She heard his boots shift on the flooring. “Who’s out there? We saw the other ships.”
“I don’t know. No one does, but it isn’t anyone you want anything to do with. More than a dozen airships, Aden, but no flags, no insignia, nothing human aboard. Just rets and men who look like they’re dead. I don’t know who sent them. I don’t care. You remember what I said. Fly out of here. Leave all this. It’s good advice. Are you listening?”
“I’m listening,” he answered quietly.
She didn’t know what else to say. “Tell Donell that I’m sorry I hit him so hard.”
“He knows.”
She pushed away from the door and stood facing it again. “See you down the road, Aden.”
“Down the road, Little Red.”
She reached for the latch and threw it clear, then turned and bolted up the stairs without looking back. In seconds she was topside again, surprised to find sleet had turned the world white. She ducked her head against the bitter sting of the wind and slush and moved to the aft railing. The rope Hunter Predd had used earlier to climb down to Obsidian was still tied in place and coiled on the deck. She threw the loose end overboard and watched it tumble away into the haze. She could just barely make out the dark contours of the Roc’s wings as it lifted into place below.
She looked back once at Black Moclips. “You’re a good girl,” she told her. “Stay safe.”
Then she was gone into the gloom.
Minutes later, Redden Alt Mer stood at the port railing of the Jerle Shannara and watched his sister pause in her climb up the rope ladder. She had gotten off the Roc all right, taken firm hold of the ladder and started up. But now she hung there with her head lowered and her long red hair falling all around her face, swaying in the wind.
He thought he might have to go down the ladder and get her.
Thinking that, he was reminded suddenly of a time when they were children, and he had gone high up into the top branches of an old tree. Rue, only five years old, had tried to follow, working her way up the trunk, using the limbs of the tree as rungs. But she wasn’t strong yet, and she tired quickly. Halfway up, she lost her momentum completely and stopped moving, hanging from the branches of that tree the way she was hanging from the rope ladder now. She was something of a nuisance back then, always tagging along after him, trying to do everything he was doing. He was four years older than she was and irritated by her most of the time. He could have left her where she was on the tree—had thought he might, actually. Instead, he had turned back and yelled down to her. “Come on, Rue! Keep going! Don’t quit! You can do it!”
He could yell those same words down to her now, to the little sister who was still trying to do everything he did. But even as he considered it, she lifted her head, saw him looking at her, and began to climb again at once. He smiled to himself. She came on now without slowing, and he reached out to take her arm, helping her climb over the railing and onto the ship.
Impulsively, he gave her a hug and was surprised when she hugged him back.
He shook his head at her. “Sometimes you scare me.” He looked into her wet face, reading the exhaustion in her eyes. “Actually, most of the time.”
She grinned. “That’s real praise, coming from you.”
“Flying Black Moclips all by yourself in a bad piece of weather like you did would scare anyone. It should have scared you, but I suppose it didn’t.”
“Not much.” She grinned some more, like the little kid she was inside. “I took her away from the witch, big brother. Crew and all. It was hard to give her up again. I didn’t want to lose her, though.”
“Better her than you. We don’t need her anyway. It’s enough if the witch doesn’t have her.” He gave his sister a small shove. “Go below and put on some dry clothes.”