Chapter 12: Gone to Ground — The Key of Oslov

Volume 16: Tales From the Sanctioned Brothel: Part 3: The Chase

Chapter 12 Gone to Ground

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

Chapter Notes

See the end of the chapter for notes

A patchy first snow blanketed the taiga as Valgund Linnett went on his afternoon rounds, searching for specimens of Cladonia borealis, or pixie-cup lichen. When he saw a thin stream of smoke coming from farther up the hillside, he veered off the trail to avoid it.No one made campfires this far out except the Northmen, and Valgund had steered clear of them since his meeting with Bors in July.After Bors left, he’d dutifully studied his friend’s map and memorized the coordinates that supposedly held the hidden terminals of Oslov’s “nervous exoskeleton.” He’d nearly crossed paths with the Northmen several times since then. But each time he tried to approach them, dread settled in his chest and wouldn’t release him till he changed course and avoided the meeting.After robust self-examination, Valgund had decided that Bors’s plan to go along with Einara’s plan was a bad one, motivated primarily by resentment of Niko Karishkov. As a good friend or whatever he was to Bors exactly, his job was to protect Bors from the consequences of his own poor judgment.The trick was figuring out how to inform Bors without triggering his sensitive temper and making them both say things that might bring their relationship to an end. For now, it was easiest just to avoid the Northmen.Easy—until today. As Valgund crested the hill, someone called out to him. Before he could hide, a raw-boned youth in a thin parka loped toward him through the trees.“Gunsha, right?” The youth hunched over to catch his breath. “We’ve been looking for you.”“Oh?” Valgund asked, his hackles rising. Maybe Bors had found some way of contacting Aleks on his own.“Yeah.” The Skeinsha youth raised his head. Valgund saw with a jolt that he looked positively gaunt, his eyes deeply shadowed. “Aleks needs help,” he said. “He’s sick. Will you come?”Valgund was skeptical for an instant. From what he’d heard, Aleks had plenty of fans and followers to assist him. But the wary set of the youth’s shoulders told him something out of the ordinary had happened.“Of course,” he said. “Where is he?”It took them nearly an hour to reach the mountainside cavern where the Northmen kept their winter camp. On their way through the thickets of spruce, the youth explained in his thick Skeinsha accent that Int/Sec had locked down Thurskein, stranding Aleks and a small band of Northmen outside the wall. Each time they reached a clearing, he paused in his narrative to scan the sky.“Why now?” Valgund asked, remembering what Bors believed about Aleks—that Karishkov was protecting him. “I thought Aleks had incredible luck and always escaped at the last minute. Did something happen?”The youth seized Valgund’s arm and pulled him into a crevice in the cliff face. “See that? Drone!”Far above them, Valgund spotted what looked like a glint of sun on metal. He blinked and it was gone. “Who’s sending drones after you?”“Not us,” the boy hissed. “Him—Aleks. Int/Sec wants him, and alive. We have to hide our camp from them.”Cold tendrils of foreboding spread in Valgund’s chest. He’d known his sister was busy with something in Thurskein; she hadn’t visited him last ten-day, as planned. But she hadn’t told him about the lockdown. “Why suddenly now?” he asked again. “Couldn’t they have—”“Shhh!”When the youth was satisfied that the drone had passed over, they made their laborious way up the rock face to the cave. Inside, only a small campfire punctuated the darkness. Valgund recognized Aleks, Lasha, and Bronia huddling around it, swaddled in sleeping bags and shivering in the cold, musty air.He felt a swell of affection, though he’d barely known them for twenty-four hours as his companions in sabotaging the Sweetbush. Maybe risking your life was a shortcut to friendship.Lasha must have felt the same way: He rose and enveloped Valgund in a hug. “Thank the Spark! We’ve been hoping Vlar would find you.”The big man’s embrace left Valgund breathless. “Good to see you, too,” he managed.“You have no idea.” Lasha led Valgund to the fire, then returned to his own place. “We’re so sick of our own company we’re on the brink of homicide,” he said, wrapping an arm around Aleks to make it clear the words were playful.In the flickering light, Valgund saw how pale and thin Aleks was, how violently he shuddered against Lasha.“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”“How could you have?” Aleks’s smile opened cavities of shadow under his eyes.“I wish you’d come to me sooner.” Valgund pushed aside his now-guilty memories of avoiding the Northmen. “You need supplies. You’re ill.”Aleks shook his head too quickly. “Don’t look at me like I’m dying, Gunsha. It’s just a cold.”