The captain raised his fist, a hard, dimpled, baby ball, and hit the prisoner in the mouth. Her head crashed back against the wall behind her. He picked her up again by the hair and dragged her forward, half conscious, to kneel at the feet of the soldier with the knife. The man bent down and sawed his blade through the captain’s fistful of hair, hacking it off at the root. The soldiers all laughed as the strands broke and the prisoner fell forward on her face.
Samiha leaned her cheek against the grime-covered wall of her cell. Her lip was split and a spreading bruise covered her right temple. Beside her crouched the fifth Focal, his eyes glinting in the gloom.
‘Still want to forgive them?’ he asked quietly.
She said nothing and stared at the ceiling.
‘They just go on doing the same thing, you know,’ observed the apparition. ‘Generation after generation. They don’t change.’
She cleared her throat. ‘They must change — eventually,’ she brought out huskily. ‘Everything changes.’
‘Not these ones.’ The man who resembled Ash shrugged. ‘Oh, sure, they change in one place, in one world. They learn. But somewhere else, somewhen else, you can be sure they’ll be up to the same old tricks.’
‘If you condemn them,’ whispered Samiha, ‘you condemn me. I’m one of them.’
‘Come on now, Kion,’ he protested. ‘Even you must be starting to doubt that. If you’re one of them, then why are you sitting here, beside me, when that—’ he indicated a huddled shape on the floor of the cell — ‘is over there?’
Her reluctant gaze trailed over to where he pointed. There was a woman lying bloody-mouthed, her eyes vacantly staring, in a corner of the prison. Her hair had been hacked off, her clothes torn to rags. Her bruised features could be seen clearly in the light seeping in under the door of the cell. They were Samiha’s own.
‘A human does not usually walk away from her own body,’ noted Ash. ‘Even a Grafter would be unable to perform a mind-walk in that state. Human beings have to endure whatever happens to them — they can’t escape. You aren’t human, Kion.’
‘Don’t you think I’ve endured enough?’ she asked.
A flicker of remorse passed over the Focal’s face. ‘That’s not what I meant,’ he assured her. ‘Of course you’ve endured far more than anyone should ever have to. I’m only saying that you’re able to step away. You’re doing it right now.’
‘It could be an effect of shock,’ replied Samiha. But her voice, for the first time, sounded unconvinced.
A key rattled in the lock of the cell; the door burst open in a flood of yellow lamplight. Two soldiers tramped in, reeking of kush. They paid no heed to the second Samiha sitting by the wall. One, the adjunct, nudged the body on the floor with his foot, rolling her over onto her back. She lay inert, the breath barely moving her chest. He slurred out a drunken complaint.
‘Ain’t awake. By the bells, it should be awake by now. An’ its eyes are starin’ all spooky at me, Funny.’
The soldier nicknamed Funny shrugged his shoulders, fumbling with his belt. He was more sober than his companion.
‘I prefer it like this,’ he said. ‘It talks too much when it’s awake.’
‘You’re right.’ The second Samiha stood up, nodding to Ash. ‘I’m not one of them. I’ll have nothing to do with them.’
She walked away from the two soldiers as they prepared to rape the body on the floor. Silently, the apparition followed her. She waved away the prison walls with a flick of her hand and stepped onto a path threading its way through a peaceful twig-thicket. Where she trod on the bark green moss spread, deep and comforting. When she touched the smooth shafts of the twigs on either side of the path they shuddered to life, producing fresh buds that rapidly grew and unfurled into leaves.
‘I didn’t mean to say you should abandon them altogether, Kion.’
Ash shadowed Samiha as she walked down the sunny branch-path, beneath the green blades arching overhead.
‘Weren’t you the one who said I wasn’t human? Why should I concern myself with them in that case?’ The bruises and injuries had disappeared from Samiha’s face; she seemed at peace as she strode along the path ahead of Ash.
‘You misunderstand me. I’ve been sent to wake you up to your purpose in the world. You’re supposed to interact with them. That’s why you’re here. That’s why all this is happening.’
