Mirror Space - Marianne de Pierres [65]
Djes nibbled at some raw fish. He wondered how she felt about eating from the ocean.
‘But some of these women will die if they do not simply rest and eat for a few days. Perhaps you could send a scouting party as before.’
Trin struggled to make enough saliva to finish his mouthful while he considered what Djes had said. In truth he wanted nothing more than to stop and rest as she suggested, but something in him would not allow that. Not yet.
‘I’ll speak to Juno. Then I will decide,’ he said.
‘Yes, Principe.’
He studied her face in the faded light, and saw nothing but the usual patience and exhaustion. She didn’t argue with him or try and insist. It was the reason he found her so comforting to be around. She didn’t bludgeon him with her beliefs like Cass Mulravey, or whine like Jilda, or falsely fawn over him as the Latino noblewomen had done.
He thought briefly of Lancia and Chocetta Silvio and how they had shared his bed on alternate nights. Those times and that lifestyle had become dreamlike. Now he ate with his fingers and spent most of his waking hours craving food and water.
He glanced around the circle of survivors again as they struggled through their meagre meal. The divisions were still there; his Carabinere sat on either side of him and Djes, some of the surviving miners sat next to them, and then the women. Cass Mulravey sat opposite him in the circle across the flat bed of rocks. She spoke quietly to her brother. Trin wasn’t sure of his name - Lennie or Innis - she seemed to call him by both names. Mira Fedor’s man, Kristo, sprawled on Mulravey’s other side, turning to check regularly on the alien korm that sat behind him.
Only three children had survived the walk from the mine shaft to the ocean: Fedor’s adopted ragazzo, Vito, and two others. One belonged to Mulravey, but Djes had told him that she’d lost her other child, a ‘bina named Ghanee, to dehydration. Then there was the korm, as large as an adult but with the mentality and resilience of a child. Just a few meals of raw fish had seen it recover its strength more quickly than the humanesques.
The fact that both Mira Fedor’s charges had survived was somehow a thorn to his flesh - a reminder of her. The korm’s attachment to Djes aggravated him even more. It hovered near her whenever she was on land and the two spoke in the korm’s language.
Would Mira Fedor come back for her children? he wondered. He’d gambled that she would, but it had been weeks already with no sign of help. Now they must create their own hope, which did not include rescue.
The group slept through the night - the first time in a while. Both Joe and Juno Genarro had agreed with Djes’s suggestion to wait before they further explored the island. Reluctantly, Trin had given in. But something about the arrangement of the boulders and the smell in the air made his skin prickle. Just as the knowledge that his most trusted men had taken Djes’s side against his stung his mind.
Yet as she lay next to him for the first time in days, he drew comfort from the way her muscled back curved against his stomach and her heels rested against his ankles. Her presence gave him strength and calm.
She left him well before dawn to fish again. This time Trin sent Vespa Malocchi to help her bring back the catch. The man was still grieving for his fratello, Seb, and needed distraction. They had all lost someone but Vespa had turned his grief to anger.
‘Principe?’ The man spoke gruffly, roused from sleep by Joe Scali.
‘Wait on the beach until Djeserit returns. Gather shells for drinking.’ Vespa was unhappy with the command but did not dispute it - another thing that had changed in a short time. In the Carabinere compound in Loisa, Seb and Vespa Malocchi had been the first to mock the disfavoured, inexperienced young Principe. Now he - like the others - was grateful to have Trin shoulder the responsibility.
Djes returned just before Leah blazed into the sky, draped in a brown weed that was heavy with finger-shaped pods, and dragging a weed net of pipis behind her. She slapped her