Part 13 (1/2)

s.h.i.+lly's expression was vexed. *See if you can find out what's going on,' she said. *Marmion won't talk to me.'

Sal strode up to the Warden and confronted him. *What can we do to help?'

*Nothing,' Marmion replied. *You're not trained for this. Just keep your heads down and let us do our job.'

Sal spoke softly so his threat wouldn't be overheard, but loud enough that it couldn't be ignored. *You'll make us part of this or I'll yell so hard every Stone Mage and yadachi for five hundred kilometres will come running.'

Marmion looked at him with cold and calculating eyes. *We're building hides,' he grated. *Camouflage shelters. Between us we can cover two kilometres of the edge. Kail thinks that will be enough. You and s.h.i.+lly can take the northern end, if it'll make you feel better.'

*It will. If we see the Homunculus, what do we do?'

*You'll let us know and we'll handle it. The same if you see your father first. Understood?'

It sounded a flimsy plan to Sal, but he didn't want to push any harder. He nodded. *If you show us how to erect the hides, we can help with that.'

*I'd rather you stay here for now, to watch the buses. Tom says s.h.i.+lly saw something. I don't want to take any chances on losing our only way home. Will you do that?'

Sal nodded again. That made sense, despite his conviction that the thing s.h.i.+lly had seen was long gone.

*Good. Then let me get on with my work.' Marmion turned away and went back to yelling orders. Sky Wardens scurried around him, building piles of yellow tarpaulins and frames. Sal watched them for a moment, feeling impotent, then went back to sit with the buggy.

The Wardens worked into the night. s.h.i.+lly was glad that she hadn't been called on to help. Her leg wouldn't have lasted long under the burdens Marmion's lackeys hurried off with. No one was entirely sure how far ahead of the Homunculus they were, but the lights were dimmed to prevent giving away their location. It wasn't possible to dim them entirely - they needed the light to work by - but Kail hoped the creature would a.s.sume any faint glow belonged to Laure, if it caught sight of them.

s.h.i.+lly marvelled at the complete ignorance of the Wardens as they laid their strange trap. The thing inside the Homunculus could have been blind for all they knew. It might have smelled or heard them already, from kilometres away, and altered course to miss them completely. But she could appreciate the position they were in. They had been charged to catch a thing they knew nothing about - not even its shape - before it killed anyone else, and they would do that to the best of their abilities. What would happen if it evaded them again she didn't know. Would Marmion be as desperate as Shorn Behenna had been, years ago? Would he cross the Divide and enter the Interior just to follow orders?

She couldn't tell. Lodo's nephew kept himself carefully at a distance from her and Sal, and she didn't push anything. It wasn't the dismissal of her that bothered her most. It was the dismissal of Lodo, the man who had been Marmion's mother's brother. Wasn't Marmion interested at all in his uncle's life since he had been exiled from the Haunted City? In his death? In the years in between? She couldn't imagine not wanting to know about the fate of a family member. She didn't know how Sal and Highson had stayed sane the last five years, knowing each other was out there, somewhere, and doing nothing about it.

The only time Marmion spoke to her was when he came to a.s.sign them their hide. After a brief explanation of how the pieces went together, he told them that they had been allocated a position almost a kilometre away.

*So, if you carry the canvas and struts to that location and -'

*We'll take the buggy,' Sal interrupted him, *and Tom.'

Marmion was obviously tempted to force the issue, but let it go. *We have a cover for the buggy. You'll need to take that, too. I want you out of sight before dawn. If you see or hear anything suspicious before then, use this.' He handed Tom a small gla.s.s sphere. *You'll find flares bundled up in the canvas as well. Either way, we'll come running.'

They nodded their understanding. Tom gave s.h.i.+lly the sphere for safekeeping and helped Sal load the collapsed hide into the back of the buggy. Kail looked up from his examination of a chart as the engine caught, and saluted farewell. With a slight spin of their wheels, they headed off into the night, heading northwards parallel to the Divide.

*I don't suppose you've dreamed what's going to happen,' she said to Tom.

The young Engineer shook his head. *Something about this place looks familiar, but I don't know why. I think I'm seeing it from the wrong angle.'

*From Laure, perhaps?' asked Sal.

*No. From above. I think I was flying in the dream.'

*I'm usually flying in my dreams,' said s.h.i.+lly. *Except when I'm falling. And just lately it's been nothing but sand, sand, sand.'

*I still dream of drowning,' said Sal.

*Sometimes,' said Tom with a shrug, *a dream is just a dream.'

By the dimmed light, the route was difficult to make out. Tom drove slowly, skirting wide cracks that led to their left into the depths of the giant canyon. They pa.s.sed four hides in various stages of a.s.sembly. More than one warden was sleeping while the others worked on the construction of the hides, intending to swap roles later.