“A cold that won’t go away.” Rubbing his lover’s shoulders, Lasha raised his eyes to Valgund. “If you want to go your own way, we understand. We know it’s risky for you to get involved. But if you’re willing to help, he needs fever reliever and cough medicine. And we’re running low on fuel.”Food, too, by the look of them. “I can bring you all those things,” Valgund said, already calculating in his head how long it would take him to go home, gather supplies, and return. “But what’s your long-term plan? If the lockdown continues—well, you can’t possibly stay here through the winter.”“We’ll manage.” Aleks stroked Lasha’s hand. “Sweetheart, I think maybe I could drink some broth.” He turned his gaze to Bronia. “And maybe you could check on Bers. Help him with the wood.”Bronia rose and left the cave immediately, taking Vlar with her. Lasha shook his head long-sufferingly, but he said, “Back in a sec” and disappeared into a tent.So Aleks wanted to talk alone. Feeling those uncharitable misgivings again, Valgund rubbed his stiff hands over the fire. “I’ll get you supplies, and I’ll learn what I can from my sister,” he said. “But you can’t stay here indefinitely, even with my help. You’ll freeze.”“Our Feudal ancestors lived in caves and hollows in the earth. We’ve spent years learning how to survive out here. It’s time we got tested.”Even now, with his wasted body, Aleks was doing the charmingly evasive thing. “And how’s that going?” Valgund asked bluntly.Aleks shrugged. “Bronia managed to shoot a deer, but we haven’t quite figured out preserving the meat, and it stank—” A coughing fit gripped him, and he hunched over, his shoulders heaving.Valgund brought over his flask of hot tea and raised it to Aleks’s lips. “Drink this.”Light danced on the cave’s ice veins and glinted in the corner of Valgund’s eye. He held the flask as Aleks drank, then listened to him breathing hoarsely until the spasms subsided.“Thank you,” Aleks said. “It really is good to see you—I hope you know I mean that. Like Lasha said. Been a while.”“Good to see you, too.” Valgund tried to ignore another prick of guilt. “This lockdown. Does it have anything to do with the Sweetbush?”“No, nothing like that.” Aleks handed the flask back, meeting Valgund’s eyes. “Are you wondering if it’s your fault? Or if they’re coming for you, too?”“No.” But he spoke too quickly.Aleks chuckled to himself. “Even Strutters need to worry sometimes, don’t they? But no. The lockdown happened because we organized a massive strike. Was supposed to take place the very next day, actually.”“Ah.” Valgund wondered how Bors would take this news. A strike was a frontal assault on the Republic’s labor practices; surely his strict friend wouldn’t condone that. Or would Bors twist his logic yet again to fit his gut feelings?As for Valgund, he was neither shocked nor impressed. “That must have been disappointing,” he said.Aleks laughed shakily. “Yeah. Very. But see, now I have a problem.” He lowered his voice. “I’m a wanted man. I imagine Vlar told you about the drones.”Valgund nodded, curiosity prodding him. “You had some luck, being out here when they locked down.”“Luck.” Again the wan laugh. “I thought I was being spared on purpose, but now I think I was just being isolated. Run to ground. And here’s the important part: If he catches me, I’ll be fine.”He? Valgund raised a brow.Aleks ignored the implied question. “But my friends—Lasha—” He shook his head, his voice going low. “They might be carted off for interrogation. They might be shot on the spot. Either way, I wouldn’t be able to save them. I’ve tried and tried to make them leave me somewhere, just go off and save themselves, but they won’t.”Considering Aleks’s condition and the Northmen’s devotion, Valgund imagined ravening polar bears wouldn’t chase them away. But if he was going to help any of them, he needed Aleks to come clean with him, and now. “Who’s he? Who’s trying to catch you?”Aleks smiled—not a charming smile this time, but one that was ghoulish in the firelight. “Everyone. No one. Int/Sec.”Again with the evasiveness. If Bors were here, he might have turned the conversation into an interrogation—probing artfully, trying to wheedle Aleks down circuitous paths toward the truth. Or he might have done one of his strange left turns and insisted on accepting everything Aleks said at face value.Valgund was not Bors. Looking at Aleks, he could see the man only told half-truths because he hated lying.“I think by ‘he’ you mean Niko Karishkov,” he said. “Who is he to you?”Aleks’s eyes wandered over the cave walls. His fingers plucked feverishly at his sleeping bag. He said with childlike curiosity, “How do you know his name?”“Bors knows him from work. Karishkov is his mentor, or was.”“Figures.” A single dry cough. “Bors knows us both, then, and he hasn’t guessed? Or has he?”