Whatever else happened now, it was good that they were here.
He turned back to the house and Lochlan, and a Koticki was standing there in front of them, one foreleg raised and pincer open in greeting.
For a moment they regarded each other carefully. Then the Koticki nodded and lowered his leg. He was clearly advanced in years, his carapace a pale green, his back slightly bowed. But when he stepped forward, he moved well enough.
“So you’re finally here,” he clicked. “She said you would come. I am Skitss, and on her behalf I bid you welcome.”
Adam hesitated, glancing at Lochlan, seeking direction. He had always been more comfortable talking to the insectoid creatures than any other Protectorate citizen he knew, but then his position had been solid, assured, and any kindness he extended was merely noblesse oblige. Now the dynamic had changed—he was a stranger and a guest, and he owed this Koticki a degree of deference. He lowered his head in something like a small bow.
“I’m … I’m not sure why I’m here. But I know I was called.” He paused, looking past the Koticki to the door. “Can I see her?”
“Of course. Follow me.” Skitss turned and headed for the house, and after Adam and Lochlan exchanged looks once more—and Lochlan shrugged—they followed.
The front room of the house composed most of the structure. On a small wood stove, a pot of something that smelled wonderful was simmering. Herbs were hung from the rafters, augmenting that smell with fresh, faintly spicy undertones. Shelves lined the walls, crammed with a clutter of dishes, books, pads, jars, and rolled paper. In that, it felt much like Ixchel’s chambers.
Lakshmi had found as much of her homeship as she could. The rest, she had tried to bring with her.
“Here.” Skitss gestured to a curtained door at the rear of the room. “She is resting. But she is expecting you. She’ll be very pleased.”
Adam started for the door. A few minutes ago, he would have hesitated, but now he was being drawn forward by the same tether that had drawn him to Peris in the first place. He couldn’t go anywhere else. Or rather, he could, but then the entire tapestry would be unraveled and remade, and the chance to save anyone might be destroyed.
That couldn’t happen. He lifted the simple, unpatterned curtain aside.
The bedroom was about half the size of the front room, the walls lined with more shelves, and the space dominated by a single bed on which lay the oldest woman Adam had ever seen. She was older than Ixchel, older than Adisa, thin and frail under her knit blanket with her white hair gathered in a braid to one side of the pillow and her eyes closed. Yet, despite her age and the deep lines etched into her brown face, he could feel her strength burning like a coal.
All at once she opened her scarred eyes, and they were milky and sightless and very, very keen. She turned her head, lifting herself on one elbow. It clearly took effort, but Adam hung back. She didn’t need his help.
“Adam Yuga d’Bideshi.” She smiled. “Lochlan Tomek Finnyfolu Jaabir d’Bideshi. It’s so good to meet you at last.” And she laughed in delight, sitting up fully and pushing the blanket aside.
“Old Mother,” Lochlan said, with a reverence that Adam didn’t think he’d ever heard before.
“Come, child. Let me look at you.” She held out her hands, and Lochlan stepped forward, taking them in his. Seeing him, his bearing and the eager expression on his face, Adam understood something that made his chest ache.
Lochlan missed Ixchel. He missed her more than Adam had realized.
In fact, he had probably missed having an Aalim at all. They were the center of the homeships, Adam knew that much—the caretakers and guides, the people who made sense of an otherwise senseless universe. How long had he been away from his Aalim before? Away and not able to return? Try as he might, Adam couldn’t feel the pain behind the questions. He hadn’t been raised on a Bideshi homeship. He would never know what it was like.
There were ways in which he and Lochlan would never fully understand each other.
“It’s been a long time since I set foot on your Ashwina,” said Lakshmi. “Is she well?”
“Last I saw her, she was well.” Lochlan ducked his head. “We … There was a battle. On the Plain. We lost—”
“You lost many. I know. I felt it.” She sobered, turning to Adam, though she still held Lochlan’s hands in her gnarled ones. “And you were at the center of it. You carry that with you, don’t you? I can see it on you. The blood of the dead—you’re soaked in it.”
