The Blood Debt (59 page)

A key turned in the lock to his room. He sat up straight on the bed and blinked at the door as it opened.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Chu, struggling under the bulk of her wing. Her head was still bound but the dressing was clean. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘What are
you
doing here?’

‘I asked first. I waited half an hour, but you didn’t show up.’ She looked around her in disbelief. ‘Have you been asleep the whole time?’

He stared at her. His headache had eased but the confusion in his thoughts was undiminished. Was she talking about the drinks with Kazzo? Why would she have wanted him there? And what was she doing
here?
How had she got in?

He had been dreaming about man’kin, and something about an endless yellow desert.

‘What?’ was the best he could manage as she manoeuvred the wing into one corner. A key tinkled onto the floor beside it.

‘This is my room, remember? I moved in here while you were in the Aad.’

‘As a matter of fact, I
don’t
remember. I don’t remember anything since last night.’

‘Oh, sure. That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard for standing a girl up — especially coming from you.’ She unzipped her patched leather top and stretched.

‘But it’s true!’ He groaned and fell back onto the bed — and jerked back upright with a start. The bed had somehow become hers without him knowing. The Goddess only knew what she thought he was doing there.

Chu studied him with the beginnings of a frown. ‘Just how much did you drink last night?’

‘I don’t know.’ He rubbed his temples. ‘Too much, obviously.’

‘Do you remember being carried up here after we found you lying on the floor of bar, out cold?’

Horror gripped him. She had to be joking.

She laughed at the expression on his face. ‘You really don’t remember a thing. This is hysterical.’

‘It’s not!’ Some of his earlier frustration returned. He backed away from her, taking the covers with him, until he was leaning against the wall behind the bed. The bruises on his arms and chest stood out starkly on his pale skin.

‘All right,’ she said, sobering. ‘No, it’s not. What’s the last thing you remember?’

‘Drinking. Then we argued. I thought — I don’t know what I thought. And then I saw Kazzo. He told me that you two were meeting for a drink.’

It was her turn to look horrified. ‘When did you see
him?’

‘I went to the armoury to find you after Mum said you had your licence back. He invited me along.’

‘What else did he say?’

‘He said that you two were back together.’ His mouth wanted to close shut on the terrible words and the vulnerability they would reveal. He forced them out. ‘That you were using me.’

‘We were using each other. Wouldn’t you say?’

He didn’t know how to answer that question. It was hard enough just meeting her eyes.

‘Let me tell you something,’ she said, her expression very serious. ‘That day I found you in the tunnels, I
did
think of screwing you over. You were practically begging to be taken advantage of. And me? I really needed something to go right for a change. My Dad didn’t leave much when he died, and that went when he was blamed for the crash. I could keep a roof over my head while I had my licence but when I lost that I had to move in with Kazzo for a bit. It soon became clear that he was only after one thing, and then I was out on the street, selling blood to survive — and that wasn’t going to go well if it went on much longer.’ She held out her arm and showed him the line of old cuts he had already noticed. ‘When I heard about this gormless Stone Mage looking for help, I knew you were an opportunity too good to pass up.’

‘I’m sorry things didn’t go according to plan.’

‘They didn’t, but that’s not your fault. First the Magister screwed things up by giving you a licence, not me. Then we crashed and I was stuck with the Sky Wardens on the wrong side of the Divide. Things got really messy then. The further they waded into the shit the less likely it was I’d ever fly again. I still can’t quite believe it’s worked out so well, that I’m not in jail and I’m free to do whatever I want.’ Her eyes didn’t leave his. ‘And you know what? What I want isn’t so obvious any more. If I’ve learned one thing in the last week, it’s that the licence isn’t as important as I thought it was. Sure, I’m happier with it than without it, but maybe it wasn’t what I was really missing. Maybe I was looking for something else all along and not knowing it.’

A faint memory stirred, and with it his hopes. ‘Did we talk about this last night?’

‘You bet,’ she said. ‘You think I’m crazy, but it’ll take more than that to change my mind.’

