Trickster's Girl: The Raven Duet Book #1

CHAPTER 7


“THAT DEPENDS,” SAID RAVEN SLOWLY, “on what those bikers are capable of.”

“Anything.” Kelsa tried to suppress a shudder and failed.
“No, I mean … There aren’t many humans like them, which is good! If all humans were like that I’d be working with my enemies. Would it be possible for the others to convince those bikers to chase you? Or would that be unthinkable, something they’d never do?”
“Not unthinkable. The biker gangs … When security in the cities became intense, when the camera net was finally connected, it became pretty much impossible to deal in illegal drugs anywhere on the grid. And in cities and towns, that’s everywhere. So the gangs who made their living that way moved into the countryside. They have regular routes, and fight with rival gangs when someone tries to cut into their trade. And they’re big on both revenge and pride. I don’t think it would be hard to convince them that I’d dissed them and they have to punish me.”
Terror rose again at the thought. She’d have welcomed his embrace now, but he merely nodded. “If the bikers are that apt for their purpose, the others aren’t likely to abandon them. But that means they’ll have to work through those bikers. They’ll be limited by what the bikers themselves can do, in this world, when it comes to tracking you. I think some scouting is in order.”
He stood and began unbuttoning his shirt.
“You’re going to leave me here? Alone?”
“If they’re anywhere near, I’ll come back at once. But we need to know what they’re doing if we’re going to elude them.”
“What happens if they find me before you get back?” At this point, she didn’t have much faith in his airy assurances. “Wait a minute. If your enemies can control people, can they control animals too?”
This was bear country.
“No. Well, to a limited extent. You can sometimes convince an animal that you’re not a threat to it, for a short time. Some other things like that. But it’s harder to confuse a simple mind than a complex one. Animals have no expectations, so they see what’s really there. And if they’re under any stress instinct takes over, and they do what they’d usually do. Which is run, for the most part.”
“But couldn’t they … I don’t know, use birds to spy on me or something?”
Raven snorted. “Birds, the smaller ones, can’t tell one human from another. And their attention span is about two minutes. The larger ones are a bit brighter, but you don’t have to worry about that. Really.”
She averted her eyes as he shucked off his pants, and kept them firmly averted till the sound of flapping wings told her it was safe to look as he back-winged out of the trees and swooped away.
Leaving his partner to have hysterics, all by herself. Kelsa had noticed before that he didn’t pay much attention to human emotions, but still!
On the other hand, if his enemies could only work through their human accomplices she should be safe here.
That knowledge did nothing to stop the spurt of tears.
***

Raven was gone long enough that she’d gotten past the crying jag and reached a state of near calm—though the thought of ever setting eyes on those bikers again made her heart pound.

It was hard even to remember being angry with Raven that morning. Being rescued from death, or other horrible fates, made the fact that he’d told a few lies look amazingly trivial. And it seemed he’d been telling the truth about his enemies.
Her enemies, now.
Kelsa shuddered. It didn’t matter if he’d lied or not. If she was going to go on, to try to heal the rest of the leys, she needed his protection as well as his guidance.
When Raven finally returned, Kelsa watched him land on the bike’s handlebars with undeniable fascination. His wingspan had to be over four feet; the wind from his landing fanned her face, even though she was seated on a rock several yards away. What other shapes could he assume? Could he become even larger? Turn into a mouse? Surely the laws of physics had to apply somehow.
She tried to watch him change, but her nerves were still unsteady and her gaze slid aside.
“If you went across the border into Canada without anyone knowing, with no official record of it, would the bikers know that too? And keep looking for you here?”
“I’m not sure,” Kelsa admitted. “Most of what I know about biker gangs comes from the news. And d-vid. But I’ve heard that they can tap into police and security nets. The parts that aren’t supersecret, anyway. Of course, the government denies that. But I can’t get into Canada, with or without a report. I don’t have permission to cross the border. And I don’t dare get out on the highway, where they could find me.”
Her stomach curdled at the thought.
“You don’t need to worry about that. Not for a while, anyway. They’re heading back to the clinic at Whitefish to get their burns treated. And the red-haired one is riding behind one of the others with a cold compress over his face.”
Raven was smiling, fiercely, but Kelsa shuddered.
“Lord, they’ll be eager to track me down and kill me. Your friends won’t have to do a thing to encourage them.”
“So if you sneaked over the border with no one knowing, they’d probably waste a lot of time looking for you around here.” Raven sounded disgustingly cheerful. “That’s what took me so long. I’ve found a way to get you across.”
***

The arena was about ten miles down the highway. According to the running sign, which no one had bothered to reprogram, the horse show had ended June ninth. Yesterday.