Adam sucked in a breath. He hadn’t been able to resist coming here; now he suddenly wanted to run from that piercing sight beyond sight, to keep her from saying any more. He didn’t have any words, not when the wound was reopening itself, raw and poisoned. But she answered for him.
“You chose to cover yourself in it, boy. You could have been washed clean a long time ago. All these months away from your arrogant people and you still carry their arrogance in your dance. Don’t the Kutub say that holding to sin is the heart of pride? There’s no sin here, but there’s a vast gulf between repentance and guilt. One of them can heal you and the other will only keep you hurting.”
She gently slid one hand free from Lochlan’s and extended it to Adam. “Child, perfect one, let it go. It won’t serve you in what’s coming.”
He almost didn’t take her hand. There had been relief in finding his path, within and without; before then there had even been joy. Now there was overwhelming fear, because all at once he was sure that when he went to her and took her hand, there would truly be no going back. He would be locked into a trajectory, falling into a gravity well from which there would be no rising.
But Lochlan was there. Waiting for him.
He closed his eyes, took Lakshmi’s hand, and the fear vanished. Warmth was flowing into him. Warmth and the breeze through the grass of the High Fields, the dancing light in the branches and twisted trunks of the Arched Halls.
When he opened his eyes again, Lakshmi was smiling, and she placed his hand in Lochlan’s, releasing them both. “You feel it,” she whispered, and she said nothing more. Adam held Lochlan’s hand, and the sun came in through the open window and spread across their skin.
When Adam finally returned to the main room of the house, the light was lower, the sun dropping into afternoon. Lakshmi was hobbling ahead of them, leaning on a stick as old and gnarled as her hands. When Skitss stepped forward to help her, she waved him away with faint impatience.
“I’m not yet so infirm as that. Come, let’s go out into the light. I want to feel it on my face. And I think there are some people waiting for me.” She turned her head to the door and grinned. “Stealing from me, in fact.”
Lochlan appeared surprised. “What—?” Adam followed his gaze toward the window and saw it: people from the ship were now milling around in the garden, some staring with hungry longing at the vegetables, a few bending to pick them. He could see the fruit tree from where he stood, and more people reaching up to gather the little blue things from the outstretched branches.
“Come,” Lakshmi said again, and she didn’t sound angry. “There won’t be enough for them all, and they’ve been living on sawdust, eh, children? In need of fresh and growing things.” She walked toward the door, wobbling slightly, but with every step she appeared to grow steadier and stronger. Bemused, Adam followed after, Lochlan at his side and Skitss behind, muttering to himself.
As they entered the garden, everyone glanced up, though Lakshmi was moving with no particular noise. Guilt flickered across many of their faces, and Rachel came forward, Aarons in tow. “Adam, I couldn’t—” She halted, her expression uncertain. “Ma’am? I’m sorry, I couldn’t stop them. They’re hungry, and we—”
“Child, quiet yourself. Quiet your worries.” Lakshmi stepped past her and into the garden, every eye was on her, but her focus seemed to be on the tree that stood at its edge. As she reached it, people shifted aside, silent.
They had never seen an Aalim. How could they understan
d what and who she was?
“What’s she going to—?” Rachel started, but Aarons touched her hand.
“I don’t know,” Lochlan said. “Watch.”
Lakshmi lowered her head in front of the tree as if in deference—or as if she was praying. What she said next was soft, and yet somehow Adam heard it, and he had only to see the assembled faces to know that they’d heard it too.
“I know, Ama. But I’ve been saving the power for so long. There can’t be any harm in using a little, can there? Love, can’t I?” She laid a hand on the tree’s slender trunk, letting out a slow breath. “I can.”
The air around the tree shimmered then, as if a heat mirage was settling over it. Rachel gasped, and Aarons murmured a curse that managed to sound more reverent than obscene. Adam found Lochlan’s hand again and held on. Some time ago he’d accepted the existence of what might be termed miracles, though he still couldn’t bring himself to believe in anything truly miraculous, truly guided by a supreme, unseen hand. Even so, this was something that was hard to deny. Not a god or some great, divine power but an old woman, reaching into the tightly woven strands of reality and tugging a few of them in just the right way.
