Of course, resentment spurred this decision, as well. The presumption of Nhamed, thinking Berun needed protection! He wondered why he had allowed himself to be corralled to the docks, why he did not even now walk away. He always knew the direction in which he traveled, could always place himself on the map of Knoori his creator had placed inside his head. Surely, he could walk from Dareth Hlum to Danoor in three and a half months. One and a half months would have been enough time. Nhamed worried too much.
Nonetheless, Berun waited, curious despite himself. A Black Suit—perhaps the man Omali had commanded him to watch. Certainly, Berun had received no message not to accompany the man, even though his presence slowed travel considerably.
Despite having spent a day and night meditating on Omali’s mystifying words, Berun had not been able to achieve peace. Indeed, his indignation only grew. He chafed at being controlled, but did not know enough to call his mission a fool’s errand. What if Vedas truly did pose a threat? Berun would not revolt against his creator without a compelling reason.
Conceivably, he did not possess the means to revolt. He shifted from foot to foot, suddenly restless. Winning tournaments in Golna had bolstered his confidence, assured him of his strength. The possibility that he had underestimated his own weakness discomforted him.
The sun rose above the horizon, and the crowd began to clear from the boardwalk.
“You are Berun?”
“Yes,” Berun rumbled. He turned from his view of the river and regarded the man.
As he had expected, Vedas Tezul was to most appearances a typical Knosi, broad nosed and black skinned. Unlike many of his countrymen, however, he did not wear his hair in long matted cords or as a halo around his head. Instead, he chose to shave his scalp and face bald. He had not adorned his elder-cloth suit with artistic designs or caused it to form thick armor. Overall, Berun considered the effect somewhat unimpressive, as if the man were only half-finished. Even his posture was unnaturally stiff. He looked like a man who had never become comfortable in his skin.
“Ten days.” Vedas said. “Nbena is only two hundred miles. You can manage twenty miles a day?”
Berun bit back his first reply. “Yes,” he said simply. Was the man an idiot? Of course he could walk twenty miles a day. He could walk miles around Vedas Tezul.
“Do you need to purchase any supplies?” the man asked.
Berun stared.
Father, he thought. This can’t be the man you want me to watch.
CHURLI CASTA JONS
THE 18th AND 19th OF THE MONTH OF SOLDIERS, 12499 MD
THE TOWN OF BASEC, NATION OF CASTA
The old men of Basec thrust their staff-ends into the unfinished wooden stands of their small theater. They did not smile or stand in respect, and the weak sound of their applause drifted away with the dry breeze. Several of the torches had gone out during the fight, but no one had moved to relight them. Money changed hands quietly as the crowd of old men climbed the stands—white-robed figures disappearing over the hillock like undead returning to graves.
Churls lowered her tattooed arms and looked down. The boy’s body lay broken on the blood-spattered dirt at her feet, a vertical dent running the length of his pulped face.
“Peace,” she said, expressionless.
She patted herself down and rubbed her bare skin, checking for unnoticed injury and letting several grams of dirt float free from her leathers. Her eyes felt scratchy in their sockets. She pulled a torch from the perimeter of the fighting floor and searched the ground for thrown coins.
“Coins,” she muttered. “Fucking savages.”
A quick search found seven, barely worth the effort. One beer’s worth, probably. She dropped the torch and retrieved her sword from the ground. Its pitted surface came clean with a little gritty dirt. Lastly, she clipped the coin belts free from her and the boy’s waists, and cut each bag open. Sixty-four bona, as she had been promised. At the expected exchange rate, it would get her two grams of heavily contaminated bonedust. Hardly worth the effort of conversion.
She was tired, disappointed with the fight’s outcome. The boy had been trained well, and killing him had not been her intention. He never stopped attacking, though, even after she broke his left femur and kicked the flail out of his hand. Grunting through a mouthful of blood, he crawled after her. No one in the crowd called it done. Resigned, she had finally flipped him over and crushed his skull.
Fucking savages .
Still, one had to live somehow. In her own estimation, Churls possessed no other skills to speak of. Gambling had gotten her in quite a bit of trouble a year previously, so it would be some time before she could return to Onsa, where the real money was. Shame the men of the badlands had so little money. Shame they had so little talent. They took what entertainment they could from watching their boys fight, watching them die.
There were good reasons so few fighters made it out here, Churls knew. One had to be in dire straits to scrounge in the dirt for coins.
Leaving the body where it lay, she climbed the shallow steps of the theater. An odd feeling, as if she were being watched, made her pause at the top. Her heart pounded against her ribs.
“What do you want?” she asked. She tried to make her body move forward, and failed.
She turned. A pale figure stood next to the boy’s corpse: A white-skinned child, dressed in a white school tunic. Her hair, her slippers, her socks—all white. Her face could not be seen from the top of the theater, but Churls did not need to see it. She would have recognized the girl’s posture anywhere. Few children had ever communicated world-weariness so well, or at such a young age.
Churls had not seen her daughter for at least three months. A decade had passed since she had seen the girl alive.
“Hello, Fyra,” Churls said.
The girl nodded, gaze never leaving the body at her feet.
You killed him, she said.
“Yes.” Churls sighed. “I killed him.”
Fyra disappeared and reappeared next to her mother. Involuntarily, Churls flinched, just as she had done when the girl surprised her by popping out from behind a corner when she was alive. Fyra had lived with her grandmother, and as a result Churls never became accustomed to children. Not even her own daughter. The fact that the girl had become a ghost did not change matters overly much.
Fyra looked up at Churls with eyes far older than a ten-year-old’s. They alone were not a shade of white, but clear and blue like her mother’s.
Did you like it? Fyra asked.
Churls took a step backwards just as Fyra reached for her hand. It was a coincidence, Churls reasoned to herself, yet she stared at the little hand the way one might stare at a live scorpion.
“No,” she answered. “I didn’t like killing him at all.”
Are you sure? Fyra said. You liked killing the last man. You told me you did.
Churls frowned. She knew the man her daughter referred to. The last time Fyra appeared, Churls had just killed an infantryman of the Castan Third in a fair fight. He had nearly bested her, and she had enjoyed every moment.
“That’s true.” Churls smiled awkwardly, like a person trying on an expression for the first time. “But that was a very different situation. You do see the difference, don’t you, Fyra?”
The girl looked down at her hand, and slowly let it fall back to her side.