A few splashes of blue gore tucked away amidst the wreckage told her it had done much the same to some of the martians, to deeply unsettling results.
“So.” She carefully stepped into the wreckage site. “You’re back. Where were you?”
The wraith seemed to ignore her at first, continuing its methodical deconstruction of the barge, but she realized that one of its appendages had angled towards her. Perhaps it was an eye, or a face, or an ear - or a weapon. It was impossible to tell what it was beyond a smoky, thick tangle of dark magic. But it was listening. And now she knew it could talk.
And then it did start making noise at her. She knew no words to describe the sounds it was making - a sort of deep, hollow chittering that echoed more than the forest could account for, a staccato hooting, a kind of angry, curt huffing and puffing. The alien sound was clearly directed at her, and it was not the peaceful or friendly sort of noise it had made before.
“What, are you angry with me?” She crossed her arms, worried what might happen if this thing should decide it didn’t like her anymore. “Because I shouted at you? Because I threw away that stupid rock?”
She took a deep breath, but it continued making that sound, on and off again. She sighed.
“Look, you’re very… helpful. You’re powerful. I’m glad you decided to help, but I don’t know what you want from me.” She glanced around at the wreckage it seemed to be eating. “You spoke to the damned outers. Why can’t you speak to me?”
At this it fell silent, and then, suddenly, it did start speaking. “I bet you have a good idea.”
It was Ada’s voice. Not only that, but the intonation was shockingly familiar, and Isavel instantly knew Ada had said those exact words to her once before. She took a step back, eyes wide.
“Just back away, Isavel, and let this finish right.”
What? That - Ada had said that just before they fought, under the mountain. Those exact words. Why was the wraith saying this? Was it - was it Ada, somehow?
Then it spoke in her own voice.
“Get out of the way, Ada. I don’t… I don’t need to hurt you.”
It definitely wasn’t Isavel. So it couldn’t be Ada. But somehow it could parrot everything straight back at her. And then her own words, on the eve of the battle, in that night they had shared together, the intonation all wrong for this damned place. “I know how you feel.”
“Stop it!” She shouted, shaking her fist at it. “Shut up! Shut up! Those aren’t your words! Those are mine! Hers ! Not -”
The thing suddenly hooted and howled at her like a vicious wind gusting through hollow metal pipes, and it churned and raised amorphous limbs into the air. She turned and ran from it. Whatever it was, she didn’t want to be near it. She didn’t want anything to do with it. She never wanted to hear it ape their voices again. The memories - the memories hurt enough.
When she found the others she was still panting, and she must have looked pale because her earthling companions - no longer including Zoa, at this point - quickly clustered around her. Hail touched her face. “Isavel, are you okay?”
She shook her head, staring at Tanos and Sam. “You. You know those things, right?”
“What things? There are a lot of things -”
“The wraiths.” She stammered. “It just - it spoke to me, but it used words that - it said things Ada said to me, before. And it said things I said to her. What is it? ”
Sam’s eyes widened, but Tanos let out a soft gasp. “Maybe Zhilik was right, when he told her to call it a wraith. He said that was a ghostly impression of someone.”
Sam glanced at him. “So it’s a piece of her?”
“Maybe. Some kind of copy.” He looked back to Isavel, and his brown eyes softened considerably as he reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder. “I mean, it’s not her . B ut it might know a lot of what she knew. Maybe it has memories. When it spoke to the outers in Deep Tharsis, it must have been saying things it remembered from Campus. Maybe that’s why it’s following you.”
Her fists clenched and unclenched, and she considered going back to it and scattering it to vapor and ash with a good strong breath of dragonfire. She didn’t want some twisted creature with fragments of Ada’s memories stalking her across all the worlds she could ever find. She could feel Hail tense up next to her, too, and the hunter seemed to be of the same mind. “It’s unpredictable enough. We should kill it.”
Isavel grimaced, wondering how readily she should agree, but Sam shook her head. “That thing took out a whole barge by itself. It’s been helping us. Look, it’s obviously not Ada. It talks in echoes, and knowing Ada and how she - well - it wouldn’t be just flying around watching Isavel from afar. It’s its own thing.”
She stared at the canopy. “So what do we do with it?”
“I don’t know.” Sam sucked in a slow breath, crossing her arms. “It’s like an animal, or a spirit. It’s confused. It knows some things but doesn’t know how it all fits together. It probably doesn’t really know what to do either. I’ve seen all kinds of spirits take a liking to people in the thousand worlds. Sometimes it’s easy - Erran lucked out.” Sam’s eyes flicked to the side. “But sometimes it just takes time for them to figure each other out. Look, it hasn’t hurt anyone, has it?”
She scoffed. “It ate some of the martians and it’s attacked drones and barges.”
“I - well obviously it’s dangerous, it’s not a fucking pet squirrel or something - but it hasn’t hurt us . I think it thinks we’re friends. So let’s… be friends.”
Isavel rubbed her arms, unsure of what that entailed. But Sam had a point - the wraith was viciously dangerous, and seemed to be looking out for them. Or at least fighting their enemies. She could have been glad for that, but she couldn’t forget how it had oozed Ada’s and her own words back at her like some kind of festering wound through time and space. “Fine. It might not even follow us to Red Rise.”