‘About what?’

‘Going with the wardens, of course. What else? They’re heading for the Hanging Mountains — for the fog forests and the balloon cities. This is my big chance to see where my family comes from. I’m not going to turn that down.’

‘I guess not,’ he said, his stomach doing a gentle backflip. He didn’t know whether to be relieved or appalled. ‘I guess that’s what we argued about.’

‘Not at all.’ The beginnings of a smile returned. ‘That was about who would win a wrestling match between Kemp and the quartermaster. I think you’re overestimating your white friend’s reach, but would you listen? Pfft. For someone who professes to like girls, you’re rather smitten with Kemp’s form.’

‘I am?’ he squeaked.

She laughed again, and he felt his face burn.

‘So what about Kazzo?’ he asked. ‘If you’re not staying in Laure, what gave him the impression that you were? Was he just lying?’

‘Why does it matter what that jerk says? Sure, I said I’d meet him for a drink. I even hinted that I might spend the night with him if he’d ditch that slutty Liris. But now he’ll sit in the bar for a while and get bored. Then he’ll give up and go home alone, feeling like an idiot. Serves him right, the shit.’

A knot of tension loosened inside him. ‘And me? Where do I stand in all this?’

‘Well, that’s up to you. When you’ve decided which you’d rather do — go back to your father’s safe little nest, or come with us to the Hanging Mountains — you let me know.’

That wasn’t entirely what he’d meant, but he supposed the answer served either way.

He shook his aching head. ‘I can’t believe I slept on the bar floor. Did you really have to carry me up here?’

‘Yes, and you
do
snore. I can tell you that for a fact.’

‘I — what?’

‘This is my room now, as well as yours. Where do you think I slept last night?’

He stared at her, not sure exactly which part of this new development horrified him more.

‘Are you pulling my leg?’

‘Maybe I am, maybe I’m not. After all the drinking and the carousing ...’ She hesitated, studying him with her gracefully curved eyes. Her expression was one he hadn’t seen before: almost wistful, almost wounded; almost a lot of things, but not quite. ‘You
really
don’t remember?’

He shook his head.

‘Then I guess, my friend, you’ll never know.’

* * * *

The Saved

‘On the beach, on the brink of death, on the

Divide, and on the cliff; on the boundary between

one state and another
—
from the edge of things

we see most clearly and lose ourselves most

readily.’

THE BOOK OF TOWERS,
FRAGMENT 99

abryn Kail sat in his undergarments as the rest of his clothes dried by the fire. The night was deep and dark and as empty of the Change as the heart of the Aad had been. The shadow watching him from the far side of the fire was darker and emptier still.

‘You must have rescued me for a reason,’ he said over the crackling flames.

‘We need your help,’ said the Homunculus.

‘I’ve already helped you by stopping Pirelius from killing you. On that score, I figure we’re even.’

‘Yes. We’re asking, not demanding.’

‘For what, exactly?’

The creature’s eyes glittered. ‘Understanding. We must understand each other or all will end in disaster. That’s obvious, now. We tried to do it alone and it didn’t work. We were pursued and attacked and imprisoned, almost killed. If we die, everything will come undone. It will all have been for nothing. We need you to help keep us alive long enough to achieve what we came here for. Then you will be free. We will
all
be released.’

Kail took several slow, measured breaths. The sense of tumbling and drowning in the flood returned, making him feel disoriented and nauseous. Then, he had thought he would die. He had been willing enough to accept his fate, under the circumstances, until two pairs of strong hands working in unison caught his wrists and hauled him to the surface, setting him on an entirely new path. Now, he thought he might just lose his grip on himself.

The taste of spiderbush leaf was bitter in his mouth. The leaves took the edge off his appetite, but little else.

‘The place you’re headed,’ he said, ‘it must be in the Hanging Mountains. I’ve studied the maps of the plains between here and the foothills, and there’s nothing else to speak of. The occasional Ruin, the odd struggling town. Laure is the last outpost until you hit the mountains, and there my knowledge ends.’

