The Fade

15

We hear the ululations of the raka. The caverns foil sound, jagged walls fracturing the echoes, making it hard to pinpoint their distance. But the Gurta are behind us, with their hunting-beasts, and they're coming fast.

'The blood,' Feyn says, panting as he climbs. All of us know it but none of us wanted to say it. 'It is me they are following.'

It didn't take them long to equate the three missing prisoners with the disappearance of the yard-worker. Or maybe they found the bodies of the guards we hastily stashed, or the Overseer discovered the door to his office was unlocked when he'd locked it earlier, or Charn ran to the guards when he realised we'd double-crossed him, or someone smelt that poor slave girl I left rotting in a trunk. Considering how sloppy the whole operation was, it's a miracle we made it out.

We're still in the cavern where Farakza lies. We've a good head start, but the Gurta are relentless and I knew the moment they hit upon Feyn's blood-trail they'd be unshakable. Even though the wound isn't bad, it's going to keep reopening until he gets to rest. Without weapons, outnumbered, we don't stand a chance if they catch us. I'm the only warrior here; I don't rate my chances against six or seven armoured monsters, each three times my weight, with beaked muzzles that can shear through bone.

The only choice is to run, but I know Gurta: they'll never give up the pursuit. It's a question of whose strength fails first. And it's likely to be ours.

We clamber along paths carved long ago by underground cataclysms, water erosion, magma flows and the efforts of geophagic fungi, lichen and stone-burrowing insects, which, given millennia, can eat through anything. On Callespa, life evolved beneath the ground long before it appeared above. Rockworms the size of cities cored the crust of the world while the surface was still a poisonous, unformed wasteland.

Following a faint breeze, I find us an enormous lava trench, long cold, running out of the main cavern. We take it, reasoning that it will slow the raka: four-legged creatures don't deal with steep, uneven trench-side rock as well as we do. But I'm not sure any terrain is likely to slow our pursuers for long.

We clamber over black stone, making our way up a slope of sharp edges and horn-like overhangs. Colourful minerals have grown in the wake of the flow, in bubbled humps and great crystals. It's hard to see here, but a distant crop of raw shinestone provides a dim glow. Around it have grown photovore lichens and tiny plants, some of them with a luminescence of their own to attract insects. Light multiplies in the dark.

Feyn is struggling. His eyes aren't as good as ours, and the roof of the trench oppresses him. I can see it in the way he hunches his shoulders. The trench must be forty spans high and three times that wide, but it's still crushing him.

'Stop,' Feyn says, and we stop, chests heaving, looking back at him.

'It is me they are following,' he says again, his face bearing an expression of helpless honesty. 'I will go another way.'

Nereith turns to me. It's what he's been thinking for some while. I know he's already agreed, but he's waiting to see what my reaction is.

'You go,' I tell him. 'I'll go with Feyn.'

'No!' Feyn protests. 'Go with him. You will not be followed.'

I ignore him. 'You can find your way back?' I ask Nereith.

'I told you I could,' he replies. His eyes flick from me to Feyn and back again. 'What do you think you're doing?' he asks me.

I don't answer that. He wouldn't understand.

The raka howl somewhere down the trench. Nereith shakes his head in despair. 'I hope you make it,' he says, but it's empty. He already believes we won't.

He heads along the slope at an angle, but before he gets five steps I say his name one last time. He gazes back at me inquiringly.

'I have a son,' I tell him.

'I know.'

'How?'

'Massima Leithka Orna, married to Venya Ethken Rynn. I hadn't heard you had a child, but considering the state you were in when you arrived, I guessed someone close to you had been killed and I assumed it was your husband. In light of events since-' he looks at Feyn, '-I put two and two together.'

Of course. With a Khaadu's memory, it's not so surprising, even if I find myself resenting his insight.

'Last I heard he was stationed at Caralla,' I say. The words don't come easily. They have to be forced through a knot in my throat. I don't know why it's so difficult to talk about Jai. 'If you could tell him…'

Tell him what? Your mother was alive last time I saw her, but by now she's probably not? Tell him I love him? I'm not entrusting that to Nereith. Abyss, I don't even know if he's heard his father is dead yet.

