The Fade

11

At first I spend much of my time in bed, but as my strength returns I'm up and about more and more. During the days we're confined to the carriages. Then the SunChildren sleep or talk or play music. They practise whittling, weaving, fletching and archery; they hold mock-battles, cheered on by their peers. They don't seem to fear the light as long as the hide flaps are secured shut over the windows, so I don't either.

The occupants of the carriage are very curious about me and about the world below, and I spend a great deal of time answering questions back and forth through Feyn, who acts as our translator. It's clear that Feyn is some sort of hero to them now. Not only can he speak the language of the underworld with apparent fluency, but he has gone into the depths and come back alive. He's allowed to speak of what he saw and learned but not what he did: that would be boastful. A person should only be judged on their interactions with the judge, not on past glories or disgraces. Strange custom, but it's kind of sensible in its way, and if it's the strangest thing I encounter during my time on the surface I'll be very surprised. So I fill in the story, with Feyn translating.

I learn their names and forget them instantly. My attempts at copying their language meet with politely mystified smiles. I can't nail the click that they make to punctuate their words, and they can't understand me without it. Languages have never been my strong point. Even when enslaved to the Gurta, surrounded by their language every moment of every turn, I was a slow learner and I suffered for it.

When night falls, the SunChildren are set free. The men slip out of their soft robes and into their sunsuits, scatter from the carriages and head to the stables in the last carriage of the chain. From there they emerge on whip-lean, chitin-armoured steeds called scha'rak. These animals are long-limbed and apparently eyeless, but they run at frightening speeds and have no difficulty in navigation. The men disperse ahead of the caravan, searching for good spots to stop. The women emerge and stretch their legs while the children play alongside the enormous, grinding rollers that support their homes. The gethra move no faster than walking pace, but I note that nobody strays too far from the caravan, and several men on scha'rak stay behind as outriders, watching for danger.

I'm something of a celebrity among the coterie, and upon my emergence Feyn and I are surrounded by women and children. They're remarkably restrained: they don't mob or pester, but simply walk beside us, talking between themselves and occasionally asking questions through Feyn. The children are having a harder time controlling their excitement. I suspect that only obedience to their elders is stopping them from poking me to see if I'm real.

I find it rather endearing that they're so oblique in displaying their interest. I ask Feyn whether they're doing it so as not to make me feel uncomfortable, but he looks puzzled and tells me that's how the SunChildren are.

I don't know exactly what it is I feel as I stroll beneath the naked sky. It's like trying to chase a memory I'm not certain I dreamed or lived. It's the kind of deep-seated, unquestioning sense of belonging that I associate with home and family, back in the dim and distant past when I was very young. I'm afraid of the sky, a threatening intimation of latent agoraphobia, but my fear can't get a grip on me. I'm beginning to understand what Feyn meant about people who've survived the Shadow Death being different. When you're on your second life, you really don't sweat the small stuff.

I can't help drinking in the land. I'm stunned by its scale. Much of it is blasted and bare, scoured by the murderous gaze of the suns, but life is not so easily beaten. It hangs on, defiant.

Gargantuan mycora tower over the bleak plains, cracking through solid stone. Feyn tells me how tiny animals live in their stems and caps, hunted by larger predators that come from elsewhere, which are in turn hunted by the SunChildren.

But in those places where the suns can't reach, the canyons and ravines and basins, that's where the action is. We pass oases that swell outward from the tiniest underground springs. Geysers and boiling swamps cloak distant lowlands in a sheltering mist, ghostly in the starlight. Sometimes whole hills are colonised by mycora, providing a roof beneath which more fragile flora can grow.

Feyn gives me a spyglass and shows me where the animals of the upper world scuttle and wing. The night is alive with movement. I see strange bats trailing luminous tendrils from their jaws, which lure in the insects they eat. I spot quick, barrel-bodied things that slither from holes dug in the earth. I see a cluster of photovores, who live off nothing but the day's light, their bodies transparent and crystalline. They softly glow in the darkness as they clamber along the rock faces: lumbering, clawed things, safe from predators inside their gem-like carapaces.

On the cliff-tops, lashers trail sticky tendrils from the mouths of their protective pots, giant anemones against the starry skyline. The wind drags their deadly limbs out like streamers, waiting for some airborne meal to blunder into them. Distant two-legged predators with long, sinuous necks lope menacingly over the high ground, lowing at the rising moon. They have blunt, skull-like faces, and they follow the caravan at a distance. These are ki'kay, according to Feyn. Opportunist killers, apt to sneak into unguarded camps and run off with a child. The hunters take them out if they get too near, but their meat is foul.