“It’s over,” said Kelsa, stopping her bike. “What’s so exciting about that? Everyone will be gone.”
“Not everyone.” She couldn’t see Raven’s face, with him perched behind her, but his voice sounded smug. “There are a dozen horse trailers still there, though most of them are packing up now. And three of them have Canadian labels!”
“Lab—Do you mean license plates?”
“Whatever it is, it means they live in Canada, right?”
“Yes, but—”
“So once they’ve loaded their horses they’ll drive right over the border. If you were hidden in one of those trailers, no one would know you were there!”
“Except for the inspectors,” said Kelsa, “who look into the back of trucks and horse trailers to prevent that kind of thing.”
“I’ve watched them do that,” Raven said. “They look, but they don’t look hard. If you were tucked behind something I don’t think they’d find you.”
Kelsa had watched the inspectors too, waiting in line at border stations. If the driver didn’t act nervous, they didn’t look hard.
Of course, they didn’t have to.
“The scanner would spot me,” she said. “It’s mostly set to look for chemicals and chemical weapons. Drugs, nuclear reactives, all sorts of things. But it would pick up a human’s biomass and heat source with no trouble. So that won’t work.”
She was torn between relief—she didn’t really want to run the border—and worry. Would the next idea he came up with be even worse?
“I thought about that too,” Raven told her. “Would it pick up your presence, your biomass, as you call it, if you were lying on top of a horse?”
***

He switched back into Raven form to scout ahead, while Kelsa waited in a thicket of trees watching people move casually around the distant trailers.

