by Jaine Fenn
She pulled herself up to stand, wobbled to get her balance, then slipped the tunic over her head; she’d stand out a bit less to a casual glance now. As she smoothed the fabric over her belly she murmured, “Try and hold off a little longer, hey?”
The nearest window was full-sized, so she walked over and looked out. What she saw stunned her. It was a city, as she’d thought, but nothing like Shen or Foam-cast-north. It was built in the water, or rather on islands in the water. Every island was covered in sprawling, gold-coloured buildings of reed and straw. Most had just the one storey, and from here she had a clear view across an expanse of rooftops and gables adorned with carved and brightly-painted wood, broken up by the odd brick chimney.
She looked down, at what was immediately below the window. A couple of wooden platforms extended from the base of the building; one of them had what must be a boat up against it. She’d need a boat to get away, but this one was already occupied by a man in a tunic at the back and sitting in front of him–
No. It couldn’t be.
“Etyan!” His name escaped before she could catch it. Surprise had stolen her voice; it was more a gasp than a shout.
Even so, he looked up. Yes, it was him! Her heart did a crazy double-beat.
“Dej? It’s really you!”
“It is.”
“But how–”
“Keep your voice down! I have to get out of here.” Improbably, the other man appeared to be ignoring them. She had a sudden thought. “Etyan, can you shout at the window to my right, say that someone’s climbing down.”
“So… you’re not going to climb down then.”
“I can’t in this…” No, that wasn’t a conversation to have now, “No, I’ll have to use the stairs.”
“I’ll come in and find you!”
“That’s not a good idea.”
“I can’t just sit here! I never thought I’d see–”
“I need you to make a diversion for me. Please, Etyan.”
“All right. Are you ready?”
“Let me get to the door.”
“I missed you so much.”
“Escape now, talk later.” But despite her last words to him, despite what he’d done and what she’d experienced since, she was glad to see him. “Count to ten, then shout.”
“All right.” He turned in his seat.
She scuttled over to the door.
She heard him shout, “Hey, there’s someone climbing out the window here!”
Dej listened and heard an opening door. She eased her own door open a crack and looked out. The woman guard stood with her back to her, looking into the storeroom. From inside the other guard called something about needing a boost up.
She slipped out the dorm and ran in the opposite direction. Stairs just ahead. She was about to turn down them when she heard voices, coming up. Two men saying something about a “poliarch”. She dashed past.
Corner ahead. She went round it, but slowed as she did so, unsure what she’d find. Just a long, empty corridor.
More voices ahead, distant but many. A large group of boys and girls, talking loudly, rounded the corner at the far end of the corridor. Dej opened the nearest door and slid through. It was another dorm.
“What…?”
A girl about the age she’d been when she left the crèche was lying on one of the beds. She sat up at seeing Dej, eyes wide.
“Don’t be alarmed,” Dej held out a hand. “I’m the eparch’s guest but I got lost. Where are the nearest stairs from here please?”
The girl looked puzzled and a little afraid, but pointed back the way Dej had come. Outside, the voices were getting closer.
“Uh, I’m just gonna catch my breath.”
The girl stared at her. “Are you a skykin?”
“Yep.” The youths would reach the door soon. They’d better not be coming in here.
“And you’re pregnant.”
“Right again.” The voices were passing, someone laughing about someone else’s voice breaking during the morning service.
“Shouldn’t you be at a crèche?”
“Probably.”
The youths went past, their voices receding.
Dej smiled at the bemused girl. “Probably best not mention you saw me, eh?”
“All right.”
Dej opened the door a crack. The corridor was empty.
The nearest stairs weren’t an option: the guards would’ve worked out she wasn’t outside by now, and be looking for her. She had to carry on this way.
Another set of voices had her ducking into another, empty, dorm. This was why she’d planned to escape at night.
She reached the far end of the corridor, listened at the corner and, when she heard nothing, crept round. As she’d hoped, the layout was symmetrical: there were stairs here too. She listened before descending.
The ground floor layout was more complex, with a couple of side-turnings straight off. But she knew which direction she needed to go. She took the turning leading back towards where she’d seen Etyan. These shorter corridors meant less chance of being spotted from a distance but more chance of someone discovering her unawares. When she heard a pair of female voices ahead she picked another random room to hide in; some sort of assembly-room, currently unused. The two women took an age to walk past.
Back outside, this corridor ended at an intersection. She needed to go left. She checked both ways. There was a figure to the left, advancing slowly… and wearing familiar clothes. He had one hand on his jerkin, as though holding something there. She called his name as she rounded the corner.
Etyan’s face went from fear to joy in a moment. Then his gaze fell on her belly. “Dej, you’re–”
“Why didn’t you stay with the boat?”
“When you didn’t come out I had to come in for you. Dej, you’re pregnant.”
“Yes, very. We need to get out of here. Now.”
“I can’t leave. Ree’s here.”
Of course she was. “Yes, but I’m guessing she wanted you to stay with the boat?”
“She did, but when I saw you… That’s my child isn’t it? You’re having my child!”
“Mine actually. But not here. Hopefully. Let’s go back the way you came.”
