Chaos Space - Marianne de Pierres [95]
Trin strained to see. In the wane of Semantic he saw a boat’s outline as it bobbed over the break towards the beach; a small pinnace without oars.
‘Looks like it’s gonna roll,’ Mulravey warned Trin. ‘You’ll need swimmers to help those aboard.’
Those aboard? Trin peered harder. Mulravey was right: two figures clung to the bow. ‘What if we don’t want them with us?’
‘You’d let them drown?’
‘What if they are with the Saqr?’
‘They have no sail, no oars—what are the chances?’
She was right, Trin knew, but he detested her arrogant manner.
‘Where is Juno Genarro?’
‘Here, Principe,’ said a voice behind him. ‘I heard the boat and came.’
His best scout was puffing slightly from running, and Trin knew that if he could see Juno’s face in better light it would be thin and lined with utter exhaustion. But Genarro was tough—maybe the toughest of them all.
‘There’s a rope in the water,’ called one of the men standing out in the shallows. Tivi Scali, Trin thought, Joe’s cousin.
‘Boat’s over!’ called someone else, a woman standing further along the beach.
‘Juno!’ said Trin.
Juno waded straight into the water, calling for Vespa and Joe Scali. Trin watched them swim towards the capsized boat, their heads just black dots in the grey swell.
‘Principe? It’s Djeserit! Here!’ cried Tivi.
A quiet cheer went up from the group. Nearly all the survivors were there now, crowding around to see.
Trin shouldered through them and strode into the shallows. He dropped to his knees and scooped Djes close. ‘Are you hurt?’
‘No,’ she gasped. ‘But—I have—two with—me. They—cannot swim.’
He lifted her higher, wanting to pull her right out of the sea. But she protested. ‘Let me—rest—tired -couldn’t row—towed—them ...’
She’d towed them from the palazzo. Trin felt a surge of anger. How could she risk herself like that? And for who? Who had she found there?
He let go of her and Djeserit submerged, staying near his legs. He let his hand stray under the water so that it contacted her. She grasped it and he forced himself not to recoil. The webbing on her fingers had grown thicker and longer, almost down to her finger tips; the Mio part of her was overtaking the ‘esque. Soon she would be lost to him altogether. Was she choosing to become incompatible with him?
‘Principe!’ Again.
Juno Genarro was only a small mesur out now, towing someone in the crook of his arm. Behind him Vespa and Joe Scali struggled with another figure between them.
Trin waded towards them and pulled the figure from Genarro’s trembling grasp. A young girl, he thought, and a face he might have known had the light not been so dim. He handed her to Tivi who had followed him. ‘Take her out.’
Then he waited for the roll of the waves to bring in Vespa and Joe. The person he took from them was much older and frail. She clung to him, sobbing and sobbing; a pathetic, trembling bundle of saturated flesh that he did not need light to recognise.
‘Trinder,’ she choked out. ‘Caro ... caro . . .’
‘Jilda,’ he replied. ‘Madre.’
JO-JO RASTEROVICH
Jo-Jo filled the time it took to reach the Saif system by stewing over his situation and quizzing Bethany more about her brother. They had taken cabin space next to each other with Mira Fedor on the other side of Beth and the mercenaries and the scholar, Thales Berniere, a stratum below.
Jo-Jo managed to extract two pleasures from his current situation. First was the sense of familiarity. The Insignia craft was larger than Salacious but with less interior cartilage and flesh on show, although each stratum was lined with tubercles that puckered and shrank dependent on the ‘zoon’s biorhythms. He wandered the strata, enjoying the whisper of the ‘zoon’s life force around him, trying to ignore his second pleasure—his closeness to Mira Fedor.
Every moment in her presence seemed to intensify his longing. Between trying to fathom Carnage Farr’s plan, and his own bitter thoughts about Tekton, Jo-Jo dissected his reaction to the Latino woman. It made no sense. He detested aristocrats and had a preference for confident women (although