Part 3 (1/2)

*Are there rivers in the Mora.s.s?' I ask.

Reef shakes his head. *If there are, our surveys haven't found them. Water wells up to make pools and lakes. In spring the snow-melt just soaks into the ground.'

What was it Pedla Rue once said about water? It was during a really bad rain-storm when the streets of Sea-Ways were flooded and the harbour walls were broken by giant waves. I remember her pointing from the window of her apartment.

*One thing witches hate,' she lectured, *is running water. Streams, rills, rivers a” they won't cross them willingly. So if a witch comes for you, ring your bells and run to a river. Or to the sea a” they hate salt almost as much as bane-metal. Do you understand?'

Of course I didn't understand. I still don't. It's just stories.

I don't ask Reef where we'll run to if witches come for us, because witches don't exist. I step down on to the ice, arms out, like a dancer. I didn't know it would be so slippery. We never get ice in Sea-Ways. Is it safe? Will it hold? I grab Reef's sleeve and we skid together halfway across the pool, then I stop. I sense movement. Smell blood. Hear a strange creaking, twisting noise . . . metal rubbing, fabric stretching, someone breathing. There a” beyond the stretch of ice a” something wrong is bleeding.

Two black corvils fly in that direction, swift and low. I stop to hear better. Reef stretches back to grab my jacket but I'm already gliding towards the sounds.

*Don't step off the path!'

*Listen, can't you hear that?'

Instantly he slips his gun from its holster, slides off the ice and scans the trees. *What? Where? Traptions? Creepers?'

*Something over there a” high up.'

We walk softly, softly in the snow, leaving two tracks of bootprints side by side. Ahead, something is swinging from a tree. A parachute is caught in the branches. Under it an airman is swinging like a toy to tease a baby. His face, his uniform, his smell, they're so strange he's got to be Crux. Disgusting! A corvil flies down to perch on his head. Reef wasn't wrong when he said the birds like their meat fresh . . .

*Hold this.'

Reef pa.s.ses me the gun, then he's off, climbing the tree like . . . like some sort of animal I can't think of a name for because we don't have real animals back in Sea-Ways, except for the great sea elephants that sometimes swim in the harbour, and they would flatten a tree if they ever tried going up it. Startled, the corvil hops away, with an indignant caa-caa cry.

I clutch the gun and wonder if I can remember my lessons on the school firing range. I also wonder if this is one of the weapons Mama and Papi make at Glissom's, back home a” the People's Number Forty-two Gun Factory. I never really thought about people using them. Shooting them.

Reef unsheathes a knife a” the first one I've ever seen for real. In the communal kitchen at home the meal packets all have seals you can tear open by hand once they're heated, and it's all food you can just fork up. Cold metal cuts a parachute strap. The pilot lurches lower. Reef sets the blade to the next strap. The pilot's head lolls to and fro with the motion. When he eventually falls he's a dead weight. I don't so much catch him as cus.h.i.+on him. His face knocks against my face. Skin against skin. My mind flashes. A vision dazzles me, brighter than snow.

I see this Crux pilot, absolutely see him, his grey eyes open, his mouth open, his hands reaching out to fend off death a” to fend me off. What's the place we're in? Some kind of ma.s.sive, stone building. A G.o.d-house? A fire is burning but that's not what kills him. In the vision I am the one who rips the life out of his eyes. I am his death.

Reef leaps down to my side and hauls the pilot off me.

*Are you OK?'

OK? How can I be OK? Shot at, crash-landed, wolf-warmed, traption-hunted, rift-hung and hallucinating a” what's OK about that? I want to be home with my mama, curled up eating cake and watching streams without wolves or weird visions. I want to be normal, normal, normal.

Nothing normal in the Mora.s.s.

*Rain?'

*I'm fine. He was heavy, that's all.'

Reef yanks the pilot's head back so we can see his face clearly. I don't need to look long. My vision was enough. I know every feature. Now I can't believe there's a real, live Crux, sprawled at my feet of all places! Someone who believes in a G.o.d and wors.h.i.+ps the sun. Aura's always telling us what backward people they are. How they're stunted intellectually. Hardly fit to be called the same species.

I didn't think he'd look so . . . normal. Almost like a person.

He's young, like Reef, maybe a few years older, tops. Perhaps still young enough to have sight at night. The Crux are the same as us in one way a” they lose their night-vision in young adulthood too. His hair is close-shaved with a white diagonal cross dyed on to the stubble. His face is angular, with a sharp nose and high cheekbones. His neck is thick, or is that just his silky white scarf bulking it out? The rest of his clothes are good quality as far as I can tell a” a slim-fitting tunic and trousers with white braces looped over his shoulders and heavy, metal-reinforced boots. Nothing he's wearing is made of bioweave.

He's deathly pale from the cold. His eyes open when Reef shakes him hard. Yes, they're concrete-grey, just like the ones I hallucinated.

*Who are you?' Reef demands. *What are you doing in the Mora.s.s?'

No answer.

Then, before Reef can speak again, the Crux explodes into life with such a stunning burst of energy I can't tell where to point the gun. There's a crack of bone on bone from a head b.u.t.t, the thump of a fist in Reef's gut, the crunch of another fist on Reef's jaw. Reef staggers back. Red blood sprays the snow. The Crux has his fists up to fight again. He makes a savage swing with his right arm. Block, grip, twist, shove, throw . . . in five smooth moves Reef has the Crux face down in the snow with both arms trapped. The Crux rages and kicks for long moments until the last of his strength seeps away.

Reef ties his arms and hobbles his legs tight enough to allow only walking, not kicking.

*Not my eyes!' the Crux snarls as Reef unwinds that white scarf to blindfold him. His accent is distorted, rougher than the proper Rodina way of speaking.

Blinding someone is a form of torture. It's what they do to traitors. They seal their eyelids permanently shut so they'll never see light again. For a G.o.d-of-light wors.h.i.+pper this would be a nightmare torment.

*You deserve far worse than blinding and you'll get it.'

Next, Reef takes the gun from me. I'm surprised he doesn't say anything about how useless I was with it. He searches the pilot and finds nothing but a silver G.o.d-book, which he tosses into the snow. I nudge it with my boot.

*I don't understand. It doesn't switch on, and there's no keypad to connect to it. What's it made of?'

*Paper. There are sheets of it, called pages.'

Reef's right. The book has leaves inside that darken with damp as they touch snow. I vaguely remember this sort of thing from early days in infant school, before Aura was fully operational. I bend down for a closer look. The brainless G.o.d-follower has written his name on the first open page.

*It says Property of Steen Verdessica. Praise the Light Bringer!'

Underneath there's a picture that doesn't even move, of saynts praying beneath an image of the Crux G.o.d, with hair like white sunbeams and eyes that burn. It reminds me of . . . of nothing, because that's all Old Nation lies. Idiot Crux a” wors.h.i.+pping light. In Rodina we just say lights and let technology do the rest.

*Leave that alone if you can't respect it,' Steen Verdessica snaps.

*What are you doing in the Mora.s.s?' Reef asks.

Steen scowls. *Looking for G.o.d.'

Reef is all cold scorn. *In the forest?'

*There were G.o.d-houses here once.'

*But no G.o.d to live in them! Everybody knows science is the only way to achieve civilisation.'

Steen dares to laugh. *Oh yes, just as cannibalism is one way to get a high-protein diet. The whole of Rodina has crept into spiritual darkness. Be glad we've made the sacrifice of coming to your rescue.'

*With war planes and traptions?' Reef snaps back at him. *That reeks of invasion.'

*Was it you?' Steen turns to me abruptly.

Alarmed, I step backwards and almost fall over.

*Me?'