Part 19 (1/2)

'You don't sound concerned.'

'There's nothing either of us can do for him.' Leki looked at him, and her eyes were the same as before. Her face was the same, though more lined, more tense. 'The slayers' weapons are almost always tipped with poison. Sh.e.l.lspot, or sometimes dusk blight venom. And even if venomless, they never clean their blades.'

'You have wounds,' Bon said, nodding at Leki's hand, her upper arm.

'I'm inoculated.'

'Against such poisons?'

Leki did not answer. She stood, groaning at her aching limbs. 'We should go.'

'I suppose the Ald retain plenty of such knowledge for themselves.'

'We have to track Aeon,' she said. 'Find out where it's going.'

'And if I'd been slashed by a slayer's blade?' Bon asked.

'Then I'd have f.u.c.king saved you! What, you think because I'm Spike-trained I'm without heart?'

'I don't know, Leki.'

'If you don't know, then you've not felt a thing between us all these days.'

Bon looked away, confused. He started rooting through Venden's belongings, spa.r.s.e though they were.

'Bon?'

'Can I trust any of that?' he asked. He did not look at her. He wanted to judge her through her voice, not the face he was growing so familiar with.

'I cannot lie with my emotions.'

'They don't train you in that, then?'

'They try,' she said. 'And it does work sometimes. But mostly with devouts.'

Bon turned on her, angry, confused. He hated the idea of his affections being toyed with, and he felt open to her, as open as if a slayer had split him neck to groin. He might be an object upon which she practised her intense Spike training. Or she might be telling the truth.

'You expect me to believe you're not a Fade devout?'

Leki shrugged. 'Pile of nark s.h.i.+t.'

Bon could not hold back his smile.

'We should talk as we walk,' Leki said. She was looking around the clearing like a trapped bird now, alert and anxious.

'I'm not sure I ...' Bon said. He closed his eyes, but his son was still gone.

'He's dead, Bon,' Leki said. 'As dead as you've believed him to be these past years.'

'But he's done something.' Bon opened his eyes again. The clearing looked so empty, spa.r.s.e, as if something vital had been removed from it that might never be replaced.

'Yes, he has.'

'Why are you here?' Bon asked. 'What are you looking for? Who sent you? If you believe that was Aeon, how come you still work for the Ald? And I didn't think the Spike recruited floaters.'

Leki ignored his use of the derogatory word for amphys, and it hung between them like a sour smell. It tasted bad in his mouth.

'Sorry,' he said.

'I'll tell you, Bon. But can we agree on something first a we have to follow that thing?'

'Follow Aeon,' Bon said, and it felt ridiculous to suggest anything else. Of course they had to follow the risen G.o.d. It was what he had spent his life believing in, researching, mourning. And Venden had given his life for Aeon to walk again. 'Yes, of course.'

'Then come on,' she said. 'Everything else can wait until we're moving. Come on!'

Leki moved off, and Bon followed. He walked backwards for a moment, looking at the last place Venden might have called home. He hoped his son had found happiness here, of a sort, but he would never know.

He turned his back on the cliff and followed Leki. They pa.s.sed the dead tree and the wound in the ground from where Aeon had torn itself to leave, standing to an impossible height, running with impossible limbs and disappearing as though it had never been here at all. They pa.s.sed the smear that was all that was left of the male slayer, and off to the left Bon saw their other pursuer, head parted from her body by Leki's vicious attack.

They might write songs about today, Bon thought as they left that place. Leki was running, and he struggled to keep up, determined to survive to hear those songs.

Bon expected to find Juda's body at any moment. He'd seen the man struck by the slayer's arrow, fall, then rise again and flee shouting, screaming, as the arrow's poison seeped into his system and started attacking his vital organs. Leki's dismissal of him had felt harsh, but his death was a.s.sured, and so there was no reason for her to consider him further.

Perhaps she had seen and known many dead people.

But they did not discover his body. Once, Leki paused and pointed out a splash of blood on a plant's leaf, careful not to touch it herself. But she followed the more obvious trail made by Aeon, rather than tracking the still-wet traces of doomed Juda. Poisoned, even carrion creatures would not touch him. He would rot into the land.

Leki did not keep her promise that they could talk while they were moving. They ran too quickly to talk, and whenever Bon urged her to slow down she either shook her head, or ignored him completely. She was so much more than he had ever suspected, and the idea that he could never trust her again came as a shock.

Initially, Aeon's route was easy to follow. Its limbs had made obvious marks as it ran a impact depressions, prints in soft soil or mud, crushed plants. Occasionally, a footprint was still smeared red with the remains of the slayer. They found a shred of scalp and a bent knife. But the reality of what had happened was still blurred, too close for true a.n.a.lysis and acceptance. The haze of madness he thought he might welcome in was, he realised, of a very personal kind. This was self-preservation.

'What are you going to do if you catch up?' Bon asked, but Leki did not reply.

The footprints grew further apart. Several times they had to backtrack to the previous print and search outward for the next. There seemed to be no design to the directions Aeon had taken, and it appeared to turn on a whim.

The landscape around them was silent, observing, perhaps stunned into immobility by what had pa.s.sed.

Leki became more frustrated and anxious, muttering to herself and only glancing at Bon if he offered an opinion, or asked a question. The sun was close to setting, and though they had followed a series of prints across the Skythian landscape, they were no closer to setting eyes on Aeon.

'I've lost it,' she said at last. They had paused beside a small lake, smudges of pastel sunlight reflecting from the water and s.h.i.+mmering where fish broke the surface and jumped for insects.

'The last track wasn't far back,' Bon said.

'And if it goes that way, it's beyond us to follow,' Leki said, indicating the lake. 'And if it doubled back, or made a turn along the lake's sh.o.r.es, it's too dark to see.' She was struggling with something, an internal conflict that Bon felt he was not part of. 'No,' she said, shaking her head.

'No what?'

'I've wasted too much time already.' She looked at Bon, and it felt like she was seeing him for the first time since her fight with the slayer. 'Bon, I need to do something, and I'd like you to help.'

'That depends,' he said.