by Peter Newman
Tal had crouched down by the tree but still hadn’t managed to climb into the hollow. ‘What?’
‘If they find our trail they’ll know I’m not alone. The new trail needs two sets of boots if it’s to match the old one.’
Sa-at nodded, smiling in appreciation. ‘Yes.’
‘Take your time coming back. If they see you, they might use you to find us.’
‘Yes.’
It took some cajoling to get Tal to trust the tree but eventually, he was stuffed into the hollow and Sa-at bent down to pull off his heavy boots. ‘I’ll bring them back.’
‘Do you promise?’
He exchanged a glance with Crowflies, knowing that it would disapprove of him making any more promises. ‘No,’ he replied, tucking the left boot under his arm.
Tal grabbed at the right one. ‘But I’m dead without them!’
‘Alright then—’
‘Sa-aat!’
‘I promise I’ll bring back your boots.’
Crowflies squawked again, not angry. Disappointed. Sa-at sighed as he took the second boot. He hadn’t realized how hard it would be keeping friends happy. It seemed that to please Tal he had to upset Crowflies, and it seemed that Tal’s discomfort brought the Birdkin pleasure.
Between them, they began the tricky business of inserting Rochant into the hollow. Unlike Tal, who wore the expression of a man trapped in a nightmare, Rochant was alert, his eyes studying the roots from the inside, flicking from detail to detail. Not from fear, but curiosity. He’s excited! Thought Sa-at, suddenly excited himself. He’s excited because he’s learning something new. He’s just like me!
Rochant’s attention turned back to Sa-at, one set of sparkling eyes mirroring the other, and for a moment he felt that he saw past the man’s guarded mask, truly saw him, and that he too was being seen, and it felt good.
He had the urge to say something, but the words got lost somewhere between his thoughts and his tongue, burrowing themselves deep into the back of his throat like shy animals. By the time he had collected himself enough to speak the tree was shifting, squatting down like a Birdkin over its eggs.
‘Aargh!’ he heard Tal say, before the sound muffled and then abruptly cut off, but it was the sound of fear rather than the sound of someone being crushed to death. The tree may not be the best of its kind, but it would honour their agreement. My friend is safe. No, my friends are safe. I have two friends now.
‘Sa-aat!’
Three friends now. And Murderkind makes four.
After pressing his hand against the its trunk in farewell, Sa-at sped away, skipping from root to stone, swinging from low branches, anything to keep his feet from marking the soft mud. Crowflies flew ahead of him as he ran back towards Sorn, giving the occasional cry to let him know it was safe. He did not know how quickly the two women would come for them, but when he conjured them in his mind again, confident and capable, he felt sure it would not be long.
When he got closer, he began looking for the places where their boots had imprinted. When he found one, he obscured it, breaking the link between them leaving and when they headed for the oak tree. Then he made a new trail with his feet and the thread he’d taken from Rochant’s clothing, moving in the direction of the Godroad and then turning parallel to it. Sa-at had never dared go to the Godroad before. The one time he’d talked to Crowflies about it, the Birdkin had got so upset he’d never mentioned it again. He knew from the forest that the Godroad was poison but if that was the case, why would Rochant think of using it? He had so many questions to ask, he worried that he might not be able to remember them all.
Aware that Crowflies was getting agitated, he turned towards the Godroad, making sure the trail was heading towards it, and then stopped. In the distance he could just make out a faint glow in the air. It didn’t look like poison to him. It looked pretty, but he remained wary. Everyone knew that the most dangerous things in the Wild were the pretty ones.
He leaned against a nearby tree as he pulled Tal’s boots on, and it touched a branch to his back for support. ‘You’re so much friendlier than the oak,’ he said, and the words were caught in its leaves and whispered back, pleased. Once this was done he walked backwards alongside the trail he had just made, so it would seem like two people had come this way instead of one. However, the prints didn’t seem right and so he began to stomp more heavily.
‘Better.’