Then it was over, and she almost fell back, Skitss rushing forward to support her. She laughed.
“Now there’s enough. Everyone can eat, and eat their fill.” She leaned heavily on Skitss, bowing her head again. “Divide the fish and the loaves among them. But they aren’t fish, are they, Ama? No. They’ll do, all the same.”
Ama. Again, Adam gave Lochlan a questioning look, and Lochlan shook his head.
I don’t know.
Lakshmi was returning to them, still supported by Skitss. Rachel opened her mouth and closed it, apparently at a loss.
“Let your people take what they want,” Lakshmi said, laying a hand on her shoulder. “There will be plenty for everyone. They should feast while they can and recover their strength. There’s work to be done.” She turned to Adam. “As for you, boy: there’s a village on the other side of this hill. In that village are people who are in need of you, waiting in the house farthest on the outskirts. I told them that you would be coming, but their time is running short, I think. Go now. Hurry.”
Adam blinked. “Who?”
“No more questions. You’ll see. What matters is that they need you.” She made a shooing motion with one hand that was eerily reminiscent of Ixchel. “Off with you.”
Lochlan started forward as well, but Lakshmi’s hand shot out and curled around his wrist. He stared down at it as if he wasn’t sure what he was seeing.
“Not you. You, young voel, stay with me. I have work for you to do, as well.”
Lochlan looked from her to Adam, obviously discomfited. “What kind of work?”
Lakshmi grinned. “Work of a most important sort. I’ll show you. Let your love go, he’ll return to you in no time at all.”
Adam glanced down the hill: the opposite side from where they had come. Yes, he could see it: a small collection of buildings made of the same red brick as Lakshmi’s house, simple and unassuming. A dirt track led down into the little valley it was set in, and there was something about it that did indeed feel as though it were calling to him. Reaching into him, gentle but insistent, and tugging at his heart as every angle and shade seemed to lift itself and beckon.
“I’ll be fine,” he said to Lochlan, keeping his attention fixed on the track, the waiting valley and its lengthening shadows. “I promise. I’ll be back.”
It was strange, Adam thought as he headed down the path, how immediately he had trusted her. As with so many other things here, it had been a bit like Ixchel—he had met his first Bideshi Aalim with doubt, worry, deep uncertainty, but no mistrust or suspicion. He no longer had reasons to feel those things specifically, not of an Aalim, but this was a strange woman, an outcast, an entirely unknown quantity.
Except he did know her.
If only he knew where she was sending him.
The dirt track was surrounded by more open fields, but closer to the village the wild-growing grass and flowers became plowed and tended plots of land, stubby, thick-stalked grain and orchards with more of the fruit trees making up what crops he could see. Lights were beginning to come on in the village. The birdsong was louder, as if they were gathering somewhere unseen and sharing the gossip of the day—it struck him that he still hadn’t caught sight of one of them.
Then he saw the little house and forgot the birds.
It was smaller even than Lakshmi’s, almost a shack. Like all the others, it was red brick with a wood-slat roof, and through a white-curtained window, a faint light showed. It had no garden, but a copse of fruit trees stood nearby, unpruned, old, and twining around each other like mating snakes. A path off the main track led to the door of the place, and Adam stopped where it branched away.
His strange intuition had abandoned him. He had no idea what was waiting inside.
“They are in need of you.”
Well, then.
Adam let out a heavy breath and started up the path.
It was a short way, only a hundred yards or so. Adam was no more than fifteen feet from the door when it opened with a jerk and a woman stumbled out. Her black hair was loose and wild, her brown skin sallow in the dim light, her body too thin. She gaped. She raised her hands and reached for him, and Adam stared at her, shocked to stillness.
He knew her.
“You,” Eva Reyes breathed, and tumbled into the dirt.
Nkiruka pressed her hands together and the glowbugs came to her.
