Raider Read online

  “Yes, sir,” Brakely said, and backed out the door.

  KYE WALKED SLOWLY back to her rooms from Drake’s taproom, taking the circuitous route she usually did, just in case. She didn’t think she was being followed, and there was no reason for anyone to, but she wished to keep her hiding place secret as much as she could. Eirlys knew where it was, and Drake, but no other. She savored the peace she found there, and sometimes thought it was the only thing that kept her going.

  But now she was only giving the route half her attention. The rest was consumed with something else. With something she had seen when she’d first entered the taproom. True, Paledan was impressive enough to suck up all the attention in any room, but she hadn’t missed the way Drake had been watching him as he left. The expression he’d worn, as if he were . . . calculating something. It was more than niggling at her, it was nagging, and she wasn’t sure why. It seemed both strange to see on Drake’s face, and yet at the same time familiar. Which made no sense at all.

  When she arrived home, it was nearly dark, but instead of eating and resting as she had planned, she found herself pacing. She was so restless, she finally did something she hadn’t done in a long time. She pulled out her sketch pad for a reason other than maps and planning.

  She had not sketched something not related to the rebellion in a long time. She had purposefully quashed that part of her. In fact, the portrait of Eirlys, staring into the distance, her hair in a loose, thick braid with wisps blowing about her lovely face, the portrait done nearly a year ago and that Brander had stolen, was the last thing of pure art she’d done.

  Until now.

  Until tonight, in a darkness lessened only by the glow of the lantern at her elbow, when she pulled out her book and a stub of charcoal and began.

  It was the long spell of working on the map that had her unsettled.

  “What is it?” she had been asked countless times. “What are you working on?”

  “A map,” was always her simple reply. “A very large map.”

  A very large map, in their minds, meant a very large plan. That alone quieted them, such was their faith in their leader.

  And their faith was nothing as compared to hers. She would, freely and willingly if necessary, die for the man they called the Raider. She admired him, respected him, and gloried in the simple fact that here was a man who would stand, who would fight back and not be moved.

  She also loved him.

  She had given up trying to deny it to herself. It didn’t matter anyway. For it was unlikely that both of them would survive this conflict, and she would not, could not muddy the waters. He needed clear thinking, and she could not distract him with thoughts of things that could not be.

  So now she sat in her room, the small sanctuary in the back of what was left of her parents’ old home. The front section had been turned to rubble by a Coalition strike, at last putting an end to her father’s helpless pain. She stayed here partly as reminder of what the Coalition had taken from her, partly for the quiet refuge it offered.

  From the front it appeared uninhabitable, but in fact the back three rooms, which included the kitchen, a washroom, and what had been a storage room, were fairly intact. She had left the front uncleared. Not only as a shrine to her father’s death there, but there was some measure of safety in the Coalition thinking they had already destroyed this target, and she was far enough distant from the center of Zelos for them not to find the location attractive enough to clear out and rebuild.

  So now she sat unmolested in the storage room she had converted to a living space, as comfortable as it could be under the circumstances. The light from the lantern was masked by the sheet of metal she had salvaged from a wreck and placed over the one window. It was her father’s extending chair she sat in, the only furnishing that had survived relatively unscathed. It now served her as both seat and bed, and it was large enough that she had had to have Drake’s help to move it out of the wreckage and back here.

  Drake.

  Her mind skittered away again, as it always did these days. Eirlys had suggested, when she had first seen the ruin, that she move in with them behind the taproom. At the time, it had been merely a stubborn refusal to abandon her home that made her turn the girl down, but it was soon after she was glad she had. For there was no way she would have been able to hold her tongue as Drake descended into the pit of meek capitulation where he now lived.

  And yet that expression she’d caught this afternoon still hovered.

  Shoving the thought aside, she turned to the task she’d realized she must do now, or it might never get done. She could be killed at any time, with this need unmet. Or worse, the Raider could be, and she would have to do it knowing he was gone forever, and it would likely drive her to follow him.

  Which losing him might do anyway.

  She shifted in the chair, angling so that the lantern light fell on a new page. She had few left, and there was no way to justify spending precious coin on such an extravagance when even food to keep living another week was so dear. But she had two, enough for this. And she needed to do this. She wasn’t even sure of all the reasons why, but she knew there was no denying it any longer.

  Her hand trembled slightly as she moved the chalk to the top of the page. Whether because it had been so long, or that she was afraid to do this she was not certain. She began anyway, because she had to.

  She began with his eyes. She needed no time to stop and recall. She knew them as well as she knew her own. The color rimmed with dark, surrounded by thick, black lashes, they were the icy blue eyes of Ziem. Typical of many—some said it was the mist that caused them—but in this man they were both intimidating and beautiful. And in the ruin of his face, they were the purest representation of the man within.

  She let her heart, her subconscious, guide her hand, and found herself drawing the remaining undamaged parts. Although she had no intention of ignoring the scars, she went to that small part of his strong jaw line that was untouched, and then his mouth. That mouth, that she had too often found herself studying as if it were something she would later have to recreate. Perhaps some part of her had always known this day would come.