“He thinks you may have a connection.”At that, Aleks laughed so hard that Valgund had to give him the flask again.“Strutters,” he said when he could talk. “They see what they want to, and nothing else. Misbirths shouldn’t exist, so we don’t. I thought with Bors being born a Drudge, he might be a little more perceptive.”Oh. Oh. Valgund remembered everything Bors had told him about Karishkov’s undercover work in Thurskein, impersonating a Laborer. Things were beginning to make sense.“Bors might be shocked, yes,” he said, showing Aleks by his tone that he understood. “Or it might just confirm his already-negative impression of, er . . .”“My father. You can say it.” Aleks slumped into the bag, looking very frail and exhausted. “He’s not a bad man. Well, actually, he is a bad man, just not to me. I want to believe he wouldn’t give Lasha and the others a bullet in the head and bury them in shallow graves just to keep them away from me, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Would you?”“Given what I know about my own relatives? No.”“That’s why I need you to help me sneak away. So my dad can nab me alone.” Aleks’s voice sank to a whisper. “Lasha’s keeping a close eye on me. He won’t be sensible. I may need to drug him—and the rest of them.”The tone was steely and practical, but behind it Valgund heard a grief that made his throat close. “You would really leave your friends, just like that? Lasha, too?”Aleks’s eyes glittered with more than fever. “Have you ever loved someone?”Valgund decided to repay frankness with frankness. “Yeah. He died and I couldn’t save him, and in my head it never ends. I go over all the things I could’ve done.”“I’m sorry.”“It was a long time ago. We were kids.” Valgund’s breathing hitched as he remembered Garsha going cold in his arms. “If he’d lived, who knows if we’d even still be together?”“Bors, though—you don’t feel that way about him?”Aleks was being evasive again, trying to distract Valgund from the question he’d asked about Lasha. Valgund played along. “I don’t know,” he said. “Half the time I’m not even sure who Bors is—there are too many layers. I don’t think he knows, either. If there’s one thing I wish I could do, it’s make him be honest with himself.”Aleks nodded. “He has a divided soul, my mother would say. People who exist on the borders—Raised people, misbirths—sometimes struggle with that.”Valgund filed away the metaphor for future reference. “I suppose so.”“But when we were out there in the Sweetbush, if the only way you could have saved Bors was to abandon him, would you have?”“I tried to abandon him! Sort of. He had trouble climbing over the fence, and I wanted to leave him for all our safety.” Remembering those terrifying moments, Valgund shuddered again. “He wouldn’t let me, though. And then he ended up finding the tunnel that saved us all.”“Things like that bond you,” Aleks said after a moment. “Narrow escapes, misadventures that show you the power of teamwork. Lasha and I have decades of that behind us. Memories going back to childhood. If we have to be separated . . . at least I’ll have known him.”“Is that the only way, though?” Valgund couldn’t bring himself to believe it.“I’ve gone over and over it in my head. We can survive out here, but not with Int/Sec after us. Not with me.” Aleks’s voice broke. “If there were another choice . . .”Valgund didn’t consciously put things together. He simply said, “There might be.”“What do you mean?”I hope to everything green I’m not being a fucking idiot. But now the words were out, and Valgund couldn’t take them back. He visualized the map on which Bors had shown him the secret installations. One was about a day’s journey on foot from here.They’d have to scout first, of course, and make sure it was abandoned. But Bors had the equipment for that. And if it was abandoned, it might make a warm refuge and an excellent hiding place.“You’ve managed to hide from the drones so far,” he said. “With Bors’s help, and if we’re careful about the weather, your party can handle an overland journey.”“Journey? Where would we go?”Valgund was weaving plans in his head. “You have to get well first. I can snag some antibiotics for you—but no knock-out drugs,” he said, shaking his head at Aleks’s worried look. “Even if you could give Lasha the slip, he’d chase after you and maybe get himself killed. He’s dangerously stubborn—he and Bors have that in common. You don’t want that, do you?”Aleks’s face was full of unguarded pain. “Of course not, but—”“No.” It felt so nice to be certain, to have a sense of purpose again, the way he had when they were planning the sabotage of the Sweetbush. Valgund hadn’t realized how much he missed it.“Let me and Bors handle things,” he said. “You don’t belong in a cell, or wherever your dad wants to put you, and none of you deserve to die out here. I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But we’ll find a better way.”

