Page 38 of Cage of Starlight
Tory blinks fast and hard. “Just training. But I’m out now.”
“You are. We’ll keep you that way.”
He just needs something sharp and to figure out where Helner planted his damn Core so he can scoop the thing out.
The girl with the murder-freckles interrupts. “Hasra, this is . . .?”
Hasra steps in beside Tory, arm warm around his shoulders. “Ariana, this is the Tory I keep telling you about. Tory, this is Ulenn Belmin’s daughter. She’s the brashness and boldness behind his operation. Still haven’t found out who’s the brains.”
“Hey!” says Ariana, but then shrugs. “Honestly? Probably Wyn.”
The men who were carrying the water stumble from the trees with a third man. Belmin, if Tory had to guess, rags-to-riches merchant and smuggler of Seeds. He’s . . . not what Tory imagined. Sweaty and red-faced, with barely an inch on Tory and a thinning head of light-brown hair gone gray at the temples, he sports a bombastic plum-and-maroon jacket embroidered like his daughter’s. Tory imagined him differently.
Belmin stares, eyes wide. “You need to leave.”
“I . . . What?” Tory staggers back on boneless legs.
Hasra pulls him close again. “Don’t you dare, Ulenn.”
Belmin shakes his head. “Get out! You have to leave, now. Those clothes, the bracelet. They’ll track you here. There’s a group of rogue Seeds by the border. Find them, mess things up forthem. I don’t care. Just go.”
“I won’t let you do this,” Hasra says, and something unnameable swells in Tory’s chest. “We’re so close to the border. They wouldn’t risk crossing it to apprehend him, even with the tracker—he’ll be safe there as long as we hurry. Ulenn, please.”
“It’s too risky.” Belmin spears her with a solemn gaze. “If they’re tracking him now, they could realize he’s escaping via our trade routes. If you must defend him, you can leave with him.”
She presses her lips together, and shit,Tory knows that face. “Hasra, no. This is your—”
“This is mynothing. I’ll get my things.”
The girl named Ariana steps up between them. “Hasra’s right, Dad. And anyway, from what she’s been saying, he’s probably a Worldseed. Wyn willlose itwhen I tell her!”
“Ari, it’s far too dangerous. We can’t risk our current and future work for one boy.”
She smiles—a disturbing look beneath her blood-spatter freckles. “Please?”
Off to the side, Hasra lights her pipe, taking one unsettlingly deep drag and then another, like she’s starving for smoke. She squints suspiciously at Ariana.
“I’ve made my decision. Go back to ourguests,” Belmin says.
“Not yet.” Ariana’s eyes widen theatrically and she points toward the road. “Daddy! They’re coming. We need tomove.”
Fear jolts through Tory, but when he examines the area Ariana is indicating with her finger, there’s nothing. Her father stares, though, like he’s seeing his own execution. “Prepare for departure!” he cries. “Hurry!”
Ariana spins, graceful, to face Tory. “Where were we, then? Tory, right?” She dances out of the way as someone barrels past. “I’m Ariana Belmin. Part-time student of medicine in the capital, full-time Seed smuggler. Call me Ari.”
Tory’s still squinting between the empty road and Ariana’s father, who has burst into motion like there’s fire on his feet. “What did you just . . .?”
He’s heard the stories, here and there, in whispers: that there are some Seeds who can change people’s perceptions of reality. Mostly,the stories are whispered in fear if they’re whispered at all, but there was a girl in one of the Houses, an older woman, who protected the employees with a power like this one.
“Oh, this? It’s nothing much. Only visual and auditory. But enough about me. Hasra’s told us so muchaboutyou! We’ve been dying to meet you.” She grabs him by the bracelet at his wrist and examines it. “Score! I knew it! Wyn’s gonna flip. We just need a Voidseed for a matched set.”
Hasra, flustered, takes another long drag on her pipe. “By the stars above and fire beneath, Ariana—”
“Hasra, shouldn’t you be preparing to depart, too? You know,considering?”
The same strange urgency takes hold of her for a moment, but she shudders and shakes it off. She spears Ariana with an unblinking stare while she inhales deep on the pipe and exhales a lungful of smoke in Ari’s face. “When will you stop trying to pull that shit on me? You’re a horrible person, Ariana Belmin.”
“Comes with the job.” Ari coughs in the cloud of smoke. “And that’s a horrible habit.”
