. If anything, you ended her misery.”

“She was alive, Caly. Alive. I had her, in my arms, and she … I should have tried harder.”

Caly frowned, “Why does she matter so much to you?”

“It’s all of you. All of you. If I can’t even save one, then how—” Taws’ breath hitched in his throat.

“You keep acting like we need saving. Synod’s not going anywhere, Taws. It’s been around for ten millennia, and we’ve always been at war with someone.”

“Usually, multiple someones,” Olm added.

“War is war,” Caly agreed.

“Not the way we do it,” the human’s voice was rough with emotion. “Our wars are different.”

“How?”

“We learned a long time ago, to put everything—everything—into war. All our fears. All our terror. Utter destruction. Every last alternative, eliminated. Every last piece of resistance, annihilated. Until you can only beg for mercy. But there will be none. Not until we are satisfied.”

“Doesn’t sound so different from us. Synod’s been crushing the lesser species for thousands of years. Far as I see it, we’re more practiced than you are.”

“Ourselves, Caly. We killed ourselves. That’s how we learned.”

“Oh,” Caly said.

“We learned to kill each other without ever being seen. We learned to start—and end—our wars on the same day. In the same hour. No chance. Utter destruction.”

“The War to end all wars,” Olm whispered.

“Yeah,” Taws nodded. “At least, until we find something new to kill. It’s what we do. What we’ve always done.”

“And you … you think this war is coming?”

“It has already begun.” Taws threw himself back on the sand, and pressed the palms of his hands to his eyes to block out the world. “I started it, but I can’t stop it. What the Agency starts, it finishes. No one can stop it. Impossible.”

“That’s funny,” Caly said. “Impossible. That’s what I said about you, only a couple of weeks ago.”

Taws pulled a hand away, and peered at her through one eye.

“Sounds like there’s a chance,” Caly said. “If the Synod knows someone is pulling the strings, well, it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve banded together to cut out an enemy within. The Councils were founded for a reason.”

But Taws was already shaking his head, “Our Intelligence is everywhere, and you don’t know. We have your numbers, your ships, your cities. Your Councils don’t trust each other, and that’s what holds them in balance. And that is your weakness. We know things about you—about the Unity, the Order, the Sovereignty, the Supremacy, and all the Rings—that you can only guess at. At a word, we can shut down your lanes. We can make your orbital cities fall.”

Caly glanced at Olm out of the side of her eyes. He knew what that look meant, but he said nothing, and she gave no other sign of her thoughts.

“Our Intelligence has built webs behind your Councils. Even now, they’re urging your Crowns and Rings to militarize, to mistrust each other. Humanity will fight the war without raising an army. The Khuus will die first. And then, the Synod will erupt. The Agency will not be satisfied until the Synod is broken.”

Caly tapped a finger on her cheek. “It can be changed,” she said simply, as if she knew it to be so.

“How?”

“The Synod has problems, but we’re not mindless. We can change. The Councils can work together, and de-escalate before this war grows.”

“You don’t believe that. You said it yourself: the Synod is always at war.”

Caly shrugged, “Anyone can change.”

Taws squinted at her, as if, before, he had only ever looked past her. As if this was the first time he had ever truly seen her. “You sound like Heron.”

“What’s Heron?” Caly asked.

“She’s my—Heron was someone—” Taws swallowed, hard, and shook his head.

“The Councils are not a monolith, Taws. I would know. They squabble, they fight, but if they had something to unite against, they would.”

“Just like us,” Taws whispered. Olm got the feeling he was talking to himself.

“Say all this is true. I know a few Rings on the Mass Council. And you know your Agency. We could show them.”

“How would we even get to the Core in the first place? I don’t have a ship anymore.”

“We’ll get one.”

“A sub-light ship?” the human asked.

“What other kind of ship is there?”

Taws looked like he was about to answer, then shook his head. “There must be 50 jumps between us and your Capital, at least. How long would that take?”

“Without a pass,” Olm said. “It would take a year. Maybe more, since we’d be heading coreward.”

