Battle For Tristaine Part 10

"Just a quick errand with Vicar."

"I'm awake. I'm up." Brenna tried to look alert. Light had only begun to fi lter into Jess's lodge. She had a vague memory of coming to this small cabin after Shann's address and falling onto a luxurious pile of quilts. "Is it a private errand?"

"No." Jess hesitated for a moment. "Actually, you're invited, if you want to join us."

"I do." Brenna gave the fur a sluggish kick and accepted Jess's hand to help her up. She swayed once erect and felt strong arms encircle her waist. Her lover seemed to know this was not a * 85 *

romantic moment, and she supported Brenna quietly until she was steady.

"Good morning, la.s.s." Jess's kiss on the top of her head was light and tender.

"Mrng." Brenna cleared her sandpapered throat. Jess had built up the fi re in the stone hearth before waking her, and the light tang of cedar smoke fi lled the air. The small lodge was remarkably cozy. Tristaine's cabin-crafters must be wizards with natural sources of insulation.

She blinked through her spiked bangs at the neat interior of the cabin. Jess had earned her lodge with years of work with Tristaine's horses, and her sisters had kept it pristine during her long months of captivity.

It was simply furnished with pieces hewn from white oak.

The chairs were padded with quilts. Art covered the walls- pictures drawn by adult hands and childish ones- scenes of battle, lovemaking, and Tristaine's river. Colorful masks of clay and plaster and wood adorned the support posts.

Brenna's own single unit in the City would have gone aesthetically barren if it hadn't been for Sammy's gifts. Politics were partially to blame. Once Homeland Security became more important than civil rights in the City, many forms of creative expression fell under Government regulation. There simply wasn't a lot of art around, especially not to hang on walls.

But Brenna had spent most of her City adulthood looking at her unit through the bottom of a winegla.s.s, so she hadn't been too inclined toward interior decoration anyway. Now, the richness and diversity of the designs in Jess's lodge amazed her.

Brenna yawned against her shoulder. "Let me take a look at you before we go?"

"Nah. I'm creaky, but I'm all right."

Brenna looked up at her. "The migration's today."

"Aye." A sigh moved through Jess's long form. "The fi rst wave leaves in a few hours."

"Ah, Jesstin," Brenna murmured.

"I know." Jess rested her lips in Brenna's hair again. Then she * 86 *

dropped her hand and slapped her b.u.t.t. "Meet Vic and me outside.

Five minutes."

O.

Sometimes the craving for it had been a raw ache in the back of her throat, especially when she was tense or scared. The temptation to seek out the sweet, sick haze liquor provided might always haunt Brenna, but she wouldn't give in to it again.

Brenna was breathing a little hard when she reached Vicar.

The other woman had her shoulder braced against a pine, her arms folded, and her long legs crossed at the ankle. She didn't look up as Brenna reached her, but a muscle in her jaw fl exed.

"Hey," Brenna panted, for lack of anything better to say.

"You'll feel easier with someone on your left." Vicar pushed off the pine and walked between Brenna and the sheer ledge. She strolled with an insolent ease that mortifi ed Brenna all the more.

"Sorry about this." Brenna scowled at her feet. "Someday, I'd like to talk to you when I'm not expecting to fall off a cliff. I'm not always such a nit, Vicar, I promise."

Vicar said nothing, which Brenna found disconcerting. She let it pa.s.s. It was a beautiful morning. When she could force herself to look into the canyon, she saw striations of colors in the rock walls, colors she didn't even have names for.

"So, Brenna. You've met Theryn."

Brenna glanced at Vicar. "Last night, yeah."

"You two going to be friends, then?"

"I think Theryn's fooling herself if she believes she can bargain with the City. I told her as much." Brenna actually did feel safer having Vicar between her and the drop. And she preferred her questions to her silence.

"You worked with Caster? At this Clinic?"

"Right."

"And you made decent money in the City?"

"For a Medical Technician, yeah." Brenna was starting to pant again as the trail steepened. She waited.

* 87 *

"A Government Medical Technician. You helped with Jesstin's...experiment, then."

"Yes." She looked up at Vicar again. "Ask me whatever you need to. I understand. But get around to asking if I love her, okay?"

Vicar's eyes were measuring. "Do you?"

"With my whole heart."

They climbed silently for a while.

"Jesstin's my cousin," Vicar said. "Our mothers were blood sisters."

"No wonder you two are so-"

"I'd kill or die for her, Brenna. Our lady needs Jess, and so do Tristaine's warriors. You might prove to be our true adanin. I'll give ye every chance of that. And I'll protect you from any threat, because you're Jesstin's lady. But I'll be watchin' you too, la.s.s."

They were nearing Jess, who waited for them at the top of the trail. Brenna simply nodded at Vicar, then surprised them both by resting her hand on her corded forearm for a moment.

"Were you able to counsel young Vicar on that regrettable bedwettin' problem, Bren?" Jess called.

Brenna didn't dare smile, but Vicar emitted an amused snort.

"Does she look sound, Stumpy?"

"Aye, she does."

