LITMIR.BIZ

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      Ness picks it up. ‘Look what you’ve done. You’ve broken it!’

      Sky gives me her best scowl. ‘You’re such a gom, Kyle.’

      The Deeps are a maze of narrow canyons between sheer cliff walls. In this main canyon we now call home, the cliffs to the east overhang a rocky shelf, forming an immense natural amphitheatre. That’s where all our tents and shacks are. The rocks below the shelf are riddled with caves and tunnels. These are too regular to be natural, but nobody knows who dug them out in the way-back-when before Wrath became a dump world and humans started arriving. Nobody cares much either. We just use them. Like this healer chamber I’m in now.

      Shirt off, I’m sitting on an icy-cold metal table with my chest all strapped up. Rona’s bandage is wound so tight around me that breathing is a battle. Just my luck that it was my foster-mother on duty. I figure she’s strapped me extra-tight because she’s so mad at me.

      I hate this room’s stink of soap, antiseptic and blood. It reminds me too much of the Facility lab where Slayer medics kept me prisoner, pumping my blood into my father, the Saviour.

      Now she’s stitching a gash above my eye.

      ‘Kyle!’ Rona scolds. ‘Quit wriggling about, or I’ll give you a mirror and you can stitch the damn thing yourself.’

      ‘It hurts,’ I say, staring at the curve of needle she’s holding.

      ‘Course it bloody hurts. Taking on a combat instructor . . . you’re lucky he didn’t kill you.’ She frowns and leans in again. I feel the sting of the needle, a plucking at my forehead as she tugs the thread through. ‘What were you thinking?’

      ‘I lost my temper.’

      ‘Your mind more like.’

      ‘The guy was giving me a hard time,’ Colm says.

      ‘He doesn’t know you’re –?’ Rona lets the question hang.

      We never talk about Colm and me being the Saviour’s sons. Apart from us, I think only Ballard knows. We leave that little detail out of the speeches he makes me give. Could be awkward, he says. Awkward? Colm reckons we’d be torn limb from limb.

      It’s a constant worry that we’ll be found out.

      ‘If he knew that, you’d be sewing me into a body bag,’ I say.

      Rona breathes out sharply, warming my ear with a tut. Six more stitches and she ties a knot and bites the end off. I brace myself to be bitched at – it isn’t the first time she’s had to fix me up.

      ‘Oh, Kyle,’ she says, sounding tired. ‘I know it’s tough with the grief you both get. But fighting will only make things worse.’

      I squirm away, feeling all tight inside.

      ‘Sometimes you have to fight. You don’t understand.’

      ‘I understand all right.’ She hands me my blood-spattered shirt, and rubs her eyes. ‘I’m just sick to death of fighting and war.’

      ‘Ballard says we’re winning,’ Colm says.

      ‘Don’t you start! If we are winning, it doesn’t feel like it. All us healers see are windjammers bringing us cargo bays piled high with wounded fighters to patch up. There’s no end to it.’

      She’s not wrong; we’ve all seen them. It’s six bigmoons now since the Facility raid and I guess it’s like Murdo says – you go poking a stick into a wrathmite hole, don’t be surprised when the bugs swarm out and bite you. The word reaching us out here in the Deeps is that Gemini’s taking some serious heat. The Saviour’s Slayer army has gone on the offensive, trying to wipe us out. The Blight is a smoking ruin and Bastion has been evacuated.

      Rona sighs. ‘So many die. Maybe they’re the lucky ones.’

      ‘You call dying lucky?’ I say.

      She looks through me. ‘I had one nublood kid in here a week ago. Gut-shot. Screaming and bleeding all over the place. We fixed him up. He healed so quickly he was sent out again.’

      ‘That’s good, isn’t it?’ I say, confused.

      ‘Is it? He was back yesterday. Blaster-burnt this time. What must it do to these kids’ heads, being so badly wounded, patched up and sent back out to fight, or die? They’re all so . . . young.’

      Younger than me. Yeah, I know.

      ‘You can’t fight wars without taking losses.’

      If Sky were here she’d be nodding, but Rona snorts as she swabs stuff on to my stitches.

      ‘Oh, listen to you. Those losses have names, and mothers too. But I’m wasting my breath. You won’t listen. The young think that dying only happens to other people.’

      I duck away from her swabbing. Whatever she’s putting on me stings like crazy. ‘You’re saying we shouldn’t fight?’

      She dredges up a sad smile. ‘I’m not. Kyle, I’m a healer, not a fighter. Even when I was your age I couldn’t kill, whatever the cause. That’s why I served the way I did, looking after you.’

      Before I can stop her, she messes up my hair.

      That does it. I have to tell her.

      ‘They hate me. Colm too. We train the same as they do, but while they go off to fight we sit on our hands, safe here. You should see the looks they give us – like we’re cowards!’

      I glance at my brother. He seems more interested in the floor.

      ‘That’s nonsense. You serve in other ways, that’s all.’

      I taste bile in the back of my throat.

      ‘Yeah? Tell them that. Making stupid speeches for Ballard. Him banging on about what a hero I am. Why can’t we be fighters like the rest of them? Fighting Slayers would be easier.’

      ‘Now you’re being stupid.’

      ‘At least we’d know who our enemies are.’

      Rona clicks her tongue. ‘Your work is important. So is Colm’s. People here are scared and anxious. We’ve taken a hammering and Ballard needs you to remind people that we can win.’

      She goes to help me into my shirt.

      ‘I can manage.’ I jump down from the examination table.

      ‘Suit yourself.’ Rona starts tidying away the bits and pieces of her healing trade. ‘Do you want something for the pain?’

      ‘No. I don’t want anything. I’m done here.’

      I struggle into my shirt, even the buttons wanting to fight me.

      ‘How’s Sky?’ Rona says, watching.

      ‘How should I know?’

      My foster-mother’s grey eyes meet mine. ‘She was here not long ago, fired up about something. I told her where to find you.’

      I hesitate, wondering if Sky’s said anything to her. I bet she has. She’s here loads – they get along big time. Rona never says it, but I know she wishes Sky and me would get back together again.

      ‘Sky’s got a lead on her sister,’ I tell her reluctantly.

      ‘That’s great news!’ Rona’s face brightens. Only now she must notice my scowl. ‘Don’t you think?’

      How can someone who’s seen forty summers be so dumb?

      ‘She wants me to help her rescue Tarn and bring her back,’ I say.

      ‘Ah. You did say you would.’

      ‘Yeah, but I can’t. Ballard would never allow it.’

      ‘You’ve asked him?’

      I scowl at her.

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