Feyn describes how each animal has armour or reflective skin, hibernation techniques or behaviour patterns that allows it to prosper in this merciless world. Most hunt at night and burrow or hide when the dawn comes. A few, like the gethra, can suffer the suns with impunity.

It's an undiscovered country, and yet I feel I've been here before. The echoes of my ancestors, resounding over thousands of generations. Were we really ever meant to live underground? Did these people have it right all along, refusing to yield to the suns? Was it an act of bravery that led the tribes of Eskara into the darkness, or was it cowardice?

Not my problem. I'm an assassin, not a historian.

We stop in a shallow dead-end canyon, where small, tough plants have taken hold around the edge of a scrubby dried-up water-hole. The caravan is broken down to form a barricade and enormous bales of feed are brought out for the gethra. The men circle restlessly and then ride away to hunt, leaving a few guards as before. The women busy themselves building up fires, mostly with materials from a storage-carriage.

I wish I was strong enough to go with the men, but I haven't fully recovered yet, and I don't much rate my chances of riding one of their mounts. So I'm left with the women, the elderly, and those like Feyn who earn their place in ways other than by their prowess in the hunt: the Loremasters, the Mystics, the Pathfinders and suchlike.

I'm surprised by how much these nomads bring with them; I always had the impression they would live entirely off the land. But as Feyn explains, in a barren world nobody can guarantee that resources will be there at every stop, so they stock up when things are abundant and use those stocks when they're not. Their carriages are mobile houses, stables, storerooms. I'm beginning to think of this as less of a caravan and more of a moving town.

We watch as the coterie's Mystic enacts the ceremony of drawing the water. He's bald and thin, with every visible inch of his skin covered in designs. He wears heavy robes that seem too large for his frame. The ceremony consists of him sitting cross-legged at the edge of the depression and burning various herbs in pots, making gestures and intoning words in the language of the SunChildren. The others treat it with great gravitas. It all seems a little unnecessary to me.

Still, there's no denying that it works. Water begins to pool at the bottom of the depression, seeping through the cracked mud, and before long the waterhole is filling again. As long as the Mystic keeps chanting, the water keeps rising; but it's a slow process, and after a while I get bored. It's not as miraculous as Feyn seems to think I'll find it. We have chthonomancers back home who can do stuff like this as a party trick, and without all the chanting. At least I've solved the mystery of who put the skinmark on my wrist.

Later, Feyn and I sit together on the porch of one of the carriages, drinking fruit juice. It's an expensive commodity down below because of the scarcity of fruit, but here they have it in abundance. Fruit grows in the low, sheltered places – the mist basins, the shaded canyons, in the mycora forests – and the SunChildren gather it as they desire.

'Why do they wear their suits at night?' I ask, motioning towards one of the scouts, who is prowling about on his mount nearby.

'Sometimes those who hunt are trapped by a large beast, or injured. Then they will not return before dawn. We are not careless where the suns are concerned.' He takes a sip from his cup. 'Also, they are our armour. Animals are dangerous here. Usually they stay away from gethra, but gethra are slow and they do not eat other creatures. Some, like the ki'kay, try to get into the camps.' He scratches his arm and makes a noise that indicates he never really thought about it much. 'It is tradition. Warriors wear sunsuits.'

'And you?'

'I am not a warrior.'

I study the scout. He's draped in a beige cloak and wearing a voluminous cowl. Beneath that he wears plates of rigid hide over a flexible undershirt and trousers, heavy boots and gloves, and a ceramic mask with a tinted glass slash for a visor and slits for breathing.

'How long can one of them survive in the sun?' I ask.

'Depends. On time of day, how strong the suns are. In your time… three hours, maybe. Four or five at best. Maybe two if both suns are high in the sky.'

But I've stopped listening. 'Three hours?'

He looks at me mildly. 'Yes.'

I'm stunned. I had no idea it was even possible. 'The best sunsuits we have give you one hour at most, and that's with armour so thick it's completely impractical.'

'Yes,' he replies. 'That is why many of my people think it is not good to mix with you. You would learn our ways, and you would learn them fast. And then you would come up here.'

'Your people are very wise,' I say, with not a little bitterness.

