in an unventilated space, but after a while, I recognized it as a familiar stench. Reamers. We must be getting close.
Mattis led the way, but Astor trailed behind me, so that no one could sneak up. Yes, my guys were over-protective, and yes, I’d always hated being sheltered like a fragile, breakable thing. But also? Somehow, their care wasn’t annoying or humiliating. It felt sincere. Like love.
“So how many people were on your ship before it crashed?” Astor asked softly, kind of out of nowhere and still in a tone barely above a whisper.
It took me a little while to gather sufficient breath to reply. “I’m not sure. I was just a passenger, so I didn’t get to look at manifests or anything. Probably…” I paused to suck in some air, make sure my balance was steady, and then plowed on, “The captain, plus officers for comms, weapons, helm, and three or four flight attendants for maybe a couple dozen passengers? Something like that? Oh! And a doctor.”
“A doctor? Is that common on transports between stars?”
“Well, we were going to a medical station, so my guess is most of the passengers were also patients of some kind.”
No, the tunnel really was tilting. I lost my footing, stumbled, and put a hand against the wall. Mattis stopped and turned, and Astor clasped my shoulder to steady me.
“Guess I just can’t handle Reamer stench,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. They were peering at me way too intently, and no way was I going to let anyone—not even them—tell me I had to turn back or couldn’t do this. I was doing it.
“Yeah, it can get to you,” Mattis said slowly, but his tone and the expression on his face both screamed the truth—he wasn’t buying my excuse. He was worried.
My heart clenched. Not in a medical way, more in a it-was-too-full way. Too full from all this care.
“Let’s take a break,” Astor said. “It doesn’t make a difference if we get there right after nightfall or halfway to morning. Dark is the same dark. We have time.”
I sat on the rough-hewn floor with my back against the wall. It was cold and damp enough that it wet the back of my shirt. Gross. But rest was rest, and I could complain all I wanted, but they were right. I needed this. We were about to slip into an enemy settlement full of monsters. I wasn’t going to skip a chance to pause and gather myself before that.
Astor passed a bottle of water to me—the thermos, my thermos, the one he’d given me in exchange for the holowatch—and I drank from it.
There was a weird undercurrent among the three of us, as if Mattis and Astor could speak telepathically and were having a whole conversation that I couldn’t hear. And normally, that kind of thing would infuriate me, but for once, I didn’t have the energy to complain. They’d known each other all their lives, so it made sense they’d be able to communicate nonverbally, right?
“I wonder…” Astor mused. “If this girl we’re rescuing might also have had an ailment, and we know how the Reamers exist and how they treat their prisoners—”
Mattis made a sound that was almost an agreement, but also almost a growl.
“—I can’t imagine she will be in top shape for this long hike back to the transport.”
“Point,” Mattis said. “We should probably call for reinforcements. You know, in case we have to carry her out.”
“My thoughts exactly.”
“Hold on,” I said. “Ignoring for the moment the question of whether we really want to tell the other guys about our little adventure, how do you call for reinforcements when you don’t have long-range communications?”
Mattis smiled widely. “Remember when you asked about our sigil for the City-State, the animal profiles in a circle, protecting the flower?”
I nodded. “You said you were a brotherhood.”
“A pack, specifically.”
Okay, that still wasn’t telling me how we were going to get a message back, and I wasn’t at all convinced we should be trying to communicate with our people, given how furious Torrin was likely to be. And how hurt Nox would be when he found out I’d lied and run off without him. Ouch.
“He means we can send messages via Howlers,” Astor said. “The profiles in our sigil are Howlers. Like the ones you heard that first night. They can copy some tones and run extremely fast over distances and then repeat those tones.”
“I thought you said they were wild, undomesticated,” I said.