  The way her hand was moving, swiftly, sure and true, with no need of the tiny bit of expunger she had left, told her that part of her she had smothered for so long was alive and well. It came pouring out of her, this need, as if every quashed bit of feeling she had for this man was rushing out through her fingers and a tiny stub of chalk.

  Even the scars came easily, and she knew somehow she was capturing every curved ridge of flesh that twisted his face exactly as they were. Then she began the helmet, with the added sweep that covered the right side of his face, and realized she knew it almost as well, every curve, every dent, every battle scar, as well as the etched design she had long ago recognized as the work of Fortis, one of Ziem’s most famous sons, a planium worker of no small genius. He had been lost in the first attack on Zelos, and their world was much the poorer for it.

  When she finished, she stared down at the portrait for a long time. Without self-pride she knew that it was some of her best work. She would have to leave it here, for it would not do for him to ever by chance see it. Not when her heart, and everything she felt for him practically cried out from every line. Nor could she risk it falling into enemy hands; it would tell them no more than they already knew about the Raider, but it was better than any image they had and she truly would die were he ever taken with help from her hand.

  It was good, yes. And yet her hand, and that part deep within her that drove this inexplicable talent, were restless still, as if she were not truly finished.

  When it finally came to her, what was yet undone, she resisted. She did not want to do this, had a down-deep certainty she would regret it. And yet she recognized the compulsion, and knew it would eat at her endlessly until she complied.

&nb
sp; She turned the page, to her last sheet of untouched drawing paper. For a moment she didn’t even breathe. But then she lifted the chalk, calling up old lessons learned long ago, when Ziem’s teachers had included artists as well as scientists, lessons about faces and asymmetry. She knew how to do this. She had done it before, in a classroom, and she could do it now.

  The question was, should she?

  The question is, do I have any choice?

  She knew she did not.

  She began again with his eyes. Then the line of his jaw, extending it to the other side, and how she guessed it must have looked before the flames that had disfigured him. Although how anyone could look at him, even scarred, and consider him disfigured was beyond her. She went on, duplicating what she knew of his uninjured face on the damaged side, with slight alterations she knew were typical from one side of a person’s face to the other. She worked quickly enough that she knew that this, too, had been bubbling just beneath the surface.

  Perhaps when she was finished she would ask Brander if this is what he had looked like, although she did not actually know if her cousin had known him before the injury. How strange, that she knew so little, yet felt so much. . . .

  She focused on sections, going back and forth, filling in what she knew—the eyes, the dark hair, the strong jaw, corded neck—with what she was guessing at, the areas hidden by the helmet on one side and the mass of scar tissue on the other. She did not let herself think of what the helmet masked, what awful thing it covered if the mass of scars he let be seen were better. She quashed the whispers she’d heard, horrified tales of bare skull and sinew. None of it mattered now.

  It was odd to be focused on the pieces and not the whole man as she drew. When she laid down the last stroke, a final shading of the taut cord of his neck, she closed her eyes. Her chalk was down to a nub she could barely hold, and she set it on the crate beside her that served as a table. She sat for a long moment, afraid to look at what she had done. Only the knowledge that the oil that powered her lamp would run out soon, and she would be hard-pressed to get more, forced her to it.

  She drew in a deep breath, opened her eyes, and at last looked down to the sketchbook on her lap. Really looked at the whole for the first time.

  Her breath shot out in a rush. She felt a swirl in her head, as if she were dizzy. She blinked, hard. Shook her head.

  “No,” she whispered.

  But there was no denying what she’d done.

  She’d drawn the Raider. She’d extrapolated from what she knew to what she couldn’t see. And she knew she’d drawn it correctly. Knew she had drawn the man as he had been, before the mass of scars had deformed and twisted his face.

  There was only one problem.

  The image she was staring at was unmistakably Drake Davorin.

  Chapter 27

  ALL OF ZELOS heard the crash; the Raider heard opportunity for salvage at the expense of the Coalition. In the cellar ruin, the Sentinels rushed to follow rapid-fire orders, taking no time to speculate if it had been freighter or combat vessel that had gone down. When the Raider had come out of his quarters, he was already in his armor, helmet and gloves in place, ready to go as they still scrambled to suit up.

  When one of the Harkins marveled at the quick string of assignments handed out, his brother said simply, “It’s why he’s the Raider and we follow him.”

  He pretended not to hear, although the words bolstered him.

  Within minutes, they were on their way, three of the captured air rovers fully loaded. Brander had the one from the cave at the falls with a crew to patrol the likely approach from the Coalition post. Kye, who had just arrived moments ago, he sent to fly another to the ridgeline above, with her long gun; his orders had been to be ready to flip on the autopilot and use the airborne vehicle as a shooting platform if necessary. She had hesitated, looking at him oddly for a moment, and he’d thought she was going to question her assignment. But then she had nodded, rather sharply, and headed out to pick up the rover from the nearby forest hideout.