I just want to see him. The words will come then, I'm sure of it.

'Tell him there's a letter,' I say. 'There's a letter, from the Dean of Engineers of Bry Athka University, in a drawer in my room. Have him send someone to collect it. If I don't make it back… he needs to know about the letter.'

'I'll pass near Caralla,' Nereith says. 'If the Gurta haven't taken it yet… well, I'll do what I can to get there.'

I smile sadly. He turns away, pauses, turns back.

'Should you reach Veya… should you ever come across a problem without a solution…' He trails off, his face grave. 'Remember who I am.'

I remember alright. He's one of Silverfish's men. And he's offering to be a contact for me: a connection to the faceless legend of the Veyan underworld.

In all the years I've spent trawling the murky depths of the city, trading information and digging out secrets in the service of my master, I've never even got close to Silverfish. He's a whisper in the dives and cut-joints, his name steeped in paranoia. A ghost of the alleyways.

I've run across his trail many times, though. His secretive network of operatives wields enormous influence in the underworld, but unlike the other gangs you never know who's working for Silverfish and who isn't. There's a good deal of doubt as to whether Silverfish exists at all, or whether he's the mythical head of an organisation without a leader. Nobody knows. I have to admire that.

And now here's Nereith, telling me he can put me in touch, if ever I have the need. If ever I make it home.

It's as close to a thank-you as I'll get from him, I suppose.

He begins to climb down toward the bottom of the trench, branching off in a different direction from us. I watch him depart with the feeling that I'll never see him again, and there's a small part of me that regrets it. I respect him. I wish I'd known him longer.

'Ready?' I say to Feyn.

He nods, but he holds my gaze for a long time, and I just can't tell what he's thinking. 'We will not escape them this way,' he says.

'No,' I say. 'We probably won't.'

'Then we must go where they will not follow.'

'There's nowhere they won't follow us. They'll chase us till they drop. It's the Gurta way.'

'Will they follow us to the surface?' I don't know how long it is before we find an upward-slanting channel. I know that we're both light-headed and weak from exertion and hunger, and I know every muscle in my body aches from climbing and running. If only we could find water we'd stand a chance of throwing them off the scent, but there's nothing.

We're in the trackless barrens of the Borderlands, a webwork of inhospitable caverns and chasms that have separated Gurta and Eskara for as long as our civilisations can remember. A war-torn, disputed wilderness crawling with troops and bandits of all kinds. Neither side wants it but neither will let the other have it. Why is it only now that I can see how utterly ludicrous that is, in the face of the thousands upon thousands who die over this wasteland? I suppose I never had to care until now. I hadn't known what it was to lose someone to the Borderlands, to be faced with the threat of losing another.

Feyn has gathered several clumps of fungi that he pronounces edible, and we chew them whenever our hands are free. They're vile and bitter but he assures me that they're safe.

'A SunChild must be sheltered from the sun, like you,' he says. 'When the Season of Days is, we are in the high caves. These grow there, like here.'

I trust him, because I'm not going to make it otherwise. I have to fight to keep the fungi down, but it eases the worst of the hunger.

We take the way up, following the breeze. The upward tunnel becomes a shaft, ten spans across at its widest part, a slanting, near-vertical crevice. Water trickles down its folds. Feyn tastes it, pronounces it clear – though clear of what I don't like to ask – and we drink.

The Gurta are close. As we haul ourselves up the teeth of the shaft, I'm comforted only by the fact that the raka won't be able to make it up an ascent this steep. The soldiers will have to follow on their own. If we can get ahead of them, we can lose them.

I want to lie down and sleep and not care if I never wake up again. But I've come so far. I'm not stopping now.

I have to slow my pace for Feyn, but his endurance is surprising. Perhaps his kind are tougher than they look. I'd thought him fragile, because he's so slender and passive, and because he wept when he was beaten. But then I remember how he never complained or flagged at the slurry-trough. He comes from a race of travellers who live in a world deadlier than mine, hardened by generations of life on the surface. He's strong enough.

