dEaDINBURGH by Mark Wilson

walked hand in hand and just liked each other, she supposed, so easily. She sort of hated them both for their weakness.
    The two sides of Joey had her angry at him, disgusted with and by him in truth, but engrossed in his movement, skill and capacity for survival in equal measures. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out how this boy had survived so long beyond the inner fences.
     
    As the thought crossed her mind, Joey, with lightning speed, dropped Steph gently to the ground, drew his bow, loaded an arrow and dropped to his right knee, aiming directly at her.
    As she took a ready stance and began to draw her Sai, he let the arrow go before she even cleared leather with the Sai.
    Alys heard a thunk behind her and rolled reflexively and tightly to her right, coming up on the balls of her feet, knees bent, facing the direction in which Joey had shot the arrow.
    A Ringed, pretty fresh from the looks of it, was lying on its back with one of Joey’s arrows sticking out of its forehead. Four more of the creatures were steps behind where it had stood. As Alys twisted the position of her feet, shifting her weight, and prepared to attack she heard four more thwip sounds followed by the same thunk she’d heard moments before. All four Ringed were silenced.
    Joey walked past her, trying not to smirk, and began pulling his arrows from the downed creatures’ skulls with a slurping noise coming with each removal.
    In her state of over-alertness, she’d been totally oblivious to signs of the approaching creatures. It was so unlike her. Joey, whilst seeming relaxed, had been truly, totally alert.
    “Smart-ass,” Alys growled.
    “You should trust me,” Joey said, referring to her assumption that he’d been aiming at her.
    “I don’t even know you,” she said, flatly.
    “Yes you do, Alys,” he replied giving her an almost one-fingered, almost rude gesture.
    Despite herself, Alys laughed in response to his jabbing his middle half-finger at her.
    “You should’ve gotten over that by now,” she said, nodding at his part-finger. “I thought I was helping.”
    Steph rolled her eye at them.
    Joey jabbed his half-finger at her again.
    “Just trust me from now on.”
    She felt the smile leave her face; it felt so unnatural there and her facial muscles seemed to sigh as they returned her poker face to position. The laughter disappeared, carried off on the cold, cutting Edinburgh wind that constantly whistled along Princes Street.
    “I will, Joey. I promise.” She meant it completely.
     
    Watching him pick Steph up again, Alys took the lead once more, taking them to the entrance to The Gardens. She felt Joey exhale loudly as they entered.
    “It’ll be okay,” she told him, punching him sharply on the shoulder.
    As he followed her through, Alys saw five women waiting for them just inside the entrance.
    “It’s me, Alys. Go and get my mother and my aunt. Steph’s been hurt.”
    Some women Alys hadn’t seen stepped out from the shadows. It was her mother, flanked by two of her guards. She hardly ever had her protectors with her. It wasn’t a positive sign.
    “Jade, Megan – take Stephanie to the medical tent and one of you go and get my sister,” she barked at two of the group of women Alys had seen initially.
    Jennifer stood staring at Alys, unmoving, unreadable. Finally Alys broke and took a step to her side. Using an open gesture, she indicated Joey with her hand.
    “Mum, this is Joey, my… friend.”
    Joey took a step forward and then a ball-bearing to the forehead, delivered from the catapult of one of her mother’s guards. Watching him crash to the grass, face first, she screamed at her mother.
      “No! He’s with me. He saved Steph… and probably me as well.” She said the last part with shame in her voice, but she’d take the shame of being rescued by a male, if it meant keeping Joey safe.
    Jennifer looked down at her daughter, crouching protectively over the boy with the bow. She was completely