High Flyer - Michelle Diener Page 0,101

there was no sound of life. No ring of a hammer on anvil, no murmur of voices from the street.

Impossible.

His home town was small, but not that small. Pan Nuk had at least a hundred inhabitants when he'd left. And it was directly below him. Hidden by the thick line of trees it would take him only ten minutes to reach, but there nonetheless.

He started to run.

At first he ran under his own steam, and then, as the silence seemed to deepen, become more sinister, he opened himself up to the Change and felt the curious, slow, honey-thick flow of the air around him, the inbetween, and he was suddenly at the village gates.

He drew back to himself, stumbled a little at the feeling of disorientation such a quick Change generated.

He stood still, looking around him carefully. Took it all in.

The ripped doors. The shutters hanging by a single hinge. The smashed pots and baskets lying in the street.

The emptiness.

While the city of Garamundo had held him, forced him to help them protect themselves from the sky raiders, the sky raiders had been helping themselves elsewhere.

Helping themselves to Taya.

Chapter 2

There would be blood.

Taya moved her gaze from Jerilia, weeping in soft, keening sobs, to the big Kardanx who gripped her arm, to the way Kas and the other men and women of the Illy began to gather to one side of the open area in front of the mine where they waited to be collected for the camp.

The Kardanx shifted his grip and Taya could see there were already dark smudges ringing Jerilia's upper arm where he held her.

The spike of anger that ripped through her made her gasp, made her force in a breath of dusty, cold air.

If she couldn't keep a cool head, she couldn't expect Kas and the others to do the same.

Behind the Kardanx, some of his fellow countrymen began to gather as well, their expressions more muted, more severe.

They didn't want trouble with the Illy. It seemed the big man who had grabbed Jerilia wasn't so worried.

Kas had already told him to let Jerilia go. Jerilia herself had demanded it. Taya looked into his eyes and knew he would not do it.

Perhaps if Jerilia hadn't screamed so loudly, made such a fuss. Perhaps if Kas's bellow of outrage hadn't made every head turn.

Or perhaps not.

Whatever the reason, to let her go now would be a loss of face the Kardanx would not be prepared to accept.

Taya could see it in the way his eyes narrowed, the way his mouth tightened. She had always had the gift of reading people's intentions from the way they moved their bodies, and the Kardanx was screaming pent up rage and defiance with every pore.

A small movement caught her eye. Kas, drawing something from the back of his pants, gripping it tightly in his fisted hand.

Was that a knife?

No.

She wouldn't let another she loved be hurt. Not because of the lust of a stupid Kardanx. The Kardanx were supposed to worship the Mother, but either this one wasn't an adherent to the belief, or he was simply one of the majority who twisted the meanings of their oaths so they could treat women with less respect. She saw the evidence before her now, in the way the Kardanx thought he could have Jerilia, even against her will.

Taya had heard another, even uglier whisper. That the reason there were only six women amongst all the Kardanx the sky raiders had taken was because the men had killed them, rather than have them taken by the enemy.

Taya had heard Kardanx men swore an oath to protect the Mother, and her avatars, all women, with their lives. But if they had killed their women to protect them, they were not honoring the Mother as an equal. They had killed them like they would kill their livestock so the invading army cannot use it. As they would burn their house, to give the enemy nothing to shield himself from the weather.

As one treats a possession, not a person, with their own will and choices.

The Kardanx took a step toward his own group, dragging Jerilia with him, and Kas and three others took a step forward.

The other Kardanx shouted something to their countryman, and he turned to look at them over his shoulder. He shouted back, and though Kardanx was close enough to Illian, it was said so fast Taya couldn't understand it. But the meaning was clear enough.

The Kardanx would not back down.

She wished,