to learn how to create Ghosts,” I go on, nodding at him. “Did they use that on you?”
His expression shutters in an instant. He nudges his horse hard enough to make it skip a step.
“He’s asking if it really matters,” Jeran tells me, his voice more hushed. “Doesn’t Mara use the Early Ones’ technology without understanding it?”
I turn my frown on Red. “You brought up the ruins in the Federation,” I sign at him.
Jeran looks more uncomfortable in his translations. “Now he’s asking what happened to you on the night you fled into Mara,” he murmurs at me.
I look away from Red. “Forget it,” I tell him, my signs cutting and angry.
We fall back into a tense silence. Whatever small bond we might have forged seems to fade again behind a curtain of suspicion. Jeran turns away at Adena’s voice, eager to get out of the thick tension that’s built back up between me and my joke of a Shield.
Red and I spend the rest of the day ignoring each other. By the time we reach the warfront, the sun has already crept below the horizon, casting the sky in hues of deepening purple. We settle into the defense compound in a mass of silence.
“Is Red not coming outside to join us?” Jeran signs to me as we gather around a fire.
“I don’t really care,” I sign back, still cranky.
Jeran hands me one of the bowls of stew he’s carrying, then sets a second one beside himself after nearly dropping it. His eyes, always observant, linger on the tent where Red is currently hiding.
Across the fire, Adena leans on her knees from where she sits and uses a hunk of hard bread to push around the chunks of fish in the stew. She shoves the entire softened bread into her mouth. “Maybe he’s plotting against us,” she signs.
Jeran frowns at Adena and hands me a second bowl of stew. “You’re suggesting he might be a mole?” he signs back.
“I’m saying he could be anything. We don’t know. Do we?” She turns to look at me. “Is he clever when you talk to him?”
“Very average,” I reply witheringly at the same time Jeran also signs, “He seems educated.”
Adena snorts. “Maybe he’s not a spy, then.”
I glare darkly at the bird we have roasting over the flames. She’s not wrong, although it would be foolish for him to try anything out here. What would he do? Break out of his chains and through the heart of our defense lines to deliver messages to the Federation? Either way, Red hasn’t emerged since we arrived. As far as I know, he’ll stay in there and go hungry for the rest of the night just to avoid having to see me again.
At the look on my face, Adena sighs and pats my knee. “I’m kidding. Just give it some time,” she says aloud to me. “Maybe he’ll be useful yet.”
I watch the fire lick the night air, unwilling to admit that I’m looking for more reasons to dislike him. “He won’t talk,” I continue. “He won’t eat anything except some stale dinner rolls. At this point, all I’m doing is waiting out the days until he gets himself killed.”
“Adena didn’t tell me anything for the first several years we were paired,” Jeran speaks as he gingerly cuts a leg off the roasted bird and tosses it in her direction. She catches it in one hand, bounces it from the heat, and bites into it. “It took me six months to learn what part of the city she lived in.”
“But you were the hardest to crack, Talin,” Adena says to me, holding up a greasy finger. “And not because you’re quiet. Corian came to me so many times for advice on how to get you to open up. Did you know that? He would ask me how I started conversations with you and what made you laugh.”
I smile, remembering a time when Corian had dressed in a ridiculous shade of green because Adena had told him it was my favorite color. “I knew,” I respond.
We all fall quiet for a beat, grieving over our own memories.
“Train with him for a few days,” Jeran finally signs, nodding back in the direction of Red’s tent. “Maybe you can help him prepare for a battle so that, if he does end up in front of a Ghost with you, he has a chance.”
“Didn’t he escape a Ghost at the warfront?” Adena signs.