Awakening (26 page)

“What if it’s the damage that patron of his did to him? It could have broken his circuitry and made his moods more changeable than usual. It might have nothing to do with him getting more jaf buzz.”

“Could be. Still has no right to treat either of us the way he does.”

No, he didn’t. “Maybe he’d gone off to buy the necklace.” Kayla drew her fingers across the pendant and its flaw.

“Maybe.”

They reached the end of the row of factories and warehouses. The access road ended at a thicket of sticker bushes, scrap grass, and junk trees. A couple of narrow plasscrete boards made a bridge across the creek, likely how Nishi had gotten to the far side.

Risa turned back the way they came, whistling for the seycat. Nishi answered with an impatient rasping scream.

“Hasn’t fed herself yet,” Risa said. “Best we go unload. Check on the GEN boy.”

The first sun had sliced through the overcast, shutting off
the drizzle. Kayla took off her hat and shook the moisture from it as they retraced their path.

“Would it be so terrible for me to be with Abran?” Kayla asked. “He’s good-looking. We’re both GEN.” She wasn’t even convincing herself.

Risa walked a little faster. “Loading dock’s open. Better get to it.”

Abran had already opened the bay doors and was up on the loading dock with a couple of crates in his arms. He caught sight of them and smiled, his gaze locking on Kayla. She forced a return smile, wishing she could create a warmth for him as easily.

Why couldn’t she fill up that hollow place in her heart with Abran? Was her mistrust of him warranted, or was she still clinging to her longing for Devak, and Abran couldn’t match up?

She’d think about it later, when there wasn’t work to be done. She hurried to join Abran and Risa on the loading dock.

It took only an hour to unload the kel-grain, but triple that to take on a load of plass bars at the extrusion factory. As practiced as Kayla and Risa were shifting at crates and sacks of goods from the lorry bay to a warehouse, carrying and loading the ten-meter-long plass bars proved to be a challenge. The bars were flexible enough to take some bending without damage, but they lacked something the factory techs called tensile strength, and too much pulling could break them.

If it wasn’t for the lowborn woman, Japara, and two lowborn
men, Garai and Crevan, who pitched in to help load, Kayla was sure she would have broken the lot. It wasn’t a matter of Kayla using her sket to carry as many of the bars as her strength would allow. The six of them had to work together in teams of three, one on each end, one in the middle to support the half-dozen or so they took at a time. They only half-filled the bay with the entire load, but it was slower than taking on crates of kel-grain or plasscine bags of plassfiber.

Japara had a boy with her, Petiri, an active seventh-year who had sense enough to stay out of their way, but ran up and down the alleyway as they worked. Japara scolded him when he waded in the creek and got his shoes wet. Then the boy nearly toppled off the plasscrete bridge that Nishi had used before his mother’s cry called him back.

Competing with the tediousness of loading the plass bars just right, Kayla had to contend with Abran’s flirtations. He’d touch her as they worked, nudging a strand of hair behind her ear when her hands were full securing a layer of bars, or brushing a trickle of sweat from her neck. She would smile in response, thinking she might start to feel something for him. But the only heat she felt was from the unexpected early winter sunshine.

Just past midday, Abran volunteered to seek out the GEN food vendor that had passed by earlier. With GENs working alongside lowborns in Skyloft’s factories and warehouses, the vendor did a brisk business in meat pies and fruit melds. Risa doled out enough dhans for him to bring back food for the three of them.

Japara, Garai, and Crevan returned to the extrusion factory. Kayla climbed into the bay and checked the straps they’d used
to secure the plass bars. They’d been piled against the walls on either side of the bay, leaving ample space in the middle for Abran to bed down. Nishi had already claimed her territory atop one of the stacks, three rat-snake babies she’d rousted from a nest beheaded and half-eaten.

Risa watched her from the bay door. “A girl shouldn’t have to work so hard to like a boy.”

