Reap the Wild Wind

Chapter 11

THE BRIDGE CROSSING THE VAST spans within the Sarc grove had never looked so welcoming. Aryl lowered the nets to its wood slats before climbing down herself, vaguely pleased to be able to stand. She’d thought she’d known the limits of her body; training with Bern—competing, to be more honest—had spurred them both to wilder and more dangerous climbs.

This was different. She stretched, hissing between her teeth at the sharp aches that answered. Not far now. She picked up the nets with their precious contents, ignoring the pain of blisters under her gloves as she secured her grip.

Aryl counted the bridge slats touched by her shadow. Eight. If she wasn’t quick, she’d be outside the Yena glows at firstnight. There would be sufficient light to see her way.

Just not enough to see what might be out for an early hunt.

“Faster it is,” she told herself.

The bridge system through Sarc consisted of five major sections, each meeting at the greatest rastis of the grove, and three lesser, leading to nekis used for the Harvest. They were convenient passageways for more than Om’ray, and Aryl kept watch for anything not on two legs as she walked. She didn’t bother with her hood, preferring to see her best. Biters were an accustomed torment, and there were fewer in the open, where the M’hir still stirred the air. The bridge swung gently underfoot, its soft creak no more than strong rope and wood welcoming her confident steps.

Until she started across the third span. Despite the need to hurry, Aryl found herself slowing, her free hand seeking the rope rail. She looked up and saw only the undersides of fronds and branches, the tips of hanging vines, but she knew.

Here.

It had been here.

Involuntarily, she stopped, leaning to shift some of the pods’ awkward weight from her shoulder to a hip.

And below.

She wouldn’t look down. That much grace she gave herself, in this place where Bern had stood to watch Costa and the others fall to their deaths.

Where she’d sent him.

The wood was improbably solid underfoot; the braided rope taut under her fingers. It might have been a dream, except for the lives lost that day and threatened now.

Except for the Dark. Aryl could see if she looked just so, a place that billowed and surged and snapped as if the M’hir had wings of its own . . .

... Like the great wind, the Dark had no boundaries, only irresistible force. Like the M’hir, it stole the breath from her mouth and hammered against her skin until . . .

Aryl shuddered and blinked herself free.

Free of what?

Her fingers still gripped the rope, the knuckles white. The grove filled her nostrils when she inhaled, redolent of ripe fruit and rot. She hadn’t gone anywhere.

Had she?

“Enough,” she told herself, letting go. It had been a long day. Her body said so; as for the rest—the less thinking about that the better.

If all this was her fault, Aryl vowed, the only way to atone was to stay away from the Dark and, she gave the nets a settling heave, help those she still could.

The lights of Yena were in sight between the stalks, the inner glow of her kind a magnet, when Aryl first heard the sound.

No, she decided, stepping into a shadow and holding still. She’d heard it before, when she’d stopped on the bridge within the grove. The canopy was a noisy place, day or truenight; experienced climbers learned to ignore what wasn’t a threat. But hearing it again, she knew what it was.

The hissing Tikitik made to one another.

Sound bounced from wood, softened against frond, carried over water. It was why Om’ray Scouts and Harvesters relied on mindspeech. Aryl listened as intently as she could, but over the ambient squawks, whirrs, and buzzing, couldn’t make out a direction. Not close, she thought, unless the faintness was an effort to speak quietly because they were close.

Which meant they could be right below her.

Aryl felt the weight of the pods on her shoulder. Her mother had warned her not to let the Tikitik know. They’d demand their share of what she held, that at least. Or they could want it all. She didn’t know or care what they used dresel for—she only knew they couldn’t have what she’d carried all this way, what Bern had left.

Six fists of life.

Weary and sore, she assessed her options. There was the path ahead, the one she’d planned to take. Straight along the wide bridge, around the platform ringing the next rastis, down the ladder to this end of the village bridge, from there, a handful of steps to where the glows marked safety. There might be a Scout on the platform, certainly one at the ladder’s base. At truenight, once all Yena were safe, they would remove several rungs and replace them with false steps, some coated with poison and spikes, others weakened to the breaking point. No friend to Om’ray climbed in the dark.

If she took that straightforward route, she’d be walking over the platform and dock—and be visible from the waters of the Lay below. She had time yet, Aryl decided, to take another way home.

Taisal di Sarc had never remarked on her daughter’s constant climbing, except to insist on a tidy and prompt appearance at supper; Costa, well, he’d had her pick plants for him he couldn’t reach on his own. But the Teeracs, Aryl remembered vividly, had taken a dim view of their eldest son, as they put it, chasing that Sarc scamp through the canopy when he should have been learning to braid rope like his kin.

