Thyla - Kate Gordon [67]
I felt my own nose curling. My lip pushing back and my hands tensing. I felt a hundred and sixty years of hatred pulsing through my veins. Instinct was telling me to attack this man, this Sarco. The word jangled in my head. Its sound was unpleasant. Its smell was repulsive. I hated Sarcos. I was meant to hate Sarcos, though I did not know why.
And yet …
I looked across the clearing to where the other Sarcos were standing. I caught Harriet’s eye. Her face was blotchy and her eyes were red. Her sun-streaked hair, which I now understood would gradually turn fully Sarco-black as she matured, was messy from having been raked through so often by her trembling hands.
She’d lost two friends. Sara dead. Rhiannah kidnapped. They had been my friends, too. They had been so good to me. But they were Sarcos.
I didn’t know what to think.
Rha ran his hand through his own tar-black hair. ‘It’s all getting so much worse,’ he growled.
Isaac nodded. ‘I know, Rha,’ he replied. ‘I think the time of petty fighting and small battles is over. It’s war now.’
‘Are we on the same side?’ I could see it pained Rha to have to ask the question.
Isaac looked at the ground. ‘I think we have to be if we’re going to survive. A treaty is our only choice. It won’t be easy, though. You know that. You know there are those among us who will not agree to it. Some of them might even actively oppose it.’
‘I know. But I think we have to try. I believe he has the poison and is testing it,’ said Rha. ‘I believe that’s why he took Rhiannah instead of killing her.’
Isaac nodded. ‘He has the poison, Rha. He calls it the “solution”. Tessa heard some of them talking about it before she fell. And tonight one of them whispered to her that Lord has got it working. And there’s something else. Tessa saw the Diemens with a Sarco captive. We think it might be Raphael.’
Rha nodded slowly. ‘We need your help.’
‘You have it,’ Isaac grunted.
‘We should have done this sooner,’ Rha growled. ‘One hundred and fifty years sooner. Like you said – petty fighting, small battles. We thought we were doing enough. Why didn’t we realise we weren’t doing even nearly enough? Why did we let it get this far?’
Isaac sighed. He looked out at the clearing. The bodies of Beagle and Sara were nearly gone now, turning to earth and sinking into the ground. I saw his eyes gleam with tears. ‘We thought the same, Rha. We thought we had it in hand. I think we just overestimated ourselves. We overestimated our powers – we were here first, after all. We know the land. They’re foreigners. We thought they couldn’t touch us. I think we overestimated also what we could do alone.’
He said this last part flatly, but still I could sense the pain that saturated every syllable: the pain of losing friends, of knowing it was partly his fault, of having lived so long and seen so much. I could also see it was difficult for him, talking to Rha about these things and admitting he had been wrong.
But Rha had also been wrong. He had made mistakes. And lost friends.
Rha nodded at Isaac and then at me, and moved towards the surviving Sarcos. Perrin looked up as Rha approached.
His black eyes seemed full of fire. His red lips looked soft and pillowy against the strong set of his jaw and his angular cheekbones were even more pronounced in his Sarco form. The scar beneath his eye was still there, and it looked even more dangerous. And attractive.
He was looking at me.
I felt goosebumps rise on my arms.
He was looking at me. And I liked it.
‘Whatcha looking at?’ Cat asked, breaking the spell. I jerked my head away.
‘Nothing,’ I snapped, still bristling at the frivolity in her tone. It seemed as though the events of this evening had not affected her at all. ‘Just them,’ I added, realising I may have sounded rude. Perhaps this was how Cat dealt with hardship – by pretending it did not exist.
I sneaked one last look across the clearing. Harriet was looking back at me. ‘Goodbye, Tessa,’ she mouthed.
I nodded back. My eyes searched for Perrin. He was already gone.
I