Part 4 (2/2)

Bon was exhausted. After seven days at sea with poor food, sickness, dirty water and a constant belief that his next breath might be his last, he'd had to swim half a mile to sh.o.r.e through vicious waves, with sea things doing their best to take bites from him. His arms and legs no longer wished to function. His stomach was rumbling from the bread and meat, and he wondered whether Juda had succeeded in poisoning him, intentionally or not.

But the memory of the dreadful murder and mutilation he had seen on the beach drove him on. And after so long fearing the light and courting the dark, the realisation that he desperately wanted to live came as something of a revelation.

Juda led them from the small cave and into a narrow crawls.p.a.ce that seemed to go on for ever. The oil lamp threw vague illumination, but it birthed s.h.i.+fting shadows that deepened creva.s.ses and exposed the sharp ridges of broken rock, and after a few minutes' crawling Bon had slashed his left thumb and right knee. Behind him Leki seemed to move soundlessly, a counterpoint to his gasps and struggles. She had grace. She enchanted and frightened him.

'How far?' he asked, but Juda did not answer, or did not hear.

'Just crawl,' Leki said from behind. 'I think we can trust him.'

'You think?' Bon's voice was m.u.f.fled in the enclosed s.p.a.ce. He wasn't sure where he was, or why, and this journey had become something he had never expected.

Juda had every opportunity to kill them, but so far had done his best to save them. So he says, Bon thought. But that image came again a slayer, the man, his guts and severed head.

The route from the cave was barely even a tunnel. A crack in the ground, narrowing and widening, sloping and falling, and at one point it became almost vertical. Juda climbed without pause or comment, and Bon followed, bracing his back against one side and his feet against the other. They climbed for some time, and the thought of what injuries he would sustain should he fall kept his back straight, his legs tense. Leki climbed below him, silent as ever. Whenever he glanced down he saw only her pale face looking up, and he was grateful for her encouraging smile.

Bon lost track of how long they were climbing and crawling. They paused to rest frequently, and it took five stops before he realised that Juda was lost. Their rescuer would sit back against the cave wall with his eyes closed and his hands reaching, grabbing shadows from the air and piling them either side of him. Bon glanced back at Leki, and she merely raised an eyebrow.

The air changed just as Bon noticed the light. The oil lamp had been burning low, but there was a background illumination that seemed to filter down from above. Dusky light was visible through narrow cracks above them, filtering down through spiky plant growth.

'This is it,' Juda whispered, and his obvious relief was also loaded with stress. 'We're out, we're away. But I have to see. See if the open brings danger.'

'How could the slayers know where we're coming out?' Leki asked, but Juda seemed to wave away her question, slapping it from the air with his ever-moving hands.

'I'll crawl out and see,' Juda said. 'They're not looking for me.'

'Wait. Don't move. Don't cough or fart. Don't ... breathe.' He nipped out the oil lamp between thumb and forefinger and crawled into the open.

Bon watched him go, and then Leki was beside him, warm and close. Though he had only known her for days, there was a familiarity that he found comforting.

'He has Outer blood,' Leki whispered.

'You're sure?' Brought to the continent of Alderia from the countless scattered islands way across the oceans a it was rumoured that some even came from the fabled southern place known at the Heartlands, ten thousand miles distant a Outers were regarded as inferior races, created by the Fade G.o.ds for Alderia's use. As such they were frequently imported into the south of Alderia as cheap labour, and the north as slaves.

'I don't think he's pure Outer. But there's something to him, yes. Have you seen the colour of his eyes?'

'Piercing green.'

'Regerran.'

'I knew a Regerran once,' Bon said. She had been a thin, striking woman who had worked in a tannery close to where he and his wife used to live. He had tried speaking to her several times in the street but, every time, she had turned away, almost panicked by the unaccustomed contact. It had shamed him then, and it shamed him still, because he had not tried harder. She had been killed in an accident soon before his son had vanished. No one had mourned her.

'A feeble race,' Leki said, surprising him. 'They're troubled, and never rest. They suffer nightmares that make them violent, dangerous to themselves and others. That's probably why he's smoking those cigars a there'll be a drug in there, settling and calming. Where I come from in Skeptin Lakes, they're employed to harvest nark eggs from the Chasm Cliffs. They sometimes spend days up on the cliffs, and they tie themselves on when it's time to sleep.'

'He said he'd been awake for some time,' Bon said. He could still smell the scent of the cigar smoke. 'Do you really see him as feeble?' The comment had troubled him. Leki's past was still a mystery, and he could not simply a.s.sume that she was here because she had spoken out against the Ald. For all he knew she was like the priest on the s.h.i.+p a a devout whose banishment was for something else entirely.

