She was small and stocky, tough as nails and hard to move once she set her mind. Right now he wished she would stop harping on the girl and what he had decided to do with her. Why couldn’t she see it was an opportunity for them and a chance at life for her?
“We aren’t equipped to care for injuries of the sort she’s suffered,” he insisted. “Did you not see the damage to her body? You were there when I opened her clothing and took a look. You saw the puncture wounds and bruising. She was hurt badly enough in that crash that it’s a miracle she’s still breathing!”
Aquinel nodded and didn’t look at him. “That’s not the problem and you know it.”
“No, you’re the problem. That’s clear enough. You keep looking to find what’s wrong instead of focusing on what’s right! Woman, I swear you will be the death of me.”
“You’ll be the death of yourself long before I have any impact on your stubborn nature.” She stopped and turned to face him, bringing the mule and the cart they were leading to a halt. “I know what you’re about. You’re thinking of what this can mean for you, not about the girl.”
“Am I? Is that how you see it?”
“I see it clear enough. You want a reward for returning her. Or at least for giving her over and washing your hands of her. You think these people will give you coin for this. But you don’t know that. You don’t even know who they are or what they’re doing here.”
He sighed. Looking down the trail to where it bent toward their destination, he took a moment to brush the unkempt black hair from his eyes. “I know that this is fate working her hand in our favor, and when she does that you don’t stop to question the why of it. Didn’t I see the ship when she came down? Didn’t I remember it when we set out with the girl?”
He started off again, pulling on the mule’s halter, forcing Aquinel to stick with him. She was a good woman and a sturdy helpmeet, but she spent too much time questioning his decisions. It wasn’t as if she knew more than he did and was better able to reason things out. It wasn’t her place to guide the family. That was a man’s work.
“We have to think about ourselves,” he added sullenly.
They traipsed on through the damp and the murk, winding down the lane through broad-leaf trees that canopied overhead, ignoring the steady rainfall and the attendant chill, lost in their separate thoughts. Sora found himself wondering what she would say if she knew about the other—about what he had done when she wasn’t looking. He wondered how he would break it to her.
Probably, he thought, he wouldn’t. He would keep it a secret. Best that way. He would find a buyer and make some coin, and they would have a few good things for themselves that he could explain away. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t done this sort of thing before. It wasn’t as if this was the first time that he found a little something knocking around that she didn’t need to know about.
“We should have waited longer,” she said for what must have been the tenth time. “We should have been more patient.”
He shook his head. “She was injured and alone. We had no way of knowing who was with her or when they were coming back. If they were coming back at all. We had no time to go searching for them. We did what we had to do. We are doing what we have to do right now. What you asked for, remember? Find a way, you said. So I did. Now stop talking about it!”
She set her jaw. “I’ll stop talking about it, but I won’t stop thinking about it. I can promise you that!”
“Fine. I’ll settle for that much.”
The trail had broadened, and the woods had opened a bit. Ahead, Sora could make out the hull of the airship through the gloom and mist. She was a big one, probably some sort of warship. He slowed automatically, Aquinel with him. For a few moments, he reconsidered what he was about to do. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. Maybe he should just take the girl to the nearest village and leave her there. Forget any reward for his trouble. It wasn’t like he hadn’t already found a way to get paid for this mess.
But greed won out over reason, and he abruptly pushed forward, clucking at the mule, pulling it and the wagon and the girl who lay in the wagon bed forward.
Already men from the airship had appeared on the decks and were watching them approach. One waved in greeting, and started down the ladder to meet them.
“Remember,” he said to Aquinel, “we’re simple foragers. We gather mushrooms and sell them to the surrounding villages. We come here all the time. Today, we were on our way to our grounds and we saw this girl lying in a clearing. She was injured and alone, apparently abandoned. We don’t have the means or ability to look after her. But we are responsible people and we want to see her safe and well cared for. We saw their ship, and we thought perhaps they could help. Thought they might even be friends of hers.”
“I still think this is a mistake,” Aquinel said softly.
He glared at her. “Hush, woman!”
“Hush, yourself.”
The rains were beginning to diminish and the woods ahead to thin out and open up. The trail was muddied and the tracks they had been following virtually erased, but that no longer mattered to either of them. Aphen and Cymrian were still running as fast as the latter could manage, ignoring personal discomfort and fighting off weariness. Cymrian had assured Aphen that they were close to catching up to the cart and its mule and drivers, the last of the visible signs indicating they were just a short distance off.
But they were shocked nevertheless when all three appeared abruptly from out of the mists ahead, not fleeing but approaching them—a big man and a short woman, both stocky and plainly dressed, a mule walking with its head down, hauling a cart in trudging acceptance of its lot, no sense of hurry or concern about any of them.
They slowed as the man and woman saw them and drew to an uncertain halt. If anything, the pair seemed frightened of them, and Aphen, sensing this, gave a friendly wave of reassurance. The woman returned it. The man stood motionless, watching.
“Easy, now,” Cymrian told her.
Aphen nodded, at the same time sizing up the couple in front of them. Foragers or farmers, not Rovers or town people, she decided. They’d lived hard lives and had little to show for it, but their bluff faces did not suggest they were either bad-intentioned or dangerous.
“Have you seen a girl?” she asked at once. “Small, young. We left her lying on the ground in the woods more than a mile back. She was injured, and we—”
Before she could finish, the woman wheeled on the man and struck him as hard as she could. “I told you we should have waited! Look what you’ve done!”
The man seized her by the arms to keep her from hitting him again. “Aquinel, stop it! We don’t know anything yet.”
“You have the girl?” Aphen asked at once, unable to contain herself any longer. “She’s my sister. Her name is Arling. Is she in your cart? Is she all right?”
The man and woman exchanged a quick look. She could tell immediately by the looks on their faces that something was wrong. “What is it? What’s the matter?”
The woman shook her head. “We didn’t know you were coming for her. We thought she had been abandoned. Her clothes and all the blood, you see. So we took her with us to keep her safe. But then we saw the airship, and we thought …”
“They said they were friends, that they could take her with them, make sure she got the help she needed,” the man said, cutting her off.
“We didn’t know!” Aquinel wailed, and began to cry.
Aphen stared. “Are you saying you gave my sister to some men flying an airship? What did the airship look like? What flag did she fly?”
“She was a warship, I guess,” the man answered, not looking at her, trying to find a way to comfort the woman, who was having none of it. “She was a Federation ship, I think.”
Aphen went pale. Shades. The ones who were hunting us.