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I stepped over to the cage.
“Fin,” Callon warned, but I couldn’t hear him. Not really. I was lost in the Feral woman’s eyes. Unable to stop reaching for her mind.
Ferals running. Being corralled and bludgeoned. Children screaming and running to get away. The gas. The shooting. I saw flickers of their home in the hills somewhere to the south. I saw crude dwellings and campfires. I saw her on her horse. The horse I’d just calmed.
For all the memories the woman showed me, all I could offer her were the images of the Feral slaves I’d seen digging in Death Valley. And I knew when she’d felt them because I sensed her rage like it was my own. I sensed the loss of someone dear to her. I sensed her fear.
Slavers. Bodies in the church.It was the only consolation I could give her, other than her freedom.
“Let them out,” I told Hills, her quickly recovering super-strength allowing her to shed the effects of the gas much faster than the others.
“I don’t think—”
I looked at her. “I said let them out. Please.”
Hills stared at me, her expression hard.
The Ferals glanced anxiously between all of us, permanent scowls on their faces. They didn’t trust our people, the same as mine lacked trust in them.
“They have helped us before,” I explained, trying to keep my voice steady. “Let them out.”
Hills looked at Del, who must have nodded because Hills finally relented. Though Hills clearly didn’t like the idea, she went to the cage, attention fixed on the keen-eyed Feral woman. The other Ferals looked at one another, bracing themselves and readying to lunge at Hills if needed. I flexed my hand, readying myself, just in case.
Their leader hummed something. It was almost inaudible, but the sound commanded the attention of everyone in the cage with her. Their focus locked on her, waiting for another command, but the woman’s gaze remained on me.
Reluctantly, and after a heavy sigh, Hills tore the cage door off.
The Ferals grumbled, and finally, their leader looked at them, dipping her head before she said what sounded a lot likefriends.
My eyes widened. For centuries, the Ferals had been consumed by their most primal instincts, a side effect of the Turn that no one truly understood. The more I saw them, and the more I interacted, the more I realized they were so much more than we believed.
“Nobody hurts them,” I warned, eyes shifting over Hills and the Corvo guards.
Slowly, the Ferals climbed out, skittish and ready to pounce at the slightest threat. Hills pulled the last cage open, moving aside as the rest stepped out into freedom.
“Let them take what they want,” I told everyone. “We take the device, weapons, and only what the slavers took from us. The rest is theirs.”
“What about the slavers?” Callon asked, his voice wary as he nodded toward the church. “They won’t sleep forever.”
“We leave them to their fates,” I said, glancing at the Feral leader as she walked carefully over to her horse. “Let these people decide what they will do with them. They’ve more than earned it.”
36
Del
Irode as close beside Fin’s horse as I could without knocking the black mare off course. The rest of our people plodded ahead and behind us on their own mounts, Callon and Ada leading the way a good distance ahead.
I had originally demanded that Liam ride with me, so I could be as close to him as possible, but Fin and Hills had pressured me to reconsider. Now that I watched Liam droop sleepily on the back of Fin’s horse, Fin’s sturdy arms the only thing keeping him from toppling to the ground, I was grateful for their clearheaded foresight.
All of our people who had been captured still suffered from the lingering effects of the sedative expelled by the gas grenades, but they could all at least stay awake enough to ride. Likely because of his smaller size, Liam seemed the most affected. He had been drifting in and out of consciousness, lulled by the steady, rocking motion of the horse.
Dust swirled above the dry, cracked earth. The towering redwoods had given way to increasingly scrawny pines as we crossed the mountains dividing the verdant land of the Sierra Kingdom from the unclaimed desert lands east of the Seven Kingdoms. Cacti and scraggly shrubs had replaced the pines as we descended from the mountains, but now there was only a flat expanse of parched ground dotted by sagebrush for as far as the eye could see. Fin’s people supposedly had a manned outpost set up on the edge of the desert lands, stocked with supplies to ease the journey, but I had yet to see any sign of such a place.
I twisted in my saddle and peered up at the sun hanging in the clear, blue sky, baking our backs. I wanted to get Liam somewhere shady to rest. This heat couldn’t be good for his already taxed body.
“We’re almost there,” Fin said, and I turned my attention back to him.
“Am I that transparent?”
