Scattered Suns - Kevin J. Anderson [258]
Udru’h waited, but the woman did not appear. Surely Nira had heard the craft arrive. There was no point in her hiding; the island wasn’t large. Perhaps she was afraid. She had always hated when Udru’h came to see her, to taunt her with her situation. But she had always shown herself.
“Fan out and search the island. She cannot have gone far.”
The other Ildirans forged through the undergrowth, calling Nira’s name. Udru’h wandered to where she had made a crude shelter out of branches and fallen foliage. Uneasiness swept through his mind when he saw that the lean-to had collapsed into disrepair. It looked as if no one had been there for a long time.
“Where did she go? Where could she go?”
It took less than an hour for them to cover every patch of land and then search again. Udru’h stood reeling. What would the Mage-Imperator say?
The island was empty, and the green priest woman was gone.
Chapter 134—RLINDA KETT
I’ve been trapped in worse places and with worse people,” Rlinda said to BeBob, waving a hand around to indicate the cavern beneath the frozen crust of Plumas. “Even so, I wish we had something to do. Maybe we should learn the water-mining business.”
“And try some sabotage, you mean?” Clearly suspicious, Caleb Tamblyn looked up from where he was tinkering with a pumping generator. He blew on his cold fingers, scowled at her, then went back to work. “This is a war, not a holiday. Put up with it.”
“It’s not any kind of war I can understand—and I don’t think you do, either.” She had never carried any grudge against the Roamers, except when Rand Sorengaard preyed upon her company’s ships.
“May I please have another pair of gloves?” BeBob sauntered up, rubbing his hands together. “It’s always cold down here.”
“We’re on an ice moon—it’s supposed to be cold.” Scowling again, Caleb picked up his tools. When he stood, his knees cracked audibly. “You’ll get used to it. Besides, I’m sure you have better conditions than all the Roamer POWs the Eddies took in their raids.”
“I’m skeptical of people who describe how good you have it by dredging up something even worse,” Rlinda said. BeBob sat beside her on a blocky piece of equipment, but stood up as soon as the metal’s chill penetrated his thin trousers.
Seeing the casual way the Tamblyns ran the water mines, Rlinda didn’t doubt that she and BeBob could find a way to break free, maybe steal her own Curiosity back if Denn Peroni and the Tamblyn brothers hadn’t damaged it too much in “fixing” it. For the time being, though, they weren’t desperate enough; besides, the EDF would still be after them. They would stay together here and see how things played out.
In the evenings, Rlinda and BeBob had little to do except cuddle in their shared hut, play a few games, and learn some forms of gambling that were popular among the Roamers. During the days, they bundled up and walked along the small ice shelf that butted up against the underground sea.
It was clear that the Tamblyn brothers didn’t know what to do with their hostages. Taking prisoners and seizing the damaged Curiosity must have seemed like a good idea to them at the time, but now they were stuck with the consequences.
She and BeBob cobbled together enough warm clothes to keep themselves comfortable. Scrawny BeBob was easy to fit. He could borrow old jumpsuits and embroidered shirts from any number of the water miners. Few Roamers were as large as Rlinda, however. She made do with her own captain’s clothes, voluminous wraps, and some of her private wardrobe that she had bullied the Tamblyns into letting her remove from the Curiosity.
As a businesswoman, she took interest in the large-scale operations on Plumas. The engineering and water distribution followed a reasonable model, and the Roamers had apparently been successful here for several generations, though no one in the Hansa had ever heard of the place.
She and BeBob walked around the complex, crunching over the frozen ground, and looked across the subterranean sea.