Uber
Alternative
Sex: not explicit
Violence: yes
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Part 1
CHAPTER ONE
1
Silent, excited, intent, the children gathered before the entrance. With an earnestness that sat strangely on their young faces they looked at one another to assure themselves that they were ready.
At a nod from their leader they threw open the door and flooded into the hideout.
The animals within looked up in surprise and fear. Then they ran, falling over one another in their attempts to escape through the rear exit.
The children chased them out into the alley at the back. Their friends were already there, lying in wait. The animals stood no chance at all.
The children had knives, stolen or borrowed. The animals threw up their arms as the blades slashed and plunged. Their cries were muted and hopeless, noises of resignation as much as of pain. Perhaps it was all they had expected.
Hexiya was last up the steps. She gripped her knife hard. Her heart hammered in her chest and her limbs shook. She felt fraudulent. She did not want to be there. She had only come because all the other children had come.
She hung back, not wanting to kill but not wanting to be seen as a coward or an outsider. The excitement on the faces of the others awed and frightened her. She saw their certainty in what they were doing. She envied it. They were strong, confident and together. She was small, confused and afraid.
Soon it was over. They stood there in blood, covered with gore, exulting. The reality of what they had done thundered through their minds.
One of the animals moved. A boy slit its throat and hot redness spilled over the ground. He grinned.
Nothing was said. In silence some of them hurriedly left the site of carnage. A few lingered. Hexiya followed as the last of them headed out of the alley and away.
Not wanting to be alone, she trailed after a girl called Vania - mousy-haired, overweight and a year older than she was. Through a tiny square, under arches, along passages and among mazy apartments they went. Soon they crossed a stone bridge over the river and ran on into the woods on the far side.
There was no need for them to run. No one was following. But what they had done was so momentous that the reality of it seemed to be chasing them, demanding that they more fully understand it.
They stopped in a small clearing. Breathing hard, they sat down on the parched ground.
'They didn't look like animals,' said Hexiya. 'They looked like us. Like children.'
Vania's mouth twitched. 'They were animals.' She spoke with conviction. Then she glanced at the knife Hexiya grasped. 'You didn't use it,' she said. There was scorn in her voice.
2
As Hexiya made her way home, the guilt, fear and horror that filled her did not lessen. Seething and twisting, they made her feel sick and wretched.
The others, no doubt, were celebrating what they had done. But she was not like them.
Not like them. Never like them. Not even in the simplest things.
When she read books that she borrowed from the library, she was always flooded with emotion. As far as she knew, none of the other children read anything at all.
When she sat in her guardians' overgrown garden she was filled with wonder at the beauty of the flowers and their myriad scents. Did the others experience such feelings?
When she lay on her back in the grass and watched the clouds drifting across the sky, she wanted to count how many colours they reflected and refracted from the light of the three suns - but never succeeded. Did the other children ever even look up?
She had not yet reached an age where she might feel contempt for them. For now she assumed they must have some power, some authority, simply because they were older. She saw their togetherness and certainty as their strength and ability. She saw her loneliness and diffidence as her weakness and uselessness. She did not truly realise that the differences between her and them were things she might have been glad of. She did not quite understand how unusual and valuable she might be.
Instead, she saw her insight and tenderness as deficiencies in her character. At the same time she stood in awe of the other children, for all that they were slow, shallow, obtuse, callous and cruel.
3
Home was an old, rambling house of whitewashed stone in an overgrown garden. She put the knife back in its holder in the kitchen. No one had seen her take it. She was not sure her guardians would have cared if they had.
She went to the living room and slumped in an armchair. She wished she could stop feeling so sullied and afraid. She felt that something awful was about to happen to her.
Around her, staring down from the shelves upon which they were arranged, black wooden masks with bulbous eyes and serpent hair scrutinized her - still, silent, waiting. Waiting for night when they might come alive. Anticipating her punishment. Drinking in her guilt. Feeding on her fear. Mocking her. Agreeing with her that she should hate herself.
