The Fade kj-2

by Chris Wooding

  The Fade

  ( Ketty Jay - 2 )

  Chris Wooding

  Chris Wooding

  The Fade

  0

  The outposts of Eskara are lonely, desolate places. Beyond the network of chthonomantically carved roadways and rivers, the world becomes hostile. Here, there are caverns that can only be reached by clambering up ancient gas vents or negotiating treacherous dust fields and fungal marshes that can swallow the unwary. Beasts roam, enormous insectile things with jaws strong enough to shear off a leg. Civilisation ends.

  The people that choose to come here are the damaged, the exiled, the explorers. Those who don't mesh well with society, or who seek to live on its boundaries. They pay little attention to strangers, and they tend to keep to themselves. Most are occupied with the tough business of eking out a livelihood. That suits me well enough.

  I've been all over the edges of Eskara this past season. I've stayed in outposts ranging from shanties to little towns. I've been put up in farms and slept in sheds with animals. I've used a dozen names and disguises.

  It doesn't matter. They're still on my trail. The Cadre of Clan Caracassa, now under Casta's domination, as the elder of the twins by a few minutes. I've already killed two of them, but they keep coming.

  I can't run any more.

  The town of Scratch, where I find myself now, is a crude and empty place. They've planted luminous fungi where they can, but they haven't grown big enough yet, so the place is always dark. Lantern oil is always in short supply so none of the three streets are lit, and there's not a shinestone to be found. Small, square buildings hunker unevenly together, with stony paths winding between them. This place runs on little more than hope.

  It's freezing cold here. The site is badly chosen: the cramped cavern is near enough to the surface to be far from the warmth at the core of our moon, but deep enough that hot air from outside doesn't reach this far. What money I had is almost gone, and only the most desperate would give me a job, fearing the retribution of my Bond-master. I could steal, but there's nothing to steal out here, and I daren't go back to a city.

  It's a soulless, terrible place to spend a life. I've got better things to do with mine.

  In a rented upper room of a house in Scratch, I write my letter. The walls are bare stone. A tatty bedroll lies on the floor behind me. In the lantern-light, I sit hunched over a desk so roughly carved that my hands are peppered with splinters. I'm wearing a fur cloak that I took from a man I found lying dead on a path, a few dozen turns ago. It doesn't keep me warm.

  By next turn, this will all be over. Knowing that, I can endure anything.

  Even so far away from Veya, I've heard the news. Casta is now Plutarch Nathka Caracassa Casta, Magnate of Clan Caracassa. And they're raking it in over the wounded and limbless and maimed that are left behind in the wake of the Eskaran Army's doomed attempt at a military breakthrough. Operation Deadfall was a failure, but they've painted it as a heroic attempt to stall a massive Gurta assault. A brave stand against overwhelming odds, thwarted by Gurta treachery. The populace are furious. Calling for an increase in the budget for the Eskaran Army. Calling for revenge. The Turnward Claw Alliance are back in the ascendant, and Clan Caracassa is at their head.

  You have to hand it to her. That Casta, she's a piece of work.

  And now the only loose end is me, and that's why I have Cadre on my tail. I'm the only one except Casta who knows what really happened. Well, except for Keren, but he'll never say a word. He knows better.

  Keren still lives in Veya, I assume. I left him with enough tips, contacts and secrets to last him for years. The cream of a lifetime dealing in the Veyan underworld. My little reward for being a good friend to me.

  I gave him a message to deliver to Reitha, too. To tell her that the letter from the Army was a lie. That if my son was dead, it wasn't because he took his own life. I needed her to know that. I couldn't have her believing that he'd give up that way.

  I think of Jai, still and always. Is he alive, even now? Was he dead long ago, or did he become another victim of Casta's machinations, killed by the Gurta in the military catastrophe she engineered? I don't know, but I choose to believe. I believe he is alive.

  And so I write my letter. A letter to Jai. The handwriting is disguised, the signature false, the content drab and typical. But it's what's underneath that counts. The code. The language that only he and I know.

