Stars above between the rock walls. The sound of nothing at all. They're gone, he said quietly. For now. Yes, he turned back.
For now. She was looking at him in the dark. He could barely see her. Just the outline, the dark eyes catching what little light there was. "You're bleeding," she said.
He looked at his arm. He'd caught it on a rock coming through the gap. He'd felt it, but hadn't registered it in the way you didn't register things when other things mattered more. A cut along the outer forearm, not deep, but open and dark in the low light. "It's fine," he said.
Don't. She reached into his pack, found the cloth strips he kept there. He began wrapping his arm with the same quiet efficiency she did everything. He let her. This needs to be tied properly, she said, working.
It's fine, Sai. I know it's fine. I'm making it finer, a pause. Hold still, he held still, her hands on his arm in the dark, certain, not hesitant. The same hands that had stitched her own sleeve back in the cabin that had pressed flat against the dry creek bed and read the water underneath.
"You thought of everything," she said. "Quiet, the pack, the route, the place to go. That's the job. It wasn't a job. " She tied the last knot. Didn't let go right away.
Jack, he waited. Why? She said, "Why risk this? Why not just She stopped. Tried a different way into it.
They would have left you alone if you'd handed me over. He thought about it. The real answer, not the convenient one. I told you, he said. I couldn't save the last one, Danny.
I obeyed instead of thinking. I followed the order instead of the thing I knew was right. He paused. He trusted me to see the truth before it was too late. And I saw it, and I waited 1 second too long.
She was quiet. So, no, he said. I I wasn't going to wait this time. The canyon breathed around them cold and still and enormously old. These rock walls that had been here before either of them and would be here after her hand was still on his arm.
She didn't seem to notice or she noticed and decided not to move it. He noticed he decided not to say anything. My father will come, she said. I know. When he does, when he gets word of where I am, he'll try to get me out himself.
He'll come, which is what they want. Yes. A beat. We need to reach him first or send word something to tell him not to. Not to react the way they're counting on.
Jack thought about that. The routes, the distances, the people he might trust with a message. Yasa, he said. She went still. You know Yasa.
I know the name. Your father mentioned him in. He stopped, caught himself. She was looking at him now, and even in the dark, he could feel the sharpness of it. How did you hear my father mention anything?
She said slowly. He exhaled because here it was the thing he'd been working up to and hadn't quite arrived at yet. The night you told me his name, Jack said carefully. AOT. I told you I'd seen it on military maps.
That's true. But I've also heard it in a different context. He paused. About 4 months before the Coyote Valley incident, there was a briefing Fitch running it. He was talking about a band leader in the southern Churikaha who was organizing resistance against the land surveys and he said another pause.
He said a hoti had a contact someone sending him information about patrol routes. Someone inside the networks sia was very still. He didn't know who it was Jack said but he said there was an old man named Yasa who was the gobetween. A long silence and Danny Seiya said carefully. Dany knew this.
I think Dany found more than just the land order. I think he found the name of whoever Voss and Fitch were trying to root out the informant. The one feeding information to your father. Seiya breathed doubt slowly. If that person is still still out there, still functional, still connected to a hoe.
Jack nodded. That's how we reach him. Through Yasa. Another silence. Then she said, "You've been putting this together for 3 years. " "No, for 11 days," he paused.
"Some of it for 3 years without knowing. It was part of a picture. " She sat back against the rock wall. He heard more than saw it. The slight exhale, the adjustment, the sound of someone sitting with something heavy and deciding whether to put it down or hold it a while longer. "You know what?
I keep thinking," she said. "What? I keep thinking about what you said that Dany was trying to tell you something. Find Voss. A pause.
He knew Voss was the center of it, not Fitch. Fitch is the arm. Voss is the the route, Jack said. Yes. The word sat between them in the dark.
Route the thing that fed everything else. The thing you had to pull up entirely or it just grew back. They couldn't go back to the cabin that night or the next. They made a camp of sorts in the canyon hollow. Jack had the oil cloth, the water, some jerked meat.