“Thank you.” I had a picnic to get back to. I’d promised Danello we’d have fun, and I wasn’t about to let him down.
Even if having fun was the last thing I felt like doing.
I made it to the kitchen garden before Danello, but I found Aylin cuddled up with Quenji on a bench under the orange trees. Thin shafts of sunlight cut through the branches and brought out Aylin’s true red hair beneath the fake black.
I cleared my throat.
They pulled apart and she blushed, but the glint in her brown eyes said I’d get the full story later. At least one of us had got kissed today.
“Oh, hi!” She giggled and glanced at Quenji, who grinned. But then he was always grinning. He’d been the leader of a street pack I’d met in Baseer and had risked his life to help us destroy the Duke’s foundry there. I think he really liked the danger, since he’d volunteered for every mission to go back and look for Tali. He was a good person to have watching your back, so I was happy to have him along.
So was Aylin, apparently.
“Sooo, how was the picnic?” she asked.
“Short.” I told her about the sainters.
“Pfft, nobody pays attention to them,” she said, waving her hand. She smiled. “But tell me, before they interrupted – anything interesting happen?”
“Not as interesting as I’d have liked.” I glanced at Quenji. Potential kisses weren’t something I wanted to discuss in front of him. “Onderaan’s trying to tell me what to do again.”
“He means well,” Aylin said.
“He’s annoying.”
“Nya, he doesn’t know how to act around you. He was probably just as shocked to find out about you as you were about him.”
“Well, maybe.” I didn’t like this conversation any better. Weren’t best friends supposed to side with you no matter what? I changed the subject. “Jeatar says the Gov-Gen might be dead.”
“Does that mean we can go home?” Aylin turned to Quenji before I could reply. “You’ll love Geveg! It’s on the lake, and there are beaches and warm breezes and the best coffee you’ve ever had.”
“And soldiers,” I said, surprised to see how eager she was to go back. To leave before we found Tali. “Don’t forget about the Baseeri soldiers beating people up just for fun.”
She flicked a hand at me again, as if she could brush off the idea of soldiers as easily as sainters. “If the Gov-Gen is dead, then the soldiers are next. They’ll probably be gone by the time we get there.”
“We don’t know what it means yet.”
“Nya!” She gaped at me. “It means Geveg is fighting back, just like you always wanted. I bet they’re kicking the Baseeri out as we speak.” She jumped up and pantomimed kicking people one at a time. Quenji applauded.
“I’ve never been to Geveg,” he said. “I’d love to go.”
“But—”
“Go where?” Danello said, slipping up behind me.
“Home!” Aylin cried.
“Really?” He stared at me with hope in his eyes. “When did this happen?”
I held up both hands. “No one said anything about going home. I’m not even sure if the rumour is true.”
“What rumour?” Danello looked confused. “You went to see Jeatar while I was gone, didn’t you?”
“Yes, but just for a minute.” I sighed and explained the whole thing. The transport ships, the Gov-Gen, not being able to go after Tali.
Aylin plopped back on to the bench. “So we’re not going home.”
I’d never realised how much she wanted to. So did I, but not without Tali. Home was wherever my sister was, and without her, Geveg would be just another city.
“Not yet, but we will, I promise.”
“If there’s a home to go back to,” Danello mumbled.
“What?” Aylin said.
“I want to go back, too,” he said. “My da’s still there. And Halima and the twins ask about him all the time.”
Danello’s little brothers and sister stayed pretty close to the farmhouse, and I’d never seen them out past the main gate. After what they’d been through, I couldn’t blame them. Kidnapped, almost killed by Undying, running from Baseer with the rest of us. They deserved to go home and be with their father again.
“Well, listen,” Danello said, taking my hand. “We have a picnic to finish.”
“We’ll see you this afternoon, right?” Aylin said.
“At the north gate as always.”
We left through the kitchen and out the back door, but Danello didn’t head for the pond again. Instead he led me towards some trees near the front of the farmhouse.
“It’s not as secluded,” he said, “but it’s shady and mostly out of the way.”
“What did you mean when you said, ‘if there’s a home to go back to’?”
He winced. “Nothing.”
“If it was nothing, you wouldn’t have changed what you said to Aylin.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “It’s just, well, if someone in Geveg really did kill the Gov-Gen, and there really is a strong rebellion there, and the Duke is suddenly moving troops, then he might be going after Geveg.”
“That’s what Onderaan said.”
He pulled out the blanket again and spread it under the trees. “You’re not the only one missing family, you know,” he said softly.
“I know.” Shame warmed my face. I’d been so focused on Tali, I hadn’t thought about what he and his brothers and sister were feeling. Their father was out there somewhere too. Maybe he was safe in Geveg, but maybe not, especially if the city was in revolt.
I took his hand and rested my head against his shoulder. “We’ll get them all back, I promise. We’ll get everything back.”
He nodded, but he knew as well as I did that wasn’t true. We’d never get his mother back, or my parents. The people the Duke had already killed were gone forever. All we could do was hold on to what little we had left and hope we could make something out of it.
I guessed we wouldn’t have any fun today after all.
We met Aylin and Quenji at the north gate midafternoon, standing near a dark-brown horse with the wagon loaded with food. The horse nibbled grass, tearing it out of the ground with quick twists of its head. Ellis sat on the driver’s bench in that brown uniform that all Jeatar’s guards wore. We’d met in Baseer when I’d saved her life after a pynvium raid had gone wrong. She’d been one of the Underground’s guards then, had fought with us against the Undying, and even held shifted pain for us. She’d been promoted to captain a few weeks ago, but she still liked to help out with the food, same as I did.
A second guard appeared and waved hello to Danello.
He waved back. “Afternoon, Copli.”
“Do you know all the guards?” I said.
“The ones who come to practise.” The rapier he carried wasn’t just for show. Danello drilled with the guards a few hours every day, working on his skills. “The rest I play cards with.”
“You really should socialise more, Nya,” Aylin said. “There are a lot of people on the farm.”
“Enough