“It’s followed us this far.” Tanos looked out towards the dispersing orange smoke, barely visible in the distance as it settled on the forest floor.
He was probably right, but only time could tell. She walked past them all, wanting to place more distance between herself and the wraith, and soon found Tharson arguing angrily with the old druitha they had first met. She caught snippets as she drew closer, and realized the old man seemed to think they were responsible for this.
Kelena appeared beside her and glanced back into the woods curiously before looking at her. “Don’t mind Tharson. He’s just delaying the inevitable. He would rather defend my honour to the old man than go to Red Rise.”
She tried to refocus herself on this, and remembered what Kelena had told her. “His brother. What happened?”
Kelena shrugged, but Isavel was sure she knew. “Ask him while we travel. He likes you. It may do him good to discuss it with someone new.”
He certainly didn’t look like he felt like talking, brandishing his index finger angrily in the old druitha’s wood-masked face. But she realized Kelena might know him more than she had first thought. “Are you close?”
Kelena smiled faintly. “He was the Red Sword, for twelve years. He raised me from youth to be his heir.” She glanced at Isavel. “The old usually die before yielding the Sword to their young. In a way, I am lucky he still lives. But there is no good way to stop being the Red Sword.”
She glanced between the two of them. So the sword was passed down? From leader to follower? And he had relinquished it, before his time. And he and Kelena were the only two martians, it seemed, who had not immediately thought the earthlings were demons.
She still couldn’t help but wonder what the Red Sword actually was , what it did . But now she also wondered whether there was something more here, too. Was it the Red Sword, somehow, that had separated the brothers? As they moved back to their galhak, she decided she would ask - he might need to talk about it, but even more than that, she wanted to talk about someone else. With gods and echoes and stranger things still c
onverging around her, she couldn’t help but long for a more worldly story.
Chapter 10
They were still under tall trees by nightfall, but everyone was more than willing to wait or rest while the animals slept through the night. The martian civilians with them had stayed behind - it was only the three fighters, now, and the five earthlings. The wraith had yet to follow them, which unsettled Isavel somewhat, but they could do nothing about it.
Tharson was not looking restful at all, sitting in front of the fire poking at it with a stick, a deep frown carved into his pale forehead. He remained so well after everyone else had turned away from the fire, so she took the opportunity now. The less she had to think about gods and ancient weapons, the better.
“Tharson. Tell me about your brother.”
He shot her an unhappy look, and remained silent for a moment, prodding at the fire. She waited. It was a quiet night, but the pressure was on him now, and she was in fact curious to know why Kelena felt the need to send him to Red Rise.
When he finally answered, his words were bitter, truncated by more than linguistic compromise. “Four years younger. Always happy. Sings well. Much more handsome than I. You would like him, if you liked men.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Sometimes I do. He made you jealous?”
He huffed. “No. Too tiring to be like him. But he wishes I was.”
She frowned at that odd idea. “What?”
“Isavel, do you have siblings?”
She shook her head. “No more family.”
He glanced at her, seeming to understand what she meant, and his eyes softened a little. “Our parents died when he was young. I tried to raise him.”
She tried to imagine what that must be like, but it was difficult to do - she had never raised anything, let alone a sibling. She could only imagine it to be a struggle, the kind she saw written on his face. “I’m sorry.”
He shook his head. “Soon he didn’t need me. Had enough friends. So I left, one day, and found the Red Sword.” He paused. “She was an old woman. Her last apprentice died. She taught me everything she knew, died after three years, and I carried it for twelve.”
“Kelena told me.”
He nodded, glancing at the younger bearer of the Sword. “She is a better Red Sword than I was.”
Isavel frowned. She was not interested in letting him spin off onto the subject of the damned sword. “What happened between you and your brother?”
He grunted, looking away from the fire for a moment. “I met him again in Red Rise four years ago. Kelena was with me. He… I lost my temper.”
She suddenly didn’t like where this was going. “I thought he was still alive.”
“He is!” Tharson’s tone suddenly cracked as he gaped at her, and he swore incomprehensibly. “I would not kill my own brother.”
Silence for a few moments. “But?”
“But I almost did. With the Red Sword.”
“Why?”
“He mocked me.” He suddenly reached out and, quite slowly and deliberately, snapped his wooden firepoke in two and tossed the pieces in the fire. “He was always mocking me. He knows my weaknesses. I am weak. He made me feel…”
He sighed, and twisted around to both sides, looking for something. Venturing a guess, Isavel grabbed another stick from just out of his reach and handed it to him; he grunted and started prodding the fire again.
“For twelve years, Isavel, I carried the Red Sword. I did what my elder taught me; what all the elders taught me.” He started making undulating gestures with his hands. “Empty, wind in the desert. Fluid, water over stones. It is not easy, carrying that sword. Being empty. The first of its keepers, she was… touched. From birth; maybe by gods or demons, maybe just different blood. But it was her state, and she kept the Sword safe for many, many years without trouble. Since then, most Red Swords have struggled.”