He decided it was quite fun walking backwards whilst pretending to be Tal. The only problem was that the boots were far too big for him and he had to stop every few paces to keep his feet from slipping out.
By the time he’d got back to where his new trail started, Crowflies was calling his name.
They’re here.
He slipped off Tal’s boots, tucked them under his arm, and scurried away, heading deeper into the Wild. He travelled quickly but did not run, focusing on making as little impression as possible. Instincts led him back towards parts of the forest that he knew, until he found one of his friendly trees and climbed into it, letting the branches close around him. Crowflies came to join him, settling into the crook of his arm.
They stayed there like that for a time, bird and boy, hearts beating quickly together, until they calmed and calmed some more, and slept.
CHAPTER TWELVE
When they got back to Nidra’s dwelling in Sorn, the tripwire by the front step was broken. Pari knew Rochant was no longer there, she could just feel it. She followed Nidra inside anyway, in part to see how the other woman would react and because there might be clues as to what had happened.
The little side room seemed bigger without Rochant to fill it, but just as sad looking. There was no sign of a struggle.
Nidra ran her hand over the leather strap that had been attaching Rochant’s head to the wall. ‘He had help.’
‘Perhaps not. He could have planned an escape and saved what little of his strength remained, waiting for us to lower our guard.’
‘No. He couldn’t have rescued himself.’
‘You sound very certain, my dear.’
‘I am certain,’ Nidra retorted, pushing past Pari and walking out the front door. Pari had one last look at the room. There were no obvious clues to indicate who had come or what had happened, but her instincts agreed with Nidra’s assessment. Someone else had been here.
When she stepped outside, she saw Nidra inspecting the ground. ‘Rochant wouldn’t be able to travel far in his condition,’ Pari said.
‘He wouldn’t be able to travel at all.’ She kept her attention fixed on the ground as she added, ‘I took the use of his limbs from him.’
That explains why his hands weren’t tied. ‘I thought you said you stopped the torture for Vasin’s sake.’
‘I did, but I’m not a fool. My situation was too uncertain to leave him whole. Besides,’ her voice dropped, ‘he deserved to suffer.’ Before Pari could say anything to that, and she did have quite a bit to say on the subject, Nidra held up a hand. ‘Look, drag marks.’
Pari gestured the way they’d gone. ‘After you.’
The two moved quickly towards Sorn’s edge. The trail was easier to follow when it hit the long grass. She could see where the escapees had ploughed their way through, trampling down stalks.
‘Two of them,’ said Nidra.
‘Agreed. The question is, who are they?’
‘No, the question is, how did they find us?’
Pari didn’t like the way Nidra glanced back as she said this. Ignoring it, she took what she could from the trail. There were two sets of prints, close together and mostly in step. One set belonged to an adult wearing the kind of heavy duty boots favoured by road-born that had to travel the Wild. The other was lighter, made by smaller feet. A young woman’s or large child’s perhaps?
‘At the risk of being pedantic,’ said Pari, ‘I think there might be a third question: Did they take Rochant against his will?’
‘There’s no point speculating. We find him. We find the answers.’
They followed the tracks out of Sorn, moving towards the Godroad. It was all as Pari suspected but something didn’t seem right, though she couldn’t put her finger on what.
‘Here!’ said Nidra, running ahead to a particularly thorny bush. Amid the spikes were some strands of grey, threads torn from human clothing. ‘That’s his.’
They upped the pace, moving parallel to the Godroad, and Pari wondered if Varg might have seen anything. Knowing Varg, he may even have caught them by now. She chuckled to herself, making Nidra turn and glare.
‘What?’
‘Oh, just laughing at my own naive optimism.’
A few more threads were found, then the tracks turned towards the Godroad. Nidra ran to the side of it and leapt, scrambling up the sheer crystal side to stand on top. Her face was lit blue from beneath as she stared first one way, then the other. ‘Nothing. We’re too late.’
