by Jaine Fenn
On returning to the cave she heard movement in the darkness and Etyan whispered, “Can we trust her?” He meant the still-sleeping skykin.
Rhia sat down next to him. “I don’t think we have any choice.”
“She killed your guard. Lekem, that was his name, wasn’t it?”
Rhia’s face flushed. She hadn’t thought of the dead militiaman since being snatched from the caravan. Breen had said he had a family. That innocent conversation felt like a lifetime ago. Lekem’s wife would even now be assuming he was on his way home. And Etyan called him a guard; she hadn’t admitted the truth about her travelling companions, just as he had not yet shared his reasons for leaving Shen.
“Ree?”
“Sorry. Yes, Dej killed Lekem. But I don’t think it was her idea.” Rhia recalled the bandit leader saying something to Dej, and Dej hesitating, though she might be misremembering; she’d had other priorities at the time.
“Assuming we don’t die horrible deaths out here,” Etyan spoke with false jollity, “Would you let me go back to Zekt, if that’s what I wanted?”
Rhia considered the duke’s orders to Sorne, House Callorn’s marriage proposal and, not least, the girl – Derry – dead in the dyers’ pools. She wanted to say no, for all those reasons. But saying no to Etyan often had the opposite effect. And much had happened over these last few weeks. “I won’t stop you. It’s your choice, and your responsibility.”
Rhia heard movement and looked over to see Dej sitting up. She wondered how much the girl had heard. “Any chance we can get a drink?” she asked.
Dej looked out the cave mouth where the sky was lightening. “We’ll have to hurry.”
“Then let’s go.”
Dej did not hang around; Rhia struggled to keep up without tripping in the dark. From the occasional curse behind her Etyan was having similar problems. At the stream Rhia drank as much as she could as fast as she could, although the liquid sloshed around inside her. When they climbed out of the shallow ravine the sky ahead was pale grey.
Back in the safety of the cave Rhia said, “Dej, is there stuff here we can eat?”
“Maybe.”
“Will you look?”
She stared at them for a while, then said, “All right,” and left.
Rhia considered how they might store water. The skykin’s cloak was leather, but it was made of strips, roughly stitched. It would not be watertight.
The Sun rose, washing the land in brilliance. By its light Rhia examined her satchel in case that would work, but though the leather had been waxed the seams were not sealed. “Hmm, that’ll dribble.”
“It’s good that you’re thinking about this, Ree.” She looked up to see Etyan’s worried face, “But shouldn’t we be worrying about how we’re going to get out of here?”
He was right. She put the satchel down. “There’s only one way we can do that.”
So now she was going to forage for them? These two were her prisoners, at her mercy. They had to do what she wanted!
But wonderful though it had felt when Etyan obeyed her last night, things weren’t that simple. Whether she liked it or not, she had a connection to him and his sister, and the longer she stayed around them, the stronger it’d grow.
If she wanted to break free, she should walk away now. Leave everything behind. But without the clanless she was on her own. Could she live as a total outcast, like that pathetic creature who’d spoken to Cal, so far gone no one else would even look at him?
And if she abandoned them now, the two shadowkin would die anyway. They’d starve or get bitten or stung, probably suffering long, agonizing deaths worse than anything she or the clanless could inflict.
Kir’s fate was on her. Maybe the clanless’s too. She wasn’t ready to add two more deaths to her conscience.
She couldn’t kill them, and she couldn’t leave them to die.
She may as well feed them.
Meat wasn’t an option. Even if she managed to catch something, they had no fire to cook with. She picked some tasty stem tips but they’d wilt quickly so she ate them as she went. Then she spotted a yellow creeper draped down a slanted rockface. A scrabble up the slope showed this to be palefruit. The fist-sized fruits were shaped like two shallow bowls pushed together and the flesh inside was moist, if stringy. Vay had mentioned that palefruit was “about as harmless as you got” so it should be fine for shadowkin. Dej cut a vine with half a dozen fruits on and looped it around her neck. Two of the fruits fell off during the trip back to the cave, but she picked them up, leaving them two each, enough to keep hunger at bay.
The shadowkin were deep in conversation when she returned, though they were keeping their voices down. They shut up when her shadow fell across them.
While Dej split the fruits and used her knife to ease the flesh free of the rind, Rhia said, “Are these plentiful here?”
“Plentiful enough.” The vine’d had another half dozen fruits ready to eat, with a dozen more ripening.
“Would you be able to fetch more, enough for us to live on for a few days?”
“I could.”
“Good, because we’re hoping you might go and get help.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can travel safely through the skyland. We can’t. And even with food and water, we can’t stay here forever.”
Dej grunted, then handed the split fruit across. This woman wasn’t going to sit still and await her fate. Just as Dej suspected, Rhia would take things into her own hands.
Etyan dug his fingers into the pink-white fruit and scooped out a handful of flesh, cramming it into his mouth. From his expression he didn’t think much of the taste. Rhia followed suit, grimacing as she swallowed. Dej ate her own fruit in silence.
The meal left their hands sticky. Rhia wiped her fingers down her already filthy skirt and said casually, “So, will you help us?”