'I'm speaking through what I've witnessed of other Regerran,' she said. 'That's all.'

Bon fell silent, thinking about what she had said, and what Juda's heritage might mean. There were still many questions to ask him, but he had no desire to include Juda's race in any discussion. It was irrelevant. Alderia was behind them now, and with it the prejudices and indoctrinations of the Ald's way of life. If being banished had done anything for him, surely it would have granted him such freedoms?

They remained close, but not quite touching, until Juda returned. He scrambled down from the narrow entrance, blocking the fading light and panting as if he had been running. He paused close to them, little more than a shadow, and handed them both dry, rumpled clothing.

'We're ... okay,' he said. 'No sign of slayers nearby. Close to Vandemon, but we'll have to skirt around and head north. We can't enter the town.'

'Into the wilds, then?' Leki asked.

'Yes. The slayers might expect that, but it's not likely they'll follow right away.'

'Why not?' Bon asked.

'Two others they wanted from your s.h.i.+p evaded them.' His meaning was implicit. While the slayers hunted down the others who had escaped, the three of them could flee.

'You've done this before,' Leki said. 'So do you always run with the people you rescue?'

Juda was silent, awkward. His shadows s.h.i.+fted as his hands waved, grasping at the air.

'Juda?' Bon asked.

'We need to go,' Juda said. He turned and started climbing, and Bon reached out, grabbing his foot.

'What happened?'

'Nothing good. Which is why every breath counts.' Juda sighed, and when he spoke again his voice was shaking. 'I knew the time would come. The slayers have marked me also. I made contact with a friend in Vandemon, and she told me the slayers have my name and scent. I'm now as much on their list as you.' He shrugged. 'I'm f.u.c.ked.'

Juda went and they followed. Outside, Bon's first sight of Vandemon was the flames.

Juda was tired, and he could feel his darker, troubled side starting to fill him out, stretching itself through torso and limbs and taking his shape. Aggravating his part-Regerran blood, this darker echo was dangerous. Though dusk had fallen, he could not let himself succ.u.mb to nightmares. They had to escape.

He had slipped into Vandemon only briefly, but in that time he had learned everything he needed to know. Built amongst the ruins of an old Skythian sea port, rough wooden buildings stood between the tumbled walls and rubble piles of homes where no one had lived for six centuries. Even ruined, it was obvious from some of the carved stones and barely visible floor layouts that these old structures had been much grander than those now forming the coastal community of banishees. In the hundred years that Alderia had been s.h.i.+pping its worst criminals to Skythe a from murderers to political exiles a there had been barely any attempts to improve these dwellings. They were built, they fell or became dilapidated, and they were repaired or rebuilt. Patched up and thrown together, they reflected much about the people who lived within them.

The new arrivals who had made it to sh.o.r.e and not been marked for execution by the slayers were already being integrated into Vandemon. There were those who sought to welcome new prisoners, and who did their best to reach them before some of the town's less benevolent characters a the pimps who went for the women, and slave drivers who lured with promises of buried treasures in the wilds to the north. If the prisoners could be warned then they might avoid both.

Juda had gone to visit his friend Bindy at Bindy's Tavern, and from the moment he'd entered he had known that something was wrong. Usually pleased to see him, she had been uneasy and twitchy, glancing more at the door than at him as if waiting for someone else to arrive. And moments into their conversation he had asked the question, and her silence provided his answer. Slayers?

Juda was now known and marked, and his time in Vandemon was over.

He had always known that this moment would come, and for some time he had been awaiting it. After each prison s.h.i.+p arrival and the resulting executions, the slayers would retreat to their holes along the coast where the cliffs were tumbled and worn from erosion and, perhaps, some ancient cataclysm. They made their dens there, and no one ventured close. But Juda had known that he was destined to be hunted by these inhuman killers one day. Seeking the spa.r.s.e dregs of magic still in the land a and attempting to rescue those who might be able to guide him to them, knowingly or not a was inevitably going to make him a marked man in the end. Gathering information, such as the names of banishees and the reasons why certain ones were marked for death, was always dangerous. Bon Ugane's name and crime had come to Juda at a cost.

Sometimes Juda recognised the desperation in his actions, and the unlikeliness of success. But he had nothing else left to live for. And there was always a chance.

He was not sad to leave Vandemon, because Bon Ugane and Leki might be the people he had been seeking for so long. Bon's crime had been studying Skythe and the war's ambiguous history, after all. But he could not yet let them know. He did not wish to frighten them away. His needs and aims, he knew, could be perceived as arcane to some, and mad to most.

'What are all the fires?' Bon asked behind him.

<script>