The Burning Ground

8. Afterbite

“No! What we just did is one thing, you got your adventure and lived through it, but where I’m headed now, it’s too dangerous.” Yseyl thrust her fingers through her hair, turned her shoulder to the crouching, glowering child and stalked to the stream. She squatted, separated out a pebble from the scree on the bank, flung it at the bole of a conifer on the far side of the stream. The snap of her arm and the satisfying clunk of the pebble calmed her. She looked over her shoulder at Zot. “I won’t take you, Zot. You can argue all you want.”

Zot brought her head up and forward like a striking yok. “Liar! You just want to get rid of me, that’s all. You think I don’t know?”

“Believe what you want, it doesn’t change anything.” She got to her feet, dusted her hands together. “I talked to Luca. Khimil and Syon are joining their ixis and they want you with them. You’ll have a family again and you need that.”

“I don’t want a family. It’ll be worse than living in the Hall, people messing you around all the time.”

“I’m doing the best I can for you, Zot. You’re a good kid and smart, but you don’t know me. I don’t know what you think you see, but it isn’t me. And you don’t know thuv about the world I’m going into.” Her voice was soft, almost a whisper, anger putting edges on the words. “And don’t tell me you could learn. You’d get yourself killed and maybe me, too.”

Zot stared at her a moment, biting her lip to keep it from trembling, eyes squinted to hold tears back. Abruptly she was up and running full out, vanishing a moment later into the shadow under the trees.

Yseyl stood where she was, anger and affection both emptied out of her, only a vague relief left to temper the coldness. It was done and easier than she’d expected. Zot will calm down once I’m gone. She’ll see it’s the best thing and go along with Luca. Family. She needs family. Not me. Not me. Not me… She shivered, drew her hand across her face, wiping away all that nonsense, then walked briskly across the grass to the hunter.

“Is there any reason why you need to wait longer? I want to get out of here.”

“I don’t want to lift until there’s enough traffic in the air so we won’t be spotted and targeted.” She nodded at the flier a few paces off, backed under the overhang of the canopy. “Alarm’s set to tell me when more fliers are up. Shouldn’t be long now.”

“I don’t understand, I thought…”

“The Ptaks know a lot of arms dealers and those gits sell more than weapons. I’m no gambler, Ghost I like to have my feet planted and know where I’m jumping…”

A musical chime, a single pure note, sounded through the open door of the flier.

Thethunter came: to her:feet in one of those fluid swift moves that always startled Yseyl in one so large and:lumpy.

“And it’s time to jump,” she said. “Get your gear and let’s go.”