He grimaced. “I’m not sure which way I came. These corridors all look the same.”
He hadn’t changed. Or perhaps he had. Etyan had an air of purpose, and a sadness that even his elation at seeing her hadn’t driven off. “We’ll just go slowly. I’m good with direction, remember?”
“Yes. Of course. So much has happened, I don’t know where to start.”
“Start by getting back to the boat. Then we’ll talk.”
“Yes. All right.”
They turned round. Etyan said he’d come up a side passage but he wasn’t sure which one. Dej inclined her head at the first one they passed.
“No, the next, I think.”
Dej nodded. She was half a step ahead, in order to check down the passage as soon as her eyeline was clear.
She stopped, Etyan coming up behind her. When he saw what was in the passage ahead he breathed, “Oh no.”
CHAPTER 63
The man who entered the reception room had to be the eparch. Even aside from his ornate tunic and accessories, he had an air of authority that reminded Rhia of Francin.
Right now, however, he looked as flustered as she felt. He glanced over at Deviock, then inclined his head to her and said, “Countess Harlyn.”
“And Observer of Shen.” Just in case he somehow failed to make the connection. “I’m delighted to finally meet you, Eparch.”
“Please call me Sadakh.”
“Sadakh. Right. Then you should call me Rhia. I must apologise for turning up like this but the situation is… grave.” To put it mildly.
“When you say ‘situation’…”
“Of the world. All of us. We’re in trouble.” She should probably not be so direct, but she needed to get it said.
He did someth
ing odd then, standing unmoving and looking at her hard. It was an appraising look but there was something else going on too. Then, to her surprise, he sat down, sinking to the cushioned floor. He put his elbows on the table and half leaned forward, as though he would put his head in his hands, before catching himself. He looked up at her. “My apologies. I have had a trying day. Will you sit?”
She did, across the low table from him. “I’m going to tell you what happened to Shen, because that’s the first thing you need to know.”
“What happened to Shen.”
She had no idea if that was a question or not, but answered it anyway, her voice catching in something like a bitter laugh. “It ceased to exist overnight.”
“When? How?”
“When… a week ago, no just over.” Shortly after she was found guilty of heresy, that life-changing event rendered almost trivial in comparison to subsequent ones. “As for how… I’ll start with ‘what’, if it’s all right with you.” She went on, in a low voice that sounded like someone else’s, to summarise what had happened since that awful day when she had woken up to find the shade gone from her shadowland. Somehow the act of speaking the horror made it fully true, forever part of her; but that in itself made it easier to face, made thinking of the future easier. And they had to think of the future.
Sadakh listened intently, his already pale face going even whiter.
Despite her enervated state, she took care to gloss over the duke’s political ambitions. She must focus on the elements of the cataclysm that they, as enquirers, might deal with. She did not mention Etyan.
By the time she had finished her voice was hoarse and weak.
Sadakh had listened without interruption. Now he nodded, then said, “You have suffered greatly. The least I can do is offer you a drink.”
“A drink? Oh yes, that would be good. And maybe something to eat?”
“Of course. If your man asks the guard outside, refreshments will be brought.”
What guard outside? Perhaps she had been too distracted to notice. “Thank you. Deviock, if you would?”
She turned back to Sadakh. “So what I said made sense to you?”
“At one level, yes. I can believe such a thing is possible, though I have no idea how it might come about.”
“How. Yes. The shade-swarm – the mechanism that blocks much of the Sun’s energy in a fixed pattern across the world’s surface to make the shadowlands – is unreachable. It is out in space. We cannot fix it.”
“So Shen cannot be… saved.”
“No. And I have worse news.”
His lips kinked. “It has been a day for that.”
“Did you see the Harbinger?”
“The Harbinger? I did, on a rare cloudless night. What has it to do with the situation?”
“It, like the shade-swarm, is in space. Out of reach.”
“And what is the Harbinger?”
“A wandering celestial body. I think it somehow came into our system, and stayed, throwing everything out of balance. Now it orbits the Sun as we do, though not in such a predictable way. Did you see the shooting stars after it left our skies?”
“I… did not.”
“No matter. At the time I didn’t make the connection, but I now think they might be fragments which it shed. Debris, if you like. Debris in space. And this debris… somehow it interacted with the shade-swarm, and damaged it.”
“That would indeed be beyond our control.”
“And some of the debris may still be out there, in space. It might do more damage. Or the damage already done might cause… instabilities in the swarm. It’s too early to know for sure. But I suspect that when the Harbinger returns, more debris may be shed. I believe the situation will worsen.”
“By which you mean what precisely?” But Sadakh answered his own question in the next breath. “You’re saying that Shen is the first shadowland to fall, but will not be the last.”
“Exactly. This is, at the risk of sounding overdramatic, the beginning of the end.”
“For the shadowlands, at least.”
“Yes, the skyland is fine. In fact, there’ll be more of it soon.” She bit back on the hysterical urge to laugh. “We can’t stop this happening, so we need a way of dealing with it.”
“You do not ask much do you, Rhia, Observer of Shen.” His voice was low and oddly bitter.
“So you won’t help?”
