The next morning, Aithne felt disgusting. Her clothes were still caked in mud, blood, and sewage from the day before, and since Mission had had her spare combat suit, there wasn't anything clean to change into. Her mouth was somehow dry and slimy at the exact same time, and she knew without a mirror that her hair was a tangled rat's nest. That's what she got, Aithne thought, for deciding to be noble. Filthy clothes, filthy hair, filthy mouth, with no prospect for getting clean for hours and nothing but ration bars on the menu for breakfast, when it'd been ration bars for lunch and dinner the day before.
With the others still sleeping on the cold ground of the Undercity, Aithne took the time to organize all their packs. After retrieving Zaalbar's gear from the Gamorreans the day before, there was one for each of them. She cheered up when she realized they actually had picked up some clean clothing in the Vulkar base. Changing into a new set of fiber armor made Aithne feel marginally better. She tied the soiled combat suit in a bundle and set it aside. Then she laid out fresh combat suits for both Carth and Mission and turned her attention to Carth's pack. She put in three spare shirts of varying sizes and a set of light plate armor. She gave herself the medical supplies—a stack of medpacs and antidote kits compatible with all their physiologies, their remaining ration bars, both of the datapads they'd picked up in the sewers the day before, and the Bek prototype accelerator. She made Zaalbar's pack the armory, packing three shock sticks, a collapsible vibroblade, a rifle, and two blasters. She pulled the power packs of all the energy weapons and put them in a side pocket for safety, then bound Big Z's own bowcaster to the back of his pack for easy access. Finally, she packed Mission's duffel with a handful of energy shields and individual bags of weapon upgrades, repair parts, disarmed mines, and security spikes, as well as Mission's selection of hardware tools for lower-tech entry into doors and secured lockboxes.
Everything else, Aithne set aside with the soiled combat suit to trade away to denizens of the Undercity for credits or better food supplies for the day. Then, she rebraided her hair as best she could and shook Carth awake.
"Hey, flyboy," she murmured.
He was truly awake far quicker than she had been the past two days. She tried not to resent him for that. "What?" he asked.
Aithne nodded at the piles of gear. "I'm going to trade for some better breakfast stuffs and fills for all our water bags," she told him. "Can you watch the rest of our gear while I'm away? I don't think most of the people down here would take things that don't belong to them—"
"But a handful of them might," Carth finished. "You got it, beautiful. You want me to get up the others?"
Aithne looked down at Mission and Zaalbar. The Wookiee was snoring softly. Vao's lekku were both curled around her throat, like she was giving herself a hug. "They had a long, hard day yesterday," she said. "Let 'em sleep. At least a little while longer."
Carth nodded. Aithne clapped him on the shoulder and took the stuff she'd elected to give away. In twenty minutes, she was back, with full water bags, some hardtack, and some crab rolled in seaweed, and the others were awake. Carth had elected to wear the plate instead of the combat suit she'd laid out for him, and it looked like he'd redistributed some of the weapons from Big Z's pack to his to make up the weight difference. All three of them looked ready to go.
They took the water bags and food she passed out with thanks, but Mission looked unhappy. "All that stuff you took away was worth a whole lot more than this," she said. "You should've woke me up. I could've made sure we weren't ripped off."
Aithne shrugged. "I didn't want to keep carrying all of it with us. It was heavy, and we don't need it all. On the other hand, I know people down here can probably use it, and this morning, I felt like food that wasn't military grade would be worth a lot to all four of us."
Zaalbar and Carth both made enthusiastic noises of agreement, Zaalbar actually through a mouthful of breakfast, but Mission still seemed grumpy. Fortunately, she decided to let it drop. "Thanks for packing the bags, Aithne, but you didn't have to give me the lightest one, you know. I could've taken on a little more."
Aithne shook her head. "It was less about weight and more about function," she explained, "though I do think you'll be more help if you aren't pushed too far past what you're trained to carry. The idea was actually to make sure none of us have to go digging through a multifunction pack to find what we need in a crisis. These packs can be pretty deep, and a few seconds can make the difference between fine and serious trouble. This way, we all know exactly who has anything we might need. And if it helps, we're more likely to need the stuff in your pack and mine than anything Carth or Zaalbar are carrying."