An hour passed. Outside, the suns moved across the sky. Their light began to stream through the windows, creating colourful shafts filled with slow-moving dust-motes. Hexiya started to feel hot and uncomfortable, but she did not move.
Her guardians, Voitan and Serriss, would be back soon. Perhaps they would know. If they did, they would beat her. But they would also, silently, approve.
4
They came home at their normal time. As always, Voitan reeked of pitch, sawdust, metal and liquor - the stench of the shipyards and the dockside taverns. Serriss's smell was of cheap perfume, rank sweat and leather - she handled furs and rugs all day in someone else's shop.
Voitan saw Hexiya in the living room and nodded his heavy head at her. He was a quiet, ponderous, powerful man, slow to anger but terrifying on the few occasions she had annoyed him. Big and heavy, clumsy and sluggish, he shuffled his feet when he walked, took his time when eating and often knocked things over.
Serriss was a garrulous and blowsy woman, younger than he was but almost as large. Energetic, wrapped in multiple dresses, she talked endlessly while he failed to listen. It was a perfect relationship.
Neither paid much attention to Hexiya. She was glad about it.
Serriss poked her fat, round face through the doorway. 'Make some tea,' she said, and hurried away in a malodorous waft of sickly flowers and poorly-cured hides.
Hexiya did as she was told. When it was done she took the tray outside, to the table on the terrace where they usually took their supper. A minute later Serriss brought out their meal - grain soup, fried fish, hot bread and stuffed fruit, bought at the eatery next to where she worked.
The three of them settled down and ate. Hexiya and Voitan were silent while Serriss talked. She had an extraordinary ability to gorge herself at speed without ever seeming to pause in her prattle.
Hexiya concentrated on her food. When she had finished she gazed around her. The flowers were drooping in the heat. The grass was a dusty yellow and the earth was cracked.
Beyond the garden, over the wall to the west, she could see the Citadel on its hill above the town. To the east, whitened by haze, she could make out the shapes of the ships and boats at the docks - merchanters, coastal vessels, sloops and skiffs and a single sleek warship.
Drifting on the hot evening air came smoke from cooking fires, the scent of grilling meat and the muted, distant voices of people relaxing after work. The town of Kohidra did not seem aware of the killings that had taken place earlier in the day.
But she did not want to think about that. Neither did she want to talk to or listen to her guardians. Their vileness seemed to radiate from them, a stench beneath their stink that no amount of washing would ever rid them of. She was grateful that they took very little interest in her. She was glad that she was largely ignored. She had no idea at all why they had agreed to look after her in the first place.
5
After washing up and tidying everything away, Hexiya retreated to her room - a pleasant space beneath the roof. Its shape was irregular and complex. Eight windows, no two the same, looked out in all directions. A small fireplace lay empty, a tall mirror stood in a corner, her bedding was rolled up on the floor, her few possessions were stacked on shelves and in a chest. A table and chair were set beneath the largest pane, looking east towards the ocean.
As always, there was a scent of oils and turpentine in the air.
The walls were covered with paintings. Her paintings, that she had worked upon hour after hour, day after day. They were of all shapes and sizes. Their colours filled the room - carmine and gold, viridian and vermilion, ochre and turquoise. Their subjects were as varied as their styles. Any adult looking at them would have been astonished by their sophistication. They would not have believed that a child could be capable of such work.
Impossible castles, gargantuan palaces, cemeteries and necropoli, ruins and monuments, sailing ships and wrecks, animals wild and domestic, idyllic sylvan settings, barren deserts, ancient, eroded mountains and scenes from the moons - her pictures were windows into other worlds.
There were depictions of people as well. Wondrous people she had never met - warriors, wise men and beauties, young children and old crones, magnificent queens and terrifying emperors.
There were more abstract pictures too - swirls of colour, geometric shapes and perspective-defying patterns.
As she regarded them, Hexiya reflected that Voitan and Serriss had not come up here in six months. During that time her paintings had multiplied enormously. Occasionally she worried that if her guardians decided to check on her they would throw them away, or punish her for creating them.