To be fair, she hadn’t been the problem; Bern didn’t like braiding rope.

Or anything else that involved sitting still for five breaths, unless it was to eat. His parents had been forced to make Bern promise not to walk the bridge from their house until he did his share of the work.

He’d braided for a full day and his parents had been cautiously happy. They were less amused when they discovered this diligence had produced a rope ladder that Aryl secured to a branch over their home so Bern could leave without breaking his word.

They’d eventually given up. Bern had eventually become dutiful enough to braid every day, at least until Aryl climbed down the ladder to wave through his window. A ladder that still waited, wrapped in toxin-soaked cloth.

As she left the bridge and climbed the rastis itself, Aryl half smiled. Even Bern’s parents had grudgingly admitted they were perfect for each other.

Had been perfect.

Feeling empty, Aryl moved as quietly as she could with the nets. She crossed between rastis by balancing on their overlapped fronds. A child’s trick, not without risk. Old fronds could crack at their base from the main stalk, young ones were supple and bent unpredictably under the weight of an adult-sized Om’ray. Especially—she staggered once and caught herself—one carrying an extra burden. But she couldn’t be seen from below and there were more reasons than a daring Om’ray for a frond to sway, including the M’hir.

Firstnight had arrived, the sunlight now diffuse and rapidly losing to lengthening shadows. As she climbed, well above the Yena rooftops, spots of warm yellow light peeked through openings between the fronds. Their glow turned the world upside down, as if she walked with her feet to the sky. She fought the disorienting sensation as much as the gloom. This path was as familiar as the floor of her bedroom.

Of course, now she had a new one, Aryl told herself, forced to slow her steps to keep her direction as everything turned dim and strange.

She started as something soft and unseen brushed her face. A nightflier. Harmless, but something had flushed it from its perch.

She didn’t want to know what.

Truenight was almost upon her by the time Aryl reached the ladder. With feverish haste, she tore off its wrappings and tossed them aside. The braided rope had held Bern; she had to trust it could support her plus her load. There wouldn’t be time to lower the pods first.

The steady splashes from the Lay below gave warning—the hunters were out and on the rise, tracking by scent and heat. She could hear their stealthy, clattering movement on every side, claws digging in as they climbed, muted clicks as they shoved one another for best advantage. No screams rent the air yet. They would soon. These hunters killed by eating their prey, swarming in such numbers they fought each other for room to bite.

No swarm would eat her, Aryl vowed. She pushed the ladder over the branch, starting to descend before it finished unrolling. The weight of the nets made her unbalanced, threw the ladder into a swing. She didn’t falter, hands and feet flying from grip to grip. She not only had to get herself down, she had to make sure this ladder wasn’t left as a road for what pursued.

She let go at the third last rung, landing on her toes, unable to believe she’d made it. Shrugging off the nets, she grabbed the retriever cord twisting in the air beside the ladder. With both hands, leaning her whole body into the pull, she drew the ladder back up to its resting place. Release and pull. Release and pull. Om’ray ladders were meant to be removed; Bern had known his craft, however much he detested it. One more. There.

Out of habit, Aryl bundled the loose cord and tossed it over that very convenient frond above the Teeracs’ roof. She spotted a cluster of Om’ray running in her direction and raised a weary hand in salute.

She didn’t move at once. Her body wasn’t inclined to do anything beyond taking deep, shuddering gasps, now that she was safe.

Safe. Her mouth twisted. Here, on this bridge in the midst of well-lit and protected homes, encompassed by the inner warmth of her kind, she could close her eyes without fear and breathe, imagine cleaning the sweat and dust from her skin and hair, plan supper. Sink into sleep.

While Bern and the others remained out there, alone.

They’d each huddle over a glow for truenight, their bodies wedged between branches as high as they could climb. They wouldn’t dare sleep until dawn, though the Lay’s hunters rarely ventured into the sparse open growth of the upper canopy. There were other dangers, things that flew over the rastis crowns by starlight, hunting the hunters. Things that wouldn’t mind plucking a careless Om’ray from his perch.

Council had sent them on Passage; she’d felt their grief. The Tikitik had made it impossible to do otherwise; she couldn’t blame them for needing dresel, too.

Whoever sent that device to spy on their Harvest, she thought, that’s who was responsible. Aryl felt a sudden fierce anger, deeper than any she’d felt before.

It lacked only a face.

She picked up the nets and went to meet her welcomers.