"Huh," Mission said. "I never thought of it like that. Alright." She finished her own seaweed roll. "What's the plan?"
"We're going to quarter the ground and run a sweep of the area for downed Sith patrols, as well as any sign of what may have happened to Rukil's apprentice, Malya," Aithne said. "Maybe a two- or three-kilometer radius around the village. We really don't have time for more than that before we have to be going. I don't want to spend more than six hours down here this morning."
"Got it," Mission said. "Uhh . . . you'll show me what you mean by that, right? Quartering and sweeping? Me and Big Z just usually wander around, trying to see what we can find."
"It's pretty much the same thing," Carth assured her. "The only difference is that we'll adopt a pattern to make sure we don't cover the same ground twice and cover every piece of ground within Aithne's set radius."
After they all had finished their breakfast, they rose and struck camp. Returning the supplies Gendar had lent them to the village leader's own campsite, they made their way back to the village gate.
They started in the direction of the sewers and moved counterclockwise through the morning, without much rhakghoul interference. But about an hour and a half after they had started their search, they did run into other people—a group of four walking purposely through the gloom.
When one of them spotted her, he shouted an alarm. "Don't—don't move!" he yelled. "I'm . . . I'm not afraid to use this blaster if I have to!"
Aithne signaled 'hold' to the others. Behind her, she heard Carth explaining to Mission and Zaalbar what the signal meant and cursed herself for not thinking of it on her own. "Friendlies," she called out, even though she couldn't tell at this distance if the party was actually Sith. "At least, we haven't been bitten or scratched by any rhakghouls."
"Settle down, kid," growled a voice like a cement mixer. Aithne peered through the gloom. She recognized that voice.
The new speaker stepped out of the shadows, into the light of one of the sickly overhead lamps. It was the Mandalorian from yesterday morning, leading a party of three other men.
"Right, you," he grunted, catching sight of them. "Mando'a-speaking aruetii. She and hers aren't a threat," he told his people. "We've already lost enough men to those damn rhakghouls! The last thing we need now is more casualties from a needless firefight. You here after Republic salvage too? Let me give you some advice: forget about it. Do yourself a favor and just head back the way you came. The Undercity is crawling with rhakghouls. I've already lost a dozen men to those monsters!"
That explained the knocking knees and itchy fingers of the people behind him, Aithne thought.
"Canderous!" one of them cried suddenly, his voice jumping about an octave and a half. "I heard something! Over there, in the shadows! Sounded like a rhakghoul."
Aithne turned in mild surprise. If it was, it'd only be the third rhakghoul they'd seen all morning. But it wasn't: it was four of them. They loped towards Canderous and Aithne's parties with their uncanny speed. Aithne and the others fell into attack position. Canderous raised his huge heavy repeating blaster. "Looks like we've got company!" he called to his men. "Get those blasters out, boys!"
Carth and Mission fell back to stand with Canderous and his men. Aithne and Zaalbar ranged to either side, melee weapons in hand. But then two of the rhakghouls broke ranks and went in from the sides they weren't guarding. There was a horrible, wet, ripping sound to Aithne's left, and a scream behind her. An outbreak of furious blaster bursts. But Aithne couldn't turn to see who'd been killed. She was facing down a seven-foot rhakghoul fiend, his fangs dripping with poison, bared in a mindless, endless leer.
He lumbered toward her, claws outstretched. Aithne kicked out under his gut, forcing him off balance. Then there was a bang, and a gaping hole appeared in his gut, steaming. Blood spurted out toward Aithne, and exclaiming, dodged backward. Then she lunged and beheaded the thing, just in case Canderous hadn't killed it.
She turned around. Mission was pale but unscratched, and so was Carth, but two of Canderous's mercenaries were on the ground, entrails steaming just like the rhakghouls'.