“I never said that.” He looked at her, eyes narrowed. “Do you have a solution to this world-shaking problem?”
“No. But you do.”
“I’m not sure I–”
“You changed my brother. He can live in the skyland now, like a skykin.” She watched his face as she spoke. “You know that, don’t you?”
He nodded slowly.
“Well that is what we’ll all have to do, in the long run. You need to reproduce your experiment. Make the change for everyone! It’s the only way.”
Sadakh’s laugh was harsh, almost mocking. “If only the effect was reproducible.”
“You’ve tried?”
“Oh yes. It doesn’t work. I refined the serum, I tested it – on myself for a start – and it does nothing.”
“It needs the Sun! That’s what triggers the change.”
“I tried that. It didn’t help.”
“But… I was sure that was it. Etyan was unwell but not much changed. Then he was exposed to the Sun, and within a day he became what he is now: half shadowkin, half skykin.”
“I said I tried that! The test subject didn’t change. Or rather they did: their skin burned, and eventually they died.”
“Oh.” Had she been mistaken? No: her brother had changed, out in the skyland. “Why would it work on Etyan and no one else?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps his youth. If so, then it is too late to save ourselves, though maybe the next generation can–”
“The nightwing!”
“The what?”
“Nightwing. They’re a skyland pred–”
“I know what a nightwing is. What have nightwings to do with your brother’s state?”
“He was stung by one. Bitten. Whatever. He was paralysed. That was why I had to, to leave him out under the Sun.” She could not afford the sudden surge of emotion triggered by that memory. She hurried on, “Surely nightwing venom could be the missing factor.”
“Yes. Yes it could.”
“Good. Because you need to reproduce the experiment, and you need to do it fast. The people of Shen are dying under the naked Sun! I will volunteer myself as your first test subject.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“None of this is easy, Sadakh.”
“I realise that. But we can hardly send people out to get attacked by nightwings. Also, you are not the only one to lose your work recently.”
“What do you mean?”
Before Sadakh could answer, the door was opened from outside by a rough-looking man she had not seen before but who he obviously knew. A servant entered with a tray. Deviock helped unload a pitcher of water, and bowls containing figs, strips of white flaky meat and rice-balls onto the table. Her stomach rumbled and she found herself staring at the food and drink.
Sadakh gestured. “Eat something, please.”
She nodded and gulped down some water then chewed and swallowed a rice-ball as fast as she could. It was sweet and soft and wonderful. Across the table Sadakh was looking her way but his gaze was distant. As well it might be. She ate a fig. When she had catered to her stupid, weak body she said, “I’m sorry. You were saying something about losing your work.”
“Things have been difficult here too. Nothing like as bad as Shen, but politically this is a very volatile time. Much of my equipment and research, and all of my samples, have been, shall we say, lost.”
“Oh. I had no idea…” Damn politics.
“So whilst I may know what is needed for a serum that allows survival in the skyland, I do not have the means to make it.”
“Ac
tually…” She hesitated. She had known when she came here that this might be the only way. She could not afford to lose her nerve now. “What you need most, what you’ve needed all long, is not lost.”
“Meaning?”
“Etyan. My brother. Your successful test subject.” After all, he had sent the clanless to retrieve Etyan from the caravan. “I assume you can get new equipment and suchlike. But he is the, uh, the ultimate sample.”
“Yes,” said Sadakh. “He is. And I can.” He looked at her hard. “And you know where he is.”
So, it came to this, the impossible choice she had seen coming but hoped never to make. The food curdled in her stomach. But it was no choice at all really. She did not matter. Etyan did not matter. Not given what they faced.
Rhia looked over to the door. “Captain Deviock, please fetch my brother.”
“M’lady?”
“Bring him to me, please. Tell him… tell him there is something he can do after all.” She hesitated then added, “You had better get that knife back off him first. We don’t want any misunderstandings.”
When the door closed behind the guard she looked back at Sadakh. She could only describe the expression on his face as admiration.
Before he could speak she blurted, “Yes, I am willing to sacrifice the person I love most in the world in order to save it.” She took another drink of water, as much to deflect his attention as to quench her thirst.
Sadakh inclined his head. “Which is admirable. And if I can do my work without harming the subject permanently, I will.”
“His name is Etyan. But thank you for that assurance.” She wanted to take heart from the eparch’s words, to assume that her brother would survive Sadakh’s attentions, even though what she knew of him implied otherwise. She already hated herself for her choice. But before the guilt took hold, she had more to do here. “Sadakh. Eparch Sadakh, what we plan to do – what we have to do – will need the cooperation of those in charge. And at the moment, I believe that is a matter of some contention.”
“I am not sure what you mean.”
“The duke of Shen is, even now, on the Eternal Isle, speaking to the eunuchs.” Talking politics was easier than she expected now she had done the impossible thing, and condemned herself as both brave and heartless. “He is seeking an alliance between Shen and Zekt. He calls it that anyway. In truth he is throwing our shadowland, what is left of it, on the mercy of yours.” She leaned forward. “Francin understands the problem, how every shadowland will one day fall. You can be sure he will support us in finding a way to adapt to live under the Sun.”
