The Bond by Robin Kirk

Author:Robin Kirk [Robin Kirk]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Far Eek Books
Published: 2022-04-13T00:00:00+00:00

18

Ash

Timbe leads me to my quarters opposite the Council House. The younger Captains have rooms on the second floor.

My room is simple: a bed with pillow and blanket, a flame lamp turned low, a table. On a small trunk is a jug of water and wash bowl. A window overlooks the street.

Timbe points to a square of cloth on the bed: a Captain's cloak and clasp. In the trunk are fresh tunics, underclothes, and leggings. For 12, there’s a water bowl and her own cloak, for her bed.

“Kesh had the metalsmith strike the clasp last year,” Timbe tells me. The clasp is a hyba head, with yellow stones for eyes. “She’s been expecting you a long time.”

There are two more gifts on the table: a leather-bound book with empty pages and a packet of drawing supplies: pressed charcoal sticks, brushes, a tiny paddle to mix paint. I marvel at them. I’ve never had brushes I didn’t have to carve myself.

There are fresh vials, empty, fit like tiny bolts in the bandolier of a leather case. Timbe flips open the book's cover and points to the writing on the first page. Draw what you see. Write what you will. Tell the truth. Beneath is scrawled a name: Kesh 544-DxL.

Timbe turns to go. 12 has already scratched the floor, turned three times, and stretched out, using the cloak as a pillow.

“I’ve never slept alone.” Even after the Rail, Anku and Petal were with me. I can still feel Sil’s moist fingers on my cheek. Everything’s a jumble. I don’t know how to feel. Is knowing about the Mother-Bond supposed to change me? Am I supposed to look at Kesh and feel it, like a touch? A shared thought? A hunger? Is it embedded in the circuitry of my skin, like a tracker map?

I don’t understand how a bond can be a weapon. To me, Kesh sounded crazy as she talked about defeating the Weave. She never mentioned the Legion, the new fleet. What possible weapon, what army could match the Weave’s power?

Yet no one knows the power of the Legion better than Kesh. And the question I keep asking: where are the males? Where are the sons?

Timbe steps into the hall. “You are hardly alone with the cross at your side. Someone will come for you in the morning. There will be plenty of time for questions. Meanwhile, get some sleep.”

Alone in the room, I pace. 12’s eyes follow, as if at any moment I might jump out the window. I imagine telling the girls back in Holdfast everything I’ve seen—the Captains, a boy. Drafts stranger than any childhood tale. Kesh, a three-sheaf commander turned traitor. By her own admission, she’s spent years plotting the Weave's destruction.

She spent years plotting to bring me to Bounty. To have me. I look at the clasp but can’t bring myself to touch it.

Those girls in Holdfast, and Asta. Chicks inside their shells, as Kesh said she and Anku were before coming to Bounty. In every

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