I don't think about how far we have to go. I think only of the next handhold, the next shelf, the next upward lunge. I concentrate on the tapping of the water as it runs from pool to pool, trying to solve its rhythm. I think of the way the chaotic surface of the pools reflect the light of the phosphorescent patches that have grown beneath them, and how its eddies and impacts have never stilled for thousands of years. I meditate as I climb, and reality becomes elastic.

The pain in me dims. It's only physical pain. I've known much worse.

The shaft begins to switch back on itself as we near the top, broken by some ancient quake. It tightens dramatically, so much that we can barely fit through. I'm worried Feyn will freeze up in there. Claustrophobia's not unheard of even among my people; it must be worse for his.

He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and squeezes through the fissure. I don't know what keeps him going, but though he's as tired as I am he's showing no signs of giving up.

The fissure takes us up almost a hundred spans before it widens again suddenly. I clamber out to find Feyn heading away along a sloping tunnel. It's the back end of a cave, wide enough for six men abreast. Cracked bones and a rotted nest of scrub attest to an animal that once lived here, but it's abandoned and empty now.

'We are close,' Feyn declares, his voice numb with weariness.

We follow the thin stream to a spring bubbling in a hollow in the stone. I catch up with Feyn as he drinks.

'Can you smell the air?' he asks me, and I can. It's warm, arid, unfamiliar.

We travel on. The cave splits into other caves, and we're forced to choose carefully. We can hear creatures calling to each other in the depths. Deep booming sounds, like Craggens but without the suggestion of language and structure.

Some time after, still following the breeze, we find a short vertical ascent. Feyn struggles up it first, and when I get to the top I find him sitting on the floor next to me, his thin ribs heaving beneath his ragged shirt.

But there's something else. I sense it even before I see it. About thirty spans ahead of us is a corner, and the stone at the end burns with white light.

Daylight.

I shield my eyes, which are blurring with tears. Dazzling after-images make it difficult to see. A primal, irrational fear uncoils within me. To be so close to raw daylight terrifies me. I'm afraid it will somehow flood in and consume us. I start to regret letting Feyn talk me into this course of action.

'Now what?' I ask him.

'Now we wait.'

'You brought us all the way up to the surface and now we wait? That's your plan?' I demand of him.

'Yes. We wait until the sky becomes dark.'

'There are Gurta right behind us, Feyn! They'll be here in minutes! ' I turn away from the light, searching for a way out of our predicament. I can't believe he's done this to us. I can't believe I trusted him. 'Let's go back. Into the caves. They can't track us without the raka.'

'They are too close behind us.'

He's right. There haven't been any branches off this tunnel for quite a way. We'll only end up running into the Gurta and hastening the inevitable. But still-

'You don't want to try?'

He shakes his head.

I want to be furious, but I can't manage it. I want to keep struggling, but his calm is infectious. I can't stand that we're so fucking close and we've been thwarted. I want to keep running, out into the sun or onto the swords of the Gurta, and yet his acceptance of the end cools me. Shrill hysteria and urgent demands seem out of place now. I'm too tired.

I sit down next to Feyn. For a long time, neither of us says anything. I'm the one to break the silence.

'We could hold them off here. At the top of this cliff.'

Feyn gives me another one of those parent-child looks, as if to say: now is that really true? And it's not. I could have held them off back at the fissure, but they'll be through that by now. There'll be archers to cover the Gurta climbing up the cliff, and they'll kill me the instant I show my face.

'You never finished your story,' I say.

He makes a quizzical noise.

'The s'Tani. The Old Men, when we were all one race.'

'You remembered,' he says, and gives me that heartbreaking smile of his. Voids, it's beautiful when the boy smiles.

He settles himself and begins. When he speaks, it's like a teacher to a pupil. I recall his ambition to be the first of the Far People to attend Bry Athka University, and I see for the first time that he might make a good Masterscholar.

'A long time ago, there were the s'Tani and the a'Jaka'ai – the underdwellers, whom now you know as the Umbra, the Craggens and the Ya'yeen. They grew in the dark, but the s'Tani grew beneath the suns. They walked naked under the skies, and the touch of the light was warm.

'Then the suns grew cruel. The sickness began, and in anger the s'Tani blamed each other. Instead of one people, they became many people. They went underground then. The Gurta, the Banchu, the Khaadu, and the forty tribes of Eskara whose names you still carry long after the blood has been mixed.'