‘I’m not interested,’ she said. ‘I’d rather make the Tree bloom.’
She brushed her hand against a twig. It immediately sprouted a green tendril. The baby leaf at its extremity was silky-smooth, already heavy as it uncurled and lifted its head toward the light. She smiled.
‘You have a destiny. You can’t just walk away from it.’
‘Watch me.’
Ash hurried beside her, frowning with anxiety. ‘No, Kion. Don’t let go. Your body is still there: don’t let those animals have the satisfaction of seeing their victim go mad. You’re strong enough. Resist.’
There was a pause. She craned her neck up to watch sunlight filtering through the translucent green blades.
‘This is how it should be,’ she murmured, with satisfaction. ‘You can’t have a Tree without leaves. Leaves are the best part. Take them away and all you have is dry structure, law and order. No beauty. No mercy.’
‘You have to accept who you are,’ insisted Ash. ‘You’re alive for a reason.’
‘So you keep saying,’ she answered dreamily. ‘I hope it’s to smell the green.’
The Focal groaned in exasperation. ‘This is no time to sniff the breeze, Samiha. Wake up to your true nature. You are more than human. You are Born.’
‘Wait a minute.’ She turned to him with a slight frown. ‘What did you say, just then?’
‘Your true nature—’ he began.
‘No, not that.’ Her face lit up. ‘Ah, yes, the breeze. It’s just as he told me.’
The leaves, the branch-path, the sunny day wavered and disappeared, and they were suddenly back in the dark prison cell.
‘He?’ asked Ash, in confusion.
‘Tymon. He told me,’ she said, the corner of her mouth twitching with amused recollection. ‘Sometimes you have to listen to the wind. The wind blows as it wills. I just have to learn to listen a little better.’
‘What does that half-baked piece of philosophy have to do with anything?’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘I suppose it’s a way of saying, “alright, I see this is going to be difficult, but that’s just how it is and I’m going to carry on all the same”. Tymon was good at that. Carrying on, I mean.’
‘Fine,’ sighed the Focal. ‘We’ll start with him. We’ll wake you up to the tune of Tymon.’
‘Not quite,’ she murmured, gazing down gravely at the woman who was herself, lying battered and broken on the floor. ‘I’d like to hear Samiha’s song, I think. I’ve had enough of men and marching tunes. We’ll listen to her for a change.’
The adjunct kicked the prone form of the prisoner methodically. He stopped only because he noticed that the exercise had become pointless; the woman on the floor was unconscious again. He frowned in the weeping light of the candle. He felt nothing but disgust for the exposed flesh and splayed limbs of the creature at his feet. It was not a human being. It was vermin, a squirming sack of disease, and he had finally made it be still.
He was distracted by the sound of keys in the lock. The lantern-light from the corridor streamed into the cell, causing him to blink. A young man wearing the distinctive robes of a missionary priest stepped inside. Father Ferny froze as his eyes alighted on the woman’s body.
‘Oh, for the love of … Green grace!’ he expostulated, in shock. ‘She has to be alive when she gets to Argos, you numbskull. Alive and able to stand trial in public. In public!’ he reiterated, annoyance getting the better of his distress. ‘Who authorised this? I told your captain — I specifically asked: no visible marks!’
The soldier shuffled away from the mangled body and hung his hea
d, mumbling something inaudible.
‘Never mind. Just get her onto my ship and get some clothes on her,’ snapped the priest. He closed his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose, where a headache had blossomed, throbbing into his temples. ‘You’re free to go after that. Tell your captain I’ve signed all the paperwork. She’s out of your hands, thank the Tree.’
The soldier hoisted up the broken doll shape on the floor and carried it into the corridor outside. On his way he passed the guard holding the keys to the cell, the one named Funny. He gave his companion a quick, surreptitious wink as he loped by.
‘Of all the luck,’ grumbled the priest as he hurried after him, oblivious to the soldiers’ exchange. ‘Trust the Marak guard to bungle communications. The Tree knows if I can clear up this mess you’ve made.’
