A knock at the door roused me from my painful attempt at taking a nap.
"Liza, are you okay?" It was Kaliska. "The door is stuck, and I can't wake up Mar'kost."
"Why not?" My voice came out so faintly that I doubted she heard me. Raising my voice, I called, "Why can't you wake him?"
"He's a heavy sleeper, I guess. Do you need help?"
"Uh..." After passing an hour counting seconds for entertainment because I couldn't reach the bookshelf, I was more open to company. "I used magic to move the bed in front of the door, but I can't move it again because I'm out of magic."
"I see... I'll ask Cadmus for help."
After much grunting and cursing under their breaths, Cadmus and Kaliska managed to squeeze past the bed.
"What happened, sweetie?" Kaliska asked.
"Ikaru-" I couldn't make myself say it. "We got in a fight. I didn't want him coming in. Now I'm out of magic, and I'm so-" I shouldn't say 'hungry.' Normal food wouldn't do anything for my problem. "I'm not feeling good. I- I've gotten like this before, and Mark helped me, but he's asleep, and even if he was awake, he's not in any shape to help me."
"What does he do to help you?"
That was hard to explain. Well, it wasn't hard to explain, but I didn't want to tell them how I was literally a magic leech. "I'll be fine until he's better."
She tutted. "Give us a moment, dear."
Cadmus slipped out of the room, and Kaliska knelt next to me.
"I may not be a trained healer, but I have healing supplies. You can tell me what you need. There's no reason to be embarrassed."
I really hoped that was true. "He gives me magic."
"You mean a healing potion?"
"Maybe that'd work. I don't really know why, but-" It was just a natural part of my freaky biology. I shouldn't feel guilty about it. "-I need magic. Or arka, I guess. When I'm low, I feel really bad... and hungry." I swallowed. "Mark and me have these dreams where we're together, and I absorb some of his arka by touching him. Usually, he gets arka from eating and going in the dungeon, but he hasn't been doing either of those things recently."
"I see." She didn't sound like she entirely understood my problem, but I couldn't blame her; I barely understood it myself.
She frowned. "If you went into the dungeon, would that help you?"
"I'm not sure. Maybe? I don't have a clue why I need arka or why I get it from Mark. But it's not like I can go in the dungeon, right? It's full of monsters."
"Mar'kost's team cleared the entrance hallway and a handful of rooms. They blocked them off from the rest of the ship, so they can't be too dangerous."
"Mark doesn't want me going down there. He said it was too dangerous."
She sighed. "I won't say it's safe, but Cadmus has experience with this sort of thing. He used to work as an Adventurer up by Holis before he moved down here to start the ranch. I'll ask him, and if he says he can take you safely enough, you should go." She paused, looking as if she was debating whether to say something. "Liza, shifters are one of the few species who die if they run out of arka. Mar'kost wouldn't risk giving you his if he didn't think it was absolutely necessary, and he's a good healer. If he thinks you need arka, you need it. Unless Cadmus says the dungeon is certain death, you should go down there."
Why didn't Mark tell me he needed arka as much as I did? He might need it even more than I did; we didn't know for sure whether I would die if I ran out of arka. He should've told me. But I guessed there hadn't been much reason to, since the only times I'd fed off him, I'd thought he was a dream and probably wouldn't have listened to him anyway.
Kaliska gingerly patted my arm before retreating into the hallway. Soft voices preceded her return with Cadmus.
He crouched next to me. "I've been down in the dungeon. 'Snot bad in the cleared section. Just troglitsâthe lil buggers sting, but they run away when they hear you coming. You wanna go?"
"Yeah."
With a nod, he hooked his arm under mine and heaved. His startled grunt told me he hadn't realized how heavy I was. I pushed off the ground with what little strength I could muster.
Gritting his teeth, he pulled me a couple feet off the ground before stopping and lowering me again. "I can't get you on a drykon. Don't think I should ask one of my men to help, with you looking like that." His wings drooped.
Kaliska touched his arm. "Could you carry Mar'kost?"
He nodded slowly. "Dunno if I shouldâwith him being asleep and all."
"No, don't-" I weakly raised a hand. "-don't take him. I'll be fine until he wakes up."
