Elmira
The Base closed in around her once more, with crowding houses, sheds, and tents that fought for shadows and an inch of space, and she found that breathing came easy again. A glance at the sky told her she had about two more hours before the deadline, which she was more than well aware of meant exactly that, especially if the mood was less than good at headquarters.
While the maze of the streets was claustrophobic and frightening to many, El was in her essence. The twists and turns and shortcuts kept her safe. For her, it was the freedom you feel when you do something you’ve done your whole life. No hesitation or deviation in the one place she had an advantage few others had. It had taken her such a long time to get it down, but she had been patient. Spending sleepless nights wandering around, connecting the dots, getting to know each quarter and their little quirks.
That’s how she knew that people over on the west side loved their bows and crossbows more than metallic sticks with pointy ends and were the sharpest marksmen around.
How she had found out that if you needed to drown your sorrows, there was a bar over the border in the fifth quarter with the best karenian ale you’d ever taste.
How she knew the locations of a dozen safe houses to take refuge in when you got the SPF on your tail and needed to lay low.
She could take the route between Noke and “the Man” in her sleep. Even with her eyes closed, she could picture where she was. A distant bell rang out the seventh hour. Despite the cold, her skin was clammy, the hairs clinging to the back of her neck.
It had not been easy to build a reputation valuable enough to gain the right sort of attention. Nor was it a simple job. Her ability to see logic where others saw endless chaos was one reason she’d taken to the position so easily.
It had taken her fifty-two years, but at last she was brought before General Alexandre Kollisi, not as a prisoner, but as an ally. That moment alone had taken years of her life. Kollisi was an erratic, unstable man who scared the living daylights out of every person who met him. If you knew what was best for you, you stayed on his good side the best you could. Although it was nearly impossible to know what that was.
Something she had learned the hard way during her early days in the camp.
A woman with her hair up in braids and a leather apron covering her tunic skirted to the other side of the street at the sight of El’s suddenly dark expression.
She tried to take a breath, but the memories came unbidden and without mercy, tightening like a metal chain around her chest. She stopped in the middle of the street next to a wall, earning a few curious glances, but none approached. Not in this part. Not in this “town.”
She focused on her breathing. Four beats in. Hold. Eight beats out. Her heart fluttered, and her vision swam as a high-pitched bell shouted in her ears. Not now, please not now.
“Calm, child,” the voice said, and a little trickle of warmth seeped through her veins to quell the storm that raged through her mind and body. “Breathe.”
Breathe. Four beats in. Hold. Eight beats out. Ride the memory until its end because sometimes the fastest way was through, not around. There was no time to wait. She closed her eyes and let it come.
Kollisi was a man whose threats were true and swiftly carried out. She’d received more than one in her time here. Either when she became too nosy or stepped too far out of line. One time in particular taught her to hold her tongue with great efficiency. The day she’d lost her cool and borne into an arrogant toad of a major in a dive bar before she punched the daylights out of him.
Inside the hour, she’d been hauled to the courts, brought up on charges of misconduct towards a superior, and sentenced to fifty lashes. Stubborn by nature, she’d refused to give in to the pain. So when the fifty were over, the whip switched hands.
Not one cry escaped her lips when Kollisi brought the whip down on her back. If it had, the brutality might not have been as vicious. Even as a young man, not yet a general, he got a kick out of inflicting pain on others, and she’d refused to give him the satisfaction of a reaction that day.
Then again, maybe that’s why she was still alive and kicking. Dodging revelers, skipping across roofs. Why she’d only come away with scars on her back that ached in the damp air. What fun was there in breaking someone who’s not just dead, but died winning?
“You and I are not done, girl,” he’d hissed in her ear before she passed out.
She shuddered, feeling the scars stretch. They always did in wintertime. Which, to be honest, was a perpetual affair at this altitude. The phantom satchel bounced against her back as she forced herself to move and slid down a stair rail to a side street. She knew she’d meet her end at the hands of the Syndicate. The problem was knowing whose hands.
“You seem to have a problem knowing a lot of things.” The snide remark was barely audible in her ear, but she heard it.
“Fuck off,” she retorted.
“Hail ódara!” A voice cried out as she came skidding out between two buildings barely two feet apart. “From stars to stars once more!”
“Hail!” came a mumbling chorus in response.
A circle of mismatched rocks marked the edges of a small square where both old and newly appointed sangoran footmen gathered around barrel fires on make-shift benches. They were all, or most at least, drinking from tankards in solemn silence. In the face of such severe expressions, the sounds of the bustle that never died seemed muted.
No longer able to bend her fingers from how frozen they were, she stopped by a fire on the outskirts of the square, and thus she found herself in the company of a Noma. An androgynous species whose home was over in the far north. True to their origin, the Noma had dressed for a chilly fall day, while their human sangoran companion had tied two scarves around their hat and stood jumping from foot to foot, hands perilously close to the flames.
Neither one reacted when she joined them, reaching for the warmth of the flames.
“This is it, huh? Once more unto the breach, dear friends,” the Noma moaned, earning a few giggles from a group of passing nurses and eye rolls from the rest. “So long, dear, beautiful nurses! Thanks for the amnesia!”
They raised their hand into a salute and took a large swig from a bottle that reeked of nutmeg, plum, and alcohol. El wrinkled her nose. There was no reason to drink such garbage.
“You don’t believe we have a chance? I’m hurt,” the friend said, making it sound like a joke, but their laugh was hollow. “I’m the best pilot of us all, you know. Best there ever will be.”
The Noma shook their head. “Those people took us on a field day before throwing us out with the trash,” they said, not bothering to lower their voice.
The silence in the square roared. People nearby bowed their heads. One crossed their heart before retreating further into their layers. There was a haunted look so contagious that it told her she was sharing a fire with pirates.
From this angle, she couldn’t see whose flag they flew under, but Black J’kol had raided an akatian transport or something along the outposts, and it appeared as if it had not ended well for the raiders. The party usually comprised more than a hundred. Looking around, she counted twenty. Her blood ran cold with dread and pride. Twenty survivors.
“There is still time, they could be on their way,” the sangoran said so quietly that only the Noma and El could hear, though they still did not acknowledge her presence.
“Could be,” the Noma said, voice breaking.
The sangoran put their arm around the Noma’s shoulders. El didn’t know where to turn, surprised at the sudden intimacy. There was something beautifully rare about the pair that eased her anxiety, which had become a constant companion in this place.
“Have some faith,” she heard the sangoran murmur.
“I’m all out,” the Noma said, nuzzling their head into the crook of their neck. “Can you lend me some?”
“Sure thing.”
When the embrace turned into a passionate kiss of the kind that makes you forget the world around you, El knew it was time for her to mind her own business. She tightened her coat, squared her collar, and headed off towards the hill that loomed above Base 19.
Time to meet the devil.