'It's not mixed so much,' I tell him. 'You can still see the bloodlines. Rynn was Venya, they're always built like crayls, with broad faces. Fentha still have red hair and eyes. Nathka have beautifully proportioned features.'

'And yours? You are of the tribe of Massima.'

'Small, hair very black, brown eyes, dusky skin – I'm a typical Massima. Besides, we cheat. A child can take the tribal name of either the mother or the father. We pick the one most suitable.'

'Your son?'

'Massima,' I say. 'He was never a Venya. Go on with the story.'

'The people went underground, but some would not give up the sky. They called themselves a'Sura'Sao, which you call the SunChildren. They hoped to endure the sickness, to become…' He waves his hand, searching for the word.

'Immune?'

'Yes. Like other sicknesses, we thought some would resist it. Many would die, but the survivors would be strong forever against it. And they said ''We will show our brothers and sisters that we should not hide from the light. It is better to die here than live down there. They will remember us, and they will come back, and we will bring them here to live beneath the sky.'' '

'Didn't work out that way,' I say, looking out over the edge of the wall. I can hear Gurta voices in the distance, jabbering at each other. Gurta never could shut up. Suicidally tenacious yet hopelessly disorganised.

'Many died before we realised that the sickness was not like other sickness,' he continues. 'And it was getting worse. But we learned how to live, for we would not go below. And we waited for our brothers and sisters to come back, so we could show them.'

'But they never came.'

'They came back, but by then they had forgotten us. We greeted them and they slaughtered us. They saw savages and they were afraid.'

'Was that us? The Eskarans?'

'We do not recall. Back then, we did not know the differences between you. So then it was decided. We would let you make your own learning. You did not deserve help from us.' He makes a gesture that approximates a shrug. 'We visit only the most remote places of your people, to trade for what we need. But we do not stay long.'

'Ignorance equals division,' I say. 'Welcome to the world.'

'You know this, and you hate the Gurta anyway.'

'I have a right. They killed my husband. They enslaved me as a child.'

'There is more,' he says. 'They have done other things.'

I don't know how he surmised that; his talent for perception is frightening. I nod, but that's all.

'And yet you admire them.'

'Yes!' I snap at him. 'Yes. Who wouldn't? I've lived among them. They have culture and poetry and wonderful things, devices and songs and stories that can pull your heart from your chest. And yet they're stuck in this ancient prison of laws and rules that means we'll never see eye to eye, we'll never stop fighting. We'll only ever understand them when our scholars are picking over the bones of their once-mighty cities, and then we'll lament the loss of a great culture, feel terrible about its destruction and then pick another fucking fight and go do it again!'

I realise I've raised my voice and the Gurta can probably hear me. Feyn has a way of prodding sore spots. I'm almost certain he does it on purpose.

'I detest having to acknowledge the good points,' I say, quieter. 'Hate should be clean, in and out like a blade. You can't let yourself admire your enemy or you lose the will to kill them.'

Feyn looks down at the ground between his knees, his manner thoughtful. 'We have a saying. The translation is: Hate is like fire. If you embrace it, it consumes you.'

I almost make a scornful comeback and then stop myself. Pithy sayings are all very well, but good advice that you can't take is just irritating. Stop hating, he says. So simple. And while I'm doing that, I'll change the day to night.

The thought has barely crossed my mind when the light from outside begins to dim. Disbelief makes me doubt my hold on reality.

'Ready to go?' Feyn asks, getting to his feet.

I can only gape. The world is darkening before my eyes.

'What is it? What's happening?' I ask as I stand.

'Halflight,' he says.

'You knew? All this time underground and you still knew when halflight was coming?'

'It is life and death to us,' he says. 'It is instinct.'

The release of a bowstring reaches me a fraction of an instant before the arrow arrives, but that time is long enough for me to pull him down. The arrow skims close enough to part the hair on the side of his skull. An explosive curse comes from the darkness of the cave behind us.

We run. The light is dying as we plunge towards it. A second arrow ricochets from the cavern wall, rattling at our feet.

We round the corner at a sprint, and with that, we race out of my world and enter his.