They came out of the trees at the edge of a rocky stream, swollen and angry with the rains. Asara looked quickly left and right, her long hair soaked to deepest black and sluggish with moisture. She made her decision in moments, heading downstream, tugging Kaiku after her. The latter was almost at the limit of exhaustion, and it told in her staggering steps and lolling head.
The stream emptied into a wide clearing, a shallow bowl of water from which humped several grassy islands and banks, scattered with the bald faces of half-buried rocks and taut clusters of bushes. The largest island by far was the pedestal for a vast, ancient tree, overwhelmingly dominating the scene by its sheer size. Its trunk was twice as thick as a man was tall, knotted and twisted with age, and its branches spread in a great fan, leaves of gold and brown and green weeping a delicate curtain of droplets across the water below. Even in the rain, the clearing seemed sacred, a place of untouched beauty. The air here was different, possessed of a crystalline fragility and stillness, as of a held breath. Even Kaiku felt the change, the sensation of a presence in this place, some cold and slow and gentle awareness that marked their arrival with a languid interest.
The sound of a breaking twig alerted Asara, and she spun to see one of the shin-shin high up in the trees to their right, moving with impossible dexterity between the boughs while its lantern eyes stayed fixed on them. She pulled Kaiku into the water, which came up to their knees and soaked through their robes. Urgently, they splashed across to the largest island, and there they clambered out. Kaiku collapsed on the grass. Asara left her there and raced to the tree. She put her palms and forehead against it and murmured softly, her lips rapid as she spoke.
'Great ipi, venerated spirit of the forest, we beg you to grant us your protection. Do not let these demons of shadow defile your glade with their corruption.'
A shiver seemed to run through the tree, shaking loose a cascade of droplets from the leaves.
Asara stepped back from the trunk and returned to Kaiku's side. She squatted down, wiping the lank strands of hair from her face, and scanned the edge of the glade. She could sense them out there, prowling. Three of them, and maybe more, stalking around the perimeter, hiding in the trees, their shining eyes never leaving their prey.
Asara watched, her hand near her rifle. She was no priest, but she knew the spirits of the forest well enough. The ipi would protect them, if only because it would not let the demons near it. Ipis were the guardians of the forest, and nowhere was their influence stronger than in their own glades. The creatures circled, their stiltlike legs carrying them to and fro. She could sense their frustration. Their prey was within sight, yet the shin-shin dared not enter the domain of an ipi.
After a time, Asara was satisfied that they were safe. She hooked her hands under Kaiku's shoulders and dragged her into the protection of the tree's vast roots, where the rain was less. Kaiku never woke. Asara regarded her for a moment, soaked as she was and freezing, and felt a kind of sympathy for her. She crouched down next to her mistress and stroked her cheek gently with the back of her knuckles.
'Life can be cruel, Kaiku,' she said. 'I fear you are only just beginning to learn that.'
With the moonstorm raging high overhead, she sat in the shelter of the great tree and waited for the dawn to come.
Two
Kaiku awoke to a loud snap from the fire, and her eyes nickered open. Asara was there, stirring a small, blackened. pot that hung from an iron tripod over the flames. A pair of coilfish were spitted on a branch and crisping next to it. The sun was high in the sky and the air was muggy and hot. A fresh, earthy smell was all about as damp loam dried from last night's downpour.
'Daygreet, Kaiku,' Asara said, without looking at her. 'I went back to the house this morning and salvaged what I could.' She tossed a bundle of clothes over. 'There was not a great deal left, but the rain put out the blaze before it could devour everything. We have food, clothes and a good amount of money.'
Kaiku raised herself, looking around. They were no longer in the waterlogged clearing. Now they sat in a dip in the land where the soil was sandy and clogged with pebbles, and little grew except a few shrubs. Trees guarded the lip of the depression, casting sharply contrasting shadows against the dazzling light, and the daytime sounds of the forest peeped and chittered all about. Had Asara carried her?
The first thing she noticed was that her bracelet was missing.
'Asara! Grandmother's bracelet! It must have fallen… it…'
'I took it. I left it as an offering to the ipi, in thanks for protecting us.'
'She gave me that bracelet on my eighth harvest!' Kaiku cried. 'I have never taken it off.'
'The point of an offering is that you sacrifice something precious to you,' Asara said levelly. 'The ipi saved our lives. I had nothing I could give, but you did.'
Kaiku stared at her in disbelief, but Asara appeared not to notice.
She made a vague gesture to indicate their surroundings. 'I thought it best not to start a fire in the ipi's glade, so I moved you here.'
Kaiku hung her head. She was too drained to protest any further. Asara watched her in silence for a time.
'I must know,' Kaiku said quietly. 'My family…'
Asara put down the spoon she had been using to stir the pot and knelt before Kaiku, taking her hands. 'They are dead.'
Kaiku's throat tightened, but she nodded to indicate she understood. 'What happened?'
'Would you not rather eat first, and compose yourself?'
Kaiku raised her head and looked at Asara. 'I must know,' she repeated.
Asara released her hands. 'Most of you were poisoned,' she said. 'You died as you slept. I suspect it was one of the kitchen servants, but I cannot be sure. Whoever it was, they were inefficient. Your grandmother did not eat at the evening meal last night, so she was still alive when the shin-shin came. I believe that somebody sent the demons to kill the servants and remove the evidence. With no witnesses, the crime would go unsolved.' She settled further on her haunches.
'Who?' Kaiku asked. 'And why?'
'To those questions I have no answers,' she said. 'Yet.'
Asara got up and returned to the pot, occasionally turning the fish. It was some time before Kaiku spoke again.
'Did I die, Asara? From the poison?'
'Yes,' replied the handmaiden. 'I brought you back.'
'How?'
'I stole the breath from another, and put it into you.'
Kaiku thought of Karia, her other handmaiden, who she had seen lying dead on the floor of her room.
'How is that possible?' she whispered, afraid of the answer.
'There are many things you do not understand, Kaiku,' Asara replied. 'I am one of them.'
Kaiku was beginning to realise that. Asara had always been the perfect handmaiden: quiet, obedient and reliable, skilled at combing out hair and laying out clothes. Kaiku had liked her better than the more wilful Karia, and often talked with her, shared secrets or played games. But there had always been the boundary there, a division that prevented them from becoming truly close. The unspoken understanding that the two of them were of a different
caste. Kaiku was high-born and Asara was not, and so one had a duty to serve and obey the other. It was the way in Saramyr, the way it had always been.
And yet now Kaiku saw that the last two years had been a deception. This was not the person she thought she knew. This Asara had a steely calm, a core of cold metal. This Asara had saved her life by stealing another's, had burned down her house, had taken her most valuable token of her grandmother's love and given it away with impunity. This Asara had rescued her from demons.