“Yeah…at the Y a couple of times,” I say, thinking of the comfortable, fake rock wall in the comfortable, urban environment.
“The Y?” His brow arches in question.
“Never mind,” I growl, shaking my head. “I just hold this line loosely, letting it slip through and the tension gathers here, right?”
Wayra gives me a crooked smile, saying, “That’s all there is to it. That…and stepping off the edge.”
“Is that all?” I ask.
Trey nods. “Jax will go first. Then you and I will follow. Wayra, you cover our eight,” Trey orders, stepping into his harness.
“You mean our six?” I ask, giving him a funny look.
“What?” Trey asks, not looking at me.
“Wouldn’t it be our six? If Wayra is covering our back…our rear, then it’s our six,” I say, seeing him grin. I blink, completely distracted by the way his eyes tilt up appealingly when he smiles.
“On a human clock, it would be six. On an Etharian timetable, it’s eight,” he answers, and my mind whirls with the implications of what he just said.
“Thirty-two? Are there thirty-two hours in a day there?” I ask, “Or, do you just have cycles of sixteen? Is it even hours? When you say eight, what do you mean?”
“Those sound like more questions,” Trey murmurs, looking at me smugly. “Did you misplace your anthropologist’s hat?”
Narrowing my eyes at him, he just grins wider. Jax cuts in then, saying, “See ya at the bottom. Baw-da-baw,” before he steps off the edge of the precipice.
“Can I at least ask what ‘Baw-da-baw’ means?” I ask Wayra, seeing him grinning, too.
“It’s military…Cavars say it before going into battle—it’s a war cry,” Wayra answers. I nod to him, feeling my knees go weak as Wayra guides me to the edge of the crag.
Placing my heels over the edge, my stomach twists as my hands tighten on the line strapped to my harness. Closing my eyes, I take a deep breath and say, “Well then…Baw-da-baw…”
Several moments pass before Trey clears his throat. I open my eyes again. “You can go now, Kricket,” Trey says, looking like he’s trying really hard not to smile.
“I know,” I shoot back. “I’m going.”
“Do you need me to hold you?” Trey asks with a smirk. Seeing that he’s making fun of me, my spine straightens.
“Baw-da-baw,” I bite out, stepping off the edge. I immediately begin to rocket towards the bottom of the abyss, because the ratchet on my harness is failing to tension the rope; it’s sliding through too quickly.
Sliding past Jax on his rope, I try desperately to hold onto my line as it pulls through my fingers, burning them through my gloves. Looking up, light blinds me again as Trey reaches out, clasping me to his huge body and squeezing out what little air is left in my lungs.
Wrapping my arms around his chest, I almost lose my grasp on him when the tension in his line catches, slowing us down. “Don’t let me go!” I try to scream, but it comes out as a raspy whisper.
“I won’t,” Trey promises in a low tone by my ear, squeezing me tighter. “Hold tight. We’re almost to the bottom.”
Hitting the ground softly at the bottom, Trey doesn’t let me go right away, but continues to hug me to him as I shake in his arms. “Are you hurt?” he asks as my cheek rests against his neck.
“That wasn’t supposed to happen, right?” I ask, hearing the quiver in my own voice.
“No,” he admits grimly, setting me on my feet and checking my harness. “You’re too light. This harness is designed for someone with more weight than you. I should’ve checked this myself. You need a smaller ratchet…how many turks do you weigh?” he asks me seriously.
“What’s a turk?” I ask, hearing Jax touch down behind us.
“You trying to stop her heart, sir?” Jax asks in a concerned tone, coming to me and checking me for injuries.
“No, she’s stopping mine,” Trey replies softly, watching Jax examine me.
Swatting Jax’s hands away, I say, “I’m fine. Just my hands hurt.”
Trey reaches out, taking my hands in his. He pulls off my gloves gingerly and turns my hands over. His face darkens at the bloody marks left on my palms from trying to hold the rope.
Wayra hits the ground hard behind us, releasing his clamps and running to me. He stops when he sees my hands. His mouth goes slack jaw for a moment and I try to pull my hands back from Trey to hide them. “I’m fine,” I murmur quickly, seeing the fierce look that Trey is giving Wayra.
“She probably weighs less than a hundred turks,” Trey says in a low voice, piercing Wayra with a scowl.
“I should’ve used a smaller ratchet. I’m sorry, Kricket,” Wayra says before grasping the back of his neck with his hand as he frowns grimly.
“Uhh...okay,” I say softly, not sure how to handle an apology from one of my kidnappers who almost accidently killed me, but is still going to hold me against my will. “Next time, we’ll make sure I weigh more turks,” I stutter, nodding my head like I’m not still freaking out inside over what just happened.
Jax begins to laugh beside me, while pulling a pouch out of his duffle bag. “We’ll make sure Wayra takes you to Sequelle’s with him. That ought to put some turks on you.” Opening the pouch, he extracts a spiky plant limb that looks like aloe. “Hold out your hands for me palms up,” he orders.
Doing as I’m told, I flinch when Jax squeezes the plant leaf over my palms, extracting its salve and rubbing it onto my cuts. “Ahh, that burns!” I hiss, pulling my hands back from him.
“Does it burn more or less than pepper spray?” he asks with an ironic twist of his lips.
“You so deserved that pepper spray, and if I had anymore of it, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now, Jax,” I reply, entirely unrepentant.
“You have the confidence of someone who is at least a couple of crikes old,” he says, pulling my hands back to him and beginning to wrap them in soft bandages.
“How much is a crike?” I ask, watching him.
Squinting his eyes, he says, “Hmmm, about fifty years or so.”
“How old are you?” I ask suspiciously, gauging him at around 23 or 24, like Trey and Wayra.
“Two crikes and a floan,” he replies casually. Hearing me choke, he looks up in question, “What?” he asks, not understanding why my eyes are so wide. If a crike is fifty years then he’s over a hundred years old. “Oh, you think I’m too young to have been given a mission like this one. Well, you wouldn’t be the first to say that,” he grins.
My eyes widen further. “How old are they?” I ask, nodding toward Trey and Wayra who are packing the harnesses back in their bags and winding up the lines.
Jax shrugs, “About the same as me…give or take a speck.”
“How long do you, I mean, do we live? On average?” I ask, feeling completely weirded out.
“A few jamarch, and before you ask, a jamarch is about a thousand years, give or take.”
“So, like three thousand years?” I ask, my mouth feeling really dry.