Kayla tugged on a strap that didn’t need tightening. “I like him fine.”

“You pulled away every time he touched you,” Risa said. “Looked pretty glad just now when he left.”

“I’m just taking things slow.” She moved toward the doors, her gaze following the length of the plass bars.

“You don’t want to take things at all. If the
thing
is that GEN boy.”

Just then, lightning sizzled across the sky, striking close enough that the explosive thunder was almost instantaneous. A drift of smoke in the junk tree grove told her where the bolt had hit.

Then the skies opened up, swift-moving dark clouds dumping a flood of rain. A handful of lowborns and GENs who had stepped outside for a break reversed direction and dashed for shelter.

Risa shouted, “Time to get moving.” She took off at a run to the front of the truck.

Kayla shut one door of the bay, then stood just inside watching for Abran. The access road was deserted. The lazy creek along the road had filled alarmingly high in the short time it had been raining. Water gushed over the top of the plasscrete bridge.

Finally, she spotted Abran at the far end of the access road. She set aside her uncharitable wish that he’d run away and she tried to be glad he hadn’t. He pelted toward the lorry with his head down and his arms wrapped around something. When he got close enough, she saw him cradling a lump under his shirt. His rough drom-wool shirt wouldn’t do much to keep their midday meal dry.

He was grinning as he reached the lorry and shouted her name. She gave him a hand up into the back of the bay, overusing her strength enough that she pulled him off his feet. He rolled across the floor, one of the meat pies flying. He came up laughing, then shook his drenched head at her and sprayed her with water.

She laughed in return, hurrying to pull shut the second door, then helping him gather up the food.

He held up the meat pie he’d dropped. “This one’s a little squished, but I’ll eat it.”

“No, you won’t,” Kayla said. “It’s my fault you fell. That one can be mine.”

He took a bite of it. “I’ve claimed it.”

He produced two unblemished meat pies from under his shirt, then tossed her a fruit meld. “I’ll take Risa hers.”

The lorry shook as Risa pulled out and Abran stumbled, half-falling into Kayla. She steadied him, a hand around his arm, her face so close to his, she could see the moisture still beaded on his eyelashes.

His lazy smile captivated her, and her skin prickled at the heat in his intense dark eyes. She had a little trouble catching her breath. It was only a physical reaction to him, but it made her stop and wonder.

Then the lorry shuddered again, this time coming to a stop. A few moments later, the hatch door opened.

“Kayla, Abran!” Risa shouted.

At Risa’s urgent tone, they both abandoned the food and ran for the hatch. Kayla grabbed the ladder and took a step up. “What is it?”

Now Kayla saw the fear in Risa’s face. “That lowborn boy fell in the creek.”

“Petiri?” Her heart froze in her chest. By now the creek must be roaring from the downpour.

“Boy’s hanging on tight, but he’s about to be washed away.”

Kayla and Abran raced for the rear doors, Kayla hitting the latch and opening the door in one motion. She and Abran leapt out, then ran forward along the lorry. She peered through a downpour so thick she could barely see two meters. Using her hands to shield her eyes, she scanned the raging creek.

Petiri had been washed to the other side, where he clung to a junk tree stump. Japara burst out of the factory door, screaming as she raced for the creek. Garai and Crevan, close on her heels, grabbed her before she jumped in after her son. Kayla could already see the black roots of the tree Petiri clutched as it loosened from the soil, the force of the flash flood undermining its grip on the bank.

Kayla searched frantically up and down the bank for a way to cross to the other side. There was no wading in that chin-high water, and swimming in that current was out of the question. The plasscrete bridge was under raging water. If there was another bridge anywhere near, she couldn’t see it. Likely flooded as well.

“We need to make a bridge,” Kayla shouted above the
creek’s roar. “I can grab hold of him if I can get to the other side.”