The second guard shut the empty cell, smirking. The key scraped in the door.
‘What did she actually say to them, brother?’
Caro walked swiftly along the eastern branch-path that led away from Marak, his features dour beneath the folds of his white kafa. He did not respond to the question at once. His companion on the path, a youth with a patchy black beard, was hard pressed to keep up with him. The canopy was still and the sky above a distant blue; no sound but their own footsteps disturbed the quiet winter’s afternoon.
‘What did she say to make the infidels in Marak so angry?’ persisted the second young man. He carried a travel-bag bumping on his shoulder and seemed in good spirits. Perhaps that was why he allowed himself to pester his leader with so many questions. ‘Brother? Did you go to the temple and hear her speak, in the end?’
‘I did,’ ground out Caro.
The admission had to be extracted from the rebel leader painstakingly, like a rotten tooth. But the two paltry words were not recompense enough for his companion, who fairly bounced with impatience on the path.
‘Well? What did she say?’
‘What she said, brother, is of no importance,’ snarled Caro, striding ahead at breakneck speed. ‘”We’re all the same underneath, we should lay aside our differences and work together,” and so on. Her usual nonsense.’
‘Why was she arrested then?’
This question appeared to cost Caro his composure. A spasm passed over his face as he strode along. It was a reaction he was at pains to hide from his companion.
‘She was arrested because it was time for her to go,’ he muttered. ‘I knew it, everyone knew it. We’ve been listening to this drivel for years: we’ve protected her, indulged her at our own cost. She just wouldn’t grow up. You can’t go on being a dreamer forever. You have to deal with the hard realities of life, and walk with your feet on the bark. Especially if you’re a leader, someone people look up to. She failed us completely in that. She wouldn’t just look after the interests of Nur. She wanted something more.’
The patchy young man frowned in confusion as he struggled to keep pace with him. ‘But surely the Governor doesn’t care about such things. He thinks she’s a rebel, that’s all.’
‘Which she is. The worst and most dangerous kind.’
‘Forgive me, brother. I don’t understand. The Kion specifically refused to ally herself with our cause …’
Caro uttered an explosive oath, spinning about on the path.
‘She rebelled against us, don’t you see?’ he snapped. ‘She refused us, even if we were her only hope. So I had to get rid of her. I told the Governor she was the one behind the attacks. I tipped the authorities off about her, alright?’
There was a moment of strained silence. The youth stared at his leader, open-mouthed. Without another word Caro turned away and continued walking.
‘I don’t blame you for it, brother,’ said the other, recovering from his shock to hurry after him. ‘She was a liability. You did the right thing.’
But Caro did not reply. He did not justify himself further. He strode grim and white-faced down the branch -path, as if he could not put the miles between him and Marak city quickly enough.
17
The convoy of refugees rolled and bumped its way along what Tymon guessed was the Marak-Donyah road, sending up shards of bark in its wake. There were eight vehicles in the convoy, three full-fledged house-carts and five covered wagons equipped with whatever comforts their owners had managed to scrape together. He gathered that the travellers hailed from the South Fringes, an assortment of wary adults and dusty children. They appeared, from the equipment loaded in their wagons, to have been dew-farmers, though whether it was drought, poverty or fear of attack that had finally driven them from their homes he could not tell.
The refugees did not speak more than a few words of Argosian. The momentary lucidity — provided, he guessed, by the Sap during his illness — was gone, and his grasp of Nurian only enough for the most basic exchanges. He took comfort from the fact that they appeared to be travelling north. He was still headed roughly in the right direction, toward Sheb.
