The Fade kj-2

by Chris Wooding

  I could barely speak. There wasn't room for air in my chest with the utter and total love I felt for this man.

  'There's another way,' I said quietly. 'Casta and Liss.'

  He turned back to me, a frown on his face. 'Ledo's sisters? You barely know them.'

  'They like me. Especially Liss.'

  'You think you can ask them for a favour like this?'

  'If anyone can persuade Ledo to be lenient, it's them.'

  He thought about this for a time.

  'They're aristocrats. You can't trust them,' he said.

  'I don't have to trust them to manipulate them.' I asked them to meet me in the sculpture-graveyards of the Greyslopes. It was exactly the kind of dark, sinister place that spies meet in cheap novels, which is why real spies never met here. But I knew Liss wouldn't be able to resist the breathless romance of a clandestine meeting, and so I played to her expectations. The atmosphere was important.

  I had met the twins for the first time not long before. They had come to my rooms and invited me to join them for a drink with that uniquely threatening friendliness that can only come from people with the power to have you killed. I went along, of course. Maybe they had a special task for me. After all, as the younger sisters of Ledo, I was beholden to them as much as him, unless their plans conflicted with Ledo's interests.

  It turned out they had no such task in mind, though it took me an hour to work it out. I finally established that the reason was simply that Liss was fascinated by me because I was a spy. Ledo had mentioned my name in connection with a particularly daring (and lucky) theft I had made on Caracassa's behalf, and Liss had latched onto the idea and become obsessed. Now she wanted to be a spy, and she demanded that I recount my most dangerous exploits, my life, my techniques. Casta sat by and listened quietly while Liss grilled me.

  I felt uncomfortable talking about sensitive matters, and avoided them when I could do so without being caught; but I didn't have the option of refusing her. I did, however, try to impress upon her the importance of secrecy, to which she slapped her hand across her mouth and mumbled something through sealed lips. It was hard to believe that the lesson had sunk in very far.

  I was left bewildered by the whole affair. Soon after, they called on me again, and this time we went out and got drunk in a club and we never spoke of matters of subterfuge once. Liss had apparently decided that being a spy was boring and that she wanted to be an explorer on the surface instead. She was now stuffed with facts about life above, which she excitedly repeated to anyone who would listen. I was to learn, when my son started dating Reitha, that they were mostly fiction.

  Still, whatever I had done, they had decided that they liked me. For a short period of time, they treated me like a friend, or perhaps a pet. It was difficult to tell with them whether I was an amusing project or someone for whom they had genuine affection. They made me uneasy, but I played along.

  Then they seemed to forget about me, and that was that. It wasn't appropriate for me to call on them, and I wasn't sure I'd want to anyway. I liked them a little, but they were hard to warm to and whimsical by nature. I could never feel safe with them. We were from different worlds, and theirs ruled mine.

  It had been several seasons since we had last spoken. I wondered how they would react to my mysterious summons, or if they would react at all. Meet me in the Greyslopes at the 27th hour, read the message. Beneath the Bleeding Coil. Simple, direct, urgent. If anything was guaranteed to make Liss clap her hands and squeal in delight, it was the promise of a secret meeting.

  So I waited in the midst of the sculpture-graveyard. The Ya'yeen had built this place, and many like it, in memorial to their slain siblings. They dealt with evolution by always birthing identical twins, one of which was given away to another family. When they reached adulthood, the twins were seized by an overwhelming and unstoppable drive to seek out and kill the other. In this way the stronger and smarter survived; the weaker was immortalised in sculpture by the victor.

  The Bleeding Coil was exactly as its name suggested: an enormous, uneven coil of metal and minerals, riddled with tiny pores through which murky yellow Ya'yeen blood dripped into a receptacle at its base, where it was drawn back up by some kind of pressure differential. That, at least, was how it appeared. The strange world of the Ya'yeen was steeped in meaning, every thought percolated through their bizarre world-view which said, as far as I understood, that everything meant something. The way a dropped piece of food fell, the path of a bat, the shape of a cavern, the way the streets of Veya were laid out. Their brains were wired for nuance, texture, subtlety. They saw things that nobody else could. Whether what they imagined was actually there was a question I didn't care enough about to answer.

