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  He looked, to be sure. Very sure. But all the delaying didn’t change the message.

  She was telling him he had to find her at Nydarrow. There wasn’t even a river down that way called Nyd that he could have persuaded himself was the destination. The place he had been tortured and where he was made into an undying, ever-agonised wreck, forever living in a feeble state. The place he hated most, if hate were even a thing he could manage now.

  He started walking. He had all the time in the world to refine what it was he was trying to think about fear, well, at least he had a few days always supposing he didn’t run into more trouble and on the plus side as he had no need to eat or drink or stop for a rest it was, assailants aside, going to be fairly straightforward. Then he thought about Tricky, and what might be happening to her, with the creatures from the Overworld, in some terrible pit, but over, because it was higher up, and he started to hurry and tripped up on a dried up yellow tibia sticking out of the worn earth by the side of the path. It stubbed his broken toes very nicely so that he sat down suddenly in pain to wait until the stupidity and the agony had worn off. As he did so his gaze crossed the abandoned meeting circle and met the ruined hut where he had found the hidden cellar. In a shimmer of heat-haze a young woman was standing there.

  She was a ghost—he could see right through her.

  He glanced around but all the others were gone, without trace.

  He looked back and she waved at him, hesitantly, leaning forward to peer at him through time. He thought there was the trace of a smile about her and he felt a conviction that this was Kula’s mother.

  As soon as he thought that, the image of her broke up and blew away on the breeze. At the edge of the village one of the black dog-things which had taken Tricky now howled a sound of utter loneliness and despair from a very human throat.

  He felt the weight of the lute’s case suddenly on his shoulder.

  He went back to the circle and tuned the strings. Then he sang to the empty round, a simple song from his childhood that people sang whenever anyone had to make journey— the going song, he thought of it, though it didn’t have a name. Now as he sang it he realised for the first time that it wasn’t about going, but returning and he sang it for the people who had lived there who had thought they were not returning, but going, so that they could stop a madman whose bargains they had sought and suffered by.

  The run of the river is a merry run

  We bowl and wind along

  A shadow slunk out of a burned woodpile and sat down barely visible in the long, dry grass.

  The sound of the wave is a lonely sound

  But the ocean is naught but a song

  Another shadow slipped along through the weeds and lay down by the curve of a brown, broken skull.

  Be sung, be rung, be run and round

  Come first and last to the end

  He was singing it for her, so she could hear it, to tell her he was on his way.

  We turn and dance in the light of the sun

  I’ll see you again, my friend.

  He was alone with the wind and the sunlight. By the woodpile and the skull empty air stirred and sifted its handfuls of nothing. He had sung it for himself, so he was able to go—a song for the dead. And it had worked. He felt better.

  As he picked his way clear of the place he watched every footfall and this time he didn’t make any mistakes.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  HORSE MADE HER departure from the ferry early, a mile before the port. She suddenly heaved up to standing while they were packing their bags and sharpening their blades and announced she must get out. The Shelliac, fearful of having a crazed centaur aboard the boat and concerned for the reaction at the Port authority, were quick to pole to the nearest available bank and put out the boarding planks.

  “I will begin my work on the hills above the city,” she explained, shouldering her shield and picking up her javelin. “I will be heading west along the cliffs to the barren hills. I’m sorry I can’t go with you.” She looked down at Kula and smiled softly.

  Kula was not surprised. She’d watched Horse’s connection to the forest gradually dwindle as they went further from it. Even before the centaur said anything she knew that there was no way she could stray beyond the reach of roots and the soft webs of fungi that stretched the limits of the Draeyad’s perception beyond the woodlands to the edges of the saltwater shore. It was better Horse leave now, while she was strong.

  Kula wasn’t sure about Murti but she was sure that she didn’t like Deffo, who was never about unless it was a meal time. Murti was easy to see. Deffo snuck around, in and out of sight, and he was pleased that Horse was going. It was one more person less to get in the way of any manoeuvres he would have to make in his one-step-ahead of whatever was going on style of planning. Anxiety about the mission had meant that his watching for any mischance had been focused very sharply on Lysandra the last couple of days and now Kula felt he was fishing about for ideas as to what to do about her, how to control her, how to get her to listen to him. This she must thwart.

  As Horse stepped regally off the ferry and onto the bank Deffo was there to watch her go and make sure she was really leaving. Even Celestaine was relieved, though mostly because she couldn’t think of a way to shepherd the centaur safely through the hubbub of the Freeport. Since nobody had seen one lately she would have created so much trouble for them that this problem had occupied Celest, Heno and Nedlam all the way here from the island. Now they were watching the problem walk out of their lives and a great relief was on them. Kula was sad though. Horse had been such a warm, comforting presence. She had vowed to come back and see her as soon as whatever business they were being dragged around on was done. As the centaur turned to wave at her she found herself in tears, but sort of glad at the same time. She didn’t want Horse hurt and the steady, approaching roar of the port promised a chaos that was filled with danger. As they poled off into deep water she watched the figure of her friend receding and becoming smaller and she wished they weren’t going.