No one made campfires this far out except the Northmen, and Valgund had steered clear of them since his meeting with Bors in July.

After Bors left, he’d dutifully studied his friend’s map and memorized the coordinates that supposedly held the hidden terminals of Oslov’s “nervous exoskeleton.” He’d nearly crossed paths with the Northmen several times since then. But each time he tried to approach them, dread settled in his chest and wouldn’t release him till he changed course and avoided the meeting.

After robust self-examination, Valgund had decided that Bors’s plan to go along with Einara’s plan was a bad one, motivated primarily by resentment of Niko Karishkov. As a good friend or whatever he was to Bors exactly, his job was to protect Bors from the consequences of his own poor judgment.

The trick was figuring out how to inform Bors without triggering his sensitive temper and making them both say things that might bring their relationship to an end. For now, it was easiest just to avoid the Northmen.

Easy—until today. As Valgund crested the hill, someone called out to him. Before he could hide, a raw-boned youth in a thin parka loped toward him through the trees.

“Gunsha, right?” The youth hunched over to catch his breath. “We’ve been looking for you.”

“Oh?” Valgund asked, his hackles rising. Maybe Bors had found some way of contacting Aleks on his own.

“Yeah.” The Skeinsha youth raised his head. Valgund saw with a jolt that he looked positively gaunt, his eyes deeply shadowed. “Aleks needs help,” he said. “He’s sick. Will you come?”

Valgund was skeptical for an instant. From what he’d heard, Aleks had plenty of fans and followers to assist him. But the wary set of the youth’s shoulders told him something out of the ordinary had happened.

“Of course,” he said. “Where is he?”

It took them nearly an hour to reach the mountainside cavern where the Northmen kept their winter camp. On their way through the thickets of spruce, the youth explained in his thick Skeinsha accent that Int/Sec had locked down Thurskein, stranding Aleks and a small band of Northmen outside the wall. Each time they reached a clearing, he paused in his narrative to scan the sky.

“Why now?” Valgund asked, remembering what Bors believed about Aleks—that Karishkov was protecting him. “I thought Aleks had incredible luck and always escaped at the last minute. Did something happen?”

The youth seized Valgund’s arm and pulled him into a crevice in the cliff face. “See that? Drone!”