  When I looked at the Bleeding Coil, I saw something ugly and powerful that I actually quite liked. But to a Ya'yeen, the sculpture was a message delivered through the shape of the coil, the location of the pores and frequency of the drips, the position within the graveyard, the way the dim light of the nearby lamp fell on it, the donor of the blood the sculptor had used. They found us endlessly confusing, because we were a people who could live our whole lives without doing anything that meant anything at all.

  I waited in the quiet, cool darkness, surrounded by dozens of sculptures of varying levels of incomprehensibility. The Greyslopes were built where the ground slanted upward to meet the cavern wall. The place took its name from the colour of Ya'yeen skin. They clustered here for reasons they could never quite explain in a way anyone understood.

  I could see out across the city to where the River Vey cut through the ocean of lights. Stalactite dwellings hung in the darkness above the Shivers, delineated by the glow of their windows. A sudden breeze fluttered my hair. I thought of the life growing inside me, and I swore I would do everything to ensure that my child would be born, so that they too could stand and marvel at the beauty of the world.

  The twins were late, but they came. Liss was bundled in a hooded cape of deepest black, Casta in a moulded suit of light, bronze-coloured armour that hugged tight to her body. She carried a narrow sword and a whip at her waist, while Liss wore a diaphanous dress that barely concealed her newly buxom figure. Since I had seen them last, Liss had grown breasts, hips and lips, all of formidable size. Her pale skin was tinged a light blue and her hair, beneath her hood, was black and tied in coils on either side of her head. Casta's hair was spiky and blonde, and her eyes were entirely white in the nut-brown frame of her face.

  Liss hurried up to me and clutched my arms with anxious fingers, kissing me swiftly and nervously on the lips. 'Oh my love, what has happened? What is it?'

  'Maybe she's asked us here to kill us,' said Casta, always the more morbid of the two. But she came up to me and kissed me anyway. 'Nobody would know.'

  'We've been terrible to her!' Liss gasped, as if that proved Casta's theory beyond doubt. 'Terrible! No wonder she wants to kill us!' She tore open her cape to further bare her already semi-bare breasts, head thrown back dramatically. 'Do it, my love! A blade in my heart! We deserve no less!'

  Casta's hand was on her sword, as if she actually thought I might do it.

  'I haven't called you here to kill you!' I cried, before their delusion could get out of control.

  'Oh,' said Liss, sounding almost disappointed. She lowered her head slowly. 'Do you like my new breasts?' she asked conversationally.

  'Don't they hurt your back?' I asked.

  'She had the muscles strengthened to cope with the extra weight,' said Casta with a bored tone, staring off down the paths of the sculpture-garden. 'I hate these things. Ya'yeen are idiots.'

  'Aren't you furious?' Liss asked, as she closed her cape and spared me further sight of her chest.

  'About what?'

  'We forgot all about you,' said Casta. 'We do that.'

  'But you remember me now, right?' I asked uncertainly.

  'Oh, we could never forget our dear friend Orna!' Liss gushed. Talking to these two gave me a headache.r />
  'You want something,' Casta stated. I guessed she was looking at me, but it was hard to tell as she had no pupils or irises.

  That was my cue. 'I'm in trouble,' I said, and my eyes filled with tears that were not entirely faked.

  Liss melted. She flung her arms around me – no easy task with the obstructions between us – and burst into tears. 'Oh, what can we do?' she cried. 'How can we help?'

  'You're pregnant,' said Casta.

  That was some deduction, given the evidence. But I buried my head in Liss's shoulder and whispered 'Yes.'

  Liss pushed away from me, holding me at arm's length, and cried: 'But that's wonderful!' She looked to Casta for support. 'Isn't it?'

  'She didn't ask permission,' Casta said, her voice steady. Evaluating me.

  'It was an accident,' I said.

  'But you have to keep it!' Liss said, then to Casta: 'She has to keep it!'

  'She wants to keep it. That's why she's come to us.'

  'Oh.' Liss was catching on now. She glanced around the sculpture-garden, searching for sinister eavesdroppers. It was deserted but for a few bats chasing ragged circles above us.