  It never occurred to her that she could object and not go herself. Lysandra had told her that she felt a sense of purpose in going with Murti on his journey and Kula was now a part of Lysandra, under her wing; where one went the other must. She wanted to be a good daughter. She felt kinship to the lost family even though they were forgotten and even though they had deliberately hidden her and cut her off so she could never remember them. They must have had a reason and as long as she lived they weren’t entirely gone from the world. What they had been could find its way again through whatever she did until she had to leave and maybe by then there would be others and other ways forward. Their presence was so strong she was sometimes stretched to imagine that they had been ended in any way at all. Only the pitying looks of the adults reminded her that it must be so.

  She stroked the black feather of the creature from the river. She remembered it very well. It lived within her. She could feel its sleeping weight, a soft, single-down brush of awareness waiting for her to find a place to let it free again and she reassured it that she would, as soon as it was safe and away from where stupid people could harm it. Then they were all arranging themselves for the end of their voyage, emerging on deck, clothed, packed, armoured—which for her and Lysandra meant no change at all as they had only ever had the clothes they stood up in.

  Just prior to their arrival at the Freeport Celestaine took her aside and handed her a share of the jewels they had taken off Lysandra’s dress. Kula was impressed by being given the same share as everyone else and hid it inside a deep pouch of her belt which she was sure was secure, her faith in the tall, blonde warrior bolstered by a fresh responsibility to her. Lysandra didn’t have a pocket so they paused to sew her one, concealed by the dress’s still-magnificent extravagance of skirt. What the others did with their share she didn’t know, but she did see Nedlam biting on some gold wire and holding it up to the light to see if there really was such a thing as a metal you could jus
t chomp into shape. When it moulded to the contours of her jagged teeth she chuckled and wound it around one of her jutting tusks. She saw Kula looking at her and winked.

  “We’ll see who comes get that, eh?” she said and looked very pleased with herself.

  As well as loot, they were divided up into two groups. Murti, Kula, Lysandra and Bukham were to obtain the food and clothing they would need for a journey into colder weather—quite a short journey, Murti insisted.

  “We’re going to Galdinnion Island. It is a two-day sail or so, around the whirlponds, and then it will be a day or more to hike the Wayfarers’ road all the way to the northern circle on the glacier.”

  Kula didn’t know what that meant but it sounded grand. It gave her the courage to face the Freeport itself, which she didn’t really want to because even from the outskirts she could see Ilkand was a big place, built both around the river mouth and up on the overlooking hills. It reminded her of the camps and their crowded strangeness full of despair and hunger. The only plus side to it was that Deffo and the others would be about a separate business finding a ship so she didn’t have to keep an eye on what he was doing.

  At last it was time to say goodbye to the otters. They came up with a trout and deposited it in a sly, proud manner on her foot, scattering water from their whiskers and chirping as the Shelliac whistled them back to their cots. Kula picked up the fish and held it with a finger through the gills like she saw the Shelliac do and gave them a shy wave. They all waved, to her great surprise, and seeing them smile at her made such a sudden tender feeling that she had to rub tears off against Lysandra’s sleeve on the way down the planks to the docks.

  Once aground and with a mission to the marketplace Bukham soon had them organised with himself at the front and Murti bringing up the rear. Celestaine dealt with some long and tedious business involving guards and identifications and a lot of talking that made people bored and long in the face. Kula waited it out with patience, watching other people come and go, her hand firmly in Lysandra’s grasp as both of them stood amazed by the sheer variety of all that was to be seen in such a small area. It felt as if it was raining with people of all different sizes, colours and customs. On the headland above them a tall silver tower stood. The sight of it made Kula shiver. She tugged Lysandra’s hand and drew her attention to it.

  “Powerful dead things,” Lysandra signed to her, confirming her senses. “Not going there.”

  There were many worse threats than some empty tower though. People with dragonish looks and scales, people with peculiar oily skins and clothing like beetle bits, people with all kinds of decorations and armours, clothing and weapons. Things that may be weapons or agricultural implements or both being carted away in stacks next to firewood and cages full of small animals. Everything was strange. Everyone was peculiar to her. She saw no faces like hers and Lysandra’s anywhere, and the group she’d been in, which had seemed only people, now felt like it was more than people. They were stared at. People recognised Celestaine with mixed feelings, but mostly saluted; they saw things in Heno and Nedlam to hate and fear; they welcomed the Shelliac; they tipped their hats politely to Murti and Bukham; they looked long at her and at Lysandra, with narrowed eyes, thinking things that Kula could see weren’t very pleasant. She returned their stares and made them break the gaze first but inside she felt as if she wanted to cry and this made her angry and the anger, first hot, was almost instantly cold and hardened to a shell. This was like the camp again and she would have to put on her armour inside to make it through.

  She felt Lysandra copy her in that way she had of always knowing exactly what Kula was doing. Lysandra made a noise of surprise in the discovery. She asked Kula—do these people really hate us?

  “Fear us,” Kula said with the hand speech. “That’s our edge.”

  “Our edge?”

