Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [21]
Despite walking through the darkness of the night, those without suits or robes were dehydrated. Trin tried to keep Djeserit close to him but she insisted on helping those who struggled most. Her own skin was blistered and flaking from the searing nightwinds.
More of them had died during the night. Some were his men—those who had surrendered their robes on his orders. Trin’s fury collected in a mental space reserved for Cass Mulravey. She nursed her women as though they were more precious. And her presence was a constant reminder that Mira Fedor had left carrying his child.
He fretted that Mira would not return with aid, that she would turn her back on her world. He held endless conversations with her in his mind, arguments that always ended in the same place, with the same look: him demanding and her accusing.
‘Principe.’ Djeserit was next to him.
‘Si,’ Trin said. ‘We must cross them now.’
He knew that her gaze followed his to the towering shadows that were the last line of red dunes. ‘They must be as high as Mount Pell,’ Djeserit gasped. ‘How can we climb them?’
‘We will not if we wait for the daylight,’ Trin said grimly. ‘Ever.’
In the east the sky grew lighter. He did not need to explain himself to Djeserit. Her practical sense was greater than his, and her selflessness shamed and angered him. She had helped the weakest—man and woman—despite her own unhealed injury. And when they stopped to rest she always attended Trin, listening while he spoke with Joe Scali and the others, serving him a little food and water, soothing him with her presence.
‘Tell me again,’ Djeserit whispered. ‘Tell me what is on the other side.’
‘If our route is accurate we will see the Tourmaline Islands,’ Trin said. ‘And the holiday palazzo with its medi-facility. And food.’
She moved closer, not quite touching him. ‘You have led us to safety, Principe.’
Gratification fluttered in his breast. Her respect never failed to lift his spirits. Djeserit was right: he had saved them.
Buoyed above his exhaustion by self-belief, Trin gave his order to Joe Scali and Vespa Malocchi.
‘Everyone must climb. Now. We must not wait.’
Trin led them over the last line of dunes without once looking back, concentrating on the impossible task of moving his numb legs, thinking ahead to the sight of the palazzo, feeling the cool safety of its interior.
The world around him dwindled to a single dogged purpose, and he had only a dim recognition of the sounds that he could hear: a shout, and weak cries of despair that could have been people calling his name. But he thought the voices were part of his tortured inner world, or part of his past. The present was the hot sand into which his aching feet scraped transient hollows, and it was the slicing pain across his lower back from muscles pushed beyond their endurance. When his trembling legs threatened to collapse he fell to his knees and crawled.
Hand, knee, hand, knee.. .
Trin reached the crest that way. Then, as he came to the top of the dune, the slap of a cooler wind raised his energy, and he let momentum tumble him down the other side. It rolled him nearly to the edge. With rattling breaths he crawled the final distance and flopped himself into the water, tearing open his fellalo to let the tepid liquid flood inside it. He wallowed and gasped, his mind filled with the cooling feel of it on his skin and the irresistible desire to drink it in. Only the dragging sensation as his robe became waterlogged forced him to retreat to the sand.
‘Principe!’
Trin dashed water from his eyes and sought the source of the voice. Joe Scali. He stared up at his friend. There was no relief in the man’s ravaged face, no celebration of arrival. Joe’s legs shook as if he would fall.
‘Djeserit is not here—’
Trin stumbled to his feet, his heart thumping.