Fourth Under Sol (Digitesque Book 5)

by Guerric Haché

  Much as she was willing to eat, she would rather understand why they weren’t pressing forward. “Tharson, why are we waiting?”

  Tharson nodded towards the door. “The rokh might kill us. Too fast, too quiet.”

  “Is Azure afraid of the rokh?” What kind of god was afraid of beasts? Even if they were demons, or things of another otherworldly sort. “Are they… not normal animals?” Her language failed her in this regard, and she frowned. “Bad-god-animals?”

  He stared at her for a moment before curling up half his mouth in a smile. “ Zalati . Bad creatures from another world. But no - not them. You are the only demons here.”

  Hail snorted, and Isavel grinned, but after a moment she realized it had not been the joke she had thought it was. The villagers had grown deathly quiet, furiously cutting food into the metal dish over the fire or shuffling their packs or staring at their hands, all in the unmistakable way of people listening very closely. Yarger, ever silent, was staring at her directly in a way that might have made her uncomfortable if she wasn’t confident she could beat him in a duel. Kelena, like Tharson, was smiling lightly.

  “Wait - you think we’re demons?”

  Tharson shook his head, and glanced at Kelena. “ We know you are not. But the others do not believe us.”

  Kelena nodded. “You are clearly from Earth, after all.”

  Isavel glanced at Erran, who was scowling, though she couldn’t tell whether it was because he was offended or because he couldn’t quite follow the language. “Erran - why do they think we’re demons?”

  He shook his head. “If they don’t have the thousand worlds, they don’t have demons. This is something else.”

  Sam clipped in with a quick question in impressive martian; she must have been listening closely. “Is that why they’re afraid?”

  At this point the villagers were staring directly, glancing between the participants in the conversation. Tharson nodded and shrugged at once. “Earthlings are dangerous. Their killing is remembered.” He reached over to the villager who was tending the food dish, and after a moment the man hurried to offer him a small wooden bowl. “The taste of the killing, not the little truths.”

  And with that he offered the bowl of food to Isavel, though he was much too far away for her to take it. She cautiously moved across the room and accepted it, glancing and nodding to the man at the fire who had prepared it. The look on his face told her quite clearly he never would have offered it to her himself. “Thank you.”

  He nodded curtly and started scraping off more of the sizzling food - roots and fungi and meats she couldn’t identify at a glance or a sniff, but hearty by all accounts, though small in portion. There was a crude wooden spoon in the bowl already, and she shared with Hail. “What earthling killings?”

  “Nothing any of us really remember.” Kelena’s words were quick and steady, and Isavel noticed, oddly, that her hand was on the hilt of her sword. “Old fights. Old wars. Are you here to kill us?”

  “No, I’m -”

  Zoa interjected before Isavel could finish, pointing at the swordswoman. “You kill us.”

  Kelena stared back impassively, but some of the villagers started chattering at this point, and in the mixture of voices and accents Isavel missed some words, but she gathered they were trying to explain - not for the first time, it seemed - what had happened at the fargate.

  Isavel continued ferrying food between the martians and the earthlings, and after the first few bowls the man at the fire conceded and handed her the food directly, avoiding eye contact as he did.

  “Azure’s people killed yours.” Tharson nodded solemnly. “It’s what he does.”

  “I don’t fucking care.” Zoa also didn’t seem to care about slipping into her earthling tongue when she couldn’t swear in martian. “You’re no better. You -”

  Whatever insult she was trying to deliver was beyond her, though, so Isavel tried to explain quickly. Fumbling over the lack of family terms, she gestured at her face instead, then at Tanos’ - he looked more like her than any of the others, but it was not a close resemblance. “She had - her - they were the same - the same blood.”

  It said something about her life, that she learned the word for blood before the one for brother , and she sat uncomfortably on that while Tharson nodded unhelpfully. Kelena cut in, shooting Tharson a glance with a pointedness that speared Isavel’s interest. “Sibling. Tharson, her sibling was killed.”

  Tharson nodded and hummed. “Of course, yes.”

