Feyn shows me the way that rocks can be arranged to indicate a waterhole nearby, or how certain marks point to a stash of food and weapons and sunsuits. He tells me how to spot the trail of a caravan, even long after the ferocious dawn winds have scattered the traces. He teaches me how different coteries have different signs, often marking a well-used trail or spots they frequently return to, so that other SunChildren can find them. In a nomadic culture where people rarely gather, it's necessary for them to be able to locate each other should the need arise.
'This is how this coterie found us,' Feyn says, indicating a thorny vine hiding amongst a group of similarly mean-looking and robust plants.
'This vine?'
'We call it-' he begins, then stops. 'You will not remember. But you should remember what it looks like. This vine is life to us.'
I turn it over carefully in my hands. Thick, fleshy and sharp.
'Cut several coils of that vine and leave it in the sun for a day. Then collect it at night and burn it. The smoke it will make, it smells very bad.'
I look up at him. 'I don't understand.'
'If it is burned in the right place, it will carry very far. For someone who can read the wind, it is easy to find. It means you need help. They will come. The scha'rak smell even more further. They can trace you.'
'They can track you,' I correct him. It's become a habit now, even though it seems pointless, knowing how little time we have left together. I wish I could stay with him, just to talk, just to make his task of mastering Eskaran easier.
No, that's not the reason. I just wish I could stay with him. Saving his life committed me somehow, and his saving mine just drove the hooks deeper.
I can't decipher my feelings concerning this boy. I've turned it over and over in my mind, but I can't find an answer that satisfies me. I protected him in prison, I risked myself to go back for him when I could have escaped far more easily alone. Now we're sharing a bed, and even though there's no more touching since that first day I awoke to find him there, the proximity unsettles me. I feel tugged towards him; it's an effort of will to keep a gap between us under the covers. Even the thought of it inspires a poisonous feeling of guilt, of wrongness. Every day I find myself wondering why I don't just ask to move beds, to sleep with the old woman or the children. And yet I never do.
What is he to me? A surrogate for Jai, for a mother who misses her son? A replacement for Rynn, for a wife who's lost her husband? Both? Was it just that I needed to save somebody, to make up for those I couldn't in the past?
Or is it simply that he represents a way of life to me, this SunChild world, a place utterly apart from obligation? A place away from the war, away from the conflict that killed the man I love, away from roofs and ceilings and walls. It's a harsh world, but it's a life with more freedom than I've ever had. Is it because he's a new start?
I tell myself he's too young, far too young, but under this canopy of stars it doesn't seem to matter.
I don't know what I feel. But I know I'm too tangled to make smart choices where my heart is concerned, and he knows it too. Rynn's death is too fresh, and my mind is on my son. I wonder, if not for that, would things be different? Is he holding back because he knows I need time to make sense of this? He's so difficult to read.
One thing's for sure. The goodbyes are going to be tough. Memory is an awful thing. A journey can seem like a lifetime while you're on it. One perfect turn can stretch like a season. But when it's over, and you look back, it seems like the whole thing happened in the beat of a heart. It's gone and can't be brought back.
The caravan waits at the crest of the rise against a purple-blue sky. The aurorae of impending dawn are just beginning to stroke the horizon. The wind is rising, blowing my hair about my face. At my back is a cave: dry, unremarkable, crooked. It will take me home.
Feyn stands with me. The others have already retreated inside the carriages, but he doesn't seem in a hurry. He assures me that he knows the dawn, and it won't catch him out.
I've said my farewells to the rest of the coterie. They were very kind. Several of them pointed to the mark on the inside of my wrist and made encouraging gestures. I didn't need Feyn to tell me that I was always welcome among them. Their simple generosity makes me feel vaguely ashamed of my cynical Veyan attitude towards friendship. In the city it's not given freely, it's subject to conditions and it can shatter with a single blow.
They've loaded me up with a pack full of food and given me shortblades to replace the ones I lost, back in another life. They're beautifully crafted, and undoubtedly valuable to a people who probably have to trade for all the metal they obtain.
'I wish you would come with me,' I say, though the unselfish half of me hopes he will refuse.
'I wish you would stay,' he replies.
'I have a son.'
'I know.'
That hangs in the air between us for a time.
'Do you think he will come with you, if you find him? Do you think he will turn his back on war?'
'Yes,' I say, then: 'Maybe. His father is dead now. You can't reason with a memory. Maybe he'll decide to stick it out, in Rynn's honour. I don't know. I just have to talk with him.'
'And will your master let him do it?'
'I persuaded him before. I can do it again,' I say, though I'm not one-tenth as sure of that as I sound. 'Ledo's sisters are my friends. They'll help me. And I have a letter from the Dean of Engineers at Bry Athka University. Ledo will see the sense in it.' At least, that's what I hope. Ledo's been known to be as whimsical as his siblings when the mood takes him. You can't be sure of anything where the aristocracy are concerned.
He studies me for a long time, his black eyes roaming my face. 'Who are you doing this for?' he asks.
'What does that mean? I'm doing it for him, of course.'
He stares at me for a long while before his gaze falls away.
'I came back for you, too, Feyn,' I say. 'I could have got out of Farakza on my own.' I realise belatedly how harsh that sounds. I'm annoyed at him for implying that finding my son is more about me than Jai. But I don't want our parting to be this way, so I soften the edge a little. 'It's how I am,' I say quietly. 'I don't think like you. I don't have your philosophies. I can't just cut loose.'
He nods reluctantly, then brushes his oily black hair away from his eyes. The wind is beginning to moan on the cliff-tops, and the air is full of the hiss of rustling dust.
'The dawn is coming,' he says. 'I have to go.'
I can feel something shrinking and dying inside me, and it's so terrible I can't bear it.
'I wish you luck,' he says, with an uncertain tone to his voice. He's still not sure what luck is. I laugh and put my arms around him.
'You're learning,' I tell him quietly, and then he holds me back and we become very still for a little while. I feel the pulse at his neck against my own. I'm never going to see him again.
'I have to go,' he says once more. The sky is lightening fast. He glances at it, then back at me, and though there's a thousand things to say we don't say any of them because they wouldn't be enough.
'We will pass this way again, at the season's end,' he says. 'After that, I cannot say.' Then he turns and runs towards the carriages, and I start walking into the cave, tears in my eyes.
Down, down, away from the killing dawn. The world I know opens its arms to me, and darkness clasps me to its chest.
12
We're moving.
It's the first thing I notice, even before I open my eyes to see the soft bed I'm lying in. The blankets are of a downy material I don't recognise. A curtain of furred hide surrounds the square bed, sealing me into my own small world. Music is coming from beyond, wind instruments cooing over the sporadic pluck of strings.