Far above them, Valgund spotted what looked like a glint of sun on metal. He blinked and it was gone. “Who’s sending drones after you?”

“Not us,” the boy hissed. “Him—Aleks. Int/Sec wants him, and alive. We have to hide our camp from them.”

Cold tendrils of foreboding spread in Valgund’s chest. He’d known his sister was busy with something in Thurskein; she hadn’t visited him last ten-day, as planned. But she hadn’t told him about the lockdown. “Why suddenly now?” he asked again. “Couldn’t they have—”

“Shhh!”

When the youth was satisfied that the drone had passed over, they made their laborious way up the rock face to the cave. Inside, only a small campfire punctuated the darkness. Valgund recognized Aleks, Lasha, and Bronia huddling around it, swaddled in sleeping bags and shivering in the cold, musty air.

He felt a swell of affection, though he’d barely known them for twenty-four hours as his companions in sabotaging the Sweetbush. Maybe risking your life was a shortcut to friendship.

Lasha must have felt the same way: He rose and enveloped Valgund in a hug. “Thank the Spark! We’ve been hoping Vlar would find you.”

The big man’s embrace left Valgund breathless. “Good to see you, too,” he managed.

“You have no idea.” Lasha led Valgund to the fire, then returned to his own place. “We’re so sick of our own company we’re on the brink of homicide,” he said, wrapping an arm around Aleks to make it clear the words were playful.

In the flickering light, Valgund saw how pale and thin Aleks was, how violently he shuddered against Lasha.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t know.”

“How could you have?” Aleks’s smile opened cavities of shadow under his eyes.

“I wish you’d come to me sooner.” Valgund pushed aside his now-guilty memories of avoiding the Northmen. “You need supplies. You’re ill.”

Aleks shook his head too quickly. “Don’t look at me like I’m dying, Gunsha. It’s just a cold.”

“A cold that won’t go away.” Rubbing his lover’s shoulders, Lasha raised his eyes to Valgund. “If you want to go your own way, we understand. We know it’s risky for you to get involved. But if you’re willing to help, he needs fever reliever and cough medicine. And we’re running low on fuel.”

Food, too, by the look of them. “I can bring you all those things,” Valgund said, already calculating in his head how long it would take him to go home, gather supplies, and return. “But what’s your long-term plan? If the lockdown continues—well, you can’t possibly stay here through the winter.”

“We’ll manage.” Aleks stroked Lasha’s hand. “Sweetheart, I think maybe I could drink some broth.” He turned his gaze to Bronia. “And maybe you could check on Bers. Help him with the wood.”

Bronia rose and left the cave immediately, taking Vlar with her. Lasha shook his head long-sufferingly, but he said, “Back in a sec” and disappeared into a tent.

So Aleks wanted to talk alone. Feeling those uncharitable misgivings again, Valgund rubbed his stiff hands over the fire. “I’ll get you supplies, and I’ll learn what I can from my sister,” he said. “But you can’t stay here indefinitely, even with my help. You’ll freeze.”

“Our Feudal ancestors lived in caves and hollows in the earth. We’ve spent years learning how to survive out here. It’s time we got tested.”

Even now, with his wasted body, Aleks was doing the charmingly evasive thing. “And how’s that going?” Valgund asked bluntly.

Aleks shrugged. “Bronia managed to shoot a deer, but we haven’t quite figured out preserving the meat, and it stank—” A coughing fit gripped him, and he hunched over, his shoulders heaving.

Valgund brought over his flask of hot tea and raised it to Aleks’s lips. “Drink this.”

Light danced on the cave’s ice veins and glinted in the corner of Valgund’s eye. He held the flask as Aleks drank, then listened to him breathing hoarsely until the spasms subsided.

“Thank you,” Aleks said. “It really is good to see you—I hope you know I mean that. Like Lasha said. Been a while.”