Frowning, Kaliska whispered in his ear.
Cadmus headed for the door. "I'll wake 'em up."
"Don't-"
He was already in the hall, shouting Mark's name.
Mark groaned. "What now?"
"Liza needs arka."
"Tell her to go to sleep, and I'll give her some."
"You don't have arka to spare. We're goin' to the dungeon to stock up."
Another groan preceded Mark's appearance in the doorway. He frowned in at me. "You okay?"
"Yeah."
"You don't look okay."
I felt like I'd been run over by a truck. "I'm fine. You don't have to go to the dungeon. You should sleep."
He waved away my concerns. "I'll be back soon."
***
As soon as they were out of sight of Cadmus's ranch, Mar'kost pulled the scarf down from his face. He had too little arka to shift into Cadmus's form, so he'd risked going out with nothing but clothes hiding his secret from the world.
Exhaustion threatened to loosen his shape, but he sat up straighter in the saddle and tried to stay intact.
"You think she's a real Ortai?" Cadmus asked from Sparrowfoot's back.
"Like I said yesterday, she has Ortai blood. I don't know how much."
They rode in silence except for the thudding of hooves every time their leaping mounts touched the ground.
"You think she'll be okay?"
Mar'kost shrugged. "Physically? Almost definitely. Mentally? She was raised like a nobleman's daughter. She's never had to fear for her life or freedom. Then she almost died three or four times in two weeks. She finally had a moment of peace, and my bastard of a father ruined that. I knew he could be demanding, but this?" He huffed. "He did something to herâthey won't say whatâand she tried to kill him. I don't mean to say she was merely upset; I can sense her strongest emotions when I touch her, and she was truly murderous. Her arka gave her enough strength that she could've killed him if I hadn't stopped her." He paused. "He was wearing my clothes. I think he wanted to make her hate me."
Cadmus was quiet for a long time. "Sorry I brought him. Thought he'd help you deal with losing Liza."
He shook his head. "I don't blame you. If she'd stayed dead, my father could've helped. Even Baliko might've-" He didn't want to think of what idiotic choices he might have made if Baliko had arrived to comfort him while he still thought Liza was dead. "What's done is done. I only worry that Liza won't be herself now." He worried that she would hate himâor at least, that she wouldn't trust him.
"Raiders're here already."
"Hmm?" Mar'kost stretched his sensory field as far as he could, but it took another centiblink before he sensed his team's wagon and the dungeon entrance. Eura was nowhere to be seen. She'd probably wandered off in pursuit of a rodent.
"You want them to know 'bout Liza or not?"
"As far as they're concerned, Liza is dead, and I'm in mourning."
"Gotcha."
They dismounted, removed their drykons' bridles, and tied long ropes between their necks and a stake Cadmus drove into the ground. The beasts immediately began grazing on grass which had grown to head height in the last two weeks. By next week, it would be taller than a Grassland drykon like Sparrowfoot.
Mar'kost and Cadmus descended into the dungeon. The former had Liza's polearm strapped to his back, and the latter carried a hunter's rifle. In a fight with monsters, a cleaving blade was more likely to immobilize them than a speeding bullet, but the chances of a monster targeting Cadmus were extremely minimal with an arka-filled shifter around. The cleared areas his team had been working on were rather safe for the average sentient, but shiftersâand likely Ortai as wellâtended to attract monster attention no matter how thick the barricades were.
At the bottom of the ladder, Mar'kost unstrapped the polearm and used it as a walking stick. Cadmus held his rifle at the ready, keeping its barrel aimed at the ground. They walked down the hard-packed dirt tunnel to a rusted metal archway that marked the entrance of the dungeon proper. Beyond it was a short metal hallway, another arch, and a larger hallway. It stretched into the distance, extremely rusty metal on all sides. Plaques in an unknown language labeled doorways along the right wall and side hallways along the left. Some of the hallways and doors were blocked with salvaged metal sheets the Drykon Raiders had used to keep monsters out of the areas they'd already cleared.
Mar'kost heard his team before they entered his sensory field. They were sitting on foldable wooden chairs in the middle of the large hallway to eat. He would've preferred to pass them without speaking, but Raeve flew in front of him.