The "she" Jess and Vicar referred to, apparently, was the huge earthen dam, supported by both wooden beams and mortar, which walled off one end of a large mountain lake. The water lapped peacefully against it, confi dent of its solid support.

Brenna stopped short, astonished by the unexpected majesty of the lake. It stretched beyond sight, curving behind a protruding islet of conifers in the distance. The gla.s.sy surface refl ected the brilliant blue of the sky overhead like an inverted bowl, and Brenna was struck speechless again.

Some part of her spirit mourned for the residents of the City, most of whom would grow old without ever crossing its electrifi ed fences. She thought of the child Sammy carried, who would never see such a lake.

* 88 *

"Did Amazons build this?" Brenna was awestruck, and for a moment, Jess just looked at her, smiling a little. Then she nodded.

"Our grandmothers built it, generations ago. It was the work of the fi rst thirty years we lived on this land."

"Where-?" Brenna kept looking from the dam to the ponderous lake it contained. "Where did they learn engineering?"

"Amazons helped design the pyramids," Vicar muttered.

"We've never needed City men to build our beds. Or anything else."

The scorn in her tone was hard to ignore, and Jess threw her cousin a quizzical look. "Did the bairn keep you up last night?

What's the matter with you?"

Vicar shrugged an apology at Brenna.

"Bren?" Jess held out her hand and she took it, gingerly stepping closer to the outcropping that became the walkway formed by the top of the structure. "We don't have to go far out. Look there."

She stopped in front of Jess and followed her long arm as she pointed over her shoulder. She spotted a particularly nasty bruise on Jess's wrist and frowned at her, then squinted at the dam.

"Not there. The hill next to the dam, near the base of that rock shelf."

"You mean that hole down there?" Brenna crouched, more to grip the walkway for balance than to see more clearly. "What is it?

A cave?"

"A mine, la.s.s," Jess corrected, steadying Brenna with one hand. "It leads to the richest vein of silver and lead ore our cavers have ever found."

"A silver mine." Brenna pivoted to stare up at Jess, the dizzying drop forgotten. "Tristaine has a silver mine? Does Caster know about this?"

Vicar smiled without mirth. "And you thought the City was after Tristaine because of our progressive politics."

"The allure Tristaine holds for an oppressed people does threaten the City, Vicar." Jess's tone was more formal as she helped * 89 *

Brenna stand. "But the Government also wants Amazon silver to fi ll its coffers. Even if Artemis herself descended now and vanquished Caster's troops, the Federal Military would keep targeting this village."

Jess took Brenna's hands. "Do you understand why we couldn't tell you this, Bren, before you came to Tristaine?"

"Sure," Brenna responded, still trying to fi le this revelation in her head. "You don't owe me any explanations, Jess. I'm learning this stuff when I should. The mine is the reason we have to destroy the village, right?"

"Aye, we want to keep Tristaine's wealth from enriching City tyrants." Jess turned Brenna gently back toward the dam. "Take a look at the center section, about two-thirds of the way up."

"I see it, but what am I looking at?"

"We'll be building a small platform there tomorrow. Against the main support post."

"A platform to hold what?"

"Enough dynamite to take out the dam."

Brenna looked at Jess. "I'm sorry?"

"Several mountain streams drain into Ziwa, as we call this lake," Jess explained. "In turn, she feeds Terme Cay, the river that runs through our village. When the dam breaks, they will empty into the valley and fi ll it. Tristaine's mine and its lodges will vanish beneath their waters."

Brenna released a long breath. She could see it happening in her mind.

"Jocelyn safeguarded the box, Jess," Vicar said behind them.

"She'll turn it over to Shann before the fi rst wave leaves."

"The only piece of City high technology we've found a use for, Bren." Jess's smile was grim. "The explosives can be detonated by a remote transmitter. There are lots of safeguards. It would be hard to throw it without meaning to, but Shann can trigger the blast from Tristaine if necessary."

"It would move so fast." Brenna knelt and stared at the implacable lake, then at the dam, which seemed suddenly fragile to an extreme. "Just seconds to reach the-"

* 90 *

"The fl ood wouldn't hit Tristaine straight on," Vicar cut in.

"The fl ow would follow the riverbed at fi rst. It feeds east into the canyon, before curving down through the valley. Trees and other debris will slow it a bit, but not much. Dyan estimated it would reach us in about ten minutes."

"Or less," Jess added. "And anyone who can't get out of the valley in time would die. It wouldn't be like drowning in a City swimming pool, Brenna. Women would be crushed in the debris carried by the fl ood. They would suffocate among dead animals, logs, branches, mutilated bodies. Ugly deaths."

"Right. Got it, thanks." Brenna stood and brushed the dirt from her palms. She looked past Jess and smiled. "Vicar? Would you excuse us for a moment?"

Vicar arched one eyebrow, bringing home her familial resemblance to Jess again, in spite of her fair coloring. Then she nodded, offered a vague salute, and started back down the trail.

"Jesstin."

"Yes'm."

Brenna folded her arms. So did Jess, and somehow it looked more impressive when she did it.

"I'm not leaving with the migration today. I'm staying with you."

"I see."

"Want to hear why?"

"I can't wait."

"Are you listening, really?"