She nodded, quietly glad she had spent so much time listening to the martians ramble at them while they were riding the galhak. She still didn’t understand what he meant , but she didn’t think that was for lack of words. “So you hurt him?”
“I brought the sword to his throat. I said I would kill him.” He released a heavy sigh, sagging inwards a little. “He cried. I passed the Red Sword to Kelena, that day, and left the city. She was ready. I… never was. I have not returned.”
It was a simple tale, but Isavel could well imagine why he would not want to return. Or tell it. “And since then?”
“I left Kelena. Travelled east. Found the Firstblood temple.” He smiled. “I was their oldest student.”
“Firstblood?” She wasn’t sure if she misheard - it was not a term they had used before, at least not speaking to her. “What is that?”
“What I am now. And Yarger.” He nodded into the distance, where they could hear Yarger sparring with Zoa with wooden sticks. “Fighters without homes. We serve the people of Mars against danger. Sometimes danger from gods.”
He stretched his left forearm out from under his poncho and bared it at her, and for the first time she really looked at his skin. It was subtle, but his inner forearm was scarred in an intricate pattern, flesh as pale as the rest but slightly raised. She couldn’t tell if it was a brand or a series of cuts or something else, but she intuited it must be some mark of these Firstbloods.
“Yarger has it too. The people know us, all over the world they feed and shelter us, and they call upon us for help.”
“So… Kelena called upon you.”
He pursed his lips as he returned to prodding the fire. After a moment he reached into a pack and pulled out a few strips of dried meat, handing her one and chewing on the other himself. She bit into it, unsure of what animal it had once been, and found it a little salty to her taste. Still, food wasn’t always about taste.
He nodded. “Yes. Azure began hunting her last year. She wanted my help. Yarger, and our dead friend Ikahra, were travelling with me. They agreed to help.” He shook his head. “Hiding from a god is not easy. When he kept following, we tried going to his lands to try to destroy his vehicles, his voices, something . We made little progress, and fled, and then - you.”
“Not that I’ve helped.”
He laughed, an only slightly bitter laugh, and shook his head. “No, you are no help at all.”
It was true enough to be funny, and so she laughed with him. He chewed up the rest of his meat, then looked at her again, cracking off the ashen end of his stick and tossing it into the fire.
“You’ve learned ot tharsis well enough.” He frowned a little. “Do you speak many tongues? Some of your earthling friends are pale, but you and the young man are darker, and you don’t look much like him either. Are you a traveller?”
She tensed up, never having enjoyed that kind of question. She’d heard it more than enough before from people closer to home, and it pained her that someone so far away as Mars could still find the question worth asking. But she rather suspected Tharson was repaying her for the pointed question about his brother. “No. People sometimes think I am, but I’m not. My mother was; she did speak another tongue.”
He grunted. “Another stranger asking you where you are from, then.”
She shot him a glance, but he seemed to be giving her an apologetic grin. “Yes. Too many, Tharson.”
“My apologies. All earthlings look strange to us. Short and thick with skin like leather and blood like leaves. You’re no worse than the rest.”
Her eyes widened, but she couldn’t help but laugh again. He had clearly descended into irreverence, which was not a bad place to be. The world was a confusing mess of cosmic jokes and unpleasant circumstances, and she enjoyed people who acknowledged the strangeness and artifice of it all. It was almost like being with Ada again.
That thought wilted her nascent smile, though, and she reached over for the firepoke. He handed it over, watching her carefully. “What?”
She looked at him, not wanting to explain. Hail might be somewhere within earshot, or might
not. She didn’t want to talk about Ada with Hail around.
She paused. That realization was worrying - she was supposed to be comfortable around Hail. Her friend, her bodyguard - but now, after inconclusive kisses and quiet handholding, there was a pressure there that demanded an answer she wasn’t sure she was ready to give.
The words were harder to say than she wanted. All the more reason to say them. “I miss someone.”
He looked at her, puzzled, and then she realized she might have chosen a wrong word. She gestured at the pendant she no longer wore, and he nodded, correcting her with the right one. “Why did you throw it away?”
“I wanted to forget.”
He shook his head. “Not that easy.”
“I know that now .”
“You are too young for brooding.” He was shaking his head. “You should be singing around fires, drinking hawan .”
“I don’t know what that is and won’t drink it.”
He looked at her and mimicked what was unmistakably somebody getting drunk. When she chuckled at his imitation, he sheepishly grabbed the stick back and jabbed it into the fire. “Too young.”
“You’re too old.” She had no idea what his age really was - and even if he told her in years, she had know way of knowing if the years here were as long as they were on Earth. Without a decent moon or a vibrant sun, did they have the same seasons? Would they mark them the same way?
He was nodding, though. Apparently she was closer to the mark than he thought. “Yes.” He patted her on the shoulder. “Old and tired.”
That was apparently his way of saying goodnight; he found his way to his galhak and lay next to it, wrapped in his poncho and facing the animal’s thick coat of rust-brown feathers. She remained by the fire, alone, for some time. Eventually the clang of sticks from Zoa’s fervent sparring lessons faded, and with that gone the night fell into silence. She found her way to Hail, who seemed to be asleep, and lay next to her, back-to-back.
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