  'Will you help me? I have no one else to turn to,' I pleaded. I knew the idea of helping someone in trouble was an easy sell to Liss, but Casta was tougher. I got the impression she was not convinced by my tears.

  Liss made appealing eyes at her twin, thoroughly on my side. But Casta was giving nothing away.

  'This child,' she said. 'It means a lot to you.'

  'It means everything.'

  'What if our brother says no?'

  I opened my mouth to answer, and shut it again. My intuition told me something was amiss here. It felt like a test. I knew what I should say, but somehow I knew it would be the wrong thing. Casta needed convincing. She needed the truth.

  'I'll keep it anyway,' I said. 'No matter what.'

  Almost as soon as the words had left my mouth, I regretted them. If they told Ledo what I'd said, he'd have me imprisoned. Our chance for escape would be gone.

  I heard Liss suck her breath in through her teeth. I waited, my eyes locked with Casta's blank ones. There was no telling how she would react to that kind of defiance from a Bondswoman.

  'We will speak to Ledo,' Casta said slowly. Then she turned and walked away without another word. Liss was torn between her twin and I for a few moments; then she gave me an apologetic glance, kissed me swiftly and hurried after Casta. Ledo received Rynn and I at his table, where he was taking his morning meal: strips of boiled fish in a fruit sauce. He looked spectral, dressed in a white brocaded robe only marginally paler than his skin. A thick mane of braids and twists hung around his face. Jewelled bands and interwoven ribbons of red and blue in his hair were the only hint of colour about him, except for the bleak blue of his irises: the natural colour of the Nathka tribe.

  'My beloved Orna,' he said, his voice soft. 'My heart swells to see you.'

  'It's an honour to sit at your table again,' I replied.

  'And Rynn, equally beloved; I trust your endeavours bear sweetness?'

  My husband's awkwardness was excruciating to witness. Ledo had picked up the watery, over-emotional manner of speaking which had become stylish in society of late. Rynn didn't quite know how to respond to it, so he mumbled something about what an honour it was, clumsily following my lead.

  He invited us to join him at the table with an airy sweep of his hand. The table was carved from mycora, as were the rounded walls of the room. Most of the Caracassa Mansions were built of the stuff, cut from the enormous roots that spilled through Veya's cavern wall and into the Tangles.

  Two bodyguards stood nearby: Caydus and Jyirt. Both of them carried enormous curved blades. Caydus was hulking, ruddy-skinned, with a mane of bright blond hair, while Jyirt was bald and had a cadaverous look about him. I knew them both slightly. They were not concerned: we were part of Ledo's Cadre, the inner circle of the Plutarch's most trusted retainers. If he was safe around anyone, it was us.

  Handmaidens appeared, bringing breakfast platters of bread, succulent spores, flaked fish and expensive fruits from the chasm-fields near the surface. I was famished, but I knew I wouldn't be able to eat anything, just as I hadn't been able to all last turn. My stomach felt too knotted to manage food. It didn't stop Rynn, however, who went for the plates before I nudged him to remind him that the Plutarch was served first. He retreated, blushing.

  'Will the twins be joining us at breakfast?' I asked, to salvage the situation.

  'The twins do as they will, accountable only to each other,' said Ledo, with the shallowest of smiles. I didn't like his tone.

  The handmaidens served us in silence, then retreated from the room. Ledo had become grave, and it chilled me. I had no idea what the twins had said to him, or if they had told him of my defiance in the sculpture-garden.

  'When you married, I gave my permission with a gladdened soul,' he said. 'Some said that for two of my Cadre to be so joined in love would weaken the both of them. That a man could not give himself to combat if he had given himself to a wife. A woman could not use all her silken wiles if she feared to betray a husband.'

  Rynn shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. That aspect of my craft was never spoken of, ever. There was no way I could explain to him the kind of steely hatred I felt for myself when I slept with other men. Nor would he ever be convinced that it was utterly necessary in some cases, because the surest way to a man's secrets was through his bed. Being a Bondswoman meant loyalty to the master above all. Even my husband.