Dej shrugged. “Perhaps.”
“I imagine you were being paid to take my brother to Zekt?”
“What if we were?”
“We have the means to pay you well if you get us to safety.”
“Do you? Because right now, that’s hard to believe.”
“I have considerable resources back home.”
Was she lying? Possibly not, given they’d had someone willing to die to defend them on the caravan. Money could probably buy that. “Then maybe we could come to an arrangement.” This power she now held, literally that of life or death, made her lightheaded. “Where is home?”
“Shen.”
She’d thought their accents sounded familiar, though not quite right. Finding out they came from the place she’d lived most of her life tightened the bond between them, made it even harder to leave them to die. “I’ll think about it,” she conceded.
She took the empty seedcases outside to dump them away from the cave, and relieved herself behind a rock.
With enough money she could make her own way in the world, maybe even in shadowkin society. But she’d be alone, if she accepted this woman’s offer instead of taking the boy to the clanless. Rich or not, she wouldn’t belong anywhere.
“Ree!”
Dej hurried back at Etyan’s cry. She found Rhia hunched over, retching, Etyan bent over her, one hand on her back. He looked up as Dej blocked the light.
“What did you give us?” He looked like he might throw up himself.
“Palefruit. It’s good, nothing wrong with it.”
“Then why is she like this? I feel like shit too.”
“I thought shadowkin could eat it!”
“Well, we can’t.” He grimaced and gulped.
His sister leaned forward, then half collapsed. Etyan caught her, narrowly saving her from banging her head on the wall. She retched again, but only bile came up.
Dej had saved them, only to accidentally kill them.
Etyan looked around in panic. “We have to help her!”
Do we? If Rhia died now, then assuming Etyan survived Dej would be better off
. And it wouldn’t be me killing her, but the world. Like the skykin did with faulty animuses.
“Please! Do something!”
The boy was desperate, as animated as she’d seen him. He’d do anything for his sister. Would Min have cared so much, if this had been Dej throwing her guts up? “I’m not sure what I can do.”
“Aren’t skykin good healers? I heard that somewhere.”
He had no idea. But if she just let Rhia die, he’d hate her.
There’d been a bad batch of meat at the crèche once, and several youngers got sick. She’d helped the staff tend them. “We need to make sure she doesn’t choke on her puke. Help me lay her on her side.”
Rhia groaned when they moved her, but didn’t open her eyes. They got her onto her side, as far away from the pool of rancid vomit as possible.
“Now what?” asked Etyan.
“She needs water.”
“Yes. Right. How?”
“Her satchel–”
“No good, she already thought of that.”
Dej looked around. They had nothing. Then she remembered one of her least favourite chores from the crèche. “Take your shirt off.”
“What?”
“Just do it! Then give it to me.”
Etyan shrugged free of his shirt and handed it to Dej.
“I’ll soak this in the stream and bring it back. Rhia can drink the water I wring out of it.”
“You might want to wash it first.” Etyan looked embarrassed. “I haven’t exactly been able to perform my daily toilette.”
“I’ll manage.” Etyan’s shirt did smell but not unpleasantly so. His body was soft and his skin looked odd, like he had the shadow of a rash on it. When he noticed her staring she jumped to her feet.
At the stream she cleaned the shirt, wringing it out and beating it on a rock, just like washday. Then she let it soak in the deepest pool, after which she draped it around her neck; chill water dripped down her back all the way to the cave.
The stench of Rhia’s puke made Dej’s nostrils close when she returned, a feeling she still found weird. Etyan lifted his sister to sit back against him, her head flopping on his shoulder. He looked better, at least.
Dej lifted the sopping shirt from her shoulders and squeezed it into the shadowkin’s mouth. Water dribbled over her lips. She licked and then gulped. Etyan licked his own lips, no doubt thirsty himself.
When the shirt was wrung dry Etyan lowered Rhia to the floor. “Sleep now,” he murmured. “It’ll be all right.”
“Help me clear this up,” said Dej, nodding at the mess Rhia’d made.
“Uh, sure.”
Dej fetched two empty palefruit rinds, and got Etyan to hold them while she scraped up the soiled earth. When she returned from dumping them outside she asked Etyan, who sat watching Rhia, whether he wanted water. He looked up then said, “I’ll be all right.”
“That wasn’t what I asked.”
“Yes, I would. If you don’t mind.”
“Wouldn’t have offered if I did.”
When she returned Rhia was asleep and Etyan was dozing. She shook him awake and handed him the shirt.
“Given how hot it is I’m going to leave this off,” he said, when he’d wrung all the water out of it. “Unless you’re offended by the sight of naked shadowkin flesh.”
“I’m not offended by much.”
Etyan smiled.
“Why were you in Zekt?”
“What do you mean?” His smile died.
“I overheard heard you talking to Rhia about going back there.”
Etyan said nothing.
“Well?”
“It’s complicated.”
“I’ll listen carefully while you explain it then.”
“I’d rather not.”
Could she make him tell her? Maybe, but she didn’t want it to come to that. “All right. Can you tell me why you left Zekt, then?” Someone in Zekt wanted him back.
