Chapter 15

While the corridors of Sky House were usually noisome with the gaiety of daily discourse, the stables were filled with softer sounds of hamox eating, snorting and generally enjoying their leisure. Porter sensed Gilly before he saw her. She was standing in front of a stall, talking to Alin. His face was rife with acne scars, but he had a friendly composure about him, despite the attack a few hours ago.

Porter gave him a small bow. “I am glad you are recovered. The time has come to leave.”

“He is quite formal,” Alin said to Gilly.

“Only when the lights are on,” Gilly quipped, watching Porter blush with amusement.

Alin took permission to add to the fun. “Oh, you mean that he is only stiff in the light of day. You poor soul.”

Porter decided that for the sake of honor he should keep his mouth shut and endure the jabs; this was the most relaxed he had ever seen Alin, which was a contradiction considering what they had just survived. The other two tossed a few more puns and wordplays between them until the subject petered out.

“Alin has decided to come with us, Porter. We need him; he is one of the best guides I know. Are you ready to ride?” Gilly asked, reasserting her habit of taking command.

“Are you sure, Alin?” Porter asked, ignoring Gilly for the moment.

“It is bad enough that Fane attacked Gilly, but he assaulted me as well. I am well and done here, Porter. Thanks for asking,” Alin said.

Porter had no doubt that the Elders were tracking them in Sky House. He tried to determine whether they would strike the three of them again as they left the fortress but he was forced to sit with his ignorance. He would do anything to protect Gilly, but he had no clue what the consequences were of attacking another in Sky House.

He sent out a thread of Blue to locate Kanji and finally found her, summoning her to meet at the lift in the Greeting Hall. The only southerly exit was very public and open, which meant they were not going to sneak out of the fortress. Their hope was that the halls were filled with innocents who knew nothing of the events of the morning, or last night for that matter. If the Elders attacked them in public, far too many difficult and revealing questions would be raised.

He was not sure why the secrets he had uncovered were so severe that his presence threatened them, but he had drawn Gilly into the complicity of his research. He felt responsible for the assault on her. The Elders had attacked them all, unprovoked without a doubt, but he was guilty, nonetheless. The anxiety of the day already had him counting the stalls in the stable, tallying in percentages how full the stable was and how many more animals the facility could accommodate.

Gilly handed him his coat and he was pleased to see that she was wearing his gift as well. The black snakeskin made her look ... dangerous. She shot him a look when she noticed him staring and he liked the combination, sultry.

Alin led them out to the Greeting Hall with four hamox. No one seemed to take much notice, and no one tried to stop them as they approached the lift. Alin and Gilly acted as if all was well. They appeared excited about taking a little trip into the forest; Porter was not such a good actor. He was perplexed by the laissez-faire attitude towards security within the building but even so, he was pleased to leave without any further confrontations.

As the lift dropped down, a rising set of fears seized Porter: He did not want to leave. He wanted to be safe in a nice little apartment with a bed and a couch and a table and a pitcher of water for the asking. Maybe he could just report his findings and beg to be forgiven. If he offered to vow with his very life to forget what he saw, then they would let him stay unmolested. Maybe they would even respect him for coming clean; maybe they would...

The world out there was all an unknown. He was following a stranger who had a prior history with his lover; was that smart? Somewhere out there the Priests of Purity were waiting to strike him down. Was not it better to face the demons one knows than to face the unknown ones out there? Porter felt nauseous.

The lift came to a halt. The three hopped on their hamox and rode back through the maze. The explorers and their wastecat made their way deep into the forest traveling six or seven hours before darkness forced them to stop for the night. Kanji generously slept on the outside this night, but Porter was still disappointed to receive only a kiss on the cheek before his lover rolled over and went to sleep.

They were traveling with a friend and he had not expected anything more, but a little more still would have been nice. He did not know all the rules of intimacy, especially when traveling in the middle of the wilderness. He was not going to ask; such a circumstance was simply too embarrassing. Panic and humiliation, nothing had changed despite months at Sky House; Porter saw himself again as the same pathetic sop he was before he had arrived in those august, elegant halls.

Full panic mode kicked in. How could Gilly not be frightened? How dare she not be afraid and trembling like he was. Kanji rolled from her stomach to her side and hit Porter on the side, knocking the breath out of him. Something had died in her mouth and he was forced to roll the other way to escape the odor, which forced him up against Gilly. She snuggled back into him as he spooned her. He felt better instantly, and sleep slowly overcame his thoughts.