Several people loaded their horses and left. One of the departing trailers had Canadian plates, which made Kelsa wonder what Raven was waiting for. But soon after that he flapped onto his favorite perch, let out a croak, then swooped away toward the trailers.
There was no one visible now.
Kelsa punched in the start code, deeply grateful for the electric motor’s quiet hum. The tires rolling over the asphalt made more noise than the motor did.
The trailer on which Raven had perched had a horse in one of the two stalls, with nothing but a net across the back to hold it in. Kelsa rode her bike into the other stall, bumping gently over the low sill. If someone was watching the yard’s security cameras and came dashing out to stop her, Kelsa would probably have time to back out and ride away. Her helmet would conceal her face, and the tape still disguised the real number on her license plate.
One of the disadvantages of computer security was that only the places they really needed to keep secure had human guards, who actually watched the monitors. Arenas like this hosted all sorts of events; their security computers were almost certainly programmed to accept a bike being loaded into a trailer as a normal event.
“But the driver will have to close up the back before he leaves,” Kelsa told the huge bird as it hopped awkwardly inside. “He’ll see the bike.”
She looked over at the horse, a big bay who didn’t seem to be disturbed by her presence or the bike. It pranced and rolled its eyes when Raven began to shift, but that was all.
“Suppose he has another horse to put in here?” Kelsa added. “And that’s why they haven’t left yet.”
Several long moments passed. Kelsa was beginning to get impatient when Raven finally said, “See those hay bales? Whoever owns this trailer only uses this side for storage.”
When she looked at the end of the compartment, it was clear that Raven was right. The stall next door, where the horse now stood quietly, had smooth wooden walls. The walls on this side of the central divider were studded with hooks and nails, from which hung all the mysterious paraphernalia Kelsa assumed was necessary for horses. The only hay in the horse’s stall was a few wisps in the raised manger, and under that manger was an enclosed space that might be big enough to conceal her bike.
Kelsa and Raven hauled out a half-full sack of grain and several chests and bags containing who-knows-what, but they managed to make enough space for her bike and wheeled it in.
They were tucking a plastic tarp over the protruding curve of the back wheel when Raven froze, listening. Once the plastic stopped rustling Kelsa heard it too: footsteps on the asphalt, coming nearer.
Raven pushed her down into the narrow space behind the bales, then struggled in beside her.
“What about the chests?” Kelsa whispered urgently. “Won’t he see—”
She felt the tension in the warm muscular body lying so close to hers. Could Raven control the mind of whoever owned this trailer? Make him see what he expected to see?
Raven had said it took concentration as well as power, so Kelsa kept quiet and still.
The footsteps stopped, very near. A long rattle vibrated through the floor beneath her and the light dimmed. A couple of clanks latched the back of the trailer closed, but Kelsa didn’t let herself relax till the trailer levitated off the pavement.
She struggled away from the prickly hay bale, and then crawled up to sit on it. “Did you make that man see what he expected to?”
She wasn’t sure if the thought of Raven controlling human minds was reassuring or creepy.
“It was a woman.” Raven rose to his knees, then sat on another bale, facing her. “And I didn’t have time. I told you humans often see what they expect without any help at all.”
Kelsa could tell by the sudden feeling of stability when the trailer stopped hovering and moved forward, but it felt odd to travel without looking out the window. Of course, if she couldn’t see out the bikers couldn’t see in. Thank goodness she didn’t get glide sick.
“We’re about fifty miles from the border,” Kelsa said. “Tell me about these enemies of yours. Why don’t they want the leys to be healed?”
Light from the narrow windows above lit Raven’s grimace. “I knew you were going to ask that. We’ll have less than an hour before we face the inspectors. Shouldn’t we make plans?”
“We’ll hide behind the hay when the inspectors look in. Then I’ll scramble up on the horse—and I really hope he doesn’t mind—and blend my body mass with his. It might even work.”
In fact, she was pretty sure it would fool the scanners. She’d seen pictures, on d-vid broadcasts, of the fuzzy red blobs and string of chemical readings that were a scanner’s interpretation of a human body. A horse would be a really big red blob, with very similar readings. Hiding from the visual inspection would either work or it wouldn’t.