Taws threw his hands at Olm, “Exactly!”

“Not to mention the price of entry,” Olm started counting on his fingers. “That’s got to be a few million, at least. Oh, oops.” he said, suddenly remembering which side he was supposed to be on. “Sorry, Caly.”

But Caly had both hands on her hips, and a triumph smile clung to her dark, blue lips, as if that was exactly what she’d hoped they’d say. “Lucky for you, you’ve got me. And I’ve got a plan.”

Olm recognized the spark of hunger, shining bright in her eyes. Oh yes, he knew it all too well. That grin, that confident grin, was the lantern that had first wakened him from the self-death of disgrace, back on Shafar.

“The Cavaliers?” Olm rumbled.

Caly grinned through her teeth, “It’s a good plan, isn’t it?” She winked at Olm, but spoke to the human. “There’s a deadline next moon. You help me get a sponsorship to the Cavaliers, and I’ll get you to the Core.”

Taws eyed her, doubtfully.

“We have to try,” she said, “Don’t we?”

That seemed to soften something in the human. He asked, “And if your plan fails?”

“Then we’ll make a new one, won’t we?”

Taws looked at Olm.

Olm shrugged, “She doesn’t give up. I told her three days ago to leave you for dead.”

Caly stood up, and gracefully brushed the dust and sand from her tunic. The queenly effect was ruined when she stuck out her tongue, and used her fingers to scrape sand off it, spitting and blowing air. She smacked her lips, and cleared her throat.

“Look, Taws,” she said, choosing her words carefully. “If you think we’re going to die, then you can’t sit here, doing nothing. One failure is not the end. It’s only the beginning. If the Synod is breaking, if you were the one to break it, you have to try. And Olm and me? We’ll be right there, trying with you.”

The human looked down at his hands, covered with raw, red of scabs. His legs were crossed, and he was hunched forward so that Olm could see more red marks crisscrossing down his back. It looked like a delirious stencil artist had gone to work on Taws body, using dried blood instead of paint. Taws touched at one of the larger wounds, which, even after three days, was shining and raw. He gingerly brushed the sand out of the wound, stifling a hiss.

Then, he squinted up at Caly. “This plan. You think it’ll work?”

She held out her hand. “Trust me.”

The human took it.

***

They plodded across the desert, with the dunes and the fallen Spirine at their backs. Olm and Caly held the makeshift reigns of two hoversleds, weighed down with fruit and materials for tents, as they walked up the rise. The human was a little behind them, dragging his own sled.

It was Olm’s first chance since leaving the crater to talk to her in private. Olm lowered his voice and said, “So, uh, you think he’s telling the truth about this War?”

Caly snorted her disbelief, “No.”

“Then all that—the last three days—just to get into the Cavs?”

“You really think I’m that one dimensional?”

“Hm.”

Caly elbowed Olm playfully. Olm nudged her back, careful (but not too careful) to not knock her over. She shoved him, and, laughing, ran up the dune, where the wind blew little curtains of sand down the ridges. Olm, smiling, ran after her.

At the top, they scanned the ocean of sand, and all its tan waves, and the gap on the horizon where the Spirine had once stood. Olm saw her gaze stop on the human still climbing the slope. That tunic fit him rather well, Olm thought. His muscles pressing against the fabric tunic in that pleasant way that some muscles do. And the evening glow caught the angles of his face just so …

The human caught them staring. Taws brushed his hair out of his eyes, and waved, and gave that lopsided smile. Funny, how Olm could feel both a twinge of envy, and real joy at the same time, because that smile wasn’t for Olm.

It was directed at Caly.

And the couran smiled back.

“Ah,” Olm rumbled knowingly. The last three days.

Caly’s smile evaporated. She pretended to be looking at the empty horizon. “What?”

He shook his head, and held back a chuckle.

“What?”

“I guess we’ll find out,” he said.

He started down the next dune. They had a long way to walk, but with the wind and sand blew in their favor, and the morning sun warmed their backs.