She couldn’t see them now, of course. Only she could, with a sight that had more in common with feeling than anything else. It was as if her senses had come together as one, and the picture that they gave her was so deep and so wide and so complete that she would never be able to process all of it.
She leaned forward from where she sat cross-legged, extending her hands, and the glowbugs landed on her fingers, pulsing like little dying stars. Over her head, the Arched Halls whispered with the voices of the dead and the voices of other things entirely.
She had come here after a time spent in seclusion and meditation, learning the new parts of herself and what they could show her. Part of her had been grieving, had been wailing with pain and loss, haunted by Satya’s face, but the rest of her had been too focused on the world before her. She had wondered if that made her callous; then she had lost herself in the dance of distant stars and thought about it no more.
She wasn’t alone. She was never alone. But someone specific was here, someone whose dance she recognized.
“Kae,” she said, and didn’t turn or rise.
He stepped from the shadows. “Old Mother.”
She smiled. She could hear the half joke in the words, but also how serious they were. This was who she was and her age had little to do with her body. The universe was ancient. Now, so was she.
“You’ve heard from Jakana and Suzaku.”
“Yes.” Kae hesitated, then sighed and took a seat across from her. He held out a mug and she took it immediately, the warm, spicy scent of the tea drifting to her like a glowing mist.
“You’re sweet, Kae. They said no, didn’t they?”
“Of course you knew they would.” He didn’t sound angry; mostly he seemed resigned. Surely he had known too. “Adisa was furious, though naturally he was good at hiding it, at least until we broke the feed. I don’t think anyone truly believed we would split the convoy over this. Their councils—”
“Were never easy with what happened on the Plain. I know.” She sipped the tea, let it warm her hands. She could still sense the glowbugs circling, as if they were reluctant to leave her. “They’re not wrong to feel the way they do. We were dealt a great hurt then, and something like that is hard to forgive.” She lowered the mug and fixed Kae with her blind gaze. “But we have to, Kae. It has to be us. Someone has to take the first step, and we were the ones who did by taking Adam in. Now we have to take the next one, and we
have to take it alone. I don’t think it could ever have been any other way.”
She lowered her head, closing her eyes, and sank a little way inward. “Another great Aalim taught us a prayer, once,” she murmured. “You know it well. ‘Forgive us our transgressions, as we forgive those who transgress against us.’ It sounds so nonthreatening, doesn’t it? But it’s a warning. If we do not forgive, we won’t be forgiven. And we have transgressed by abandoning them to their own mistakes, Kae. By setting ourselves against them rather than trying to fight the evil consuming them. Ixchel understood that. No one is innocent here.”
“Who will forgive us?” Kae asked softly.
“You were taught that as well.” She cocked her head. “You don’t need a name. You don’t even need to believe that it’s one being only. You don’t have to believe at all.”
“I know. But I still wonder. Old Mother—Nkiru. Are we being guided by something? Or are we simply … fumbling our way forward in the dark?”
She set down her tea and gazed at him for a long moment. He was made of shifting forms of light and dark, a hundred billion little stars in their orbits. The stuff of stars, here for the briefest of moments in the body of a man, and when he went to the Halls, everything that he was would go to the stars again. Nothing was ever truly lost.
“Do you think there’s any real difference?”
He let out a quiet laugh and shook his head. “You’re already so much like Ixchel. It’s … eerie.”
“I know.” She smiled again, but a second later the smile faded. “I’m— Kae, I’m not sure. I’m not sure what’s happening, I’m not sure of anything. Do you know I’m still afraid? I should be so certain of the future, but I’m not. I don’t know where this will end. All I know is that we have to keep moving forward.”
Kae took her hand, squeezing. “I think Ixchel might have said the same thing.”
“Yes. She would. She knew the limits of—of what we are. Of what I am.” She tilted her head back, pulling in a long breath. It filled her, made her feel lighter. “We’re going to slipstream.” She held tighter to Kae’s hand. “God, we’re getting closer. I can feel it. Kae …”
Fall and Rising Page 28