In spite of this, it had been so long since they had last taken an interest in her that she had come to regard this attic space as her sanctuary, her haven. Within its confines she could escape the sense of quiet dread that so often filled her. She could find a measure of peace. She could be herself and not have to act like a performer on a stage.
She liked to be alone.
The safety she felt here was in utter opposition to the way she felt about the world outside. The latter, she sensed, was heartless, ruthless and cruel. It held no more for her than fear and the promise of suffering. Sooner or later, she knew, it would close in on her.
Other children, she reminded herself, did not feel this way. Awareness of the fact gnawed within her. Why am I so afraid? she wondered. What is wrong with me?
As if to answer her question, she walked over to the mirror in the corner. It was a good mirror - perfectly flat, perfectly reflective and taller than she was. She stared at herself.
A beautiful child looked back at her, though she did not really perceive her beauty. She was eleven years old, though small for her age. Her long hair was light blonde. Her eyes were a soft, smoky green. Her skin was fair. Her limbs were straight and she had no spare flesh.
Even Hexiya could see no fault in her appearance. But the conviction that there was something the matter with her remained.
CHAPTER TWO
1
The next day was a school day. Hexiya felt a sickness in her stomach as she made her way through the streets, her satchel tucked under her arm. Though it was early and the suns were still riding low over the sea, the heat was already building. Only an occasional breath of wind relieved the stillness. Even the birdsong was muted.
The school was a small building. It was just an ordinary house that had been converted for the purpose. But its walled grounds were pleasant and extensive - a complex expanse of sloping lawns, ridges, close-growing bushes, towering trees, a pond and a stream. Forty-five children attended the place. The oldest were thirteen years old and just coming up to the age when they would join guilds or workshops or be taken into service or find some other form of employment. Only a very few had families or patrons that were wealthy enough to send them to the senior schools at Vayathary City . As for university, it seemed like an impossible dream.
There were three teachers. Hexiya's was a middle-aged woman who seemed curiously emotionless. Perhaps it was her way of protecting herself from the unruly children she had to look after and teach. Yet occasionally Hexiya had seen a flash of real happiness behind the usual sternness of her gaze - gladness that she had understood a mathematical idea, enjoyment at her pleasure in reading.
She settled down at her table and waited as the others shuffled in. The classroom was already hot. Later in the day it would be almost unbearable.
A tall girl she had not seen before sat down two rows in front of her. She was only able to see the back of her - long, straight black hair and a certain fearlessness in her bearing.
When the teacher arrived, she said merely: 'We have a new member of the class. Her name is Kaledria.'
Lessons began - mathematics, astronomy, geography. The children were strangely subdued. Hexiya had expected there to be sinister whisperings among them - dark excitement in the black knowledge of what they had done the previous afternoon. But they just seemed listless, apathetic and frustrated by the sweltering heat.
At one point their teacher asked a question about the northern constellations. The new girl raised her hand. When she spoke it was with a strange accent - pleasant, rich, evoking in Hexiya images of mountains and ice and wild oceans. She was not from Kohidra then. Perhaps she was from far away.
Within the first hour of classes it became clear that Kaledria was cut from a different mould to the other children. Small things struck Hexiya about her - her confidence; the flourish with which she wrote; her ease when speaking with the teacher; her knowledge, that went far beyond what the rest of them had learned. But no one else seemed to notice her.
When their teacher announced that it was time for a break, the other children hurried outside. Hexiya and Kaledria followed more slowly, each on their own.
Hexiya sat by the pond and stared at the fish. After a while she looked up and saw Kaledria standing by the garden wall - a slim, straight figure against a backdrop of crumbling brick and light green vines. Her skin was tanned and her hair was jet black. Her eyes were an extraordinary light blue, like ice reflecting sunlight. Her skirt and top were old and worn but richly woven - faded red, ornamented and well-made. Hexiya guessed that Kaledria was about a year older than she was - and at least six inches taller.
Hexiya might have expected her to be shy and nervous, this being her first day at a new school. Surprisingly, she did not appear to be either. Rather, she seemed merely to have chosen to observe her new classmates for a while.
