Reclamation

Be patient. You need him to keep the Notouch in line. Say it again. Jay wrapped his poncho a little closer around him. "Nothing, Heart. She's valuable to them. You all are. That's what's buying us this time." That and King Silver's pride.

"I do hold her in my regard, Messenger." Heart pitched the charcoal onto the flames. The fire hissed and a flurry of sparks danced above the flames. "She is so unwavering…I fear they will grow impatient with her."

Jay considered laying a hand on the man's shoulder, but couldn't quite bring himself to do it. "I know these people, Heart. They're born patient. They cannot be rushed. I once…" His translator disk beeped.

Cor's voice hissed in his ear. "Jay, get your sodden face out here. I'm about to be bludgeoned."

"Blood of my…" Jay scrabbled at the tent's laces and tore them open.

It was full night outside. The icy wind drove straight down on his head, making him stagger as he emerged from the tent. The only light was from the four orange watchflres. Everything else was a solid curtain of black.

"Hold your hand!" he bellowed to the world in general.

Jay squinted at one fire after another. The one toward his left flopped sideways in the wind and Jay saw a pair of human shadows, one standing and one kneeling. He took a bead on the fire and, ignoring the violent crawling of the goose bumps rising on his skin, waded through the weeds and reeds toward it

"I speak for her!" he shouted as he approached.

Jay entered the tiny circle of flickering light and saw Cor on her knees with her hands in front of her eyes. A soldier with Bondless tattoos on his hands and a craggy face that Jay didn't recognize held his metal-studded club over her head.

"What in the sight of the Nameless is all this?" Cor demanded as Jay waved the soldier aside. "An invasion?"

"Hardly." A fresh wind hit him and Jay shivered. "The Vitae have got that show to themselves." He brushed the soldier back. The man gave Jay the barest possible salute and tramped off into the darkness.

"I noticed." Cor stood and picked up her handlight. She seemed oblivious to the cold. "We had word. They've started giving orders that the Notouch be rounded up." She clipped her light onto her belt.

"So you found Stone in the Wall's relatives?" For a moment, eagerness was stronger than the cold.

"Yeah, I found them." Cor stretched her hands out to the fire and let the light shine between her fingers. "I thought you were going to King Silver for letters of authority, not for a small army." She nodded toward the cluster of a dozen tents.

"Cor…" Jay began angrily. He stopped and gripped his temper. "We need protection in case we run into First City troops. They're working for the Vitae now."

Cor watched the fire between her fingers.

"Cor." Jay moved closer. "Where're the Notouch?"

"I don't know," she said. "I sent them running."

Jay's heart thudded once, hard, against his ribs. "You what?"

"I told them to grab their gear and run like the wind." She rubbed her hands together. "And not to tell me where they would go."

"Cor, the Vitae are rounding up Notouch!" Jay shouted. "They know something! We have to find…"

"We have to get out of here!" Cor screamed up at him to be heard over the wild night wind. "We have to get out of here and leave these people alone!"

"They aren't people!"

Cor didn't even flinch. "I don't think they'd agree with you."

Jay took a deep breath, trying to get control of himself again. It was too much. He had come all this way, he had worked all this time, and now he was so close. He was too close.

"Cor," he said, hoping she couldn't hear the tremor in his voice over the sound of the wind and the crackle of the fire, "you're not thinking straight. If the Vitae find out how this place works, they will rule the Quarter Galaxy."

"And if the Family finds out how this place works, then what?" Cor shook her head and Jay saw the rock-hard resistance behind her eyes. The fire struck sparks in them. "No. No matter who gets hold of them, they're never going to be left alone again. The only thing they can do is keep running and fighting us all off." Her voice dropped almost to a whisper. "With the number of birth defects they've got, I doubt the whole place has more than four generations left anyway. Then it's over with, but they're at least not being bred into slavery."

Jay felt the world tilt under his feet. Anger rushed through him, faster than the wind through the reeds, and all of it focused on the woman in front of him, calmly facing him down as if he were no more than a Bonded, or a total fool.

"Then why in all this hell did you come here?" he croaked. "Why didn't you stay with your Notouch?"