  It's a long letter, and in it I explain many things. I tell him how his father died, and I tell him about the letter from the Dean, and I tell him that I have to go away forever. I can never see him again, because there will always be people watching, waiting. People who would use him to draw me out, who would hurt him to get to me. I can't allow that. I tell him how dearly I love him, and how much I miss him, and how I hope he will be happy in his life.

  But I say nothing about Casta, nor how she made me her fade, nor what I did to my master. These are things it's better that he doesn't know.

  I've been cheated of the chance to see my son again, but at least I can make him understand. So I'll send this letter, borne on faith. I'll believe that it will get to him eventually, and he'll be alive and well. I'll believe that he'll read it in the end.

  That'll do for me. That's enough.

  When it's done and folded and sealed, I cry a little. But I've shed a thousand tears over this already, and there aren't many left in me. I've written many letters and burned them all, half-finished. It's only now, with time pressing, that I manage to reach the end. I'll put it in the post on my way out of this dreary place.

  I glance at the pocket-watch lying on the desk, beneath the lantern. Not too long now. My guide will come for me on the sevenhour. The man who'll take me away from all of this, and from those that hunt me.

  Even the Cadre won't follow me onto the surface.

  I look down, at the skinmark on the inside of my wrist. Two chevrons pierced by three vertical lines. I hear the voice of a boy I knew once. It means you are a friend to the SunChildren, he says. It means you belong to a coterie.

  I hear him again, asking me to stay with him. And I hear him telling me about a certain vine, that if burned in the right way would give off a smoke that could be smelt from afar. A smoke that would bring the SunChildren.

  We will pass this way again, at the season's end.

  Spore Season is drawing to a close and Swell Season is coming on. Up above, the Season of Nights is dying and the Season of Dust begins: a time of harsh winds and terrible storms. The coteries of the SunChildren will be on the move.

  The nights are becoming short. More and more, Callespa will be ruled by the suns that scorched me. The surface is an alien world in which I'm not equipped to survive.

  But I've been through the Shadow Death. I stood in the gaze of the suns and I lived. So I'm going. I'm heading to a place with no ceilings and no walls, where the sky keeps on forever and you could go mad with the freedom of it. Perhaps it will kill me, as sure as the Cadre on my tail would.

  We'll see.

  1

  That's when it hits me. The one thing I never considered, the one possibility that never entered my head, because I never stopped seeing the Gurta as the enemy. I hated them too much to believe anything good of them. I was so accustomed to seeing them as monsters that I forgot that they were people. That they also had children who were being killed on the battlefields. I forgot that, just like us, they might not want to see their loved ones coming home in pieces. They wanted an end to the fighting as much as we did.

  Ledo was dealing with the Gurta. But he wasn't selling us out. He was making peace. And knowing that, I understand everything.

  Ledo saw the tide of public opinion turning and realised he was facing stiff competition in the fie
ld of battlefield medicine. Since all his interests were tied to the war, he needed to make a move into peacetime industries. So he agreed to marry off Liss to Clan Jerima, a successful textile manufacturer. He intended to use his workforce to make dyes instead of medicines, and he would go into business with Jerima. Probably he would also switch away from battlefield medicines to more commercial drugs like cold remedies. He knew the war was dying out, and he was gearing up for peace.

  All this I'd learned from Casta, but I'd thought it was the backup plan in case his sabotage failed. I was wrong. He wanted to prevent Operation Deadfall, not sabotage it. He wanted to declare a truce.

  As ever, it was all about the timing. If the other Plutarchs sensed the change coming, they would all start making similar plans. So Ledo went behind the Turnward Claw Alliance's back, and began gathering support among the Folded Wing for a truce with the Gurta. At the same time he contacted one of the Gurta, an influential Minister called Belek Aspa who was known to have the ear of the High Elder, and told him that he could get enough of the Plutarchs on his side to call a truce, if Belek could do the same.

