Crecheling by D. J. Butler Page A

taking this all very personally.”
    “Good,” Jak countered. He threw a silvery microfiber blanket from one of the saddlebags over Eirig, and then settled into a seated position against one wall of the cave under a second. He snapped off the light stick, plunging them all into cool darkness. “So am I.”
    ***

Chapter Eight
    Dyan awoke lying on her side, feeling dirty and stiff. The salty animal tang of bats filled her nostrils so much it seemed to her she could actually taste the little creatures on her tongue. Her neck was balled into a single knot of stressed tissue and the left side of her face stung from lying on sand and stone all night.
    To her surprise, she could see.
    Cheela slumped upright against a large rock, chin forward on her chest, sleeping. A silver-wrapped lump in the corner, just where Eirig had fallen asleep the night before, snored gently. There was no sign of Jak.
    Dyan rolled onto her back and sat up. She ached, every part of her, saddle-sore or foot-weary or scraped or bruised.
    The light, she realized, came from above, and it was daylight. The top of the slanted well in the bottom of which they lay was open to the sky, and when she craned her neck around to look, she could just see the tiniest sliver of blue. By the faint light she could see that the well was climbable, even comfortably so. She also saw clumps of brown lichen all over the walls that she hadn’t noticed the night before. They looked like leopard’s spots, and she was leaning very close to get a good look at one before she realized what they must be.
    Bats.
    She pulled away at the last second.
    Dyan leaned down and squinted out the crack onto the ledge by which they had come into the cave. She could see daylight there, too, and no sign of the Landsman boy she had been assigned to kill.
    Now was her chance to escape. She took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and exhaled. She tried to let all the tension and stiffness she felt flow out of her body with the air of her lungs, to deflate like a balloon, become limp and soft and relaxed.
    When she felt so relaxed she was almost fluid, she tried to slip her hands out of their bonds.
    And failed.
    “Lying funvids!” she cursed.
    Cheela jerked her head up. Even in the moment of her waking up, her eyes stared at Dyan with a hawklike expression that was hard to interpret as anything other than full of hatred. She looked around quickly at the cave and then back at Dyan. “Shh!”
    Dyan nodded.
    Cheela stood. She was wobbly on her knees, but she gritted her teeth with determination and pushed her back against the stone. Dyan followed her example, the effort bringing tears to her eyes. It felt like the long muscles of her legs ripped as she moved.
    When they were standing, Dyan nodded her head at the crack exit and mouthed a message, Jak’s gone .
    Either Cheela didn’t understand her, or she ignored Dyan. The Outrider-designate whispered back, very softly. “We kill the cripple and get out of here.”
    “With what?” Dyan whispered back.
    For an answer, Cheela raised one rider’s boot off the ground, showing Dyan its sharp and heavy heel.
    Dyan flinched. “I don’t know if I can do that.”
    Cheela shrugged. “Not my problem.” She stepped across the scratchy sand floor of the well and stood over Eirig. Leaning against the wall with her shoulder, she dragged back the microfiber blanket with her boot.
    Eirig continued to snore. His clothing was crusted with dirt, and beneath the dirt on his face, Dyan saw bruises. He looked like a little kid, innocent and grubby. Cheela raised her leg to stomp on the boy—
    “Bad idea.”
    The voice was Jak’s, and it was loud in the cave.
    Dyan looked up and saw him perched above Eirig like a roosting bird. He had been hidden behind a rock, and now emerged to intervene. He held a spear in his hand. Once, Dyan would have laughed at the spear, which was the weapon of outlaws and cavemen in the funvids, but she had seen gentle, harmless Wayland