"Damn it," Canderous swore angrily. "I told Davik this salvage mission was a bad idea. His men aren't trained for this kind of thing, and I can't babysit them all!"
Aithne looked down at the corpses in their low-quality combat gear. "Looks to me like you can't babysit at all," she muttered.
Canderous clenched his fists around the stock of his blaster. "I make no apologies for the weak!" he retorted. "If they couldn't keep up, they deserved what they got. But this trip was just bad business. Come on," he snarled at his one remaining companion. "We're getting out of here before I lose you too. I can't carry all this salvage back by myself. You people would be smart to get out of here as well," he added to Aithne. "Even if you can handle yourselves against the rhakghouls, I doubt there's any salvage worth finding at those pods anymore."
"What do you mean by that?" asked Aithne.
"Ah, the Lower City gangs got down here first," he complained. "Anything worthwhile in those Republic pods is probably in their hands now. Davik won't like that. They've been giving him more trouble than usual lately."
"Well, then, you'd better get back to him," Carth suggested.
Canderous shot him a look. "I'll do that," he said. "You want an escort to the elevator? Figure we owe you one for the help."
Aithne shook her head. "Ret'urcye mhi, Mando."
"Insolent . . ." Canderous shook his head. "Maybe we will," he said, then walked off with his sole companion.
"Why'd you do that?" Carth asked as they watched the man walk away. "He clearly finds it insulting. Unless that's why you did it, in which case," he shrugged, as if to say that was just fine.
"Partly, I guess. He deserved to be annoyed, the way he talked about his people, after so many of them had died," Aithne said. "But also, I just—" she shrugged too. She couldn't explain why, but she thought it was a good idea if Canderous the Mandalorian remembered who they were, and she'd seen right away this morning that it was her Mandalorian greeting yesterday that had made him remember her. Sometimes she got these feelings, impulses to take actions that didn't always make immediate sense, but when she followed them, it almost always turned out well. Somehow, though, she didn't think Carth would understand that.
"How many languages do you speak, anyway?" Mission wanted to know. "Basic, Mandalorian, Huttese; you understand Wookiee, and Rodian too, don't you? Those guys in the cantina day before yesterday."
Aithne thought. She tried to figure on her fingers, then lost track. "I have a knack for languages," she explained. "Always have done. They just . . . make sense to me, and in my line of work, it helps to be able to communicate with as many people as possible in the languages they prefer speaking and feel most confident in. I guess I speak about five or six languages humans can physiologically speak with some degree of competence—languages of species who are particularly widespread or influential, but I never bothered keeping track of the others I learned to understand, orally if not in written format. Probably any language of a species or planet I've stayed with for more than two months, and I've been a lot of places. Doesn't mean I'm not rusty to start with, if I haven't dealt with a language in a while."
"Wow," Mission said. "I make do with pidgin Twi'lek and Huttese, when I ain't speaking Basic. And what I need to know to understand Zaalbar."
For a while after that, journeying through the Undercity was once again uneventful. Sure, there were rhakghoul attacks, and they talked their way out of a confrontation with a Sith patrol once, but nothing too exciting. At one point, though, they caught sight of the escape pod, still smoking, buried in the cement. Near it, Aithne caught sight of a man in Republic uniform.
"Carth!" she called behind her. "Another Republic!"
Carth lit up. "Let's go! He must've been down here a week! I wonder how he made it?"
As they drew close, however, Zaalbar motioned them to proceed carefully. On closer inspection, the soldier's skin appeared gray. He was shaking and sweating. All at once, his skin ripped like paper. His body warped and twisted until he was an ugly, big-headed mutant, all gaping mouth and poison teeth, with raw, sinewy, gray, naked body. The Republic uniform lay shredded on the ground, and only the rhakghoul stood before them.
Its uneven nostrils—open slits in its grotesque round head—flared. It roared and lunged. Zaalbar sidestepped and brought his sword chopping around. The creature's round head went rolling.
Aithne stared at it until it came to rest like a tired top. She knew the rhakghouls had all been humans once, of course, but to see one transform like that . . .
