Indentured (Book 2 of the Dana Halliday series)

AIN'T NO SUNSHINE. OUT OF THE FRYING PAN. UIS EX MACHINA.

We walked all night. The temperature dropped, reviving the both of us a bit. A brisk, cool breeze met us, and although it felt great, I wished it would blow at our backs. I was tired and sore, my hand and face complaining, and I would have dearly loved to take a long rest rather than go on a death march into the wind. I sternly reminded myself that at least the sun was down, then started singing "Ain't No Sunshine" as I walked.

Liti, apparently not a fan, countered with one of her prayer songs. I responded with "A Horse With No Name," although my dehydrated brain couldn't recall most of the lyrics. After the dozenth repeat of the "la la la" chorus, Liti shoved past me, snarling at me to stop, please. Feeling irrationally sadistic, I switched to the "na na na" portion of "Hey Jude." Soon enough, though, I ran out of breath. It was now clear we were heading uphill.

The landscape was a study in blacks and silvers and beiges under Naiccora's washed-out glow, more and more rugged and rocky. I took to following closely at Liti's heels to avoid tripping, and as the sun started to glow behind the mountains I had to use the flashlight for a short time, or risk breaking an ankle on the increasingly treacherous ground.

Near dawn, we were attacked by a small pack of what looked like industrial-sized rats crossed with monitor lizards. They were vicious, whatever they were, but between Liti's claws and teeth and my appropriated sword, we kept ourselves from becoming biped sushi.

As the sun emerged fully, we rested. We were within a stone's throw of the bottom of the pass, and there were plenty of stones to throw. The ground was now rough, exposed rock, streaked with sand and littered with detritus organic and inorganic. Finally there was flora as well as fauna: flat brown stuff that grew in the shade of the rocks, somewhere between lichen and mushrooms, and thin, creeping black vines that shrank back from the touch of the sun.  Liti smelled both and pronounced them toxic.  I didn't argue.

We were high enough above the frying pan of the desert to see Kez's compound in the distance, but too far now to see any details. There was no longer any smoke, at least none that I could see after straining my tired eyes for half an hour or so.

I fought the conviction that part of my soul was trapped there, and turned my attention to Liti. She had scraped together a little fire and was roasting one of the dead lizard-rats over it, while she gutted and skinned the others.  

"I'm hungry enough to eat them raw," she muttered. "But I don't know what parasites they might have."

"Ugh." I love a good spicy tuna roll, but even cooked I couldn't bring myself to eat more than one of the things. They tasted inoffensive enough, kind of bland, but the texture was like a chewy blood clot shot through with fish bones.

Liti ate three, gazing with exhausted, somehow troubled amusement at me. I'd spent ten minutes picking bones and scales out of my breakfast, such as it was, while she'd inhaled them whole in about thirty seconds. She shared Flynt's talent of quick and silent ingestion, barely chewing.

"Feel better?" I asked her.

She nodded. "Not much fat on them. But I think I can get to the water now. We should get going."

"Water?" My parched throat made the word sound like a prayer coming out of a garbage disposal.

Liti nodded again and gestured upward. "I can smell it." The light wind blew back her hair and antennae. "But I think it's well over the pass."

As she spoke, a shadow coasted over us. From high above, we heard the thin purr of some kind of aircraft. I had almost forgotten about the Crae's drones in my general apathy, although this didn't sound like Kez's fleet.