“Just trying to be helpful,” she mutters through gritted teeth. We’re not far from where I snuck in through their fencing. I’m sure on a more high-tech world, the perimeter would light up with lasers and six kinds of alarm bells, but out here beyond the edge of civilization, the soldiers are stuck with wire fences and foot patrols. Central Command spends as little as it can get away with to supply them, and it shows. On top of that, the last few months of ceasefire have made them lazy. Their patrols aren’t what they should be.
I can hear the search parties on the other side of the base, but here where it butts up against the town, it’s quieter. They always think the rebels will come from the swamp. Like we’re not smart enough to walk around to approach from the town, where there’s less protection.
I can tell she starts thinking about those search parties about the same time as I do—she draws breath to shout, and I dig the barrel of the gun into her skin in warning. We’re both still for a long, tense moment as she decides whether to call my bluff. I’m praying she doesn’t. She lets the air out of her lungs in a furious capitulation.
I kick at the wire until the place I wound the severed ends back together gives way, and then we’re outside her territory and into the swamp beyond. The marsh stretches out before us into the gloom, mudflats and bare rock interspersed with a thousand winding creeks and streams. The water’s as muddy as the land and half concealed by reeds and rotting algae, so nobody but the locals can tell where the solid ground is until they put their feet down. The floating clumps of vegetation mean the waterways are constantly shifting—deeper, shallower, interconnecting in different ways each week as mud and algae flow sluggishly.
Most of the swamp is a murky black right now, the permanent clouds above us blocking any hint of light from the stars. We were taught there are a couple of moons up there too, somewhere, coaxing the waters to flow this way and that. But I’ve never once seen them—only the clouds, always the clouds. Avon’s sky is gray.
My currach is pulled up and beached on the mud by the fence, her flat-bottomed hull of sturdy plastene a battered contrast to the military patrol boats. I don’t mind her, though—she can go places they don’t even see, without making a sound. I push Jubilee ahead of me, down toward the water’s edge, and she growls a wordless protest.
“You know, most people find me charming.” I keep talking in her ear, hoping to keep her too distracted to think of a way out of this. “Even you looked keen on me for a sec there, Jubilee.” I hear her huff. Using her name annoys her for some reason—good. One more way to keep her off balance. “Maybe you just need to give me a second chance.”
I shove her forward into the currach and knock the lid off the fuel can with my foot. The crude gasoline we’re forced to use is so toxic, I can smell the fumes from here, but I grab her collar to shove her face down against the can. With an indignant protest she sucks in a lungful of vapor. It takes her a few seconds to push past the pain and work out what I’m doing, but she’s inhaled enough that her limbs don’t work. When she tries to push me away, her legs give out and she slips, wrenching free of me to thump down into the bottom of the boat.
For a moment our eyes meet in the dim light. Her gaze is furious as she struggles to stay conscious, trying to push up on one elbow. Then she’s gone, her head falling back to thunk against the plastene hull. I lean in carefully to peel back her eyelids, but she’s out. She’ll have a screaming headache when she wakes, but it’s better than hitting her over the head. Too easy to misjudge the blow and end up killing her instead.
Without wasting another second, I flick on the safety, stick my gun into my waistband, and shove off with my foot. The currach glides swift and silent through the water. I can’t risk a light, not when I can see the lights of the base security forces dancing behind me, still searching for the intruder. I navigate by feel, unclipping the pole from the gunwale and using soft, quick touches ahead and around me to make sure I’m keeping to the channel that will lead me away from danger.
By the time they get searchlights sweeping the stretch of swamp beyond the fences, I’m too far away for the light to reach. I keep expecting to feel a hand on my ankle, or the captain’s fist meeting my gut, but she doesn’t stir.
As soon as the sounds of shouts carrying across the water begin to fade and I can no longer see the distant lights of the base, I stop long enough to find my lantern and light it. We use algae to coat the glass, giving the light an eerie green-brown wash; occasionally the soldiers spot our boats or our signal lights, and the camouflage can make them dismiss what they’ve seen as the will-o’-the-wisps so feared in this swamp.
What they don’t know is that anyone who’d seen a real wisp could never confuse it with one of our lanterns.