Reading the Wind (Silver Ship) Read Online Free Page B

from the moment before he sprang into a chase. “Stop!” he commanded.
    Kayleen smiled, looking up at Liam. The feral look in her eyes actually matched her expression this time, and as she raked her gaze across me I felt like prey. Me. Her best friend.
    She flashed a map of Fremont from above—a satellite shot, on the wall screen in front. It rotated, the picture first showing Jini, where we were, and then sliding to hang above the only other land mass of any consequence, the continent Islandia, almost half a world away and closer to the equator.
    The ramp clicked closed.
    Liam stared down at her, stance frozen, his eyes wide and his jaw tight.
    She looked up at him, apparently unconcerned. In a measured soft tone she said, “Too late.”

3    

A TRIP
    A s soon as Kayleen uttered the phrase “too late,” I knew what she meant to do. Even knowing, disbelief closed my throat.
    Liam’s face transformed into one I had never seen, anger tightening his skin and lacing his muscles so they jumped. His dark eyes turned nearly black. He stepped toward Kayleen, leaning over her, strange and terrible and unlike himself. If Liam were anyone but Akashi’s son, I’d have expected him to strike her, the anger poured from him so strongly.
    Kayleen held her smile, her gaze on Liam, her body completely still, neither provoking nor backing down. They held that pose for three long breaths, not moving.
    We killed animals when we hunted, but we protected each other. Always.
    The baby hebra, Windy, bugled and struggled to back away, finding only smooth silver hull behind her, her cloven hooves slipping and scrambling. She shook her head back and forth like a rag on her long neck.
    Liam took a step back.
    Kayleen leapt up, vaulted one-armed over the last row of seats, and landed lightly next to the bleating hebra. She put a hand out, flat, in front of Windy’s nose. Small soothing noises rose from Kayleen’s throat. Her body language became the tough alpha of a trainer, tempered by a soft tone in her voice. Windy bugled again and then gathered her splaying legs under her, standing, shaking.
    Another long beat of silence, all of us breathing, no one speaking.The cabin felt small and close, the air thick with the mingled stink of fear and anger and upset hebra.
    Windy lowered her head slowly and curled it against Kayleen’s chest. Kayleen brought her right hand up and stroked the side of the hebra’s face. Windy closed her eyes and moaned like a new foal at her mother’s teats.
    I glanced at Liam. The expression on his face was so incredulous that I nearly burst out laughing, regardless of the tense situation. Maybe because of it. But then Liam had almost no experience with Kayleen’s mercurial nature.
    I did. But did I know this Kayleen?
    “Kayleen,” I said softly, using the same tone she had used on the hebra.
    She glanced at me, her eyes unreadable.
    “Kayleen. You can’t leave.”
    She raised an eyebrow at me.
    Liam spoke. “The band needs us. They’re going to Rage Mountain. It’s dangerous there. They’ll need us to hunt.”
    They were the wrong words, about us and not Kayleen.
    She continued standing with Windy’s head in her arms, continued the soft soothing movements and kept her voice soft. “Well, perhaps I need you. Perhaps I’ll go crazy if I have to stay there another year. The nets give up their stories to me freely now, all the time, even into my dreams. I can see everything, hear everything. I watched you all last winter, and all the summer before.” She searched my face for a reaction.
    I struggled not to give her one, trying to look calm, to radiate calm. She’d watched us? Without telling us? Seen Liam and I kiss and hunt and watched me and Sasha train Stripes? Watched us train for the dances?
    What did she make of what she saw?
    She frowned when I failed to respond and kept going, her voice raised higher. “I tried living through you, imagining it was me laughing and dancing and running free. But