"What kind of monster virus is that?" she gasped after a moment. "To change people, just like that?"
"No one really knows," Mission answered. "I think it's been on Taris for a few decades. There are rumors it didn't use to be as bad; that it only used to affect humans and Devaronians, and not even all of them. But they've been running around down here as long as most folk can remember. By now, there are hordes and hordes. More all the time. They breed, you know? They don't just spread through infection."
Aithne looked at the kid. "You are way too blasé about a virus that turns people into those."
"It's awful," Mission agreed. "But that's just the way things are down here, you know? No use bellyaching over it."
"How about finding the cure?"
"It's great if we can do it," Mission answered. "But a lot depends on us finding a dead Sith with the serum on him, you know? I mean, you heard that guy before. Their patrols are running out. Besides, don't we have to get back to Gadon and the Beks if they're going to install their gizmo on a bike? So you can help your friend in that big race?" Then she looked over at the pod crash. "In a way, it's probably a good thing the Vulkars found her, huh?" she said. "If they hadn't, she might've been down here to get bit by a rhakghoul. Did you two know him? That guy back there?"
"He wasn't anyone I'd spoken with," Carth answered. "I was just wondering if I'd feel better or worse if he had been."
Aithne shook her head. "I'd only just transferred aboard when the Sith attacked," she said. "Truth is, by now, I've been on Taris longer than I spent on Endar Spire."
In all honesty, Mission was right. Their time in the Undercity was running short. Aithne felt the urgency pressing on her chest—both to leave and get back to their main objective and not to head back to the village emptyhanded. But it wasn't until they were out in the only bit of Undercity wasteland directly adjoining the village that they hadn't checked yet that they found something promising.
The two bodies on the ground were relatively fresh. They looked like they had died fighting back-to-back, probably in a rhakghoul attack. A man and a woman. The man was still clutching his blaster rifle, but his cheap Sith-issue armor had been broken in several places. It was stained with poison and blood. His free hand held his companion's in a death grip. Her face was mauled beyond recognition, but her clothes proclaimed her to be an Outcast.
"The man was on patrol and ran into this woman," Aithne began, reading out the signs for the others.
/This Sith spent his last moments fighting beside the stranger, fending off the monsters to defend himself and her,/ Zaalbar agreed, squatting beside the bodies himself.
Aithne translated what he had said for Carth. "You're a tracker?" she asked Big Z then.
/My people train as hunters on our homeworld of Kashyyyk,/ Zaalbar confirmed. /Part of it involves learning to read the signs of prey and predator, what has befallen them both./ He looked up at them all. /The smell of death is slightly fresher on the Outcast woman,/ he added. /And the Sith man's blood, not the woman's, is farther forward on the ground. He was standing in front of her./
Carth had folded his arms. "Well, that's something you don't see every day."
"Why not?" Aithne asked. "The Sith machine as a whole is something horrible. They promote officers who are cruel, ruthless, and ambitious, and that's the legacy they leave behind them. But you have to know that for a lot of the foot soldiers on the ground, being Sith is just a job, just like it is for a lot of you Republics. They join up to see the galaxy or feed their families or because they happen to be good with a blaster, and they're only corrupted by the apathy and rot of the Sith ethos later. Not everyone's lucky enough to come of age on a planet under the protection of the Republic."
A dark, ugly shadow crossed Carth's face, and she knew he was thinking about those traitors to the Republic who had helped burn his homeworld.
"Foot soldiers, Carth," Aithne repeated in a murmur. "Not the officers, and not the ones who used to be Republic."
Carth seemed to struggle with himself for a moment. "I guess I can see what you mean," he confessed. "It's strange to think of. You get used to envisioning all the enemy as monsters."
Mission squatted next to Zaalbar. She looked troubled. "I guess it's probably easier that way, huh? Maybe it's how a soldier has to think. To do what they have to do. But I—I wish I hadn't seen this," she told Aithne. "It's easier when it Is just bad guys and good guys, like you said yesterday. I'm not—let's go, guys. I want to leave."