The tree stump lurched as more of the roots gave way. Garai groaned, Japara screamed. The junk tree’s deep tap root, which should have held it firmly in place, was likely rotted, with the tree good and dead. Now only half of the roots seemed to be holding on.

“Petiri!” Japara sobbed. Garai held her close. “I told him! I told him to stay away from the creek!” she howled. “It’s too dangerous!”

Crevan looked frantic. “Some plasscrete boards?” He started toward the factory.

“There’s no time for that,” Abran said.

He swept his prayer mirror from his shirt hem and tossed it in Kayla’s direction. As she fumbled for a grip on it, he ran along the bank and leapt into the water. It was more stupid than heroic—the moment he hit the thrashing brown foam, it threw him downstream so fast he tumbled past the boy between one heartbeat and the next.

Kayla didn’t even have time to feel grief at his loss before Abran slammed into a rock near the far shore and held on. He hugged the rock, his red-brown skin tinged with a ghastly gray, crimson blood smearing his untattooed right cheek.

Just then, the junk tree stump gave way completely, tumbling into the water. Japara screamed as Petiri went under. Kayla found herself running as if she could catch up with the boy.

Then Abran, one arm precariously clutching his rock, flung his other arm out in hopeless effort. His body went taut, then jarred as if something had hit it. He pulled his arm in,
and a moment later, Petiri’s head bobbed above the water. Abran gathered him in close, wrapping himself around the rock again.

Abran struggled to lift his head above the water’s rush. He had Petiri propped up so the boy’s head would stay above the creek’s swollen flow. But Abran himself kept slipping lower, water slamming into his face for several moments until he could drag himself higher.

She realized she was gripping the prayer mirror so tight, it gave a little in her hand as if she’d cracked it. “Risa!” When Risa, a few meters behind her, turned her way, Kayla lobbed the prayer mirror at her.

“The plass bars!” Kayla shouted to the men. “Can we use those to reach across?”

Garai and Crevan looked at each other, then Crevan said, “They’re not strong that way. They’d likely snap if he pulled on them.”

“What about three or four bound together?” Kayla asked.

Another exchanged look. “Maybe,” Garai said.

A yell from Abran sent Kayla’s heart in her throat. He’d slipped partway off the rock. She watched as he crawled his fingers along it, got himself secured again. The bank was too steep for him to climb up on the other side, even if he could get free of the current.

“We have to try,” she said, running for the lorry, not even caring if the men heard her or if they’d help.

But they followed her and between the three of them, they got a trio of plass bars out of the load. Using several straps, they bound them together. “You two hold tight to the far end,” Kayla said.

They held on while Kayla used all of her sket’s strength to pull in the opposite direction. “It’s holding!” Crevan shouted.

Now they hurried along the creek, Kayla in the lead. Where she drew even with Abran, the water was nearly level with the top of the bank.

Between the driving rain and Abran’s focus on keeping his grip on the rock, Kayla doubted he even knew she was there. Petiri had revived and he’d all but climbed onto Abran’s shoulders, driving Abran even lower in the water.

“What now?” Kayla shouted.

Garai motioned her to retreat along the bank. “If we send it straight across, the GEN and the Petiri’s weight might take us all in once they let go of the rock and the water takes them. We should feed it to them at a shallower angle. There’ll be less stress on the bars that way.”

Following Garai’s guidance, they started paying out the long plass bars. The two lowborn men backed her up, walking forward as she fed the lifeline toward Abran like a rigid rope. But the distance was such that eventually the two lowborn men had to let go. It was only her hanging on to one end, directing the other toward Abran. Garai stood behind her, gripping the back of her shirt to steady her.

Despite the bars’ greater strength with three bound together, they sagged once the bundle was halfway across the creek, enough that the tips would strike the water and be flung high. Each time they made contact, the contraption threatened to fly from her hands. The rain made her grip slick, but Garai had wrapped extra strapping around each end, giving her something more to hold onto than slippery plass. Abran would have the same grip on his end.