The Seek (14 page)

‘Well he certainly didn’t behave like it.’ Tabi looked down at her hands, opening and closing them like she was trying to understand what she saw. ‘How could he have done this to me? Taken Asha? And you?’

‘Tabi.’ Kyn had to make her understand. ‘He didn’t take me.’ She reached out and captured one of the hands Tabi was studying so closely, squeezing it in her own in the hope that she might understand. ‘He saved me.’

Tabi shook her head like she couldn’t compute Kyn’s words.

The three of them looked at each other, lost in their own stories.

But Kyn had to know. She turned to Asha. ‘So, how did you…?’ She gestured at Tabi. It wasn’t allowed. How had they found each other? How was it that they were together?

Asha grinned that little boy grin, the one that had turned the heads of every girl in a ten-mile radius from the moment he had worked out how to use it. ‘Fate,’ he said. He smiled gently at Tabi and Kyn’s heart twanged at the love in his eyes. ‘And a pretty horrible crash-landing.’

Kyn shook her head, trying to understand.

‘Tyver,’ Asha said, sounding so low and sweet and Southern — so much like her childhood — that Kyn had to swallow a few times, quickly, to be sure her voice wouldn’t crack when she spoke again.

‘Fuck,’ she said. ‘Tyver.’

Tabi and Asha nodded.

‘And now I’m here,’ Asha said. ‘Based here, where Tabi is, so what can they do? Even if they find out about us, what can they do? They can try’ — It was his turn to bang the table — ‘they can just fuckin’ try to separate us again.’ He eyeballed Kyn hard. ‘They do it, and I’ll run. I swear Kyn, I’ll take her and I’ll run.’

Kyn got it. Avengers didn’t have relationships. Sex, sure. Relationships? No way.

She nodded, and crossed her heart slowly. ‘Locked in the vault,’ she said.

The other two smiled, all the shadows of a lost childhood playing across their faces. Then, like some unspoken command, the three of them picked up their glasses and clinked them.

‘To Sweetheart,’ Asha said, and Kyn could almost see him hiding out in the botanicals of Avenger HQ, strumming his illicit guitar and smoking Lucky Strikes.

‘To friends forever,’ Tabi said, tipping her glass in Kyn’s direction. ‘Whatever stupid shit they do.’ She rolled her eyes and said ‘damn Avengers’ before she downed the whiskey in one slug.

Kyn held onto her glass a second longer. ‘To surviving,’ she said, tilting it towards them both before she tipped the hot, sweet liquid into her throat.

Asha studied Kyn carefully as she slammed the glass onto the low table. ‘You know, sweetheart, there’s more to life than surviving.’

Really?
Not from where Kyn stood. From where she stood it seemed survival was exactly about all there was. And she had made an art form of it.

‘Is that so?’ Her voice sounded a little strange and she knew it was probably unwise to drink at all when they would move out tomorrow to Eden 13. But her skin was warming nicely, and despite all that had happened in the last ten years she felt, for the first time in a long time, like she was a real person, with a real history. These people knew her, had known her back then. She thought about Krysto, that first night, wondering if he was real. She got that. But here, with these people, she could really believe that she was. ‘Like what?’

But it wasn’t Tabi or Asha who responded. The deep growl from behind Kyn was so achingly familiar she had to shut her eyes for a second to properly appreciate it, like savouring a fine wine. ‘Like getting drunk with old friends, Kyntura,’ the voice said, saying her name like it was some kind of invocation. This boy, who never called her Kyn. Always Kyntura. ‘And can I say how lovely it is to see you’re still the same sunshine and lollipops sweetheart we last saw ten years ago?’

Kyn stood and turned slowly, trying to imagine how he would look after all this time.

‘Hi.’ She would not react to him the way he wanted. She would not fall apart, or cry, or apologise. Or even explain. This was Symon. She never needed to do any of those things with him.

And he looked like coming home. Except so much more.

Ten years had turned him from a boy to a delicious man. His olive-brown skin was broken by a black smudge of end-of-day stubble. Those brown eyes, that had seemed so sweet and puppy-dog-ish as a boy, were darkly impenetrable. His hair was a little longer than was usual, grazing the collar of his navigator purple. His full red mouth curled with irritation at her cautious greeting.

What did he want? For Kyn to run and jump into his arms like they were still practising gymnastics under the old apple tree?

‘Hi yourself,’ he growled, allowing her a bitter smile. ‘Where you been, stranger?’