Aithne understood. Mission had only been able to cope with the shot she'd taken yesterday by accepting Carth's kind of strict dichotomy—Kandon was bad, and she was good. The Vulkars were bad; the Beks were good. She'd been headed into the war expecting things to be similarly black and white: Carth, Aithne, Jedi, and the Republic as the good guys and the Sith as irredeemably evil. Now she was seeing this.
"Okay," she said. "What do they have, Zaalbar?"
The Wookiee looked up from his inventory of the bodies. /The Sith has armor, weapons, grenades, and—/he trailed off. Then his eyes glowed, and he smiled. /—two vials of the rhakghoul serum./ He lifted them in his claw to show them.
Mission gaped. "I can't believe it! We actually got it? We're gonna cure the rhakghoul disease?"
Aithne slung her arm around the Twi'lek, pounding her on the shoulder. "We're gonna cure the rhakghoul disease," she confirmed. "We'll give one to the village healer down here and take the other to Zelka Forn to replicate to wipe this blight from the face of Taris."
"Now that is worth seeing," Mission declared.
/This woman is the apprentice you've been seeking,/ Zaalbar interrupted again, looking through a datapad journal. /Malya, apprentice to Rukil, disciple in the quest for the Promised Land./
He handed it to Aithne. "Right," she said, forcing a practical tone. She'd known this would be the likeliest outcome if they found Malya at all. "Let's go. Rukil will want to know."
Though the dark of the Undercity was the same throughout Taris's rotation, by the activity in the village, it was midmorning by the time they returned. Aithne led her companions through the tents. She grit her teeth against the silent despair of the village residents. She'd found Malya, and she'd leave them with a vial of serum to help their infected, and to replicate themselves if they could find the supplies. It wasn't her place or within her power to upend the entire social structure of Taris.
Though if I had six months and there wasn't a Sith occupation, Aithne thought rebelliously to herself.
Finally, she stood in front of Rukil's tent. Rukil caught sight of her and smiled. "Greetings once more, up-worlder. Do you bring news of my apprentice? Have you discovered her fate, and proved yourself a true savior of my people?"
Aithne didn't beat around the bush. "Your apprentice is dead. I have her journal. I'm sorry."
Rukil sighed, but he didn't look surprised. "It is as I feared, then. She joins the list of those who have given their lives in the service of our cause. But though I am saddened by this news," he continued, a thread of excitement joining his voice, "there is yet hope. By finding my apprentice you have proved yourself worthy, up-worlder. You are to be the beacon on our path to salvation. You will guide us to the Promised Land!"
Though Aithne had been daydreaming about something of the kind literally seconds earlier, now she was aghast. "We don't have the time," she protested. "Honestly, I don't think your Promised Land exists. Not down here. What your people actually need is some kind of lever—"
Rukil cut her off. "You are marked, up-worlder—even my dim old eyes can see the mantle of destiny that cloaks you. Perhaps old Rukil knows you better than you know yourself! I am old: I have lived a hundred years in the Undercity, cast down into the darkness. I know the legend and history of our people, and now you must learn it too!"
His wrinkled hands reached out for Aithne and pressed her hand with urgency.
"It couldn't hurt to hear him, could it?" Mission whispered. "His apprentice just died. And now we have a couple more hours before you wanted to be back with the Beks, right?"
Aithne shot her an annoyed look, but then she sighed. She did make a practice of learning as much history as she could about each world she landed on, from as many different sources as it was practical for her to look at. It came in handy if she ever came to the world again. So, she sat on her butt in front of the ancient storyteller, arms clasped round her knees, and Mission smiled softly at her and sat beside her, weaving her arm through Aithne's and resting her head against Aithne's shoulder as though she hadn't had someone she could just touch in years.
Aithne closed her eyes. The kid needed this. "Tell us the history of your people," she told Rukil.
Carth and Zaalbar sat behind them. The four of them, Aithne thought, had to look like a pack of oversized schoolchildren, cross-legged or with their arms around their knees on the ground in front of the man.