Then their gazes met, and for a long moment they regarded each other. For once, Hexiya's self-consciousness left her. Kaledria's solemn, curious stare did not disquieten her at all.
Then the new girl approached her.
Even the way she moved was distinctive, thought Hexiya. It hinted at speed, grace and strength. Perhaps she was from the wilds.
Kaledria sat down beside her and they watched the fish together. 'The yellow ones are pretty,' she said. Again her accent - exotic, attractive - was suggestive of northern mountains and hostile seas.
'They change colour as the suns move across the sky,' said Hexiya.
'Do you want a sandwich?' Kaledria reached to a small bag she was carrying.
'Thanks. I forgot mine.'
For the rest of the day Hexiya wondered at the fact that she had found a new friend. No, not a new one, she told herself. Her first friend. She had never before felt what friendship was.
2
After school she went to visit her mother at the asylum - a squat building of heavy green stone, whose architecture seemed intentionally menacing and unpleasant. She liked seeing her, though she also felt pain every time she did so. The doctors told her not to disturb her, not to upset her. If she did, she might return to the wild, berserk, insane state she had been in before she had been committed.
Hexiya had never seen her as anything other than calm. She had only ever witnessed her gentleness, her compassion, her docility. She still could not quite bring herself to believe that she had killed her father.
In a room that overlooked the hospital's atrium, they sat together. The hint of a smile lingered on her mother's face - the contentment she saw every time she came here.
'Mother?'
There was no reply. There never was. Just an infinitesimal nod, imagined perhaps, and a crinkling around the eyes as if her perpetual smile had deepened.
Strange that she would not talk. Strange that she had retreated inside herself, to another place - a place away from reality. Hexiya had to sit right in front of her just to get her to look at her. Even then she was not sure that her eyes were really focused.
Will I become like that? she wondered.
She hoped her mother knew she was there and remembered who she was. She hoped that she would recover from her illness.
'Mother?' she said again. 'Please talk to me.'
Silence.
'I did something awful yesterday.' She almost choked on the words, then forced herself to continue. 'Me and the other children. We went to kill some animals. But they were like us. Just ordinary children.'
Her mother's grey eyes regarded her, smiling, calm.
'I didn't kill any. But I was going to. I can't stop thinking about it. No one else seemed to care. Now they seem to have forgotten.' She paused, then: 'Mother? Do you remember me? Do you know who I am?'
She fell silent, holding the lady's cool, still hand. After a while she took her leave.
She thought about her all the way home. For most of her life her mother had been a refuge for her, a safe place she had always been able to return to. When the world had seemed dangerous and hostile, she had always been there to protect and shelter her.
But no longer.
For months Hexiya had been telling herself that she would wake up. For months she had been trying to persuade herself that things would go back to what they had been before. But now she saw that she had just been fooling herself.
As she reached her guardians' place, tears stung her eyes. She did not want to go indoors. Her life with Voitan and Serriss - loveless, empty and desolate - seemed only to emphasise her loss.
The warmth she had had with her mother, and which she now craved for, seemed obliterated forever.
CHAPTER THREE
1
The next day was free, though Hexiya would have preferred to go to school - she wanted to see Kaledria again. Instead she went to the market square and bought the things she had been instructed to - food, mostly. Serriss had given her a long list. It would be hard to carry everything home.
There was an art shop in one corner of the square - the place she normally went to if she needed a roll of canvas or some new oil-paints or brushes. She did not stop to browse, but as she passed by the proprietor - a black-haired old lady with a fluting voice - happened to step out of the door. Seeing Hexiya, she nodded at her and grinned a wide grin full of crooked yellow teeth. Hexiya did not miss the knowing look in her eyes. Nodding in return, she hurried past and suppressed an internal shudder.
Just as she was about to leave the marketplace she spotted Kaledria at a stall, bargaining with a seller over the price of some fruit. Kaledria, as if aware of her gaze - though her back was towards her - turned and looked straight at her. She smiled in recognition and waved.