She shrugged. ‘Here and there.’ And then it seemed stupid, hanging back while they sized each other up. Especially with Tabi and Asha watching. So she stepped forward when he held out his arms. She needed to act normal. Tabi and Asha didn’t know about the other stuff that had happened between them.

Symon wrapped his arms around her, squeezing her into a bear hug that was both familiar and somehow so very different. The lean, strong boy she’d known had turned into a big, hard and much stronger man. He’d always been tall, but wiry and a little awkward. Now it was like hugging a mountain. A mountain that smelled really good and managed to lace spidery goosebumps down her spine as he breathed in, burying his face in her neck.

She pulled away quickly. ‘It’s good to see you.’

The dark, hot stare that bored into her told her he was a child no longer. He was all grown up. And he was pissed. He cocked his head to one side. ‘You look different.’

Kyn felt suddenly horribly self-conscious. What did he mean? Could he see them on her — the scars from all she’d seen and done? Or did she just look hard, and old? To fight off the mad hammering in her ribcage, she swept a hand theatrically across her uniform. ‘Maybe it’s the Avenger red?’

‘Hmmm…’ Symon’s growl was doing funny things to Kyn’s tummy. When did his voice get so damn deep? She remembered when it had broken, at twelve, how they all teased him so mercilessly. But somehow it had settled into this, this raspy growl, and it was so deep and so sweet and so man-ish she almost swooned.

Get a grip, Kyntura. Remember what you are
.

Symon picked up one of her hands in his big, warm, strong one and raised it in the air, propelling her around in a little circle in a parody of assessment. ‘Hmmmm…no, no that. Although…’ he winked at her as she came back to stand eye-to-eye with him. ‘You always did look good in red.’

She rolled her eyes at him to stop the tummy flutters that had taken up residence. ‘Must be the new hairdo,’ she grunted shortly, grabbing her hand back from him.

‘Nah,’ Symon said. ‘Not that. Although what is it with you girls and that freakin’ hairdo?’ He hooked a thumb in the direction of his sister Tabi who was standing, arms wrapped around Asha, enjoying Kyn’s discomfort as Symon assessed her. Tabi ruffled her own short dark crop.

Symon turned back to Kyn, rubbing his chin like he was thinking. Finally, he clicked his fingers. ‘I’ve got it,’ he said.

She raised an eyebrow at him, waiting for the punch line. With Symon, there was always a punch line.

‘You don’t look as pissed off with the world,’ he said, reaching out to touch the side of her face gently. ‘Actually, the universe, I guess.’

Kyn stepped neatly away from him to put some more distance between them. She couldn’t do this; she couldn’t have him standing looking at her, looking into her. It would undo her.

She punched him hard on the arm, and she knew it hurt. Firstly, because she had a really hard punch, and even though she did it with a joking smile, she let him feel the full power of her thrust. Secondly, because he winced. ‘Goes to show how much you know, Sym,’ she said. ‘I’m more pissed off than ever. I’ve just got a way to take it out on someone other than my best friends.’

With that, she turned back to the others. ‘I should be hitting the sack,’ she said. ‘Briefings tomorrow, and then we move out.’

Tabi and Asha murmured agreements, getting up from their seats.

But Symon wasn’t having it. ‘Since when did you become a lightweight?’ He held up a bottle of Sweet Caroline, old school. ‘We were just getting reacquainted.’

Kyn sighed, and glanced at her watch. ‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Half an hour. But I’m not drinking any of that. I’ve got people to look out for tomorrow, and they sure as shit don’t need me hungover.’

Symon grinned at her and waved at Tabi and Asha. ‘Later, guys,’ he said, settling into one of the chairs.

***

‘I knew you weren’t dead,’ he said, picking up one of her hands.

‘People always say that,’ Kyn said. ‘About the Avengers. They want to believe it.’

‘No,’ Symon said. ‘I actually knew.’

Kyn studied him. His dark eyes were very clear and focused. He was trying to tell her something. ‘Pietr?’

Symon laughed, but without bitterness. ‘No way, Kyn. He didn’t tell Tabi about Asha, you know that, and he never said anything about you either. For both of you, one minute you were there, the next you were gone. And if we ever asked, he just said, “There are more things in heaven and earth”.’ Symon did such a good imitation of Peitr’s croaky tenor that Kyn smiled. Symon didn’t look like his father, but there was something about him — a reassuring strength, a quiet togetherness — that invoked the older man. The one they were all so mad at right now. But not Kyn.

