Hidden Sun

by Jaine Fenn

  They set off into the skyland at dusk. The wagons rattled along at a fierce pace throughout the night, sticking to the caravan route.

  The militiamen stopped as the sky went from black to grey, and pulled a huge construction of heavy canvas – a tent – from the supply wagon, erecting it speedily. The horses went into the tent, the men went into the wagon. And that was how they waited out the day’s heat. Dej stayed outside, sitting against the wagon and dozing.

  The next day, they left the road and cut up into the foothills. Dej went ahead, checking landmarks from memory and direction from instinct. Weirdly, whilst her sense of direction had been dulled by the red valley, she had a strong sense of where it was now, as though she was somehow drawn to it. Or someone in it, she thought, before mocking herself for being so soft.

  When the ground got too rough and steep for the wagons, the militia unhitched the horses. Two men stayed with the wagons, while the remaining three took all five horses up into the hills.

  With no wagon or tent to shelter in, the party had to reach the caves before sunrise. Captain Remeth insisted Dej rode whenever the ground was flat enough, to avoid her getting left behind. She sat behind him awkwardly. On the steeper sections, Dej dismounted to scout ahead while the men led the horses.

  They were on a relatively even path when one of the horses stumbled. Dej heard a familiar hiss and tensed. The party stopped and calmed the horse. It had disturbed a rockslither, and the beast had bitten the horse’s leg.

  The party’s medical expert, Gerthen, examined the horse. If it was too badly injured to carry on they would have to leave it behind, though they’d cut its throat rather than let it fry under the open sky. But Gerthen produced bandages and bound the horse’s leg, and they carried on, hurrying to make up lost time.

  They had to approach the red valley from the south, that being the only route suitable for horses, though not a way Dej knew and twice she led them up false trails by mistake. By the time she saw the familiar line of holes in the hillside the horizon showed a line of silver.

  “Which one are they in?” shouted Captain Remeth, kicking his horse into a gallop.

  “Second from the left.”

  “Will the horses fit in that cave too?”

  “No, but there should be room for them in the fourth cave along.”

  The captain barked orders as they halted outside the caves. While he and the medic followed Dej to the cave where she’d left Rhia and Etyan, the third man, Hithim, hurried the horses into the shelter of the fourth cave.

  Dej entered the cave to see two bodies lying at the back, stretched out side-by-side. She gasped and hurried forward.

  The nearest one stirred and sat up. It was Etyan. She grinned at him. “You’re alive!”

  “Very much so.” Etyan looked to the militiaman. “Captain…?

  “Remeth, m’lord.”

  Dej started at the deference in his voice.

  “Captain Remeth, my sister needs urgent help.”

  “I’ll see to her, m’lord.” The medic bent over Rhia.

  Dej looked at Etyan over the medic’s head. He glowed with health. And his skin had changed. He didn’t have scales, but there was a bronzed patterning which could make you think so at a glance.

  “Have you managed to get her to drink, m’lord?” asked the medic.

  Etyan looked down, his face twisted with worry. “I’ve tried, but she fell into a doze two days ago and I can’t rouse her. I’ve wet her lips since.”

  “That was wise, m’lord.”

  “She has also been beaten.”

  “Beaten?” Dej looked at Etyan in confusion.

  “One of… those we encountered came back. The leader, I think. I saw him off.”

  So Cal had survived the landslide. Dej kept her expression neutral.

  “Is he likely to return?” asked Captain Remeth.

  “I doubt it. Certainly not now you’re here.”

  “We’ll set a watch anyway. Mam Dej, please go and tell Corporal Hithim to stay sharp during the morning, and shout out if he sees any skykin; we’ll cover the afternoon.”

  She did as the captain asked. The Sun was up fully now.

  When she got back the medic was smearing something on Rhia’s lips. Etyan was chewing on jerky, eyes closed. Captain Remeth looked like he had fallen asleep sitting up against the side wall.

