I curse softly. That's how the aristocracy work, alright. I know Vask is being straight with me and I appreciate his trust, but my boy is out there somewhere.
'I need to find him,' I say. Desperation is edging into my tone. 'Is there anything you can do? You're a Warmaster.'
'I can only petition a Plutarch to provide the information. Someone like your master. With all the bureaucracy involved, it'd be quicker if you did it yourself. I assume you can?'
'Yes,' I say bitterly. 'Yes, he'll see me.'
'I wish I could help, Orna. I hold the Cadre in highest regard. You have no idea what you do for the men. They fight twice as hard when you're fighting with them.'
I manage a smile at that.
'He could be anywhere along the Borderlands,' Vask says. He's seen that I'm still thinking about alternatives. 'We've had troops swapping in and out of here all season. I'm telling you, you won't find him by looking. Go back to your master.'
He's right, and I know it. Abyss, it's too cruel. To get here and then to leave empty-handed, when every turn wasted is the one that might get him killed.
Sharp claws of panic scramble my guts. I feel so helpless it makes me sick. Isn't there any way I can stop this? Isn't there anything I can do now? If Operation Deadfall goes ahead, and the rumours about Korok are true, my son will be sent into the jaws of a massacre. Never mind the thousands of others who will suffer; I only care about one of them.
If the rumours about Korok are true. If there's a traitor. Those are questions I need answers to, and fast.
Suddenly, I'm against the clock. And though it seems absurd to be heading away from the frontline instead of searching for Jai, I know that Vask is talking sense. The quickest way I can get to Jai is to go home and see Ledo. Only he can help me.
'The men are talking about a traitor,' I say, a tinge of desperation in my voice. 'That we were betrayed at Korok. Aren't you worried about Operation Deadfall being compromised?'
'There are always traitors, Orna,' he replies. 'And there are always rumours. Maybe we were betrayed, maybe we were just outsmarted. But that's for the aristos to deal with. Until I hear otherwise, Operation Deadfall goes ahead.'
He makes for the door, reaches for it, stops. Then he turns back, a faintly puzzled look on his face.
'There was a Khaadu, came asking for your son only a few turns back.'
'Nereith?'
'That's him. I sent him on his way. Khaadu might be allies, but I don't trust them that far.'
Wise of him, I suppose, since Nereith actually works for Silverfish. 'Is he still here?'
'Could well be. Ask around. He's hard to miss.'
And with that he leaves, returning to the waiting gaggle of attendants, and I'm left alone with my hopes turning to ashes in my heart.
11
At first I spend much of my time in bed, but as my strength returns I'm up and about more and more. During the days we're confined to the carriages. Then the SunChildren sleep or talk or play music. They practise whittling, weaving, fletching and archery; they hold mock-battles, cheered on by their peers. They don't seem to fear the light as long as the hide flaps are secured shut over the windows, so I don't either.
The occupants of the carriage are very curious about me and about the world below, and I spend a great deal of time answering questions back and forth through Feyn, who acts as our translator. It's clear that Feyn is some sort of hero to them now. Not only can he speak the language of the underworld with apparent fluency, but he has gone into the depths and come back alive. He's allowed to speak of what he saw and learned but not what he did: that would be boastful. A person should only be judged on their interactions with the judge, not on past glories or disgraces. Strange custom, but it's kind of sensible in its way, and if it's the strangest thing I encounter during my time on the surface I'll be very surprised. So I fill in the story, with Feyn translating.
I learn their names and forget them instantly. My attempts at copying their language meet with politely mystified smiles. I can't nail the click that they make to punctuate their words, and they can't understand me without it. Languages have never been my strong point. Even when enslaved to the Gurta, surrounded by their language every moment of every turn, I was a slow learner and I suffered for it.
When night falls, the SunChildren are set free. The men slip out of their soft robes and into their sunsuits, scatter from the carriages and head to the stables in the last carriage of the chain. From there they emerge on whip-lean, chitin-armoured steeds called scha'rak. These animals are long-limbed and apparently eyeless, but they run at frightening speeds and have no difficulty in navigation. The men disperse ahead of the caravan, searching for good spots to stop. The women emerge and stretch their legs while the children play alongside the enormous, grinding rollers that support their homes. The gethra move no faster than walking pace, but I note that nobody strays too far from the caravan, and several men on scha'rak stay behind as outriders, watching for danger.
I'm something of a celebrity among the coterie, and upon my emergence Feyn and I are surrounded by women and children. They're remarkably restrained: they don't mob or pester, but simply walk beside us, talking between themselves and occasionally asking questions through Feyn. The children are having a harder time controlling their excitement. I suspect that only obedience to their elders is stopping them from poking me to see if I'm real.
I find it rather endearing that they're so oblique in displaying their interest. I ask Feyn whether they're doing it so as not to make me feel uncomfortable, but he looks puzzled and tells me that's how the SunChildren are.
I don't know exactly what it is I feel as I stroll beneath the naked sky. It's like trying to chase a memory I'm not certain I dreamed or lived. It's the kind of deep-seated, unquestioning sense of belonging that I associate with home and family, back in the dim and distant past when I was very young. I'm afraid of the sky, a threatening intimation of latent agoraphobia, but my fear can't get a grip on me. I'm beginning to understand what Feyn meant about people who've survived the Shadow Death being different. When you're on your second life, you really don't sweat the small stuff.
I can't help drinking in the land. I'm stunned by its scale. Much of it is blasted and bare, scoured by the murderous gaze of the suns, but life is not so easily beaten. It hangs on, defiant.
Gargantuan mycora tower over the bleak plains, cracking through solid stone. Feyn tells me how tiny animals live in their stems and caps, hunted by larger predators that come from elsewhere, which are in turn hunted by the SunChildren.
But in those places where the suns can't reach, the canyons and ravines and basins, that's where the action is. We pass oases that swell outward from the tiniest underground springs. Geysers and boiling swamps cloak distant lowlands in a sheltering mist, ghostly in the starlight. Sometimes whole hills are colonised by mycora, providing a roof beneath which more fragile flora can grow.
Feyn gives me a spyglass and shows me where the animals of the upper world scuttle and wing. The night is alive with movement. I see strange bats trailing luminous tendrils from their jaws, which lure in the insects they eat. I spot quick, barrel-bodied things that slither from holes dug in the earth. I see a cluster of photovores, who live off nothing but the day's light, their bodies transparent and crystalline. They softly glow in the darkness as they clamber along the rock faces: lumbering, clawed things, safe from predators inside their gem-like carapaces.
On the cliff-tops, lashers trail sticky tendrils from the mouths of their protective pots, giant anemones against the starry skyline. The wind drags their deadly limbs out like streamers, waiting for some airborne meal to blunder into them. Distant two-legged predators with long, sinuous necks lope menacingly over the high ground, lowing at the rising moon. They have blunt, skull-like faces, and they follow the caravan at a distance. These are ki'kay, according to Feyn. Opportunist killers, apt to sneak into unguarded camps and run off with a child. The hunters take them out if they get too near, but their meat is foul.