Night Quest. Susan Krinard
a quick glance at Artemis, Garret offered his wrist to Pericles. The young Freeblood’s mouth clamped on his flesh. Garret winced but held steady, and Artemis found herself battling both her own unexpected hunger and Garret’s heightened emotions.
After a minute the boy’s head fell back onto Artemis’s arms, and he went still. The echo of his pain faded from Artemis’s mind. Then there was only an emptiness where he had been for such a short while.
Somewhere in the darkness, an owl hooted. Perhaps, Artemis thought, the same owl as before. She laid the boy’s head on the ground and closed his eyes with a sweep of her palm.
“Thank you,” she said to Garret. She took his arm and sealed the wound. Garret hardly seemed to notice.
“He was with the ones who took my son,” he said, his voice hoarse with anger.
“And they left him here to die,” she said.
“They are rogues, and so was he.”
“Yet you showed him mercy.”
“To find out what we needed to know. It’s unlikely he’d have done the same for me.”
Garret had not felt the boy’s very real fear of him, Artemis thought. She wished she had not. She lifted the boy in her arms and carried him to a place under the trees. She laid him out there, his hands folded across his chest, and stood over him for a few moments. Garret waited silently behind her.
“I know you don’t believe it,” she said, “but this boy was also a victim. I do not think he has been Opir for more than a few years.”
“That makes it worse,” Garret said. “He doesn’t have the excuse of having had decades or even centuries to forget what it was like to be human. He chose to join a pack of rogues and kidnap a human child.”
“Did it occur to you that he might have needed to join a pack in order to survive?”
“Like you did?”
His sarcasm bit hard. “It is because I am older that I could do what he could not,” she said.
“You can’t make excuses for every rogue who commits crimes against humanity.”
“Many of your kind would say that I have committed such crimes merely by existing.”
Garret gripped her arm and turned her to face him. “Those humans would be wrong,” he said.
“How many would have saved my life?” she asked, trembling at his touch.
“I would not be the only one.”
“And I believe that only the worst of my kind would harm a human child.” She pulled her arm from his light hold and strode back to the ruins.
“Artemis,” he called after her.
She stopped without turning. “I do not wish to quarrel,” she said.
“Neither do I,” he said. His moon-cast shadow fell over her, and she felt his breath stir her hair. “We obviously don’t understand each other very well yet.”
“Perhaps it would be better if we did not.”
“Our survival might depend on it.”
She swung around to face him. “What is it that you do not understand?”
“I heard you tell Pericles that you believe it isn’t in your people’s true nature to kill each other over humans, or take human lives just because you can.”
“Why is that a surprise to you?” she asked.
“Are you really concerned about saving humans, or only about Freebloods killing each other?”
Without answering, she broke into a fast walk back to camp, where she began to gather up her things. Garret did the same, though he moved more slowly. Artemis thought she sensed regret in his mind. He checked again to make certain the fire was out, and that the rabbit carcasses and entrails were well buried, not that an Opir hunter couldn’t have smelled them if he’d been searching.
But there was still no sign of intruders, so Garret withdrew a folded sheet of paper from his pack, and carefully smoothed it across the cracked and overgrown floor of the building, right where a shaft of moonlight illuminated the ground. Artemis recognized a precise drawing of the western half of the former state of Oregon.
“If I judge correctly,” he said, pressing his fingertip to a spot on old Highway 99E, “we’re right about here, roughly twenty miles south of Albany.” He glanced up at her for confirmation.
“Yes,” she said, grateful for the need to focus on practicalities. “That is also my estimate.”
“And ten miles north of Albany is the southern border of Oceanus,” he said, indicating a large black square on the eastern slope of the Coast Range. “We have only limited information about this area. Do you know how far inland their territory reaches?”
“Why do you think I can tell you?” she asked.
“You were exiled from Oceanus, weren’t you?”
“How do you know?”
“Because we’ve learned that most exiles stick pretty close to their home territory. There are only a few small Opiri outposts between Oceanus and the northern California Citadel, Erebus. And I know you didn’t come from Erebus.”
“What of the rogues who stole your son? Were they not from Erebus, nearer to your colony?”
“As near as I can tell, they were from a Citadel some distance away. They were acting out of character. It’s all a mystery.” He withdrew his hand and clenched his fist on his thigh. “From what the Freeblood—Pericles—told us, the rogues are taking Timon across the river into old Washington. God knows why. But if he was right, they’ll probably have to cross the Columbia River near Portland, where one bridge is still supposed to be intact. They’ll follow the path of least resistance, the I-5 corridor.”
“But that will also be a more exposed route,” Artemis said. “Oceanus itself may be situated in the foothills of the Coast Range, but its territory reaches across the valley to the western slope of the Cascades. The rogues will be summarily executed if they are caught.” She tapped the map with her fingertip. “They might have gone farther into the Cascade foothills to avoid any chance of meeting a patrol.”
“And that’s much rougher terrain,” Garret said. “If we can find a more direct route across the territory, we may catch up with them, or even get to the Columbia before them.”
“Or we may be captured,” she said. “I am of no use to them, so they will kill me quickly. But they will either take you as a serf or, if they think you are dangerous enough, execute you as an example to other humans.”
“No surprises there,” Garret said, carefully folding the map. “But I don’t expect you to take unnecessary risks on my behalf.”
“You always knew I would be taking such risks.”
“Yes,” he said, meeting her gaze. “But I’m prepared to release you from our pact.”
“Because we quarreled?”
“I was wrong to interfere between you and the Freeblood. And I have no excuse for saying what I did about your motives for helping your fellow Freebloods. But my son must come first.”
“Then nothing has changed,” Artemis said, feeling another jolt of his worry and pain. “The most logical route to Portland is also the shortest, but there is still no guarantee that the rogues have not chosen the same route.”
“Agreed.”
“So we continue to parallel Interstate 5 for the time being.”
She shrugged into her pack and returned to the path, leaving the young Freeblood to the elements and the scavengers that would return him to the earth.
*