"The great city of Taris covers the entire surface of this planet," Rukil began. "There is no land to grow food. Kelp harvests and the creatures of the sea are our only food source. A century ago, rising levels of toxic pollution poisoned the oceans and a famine swept the planet. The rich hoarded food for their own use, and the poor were left to starve and die."
Carth snorted. "From what I've seen of Taris, it doesn't look like much has changed. Except for the Upper City, people here are just as bad off as the poor in your little history."
"Don't diminish it, Carth," Aithne muttered out of the side of her mouth.
"Sorry," Carth said under his breath.
But Rukil didn't seem unduly offended. "Ah, young man," he told Carth, "in those days, the poor rose up against this tyranny and civil war engulfed the planet. Millions died in the fighting, and huge sections of Taris were destroyed or abandoned. The rebellion was crushed in the end. Thousands were taken prisoner. The jails could not hold them all, and so the practice of banishing all prisoners to the Undercity was born."
Aithne nodded, understanding. "Is that how you came to be down here?" she asked.
"Many brave men and women were banished here to the Undercity for their part in the rebellion," he confirmed. "People like my father and grandfather were cast down, along with their families."
"What did you expect?" Mission asked bitterly. "If they could get away with it the Tarisian nobles would stuff their own mothers down here to make more room in the Upper City."
"You want to see it with us later?" Aithne asked. "Carth stole us an apartment."
Mission's eyes glinted, and she looked over at the pilot appreciatively. "Didn't think you had it in you, geezer!"
"Yeah, what are you gonna do?" Carth said modestly.
"Now we live a dark existence beneath the streets of Taris," Rukil concluded, "a life devoid of all hope but one—" he paused— "The Promised Land. And you will be the one to show us the way to get there."
"No, I won't," Aithne said firmly. "But what is it? A path to a system of underwater caves the folks in Upper City don't know about? A place where there's farmable, edible mold and moss growing?"
"Legends tell of a self-sufficient colony founded just before the famine and lost during the Civil War," Rukil explained. "A paradise beneath the Undercity where droid servants tend to every need. For many years I searched for the Promised Land, just as my father and grandfather did before me. When I became old and gray, my apprentice continued the search on my behalf."
Carth looked over at Aithne. "It sounds like a myth to me," he said. "Something to give the people here some false hope to cling to so they don't go mad with despair."
"The droid servants and the name, probably." Aithne conceded. "Certainly, the hype is overblown. But there's a possibility they had started a new underground colony a century ago with some type of food source unknown to the rest of Taris. No guarantee it still exists now, though, that it wasn't tapped out of resources before the war or bombed out during."
"I have collected many clues hinting at the colony's location," Rukil told them. He was reading Malya's journal thoughtfully. "The journal of my apprentice provides yet more information." He stamped his foot in frustration. "But still there are pieces missing from the puzzle! I know my father and grandfather each had journals where they recorded their own discoveries. Perhaps with these journals I could at last uncover its hidden location."
Aithne started. She had those journals. They weren't doing her any good, and they could give this village a valuable piece of its history back. "I found a couple of old Outcast journals exploring the sewers yesterday," she said. She fished them out of her pack. "Here, take them."
Rukil's hands shook. His knees wavered, and for a second, Aithne worried the old man might have a heart attack right there. But then his knobbled fingers closed around the datapads. "Can it be true?" he breathed. "Is it possible that at long last the dream of my father and grandfather before him will be fulfilled? I . . . I can hardly bear to look."
Aithne stood, and the others followed her. Rukil was peering at the type inside the datapads. Part of Aithne felt like she was done here. It could take Rukil days or weeks to decipher everything in the journals, and even once he did, there was no guarantee they would lead him anywhere. "Maybe we should go," she started, but then Rukil suddenly shouted.
"Yes, yes!" He pumped his fist into the air, and Aithne, looking at him, saw a shadow of the young man he must have been once—the descendant of revolutionaries, handsome and full of purpose. He crossed to Aithne and seized her by both arms. "Now I understand—it all makes sense! Now I see why the Promised Land has been so difficult to find! It is so obvious!" The joy on his face was so radiant it went a ways toward lighting up the underworld of the village. "You have done a great thing, up-worlder. A selfless act that will bring great joy to all the people of this village! I must take this to Gendar right away."