  Dej sat against the opposite wall, out of the way. The medic turned his attention to Rhia’s other injuries, getting Etyan to lift her gently, then binding her ribs. When he was done he told Etyan she was stable but must be watched. Then he went to sit next to the captain, and closed his eyes. The militiamen could sleep, and wake, near instantly, but Dej still waited until she was sure the medic was asleep before crawling over to Etyan and whispering, “What happened to you?”

  “I’m not sure. But I can go out in the sun, and eat skyland food. And I feel great!”

  “That’s amazing!” And it was. She hadn’t been sure of her feelings for him before but now she found him fascinating. Irresistible, even.

  Rhia stirred, and Etyan got up to drip water onto her lips. When he returned he sat close, his leg pressing against Dej’s. Dej smiled. “She’ll be fine,” said Dej, though she had no idea whether the shadowkin woman would recover.

  He asked her about her journey to the city. He was shocked at the reception she’d got at his house. When Dej grew tired she let her head loll onto Etyan’s shoulder. He didn’t move away.

  She awoke in the afternoon to find Etyan snoring gently, his head resting on hers. The captain was on watch. She doubted Cal would come back now the soldiers were here, but she enjoyed thinking about what might happen if he did.

  They left as soon as darkness fell. Rhia, still out of it, was lifted like a fragile package, strapped onto a horse behind the medic. Etyan asked Dej if she wanted to sit behind him on his horse. She was happy to accept.

  Chapter 62

  Rhia opened her eyes. Above her a wooden ceiling was lit by a gently swinging lamp. Everything ached, but she was alive.

  “Ree?”

  She turned her head to see Etyan’s face. Her brother was alive too. She was alive, he was alive and the universe did not work the way everyone thought it did. She smiled, then remembered the other recent revelation. Etyan had raped an innocent girl.

  “Ree, this is Gerthen.” She focused on the man standing near her feet. “He says we need to get some food and water into you.”

  “Wh–?” They were in a wagon, a smaller version of those the skykin used.

  “Don’t try to talk.”

  Etyan and the other man, whose name she had already forgotten, lifted her up. Beyond them the skykin girl, Dej, looked on.

  Rhia’s body felt light and delicate, except for her chest, which ached like one big bruise. Etyan squeezed water into her mouth and fed her a sweet yet salty paste which tasted wrong, and then wonderful. “Captain Remeth hopes to reach the umbral before daybreak,” he said as she gulped the stuff down.

  She grunted to show she understood.

  “You should rest.”

  “Been asleep too long.” Rhia focused on the skykin girl. “Thank you.”

  Dej looked startled, then grinned and nodded.

  “Dej had some trouble.” Etyan’s voice was halting. Rhia looked at him. He shrugged. “Maybe when you’re stronger.”

  “No, tell… me now.”

  “Our housekeeper tried to set the militia on her. The militia captain says the duke took Fenera into custody. She was still being questioned when he and his men left, but has confessed to spying on our household, passing information to a lover. A foreigner. I’m sorry, this isn’t news you need right now.”

  “Markave?”

  “I don’t think there’s any question of his loyalty.”

  She never thought there was. But his first wife had died, and now his second wife had betrayed him. “He’s all right?”

  “Oh, yes, as far as I know everyone else is fine. Ree, you need to
rest.”

  Everything, even speech, took so much effort. “Yes.” Etyan and the medic helped her lie down.

  “I should probably give you this back,” said Etyan as she settled. He held up her signet ring. “I’ll put it on your finger.” The ring was too big for her now; she slid it onto her thumb, wrapped her fingers round it to stop it slipping off, and closed her eyes.

  Will he ever look at me the way he looks at her?

  But that was different: they were brother and sister; Dej had no idea what that felt like. She did know what love felt like. It burned like the Sun.

  The last two days had been sweet torture. So close to Etyan, but never alone. The soldiers treated her better than the clanless had, but Etyan they treated like his every wish was a command. She wasn’t sure what he’d done to earn such respect.