'But I think that the people below will come anyway. We should know you, and let you know us, and in that way we would both be ready. But we will not teach you our secrets. You would have to find them for yourself.'

'Some public-minded citizen would torture them out of you, I'm sure.'

'No. For we send only people like me, who do not know the secret of the crafting. And if just one of us was harmed, all of us would disappear. When you emerged we would be waiting for you. And not as friends.'

I'm silent for a time, until he adds: 'Others feel this way too. Not many, but some. With what I know I may be able to make it this way.'

'Don't trust us,' I say. 'Don't trust anyone. If you let us get stronger than you up here, if you let us take the advantage, it'll be over. We'll crush you.'

'We know this. Your kind are war-like. You need to fight or your society does not work.'

'Voids, that's a depressing thought,' I mutter. 'How the fuck did we come to that?'

'Civilisation is a stampede,' he says, looking away. 'Hard to steer. Impossible to stop. Destroying everything in its path.'

The hunters return soon after, dragging the corpses of several creatures with far too much scale and fang for my liking. The creatures, each twice as long as I am tall, are swiftly skinned and cleaned, then brought to the women to cook over the fire. The men are ebullient, laughing and celebrating. I move down to the fire with Feyn, and we sit silently in the warmth and the light, watching the life of the coterie.

Just for now, just for the short time I'm spending in the company of these curious people, there's no weight on me. It's the first time I can ever remember feeling this way. I'm not responsible for anyone here, and I'm beholden to none. Nobody knows where I am. My master and Clan probably think I'm dead. I'm floating, adrift, and it's wonderful.

I look up at the boundless sky, dense with stars. A dull grey moon, a sister to Callespa, is visible high above us. I don't know its name and I don't care to ask. Let it remain unknown.

Sometimes, that's the greatest gift you can give. We travel for several days more, our pace slow and steady, and I concentrate on regaining my strength and putting back the weight I've lost. I begin to work my way through chua-kin exercises in the carriage. The children sit and watch me, rapt, as I force myself to endure the punishing regime of movements and stances, while the old woman stitches torn clothes and the men play games of chance with Feyn.

At night, when I'm not sitting with the others, Feyn educates me about SunChild signs. I've given up trying to help the women with whatever they are doing; it only ends in me getting good-naturedly shooed away. I watch the men enviously each time they ride out on the hunt, wishing I had time to learn how to ride one of their skeletal mounts. But I don't, so I learn other things instead.

Feyn shows me the way that rocks can be arranged to indicate a waterhole nearby, or how certain marks point to a stash of food and weapons and sunsuits. He tells me how to spot the trail of a caravan, even long after the ferocious dawn winds have scattered the traces. He teaches me how different coteries have different signs, often marking a well-used trail or spots they frequently return to, so that other SunChildren can find them. In a nomadic culture where people rarely gather, it's necessary for them to be able to locate each other should the need arise.

'This is how this coterie found us,' Feyn says, indicating a thorny vine hiding amongst a group of similarly mean-looking and robust plants.

'This vine?'

'We call it-' he begins, then stops. 'You will not remember. But you should remember what it looks like. This vine is life to us.'

I turn it over carefully in my hands. Thick, fleshy and sharp.

'Cut several coils of that vine and leave it in the sun for a day. Then collect it at night and burn it. The smoke it will make, it smells very bad.'

I look up at him. 'I don't understand.'

'If it is burned in the right place, it will carry very far. For someone who can read the wind, it is easy to find. It means you need help. They will come. The scha'rak smell even more further. They can trace you.'

'They can track you,' I correct him. It's become a habit now, even though it seems pointless, knowing how little time we have left together. I wish I could stay with him, just to talk, just to make his task of mastering Eskaran easier.

No, that's not the reason. I just wish I could stay with him. Saving his life committed me somehow, and his saving mine just drove the hooks deeper.

I can't decipher my feelings concerning this boy. I've turned it over and over in my mind, but I can't find an answer that satisfies me. I protected him in prison, I risked myself to go back for him when I could have escaped far more easily alone. Now we're sharing a bed, and even though there's no more touching since that first day I awoke to find him there, the proximity unsettles me. I feel tugged towards him; it's an effort of will to keep a gap between us under the covers. Even the thought of it inspires a poisonous feeling of guilt, of wrongness. Every day I find myself wondering why I don't just ask to move beds, to sleep with the old woman or the children. And yet I never do.