“Good to see you, too.” Valgund tried to ignore another prick of guilt. “This lockdown. Does it have anything to do with the Sweetbush?”

“No, nothing like that.” Aleks handed the flask back, meeting Valgund’s eyes. “Are you wondering if it’s your fault? Or if they’re coming for you, too?”

“No.” But he spoke too quickly.

Aleks chuckled to himself. “Even Strutters need to worry sometimes, don’t they? But no. The lockdown happened because we organized a massive strike. Was supposed to take place the very next day, actually.”

“Ah.” Valgund wondered how Bors would take this news. A strike was a frontal assault on the Republic’s labor practices; surely his strict friend wouldn’t condone that. Or would Bors twist his logic yet again to fit his gut feelings?

As for Valgund, he was neither shocked nor impressed. “That must have been disappointing,” he said.

Aleks laughed shakily. “Yeah. Very. But see, now I have a problem.” He lowered his voice. “I’m a wanted man. I imagine Vlar told you about the drones.”

Valgund nodded, curiosity prodding him. “You had some luck, being out here when they locked down.”

“Luck.” Again the wan laugh. “I thought I was being spared on purpose, but now I think I was just being isolated. Run to ground. And here’s the important part: If he catches me, I’ll be fine.”

He? Valgund raised a brow.

Aleks ignored the implied question. “But my friends—Lasha—” He shook his head, his voice going low. “They might be carted off for interrogation. They might be shot on the spot. Either way, I wouldn’t be able to save them. I’ve tried and tried to make them leave me somewhere, just go off and save themselves, but they won’t.”

Considering Aleks’s condition and the Northmen’s devotion, Valgund imagined ravening polar bears wouldn’t chase them away. But if he was going to help any of them, he needed Aleks to come clean with him, and now. “Who’s he? Who’s trying to catch you?”

Aleks smiled—not a charming smile this time, but one that was ghoulish in the firelight. “Everyone. No one. Int/Sec.”

Again with the evasiveness. If Bors were here, he might have turned the conversation into an interrogation—probing artfully, trying to wheedle Aleks down circuitous paths toward the truth. Or he might have done one of his strange left turns and insisted on accepting everything Aleks said at face value.

Valgund was not Bors. Looking at Aleks, he could see the man only told half-truths because he hated lying.

“I think by ‘he’ you mean Niko Karishkov,” he said. “Who is he to you?”

Aleks’s eyes wandered over the cave walls. His fingers plucked feverishly at his sleeping bag. He said with childlike curiosity, “How do you know his name?”

“Bors knows him from work. Karishkov is his mentor, or was.”

“Figures.” A single dry cough. “Bors knows us both, then, and he hasn’t guessed? Or has he?”

“He thinks you may have a connection.”

At that, Aleks laughed so hard that Valgund had to give him the flask again.

“Strutters,” he said when he could talk. “They see what they want to, and nothing else. Misbirths shouldn’t exist, so we don’t. I thought with Bors being born a Drudge, he might be a little more perceptive.”

Oh. Oh. Valgund remembered everything Bors had told him about Karishkov’s undercover work in Thurskein, impersonating a Laborer. Things were beginning to make sense.

“Bors might be shocked, yes,” he said, showing Aleks by his tone that he understood. “Or it might just confirm his already-negative impression of, er . . .”

“My father. You can say it.” Aleks slumped into the bag, looking very frail and exhausted. “He’s not a bad man. Well, actually, he is a bad man, just not to me. I want to believe he wouldn’t give Lasha and the others a bullet in the head and bury them in shallow graves just to keep them away from me, but I wouldn’t put it past him. Would you?”

“Given what I know about my own relatives? No.”

“That’s why I need you to help me sneak away. So my dad can nab me alone.” Aleks’s voice sank to a whisper. “Lasha’s keeping a close eye on me. He won’t be sensible. I may need to drug him—and the rest of them.”

The tone was steely and practical, but behind it Valgund heard a grief that made his throat close. “You would really leave your friends, just like that? Lasha, too?”