  They’d sat together, and talked when the soldiers were asleep. But it had been vague, harmless chatter, about life in Shen or her life with the clanless; not that she said much about that. She was happy to forget it.

  They reached Shen’s umbral just before sunrise. Captain Remeth stopped at a clearing in the forest which, Etyan told her, was where the caravans departed.

  For the first time, it was safe for everyone to spend the day outside, though the soldiers appeared happy to rest up in the wagons with the doors open for air. When Etyan said he was going out, Gerthen said he’d keep an eye on his sister.

  Dej followed Etyan. He stopped outside the wagon, and looked up at the solid ceiling of cloud pressing down overhead. The air was heavy and moist. “Shall we walk in the umbral?” she asked.

  “Why not?”

  Side-by-side, they headed into the shade of the trees. Dej felt stupidly self-conscious. The hollow inside her had been filled, by this boy, but she had no idea what to do next.

  They both started speaking at once.

  “Sorry,” said Etyan, “you first.”

  “No, you.”

  “All right. I don’t know exactly what happened to make me… what I am now. It must have been the eparch, I guess, whatever he gave me. However it happened, I’ve noticed changes in the way I see the world. I wanted to ask you about them.”

  “Sure.” What had she been hoping for, a declaration of undying love?

  “I think I’m sort-of part skykin now.”

  “One way to find out. Follow me.” Dej strode off towards the brilliance to the north.

  She led him to the edge of the umbral forest. The border wasn’t sharp: the ironwoods thinned, and then it was just the odd stunted tree shading damp ground dotted with skyland plants, and then there were no more trees, just open skyland. He hesitated for a moment in the last of the shade, then stepped out into the light.

  “Does that answer your question?” she asked with a grin.

  “I knew the Sun wouldn’t kill me. I had to walk back to the cave in daylight.”

  Well, if he’d said that… “All right, let’s try something else.”

  She led him farther out; the landscape here was lush compared to the dry farmlands on the far side of the umbral. When she spotted a low-lying mat lying in a depression she asked, “What do you see when you look at that?”

  “I see… a squishy-looking mat thing. But I get the feeling it would be dangerous to touch it.”

  “It would. When I look at it I also know that it’ll leave me alone if I leave it alone, but that it can move so I shouldn’t take a nap anywhere near it.”

  “So I sense extra stuff I couldn’t before, but you sense and know stuff?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “So I was right: I’m part skykin.”

  It wasn’t as though she was a full skykin, a true skykin, herself. “Sounds like you got the most useful stuff. Trust me, some of it’s a pain.”

  “Like what?”

  “Having to sleep with my head to the north.”

  “Oh, so that’s why you didn’t sleep against the wall in the cave. But not every skykin has to do that. They didn’t on the caravan.”

  “Not every one, no. We’ve got… different skills.” She wanted to exaggerate, to try and impress him. But then, she’d got to Shen alone, evaded the militia, and led the party that saved his life. That was impressive enough.

  “I see.”

  She wanted him. Leaving aside what he did to her heart and head, when she looked at Etyan she got an ache in her groin, just like Min said she got over some of the boys back at the crèche. Even the image of Cal, looming above her, wasn’t enough to kill the desire. Should she take the initiative, just grab him?

  “Shall we go back, then?”

  Dej looked up. “What?”

  “I don’t want to leave Ree alone for too long.”

  “All right. I suppose we’d better.”

  Damn, but this was hard, painful work. Grabbing him would have been too much, so maybe if she just came out with how she felt… But what if he laughed in her face?

  Etyan turned back to the umbralumbra. She took a last look at the skyland, then sighed and followed.

  Rhia woke doubting her insight. What if the Sun was not the centre of the physical universe? What if her revelation had been a fever dream? But it made sense of other anomalies, like the Strays.