  Zoa tilted her head back against the wall, but after a moment Isavel was surprised to see Yarger bring a bowl of food over to Zoa himself. She stared at him for a moment, and Isavel briefly worried the coder might smack the offering away, but she accepted it and ate.

  Kelena and Tharson, meanwhile, traded uncomfortable glances. It was the first time she had really noticed this, but whatever it was was soon set aside for the sake of the hunger.

  Isavel found the martian food to be pleasantly inoffensive. Something smelled like cinnamon, one of the rarer spices she had encountered in her life. The meat was gamey and lean, a bit reminiscent of goat but not enough to be sure. Everything on this world seemed a little off, though it was perhaps more remarkable there was any similarity at all.

  After several bites of silence, she decided to try again for a clearer answer. “Where are we going?”

  Kelena shot Tharson another glance, but he ignored it. “The First Tree. All the gods are there. And older things.”

  Older things they had made dark bargains with, perhaps? She sat up a little straighter. “Can the older things send us back?”

  Tharson shrugged. “Many strange things have happened there. Sending you back would not be the strangest.”

  One of the villagers piped up at this. “Please don’t bring more demons.”

  She frowned. “Nobody wants to come here.”

  “Then why do you burn our world?”

  “We don’t -” She frowned at Tharson and shook her head, taking another bite of food. Why would the martians think Earth was a demon world? That seemed strange on the surface - but then again, Earth had its thousand worlds and their demons. Mars only had Earth. It may not seem so different, from their side. She hoped that was it.

  As she ate, she leaned back against the ancient concrete. Tanos was inspecting the food with far more attentiveness than she thought it warranted, but Sam was quietly eating next to her, so Isavel prodded the ghost.

  “Do you know anything about Mars?”

  Sam looked at her, briefly wide-eyed, before smirking. “Back when I knew people who knew people who might have known? Maybe I knew something. But I’m centuries old, Isavel, a lot of them spent in a screaming broken void. I’m surprised I remember the first Ghost War, let alone my first life. All I know is whatever everyone else half-remembered and repeated.” She leaned back next to Isavel, her reddish knot of hair cushioning her head against the ancient wall. “You know, I think I remember what my parents looked like. But I also think what I remember is something I made up, at some point along the way, to convince myself I didn’t forget.”

  Now that was an uncomfortable thought, and not what she wanted to hear. She knew what her parents looked like. For now. But she didn’t like to think of it.

  Tanos leaned back as well. “If you think that’s grim, Isavel, imagine the lectures she gives me.”

  Sam’s eyes widened. “I do not lecture you -”

  “Tanos, listen here now.” He put on a mock voice that sounded nothing like Sam. “I’ve spent more time chewing apples in the thousand worlds than you’ve lived your entire life, so when I say -”

  Isavel chuckled, and she noticed the jibe drew a smile from Erran as well. Then she bit into a spicy, tough mushroom she’d never encountered before, surprised at the burst of flavour and smiling a bit as she swallowed it. “But look at them - the martians look like us, or more than outers do at least. And they’ve dealt with earthlings before. So what’s going on? What exa
ctly are we dealing with?”

  Tanos hummed for a moment as he chewed something that wasn’t an apple, then offered up an idea. “They said older things than the gods? What if something came here from Earth first, then brought gods and people afterwards and changed them? Or what if Mars was split off from Earth?”

  She considered that, but without anything else to go on, those were just ideas. She didn’t even know where Mars was - was it closer to the stars than Earth?

  Tanos seemed to commiserate with her unspoken thoughts, and sighed as he glanced at her. “Yeah, I don’t know. Ada would be asking the same questions. She’d probably be tearing into some ruins right now to get at the oldest stuff she could find.”

  Isavel felt Hail’s gaze, too, but tried to keep her face impassive as she let go of the locator stone. Hearing Ada’s name was unexpectedly unsettling this time, but she kept quiet. It wasn’t supposed to matter - she was supposed to be focused on bringing them all home.

