Dark Age (Red Rising Saga 5)

The which I make, and call it melody.”

The words keep me walking. But temperatures ascend as the sun climbs over the mountains. Just when I believe I can’t go another step, I feel Kalindora’s hand on my lower back, steadying me. Always it lingers there, and I find I miss it when she takes it back.

We walk and walk until we break for water in the middle of a playa.

“Nobody move,” Cicero says. We freeze at the tension in his voice. He gestures slowly to a cactus, beneath which is a hole in the hardpan. “If you value life, slowly, back away.”

We put a hundred meters between us and the animal hole. “What was that?” I ask him when we collapse down for water in the shadow of a yellow cactus as tall as five men.

“Hydra burrow,” he says. “They hunt sunbloods. We’d be a nice little aperitif for them.” He wanders off to inspect a nearby cactus blossom. Kalindora squats in the dirt beside me and stares east. The remains of an unmarked bomber lie several kilometers off. Several of the Grays hack at cacti with utility knives to suck water from the meat. It’s barely worth the effort. The storms have thrashed the flora. I take enough water from the canteen to fill my mouth. There will be none left after this break. “Take more,” Kalindora says. “That burn is sapping you dry.”

She can barely stand herself.

“We don’t have enough.”

“Take more. There’s always a chance we’ll find something, maybe in that bomber. But no chance at all if you die now.” She tilts the canteen and I swallow another mouthful. She sits down beside me and splays out her long legs. The fabric of her thermaskin, like mine, is caked white with chalk.

“While the lips are calm and the eyes cold, the spirit weeps within.”

Kalindora smiles softly as I recite.

“I see you’re still fond of Shelley. Does it help take your mind away?”

“No,” she replies. “I just don’t think anyone should die without hearing poetry one last time.” Whether she means me or herself is unclear. “I’m going to have hot tea,” she says suddenly.

“What?”

“When we get back. A hot tea and a cold bath. How about you?”

“Fralic juice and vodka,” I say.

“Fralic juice and vodka?” She squints at me, finding more meaning in it than I meant. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never even had it before.” That seems to puzzle her. “Octavia said that her greatest mastery of the Mind’s Eye came when she could make herself taste a food simply by thinking of it,” I say.

“Well, I can do that,” she says. “Watch. Dust.” She licks her lips. “Gods, just like the real thing.” I am unable to smile from the burn. “What’s it like?” she asks. “The Mind’s Eye.”

“It is difficult to explain.” She waits for me to try. “Have you ever had a moment where you couldn’t fail? Where everything seemed slow, except you? Like you were the center of all gravity, all time, and your thoughts themselves were second to your actions?”

“Sometimes, in combat.”

“Bad comparison,” I say. “You were a sailor before, yes?”

She considers. “Sometimes when the wind is strong, you slide like a knife over the water…it feels like you’re flying.”

“Then you have touched it. But imagine you could control that peace, that sense of harmony, and summon it according to your will.”

She reconsiders me.

“You can do that at will?”

“At times. Octavia could like this.” I snap my fingers. “It isn’t without flaw. It didn’t make her a warrior equal to Aja. But it made her very…dangerous. She said it could even stop poison, if mastered.”

“All poison?”

I’m about to answer when I see movement to the north. I squint out at bright chalk flats. Amidst a cloud of dust, a herd of pale sunbloods race one another against the horizon. Not one, not ten, but hundreds. I stand up to watch, wondering if it is real or a desert mirage. Either way it is one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen.

Then I realize it is not one another they race.