Aleks’s eyes glittered with more than fever. “Have you ever loved someone?”

Valgund decided to repay frankness with frankness. “Yeah. He died and I couldn’t save him, and in my head it never ends. I go over all the things I could’ve done.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was a long time ago. We were kids.” Valgund’s breathing hitched as he remembered Garsha going cold in his arms. “If he’d lived, who knows if we’d even still be together?”

“Bors, though—you don’t feel that way about him?”

Aleks was being evasive again, trying to distract Valgund from the question he’d asked about Lasha. Valgund played along. “I don’t know,” he said. “Half the time I’m not even sure who Bors is—there are too many layers. I don’t think he knows, either. If there’s one thing I wish I could do, it’s make him be honest with himself.”

Aleks nodded. “He has a divided soul, my mother would say. People who exist on the borders—Raised people, misbirths—sometimes struggle with that.”

Valgund filed away the metaphor for future reference. “I suppose so.”

“But when we were out there in the Sweetbush, if the only way you could have saved Bors was to abandon him, would you have?”

“I tried to abandon him! Sort of. He had trouble climbing over the fence, and I wanted to leave him for all our safety.” Remembering those terrifying moments, Valgund shuddered again. “He wouldn’t let me, though. And then he ended up finding the tunnel that saved us all.”

“Things like that bond you,” Aleks said after a moment. “Narrow escapes, misadventures that show you the power of teamwork. Lasha and I have decades of that behind us. Memories going back to childhood. If we have to be separated . . . at least I’ll have known him.”

“Is that the only way, though?” Valgund couldn’t bring himself to believe it.

“I’ve gone over and over it in my head. We can survive out here, but not with Int/Sec after us. Not with me.” Aleks’s voice broke. “If there were another choice . . .”

Valgund didn’t consciously put things together. He simply said, “There might be.”

“What do you mean?”

I hope to everything green I’m not being a fucking idiot. But now the words were out, and Valgund couldn’t take them back. He visualized the map on which Bors had shown him the secret installations. One was about a day’s journey on foot from here.

They’d have to scout first, of course, and make sure it was abandoned. But Bors had the equipment for that. And if it was abandoned, it might make a warm refuge and an excellent hiding place.

“You’ve managed to hide from the drones so far,” he said. “With Bors’s help, and if we’re careful about the weather, your party can handle an overland journey.”

“Journey? Where would we go?”

Valgund was weaving plans in his head. “You have to get well first. I can snag some antibiotics for you—but no knock-out drugs,” he said, shaking his head at Aleks’s worried look. “Even if you could give Lasha the slip, he’d chase after you and maybe get himself killed. He’s dangerously stubborn—he and Bors have that in common. You don’t want that, do you?”

Aleks’s face was full of unguarded pain. “Of course not, but—”

“No.” It felt so nice to be certain, to have a sense of purpose again, the way he had when they were planning the sabotage of the Sweetbush. Valgund hadn’t realized how much he missed it.

“Let me and Bors handle things,” he said. “You don’t belong in a cell, or wherever your dad wants to put you, and none of you deserve to die out here. I’m not saying it’ll be easy. But we’ll find a better way.”

Chapter End Notes

Normally I like to stay two chapters ahead of what I’m posting, but a confluence of life stuff is turning me into a zombie right now. It’s possible I’ll take breaks, though probably not for more than a week, because I don’t like to forget where I was either.As always, thanks so much for reading! <3 Sometimes I think about what would’ve happened if no one had responded to my first story. Probably I would have finished it and stopped, which means basically that you all have given me reasons to explore and build out this world further, and I can’t thank you enough for that. :)

Chapter End Notes

As always, thanks so much for reading! <3 Sometimes I think about what would’ve happened if no one had responded to my first story. Probably I would have finished it and stopped, which means basically that you all have given me reasons to explore and build out this world further, and I can’t thank you enough for that. :)