  'But I believed in you,' Ledo said. 'And you rewarded my trust. You have become valuable as the rarest of jewels to me.' He bit into a fruit, chewed, then held it up before him and examined it. 'I wonder, will a child diminish you the way they thought your marriage might?'

  He didn't appear to be asking us, but rather himself, so we kept quiet. Rynn ate, trying to make as little noise as possible.

  Ledo put the fruit down and lowered his eyes. 'Disappointment aches in my stomach like the voids,' he said heavily.

  'I swear, we didn't mean for this to happen,' I said. 'We would never intentionally conceive without your approval.'

  'Your loyalty is not in question, Orna. But there is precedent to consider. There are others in my Cadre who may also desire children. What soothing words will I have for them?'

  I had nothing to say. There was no defence that would convince him.

  He sighed and sat back, steepling his fingers and tapping his index fingers against his teeth. 'You will continue to work for me as a spy until your condition prevents you,' he said. 'You understand, I am sure, how the lush bloom of pregnancy can be exploited to lower suspicions in the society of men and women. I will arrange someone else for the more physical aspects of your work.'

  My breath was trapped in my throat. I could barely believe what I was hearing. Rynn continued eating, gazing hard at his plate. Food offered the only safety in the room for him.

  'The child will be creched as soon as it is reasonable to do so,' he continued. 'If I see the quality of your work diminish even a little, Orna, your child will be taken. Rynn, my words brush you also.'

  Rynn looked up at him briefly, then back at his plate.

  'Thank you,' I whispered. 'You won't regret your decision, Magnate. We will-'

  'The child will also be Bonded to Clan Caracassa,' he interrupted. 'Standard lifedebt, for a single generation. It shall not pass to their offspring, but they shall be mine as you are.'

  My relief curdled in my mouth. No, no, no, this was too cruel. Our children were supposed to be free, to choose their own paths in life. Rynn had wanted that even more than I. Rynn, who had never known anything but Bondsmanship. Rynn, still paying for his grandfather's mistake even now. Abyss, they were meant to have the chance at a normal life even if we could not.

  I almost protested. I almost forgot who I was and who he was and how much we owed him for allowing this. I almost forgot how much I owed the twins for pers
uading him.

  'You're very generous, Magnate,' Rynn rumbled next to me, and I shut my mouth before I could say what I wanted to. He had seen it coming and headed me off. Every once in a while, he saw right into me.

  I swallowed down the bile, took a breath, and said: 'We are grateful for your mercy.'

  Ledo nodded vaguely and returned to his breakfast. Rynn took my hand beneath the table and squeezed it hard. And with that, we had saved our child's life by giving it away.

  38

  The Academy was all I'd known for four years now, ever since I was accepted at the age of ten, the same age I swore Bond to Clan Caracassa. The cavern that housed the Academy complex was the limit of my world; I wasn't allowed to leave it, and I didn't want to. I'd suffered enough of life outside to last me a long time.

  The Academy to me meant shelter and protection. The harsh training, the punishing regime, the way they regulated our sleep, our diet, our activities – all this was a comfort. After growing up a Gurta slave I was used to strict order, and the idea of taking responsibility for myself terrified me. In my more introspective moments, I wondered whether it was fear, and not overwhelming gratitude, that had led me to swear myself into Bond to my rescuers. I put my life in the hands of others so easily.

  Here at the Academy all I had to do was excel at the tasks they set me. Life was clean and simple. I never wanted to leave this place.

  The complex was set on many levels, across steep slopes. Chthonomancers had sculpted it into an enormous rock garden, with the buildings of the Academy set amid great crystalline formations, fungal glades and arbours, ornamental pools and waterfalls. Light sources were artfully arranged, through phosphorescent stones and plants, lanterns and a single, squat shinehouse atop the circular Gathering Hall. It was always warm in the Academy. The cavern was set deep underground, heated by the fire at the heart of our moon.

  I had many friends here, but the first was an older student called Rynn. He was assigned to orient me during my first few turns, and we took to each other immediately. At first, he treated me like a little sister. Even at thirteen years old, he was larger than most boys his age, and I enjoyed the feeling of being under his wing. New inductees were often bullied until they found their place, but nobody dared with Rynn looking out for me.