‘Yes.’
He smiled. ‘A good man. I had plans to make him my own priest.’
‘You could have done worse.’
‘Ana, Ana – must people die each time we meet?’
‘It seems so. That’s why it would have been best if we had never met again.’ She glanced at her sister. ‘There were rumours that Zesi lived, that she had come to you.’
‘Those treacherous slaves-’
‘I think I would have known anyway. This whole scheme, how you worked your way into our world, into my head, with the stone and the labour, and then the slaves rising up against us – I knew it was too clever a plan for any Pretani. Even you, Shade.’
He grinned, and there was just a flash of the boyishness she remembered – the tender face she had longed to kiss, but never had. ‘Still, it nearly worked, didn’t it?’
‘Why did you come back, Zesi? Why spill so much blood?’
‘For the sake of the son you stole from me.’ She reached out her arms towards Kirike and tried to smile. ‘For you.’ But she was grotesque, her hardened face smeared with the blood of dead men, more dried blood under her fingernails, and Kirike flinched back. Zesi turned on Ana. ‘You took him from me.’
‘He was not safe with you. None of us were safe, with you in the world.’
Zesi took another step forward, her fist closed on a bloody stabbing spear. ‘Who are you? You are nothing. You are a worm beside me. All my life you got in the way. My father always favoured you-’
‘That’s foolish.’
‘And then you took it on yourself to judge me, and to throw me out of my homeland-’
‘If I had not you would have destroyed us all by now, as you killed the snailhead child under the reservoir you breached.’
‘And for that, you exiled me! You said it must end here, Ana. Then let it be so.’
‘I won’t fight you.’ Ana had a spear and a knife; she dropped them both.
Zesi grinned. ‘If that’s how you want it.’ She raised her stabbing spear.
Kirike, baffled and distressed, called, ‘What are you doing, Zesi – mother?’
‘No,’ Ana said sharply. ‘Please, Kirike. Stay back-’
Zesi snarled, ‘Don’t stand in my way, boy.’
And Shade said, ‘Enough is enough.’
His thrust was clean, the blade driving through Zesi’s body from the back. For a moment more she stood, supported by the spear, an expression of outraged shock on her face.
Shade stood behind her, whispering in her ear. ‘You destroyed my family. Even my mother went to her grave cursing me, because of you. You would even have killed our son, wouldn’t you, to get to your sister? Now we face defeat. My men are being slaughtered. And was it for this, Zesi – your hurt pride, your hatred of your sister? I kill you, but you have killed me already.’ And he thrust again. The blade punctured her heart and burst out of her ribs. She fell forward, into Ana’s arms, blood spouting from her chest and mouth, already dead.
Kirike cried out, and fell on his father, but Shade easily brushed his clumsy blows aside. Then he held the boy, until he dissolved into weeping.
Shade looked over the boy’s head at Ana. ‘It had to be me that finished it,’ he said blackly. ‘Let my hands take the last of the blood, as they have the rest. I should never have come here, never have let her back into my life… Well. Let it end here.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ana whispered, clinging to the body of her sister. ‘Yes, let it end, Zesi. And if I couldn’t honour you in life as you wanted, I will honour you in death.’
85
Me roamed, looking for Leafy Boys. The cut leash still dangled from his neck. He was panting, bloodied but uninjured, deeply scared, lost.
In this strange place trees grew on salty land, and fires sprouted away from the hearths where the grounders usually kept them. The world was all broken down and jumbled up. He longed for the canopy, or failing that the security of the leash and the net. But the only grounders he found lay dead or dying.
Then he found another Leafy, alive. A girl. She was feeding on a dog, its belly ripped open by a spear. The smell of blood reminded him how hungry he was. He pushed the girl aside and shoved his face into the dog’s open belly, and tore away a mouthful of meat. But he hadn’t eaten all day, and something about the blood trickling down his throat worked in him, and his gut ached. He crouched, and let out an enormous fart, and then a bit of shit dribbled from his bare backside.
The girl stared at him. Then she laughed.
He laughed too. He felt better. Together they pushed their faces into the dog’s belly.
The food made him feel better, and he thought more clearly. He remembered the way they had come, the way the grounders had driven them here. They had come from the south and climbed down into this bowl of land. Then that was the way they must return. Maybe they would find the grounders again. Better yet, they might find their way back to the forest canopy, the endless green.
He picked up the dog. The girl fought and snapped, until she saw he did not mean to take it from her. He slung it over his shoulder, still chewing its flesh. With the girl at his side he loped off to the west, across the salty land.
FIVE
86
The Thirty-Third Year After the Great Sea: Spring Equinox. Following the slow rise of the land, the Pretani party walked out of the forest cover and into the glare of the spring sun. It was noon, the sun was as high in the southern sky as it would get all day, and the air was heavy and windless.
Acorn, twenty-five years old and proud in her hide tunic, led steadily and strongly, Kirike thought, as befitted his half-sister’s rank as the Root of the Pretani. But the handful of warriors who followed her grumbled under their breaths about how thirsty they were and the state of their feet. Warriors always grumbled.
And Old Resin, who had seen thirty-six summers, hobbled into the light, muttering and squinting. ‘Wretched sun… Give me the forest shade any day. If we’d been meant to stumble about in the light the tree gods wouldn’t have blessed us with their shadow.’
Acorn said, ‘Oh, stop complaining, old man.’ She dug a battered cloth cap out of Resin’s pack and set it on his bald, sunburned head. ‘That’s enough shade for you. Mind you, from now on it’s open spaces and sunlight all the way to Etxelur. What about you, Kirike? I suppose you’re used to this.’
Kirike set down the bag he was carrying, turned his face up to the sun and stretched. ‘But it’s a long time since I made my home among you.’ More than fifteen years, in fact, since he had come home with his father, Shade, to the woods of Albia. He was over thirty years old himself now. He breathed deep of the air, and he thought he detected a whiff of salt, that odd sharpness that he remembered vividly from his boyhood, so different from the damp, cloying smells of the forest. Suddenly his heavy, scratchy hide tunic felt uncomfortable, and he remembered how he had run with Dolphin Gift along the endless strands. ‘I have Pretani blood, but Etxelur is in me too. Besides, even the strongest tree needs the sun.’
Resin hawked and spat. ‘A nice Pretani saying for an Etxelur boy. Let me remind you of another. Saplings grow only when the great tree falls. And this old tree hasn’t fallen yet. Is that bag of bones too heavy for you? If so pass it over, and let’s get on.’
Kirike’s sack, carried on a long shoulder strap, contained the bones of their father, Shade, dead a year now. They were making the long trek to Etxelur to fulfil his strange but firm wish that his bones should be placed in the
