It was necessarily an inefficient method of communication. There was no set check-in routine. Birds were prey to predators above the canopy and, despite the design of the nesting boxes and their entrances, to the attentions of snakes and rodents.
In the vastness of the bowl of the Ultan, the few thousand Ynissul and their guards looked precisely what they were: an insignificant demoralised group of elves soaked by the rain before dawn and huddling under the inadequate shelter the Tai cells had been able to construct. A few fires had been lit and their smoke rose to join the pall that hung over Ysundeneth.
TaiGethen moved among the refugees, offering comfort where they could and giving out what information they had of the immediate future. But rainforest warriors were unused to the roles of counsellors and shoulders on which to cry. However, they missed nothing they were told, and a trend was emerging that was causing a growing fury.
Katyett watched other birds flying over the Ultan. Not those of the Ynissul and the TaiGethen. These would be bound for Tolt Anoor and Deneth Barine. The former a day’s sail along the coast east of Ysundeneth. The latter a long journey by sea, river or rainforest trail to the eastern coast of Calaius. She sighed. The conflict was spreading, sped on the wings of Tual’s denizens.
Beside her on his stretcher poor Olmaat raised his head a little to see an approaching knot of TaiGethen, led by his Tai, Pakiir. Katyett put a comforting hand on his shoulder.
‘Don’t strain, Olmaat. Rest.’
‘Hothead,’ managed Olmaat, his tortured lungs and throat grinding breath and voice. ‘Lot to learn.’
Pakiir was with the Tai of Makran, Kilmett and Lymul. They were a relatively new cell, in training only for the last fifty years and with a zeal that needed to be tempered. Their expressions confirmed that their zeal was in control of their emotions.
‘We must return to the city. We must clear it. Crimes have been committed that strike to the core of our faith.’
Pakiir’s voice echoed about the Ultan. His face was twisted with the anger surging through him. Katyett paused for a deliberately long period, refusing to add fuel to their fires. She chose to speak formally, knowing they had no choice but to respond in kind.
‘First, we must lower our voices such that those we seek to comfort are not further scared by the din of our desire for conflict,’ she said quietly. ‘Second, we must all be in possession of the entirety of information that pertains to this debate. And third, we must retract our demands of the Arch of the TaiGethen and seek instead to recommend and persuade.’
‘We cannot just stand here and let-’ began Makran.
Katyett silenced her with a glare to wither stone.
‘We are TaiGethen,’ hissed Katyett. ‘Appointed by Yniss and created by Takaar to protect the sanctity of our lands and the harmony against all of those who would destroy it. We do not lash out in hate and revenge. We are here to protect elves of every thread. This day, we protect the Ynissul. Tomorrow it may be Tuali or Beethan or Cefan. We do things as Takaar described. Pakiir. Speak.’
‘You led an attack against elves yesterday in the piazza. How is that not lashing out in hate?’
‘We all saw the perpetrators of the crimes. Yniss was our witness. We were not lashing out. We removed heretics. What we saw was deliberate desecration and destruction of the harmony of elves. We cannot allow the guilty to escape just punishment.’
‘It didn’t feel that way to me; it felt like revenge,’ said Pakiir.
‘There is joy in performing Yniss’s work,’ said Katyett. ‘Makran. Speak.’
The young TaiGethen iad nodded. She drew breath. Katyett laid a hand on her arm.
‘We are all brothers and sisters here, Makran. We all feel the passions of other elves but we must learn to direct them. Tell me what you have heard. What stoked your anger so much to force you into an outburst unbecoming of the paint you wear on the hunt.’
Makran’s eyes were hollow with hate.
‘We were too late for some,’ she said. ‘Not just the ones who have died. The things we have heard. Can you not see it in the faces of the iads?’
‘What’s happened, Makran?’
Katyett could feel her heart beginning to beat hard and more atrocities of the past surface in her memory.
‘They knew what we would do. They knew we would go to the temple or deal with major conflict. And all the time they were kicking down the doors of the Ynissul. They blame us because our thread is still pure. No interbreeding. They don’t care that our fertility is on a different scale to theirs. So they have raped any iad they found, fertile or not. Not to enhance the harmony, to destroy lives. To remove choice. To encourage hate.
‘Well they have succeeded.’
Makran was shaking. Katyett felt empty, scoured. She looked across to the refugee Ynissul and every iad eye seemed to be on her, imploring her to act. Their ulas standing mute beside them, most with bruised and battered faces. Forced to watch, no doubt. Forced to survive to carry the message of their helplessness.
She could see the shock behind their eyes and the grief in the way they held their bodies. She had assumed it to be just the fact of being chased from their homes. How stupid that seemed now. Katyett cleared her throat.
‘I understand your anger, Makran-’
‘Then we must act. Now. We can identify the guilty.’
Katyett nodded. She breathed deeply.
‘Believe me, I am sorely tempted. But we have more pressing concerns. Makran. Silence. I am speaking. The day of judgement for any rapist will come. That is my promise to you. None will escape. But we have to see these people, the innocent, to safety.
‘Next, we will gather the TaiGethen from the forest. We will gather the Silent too. Only then we will return to cleanse the city of the filth it harbours.’
Makran made to renew her protest but Olmaat silenced her this time, his voice pained and his lungs wheezing.
‘Think, Makran,’ he said. ‘Preserve what we have now. Stand in judgement later. These people need us here, not stalking the streets of Ysundeneth like vigilantes.’
Olmaat paused to cough violently. His whole body convulsed and an agony he could not hide crossed his face and settled in his eyes. He composed himself, wiping his mouth with the back of a burned, salve-covered hand, before continuing.
‘We face a conflict rendered all the more dangerous because we don’t know who the enemy really is. It seems to me there are several factions pulling us apart. But these criminals have no escape. If they run to the rainforest, they become our prey. So they will stay in the city, a prison they have built for themselves. And we will pick them off at will. When the time is right.’
Makran nodded. So did Pakiir.
‘I hear you, Olmaat,’ he said. ‘Forgive me.’
‘There is nothing to forgive, my brother. We all feel the same. But we must ensure we act as one or we are lost.’
Katyett raised her head at a brief commotion at the head of the Ultan.
‘What now?’ she said before feeling a wash of pure relief. ‘Yniss has not quite deserted us yet.’
Priest Serrin of the Silent had entered the Ultan. The Gardaryn had been comprehensively ransacked. The treasury vaults had been broken open. Every shop had been looted. Farms ransacked and stripped. Food was stockpiled all over the city and was giving rise to a fierce black market already spilling over into violence.
Any pretence at thread harmony had disappeared like sea mist on a hot day. Individual threads gathered as the unity against the Ynissul broke apart. The Tualis turned their attention on the Beethans for reasons Pelyn could not fathom barring their relative long life. She presided over a city of thread ghettos. Barricades were going up all over the place. Territory was marked. The administrative vacuum was being filled by mob rule. It had been simply stunning how quickly the elves had reverted to type. Without Takaar’s law, there seemed nothing to bind them any longer. Priests of most threads had reappeared now but only to stand with their own.