  The Raider himself piloted the one headed for the crash itself, now marked by a rising spiral of smoke that would soon be noticed in town. He slowed once the wreck was in sight. The smell was stronger here, an ugly mix of smoke and freshly turned dirt, softened only slightly by the mist. Immediately any thought of salvaging the ship itself vanished; it was far beyond any repair they could manage with what they had.

  It appeared no one could have survived it, but he’d learned early on—and the hard way, gaining the scar that slashed across his rib cage—to never assume.

  “Clear in the valley, sir!”

  Galeth’s call indicated Brander had fired the flasher to indicate there was no sign of the Coalition incoming yet. The rebels’ ability to see in the mist and knowledge of the terrain had given them the advantage, but not for long. The Raider had no doubts the Coalition would be here soon. Very soon.

  “Cover in position,” Galeth’s brother said as he handed over the scope, indicating Kye was in place above. He quashed the inward shiver at that thought of her out in the open, in danger. She would not welcome his worry, and he could not let it distract him. But he could not seem to stop it, either. Every time he had to send her out it ate at him. The best he could do was avoid admitting to himself why.

  He eased the rover forward. Used the battered scope to inspect. Class four freighter. Minimal armaments. Crew of three. No sign of any of them. Not a footprint outside the wrecked vessel, or even an open hatch. Yet there was no sign of fire, either. Which could bode well for recovery of cargo, or ill if it was a trap.

  “I think they bought it on impact, sir,” Galeth said.

  He studied the front of the craft, which had crumpled to barely an arm span’s depth as the freighter had cratered into the rocky slope.

  “Agreed,” he said, collapsing the scope. “But we will spread out and approach as if they are alive and waiting to fire.”

  The men obeyed, keeping enough distance between each other that a single blast could not take more than one of them out. They approached warily, carefully. They stopped at the Raider’s command. Pryl looked back, and he nodded. The man edged forward alone.

  He hated this part. Hated ordering people to do dangerous things that he would gladly do himself, were he free to do so. It had taken him a long time, and a few lectures from Brander, and by letter from the Spirit, to make him admit he couldn’t take every risk himself.

  Pryl crept up to the wreckage, his blade as always at the ready. “Three bodies,” he called back. “No sign of anyone else aboard.”

  The Raider gave the signal, and his squad advanced on the ruined ship. The men began to go through the cargo bay, which, while damaged, looked as if it would hold long enough for them to get what could be carried. Including, he thought with grim pleasure, the crate of new blasters he could see from here. He wasn’t sure how they’d transport the heavy thing, but he’d think of something.

  He went forward toward the control deck, stepping past the bodies Galeth and his brother had pulled out and laid in a neat line. More than they would do for us, the Raider thought as he edged forward as far as he could go.

  It seemed pointless—the controls were smashed, even the throttle broken off by the force of the crash. He took a step back, thinking he would join the others in selecting what cargo that was portable that they could best use.

  A tiny, blinking light caught the edge of his vision as he turned. He leaned over. Reached out and pushed back a large chunk of metal—planium, he noted with some irony—to reveal the navigation system. He doubted it was functional—it likely hadn’t been even before the crash, or they’d be safely landed on the flats by now—but maybe . . .

  He reached out, trying to remember what he’d once read in stolen schematics and plans. He tapped three buttons with no response. Tried a different order. The
cracked screen flickered to life, although the menu it displayed had several blank spots. But the one he’d been looking for was there, and he tapped it.

  A log popped into view. It showed the arrival and departures of the ship for the last month. He tapped for the next page, hardly daring to hope.

  It was there. A schedule for the next month, including the destinations. Ziem was there twice. Once with a cargo labeled as needing refrigeration. Food, he guessed.

  And one more. His breath jammed up in his throat.

  He spun around.

  “Hold!” he ordered sharply.

  The men pulling cargo from the bent racks froze. Galeth turned to look at him.

  “Return it all.”

  As one they all drew back, staring. “What?” Galeth asked.

  “Return it all. Exactly as you found it. Including the crew.”

  Teal stared. “The bodies?”

  “Yes.”

  “The blasters?” Galeth said rather faintly.

  “Don’t take even one. Of anything. That’s crucial. Move quickly!” He turned to Pryl, who was staring at him equally bewildered. “Go outside. Erase any trace of our presence. And stand by to obliterate our trail back to the rover. Now!”

  He knew he was testing the obedience of these men to the limit. But the power of the Raider held, and they began to follow his orders. He spun on his heel and leapt from the ship, pulling the flasher gun from his belt. He fired the red signal for pulling back. Brander would linger, he knew, until they themselves were clear, and if he knew Kye, she would do the same, which made it even more imperative that they on the ground get clear rapidly.

  They finished quickly. He left only Pryl, the best woodsman among them, to watch with the scope from a perch in a large mistbreaker tree.

  He only breathed freely again when they were back in the shelter of the forest and he saw Kye and Brander’s rovers riding their wake. They got to the ruin, returned the rovers to their hiding places, and at his order assumed the highest alert status.