Pari didn’t follow, staying amid the mud and dead plants that bordered the Godroad. Her intuition was trying to tell her something if she could just be quiet enough to let it. She took a deep breath and released it slowly, then looked from the road to the trees and back again. She allowed her eyes to rest on details as she did so, trying to be open to anything. She even looked up at the sky, her eyes drawn across the swirling mass of cloud.
‘If they had a carriage waiting for him,’ said Nidra, ‘they could be halfway to Sagan by now.’
‘Mmm.’ Pari’s attention came back to the tracks. She was vaguely aware of Nidra jumping down, curses spilling from her lips.
‘Damn that bastard! I should have killed him when … no, I should have done more to break him. Then this wouldn’t matter. All that time. He’s been in my grasp all that time and I could have … I should have …’
‘Does this look odd to you?’ said Pari, pointing at the tracks.
Nidra came to join her. ‘What do you see?’
‘It’s not easy to climb onto the Godroad here. You had to jump and pull yourself up.’ She pointed to where Nidra had just been. ‘And that’s where you disturbed the ground to do it. If we assume they walked fairly directly from the trees to the Godroad, we should be able to see some sign of their climb but there’s nothing. When we first tracked them, there were signs of dragging, but they’ve gone. It may be that they found a better way to carry Rochant between them but if so, I’d expect the tracks to get heavier, and yet this set, the bigger footprints, seem lighter here than they did before.’
Nidra stared at them. ‘Maybe the other one carried Rochant.’
‘You may be right, my dear, but I’m not sure they actually took the Godroad at all, and even if they did, there’s no evidence that they still had Rochant at this point.’
‘You think they hid him somewhere?’
‘Yes, or gave him to another party. Either way, I think we’ve lost him.’ She received another of Nidra’s suspicious looks and decided to ignore it. She’s like dry wood waiting for a spark. ‘We don’t know where he is but we can make an educated guess that he’ll be going home. If I can get there ahead of him, I’ll be able to watch the roads at least.’
‘To what end?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps an opportunity will present itself, perhaps it won’t, but better to try something than do nothing, I always say.’ The truth was, Pari didn’t always say that. She actually felt that doing nothing was often far better than making things needlessly worse. However, she was gripped by a powerful urge to keep talking, saying whatever popped into her mouth in an effort to keep things upbeat. There was a growing sense of darkness around her companion, one that threatened to suck them both in if she didn’t fight it.
‘One thing we do know,’ said Nidra, her eyes narrowed. ‘This isn’t the work of my brother. If it was, there would be hunters everywhere and we’d both be facing our last lifecycles.’
‘Some good news at least.’
‘Which means,’ Nidra continued, ‘that it’s Rochant’s people, or a force from the Wild, or random travellers.’
‘As you say, speculation doesn’t help us now. The best thing is for me to get moving.’ She turned to go but Nidra hadn’t finished.
‘Those tracks look human, and things of the Wild go deeper with their victims, they wouldn’t come here. We can rule them out. Travellers avoid Sorn, have ever since the Corpseman came. No reason for that to change.’ Her body was rigid with tension, gloves creaking around the hilt of her sapphire dagger. ‘Which leaves Rochant’s allies. But why now, after all this time? Why not take him ten years ago, or just after it happened?’
She glanced up at Pari, the unsaid words hanging between them. Because I was between lives. She thinks I did this! Don’t laugh, Pari. Whatever you do, don’t laugh. She might burst an eyeball.
‘I honestly don’t know, my dear, but I intend to find out.’
But Nidra wasn’t having it that they had lost Rochant. ‘You retrace these tracks to Sorn, see if you can find anything new. I’m going back. If only two found him, they may have hidden Rochant somewhere nearby while they went to get backup.’
‘I agree, and I think it’s a good idea …’ She was just building up to explaining why she couldn’t stay when her instincts caught the words before they left her mouth. She suspects me. If I leave now, I’ll appear even more guilty in her eyes, and neither of us can afford this fragile alliance to break. ‘But I can’t stay long. If I don’t get back to Arkav by morning difficult questions will be asked.’
