Carnival

They had to heave Chun’s unconscious body aside to slip through. The sentry had passed out leaning against the door with his plate in his lap. Kusanagi-Jones carefully reclosed the door, pulled the chain free and slipped it into his pocket, and propped Chun back up as he had been. There was no need to leave the place looking like an escape in progress.

And then, side by side, Robert chatting aimlessly about some sporting event, they headed for the gate.

“Easier to steal an aircar,” Kusanagi-Jones suggested in low tones. “I can hotwire those.”

“They all have beacons. Besides, it’s only about fifteen kilometers. We’ll be fine.”

The boots were too tight and pinched across the ball of Kusanagi-Jones’s feet. He could already feel every step of that fifteen kilometers. “I hope you can run,” he quipped, which earned him an arched eyebrow.

He wondered what Vincent would have made of that look, of the jaunty set of Robert’s shoulders.

And if it would have meant anything. Because if Robert had been fooling Lesa for as long as he must have been, the only explanation was that either he was a Liar, too, or he’d been very lucky never to find himself in a context that Lesa could pick up what he was concealing from her.

Of course, it was possible that the New Amazonian women just didn’t talk to their men very much.

The guard at the gap in the zareba barely gave them a glance. They emerged into a camouflaged clearing that extended a few meters beyond the stockade, and crossed it quickly, Kusanagi-Jones blinking gratefully when they entered the shade of the trees. He slid a hand under the borrowed shirt and retrieved the datacart, wincing at the beep when it activated.

Amateurs.

Something took flight overhead, invisible among the branches.

“What are you doing?” Robert asked.

“She’s east?”

“So Medeline said.” Robert stepped into the lead, using his own long knife to lift vegetation out of the way rather than slashing at it. Of that, at least, Kusanagi-Jones approved.

The map was easy to use. Lesa’s estimated position was marked by a yellow dot, that of Kusanagi-Jones and Robert by a pulsing green glow. All he had to do was make the second match the first.

He’d done harder things in Academy.

Robert never knew what hit him. Michelangelo stepped left, the chain from the door doubled in his right hand, the lock swinging freely. It struck Robert at the base of the skull, on a rising arc that snapped his head forward and sent him crashing forward into the brush. His knife went flying.

Michelangelo had to search to find it, after he straddled Robert and broke his neck.

It was a pity, because Michelangelo had sort of liked him. But he’d already proved he would switch sides over a woman he’d betrayed at least once, and unlike Vincent, Michelangelo didn’t believe in redemption.

And you couldn’t trust a Liar.

Lesa would have taken the night before over the day that followed. At least nants weren’t much for climbing, and few of them bothered to scale the inside of her trousers past where they bunched at the knee. After a while, the scathing agony of each individual bite, like a heated needle slipped into her skin, dulled into consistent pain as her flesh puffed up, honeycombed with lymph.

And when she could manage not to flinch reflexively at every bite, she didn’t wind up imbedding the thorns farther into her skin. Thrashing wouldn’t help her anyway. The wire-plant’s barbs were backcurved like fishhooks, and every twist impaled her more. But if she could get her hands around the vines…

They were strong enough to take Stefan’s weight. If Lesa could manage a grip on them while she still had the strength, she could lift herself off the barbs. They hurt,but they weren’t long enough to threaten her unless they tore her throat or eyes, or punctured her inner thighs where the femoral arteries ran shallow.

It meant freeing one arm, however, while her entire weight rested on the wire-plant wrapping her other arm and her torso, and every movement earned her anguish.

The thorns didn’t come out any sweeter than they’d gone in. She closed her eyes in concentration and lifted, edged, bending her wrist in an arc that encouraged the burred vine to drag down the back of her hand. She couldn’t just yank herself off the thorns without impaling herself on others; she had to coax it.

It was like giving birth, one centimeter, two centimeters. A slide and a moan and a fraction closer to freedom.

Flecks of sun dotted her face through the fluttering leaves of the strangler oak, and her tongue swelled in her mouth by the time she got the last serrated coil to scrape down her arm and drop away. She swayed with reaction and gasped painfully, the vines crossing her torso tightening.