Burn Bright - By Marianne de Pierres Page 0,5

she was tearful.

‘Thank you f-for …’ She tapered off.

‘I’m Markes. From Grave North.’ He thrust his hand into her blurred vision.

‘Retra, from Seal South.’ She heard the apology in her own voice.

‘I’ve heard that the Ripers don’t like Seals. You might want to change your name,’ he warned her softly. ‘As it is, you were lucky Ruzalia didn’t take you. She knows everyone who comes on. No one knows how. But she does.’

The thought of it started Retra trembling. What she had done to see Joel again – the pain. If the pirate had taken her …‘Why does she do that?’

Markes shrugged. ‘It’s hard to know the truth. Some say it’s a rescue. Others say she’s perverted and cruel and uses them as pets. The truth may be somewhere in between.’

‘Whatever.’ Cal tugged at Markes’s arm until he faced her. ‘The over-ager deserved it. You can’t come to Ixion when you’re old.’

The spotlight showed that Cal’s white hair framed a heart-shaped face, made prettier by upturned lips and long-lashed blue eyes. She was attractive in a way that Retra immediately envied.

Not that Retra had much to compare with – the women in the Seal compound wore veils, and the men wore deep-caps that hid the sides of their faces. But Cal was beautiful.

‘She shouldn’t be pretending she’s young enough for Ixion,’ continued Cal. ‘She had her chance to come here when she was younger. It’s our place. Our time.’

‘We all pretend things sometimes. And sometimes we leave things too late.’ Markes showed his disagreement with her by turning back to Retra.

He reached out and wiped his finger across Retra’s cheek. ‘There’s blood on you from Ruzalia’s blade. You never made a sound when she pointed it at you.’

Retra trembled, not knowing what to do with the admiration in his voice, or her body’s reaction to his touch. She wasn’t going to Ixion for the same reason as Cal – for parties and boys. She wanted only to find her brother.

I can’t live like this anymore, Ret, Joel had told her. I’m suffocating.

Her brother had been all impulse and quick, blazing heat. She’d felt so cold without him. But right now, Markes’s touch and his gentle, steady gaze warmed her.

‘Yeah, you’re covered in it. You should go and clean up, you look terrible,’ said Cal. ‘We’ll be in Ixion soon.’

In the silence that fell between them, the engines seemed to throb louder than before, straining to get there.

Retra bit her tongue and frowned. Cal wanted to be left alone with Markes – that was obvious. She risked a glance and found that he was staring intently at her. He didn’t speak, though, or offer to come with her.

Under Markes’s silent scrutiny and Cal’s disapproval, she fumbled for the handrail, and made her way aft looking for somewhere to wash.

The barge’s ablution cubicle was on the far side of the cabin housing. Retra waited her turn in line, head bowed to conceal the blood on her face. She listened to the conversations around her, about Ruzalia and Ixion. Some sounded excited, others scared.

‘I’ve heard Ruzalia ran away to Ixion and didn’t like it. So she started stealing people to make her own place –’

‘That’s stupid. How could you not like Ixion? Ixion is freedom.’

‘Did you see her boat? And the giant bat things –’

‘She killed a Riper. They put his body in the kitchen. I saw them drag it –’

‘It’s everywhere, all over the walls.’

Retra touched her face. Was it Riper’s blood? She felt sick.

The toilet cubicle became free and she stumbled into it. There was no lock, so she jammed her heel against the door. With jerky movements she removed her veil and splashed her face, heedless of the ice cold water. There was no mirror but Retra didn’t need it. She’d practised washing and dressing all her life without one. Seals believed mirrors bred vanity.

With fingers well accustomed to the contours of her face, she checked for cleanliness across her brow and cheekbones, then down to the fading scar on her earlobe, where the warden had stung her with the pain prodder for asking to go to the library.

The prodder hadn’t been as bad as the obedience strip, though. When the warden fitted the strip, he’d pored over her naked thigh for ages, pressing and prodding the soft skin there; pushing her underwear aside to make sure it wouldn’t interfere with the proper function.

Her embarrassment had been so intense she’d wanted to shrivel into nothing. And the warden had tested