‘How far are they?’

‘Hundreds of kilometres. I don’t know exactly. It depends on how far downstream we’ve been swept. By tomorrow morning, I’ll be able to tell you.’

The Homunculus slowly nodded. ‘It’s a long way. But the mountains sound ... plausible. There is a connection between our previous lives and this one.’

‘What sort of connection?’

‘That’ll be hard to explain.’

‘Well, I’m not going anywhere until my clothes are dry.’

‘We mean that it will be hard for us as well as you. Much remains unclear in our own minds. It’s been a long time since we last had to think of such things.’

‘How long?’

‘You tell us. When did the giant cities die? When did electricity stop working? When did the world end?’

‘No one knows for sure. “A thousand years ago” is what the stories say, but that’s like “once upon a time”. People say it because they don’t know for certain.’

‘However long it’s been, that’s how long we’ve been in the Void. We’re only just beginning to remember parts of what happened. You’ll have to be patient with us.’

‘But you
will
tell me?’

‘In return for helping us survive our journey, yes. We’ll owe you that much, at least.’

Kail thought of Eisak Marmion and his mission to destroy the unnatural interloper, for reasons he kept carefully to himself. He thought of Shilly insisting that the Homunculus deserved to live, and the promise he had made to her, to prevent the Homunculus from being killed out of hand. He thought of Highson Sparre, who had inadvertently given it a route back among the living. And he thought of himself, a tracker who had disobeyed orders and now had to work out where he stood. Everything had seemed so simple in the moments before the flood.

One thing he was sure of was that few things deserved automatic obliteration. Nature was about coexistence, even among hunter and hunted. Predators could be avoided, just as he would avoid dangerous insects and snakes, and the need to flee kept prey vigorous and vital. He didn’t know which class of being he belonged to at that moment, but he knew the world would be diminished if he chose to kill the Homunculus without understanding it first.

If he even
could
kill it. The wound Pirelius had inflicted in its shoulder was gone, as though it had never existed.

What would Lodo do?
he wondered, as he had so often in his life.

‘All right,’ he said, ‘I’ll help you of my own free will. I’ll guide you across the plains to the mountains and keep you out of trouble. It doesn’t take me too far into the Interior, and I can manage well enough without the Change. In return you’ll tell me about where you come from and why you’re here. Does that sound fair to you?’

‘We need to know about
your
world, too,’ the Homunculus responded. ‘There’s a lot we don’t understand.’

‘We’ll teach each other.’ Kail wondered if he should go around the fire to shake the creature’s hands. It made no move to come to him, so he stayed where he was. ‘There’s something else I need from you, if we’re to cooperate.’

‘And that is?’

‘Your names.’

The dark figure didn’t move for a long moment. Although the features of the physical vessel were shadowed, he sensed a fierce internal struggle taking place between the minds it contained. Its posture was rigid. Its skin shivered from more than just the shifting of the firelight.

Then it relaxed. ‘I am Hadrian Castillo,’ it said.

‘And I am Seth Castillo,’ said a second voice, one similar to the first but not identical.

Kail waited a moment, but nothing else was forthcoming.

‘My name is Habryn Kail,’ he said, ‘and I guess we have a deal.’

The twins nodded, then froze again.

They said nothing more that night. When his clothes were dry, Kail put them back on and lay down by the fading flames. The fragment of the Change-sink, secure in a pouch normally reserved for coins, dug into his side, and he adjusted it to a more comfortable position. He was exhausted from his trials in the Aad and the Divide, and hungry too, despite the spiderbush he had found growing on the edge of the flood-filled canyon. Foraging in earnest would have to wait until morning. He needed to take what rest he could before they set out on their long journey.

The Homunculus watched him, sleepless and silent beyond the fire. Its thoughts were unknown to him. When he slept, he dreamed of those four gleaming eyes staring at him all night long, and he shifted uneasily on the cold, hard ground.

* * * *

The time has come. It has always been. You are there. We are there with you.

You weren’t there! You couldn’t possibly know! We are alone!