  His idea was to hamstring Operation Deadfall at the last moment, then defect to the Folded Wing, leaving him way ahead of his allies in the Turnward Claw Alliance, who had already committed themselves. Leaving them in the dust in the post-war era of peace. A smart and ruthless political move.

  And I just fucked it all up.

  Ledo wasn't the traitor. And that leaves only one person it could possibly be. One person who stands to profit by what I've done.

  It's because I'm so overwhelmed by the realisation that I don't hear the arrow coming in time to avoid it. I move far too late, but at least I move, and that makes the difference between getting it square in the back and getting it through my side. The impact spins me off my feet and sends me crashing to the floor, gasping with shock.

  Instinct kicks in. The chua-kin chants that govern my metabolism start marching through the white emptiness in my head, and my body responds as best it can, but it doesn't have a lot left to give. I lie there, trembling and juddering, spitted. The arrow is sticking out of my ribs at an angle. At least the bastard went right through. It only delivered a small amount of the poison on the tip.

  I've fallen facing the doorway, but I know who's done it even before my blurred vision resolves and the fuzzy blob stepping into the room takes on shape.

  Nereith. Of course it's Nereith.

  He walks slowly into the room, surveying the dead. He's wearing a scarlet trench coat, matching the skinmarked stripes on his bald skull. My heart is thumping in my ears, but I can't move. I'm paralysed.

  'Reliable Orna,' he says. His bow is still trained on me, a new arrow nocked. 'You know, Silverfish had doubts as to whether you could pull it off or not, but I never lost faith. I was there when you got us out of Farakza. I knew you could do it.'

  I've been used. I've been fucking used. I want to scream but I don't think I could take the agony. Because I know who Silverfish is now. Silverfish is the traitor. Silverfish is the one who's been playing me all along, who's deceived me over and over until, in the end, I killed my own innocent master.

  Who was it who sent me to break into Ledo's quarters, where they could easily have put the letter from Belek Aspa in a place where I would find it? Who was it, apart from Ledo, that had the authority to send me to kill Gorak Jespyn, a man who knew the identity of the real traitor who sold us out at Korok? Who had reason to want Ledo dead, and needed an agent, a loyal member of his Cadre that could get close enough to him to do the job? Who had fucking well told me they wanted the war to continue, and that Operation Deadfall had to fail for the good of the Clan?

  'Ah,' says Nereith, stepping closer. 'I see you get it now. A little late, perhaps, but congratulations all the same.'

  'Casta,' I croak. 'Silverfish is Casta.'

  'And you're just a fade, Orna. How does it feel?'

  Casta. Casta, with her long absences from her lamenting twin. Casta, not half so dizzy as she pretended. With her connections in aristocratic society and the network she'd built up in the underworld as Silverfish, there was little that went on in the city that she didn't know. She hid her identity with the simple trick of always having her generals refer to her as male, but there were clues, if I'd have been smart enough to see them. I'd always wondered why Silverfish persecuted Clan Jerima in particular. Clan Jerima, the family that Liss was marrying into. The Clan that were going to take Casta's twin away from her.

  It was her that had sent me to kill Gorak Jespyn, who really did have information that could compromise her. But she knew I'd suppose it was Ledo who'd given the order, and she made sure of it by sending me on a break with my family only to call me away the very first turn that I arrived. It didn't make sense for Casta to do that, so I assumed it was Ledo, and later that fitted in with the picture that was being presented to me. A picture in which Ledo was the traitor I was looking for.

  'Fortunate, our meeting in Farakza,' Nereith says. 'And not only because you saved my life. Casta had been looking for a way to get rid of Ledo for quite some time. Ever since he'd decided to marry off Liss, actually. Ledo never really did understand the lengths she'd go to to keep her sister by her side.' He's still approaching, watching me for any sudden moves. 'But you were just too perfect. Grieving, desperate, so full of hate. You wanted someone to blame for it all. We just arranged things to make sure it was Ledo.'