Hexiya set down her bags and waited. A few moments later Kaledria walked over to her, triumphantly holding a couple of bright red fire-fruit that looked so full of juice that they must be about to burst.
'I bought this for you,' she said. And she tossed one to her, high over her head.
Hexiya reached up and caught it with an outstretched hand - reflexive, unthinking, graceful. 'Thanks.'
'Where are you going?'
'I have to take this shopping home.'
'I'll come with you. Can I carry something?'
They walked silently along the streets of Kohidra. Yellow dust drifted in the air and mixed with layers of red and violet pollen. Flowers drooped from plants that crawled over walls of glassy stone. People lolled in the shade of doorways or sat beneath arches or in gardens. From the Citadel to the harbour, from the temples to the grainfields, from the merchant houses to the dwellings of the peasants, the town was eerily quiet as it sweltered under the midday heat.
'You're afraid,' said Kaledria, very softly.
Hexiya was startled for a moment, then nodded. 'The day before yesterday . . . I did something . . . saw something.'
The northern girl took her arm. Her touch was cool and thrilling and seemed to rush right through Hexiya's body. She could not remember the last time she had been comforted by anyone.
'What happened?' asked Kaledria.
Hexiya looked across at her. 'I'll tell you,' she said softly. 'But not here.'
They reached her guardians' home and she stacked the provisions she had bought in the cupboards. Kaledria drifted in and out of the ground-floor rooms as she did so, looking curiously about her.
'You don't belong here,' she said as Hexiya put the last of the things away.
'No.'
Thirsty, they drank a couple of glasses of water. Afterwards they went out into the garden. A small area at the end was walled off. Once it had been glassed over, enclosing tropical fruit trees. The roof had fallen in long ago. Now a great redfruit tree sprawled over the place. Beneath its twisted trunk was a shaded place where Hexiya liked to go - to read, to be by herself, free from intrusion.
They settled down on the parched grass and set to peeling the fire-fruit that Kaledria had bought them.
'What happened?' asked the northern girl around a mouthful of crimson seeds.
Hexiya told her. 'They said they were animals,' she said as she finished. 'But they were children, as much as you and me.'
Kaledria was silent for a while, then said: 'I didn't hear anything about it.'
Hexiya shrugged.
'That's strange, don't you think? Not to hear anything about it? In the last town I lived in, soldiers would have been going from door to door, asking questions. The people wouldn't have stopped talking about it.'
'Perhaps nobody found the bodies. Perhaps the dead childrens' parents are out right now, wondering what happened to them.'
Kaledria looked at her, gazing into her eyes. Her pupils were deep, her ice-blue irises light even in the shade. 'Why did you go with the others?' she asked gently, gravely.
Hexiya looked down. 'They told me we all had to go. They told me they knew a secret and that they would tell me what it was. But I had to bring a knife if I wanted to know it.' She felt tears well up and run down her cheeks. 'When I said I didn't want to know their secret, they taunted me and pushed me around. It went on and on. I thought that if I went, they would stop. And I was so tired of being an outsider.'
Angry with herself, she rubbed her eyes before continuing - she did not want Kaledria to think she was just a weak and stupid child. 'Later,' she said, 'when they told me we would kill some animals, I thought it was a game of some kind. Like they had some imaginary enemies they pretended to be afraid of. But they weren't imaginary. They weren't even animals. They were children.'
'This town isn't big,' said Kaledria. 'You must have known some of them.'
She shook her head. 'No. I didn't. I wondered about that too.'
They spoke no more of it. Instead they explored the small, walled-off area, looking for places to hide. It was partly play, partly serious. Even Kaledria, whose whole bearing and manner seemed to radiate fearlessness, seemed slightly afraid after hearing Hexiya's story.
