“Rory…” Fellisse said, and I mentally prepared.
“Hey, Fellisse, do you think you could go and get me my hat?” I batted my eyes at him. We were still living in the apocalypse, after all, and I needed to work on my survival skills.
Fellisse beamed. “Gladly.”
He left Inkiri and me with the tomatoes, but before he even made it to the stairs, Charles rushed outside, taking the stairs two at a time.
Inkiri looked up from the yellow tomato plant he was working on. “Charles, what’s happening?” He took my wrist right away, almost casually, but I knew I’d never be able to make him let go now.
Charles’s strides were long, and he looked really focused, like he was at the store and in a hurry to grab the last pack of toilet paper. “Saw something on the camera system. You wanna come along.”
My hand froze, halfway to an especially juicy-looking heirloom tomato. “Wait—camera system? Is that new?”
I barely had time to put the picking basket down before Inkiri said, “Sadir, let’s go with him.”
“Nah,” Charles said when we joined him, Fellisse falling into step as well. Charles was one of those fast walker types, and sadly, so were the two bagua with me. I had to jog to keep up. “Always had it, but didn’t have constant coverage, just motion sensors that activated when something came close. Fixed that after the raspberry incident.”
“That’s what we’re calling it? The raspberry incident?” I looked back over my shoulder. At least this time, I had left the picking basket where it was instead of dropping it. “We’re having a tomato incident, aren’t we?” I immediately reached out to the presence.
Does anyone want to kill us?
It stretched and blinked blearily, or that was what it felt like to me. It looked around like someone not quite awake yet.
Not them. Their leader is your mate’s blood.
I looked up at Inkiri. “The land says they don’t want to kill us, but the leader is related to you. Does that ring a bell?”
Charles looked at us curiously. We were passing the area where they usually did their sparring. The apple tree already had small fruits weighing down the branches, and soon Kinnek and I would be able to sit there and munch on them while we watched our guys.
Inkiri groaned. “Zeddira. You might be wrong about him not wanting to at least attempt murder.”
I cleared my throat. “Should we…bring Vergis?”
“Should we bring me where?” Vergis asked, and if Inkiri hadn’t been holding me, I’d have faceplanted all over again. As it was, I yelped a tiny little bit.
“Where’d you come from?” My voice had gone slightly high, so I cleared my throat.
He was behind us and walking soundlessly. Shrugging, he said, “The lettuces. There was an issue with snails. There isn’t anymore.”
I wiped my slightly sweaty palm on my shorts. “Mothertrucker.”
Charles chuckled.
“Who is Mother Trucker?” Fellisse asked, which got Vergis to join in the chuckling.
I looked up at my mate, who was…trying to stifle a grin as well.
I remained cool and decided to have mercy on Fellisse. “Just… I’ll tell you later. It’s not important right now.”
We cut through the rows of raspberries and toward the pumpkin field beyond it. A group of black- and taupe-clad bagua was walking around the field, eyeing the pumpkins warily as if they thought they might rise up from the soil and attack them. Maybe they’d seen some tacky Halloween movie at some point.
Inkiri bent down so he could whisper in my ear. “Sadir, no matter what Zeddira does, you stay by my side. Hold on to me. Do you understand?”
I had no idea why that would be an issue, but then Inkiri let go of me. I gave him a quick nod and put my arm around his waist, not caring whether that was considered proper by other bagua or not, but the group of them—all Raikengana, by their looks—didn’t give any indication that they thought I was doing something improper.
The leader person was pretty easy to spot. His robes were gray rather than plain black or even taupe, and he had a thin string of shimmery fabric in the same color wound around both dark blue horns. He had darker hair than Inkiri’s, but wasn’t quite as fair, more cornflower blue where Inkiri’s skin was baby blue. In fact, I’d never have guessed the two of them were related. Kinnek and Vergis looked way more similar than those two did.
We walked right up to them, meeting in front of a particularly large turban squash. The leader made his way to the front of the group, face smooth and pleasantly smiling.
