That attitude had continued when they had moved down to the planet. There were police, and some of the Terraforming Council had bodyguards, and Ashiban didn’t doubt there were people who specialized in fighting, including firing guns, but there was no Gidanta military, no army, standing or otherwise. Fliers for cargo or for personal transport, but not for warfare. Guns for hunting, not designed to kill people efficiently.
The Raksamat, Ashiban’s own people, had come into the system armed. But none of those weapons were on the planet. Or Ashiban didn’t think they were. So, a hunting gun and a personal flier. She wanted to ask the Sovereign, standing staring at Ashiban, still shivering, if the girl had seen the other flier. But she couldn’t, not without that handheld.
But it didn’t matter, this moment, why it had happened the way it had. There was no way to tell who had tried to kill them. No way to know what or who they would find if they returned to the mire, to where their own flier had sunk under the black water and the moss.
Her thoughts were going in circles. Whether it was the night spent in the cold, and the hunger and the fear, or whether it was the remnants of her concussion – and what had the Sovereign of Iss said, that the corrective hadn’t been the right sort and she should get to a doctor as soon as possible?
– or maybe all of those, Ashiban didn’t know.
Yesterday the Sovereign had said there was a monitoring station on the Udran Plains, which lay to the north of the Scarp. There would be people at a monitoring station – likely all of them Gidanta. Very possibly not favorably disposed toward Ashiban, no matter whose daughter she was.
But there would be dozens, maybe even hundreds of people at a monitoring station, any of whom might witness an attempt to murder Ashiban, and all of whom would be outraged at an attempt to harm the Sovereign of Iss. There was no one at the crash site on the mire to see what happened to them.
“Which way?” Ashiban asked the girl.
Who looked up at the leaf-dappled sky above them, and then pointed back into the woods, the way they had come. Said something Ashiban didn’t understand. Watched Ashiban expectantly. Something about the set of her jaw suggested to Ashiban that the girl was trying very hard not to cry.
“All right,” said Ashiban, and turned and began walking back the way they had come, the Sovereign of Iss alongside her.
THEY SHARED OUT the water between them as they went. There was less food in the woods than Ashiban would have expected, or at least neither of them knew where or how to find it. No doubt the Sovereign of Iss, at her age, was hungrier even than Ashiban, but she didn’t complain, just walked forward. Once they heard the distant sound of a flier, presumably looking for them, but the Sovereign of Iss showed no sign of being tempted to go back. Ashiban thought of those shots, of plunging into cold, black water, and shivered.
Despite herself, Ashiban began imagining what she would eat if she were at home. The nutrient cakes that everyone had eaten every day until they had established contact with the Gidanta. They were traditional for holidays, authentic Raksamat cuisine, and Ashiban’s grandmother had despised them, observed wryly on every holiday that her grandchildren would not eat them with such relish if that had been their only food for years. Ashiban would like a nutrient cake now.
Or some fish. Or snails. Surely there might be snails in the woods? But Ashiban wasn’t sure how to find them.
Or grubs. A handful of toasted grubs, with a little salt, maybe some cumin. At home they were an expensive treat, either harvested from a station’s agronomy unit, or shipped up from Iss itself. Ashiban remembered a school trip, once, when she’d been much, much younger, a tour of the station’s food-growing facilities, remembered an agronomist turning over the dirt beside a row of green, sharp-smelling plants to reveal a grub, curled and white in the dark soil. Remembered one of her schoolmates saying the sight made them hungry.
She stopped. Pushed aside the leaf mold under her feet. Looked around for a stick.
The Sovereign of Iss stopped, turned to look at Ashiban. Said something in Gidantan that Ashiban assumed was some version of What are you doing?
“Grubs,” said Ashiban. That word she knew – the Gidanta sold prepackaged toasted grubs harvested from their own orbital agronomy projects, and the name was printed on the package.
The Sovereign blinked at her. Frowned. Seemed to think for a bit, and then said, “Fire?” in Gidantan. That was another word Ashiban knew – nearly everyone in the system recognized words in either language that might turn up in a safety alert.
There was no way to make a fire that Ashiban could think of. Her bag held only their now nearly empty bottle of water. People who lived in space generally didn’t walk around with the means for producing an open flame. Here on Iss things might be different, but if the Sovereign had been carrying fire-making tools, she’d lost them in the mire. “No fire,” Ashiban said. “We’ll have to eat anything we find raw.” The Sovereign of Iss frowned, and then went kicking through the leaf mold for a couple of sturdy sticks.
The few grubs they dug up promised more nearby. There was no water to wash the dirt off them, and they were unpleasant to eat while raw and wiggling, but they were food.
Their progress slowed as they stopped every few steps to dig for more grubs, or to replace a broken stick. But after a few hours, or at least what Ashiban took to be a few hours –- she had no way of telling time beyond the sunlight, and had no experience with that – their situation seemed immeasurably better than it had before they’d eaten.
They filled Ashiban’s bag with grubs, and walked on until night fell, and slept, shivering, huddled together. Ashiban was certain she would never be warm again, would always be chilled to her bones. But she could think straighter, or at least it seemed like she could. The girl’s plan to walk down to the plains was still outrageous, still seemed all but impossible, but it also seemed like the only way forward.
BY THE END of the next day, Ashiban was more sick of raw and gritty grubs than she could possibly say. And by the afternoon of the day after that, the trees thinned and they were faced with a wall of brambles. They turned to parallel the barrier, walked east for a while, until they came to a relatively clear space – a tunnel of thorny branches arching over a several-meters-wide shelf of reddish-brown rock jutting out of the soil. Ashiban peered through and saw horizon, gestured to the Sovereign of Iss to look.
The Sovereign pulled her head back out of the tunnel, looked at Ashiban, and said something long and incomprehensible.
“Right,” said Ashiban. In her own language. There was no point trying to ask her question in Gidantan. “Do we want to go through here and keep going north until we find the edge of the Scarp, and turn east until we find a way down to the plain? Or do we want to keep going east like we have been and hope we find something?”
With her free hand – her other one held the water bottle that no longer fit in Ashiban’s grub-filled bag – the Sovereign waved away the possibility of her having understood Ashiban.
Ashiban pointed north, toward the brambles. “Scarp,” she said, in Gidantan. It was famous enough that she knew that one.
“Yes,” agreed the Sovereign, in that same language. And then, to Ashiban’s surprise, added, in Raksamat, “See.” She held her hands up to her eyes, miming a scope. Then waved an arm expansively. “Scarp see big.”
“Good point,” agreed Ashiban. On the edge of the Scarp, they could see where they were, and take their direction from that, instead of wandering and hoping they arrived somewhere. “Yes,” she said in Gidantan. “Good.” She gestured at the thorny tunnel of brambles.