He nodded to his sister. “She came to get me.”
“All the way across the skyland?”
“All the way across the skyland. Once Ree gets an idea into her head… I’ll tell you one reason I left Shen: because of her.”
“Really? What did she do?”
“Nothing. Everything. She stifled me. She paid for the best tutors so if I didn’t do well in lessons it was my fault. She didn’t like me going out with my friends, but we never had visitors, not any of my own age, anyway. And she goes on about me being immature and irresponsible all the time.”
“Are you?”
“Am I what?”
“Immature and irresponsible?”
“No! I don’t know. Maybe I was a bit wild. Some stuff I did wasn’t… oh, can we talk about something else?”
“You can tell me about your life in Shen.”
“I said I didn’t want to talk about that.”
“Very mature.” She liked how he got all fired up, even if it made him seem younger than his years. And she was curious about his life, so different from hers. “Some of it must be all right, especially if you’ve got money. Tell me about those bits. What was it like, where you lived?”
“You mean the city?”
“Yes, the city. Did you ever meet the duke?”
“Only about once a week!”
He was showing off: typical boy. But she was impressed, even if that was just a lowly crèche-kid’s response. “Really? What’s he like?”
“Well…”
They talked while Rhia slept, and the day grew hotter. When Etyan grew hoarse Dej fetched more water, and when he wanted to take a siesta Dej let him. She stayed where she was, staring out over the skyland.
Chapter 53
Father is alive. Father is alive and he’s calling her name. He wants to show her a marvellous contraption that he’s built. But she can’t go see because Etyan has fallen in the lake, and the weed and the hair are dragging him down. Uncle Petren says she should come away with him and see the world instead, but she has to get her stupid brother out of trouble yet again, because without her he’ll be hung like a common criminal–
Rhia woke in sweltering darkness, nightmarish dream giving way to nightmarish reality. Her guts were an empty sucking hole and she was dizzy and weak. Her throat felt like she had been breathing diamond dust.
She lay still, then rolled onto her back, massaging her numb arm where she had slept on it.
Etyan slept beside her. From what she could recall, he had not been as sick as her, thank the First.
So she, and possibly he, could not eat skyland food. How long did it take to starve to death? A week? Two? Thirst killed you faster, if she recalled. It certainly felt like it would.
Etyan looked oddly pale in the skyland night. She realized he was bare-chested. Rhia worked back through blurred memories. So that was where the lifesaving water had come from! She licked her lips and whispered, “Etyan!”
Etyan stirred and raised his head. “Ree? How are you?”
“All right but really thirsty. Can… can you help me get to the stream?”
“If you’re up to it.”
“I’m going to try.”
He had to pull her to her feet and provide a shoulder to support her. She held her breath as he helped her past the sleeping skykin, but Dej didn’t wake.
Outside, thin cloud masked the high stars, though both Whitemoon and the Matriarch were low in the west; the Maiden was in the sky too. Shame she wasn’t up to making any observations. She shivered in the chill night air.
“Ree, are you sure you can make it to the stream?”
“Possibly not,” she admitted. “But we need to talk, alone.” Dej had interrupted an important discussion when she had returned with that damned fruit.
“Then let’s sit down.”
As he helped her onto a rock she asked, “Did you keep your meal down?”
“I did, though I’d still prefer that roast pork dinner.”
“And has Dej said anything about our proposition?”
/>
“Our–? Oh, going for help, you mean. No, we didn’t talk about that, not directly.”
“We have to assume she will.” Given the alternative. “And we have to decide where to send her.”
“I know that.” He thought she was nagging him; didn’t he see how important this was?
“It must be Shen,” said Rhia.
“Why?”
“Firstly, because it’s closer. Secondly, because Zekt isn’t safe.”
“Not safe how?”
“Well, someone tried to abduct you from your sickbed. And I was attacked. Twice.”
“Attacked? Who by?”
“Different people, but in both cases they may have been working for the same person. Someone wants me as a hostage, which isn’t a fate I fancy. So Zekt isn’t the logical choice. Shen is. And it’s your home. Unless,” she wanted to give him a chance to confess; if there was anything to confess, “there is something waiting for you there you can’t face?”
Etyan was silent.
“What happened the night you left, Etyan? You have to tell me.” Her voice was growing hoarse.
“I don’t know!”
“How can you just not know?”
“Surprisingly easily.”
“You–” A coughing fit took her.
Etyan stood. “I’ll get the shirt and fetch some water.”
“Wh–” Now her voice had died, damnit.
He was already striding off.
“Etyan?”
Rhia looked up at the skykin girl’s voice. She stood in the mouth of the cave.
Etyan told her, “Ree wanted to get some air, and a drink.”
“You shouldn’t go out alone.”
“She wasn’t up to going to the stream anyway. We’ll come back in.”
He offered her his arm. She let him help her back to the cave. Neither of them said anything.
“It’ll be dawn soon,” said the skykin, “but there’s still time to get to the stream.”
“Yes, let’s,” said Etyan as he lowered Rhia to the floor. “I’ll fetch you some water, Ree.” Rhia didn’t argue.
