Carnival

“If we take her back to camp, it’s just one more decision to make in the end,” Stefan said. He turned, and caught her gaping before she could glance down. His mouth firmed over his teeth, an expression she understood. A duelist’s expression, and one she’d seen on the faces of stud males before a Trial.

“It’s too much risk to keep her alive,” he said, and Lesa let the breath she seemed to be holding hiss out over her teeth, and, for a moment, closed her eyes.

“And too much risk to shoot her,” the woman said. Lesa opened her eyes in time to see Stefan answer her with a flip of his hand, but she continued. “She has family in the group, Stefan. I don’t think anybody’s going to be comfortable with the idea that their relatives aren’t safe—”

“Do you suppose they thought we’d be able to overthrow the government without bloodshed?”

The woman bit her lip. “I don’t think they expected their lovers to be shot out of hand.”

Stefan nodded, still staring at Lesa, who managed another shallow breath around the tightness in her throat. “It’ll have to look natural, then,” he said. “That’s not hard. There are plenty of ways to die in the jungle. Exposure, fexa, sneakbite.”

He glanced around, and Lesa wobbled to her feet. The woman leveled her rifle again, her squint creasing the corners of her eyes. Thank you,Lesa mouthed at her, but she only shrugged and shifted her grip on the rifle.

“Here,” Stefan said. “Mikhail, give me your gloves.”

The second man pulled a pair of hide gloves from another cargo pocket and passed them to Stefan. He tugged them on, his eyes on his fingers rather than Lesa as he made sure they were seated perfectly. And then he walked toward her, past her, and began tugging at the mess of wire-plant until the bulk of it was on the ground, the long stems dragging down from their parasitic anchor points in the canopy. Nests fell in showers of twigs and twists of desiccated parasitic moss, two yellow-gray eggs shattering on the ground and one bouncing unharmed on a patch of carpetplant.

When he’d freed most of the vines, Stefan placed his hands carefully between thorns and gave the plant a hard, definite yank, enough to sway the strangler oak it rooted in and bring another shower of twigs and dead leaves down. A glistening black Francisco’s macaw swooped down, shrieking, and made a close pass at his head, fore-wings beating wildly and the hind-wings folded so close to its body that the gold primary feathers merged with the tail plumage.

Stefan ignored it completely, even when it made a second pass, close enough for the claws of its hind-wings to brush his hair. “Bring her up here.”

Mikhail and the woman started forward, though she waited until Mikhail had a good grip on Lesa before lowering the rifle.

Lesa made them drag her. A few scuffs in the earth might be revealing, if the right person found her body.

If anyone ever found her body.

She shook her head. Negative thinking. She wouldfind a way out of this.

Mikhail unlocked her cuffs, but by then Stefan had her arms too tightly restrained for her struggling and feet-dragging to make any difference. But she kept squirming and kicking anyway, until fighting made the thorns of the wire-plant Stefan wound around her bite that much deeper. Then she sagged, dead weight, but he hung her on the plant like so much laundry anyway, vines winding her wrists and crossing her chest, thorns sunk like hooks into her skin.

When Mikhail released her and the thorns took her weight, she couldn’t even scream. She choked out a whimper, bit her lip, managed to pull it back to the barest whine. Her flesh stretched against imbedded thorns.

Mikhail backed up, scrubbing his palms against his capaciously pocketed trousers, and the woman looked down as Stefan draped a few more vines artistically across her chest. Then he also moved away, frowning at his handiwork. Lesa could barely see him, though the morning had grown bright. Her vision was empty at the edges, and every breath, no matter how shallow, sank the vine’s three-centimeter thorns more deeply into her skin. Some of them shattered, stripping off the vines, but there were many more, and they were fresh and green.

They took her weight.

Stefan dropped out of sight. Lesa heard scuffling, but couldn’t turn her head. A moment later, he reappeared, sliding from under her log with her improvised club in his hand. He weighed it across his palm, and then took good hold of it and smashed at the ground with a croquet-mallet swing.

Whatever he was doing, a few blows satisfied him. He whirled the club overhead, and slung it tumbling deep among the trees. Mikhail stared down at his feet, and flinched when Lesa couldn’t hold back another whimper.

“Right,” Stefan said, grabbing the woman’s wrist in a liberty that would have shocked Lesa under other circumstances. “Come on,” he said, and paused long enough to smile up at Lesa. “Pleasant dreams, Miss Pretoria.”

Then he herded his companions away.