Kelsa preferred not to wonder what the legal penalty for trying to run an international border was.
“Why don’t your enemies want to heal the ley?” she repeated firmly. “Are they … are they some kind of bioterrorists too?”
Raven snorted, but then his expression grew thoughtful. “You know, I think they are. On a big scale. The thing is … I wasn’t supposed to tell you this, but since any human you told would think you were crazy, I guess it doesn’t matter. The reason everyone cares so much about the leys is that they exist in both your world and mine.”
Kelsa stared. “Your world?”
His smile held some of the old cockiness. “You think shapeshifters belong here? Though world isn’t quite the word. Your scientists’ theories about dimensions are actually pretty close. But world sounds better. Anyway, the leys not only exist in both worlds, they make a big difference in the health, the stability of ours. I don’t know if I can explain that to you, but clean powerful leys are as important to our survival as clean abundant water and air are to yours.”
The chill that ran over Kelsa’s skin had nothing to do with the cool breeze coming through the window slits.
“And what we did, ERB-1, things like that, it weakened the leys.”
His changeable face was now very serious. “The tree plague was the final straw. We’d been arguing for years, for decades, what to do about the damage you were causing. When the tree plague came … The others didn’t understand! They hadn’t looked in on you for so long, they couldn’t see that you were finally beginning to turn it around. To become the stewards to this planet that you could be.”
“You stood up for us?” Gratitude bloomed in her heart.
“Not really. What you’d done was pretty indefensible. Your world and mine aren’t the only ones affected by the leys, either.”
A wondrous vision of dozens of dimensions, with a great river of healing power flowing through all of them, lurked in the back of Kelsa’s mind. But more important…
“If you’d only told us about the leys, taught us to use them, maybe we could have reversed the damage a long time ago.”
“Maybe. But more likely you’d have drained them to the dregs, like you did with your oil. And your climate. And—”
“That’s no excuse.” But it almost was. “That’s still no excuse for letting us all die. Which we could, if the tree plague spreads everywhere. Nothing could excuse that.”
“Not even the fact that if you don’t start doing better you could threaten our survival? That’s what the others were saying. That this is our chance to be rid of you, once and for all. But if we did let the plague wipe you out, as I had to admit you’ve deserved, it would do significant damage to our world. Others as well. Cutting off your nose to spite your face, in the old phrase. I didn’t care if you survived. I mean, of course I wanted humans to survive,” he added hastily, catching sight of her expression. “But the others, most of them, they said you’d brought it on yourselves. That in the long run, it would be worth putting up with the damage the ravaging of your planetary environment would do to the leys just to be rid of you. That we could heal the leys ourselves once you were gone. And we weren’t the ones who started the tree plague, after all.”
They weren’t. Humans had done that all by themselves. “Your enemies. The bikers they control. They’d really be willing to kill me?”
“In a heartbeat, most of them. Though there are a few others who’ve seen that you’re changing, doing better. And it’s stupid to accept a massive catastrophe if you don’t have to! There are a lot more, the neutrals, who aren’t convinced you’re changing, but who do want to heal the leys if that’s possible. So”—he drew a deep breath—“they told me that if I could persuade the humans to heal the damage they’d done, they’d accept that I was right and leave you alone. But it has to be humans, working their own magic to do the healing. All of it.”
“And that’s where all those rules come from. They’re not some sort of natural-magical laws. They’re … political.”
This new fear wasn’t as immediate, as visceral, as the fear the bikers had evoked. This was a slow, icy dread that encompassed the whole world. Now, Kelsa thought, she knew how her ancestors had felt during the mad, brief period of the nuclear arms race.
“That’s right,” Raven said. “And those rules cut both ways. Just as I can only use the tools of this world to heal the leys, they can only use the tools of this world to stop us. If those bikers can be delayed looking for you on this side of the border, it will give us more time to reach the next nexus.”
Was she just a tool? Or part of “us”?
Kelsa decided not to ask. He might be stupid enough to tell her the truth, and she wasn’t sure she could deal with it.
“So, can you control the minds of the border inspectors?”
***