  “Some people have a sword made of metal. Some people have edges in other ways. Fear is the best edge for control but it cuts off one from another completely.”

  “So, they hate?”

  “No. Hate binds. Fear separates. Combined they are a trap.” Kula didn’t know how to say what she wanted to say, but Lysandra could feel how it worked. Kula felt her surge with brightness, as she always did when she was learning new things. Every time it happened the brightness lasted longer, spread further. She understood what Kula saw but also through their connection Kula could see what Lysandra saw. Lysandra could do a task or use an insight better, further, faster, once she had mastered it. She could connect it to everything and see how it fit. Kula relied on her now for gaining the bigger picture of things. So it was in a few moments that she felt a shift in her perception of the Freeport and its people. They were no longer things divided up by their looks into incomprehensible groups of strange and unknowable freaks. They became things divided up by their behaviour and their motives. In that they were all equal. Her sense of people vanishing and being replaced with hostile creatures she didn’t understand shifted. They became an influx of ordinary beings like herself, moving in a single sea of circumstances and moments, easy to understand, easy to see.

  She squeezed Lysandra’s hand. This was much better. Now everyone was the same and she didn’t have to be afraid.

  Ahead of them the big, slow-moving hulk of Bukham was moving forward, trailing the warrior group in through the dockyard gates on the roads that led into the port’s heart, his head up and his purpose clear. He was like a different person to the sombre, brooding figure that had sat on the ferry. Now he was like she remembered him at the trading post, big and full of confidence and charm.

  They agreed a meeting point and time and then the two huge Yorughan and the smaller warrior between them vanished into the crowd, trailed at a short distance by the anxious figure of Deffo who attempted to walk tall as if he owned the place and Celest was merely his bodyguard, but somehow managed to give a distinct impression of both limping and slouching in the most craven way. A guard went behind them, to help them reach some important place which they clearly already knew how to reach by themselves. Kula scowled but she was being moved in a current heading in a different direction. For a moment she felt a clear sense of danger, that they would not meet again.

  CELESTAINE WAS HEADED to meet with Governor Adondra, to make a formal greeting and to ask her advice about gaining passage on a trustworthy vessel. The delicate ins-and-outs of politics could have shifted the weight of influence enormously even in the few months since she’d last been here and she didn’t hold out much hope for figuring it all out by trial and error, at least not in any timescale that would be useful. Adondra had dished her a sharp but useful lesson in presuming to know anything about port business and she felt a certain desire to make amends for what had happened on that visit, when the Archimandrite had heard the gods’ farewell and Adondra had seen the prospects of her town full of refugees go from mere survival enforced by religious zealots to something with a much larger potential for expansion—the future looked more interesting but the difficulty of her position between an enlightened Temple and a seething mass of human interests far beneath that had been expanded a hundredfold. Celest was hoping that some of Lysandra’s wealth was going to help with whatever was now going on. And hoping they would not all be put to the stake again.

  This time, instead of getting an audience by trading on her power as a Slayer she petitioned in the usual way and lubricated the process with just enough gold that would seem auspicious but not so much it would cause undue suspicion—as if coming into the city accompanied by two Tzarkomen wouldn’t do that, but they were mild, shopping-only Tzarkomen, not even tattooed with the markings of the necromancy, and they were with an Oerni trader and a Wayfarer priest. A more harmless bunch there couldn’t be.

  “How long d’you think before we’re arrested?” Nedlam asked from behind Celest’s right shoulder as they waited in the yards of the Governor’s mansion. They were already attracting plenty of attention.

  “Not this time,” Heno said wit
h confidence.

  “Wait, don’t we know that guy?” Celestaine pointed to a stake placed high on the walls overlooking the yard. Upon it was a head. Although it was discoloured and puffy its death-snarl of surprised disgust was still in place.

  Nedlam shrugged—her eyesight was not that good at very long range, but Heno sighed.

  “The Templars we saw before Hathel Vale.”

  “Yeah, he’s the dead one that was on the horse,” Celestaine agreed. “And you said you liked them.”

  “They had a dead Templar with them, it was difficult not to like them, as any Templar dead is obviously a good thing, even if the others remained alive,” he objected. “But now that looks a lot like Termaghent Phylanstery justice to me. Perhaps even they can do right sometimes.”

  “Maybe we should skip this and go to the dockhouses at the sea end of things,” Nedlam said. “No need to bother the Governor. She doesn’t like you anyway.”

  “Bit late for that,” Celestaine replied. Through the milling people a man with the Templar and City surcoat on was coming purposefully towards them, accompanied by guards trying to look like they weren’t out for an arrest and failing.

  “Fernreame,” the official said carefully, assessing the Yoggs with an eye that was pretending not to notice that they were Yoggs at all. “If you would accompany us. The Archimandrite would be pleased so see you now.”

  “I only wanted to pass on my good wishes to the Governor and ask her advice on a minor matter,” Celestaine said as they were casually surrounded. She deliberately took her hand off her sword hilt.

  “You have a way of precipitating major change and that is not welcomed today,” the man said. “Please attend.”