Tangled plants and roots and a dilapidated coal shed lent places that might be overlooked if someone entered the garden. But the best place in which to conceal themselves was in the redfruit tree. Two boughs, each fully a yard thick, sprouted from the same side, one just above the other. As the trunk curved, one of the branches arched over the other before drooping down towards the ground. The lower limb afforded a platform upon which the two girls could sit or crouch. They would be invisible from the ground, hidden from the house and shielded from the rest of the town by the top of the wall that edged the garden. But if they stood up, they could peer through narrow gaps towards the harbour or towards the Citadel, and the house was in plain sight.
They felt safer, sitting there through part of the afternoon. They talked in hushed voices. They shared their fears about what might happen when the dead children were found. They wondered at the fact that the children they went to school with could kill so easily.
Later they talked of other things, and a curious intimacy opened between them. Magic seemed to grow from their companionship. Though they were filled with wonder by it, they did not think about it in abstract terms. It did not occur to them that, in meeting each other, their lives had fundamentally changed.
After some time, Hexiya went back to the house. She returned with a jug full of water, two cups and a bag of sweet pastries. She handed them up to Kaledria, then climbed back into the tree to join her.
'Where are you from?' she asked after she had finished eating.
'Araxis. It's an island, one of a chain strung across the ocean, about three thousand miles north of here. I was born into a family of hunters. We lived in the wilds, in the interior of the island. We had three tents of finely-cured leather, and moved to a new place every two or three months. My earliest memories are framed by frozen forests and ice-covered mountains.
'And I remember the lessons I was given. My father and mother taught me the arts of stalking, tracking and trapping. They showed me how to identify plants and how to forage for food. They instructed me in the building of shelters, in fishing, in skinning animals and curing hides, in making warm clothes and good boots.
'Each summer we went to a coastal village, and lived there for two months. We traded what we had gathered during the year, then rested for a while. But one day there was an attack from the sea. Northern raiders came in at night, slew most of the people and took what they could find. My parents were killed in the attack.' Kaledria fell silent, looking down. Grief was written upon her face - a sudden and striking contrast to what Hexiya had seen of her so far. It was a while before she continued. 'I hid. The raiders left. Two days later a pair of trading vessels put in. One of the captains was a woman called Avassia. She asked if I wanted to go with her and I spent the next two years sailing the oceans.
'Recently, Avassia decided that she wanted to retire. She had made her fortune and wanted to settle down. So she bought a place here in Kohidra. We moved in ten days ago.'
As Hexiya would find out, Kaledria was a girl of wild dreams, passionate emotions, untamed ideas, ferocious energies, deep compassion, inexplicable melancholies and innate kindness. In the short time she had been in Kohidra, she had already roamed through the forests that grew upon the western side of the town. She had swum in the sea, out to where an old fisherman in his boat had grinned at her and called her crazy. Brave, confident, considerate, she was already drawing Hexiya into her world of wonder and magic. She gave her warmth where there had been none.
But for all that Kaledria was full of reckless notions and a myriad fancies, Hexiya's imagination was something else.
2
That night Hexiya lay sleepless in bed. Her mind sang with images and swirling emotions. Pleasure in her new friendship mixed with black fear and shame. The one fought with the other but could not give her rest. It was not until her window paled with deep maroon light that she finally drifted into an uneasy doze.
CHAPTER FOUR
1
'Perhaps we should go to the hideout,' said Kaledria the next morning.
They were standing on the Ridge - a high spur to the north of the harbour that jutted into the deep green waters of the ocean. Looking down over the docks and shipyards, the view was partially whited out by the amount of haze in the air. The boats were lent a dreamlike quality and seemed only half real. Above them the three suns - red, mauve, white - were veiled to an indistinct but brilliant glare.
Hexiya squatted down, then sat on the baked earth. 'I'm afraid.'
'But you want to go.'
She looked up at Kaledria, whose long black hair was so dark against the whiteness and whose ice blue eyes were so brilliant, effulgent, luminous. 'Yes,' she said, very softly.
'We should go soon,' continued the northern girl.
'I know. But I'm afraid. I feel like . . .'
Kaledria sat down beside her. She regarded her gravely, quietly.
