Mercurial by Naomi Hughes (ebook reader with built in dictionary .txt) 📕

But: “No,” Tal said, finality ringing in his voice. “We don’t know each other at all.”

It turned out disappointment made a fine weed killer. “Of course.” She hesitated. “Do you remember where the train was going? Where it came from?” Maybe that could give her some hints, at least.

He shifted, gritting his teeth at the pain the movement caused as his broken leg bent further beneath him.

“You shouldn’t be moving around,” she interjected.

“I’m fine,” he snapped.

She crossed her arms and made ready to fire back a retort, but before she could, he held up the hare by its back legs. “I can’t skin a rabbit with a sword,” he said in a level, utterly emotionless tone that told her he must be feeling quite a lot of emotions indeed. “Give me your dagger.”

Fear feathered along her spine. Her fingers curled, nails digging into her palms. “I’m not giving you my only weapon. How do I know you won’t turn on me while I’m defenseless—”

“Defenseless?” he scoffed, incredulity breaking through his emotionless mask for a scant instant.

She uncrossed her arms with a violent movement, true anger finally snapping to life within her. “Listen,” she hissed, stalking forward a step so she loomed over him, “I have been nothing but considerate to you. I could have left you here to die, and come back to steal your trousers when you were a frozen block in the bloody snow. Instead I offer you a portion of my hare, and a spot by the fire that I will figure out how to start, and am willing to build a shelter by myself that you may share, and you offer nothing in return except surliness and threats.”

He dropped the hare back onto the snow. “I have never threatened you,” he said flatly.

She snorted. “You threaten with your every glance. Your every word. You think I can’t see it in your eyes, hear it in the evenness of your voice? You are bitter. A rage stalks you that has nothing to do with me. So yes, of course, I suspect that you might stab me while I am defenseless and take for your own all of the things I have already freely offered to share.”

He looked away and took a steadying breath. Then he gazed back at her, those green dark eyes a nameless accusation. “I will protect you, and not allow harm to come to you, and never harm you myself. Is that good enough for you?” Bitterness leeched every word drought-dry, revealing the bare bones of truth beneath. He didn’t like what he said, but he wasn’t lying.

“I don’t know how you expect to ‘protect me’ in your condition,” she said, mollified slightly, “but I appreciate the sentiment.” She drew her dagger from its sheath and tossed it at him. Alarmed, he jerked sideways just in time to avoid being impaled by it. It made a crunching sound when it sank into the snow two inches from his neck. She tried to look regal and slightly intimidating, as if that had been exactly what she’d meant to do rather than an unthinking and nearly disastrous accident, and once again turned her back on him.

Shelter. She needed to focus on finding a shelter.

She scanned the landscape before her, focusing now not on the bodies but on the debris. There was one mostly-flat sheet of blackened metal not too far off that she could perhaps…lean up against another piece of metal? She shook her head, displeased with that idea. Even if she found a convenient coil of rope and more useable sheet metal, there was no way she would be able to build a passable lean-to in time. They needed something secure, and insulated if at all possible. Wind bit cold on her face already, flushing her skin, building to a low howl in the distance. Time was growing short.

The mountainside sloped sharply downward not far away. She slogged her way through the snow, boots breaking through the crust every few steps, to get a better look at what lay below. Perhaps extra debris, or the rest of the train and more helpful survivors, might be down there. But when she reached the edge of the slope, what she saw was even better: a distant dark hole in the craggy mountainside that could only be a cave.

Excellent. A cave would be both secure and insulated. But now that she’d solved one problem, another became more urgent. How was she to get Tal all the way down there? The slope was treacherously steep. If he tried to walk down, even with her helping, he was likely to injure himself even worse. And that was if they could make it in time without getting lost once the blizzard began in earnest.

Maybe a crutch might make his descent safer. She turned in a slow circle, peering again at the debris field, searching this time for a rod or long piece of wood. Then her eyes fell once again to the mostly-flat sheet of metal she’d already collected. She tilted her head and narrowed her eyes, then walked up to it and gave it a light push. It moved easily across the snow. She grinned, and then began gathering wood.

By the time she returned to Tal, she was proudly dragging the metal over the snow with a rope made of clumsily tied-together—and bloodstained—clothing. Atop her homemade sled was a stack of wood fragments she’d gathered from the debris: a bit of door panel here, a mostly-intact floorboard there. From the size of the pile she guessed it would hopefully last at least a few hours as firewood.

She dropped the clothing-rope and gazed down at Tal. He’d been busy while she was gone. The rabbit had been not only skinned but carved apart, bones dropped in a pile and meat wrapped up in a bundle of fur. It was an impressive job—not that she was about to inform him of that—but also