  How did the shadowlands fit in? Could they be, as dogma claimed, the result of heavenly shades that followed the Sun? How would that work if the Sun was the point around which everything else orbited? And then there was the matter of rotation, as postulated by Skywatcher of Liyr. Would this model work if heavenly bodies rotated? Yes, in fact the world had to, for day and night to occur. And if the world, a sphere, rotated as it went around the Sun, these celestial sun-shades must be structures of massive complexity, moving in ways it hurt her head to consider. They were a niggling complication in this elegant new system.

  Two things were certain. Firstly, she had a lot of work to do to prove her theory. Secondly, if she did prove it, the Church would not be happy.

  Beyond her closed eyelids the soldiers were talking but she couldn’t hear Etyan. He had told her his awful secret. Would he run away again? Would the militia stop him?

  She opened her eyes. The medic was at her side a moment later. “Where is my brother?” Speech came easier today.

  “I’m not sure, m’lady.”

  “Could you find him, please? I need to speak to him, alone.”

  “You should have some more food and water first.”

  “I’ll go and find the young lord,” said one of the other soldiers.

  She managed to sit up unaided to eat and drink. The only remaining pain was from her ribs which the medic – Gerthen, that was his name – assured her had been badly bruised but not broken.

  She needed to see beyond Etyan’s confession. He had done something terrible, but not as terrible as she feared. And he had not acted alone. Had, in fact, been led on by his noble cronies, as he so often was. By Phillum and Aspel, he had said. Phillum Escar and Aspel Callorn, that would be. A suspicion began to form in Rhia’s mind.

  She saw Etyan approaching, in the company of Dej and the militiaman, both of whom peeled off before he climbed into the wagon. Gerthen left after Etyan entered.

  “How are you?” Etyan asked, sitting on the end of her makeshift bed.

  “Better. Etyan, we have to talk about what you told me at the pool.”

  “When I thought I was going to die.”

  “Yes, when you thought you were going to die. But you didn’t.” No: he had survived to become something new, something unique. “But now I know what happened the night you left, I can’t unknow it.”

  “But you can choose what you do with that knowledge.” His voice was quiet.

  “Yes. I can, and I will. But it will depend on what happens when we get to Shen.”

  “What do you expect to happen?”

  “I don’t know. Francin investigated the girl’s death, Derry’s death, but chose not to share his findings with me.”

  “Right.” He looked uncomfortable. As we
ll he might. “And those militiamen with you? Were they sent to arrest me?”

  “Their orders were to bring you home. They were not given reasons.”

  “So,” he exhaled. “The question is, given you love knowledge so much, are you going to share everything you now know?”

  He was asking her to cover up his crime. “If questioned I won’t lie. But if there is any way of bringing Derry’s real killer to justice, I will.”

  “You do know there’s a logical contradiction in what you’ve just said. You might not be able to protect me and still get full justice. Whatever else,” he looked away, “I was one of the last people to see her alive.”

  “I know that. But you didn’t kill her.”

  “And what if the duke knows more than he’s said? He often does, doesn’t he?”

  “We’ll deal with that if we have to. For now, I need you to know that I’ll stand by you.” Despite what you did. “And I need you to assure me that you won’t run off again.”

  Etyan stared out the back of the wagon, towards the light. Then he said, “The skyland is fascinating. I never knew.”

  “Etyan! This is no time for your games.”

  “I know.” He looked back at her. “I’ll come back to Shen with you. I can’t promise more than that.”

  And she could ask no more of him than that.

  Chapter 63

  The next morning, Rhia watched the umbral clouds spill over into Shen’s skies through the open back door of the wagon. She was strong enough to sit up by herself today.

  They had set off during the night, stopping at the inn around dawn to water the horses. Rhia took the opportunity to change into the clothes the militia had brought; plain garb, but clean. She left her filthy skirt and shirt in the inn’s outhouse. She had lost her mask; presumably it was still in the cave somewhere. The militia had brought the only possessions that mattered: her notes and her sightglass.

  Fat drops of rain began to fall around mid-morning. The militia sent the horses into a full trot; if the drought broke now, the dusty road would become a quagmire.