  But Ada would be asking those questions, wouldn’t she? Why was Isavel bringing them up now, then?

  The martians didn’t know what they had been talking about, but she was starting to feel eyes on her, first the earthlings then the martians, all realizing something was amiss. Like something was painted across her face. Why were they all staring? Were they, really, or was she just imagining it?

  She couldn’t tell, but the tension and strain in her chest quickly became unbearable, and she handed Hail her bowl. “I’m going to forage. I want a bit more… flavour.”

  “Isavel -”

  “I’ll be back. Stay here.” She stood up and made for the door, and the martians started getting agitated.

  Tharson stood up again, eyeing her pointedly. “Isavel, the rokh is dangerous.”

  “Not to me.” Isavel put one hand to the reddish sandstone wall and melded all the skin on her body to its texture and colour, and at the other hand she briefly flashed a bright sword of composite hexagons of light. Tharson grunted in resignation; he didn’t need to tell her that her clothes couldn’t meld with her skin, but thankfully he didn’t try. Kelena was watching her with open interest, perhaps impressed by the boldness or stupidity of marching out into the night.

  So long as they didn’t bother her. Stepping outside, she cast her eyes up and saw nothing that worried her. Then she took a few steps and heard something that did.

  She rounded on the footsteps and froze. “Tanos? What are you -”

  He nodded hurriedly. “Forage. I’ve never been somewhere with so many different plants. It’ll be fun.”

  She rolled her shoulders, feeling the pathfinder brace shift slightly around her chest. “Look, I just wanted -”

  “To be alone, yeah.” He nodded, stepping up with her and cautiously putting a hand on her shoulder. “Ada’s difficult. It’s okay.”

  She scowled and turned away, but he followed her down the block. After a moment he made a hushed sound, and she turned to find him actually eating a leaf he had found somewhere. He was kneeling by a particularly long patch of grass sprouting under an overhang, chewing at the end of an arm-length blade. “This one isn’t bad.” He beckoned her over. “Come on. At least pretend you’re not brooding.”

  She shook her head and grabbed one of the finger-width blades, crouching beside him and tearing off a bite with her teeth. It was not unlike spinach, bitter but reasonably flavourful. In the silence, she was reminded of younger times when she would eat just about anything she found, even if it didn’t taste good - it was important, her mother had said, that she learn what things tasted like, and feel comfortable living off the land.

  She couldn’t truly remember what language her mother had said that in, even though she knew it must have been her southern tongue. “I used to love foraging. Before I knew what everything was.”

  Tanos looked at her, nodding and swallowing. “Honestly, I don’t really know you, Isavel.”

  She blinked. It was true - these last days had been constant motion. It was a bit of a surprise he was even here, and likely a poor decision on his part.

  “You look familiar, though. Did you ever travel with Jerod? That old priest?”

  That name reached out and hit her from what felt like an entirely different age. “I - well. A few times, as a kid. When I thought I might be ungifted. I was right about that.” She looked away, feeling around in the dirt for anything with tuberous roots. Then a wry smile found her. “But religion wasn’t for me.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  She smirked, but she couldn’t keep up the humour. “I listened to him die, you know.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry.” Tanos nodded solemnly. “Like I said. I don’t really know you. But I know the look on your face, and I know Ada.” His humour seemed to return a little. “You know she brought me to the island, then ran off with the hauler? No warning, no way for me to get home. Not that I had a home - ghosts had just taken my village. She saved my damned life, and then dumped me in the middle of nowhere.”

  She paused, unsure of how much of her expression he could see in the dark, or of how guarded she could keep it. “So she’s just a heartbreaker, is that it?”

  “Well. It was a complicated time. We were…” His face spoke clearly to her even under ringless night, and she felt herself grow oddly both jealous and sympathetic at once at the implication. “But not like you. Everything was exploding around me, but she kept me pointed at something ahead of us. She has an energy - she keeps going. All the time. You know what I mean, right?” He sniffed another plant he plucked from the undergrowth, and gave a single, short laugh. “It was fun, then it got desperate. And sometimes I think she was just happy to have someone to listen to her talk.”