What is he to me? A surrogate for Jai, for a mother who misses her son? A replacement for Rynn, for a wife who's lost her husband? Both? Was it just that I needed to save somebody, to make up for those I couldn't in the past?

Or is it simply that he represents a way of life to me, this SunChild world, a place utterly apart from obligation? A place away from the war, away from the conflict that killed the man I love, away from roofs and ceilings and walls. It's a harsh world, but it's a life with more freedom than I've ever had. Is it because he's a new start?

I tell myself he's too young, far too young, but under this canopy of stars it doesn't seem to matter.

I don't know what I feel. But I know I'm too tangled to make smart choices where my heart is concerned, and he knows it too. Rynn's death is too fresh, and my mind is on my son. I wonder, if not for that, would things be different? Is he holding back because he knows I need time to make sense of this? He's so difficult to read.

One thing's for sure. The goodbyes are going to be tough. Memory is an awful thing. A journey can seem like a lifetime while you're on it. One perfect turn can stretch like a season. But when it's over, and you look back, it seems like the whole thing happened in the beat of a heart. It's gone and can't be brought back.

The caravan waits at the crest of the rise against a purple-blue sky. The aurorae of impending dawn are just beginning to stroke the horizon. The wind is rising, blowing my hair about my face. At my back is a cave: dry, unremarkable, crooked. It will take me home.

Feyn stands with me. The others have already retreated inside the carriages, but he doesn't seem in a hurry. He assures me that he knows the dawn, and it won't catch him out.

I've said my farewells to the rest of the coterie. They were very kind. Several of them pointed to the mark on the inside of my wrist and made encouraging gestures. I didn't need Feyn to tell me that I was always welcome among them. Their simple generosity makes me feel vaguely ashamed of my cynical Veyan attitude towards friendship. In the city it's not given freely, it's subject to conditions and it can shatter with a single blow.

They've loaded me up with a pack full of food and given me shortblades to replace the ones I lost, back in another life. They're beautifully crafted, and undoubtedly valuable to a people who probably have to trade for all the metal they obtain.

'I wish you would come with me,' I say, though the unselfish half of me hopes he will refuse.

'I wish you would stay,' he replies.

'I have a son.'

'I know.'

That hangs in the air between us for a time.

'Do you think he will come with you, if you find him? Do you think he will turn his back on war?'

'Yes,' I say, then: 'Maybe. His father is dead now. You can't reason with a memory. Maybe he'll decide to stick it out, in Rynn's honour. I don't know. I just have to talk with him.'

'And will your master let him do it?'

'I persuaded him before. I can do it again,' I say, though I'm not one-tenth as sure of that as I sound. 'Ledo's sisters are my friends. They'll help me. And I have a letter from the Dean of Engineers at Bry Athka University. Ledo will see the sense in it.' At least, that's what I hope. Ledo's been known to be as whimsical as his siblings when the mood takes him. You can't be sure of anything where the aristocracy are concerned.

He studies me for a long time, his black eyes roaming my face. 'Who are you doing this for?' he asks.

'What does that mean? I'm doing it for him, of course.'

He stares at me for a long while before his gaze falls away.

'I came back for you, too, Feyn,' I say. 'I could have got out of Farakza on my own.' I realise belatedly how harsh that sounds. I'm annoyed at him for implying that finding my son is more about me than Jai. But I don't want our parting to be this way, so I soften the edge a little. 'It's how I am,' I say quietly. 'I don't think like you. I don't have your philosophies. I can't just cut loose.'

He nods reluctantly, then brushes his oily black hair away from his eyes. The wind is beginning to moan on the cliff-tops, and the air is full of the hiss of rustling dust.

'The dawn is coming,' he says. 'I have to go.'

I can feel something shrinking and dying inside me, and it's so terrible I can't bear it.

'I wish you luck,' he says, with an uncertain tone to his voice. He's still not sure what luck is. I laugh and put my arms around him.

'You're learning,' I tell him quietly, and then he holds me back and we become very still for a little while. I feel the pulse at his neck against my own. I'm never going to see him again.

'I have to go,' he says once more. The sky is lightening fast. He glances at it, then back at me, and though there's a thousand things to say we don't say any of them because they wouldn't be enough.

'We will pass this way again, at the season's end,' he says. 'After that, I cannot say.' Then he turns and runs towards the carriages, and I start walking into the cave, tears in my eyes.

Down, down, away from the killing dawn. The world I know opens its arms to me, and darkness clasps me to its chest.