Tom kept a close eye on the odometer. When they reached the required distance, they chose a hollow in which- to park the buggy. s.h.i.+lly tied the canvas over the Buggy while Sal and Tom worked on the hide's framework.

The night was cold and quiet. With the black emptiness of the Divide at her back, seeming to watch her, and the memory of the mysterious black crescent in the sky still strong in her mind, she worked as quickly as her stiff leg would allow.

With barely an hour left before dawn, their hide was ready. Tom took both headlights off the buggy and turned them down to mere glimmers. The three of them a.s.sumed crouched positions behind the low, dirt-coloured s.h.i.+eld and settled back to wait. They were right on the lip of the escarpment, tucked behind the first of several rough steps leading down to a very long fall. The chances of taking a tumble were small, but s.h.i.+lly was acutely aware of the drop so close at hand. Whether she would feel better or worse at dawn, with the awesome expanse of the Divide revealed, she didn't know.

*So how does this work?' she asked, producing the gla.s.s sphere from her pocket. It was as wide as her palm and perfectly clear. She could see through it without distortion.

*You hold it like this,' said Tom, taking it from her and gripping it tightly between both hands, one on top of the other, *and you twist.' He mimed the motion. *All the b.a.l.l.s will glow in response. Each of us has a unique colour. Marmion and the others will know if we're the ones who sound the alarm.'

*a.s.suming the Change is working when we try it,' said Sal.

*That's what these are for.' Tom gave the globe back to s.h.i.+lly, and picked up one of the two flares Marmion had a.s.signed them. *These couldn't be easier. You just break the seal on one end and point it at the sky. You might want to cover your eyes while you do it.'

s.h.i.+lly was in no hurry to test the theory. *I don't suppose Marmion told you who has been a.s.signed what colours for the spheres.'

Tom and Sal shook their heads.

*Of course not.' She sighed and leaned against the dirt and rock. *He wouldn't want us to know who else got lucky. That would make too much sense.'

*I could go and ask,' said Tom, already moving to stand up.

Sal grabbed the back of his robe before he could take a step. *Don't worry about it. I'm sure we'll hear if something happens.'

s.h.i.+lly thought of the scream Larson Maiz had let out when the Homunculus had frightened him to death, and hoped the rest of the night would go undisturbed.

Dawn came, daubing the world with yellow and orange hues. The Divide gaped behind the hides, achingly ancient, scarred by the relentless pa.s.sage of time and weather. There was no sense to be found in its geography. Deep creases pockmarked its steep sides. Strange, wandering gullies traced almost-legible lines across its edge-most floor, where water running down the cliff faces during monsoon rains pooled and spread. Its heart was cracked and parched. Relentless winds carried red sand in waves over features that could have been ruins, or just slabs of tilted, baked clay, broken by unknown forces in the distant past. Dunes taller than a house made their way down the centre of the great rift valley, their stately progress measured in decades.

Heat haze made details dance crazily in the distance. Sal saw movement everywhere he looked. He turned his back on the view, interested in neither illusions nor the Wall and towers of Laure. He failed to make the connection between the dots circling those towers and the thing s.h.i.+lly had seen in the night. He had more important things to consider.

If Kail was right, his real father was approaching. That possibility - and his conversation with Banner about the Divide and the man he had thought was his father - brought back numerous memories. He knew of Highson's existence and the truth about his parentage just a few weeks before meeting the stranger who claimed him as a son. Their first encounters had been terse and full of unspoken emotion. Sal had never been able to see Highson as more than the focus of his loss and grief, of his anger and frustration, until on a dark night in the Haunted City, when every hope seemed lost, a subtle transformation took place, and Highson Sparre suddenly became a real person.

*You'll never win, Sal,' he had said that night. *You can hate me as much as you like, but you'll never defeat me. Do you really think you could, with all the might of the Conclave and the Alcaide and the Strand itself behind me?' The words were burned into Sal's mind, so tightly bound up in anger and grief that he could never possibly forget them. *You can try to escape again if you want to, and I have no doubt you'll find another way, in time, with similar consequences. But you'll never truly succeed. I will always haunt you, as long as you live. As you burn out in a blaze of something that might have been glory but ends up stifled and turned back on itself in frustration, you'll remember this moment, and you'll wish you'd listened.'

Sal's real father had stared down at him crouched on a cobbled street, his gut aching and his mouth burning with bile.

*Hear me out, or die fighting me. For that is surely what will happen. The decision is yours.'

*All right,' Sal had said, knowing that Highson was the haunted one, not Sal. *Let's finish this. Tell me what you want me to hear and get out of my way.'

Something like relief appeared in his real father's face, mixed with fear. The resemblance between them was slight, but their voices were identical. So was their stubbornness.

*I didn't kill your mother. I loved her.'