  She nodded. “What happened?”

  “I wandered around the forest for days, trying to figure out where to go. Eventually I saw a damned starship flying around and I knew it had to be her. Took me even longer to find the outers and get them to hear me out; one guy finally got interested when I shouted her name at him across a lake, before he could disappear. She was not excited to see me again, but she blew past it pretty quick. She keeps going.”

  “So what? She’s gone - I can’t just wander around and hope I run into her friends. I already did that. I -” She sat down and grumbled. “I killed some of her friends, for all I know, and I definitely let their home get burned down. And what if I do find her again? You…” She stumbled, dreading the answer that might come to this. “Did you want -?”

  Tanos laughed again. “After she dumped me in the woods like that? Hell no. She’s got that energy and… look, things happen around her. Big things. At first, the crazy girl taking me on rides through ancient ruins was exciting, but you realize if you stay too close you get burned. I’m not fireproof.” He looked at her pointedly.

  Isavel was, perhaps, not far from being fireproof. And to hear the very thing she had felt about Ada, in some ways, reflected back on her was strangely warming. But this wasn’t helping her mood. “She’s fucking gone, Tanos.”

  “I know. She’s always running.” He shrugged, and offered her a soft, jagged leaf that revealed itself to be minty. “You’re gifted halfway to Mars and back. All the damned way, now. I think she knew you were a runner too. You could keep pace. I think she’d want you to.”

  That was a nice sentiment, perhaps, but it meant little when Ada had clearly chosen to leave her on Earth, alone, in pursuit of whatever she was chasing. “She didn’t want enough.”

  He shrugged, quietly. “What did you like in her?”

  “She - I thought she saw me first. Not the Herald.”

  He nodded, moving further down the ruined street. There was undergrowth everywhere here, a variety of weedy and tough plants, some of which proved more interesting to taste than others. “That can’t be what started it.”

  He was right, of course. She thought back to the docks outside Glass Peaks, impossibly long ago now. She remembered Ada’s eyes, immediately enthralling despite - or maybe because of - their sha
rp irreverence. She remembered the quiet dare to anybody to approach her, the odd way that dare seemed to turn into a bluff when Isavel actually came closer. She remembered feeling… curious, drawn to this girl who seemed enticing, somehow.

  She pricked her hand on part of some new plant, and laughed. Tanos glanced at her quietly, and she explained. “Blackberries.”

  “What?”

  “Blackberries. Thorny as hell, but there’s something in there you want, enough that you go in carefully, you pay more attention. When we met, I think she had killed someone I knew. Someone titled, actually. She looked worried I wanted revenge, but when she realized I didn’t she seemed relieved, in a sort of… interested way. Like she cared that I wasn’t going to be trouble, somehow. I don’t know. I’m not making sense.”

  Tanos grimaced. “She didn’t give you trouble for being a superstitious peasant?”

  She frowned. Peasant was an odd word, a derision aimed by cityfolk at those in the wilds. Ada wasn’t from a proper city, though, was she? “Not to me.”

  “Huh.” Tanos had clearly experienced another side of her.

  “But you have to understand, I didn’t… Gods, I still haven’t spent that much time with her.” She gripped her head, leaning against the wall. “Why do I even care? ”

  Ungifted as he was, he couldn’t possibly see much of what he was plucking and eating, but he kept going anyway. They were fortunate to be more robust than pets or livestock, prone to illness or death if they ate the wrong things. He chewed idly on something for a moment before not answering the unanswerable question.

  “You angry with her?”

  “Of fucking course I am.”

  “So. Like I said, I don’t really know you. But you’ve said - I listened, and you told us you would get us home.” He used the specific form of us that did not include the person being spoken to - that did not include her. Because she had, it was true, said she would get them home - not always, but more than once. She couldn’t deny that. “So when you get to the gods, when you get them to give up whatever power they have - you’re going after her, aren’t you?” She froze. “What do you think will happen when you catch up?”