Aithne pressed her lips together. "I should probably go with you," she said. "If this goes anywhere, there's something else you'll need to have."
Gendar was once again working nearby. As Rukil approached, Gendar looked up, annoyed. "Rukil. What do you want now?" he asked, sarcasm heavy in his voice. "Have you more tales of a hidden paradise, just waiting for us to find it?"
Rukil smiled. "You may not think these are fables after you see what I have brought you, Gendar!" Gendar straightened. He had obviously never, in all his years in the Undercity, heard Rukil use so gleeful a tone. "Look at these journals!" Gendar bent over the datapads, reading the passages in the journals Rukil pointed out to him.
"What? No, it can't be!" Gendar said. He looked sharply at the older man. "Are these real, Rukil? Is this information accurate?"
Rukil nodded, serious again. "I swear to you everything in these journals is true, Gendar. The Promised Land!" he sighed. "I told you I would find it."
Gendar nodded, thinking. "The entrance is far from here, Rukil. It will take us weeks to get there . . . perhaps even months. And we will have to cross several rhakghoul-infested areas."
Rukil nodded. "I do not deny the journey will be hard, Gendar. But surely it is better than the miserable life we have here!"
Aithne felt a wave of foreboding. She knew how important hope was to these people, but the way Rukil and Gendar were talking of leaving immediately . . . "Sending an expedition of four or five of your best warriors to scout out the site would probably be smarter than a mass exodus on information that's decades old," she pointed out. "There may be a colony, or the ruins of one. But it may or may not be viable."
Rukil looked stubborn. "I will see the Promised Land!" he declared. "I was sure I should die before we ever found a trace of it! If there's even a chance, we must seize it!"
"The up-worlder may have a point," Gendar said. "Our supplies are high right now. Our entire village could leave by nightfall. But if we do so on a lead that falls to nothing . . ."
"I am certain! These journals will lead us to the Promised Land!" Rukil said again.
Aithne could see there would be debate on the subject, and there should be, but it wasn't her place to solve it. "Whatever you decide," she interjected, "a gift for your people, Gendar." She offered one of the vials of rhakghoul serum to him. "If any of your people contracts the rhakghoul disease, this will cure it. If your supplies are high right now, I'd say a better use of them might be having your healer duplicate the contents of this vial, before the rest of you undertake any journey through the bowels of the planet."
"But this . . . this will greatly decrease any risk!" Gendar cried. "Whether we stay or go, it will improve our people's lives beyond measure to be safe from that terrible disease. You know, up-worlder, that we never can repay you."
Aithne shook her head. "My friends and I have already talked today about subjective value," she answered. "That, for example, a hot breakfast and a little ease for our backs may be worth the cost of a small horde of supplies none of us truly need. After the last couple of days we've had, what should we say it's worth to us, to know you and yours might have it a little easier in the future? Don't underestimate what that knowledge can do for all our morale."
"You are kind," Gendar answered, bowing.
"Rarely," Aithne answered.
"Aw, you're full of poodoo," Mission said, punching Aithne on the arm. "You are."
"It's time for us to go, Gendar," Aithne said, bowing. "Rukil. I wish you well, whatever you decide. Give Shaleena my regards."
Rukil clasped their hands. "Thank you once again, up-worlder. I will say a final good-bye," said Rukil. "Where we are going, you cannot come."
The others made their own goodbyes, and then, the four of them headed for the elevator. Already as they passed, they heard the whispers spreading through the city, sound beginning where it'd been silent. The Outcasts were moving faster, walking straighter as word traveled quicker than Aithne and the others' own feet: The Promised Land was found. The Promised Land was near.
"You've started something here, beautiful," Carth told her as they got onto the lift.
Aithne took one glance out at the dark, sunlit land before the doors closed on it. "Let's just hope it turns out for the best."