off?”
“You can stay here with Kennet, help him see if the satellites picked up anything. He might not know exactly what he’s looking for.” Gavin hoped that the cool analyst never heard him make such a comment.
He’d never live it down.
Esme shook her head, tiny looped braids swinging on either side of her face. “I have a duty to the dead,’’ she said. “Would you deny me that?”
Gavin thought about Merren. There’d been nothing left.
Would a ritual have helped his brothers’ grief?
Helped them move on faster?
Her soft voice continued. “And they may have taken more of my people than the children. How would you know?”
She was right. He just didn’t like it.
Nic and Adena had already left the hanger, hovering outside, waiting for them.
“Do you want to sit up front where you can see, or behind me where there won’t be quite so much wind?” Gavin offered.
“The wind on my face helps me know I’m alive,” she answered and using her hand as a balance point sprung lightly into the body of the air sled.
He climbed in after her and in seconds they were in the air, heading back to the site of the massacre.
It had been late afternoon when Esme had awakened. The meeting with the others, short though it had been, had still taken almost an hour.
As the year moved deeper into autumn, darkness fell sooner and they pushed the air sleds to reach the campsite while the light was still good.
He studied Esme’s straight back before him as they cut through the sky, wishing like hell he was doing anything but bringing her back to the site of her family’s murder.
Knowing that it might be the murder of half, and the kidnapping of the rest, didn’t make it any better.
“Where had you been before the high plains?” he asked, partially for the information but mostly to try to break the silence that seemed to wrap about her like her own armor.
“Malterresy, most recently,” she said, the wind catching at her words, nearly blowing them away too fast to hear. “It’s the largest town to the north. There’s a good market there, and the people are friendly, always happy to have us, trade fairly.”
Gavin frowned at what her words implied. “We haven’t been stationed on Crucible long,’’ he said. “It seems like every day we’re finding out something everybody assumed was common knowledge, so they didn’t bother to tell us. Help me out here. Was there some sort of tension between your people and the towns?”
She looked back over her shoulder, one eyebrow raised. “People who live in one place for most of their lives often find it strange that being so still sounds like a death sentence to other people.”
Those dark eyes of hers smiled at him. Not much, just the tiniest bit. But he’d take it. “Don’t you find that to be the case?”
He made a slight adjustment to their course while thinking about her words. Remembering how it felt, almost every time they were sent somewhere new.
Even if they were there to protect the local population, there was no telling how an Enforcer Unit would be received.
Sometimes with open arms, a welcome asset.
More likely with suspicion.
Hostility.
“I had always assumed that people’s reactions to us had little more to it than just that we’re new to the area,” he said grimly. “It’s not exactly like we come through on a regular basis with goods to sell. If we’re sent somewhere, usually there’s already trouble.”
He scratched behind his ear.
“But yeah, being different, not having a settled place other than where the Alliance sends us, probably doesn’t help.”
They rode in silence for a few moments, then she looked around sharply. “We’re almost there, aren’t we?” she asked.
“Do you recognize anything?”
“Not from up here, it’s all strange, unreal looking. But you stiffened, went on alert.” She brushed the side of his hand with the edge of her own. “I’m stronger than you think.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think,” he growled. “Nobody should have to see that done to their family.”
He wouldn’t have thought it possible, but her back straightened, just a little more.
“But it happened anyway,” she answered as they began their curving descent. “And I need to see it made right.”
All three air sleds landed closely enough that Gavin didn’t need any of his enhanced senses to hear Nic muttering to Adena.
“I can’t believe you talked me into letting you come here. You shouldn’t be anywhere near this.”
“You think we’re going to let Esme face this by herself?”