  And I gave them the instruments of my undoing. Casta had been there, at the sculpture graveyard in the Greyslopes, when I had professed that I would betray my master if he tried to take my son. I'd mentioned Belek Aspa to Nereith, hoping to learn something, and Nereith had worked out that I'd heard it in Farakza, in conjunction with Ledo's name. He'd worked out that I suspected Ledo of something.

  I'd told him about the letter in my drawer, which would have given Casta plenty of time to find it and work out how to use it against me. I'd placed all my hopes in that letter.

  'Casta… the letter…' I say, because I need to know. I need to be sure. I have to understand the whole of what's been done to me.

  'We couldn't have Jai withdrawn from the front lines, Orna,' he says, a false apology in his tone. 'Then what reason would you have to kill Ledo? Casta had words with her brother, like you asked her to. But she made very sure he wouldn't grant your request. That wouldn't have suited her plans for you.'

  Nereith must have had this in mind from the moment he met me. Once we got out, he sent word to Casta from Caralla. Then he waited there for me, knowing I'd turn up if I possibly could, because like an idiot I'd told him that was where Jai was stationed. Between what Casta knew of my past, and what I told Nereith, they had all the tools they needed to make me into their assassin. My family was always my weak spot.

  The scale of the deception staggers me. They've had me in their hands from the start.

  I have a thousand questions, but I ask only one, forced huskily from my resisting lungs.

  'Is my son really dead?'

  He walks carefully up to me, then loosens the tension on the bowstring. Obviously convinced I'm not a threat, and he's right. I don't have the strength to raise my head.

  'I really don't know. If he is, it's news to me.' He picks up the document from the desk, runs his eyes over it briefly. 'Faking that letter from the Army was dirty, I'll admit. But we needed to be sure you'd kill Ledo. Otherwise it would all have been for nothing.' He shrugs. 'We knew you'd try to find Reitha. Better that the news came from her. Makes it seem less suspicious if it goes through a third party. Basic subterfuge, really. You should know that.'

  The joy is enough to hurt my heart. It crushes in with the horror and the pain and the shock. It mingles with the disgust I feel at myself, curdles into the fury and the hope. I'm feeling too much at once and I can't handle it. Tears come and I'm trembling violently. I feel like I'm going to die, but it won't be from the poison.

  He walks over to a lantern, rolls up the document and touches
it to the flame.

  'You'll get hero's honours,' he says. 'You were killed in defence of your master, trying to save him from these Gurta assassins.' He tips the peace treaty so that fire runs up its side, watching it with fascination. 'And so the war goes on, as it must. Too many people profiting from it to stop it now. It's not in Clan Caracassa's interests.'

  He holds it until he can't hold it any more, then drops it to the floor. Worms of white and red writhe in the blackness of the scorched paper as it curls up.

  'Operation Deadfall will fail,' he murmurs, looking down at the embers of Ledo's ambition. 'The humiliation will inspire such rage in the people of Eskara that they will redouble their efforts to wipe out the hated enemy.' His eyes flick away from the treaty, disinterested now. 'Caracassa does best during the really big slaughters. They have the manufacturing capacity to handle it.'

  He comes over to me. I'm spasming pitifully, face streaked with tears. He bares his teeth and draws the bowstring. 'Be careful who you trust, Orna. If you don't pay attention, you're liable to get stabbed in the back.'

  I hear the thud of an impact, and I flinch as his arrow fires into the floor and spins away. Nereith's face is puzzled. He looks down at me, for what seems a long time, and I can't help thinking that he seems betrayed, disappointed. How could you?

  Then he groans and falls over sideways, a throwing knife buried to the hilt in between his shoulder blades.

  'You got that right,' says Keren to the dead man, as he slopes into the room.

  I just stare at the ceiling as he picks his way through the corpses and kneels down next to me. I can't do any more.

  'Well,' he says helpfully. 'You're a mess.'

  'You're late,' I tell him.

  'You told me to keep watch on the gate in case anyone else arrived,' he replies. 'Didn't say anything about your Khaadu friend.'

  'I didn't exactly see it coming, Keren, or I wouldn't be lying here. Why didn't you stop him?'