Kaiku found herself wondering suddenly why Tane had troubled to bring her out here at all, why they were sitting together and talking about birds.
'I have watched them every year since I can remember,' she said. 'And I used to stay up in the autumn and look out for them flying back.'
It was an aimless comment, a lazy observation thrown out into the conversation, but Tane took it as a cue to continue his train of thought.
'The beautiful things are dying,' he said gravely, looking upstream to where the Kerryn bent into the trees and was lost to sight. 'More and more, faster and faster. The priests can sense it; / can sense it. It's in the forest, in the soil. The trees know.'
Kaiku was not quite sure how to respond to that, so she kept her silence.
'Why can't we do anything about it?' he said, but the question was rhetorical, an expression of impotent frustration.
They watched the birds come down the river all that day, and it did seem that there were fewer than Kaiku remembered.
She stayed another week at the temple while she regained her strength. The waiting was chafing her, but the priests insisted, and she believed they were right. She was too weak to leave, and she needed time to formulate a plan, to decide where to travel to and how to get there.
There was never really any doubt as to her destination, however. There was only one person who might be able to help her learn the circumstances that surrounded her father's death, and only one person who she felt she could trust utterly. Mishani, her friend since childhood and daughter of Barak Avun tu Koli. She was part of the Imperial Court at Axekami, and she was privy to the machinations that went on there. Kaiku had not seen her much since they both passed their eighteenth harvest, for Mishani had been enmeshed in the politics of Blood Koli; yet despite everything, she found herself growing excited at the thought of seeing her friend again.
She walked with Tane often during that week, traipsing through the forest or along the river. Tane was interested in her past, in who she was and how she had come to be under that tree where he had found her. She talked freely about her family; it made her feel good to recall their triumphs, their habits, their petty foibles. But she never spoke of what happened at her house that night, and she made no mention of Asara's fate again. He was light-hearted company, and she liked him, though he tended to swing into unfathom-ably dark moods from time to time, and then she found him unpleasant and left him alone.
'You're leaving soon,' Tane said as they walked side by side in the trees behind the temple. It was the hour between morning oblations and study, and the young acolyte had asked her to join him. Birds chirruped all around and the forest rustled with hidden animals.
Kaiku fiddled with a strand of her hair. It was a childhood habit that her mother used to chide her for. She had thought she had grown out of it, but it seemed to have returned of late. 'Soon,' she agreed.
'I wish you would tell me what you are hurrying for. Are you fleeing your family's murderers, or trying to find them?'
She glanced at him, faintly startled. He had never been quite so blunt with her. 'To find them,' she said.
'Revenge is an unhealthy motive, Kaiku.'
'I have no other motives left, my friend,' she said. But he was a friend in name only. She would not let him close to her, would not divulge anything of true worth to him. There was no sense inviting more grief. She knew she was leaving him; it was necessary, for she still did not know the nature of the demon inside her, and she feared she might harm him as she had Asara. By the same token, she was terribly afraid of endangering Mishani by her presence; but she knew if Mishani were asked, she would willingly take that chance, and so would Kaiku for her. There was some comfort in that, at least. Their bonds of loyalty went beyond question. And there was scarcely any other choice, anyway; it was the only course she could see.
'I'd like it if you stayed,' he said solemnly. She stopped and gave him a curious look. 'For a while longer,' he amended, colouring a little.
She smiled, and it made her radiant. For a moment, she felt something like temptation. He was physically attractive to her, there was no doubt of that. His shaven head, his taut and muscular body honed by outdoor chores and an ascetic diet, his deep-buried intensity; these were qualities she had never encountered in the high-borns she had met in the cities. But though they had spent much time together in the past week, she felt she had not learned anything about him. Why had he become a priest? Why was he driven to heal and help others, as he professed? He was as closed to her as she was to him. The two of them had fenced around each other, never letting their guards down. This was the nearest he had got to real honesty. She exploited the opening.
'What is it I mean to you, Tane?' she asked. 'You found me, you saved my life and sat with me through it all. You have my endless gratitude for that. But why?'
'I'm a priest. It's my… my calling,' he said, frowning.
'Not good enough,' she said, folding her arms beneath her breasts.
He gave her a dark look, wounded that she would pressure him this way. 'I lost a sister,' he said. 'She would not be much younger than you are. I could not help her, but I could help you.' He looked angrily at the ground and scuffed it with his sandals. 'I lost my family too. We have that much in common.'
She wanted to ask how, but she had no right. She would not share her secrets with him, nor he with her. And therein lay the barrier between them, and it was unassailable.
'One of the priests is going downriver to the village of Ban tomorrow,' she said, unfolding her arms. 'I can get a skiff from there to the capital.'
'And you think your friend Mishani will be able to help you?' Tane asked, somewhat bitterly.
'She is the only hope I have,' Kaiku replied.
'Then I wish you good journey,' said Tane, though his tone suggested otherwise. 'And may Panazu, god of the rain and rivers, guard your way. I must return to my studies.'
With that, he stalked away and back to the temple. Kaiku watched him until he was obscured by the trees. In another time, in another place… maybe there could have been something between them. Well, there were greater concerns for now. She thought of the mask that lay in her room, hidden behind a beam on the ceiling. She thought of how she would get to Axekami, and what she might find there.
She thought of the future, and she feared it.
Five
It had to come to this, Anais thought.I was only putting off the inevitable. But by the spirits, how did they find out? The Blood Empress of Saramyr stood in her chambers, her slender profile limned in the bright midday sunlight, the hot breath of the streets reaching even here, so far above. Below her lay the great city of Axekami, heart of the Saramyr empire. It sprawled down the hill and away from her, a riot of colours and buildings: long red temples shunting up against gaudy markets; smooth white bathhouses huddling close to green-domed museums; theatres and tanneries, forges and workhouses. Distantly, the sparkling blue loop of the River Kerryn cut through the profusion on its way to meet its sister, the Jalaza, and combine to form the Zan. Axekami was built on the confluence of the three rivers, and their sweeping flow served to carve the city neatly up into districts, joined by proud bridges.
She let her eyes range over the capital, over her city, the centrepiece of a civilisation that stretched thousands of miles across an entire continent and encompassed millions of people. The life here never ceased, an endless, beautiful swelter of thronging industry, thought and art. Orators held forth in Speaker's Square while crowds gathered to jeer or clap; manxthwa and horses jostled in their pens while traders harangued passers-by and jabbered at each other; philosophers sat in meditation while across the street new lovers coupled in fervour. Scholars debated in the parks, blood spewed on to tiles as a bull banathi's throat was slashed by a butcher's blade, entertainers leered as they pulled impossible contortions, deals were made and broken and reforged. Axekami was the hub of an empire spread so wide that it was only possible to maintain it via the medium of instantaneous communication through Weavers, the administrative, political and social fulcrum on which the entire vastness of Saramyr balanced. Anais loved it, loved its constant ability to regenerate, the turbulence of innovation and activity; but she knew well enough to fear it a little too, and she felt a ghost of that fear brush her now.