Chapter 2: Better Alive
"More or less."
She was already moving. She crouched beside him and pulled back the edge of his coat without asking. Her hands found the wound imdiately, pressing and probing without hesitation, checking what needed checking and moving on.
He watched her while she worked. The dead creature lay nearby. The air around it carried iron and opened earth, heavy enough that the afternoon wind didn’t clear it. The bag she was pulling supplies from was his.
He’d noticed it earlier, hanging at her right side before she crouched. It had been lying a few feet away from the rest of the wreckage, maybe four feet or so, separate enough to stand out.
Sothing pressed in, uninvited. A different light. Hands moving across a surface, the sll of sothing sterile that had no na in this world. Gone before he could look at it directly.
"That from my kit?" he asked.
"Your dressings are cleaner than mine."
"I’ll take that as a yes," he said.
She didn’t respond.
She wrapped the wound carefully, hands moving fast but steady. She tightened the bandage, then paused to check the pressure. Dry scrub rustled sowhere beyond the wreckage.
The hardpan ticked faintly in the heat. A mont later she checked it again, then leaned back on her heels and studied the result, head tilted slightly.
He looked past her toward the sky. The Scar stretched across the blue above him, jagged and pale in the afternoon light. Its far edge always looked wrong against the sky, as if the world had been cut and poorly sealed.
He knew its outline the sa way he knew the prince’s na and the exile that ca with it. The body rembered even when the details inside them were missing.
"We need to move before dark," she said. She had already turned east, scanning the terrain with quick movents. "This close to the wilderness, night becos a different problem."
He followed her gaze for a mont, then focused on the practical question. "How far to Ashmark?"
She glanced back at him briefly. "Two days."
"Using the main road?"
"We won’t use it."
He studied her expression. She was still watching the terrain, jaw tight.
"Why not?" he asked.
She turned and looked directly at him. "I’m Sinbound."
She said nothing after. She watched his face.
The word hit him and triggered sothing in the body’s mory. Old associations surfaced. Worn smooth from use. Danger. The human kind.
Her attention had not moved off him.
He looked east again, considering the route. "How much ti does going around add?"
"Half a day," she said after a mont. The answer ca slower than the others.
"That’s not bad."
She stayed silent for a few seconds.
"You know what Sinbound ans," she said.
"I know the word."
"Then you know what I’m talking about."
"I know it makes the main road complicated," he said. "I’m asking about the detour."
She held his gaze for another beat. So thinking that didn’t reach her face. Then she turned away and began sorting through the broken supply fras scattered around the crash site. Her decisions about what to keep happened quickly. Once she chose an item, she didn’t second-guess it.
She moved through the wreckage without hesitation, reading each pile before she touched it.
He pushed himself upright into a sitting position. Pain pulled sharply along his side and he paused to breathe through it.
"The gate guards," he said. "In Ashmark. Are they Crown soldiers?"
She made a short sound that might have been a laugh.
"Crown soldiers. Sure."
She pulled a water skin from the wreckage and weighed it in one hand, testing how full it was.
"There’s a garrison," she continued, setting the water skin aside in a small keep pile. "Ask
how many actually show up for drill."
"How many show up for drill?"
"I don’t know. No one counted in years." She moved to the next broken fra and started searching through it. "The ones who do show up take orders from whoever’s been paying them the longest. Right now that isn’t the Crown."
He watched her hands as she worked through the debris.
"You’ve been inside the walls," he said.
"Twice."
She pulled a wrapped bundle from beneath a collapsed support fra, checked what was inside, then set it down beside her.
"First ti I needed rest and passage," she said. "The city gate was easier than going around." She set the bundle down. "Second ti was a mistake."
She picked up the bundle again and added it to the keep pile.
"The people who run the real arrangents inside those walls don’t care about a prince’s seal or a garrison’s authority," she said. "They control the supply routes. They control the warehouse district. And they control the gate guards whether the guards realize it or not."
She glanced at him. Or rather, at the signet ring on his finger.
"Your title gets you through the gate," she said. "After that, you’re dealing with a completely different set of rules."
"Who sets those rules?" he asked.
"Right now? A man nad Harvin Coss."
She tightened the knot on the bundle she had packed.
"He’s been building influence out here longer than most crowns bother paying attention," she continued. "Controls the mines. Controls the supply. Holds the contracts for half the work crews operating in the Badlands."
She finished tying the bundle.
"The steward who runs Ashmark on paper does whatever Coss finds convenient," she said. "That’s not a secret. It’s just how the place functions."
Harvin Coss. Everything attached to it was new. He searched the body’s mory for context about Ashmark’s internal factions and found only vague outlines. He knew Ashmark had factions. The nas behind them were blank.
"Is that who you’re taking
to?" he asked.
She stopped moving.
Then she looked back at him over her shoulder.
"What makes you think I’m taking you anywhere specific?"
He t her gaze without answering.
They held eye contact for a mont.
Then she turned back to the pack and continued organizing supplies.
"I haven’t decided yet," she said.
"You have a starting point, though."
"I have a starting point."
She stood up and lifted the pack once, checking the balance.
"A live prince is worth sothing in Ashmark," she said. She said it without looking at him.
He considered that.
The pieces missing from the explanation were chosen. She had said exactly what she needed to say. The timing of her intervention. The bag already recovered. The route already forming in her mind.
The basic structure of the plan was clear enough.
"Can you walk?" she asked.
He took stock. The bandage held. Pain concentrated in his side and left leg. The rest was workable.
"Yes," he said.
She studied his bandaged side, then his face.
"Three hours of light left," she said. "We need to cover ground."
Standing took longer than he wanted it to. She watched the process without stepping in to help. She also didn’t comnt when he finally managed it.
Once he was upright, she checked the straps on the pack, turned east, and started walking.
He followed.
The hardpan stretched ahead of them in wide, dry sheets. Low scrub caught the fading light. Jagged rock formations interrupted the horizon at irregular intervals.
He chose not to look back.
Three hours of light.
He breathed through the tight pull in his side and kept pace. She had given him one na. The one he actually needed was still hers.
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