'I feel like something terrible is going to happen,' said Hexiya. 'What happened to those children was dreadful, but . . . This morning I had a dream. I can't remember the details. But I thought that something dark, ugly, revolting was squirming around in my head. And I was trying to shake it out of me but I couldn't. I couldn't even wake up. Like some parasite was living in my brain.' She looked down. 'I felt so sick when I woke up. And I can still feel the vileness inside me. I can taste it.'
Kaledria said: 'You think that the children that died . . . You think that there's more to blame than just the horrible children we go to school with.'
Hexiya nodded. 'Yes, I do. Something more. Something far worse.'
2
They made their way down from the Ridge. As the ground levelled out they passed into a wood of trees whose grey leaves were parched and whose grey trunks were flaking. The dust on the cracked ground scuffed up in little clouds with each step they took. Soon they reached the beggars' quarter with its stench and its wreckage of ancient buildings. A scrawny toddler played by a well; an old woman with a mindless, toothless grin stared numbly at them as they passed; the sounds of a vicious argument came from an upstairs window.
Among old tenements they went, then crossed a rotting bridge over a dried-up stream. Beyond it was a street of workshops where men shouted and machinery pounded. The smells of smoke, leather, metal, oil and dust hung in the air.
'Down here,' said Hexiya, and led the way through a series of narrow alleys. Old stone apartments packed together in chaotic array reared around them.
At length she stopped before a corner. No one seemed to be around. The clamour of bargaining and bidding could be heard in the near distance - traders and merchants at a warehouse auction. The noise of work from the boatyards and the tanneries came to them more faintly.
She was afraid to look around the corner. At the end of the narrow way beyond it was the flight of steps leading down to the low entrance of the place where the children had been hiding.
'We're here,' she whispered. 'It's at the end of the alley. Down the stairs.'
Staying close to the wall, Kaledria peered around the stonework. Then she looked back at Hexiya. 'The door's open.'
'All right.'
They hurried across the short distance to the steps. Just as they reached them there was a shout from behind them.
Hexiya's heart was already pounding. With a little cry she leapt back against the wall of the alley, pressing herself into a doorway. Kaledria was beside her in an instant.
Looking back the way they had come, they saw a man and a woman passing by at the end of the street, talking noisily. Hexiya shook her head and managed a tired smile.
Down the steps they walked. The door was half open. It looked very dark within.
When Kaledria grasped Hexiya's hand, she was glad.
'No one here,' said Kaledria, peeking inside. But they could not miss the smell that was drifting from the opening: rotting meat. Nor did they miss the low droning noise that came faintly through the gloom.
Kaledria, utterly silent, went in. Hexiya followed. The place was almost black after the glare of the sun-drenched streets. They stood still for a moment, waiting for their eyes to adjust.
A small table and a couple of chairs were overturned on the floor. Shelves stacked with tins lined the walls. The droning noise was louder. Light glimmered from the back of the place, around a corner.
Hexiya nodded towards the glow. 'We chased them up there,' she murmured.
Round the corner, up a few steps and along a short passage they went. At the end were the stairs to the rear entrance the children had tried to escape by - only to run into the plunging knives of those waiting in ambush.
The back door was open. A cloud of insects buzzed loudly over a black bulk wedged in the way. The stink of putrefying meat was appalling.
Kaledria caught her breath suddenly. She stepped quickly forwards, mounting the stairs to the carcass.
She turned back, regarding her friend. 'It's an animal,' she said through a hand that covered her nose. There was relief in her voice.
Hexiya ran to join her. Looking down, she regarded the body uncomprehendingly. It was a kavanta - a gross-bodied animal with black fur and a blunt face, bred for its meat. Insects crawled in a writhing mass over its suppurating flesh.
Suddenly a shadow crossed the open doorway, blocking out the outside glare for a moment. They heard a thud, a grunt of effort and then a dragging noise.
Silently, fearful, they crept back down the stairs. Just as they reached the bottom and were about to flee, the door was kicked carelessly wide.
'Hey!'
They turned. A man was standing there, framed by the light.
'What are you doing here?' he asked. There was no threat in his voice, just surprise.