Having stood for the last watch, Porter woke the other two with the dawn. He wanted to pull out the hidden map and study it as soon as the light was bright enough; however, Alin cautioned him that they were not beyond the eyes and ears of Sky House yet. They continued east.

Sometime in the late morning, the grey skies finally released their burden of rain upon the land. The downpour was heavy and unrelenting. Porter was doubly glad that the snakeskin was thoroughly waterproof; the water sloughed off easily. His trousers were another story and he thought to voice a complaint until he looked down at Kanji who was pacing the hamox with her ears folded and her tail tucked under her. She looked more miserable than he did, and she did give voice to her misery. Porter clamped his mouth shut.

That night they camped among the boulders of a mountain under some trees with a few small dry patches beneath their foliage. Unable to bring out their bedrolls, Porter slept leaning against a rock. By morning the torrents had stopped falling from the heavens to the riders’ relief but all four were tired and cranky. They rode on.

Towards evening they stopped in a small valley that was cupped by two ridges. Kanji and Porter both brought down meat. Kanji had a small mammal with an ugly face, but a thick meaty body and Porter had two ground birds. Alin knew his woodcraft well and a near smokeless fire was burning under the turning canopy of twisted trees.

While the birds roasted, the three bent down to study the map for the first time together. Alin estimated that the big red dot to which they were heading was probably a thousand kilometers east of Sky House, in mountainous territory that had no permanent residents and few visitors. The location was far too removed, and the terrain was difficult to boot with high peaks and narrow valleys. In one regard, the path was straightforward; the same ridge of impassible mountains in which Sky House nestled continued unbroken for thousands of kilometers in either direction, demarcating where two continents had collided in the geologic past. The only problem was that below that one continuous ridge was a convoluted twist of mountains, streams, and valleys that looked like a giant child had stuck her fingers in a sandbox and twirled them around. One thousand kilometers would be two weeks on the straight and narrow with hamox, but there was no way to predict their journey among the trails they would have to find.

Alin was familiar with the area they covered the first six days. Further on, his experience shifted from guide to bloodhound, seeking out game trails that led ever further eastward. In order to stretch out their supplies, they had to pause to hunt or fish every day, which made Kanji happy but made the others anxious. The continuing good news was that in most places they stopped, the local population of possible dinner entrées did not recognize the humans as predators. Kanji was not so lucky and in fact, had a tangle with a distant cousin on the fifth day. She emerged with some deep scratches but no deep bites. She sulked around the three humans after Gilly stitched her wounds.

On the eighth day, Porter learned firsthand why the trees of this northern region were thick and twisted. The first of the winter winds began to blow. Beginning in some polar region the winds swooped down and became trapped under the ridge of mountains that circled the northern reaches of the continent. The gusts, boxed in from the north and fed moist circulating air from the south, gathered speed and strength. They became screaming windstorms that tossed anything that was not heavy enough to withstand the pressure or was secured to the ground. The trees rocked furiously as the winds tore through them. The creatures of the forests buckled down and hid in their holes, dens and burrows.

The four were forced to march and retreat behind boulders and natural windbreaks when they could find them. There was nothing to hunt when the winds blew; even fish in deep rivers would not bite. Porter had never thought his ears could burn and freeze all at the same time. At the worst of the storm, they hunkered down in a high cave that Kanji found.

The lair had been occupied but the cat had drawn out the toothsome beast with its naked curved claws on twelve independent limbs. The eyes were on stalks above its thick round body, which could swivel in any direction. Porter was pleased with his aim with his bow as the creature lashed out at anything that moved as it screamed piercingly in pain. Alin and Porter put four arrows into the creature before its final jerking motions ceased. They lost more arrows in the wind.

The cave was dry, but the white dry bones put everyone on edge. Porter could not identify any of the prey from the scattered heaps of bones either. Staring at the piles, he shuddered. Kanji sniffed about for a few minutes and lay down to bathe herself and rest. The three fugitives took their cues from her, settling down with their hamox in the safety of the cave.

While they had engaged in small talk as they traveled, all three had avoided the difficult and loaded subjects from which they were escaping. The events of Sky House were never far from Porter’s mind, but he was also careful of Gilly’s loyalty to the fortress and Alin’s long residence behind its walls. Sky House had been their home and refuge for years. He was the interloper.

Porter worried how they would judge his actions and whether they would blame him for the attacks that led to their fleeing. Then he kicked himself all over again for being afraid of their opinions. He uncovered facts and he should let them judge the evidence, not him. In his head he knew this truth but in every other capacity, he was leery.