And yet I can't help wondering what he's doing in bed with me. Is it the custom of his people to share beds? Were they short on space? Or is it something else? Something more?
And is that what I want?
I'm appalled at myself for even thinking about it. Liss and Casta would have paroxysms of joy if they could see me now. The boy is my son's age.
I don't let him go, not straight away. I tell myself there's nothing erotic in it. It's just the comfort I need. The feel of another person. If I believe that, I can stay this way a little longer.
But in the end I can't. I can't keep Rynn out of my head. All the times I slept with other men in the service of my Clan, none of them felt as wrong as this. Because Rynn is dead now, and because this boy isn't a fade like the rest were. My husband looms larger in my memory than he ever did in my life. I feel disloyal for even contemplating the absurd possibility of being with Feyn.
I draw away from him, away from his warmth. Voids, the thing I miss most is being held by my husband, the feeling of protection. I miss feeling like a little girl, safe from the world in daddy's arms.
In that moment, it hits me that I'll never be held by him again, and I quietly cry myself back to sleep. It's night when my eyes open, and Feyn isn't there. The motion of the hall is more noticeable now, bumpier. I hear the SunChildren talking and the sound of rapid chopping. I smell food and I realise that I'm ravenous. I've lost a lot of weight during my convalescence.
At the first twitch from the curtain, the children come running over to look at me. I smile at their wary fascination. The old woman bundles them away, scolding, as Feyn comes over with a plate of food. It's a kind of warm mush of sugary pulp with seeds and other, less identifiable things mixed in.
'You should eat,' he says, though I need little prompting.
'With my hands?' I ask, noting the lack of cutlery.
'That is our way,' he replies.
I'm fine with that. I scoop the mush into my mouth. It's way too sweet, but I could stomach just about anything right now. When I'm finished, I ask if he's got any more.
'Too much will make you ill. Be slow,' he says.
The food has woken me up, and I look about, suddenly restless. 'We're still moving,' I say.
'Yes.'
'Where are we?'
Feyn offers his hand. 'Do you think you can stand?'
I push the blankets off. 'I can try.'
He helps me up. I get a dizzy rush, but it passes. I walk carefully across the room, with Feyn at my shoulder steadying me. The men murmur greetings, to which I reply with a nod. We go over to one of the windows. I see that the hide flaps have been pinned back, revealing inverted triangular holes with no glass in their frames.
I look out, and then I understand.
The palette of the night is haunting greens, faint blues, ethereal purples. It's brighter than I would have thought: the stars that pack the sky spread a cold glow across the broken surface of the rock plains. Distant thunderheads mar an otherwise empty horizon, flickering from within. The landscape is desolate and alien: rock formations rear up like monsters breaching a petrified sea. In the distance, mountains slope into rugged peaks, forested with mycora and lichen trees and foliage I've never seen before. A distant flock of flying creatures soar on membranous wings over the canyons that cut the plains.
I have to step back quickly, staggered by a sense of vertigo. That eternal glittering nothingness overhead threatens to overwhelm me. But I remind myself that I have a roof over my head, and I make myself go back, dragged by the wonder of the world beyond the window. And as I stand amazed, the terror begins to recede. My body and brain are starting to understand that I'll come to no harm. Old, old instincts are asserting themselves again. The instincts of my ancestors, who lived and died beneath a ceiling of stars.
I had dismissed the possibility that this moving room was being pulled like a wagon, simply because it was too big. I was wrong. They're being pulled in chains of five or six: wide, low constructions with rounded roofs covered in some kind of reflective black carapace. Charms and totems dangle from overhanging eaves. Each carriage in the chain is built on a stout wooden platform, below which several sets of enormous rollers turn slowly, grinding over the stony ground.
But it's the creatures at the head of each chain that make me catch my breath. I know them immediately. They're called gethra. They were Reitha's particular field of interest, and she never tired of talking about them. Her dream was to study the gethra herds once she had qualified as a naturalist. Suddenly I can see the fascination. I've never in my life beheld any land animal so colossal.
They're like moving pieces of the landscape: almost featureless humps, rising out of the earth. Long, segmented tails drag behind them, armoured in the same dusty, scratched black stuff as their shells and ending in a wide fan that brushes over their trail as they lumber forward. Every other part of them is hidden, but I know that beneath that canopy of armour, massive crablike legs move steadily in sequence, working together to haul their tremendous bulk. The carriages are attached by a complicated series of chains and ropes, some attached to bolts driven into the gethra's shell, some disappearing underneath.
As I stare, I realise I shouldn't have been surprised that the SunChildren can travel during the day. Their whole society has depended on foiling the deadly touch of the suns. They have methods I can only guess at, special techniques for sunproofing material and access to resources unknown to the world below. Creatures like the gethra have adapted to life under the suns and evolved protection from their light. No doubt the SunChildren have copied nature's designs over the millennia. With all that time to learn, and the advantage of superior intelligence, is it any wonder that they have mastered the suns as well as the animals have?
'Where are we going?' I ask Feyn.
'Turnward,' he says.
We're heading towards Jai. Turnward of Farakza is the Borderlands, and beyond that is Eskara.
It's as if he's read my thoughts. 'In several days' time, we'll pass near a cave network that will take you down into the Borderlands. The Pathfinders have agreed to divert the caravan a little way to take you there.'
'And you?' I ask, turning towards him.
'I will stay. I have spoken with the Loremaster of this coterie. I understand now I was foolish. There are reasons why my kind must be…' he struggles '… aloof?' I nod my approval. He's really getting good. He smiles and continues. 'I will study further on Eskaran, because I know more now. Then perhaps I will travel to a far away outpost, where there are Eskarans, and I will learn more. When I am older and more wise, I will speak with others at the gatherings, and seek to be sent to the heart of your lands.'
I feel an uneasy mix of sadness and relief at his words. I know he'll be safe, and that's what counts; but it's an unexpected wrench to realise that I'll be leaving him behind and that I'll never see him again. Perhaps he knew it would be that way. Perhaps that's why he didn't return my kiss.
Stop thinking about it. It can't happen.
I turn over my hand to show him the sigil on the inside of my wrist. 'What's it mean?' I ask.
'It means you are a friend to the SunChildren,' he says. 'It means you belong to a coterie. Only a few outsiders have ever been given this gift.' He looks over at me with those huge black eyes. 'It means you can stay. If you want.'
I stare through the window at the panorama before me. Beautiful, frightening and strange. A world without limits. A new start. Voids, I can't deny that it's tempting. More than tempting. There's a great desolation in me and I'm yearning to sever my ties to its source forever: from my masters, from my life, from all the memories of Rynn.