It seemed he couldn’t, unless he had at least ten minutes to study them and slowly insert his will into their thoughts. Raven and Kelsa spent the rest of the ride to the border arranging better concealment. Even Kelsa had to admit that the pile of chests, buckets, and folded saddle blankets behind the hay bales shouldn’t look like two people were hiding beneath them.

On Raven’s instructions, she passed through the narrow slot that gave access between the stalls and made friends with the horse, feeding him a handful of oats. He was intimidatingly big, but his muzzle was soft and he lipped the grain out of her palm quite delicately.
When the trailer began to slow, Kelsa looked out the window slit and saw they’d reached their destination.
The long row of scanner tunnels proclaimed an international border, something she’d never crossed before. Were these scanners different, better, stronger than the ones on state borders? The lines of traffic in front of them looked the same.
“It’ll take them a while to get to us.” Raven stood beside her, peering out. “But we should probably hide now, just to be sure.”
They had plenty of time for Kelsa to lie down behind the bales and for Raven to make sure she was well concealed before he disarranged everything by joining her.
The warm strong body lying so close to her still felt human, but Kelsa would sooner have been turned on by a crocodile. The being inside that body wasn’t human. His careless comments about wiping out her species had proved that. Still, he was on humanity’s side, and he had rescued her from the bikers. And if he was using her only to save his own world, then she would use him, his knowledge of the leys and their workings, to save hers.
The cut hay stalks were sharp against her bare arms. They smelled dusty. Kelsa resigned herself to a long wait, and she wasn’t disappointed. She didn’t know exactly how much time passed, but her hip was numb where it rested on the wooden floor. More important, Raven kept shifting his position. The stack of buckets that concealed their feet was rocking from his last movement when the latch that closed the trailer door clanked.
Kelsa’s instinct was to freeze, but those wobbling buckets would give them away. Trying not to move the folded blankets, she shot one hand down to steady the buckets then froze, not even breathing, as someone entered the trailer … paused for a moment … and then left.
The trailer’s back panel rattled down, and the latch clicked closed.
Raven was moving before she dared, struggling out from under the blankets and boxes. The buckets would have fallen if Kelsa hadn’t been holding them.
“What were you doing with all that wiggling?” she whispered. “You almost got us caught.”
Raven crawled over her onto the bales, planting an elbow in her ribs on the way.
“Tarnation, this form can be uncomfortable! Every muscle I’ve got is cramping.”
Kelsa’s own body was stiff as she levered herself out of the narrow slot and onto the bales beside him. “I’m cramping too, but I didn’t twitch like a—”
The trailer slid into motion, silencing both of them. Kelsa shot to her feet.
“We’re heading for the scanners. Now! You’ve got to shift into something small, and I’ve got to get on that horse!”
“We’ll both join the horse,” Raven said. “I’ve shifted half a dozen times today. I can’t change quickly. And if I’m still shifting when we go through, those scanners might pick up the energy.”
Now that Kelsa thought about it, his last few changes had seemed to take longer. But she had no time to pursue the subject.
Raven slipped into the horse’s side of the trailer, pausing to murmur and stroke his neck. Then he grasped a handful of mane and swung onto the horse’s back in a fluid leap that Kelsa had thought only stuntmen on d-vid could do.
He reached down a hand to help her. “Come on. We don’t have much time.”
The horse looked much bigger than he had a few minutes ago. Kelsa took the offered hand and tried to duplicate Raven’s leap. With perfect comedic timing, the horse stepped aside, and Kelsa slid down his body and back to the floor despite Raven’s strong grip. No one had ever warned her that horses are slippery, and there are no handholds.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake! We’re almost at the scanner!” Raven slid neatly off the horse, grasped her hips, and boosted her upward. “Throw your leg over. That’s right. Good!”
Kelsa straddled the horse. It felt a lot more precarious than it looked on d-vid. She grabbed a big handful of mane, and the horse didn’t seem to mind. She was only vaguely aware of the dimming light as they pulled into the scanner tunnel, most of her attention taken up by the large animal she was sitting on.
Raven swung up behind her, pushed her body down against the horse’s neck, and then flattened his body on top of hers.
Kelsa didn’t think the scanner was set to detect sound, but neither of them spoke as the trailer moved slowly through the tunnel. The body beneath her was certainly warm enough to mask her heat signature, and probably Raven’s too. Horses came in different sizes, didn’t they? Some were even bigger than this one. Surely the security data wasn’t so detailed that the computer would flag the fact that this horse massed about three hundred pounds more than it had when it crossed the border before. Surely—
The light through the window slits brightened.
Raven sat up cautiously. The truck that pulled the trailer stopped for a few seconds at the final barrier, then when it lifted, the truck accelerated into Canada.
Raven dismounted, and Kelsa managed to slide down the big body without embarrassing herself.
“Thank you.” She stroked the horse’s neck as she’d seen Raven do. The horse heaved a sigh and sniffed his empty manger.
“We’re through!” Raven’s voice held the same incredulous relief Kelsa felt.
“You sound surprised. Weren’t you the one who came up with this plan?”
“That doesn’t mean I liked the idea of breaking you out of a Canadian jail. This is much better. I promise you.”
“Until someone runs my PID card, and some security computer flags the fact that I appear to be in Canada without ever having entered Canada.”
“We’ll worry about that later,” Raven told her. “For now, I’m more concerned about getting you out of this box without the owner seeing you.”
After some debate, they couldn’t come up with any better idea than to wing it—literally. Raven shifted into his feathered form once more. It took a lot longer than usual, but as Raven flippantly observed, every jailbreak needs someone on the outside. He squirmed through one of the narrow windows when the trailer stopped at a traffic light in the first town they passed after crossing the border.
Then the trailer ran over curving mountain roads and down winding river valleys for several hours, while Kelsa wondered helplessly if he’d be able to keep up. Finally, it pulled into a charge station.
Standing out of reach of the lowering light that came through the small slit, Kelsa watched the driver—it was a woman with short curly hair—climb out and stretch. She connected the charge plug and headed off to the flash station, no doubt to use the facilities. Kelsa would have liked to do that herself. And then eat. It felt as if a lifetime had passed since lunch, and despite all the trauma, she was hungry.
Would the woman check on her horse when she returned? What if—
The clang of the latch sent her spinning around as the door rattled up to reveal Raven, nude.
He scrambled into the trailer and grabbed his pants. “Get your bike out. It’s nothing short of a miracle no one saw me, and we may not have much time.”
Kelsa was already rolling her bike out from under the manger. Raven dressed and tossed the gear they’d removed back into the compartment, willy-nilly, while Kelsa backed the bike out of the trailer. He was out and pulling down the gate by the time she’d looped back for him. As soon as the latch closed, he turned and flung himself onto the bike behind her. They whipped out of the charge station and onto the road.
Kelsa’s heart was pounding, but no outraged shouts followed them. No sirens. No flashing lights. She checked her speed to be certain she wouldn’t trip any sensors and rode on into Canada, free and clear, with Raven’s arms around her.
This time his shirt was completely unbuttoned, and he had no shoes on.
Rain began to patter down.