‘So how then?’ Kyn frowned at him. ‘No-one knows. No-one ever knows. Not where we go, not how it works.’

‘I know,’ Symon said, emphasising the
I
. ‘When you left, after Asha, I…’ He paused, and Kyn saw him stop, reflect and change course slightly. What had he been going to say? ‘I decided I wanted to know, and that I would know. I found out about Asha, and I told Tabi. But back then, we thought he’d run away to join the Avengers. I didn’t understand how it worked then.’ He shut his eyes. ‘And when I found out he hadn’t left her; that they’d taken him — that he’d had no choice — I didn’t tell her, I couldn’t bear to. I knew it would open it up, all over again.’

Kyn tried to make sense of what he was saying. ‘But she found out anyway?’

‘Yes,’ Symon said, his voice bitter. ‘Asha told her, after the rescue. Asha had always thought our father might have explained. But he never did.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘And I found out about you too. Not straight away. But I never told Tabi that I knew you were with the Avengers. Two desertions would have been too much for her.’

Kyn glanced up, expecting to see recrimination in his eyes. But she couldn’t read them as easily as she had at eleven. Or even eighteen.

He dragged his chair closer so he was sitting so near she could smell the whiskey and maleness of him. She wanted to sway even closer to him, be wrapped up in those familiar arms. But he wasn’t her childhood best friend anymore.

‘There is so much we don’t know, Kyntura,’ he said, his face dark and his voice urgent. ‘So much they don’t tell us.’

Kyn closed her eyes at the truth of it. She knew more than most, but she also knew there were limits to the information to which she was privy. ‘So how did you find out where I was? You’re a navigator.’

She didn’t mean the word to come out sounding like ‘taxi driver’, but she winced a little as she realised it had. She had been surprised to find out that was the path he had chosen. If there was one thing the children of Pietr Proctor had known, it was how to fight. And Tabysha and Symon were smart as hell to boot. Kyn would never have imagined this one driving a ship.

Symon just smiled. ‘Even Clark Kent needed a day job.’

Symon’s tone was light, but his body was tense. She realised as she studied him, trying to work out what he was trying to tell her, that he had really become very buff in the ten years since she had last seen him. His broad chest rippled in the black T-shirt and jodhpurs he was wearing. Too buff for a navigator. And there was something about his tone — something wry and secretive. Kyn knew enough to know there were some secrets you didn’t try to find out. Not if you valued your skin. Her throat went dry.

‘Symon,’ she said, swallowing hard as she picked up his hands, suddenly desperately afraid for him and wanting to hold onto a piece of him. ‘What are you doing? What are you up to?’

He looked at her, long and hard, as if he was weighing things up. He squeezed her hands, which he turned to hold in his. Then he looked away and shook his head slightly, the moment lost. He turned back to her, dipping his head to rest his forehead against hers and whisper softly against her face. ‘Nothing, Kyntura,’ he said. ‘Just driving ships.’

Kyn was about to push him harder when they were interrupted.

‘Captain.’ The voice from behind her was usually loose and chill, but tonight it had an edge and Kyntura almost groaned. She dropped Symon’s hands as if she’d been caught with them up her shirt, and stood abruptly.

‘Lieutenant.’ She would not acknowledge the hurt and confusion in Krysto’s eyes. She had been very clear. She did not owe him anything. Least of all an explanation about Symon.

He looked tired. They had come a long way today and he had done a hard job well. His eyes flicked from Kyntura to Symon. Symon stood and moved closer to Kyn. Kyn tried not to think it was a proprietal move. ‘I was just checking in whether you needed anything ahead of the briefing at six bells?’

She shook her head. ‘I think I’m all sorted.’ She hesitated. ‘Thank you.’

Krysto smiled at her a little and Kyn was sure she felt Symon bristle at her right.

Well, fuck him
. She didn’t owe him an explanation either.

But she did probably owe Krysto her life today. As he turned to leave, she cleared her throat and he turned back, his face a respectful mask. ‘Good job today, Lieutenant,’ she said. ‘That was some leap.’

Krysto nodded at her. ‘Well,’ he said, eyeing off Symon’s navigator purple. ‘I wasn’t the driver.’ Did he say that last word with the tiniest of sneers? The Avenger’s disdain for any of the others? Kyn felt like screaming.

‘No,’ Kyn said. ‘But you weathered the attack very well.’

Before he could smile too broadly at her and cause any more tension in this weird situation, Kyn went on. ‘Dismissed, Lieutenant.’