The inhabitants of his cart were a dour, red-whiskered man in his late forties, and the woman Tymon assumed was his mother, as the age gap was about right. The man barely spoke to him. He spent his days in the driver’s seat, goading on the herd-beasts yoked to the cart with the use of a short stick, his watery blue eyes fixed glumly on the road. Tymon had the distinct impression it was the older woman who had wished to take Lai and himself in, and that her son had been, and still was deeply opposed to the idea. In the evenings, when the convoy halted together for the night, the red-haired man would return to the back of the vehicle to conduct short, gruff arguments with his mother. These altercations always ended the same way, with the man throwing a blanket over his shoulders in fury and stomping off to visit another wagon. He would return in the early hours of the morning, drunk and morose, and throw himself down on one of the two bunkbeds with a stream of curses.
When her son stormed off the woman would smile apologetically to Tymon and give a general, regretful shrug, as if to say, ‘Well, here we are, this is the human condition.’ She made him understand through gestures that her name was Adana and that her son was named Dell. She was extraordinarily kind, sharing her scanty store of food unstintingly, though he found it hard to swallow more than a few mouthfuls after his bout of illness. She was scrupulously polite. But he could see that it was little Lai who had captured her attention. She would gaze for long periods at the child as they swayed and clattered along the road, her expression full of anxious care. Sometimes she would rub the sleeping girl’s hands and feet or spoon small quantities of broth into her mouth, holding up her head so the liquid slipped down her throat.
He tried to ascertain from her where and when the two of them had been found, for he guessed he had lost consciousness and been picked up by the convoy several days before. The moon shining over the thickets was now a crescent, thin and new. He calculated that he had lost roughly two weeks to his illness. He also suspected he had stumbled onto the road he was now travelling during his delirium, for it was far wider than the track he had previously discovered with Nightside; it occurred to him that the Saffid youth might have gravely miscalculated his course.
He tried to ask Adana about other roads in the region but she never seemed to understand his garbled, halting requests in Nurian. It was doubly frustrating to him because he burned to ask her whether the convoy had come across travellers from Sheb, refugees who may have brought news of the Freehold. After a while he gave up attempting to communicate with his hosts, and resigned himself to waiting for the Oracle’s health to be restored to find out more. The hours passed slowly, in cold and in boredom, the silence filled with the churning of wheels.
When his teacher awoke three days later, her gaze immediately sought out Tymon, sitting huddled under blankets on the floor of the cart in an attempt to keep warm. The hinged side of the vehicle had been raised up and bolted against the chill, but the wind still sliced through the smallest cracks like a knife. The first words the Oracle uttered were, most uncharacteristically, an apology.
‘I’m so sorry, my friend,’ she said. ‘I almost killed you back there. I almost killed both of us. And it was pride, all pride.’
‘I don’t see how that could be true, Ama,’ he grinned.
He had been seized by a swift joy on seeing her open her eyes. He had not expected to come to care so deeply for his acerbic little teacher; he felt giddy with relief that she was back and Lai had pulled through.
‘I could have avoided our predicament,’ she sighed. ‘I might have spoken to Nightside before he left — forced him to stay, commanded him. Or I could have simply told him he hadn’t found the Marak road and was headed straight back to Cherk Harbour. But no. I had to go and let him make his own choices, without interference, leaving us to wander off to rack and ruin.’ She winced in recollection. ‘Sometimes I take myself rather too seriously,’ she confided. ‘It’s a good thing you were up to it. You’re true Grafter material. You don’t let a little thing like certain death stop you.’
Her praise covered him with embarrassment, particularly since he remembered how little he had trusted her advice, and how how ready he had been to disobey her in his attempts to launch the trance. He mumbled that he had only done what was natural, and they had Adana to thank for saving their lives, anyway. He drew back and allowed the old woman to shuffle up to the Oracle, her hands twisting together in her apron.
Adana seemed to be in awe of her tiny patient. To Tymon’s astonishment she threw herself prostrate before the child. It was not the first time he had witnessed such behaviour among the Nurians, of course. He realised with a shiver that the refugee woman had guessed the identity of the Oracle. She lay with her head in the girl’s lap and burst into a dramatic flood of tears. It was a while before the Oracle could calm her, stroking Adana’s grey curls and speaking to her in a low voice, as she had to Jan.
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