‘Difficult questions?’ Nidra almost choked on the words. ‘I have suffered in ways you cannot imagine, and face my final death, and you’re worried about being given a hard time by your brother?’
Not my brother, she thought but did not say. Now is no time for pedantry. ‘My apologies. Let me go now and do as you suggested. I’ll come back and report my findings either way.’
She hurried off, not wanting to give space for things to sour further.
On a second viewing the tracks remained suspicious. Apart from the early stages near Sorn, there was no sign of dragging nor any indication that they’d set Rochant down to rest. Am I to believe they just marched the whole way with him on their shoulders like a sack?
And then she found it, a mostly covered footprint leading in a different direction. Now that she knew what to look for, she saw several signs of obfuscation that made it difficult to see the original footprints, but nonetheless created a followable trail of their own. Soon after, she found the tracks again. This is it!
However, the path led deeper into the Wild, deeper than she wanted to go without armour and company. If she went on, she would be putting herself at risk, and if anything happened to her, it would leave Arkav alone in Sapphire territory. He might break again, or worse, he might break someone else. She imagined him turning his back on his mission to come and find her, and all of the terrible consequences that would follow.
But I’m close to something here. If I leave, Rochant will get away and all of our plans will be for nothing. Nidra will die, Vasin will likely follow, and Rochant will be back at High Lord Yadavendra’s side.
The weight of responsibility was crushing on her shoulders. She felt the various factions wheeling about in her imagination, forces that she could influence but not control. Nidra needed her. Arkav needed her. And beyond them, the very balance between the Crystal Dynasties and the Wild was being threatened. House Sapphire had to be purged if the rot was to be kept from spreading elsewhere.
She looked up at the suns and was troubled to see them halfway towards the horizon. There were only a few hours until sunsdown, and only a fool stayed in the Wild after dark.
If I find nothing soon, I’ll have to turn back.
The trail continued before her, the footsteps closer together now. In a few places a print was smeared, as if the person making it had slipped but not fallen. She could imagine the ones carrying Rochant getting tired. They too would need a place to hide at night. They were heading away from any known Sapphire settlements, suggesting t
hat the pair had a camp or fortified location nearby.
Or that they’re as desperate as I am.
At some point she lost the trail. It took her a while to retrace her steps, and she had enough time to worry that the forest had played a trick on her before she found the end of it again. A few different prints merged here, suggesting they’d stopped a while. A little more investigation revealed some grey threads tramped into the mud. She crouched down to sift more closely and found leaves pressed down too, not by boots but by a body.
They put him down here. They rested for a time. Where did they go afterwards? Did the Wild take them? There’d be a strange irony in that.
Here, the canopy was thick, oppressive, the sunslight able to make it glow overhead but not penetrate deeply. It was already getting hard to discern fine details on the ground. She made one last search, vowing to go back if no new clues presented themselves. When that failed, she made one more, vowing that this really would be the last one.
That was when she saw the tree.
In and of itself, there wasn’t much to tell it apart. The Wild was full of large imposing trees that seemed to loom over her as she travelled. This one was old and many things, from moss, to mushrooms, to tiny Lizardkin, seemed to have made a home there. Again, hardly remarkable. However, hanging from its branches like slender banners were two lengths of hair, of a colour that seemed tantalizingly familiar. Pari cursed the lack of light and moved closer, stepping up on a lower branch for a better look.
I know you, she thought. Or someone very like you.
A name was on the tip of her tongue, so close she could almost speak it, when she heard a footstep from somewhere behind her. It was heavy, too heavy for the smaller of the two carrying Rochant, too heavy even for the larger one. It was followed by a second footstep, just as heavy.
The hairs on the back of her neck prickled, as the two things – her senses, cultivated over lifecycles, screamed at her: things, not people! – got louder.
It was clear that they would find her at any moment and it was just as clear that she could not allow that to happen.