The Rift - Howard Chris (читать книги TXT) 📗

Then the poacher at my back shoved me forward. My legs were bound together so tight, I had to hop into the room.

And I mean, I call it a room, but all it was really was just a hole in the ground. There was a fire blazing in the center, flames crackling inside a ring of stone, and black smoke leaching up. And I counted nine poachers sat cross-legged in a circle around it.

Some of them had to turn around so they could face me, their eyes boring into mine as the old steel door got sealed behind me with a scrape.

I stared back into those wretched faces. Their features all creased and bitter. Chunks of skin missing. The women no fairer than the men. All of them were short-haired or greasy-haired or had no hair at all. Sunken eyes and scummy teeth.

They were like ugly brothers and sisters. Grown old before their time.

Except for one of them.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

Kade made his most handsome smile as he looked at me. The red flames in the pit burned in his green eyes. He had on long robes made of cornhusks, the color of clay, but he hadn’t gotten himself a wash or nothing. He was still painted with grime and grit.

Still, he looked a couple decades younger than the other poachers in that circle, and his teeth shone as he took a fistful of popcorn and shoved it in his mouth. I held his gaze as he licked his fingers and chomped his jaws. His eyes swaggering in their sockets.

“Said you were a field hand,” I said. “In some cornhusk city.”

“I was.” Kade shook back the stiff sleeves of his robe and grasped his stump with his hand. “Until the blades took my fingers.”

“So, no poems. No bootlegging. You just squirmed your way down here with the thieves.”

“I told you, I traveled all over.” He grinned, his mouth swollen full of corn. “A man has to do something with his life.”

“This ain’t living.” I stared at the poachers who hunched around the fire pit. I watched them feeding the flames with cornhusks. The whole room smoky as it was foul.

“But it is you who is the thief,” said a woman with metal bracelets on her wrists and slits for eyes. “If everything that’s been said is true.”

“I ain’t a thief.”

“Yet you stole,” said another of the poachers. “On the island.”

“What I took weren’t GenTech’s to begin with.”

“Your father,” said the woman with the bracelets. “He was a scientist. He worked for the Executive Chief.”

“He was a tree builder. Worked for no one but himself.”

“But he worked with your mother once,” the woman said. “The Soljah told us. They both worked for GenTech.”

“What difference does it make?”

“You said these trees belong to you.”

“I said they don’t belong to GenTech. And what? You want to give them to the people you been stealing corn from for the last hundred years?”

The woman gazed at me for a moment. Then she gazed into the fire. “We are establishing where these things came from, and who will come looking for them.”

“Lord Kade told us these things will grow too strong for the locusts.” This freak looked even worse than the others, ribs sticking out like a bony fist, a crown of cornhusks on his head. “He said they’ll bear fruit.”

Fruit. Just the sound of the word made me spin with hunger. I watched Kade, still throwing back his popcorn. Lord Kade, I guess I should say. The punk that was a poacher lord.

“Hungry?” he asked when he saw me eyeing his corn.

“What about Namo?” I glared at him. “What have you done with him?”

“But what of this fruit?” said the guy with the crown. “Have you seen it, boy? Did you taste it?”

“Hell, yeah, I tasted it. Tastes like cheese and maple syrup and every other flavor GenTech figured out how to brew. And it sits like a rock in your belly. Fills you up inside for a week.”

“He’s lying,” Kade said. “The trees will grow apples. But he’s never seen one.”

“You sure about that, compadre?”

He started to say something about Zee, the things she had told him. But I cut him off sharp.

“Don’t even say her name, you son of a bitch. You betrayed everything Zee stood for.”

“You never even knew her.” Kade’s voice quivered with anger.

“Least I didn’t pretend to. Least I didn’t use her, like you.”

He shot to his feet.

“Sit down, Lord Kade,” said the woman with the world’s thinnest eyes. She turned to the rest of her cronies. “They belonged to GenTech. They must have been made to grow fruit.”

“But where do we plant them?” This from a man with a peeling red scalp. He dug his nails into the dirt beside him.

“A good question, Lord Baxter.” The man who wore the cornhusk crown let out a sigh. Like he was all worn out, sitting there on his skinny ass by the fire. “A great gift Lord Kade has brought us. But a great burden also.”

“Tell you what,” I said. “I’ll take them trees off your hands. GenTech won’t even know they were here.”

“Silence.” Bracelets held up her hands, showing us her creased palms, her fingers like claws. “For too long have we feared the might of Vega. For too long have we dreamt of overthrowing the masters of the fields.”

“Then this is our chance,” rumbled Baxter, rubbing dirt on his scalp. “If these are the only ones. The last trees.”

“He burned them,” said Kade, pointing his stump at me. “He burned all the rest.”

“And there were no others?” said someone who till then had stayed silent. “On the boat?”

“What of the Soljah?” piped up another. “Are there others like him?”

I thought of Alpha. The bit of bark stitched on her belly.

“We need the boy to tell us what he knows about growing them,” said Baxter. “The Soljah said he’s the only one that can.”

And what was this? What lies had Crow told them? Selling me out and screwing me over? Or was he trying to buy me some time?

“It’s not just growing them.” Bracelets glanced around the circle. “We need help protecting them.”

The man with the crown nodded as he watched the fire. “That’s why I’ve summoned our allies,” he said quietly.

The woman opened her eyes as wide as she could. “My lord,” she whispered, fluttering her bracelets. “I should have been consulted.”

Dude just shrugged.

“They will be here,” said Baxter, his eyes fixed on the flames. Fingers still rubbing his scalp. “Before evening shadows.”

“I can’t agree with this course of action.” Kade had sat his ass back down, and now he stared across the flames at Baxter and the guy with the crown.

The old prune lifted up the cornhusks on his head and scratched his thin white hair. Then he put the crown back on and closed his eyes. “I, too, wish this could be a prize for us alone. But we must share the spoils, if we are to survive.”

“There are other ways, Lord Orlic,” said Kade.

“None that offer safety. We need their help.”

“Who?” I said, unable to keep quiet any longer. “Who you counting on?”

“An old friend.” Orlic opened his eyes, fixed them upon me. “Or friends, I suppose, is more accurate. Pray you’re still alive to meet them when they arrive.”

“I don’t pray for nobody.”

“Very well.” Orlic let out a big sigh, then straightened his crown. “Guards, bring the boy closer. It’s time we found out what he knows.”