The normality of his question shocked Hexiya such that she was speechless for a moment.
'This some kind of hideout of yours?' asked the man. He was past his youth but not yet old. He wore gloves and worn, faded working clothes. He looked like a working man - perhaps he was from one of the workshops or the boatyard. 'Better come out of there,' he continued matter-of-factly. 'Not good to be too close to rotting meat.' And with that he stooped and slammed a hook into the side of the dead kavanta. Leaning back, he pulled on the rope that was attached to it, heaving the heavy body back from the doorway and out into the alley beyond. The door, with nothing to block it any more, swung closed. They were in darkness but for the narrow line of brilliance down one side of it.
Hexiya was about to run back the way they came, but Kaledria, apparently curious, climbed the steps and pushed through. Hexiya, summoning her courage, followed her.
They emerged into the place where the ambush had taken place - children lying in wait for other children, to cut them down.
The man glanced up from where he had wrestled the great animal. The dead bodies of eight or ten other beasts were piled up in a wagon behind him. He appeared to be wondering how he was going to lift the kavanta - the largest and heaviest of them - in with the others.
'I've never seen anything like it,' he said, stepping away from his cart and away from the smell. 'Where'd they come from?' He seemed to be thinking out loud, not really asking them a question.
Hexiya looked on and wondered. No two carcasses were the same. She counted them and saw that there were nine of them - nine different species, though all of them farm animals rather than wild.
'Did you see what happened?' asked the man.
She shook her head.
'You play in that old cellar, huh? It's not the safest place. This building should be knocked down really. Be careful.' Looking back, regarding his wagon full of rotting meat, he shook his head. 'I just don't get it,' he said. 'Who'd bring them here? What for?'
'What are you going to do with them?' asked Kaledria.
The man turned, regarded them, seemed to really look at them for the first time. 'I'm taking them away. Neighbours complained about the smell. I work for the town. Never had to do anything like this before though.'
'How'd they die?'
He glanced at her, surprised at the question, a frown touching his brow. He shrugged. 'I don't know.' He stood there, still shaking his head. 'Not a mark on them as far as I can see. But they've decayed a bit so it's difficult to tell.'
He turned back to his work. Kaledria and Hexiya walked past him. Just as they neared the end of the alleyway there was movement from a doorway on the opposite side of the street into which it opened. Emerging from it, a man with a weathered brown face and sparse grey hair set off up the road. From where he had been standing he might have been watching them.
Hexiya recognised him. He was an old fisherman who worked his nets on the far side of the Ridge, catching seafood for his wife to sell in the market. A kindly man, as she recalled. He had often exchanged pleasant words with her mother. His name, she thought, was Malajik.
3
Hexiya and Kaledria walked away from the place, not really thinking about where they were heading. Soon they found themselves at the river, and made their way up onto a narrow stone bridge. On the north bank was the ornate edifice of the Merchanters' Guild. To the south was a little park.
They stopped at the summit of the bridge and stared down into the water beneath them - a meandering trickle through baked mud.
Hexiya said: 'It doesn't make sense. They were children. I saw them. And they only died three days ago. Not long enough to rot like that. Those dead animals had been there a lot longer.'
Kaledria, elbows resting on the stone rail, said quietly: 'Tell me about the children you saw. Everything you remember.'
'They were like ordinary children, except . . . Well, maybe a couple of them were ordinary. I remember a boy and a girl who seemed to be about a year older than me. The others . . . They seemed rather slimmer than most. Wide-eyed. Different somehow. They didn't really cry out even when they were dying. Like there was something odd about them.'
They discussed it for a while and wondered about the senselessness of what they had seen. But at length Kaledria said: 'I have to go. I promised Avassia that I'd help her this afternoon. She's still fixing up the house and moving her things in.'
'I have to get back too. It's my turn to cook.'
CHAPTER FIVE
1
At school the next day, the children played a game during a break between lessons.
Hexiya and Kaledria were standing by the pond when two of them approached - Vania, the fat girl, and Arak . Seeing them, Hexiya's mind went back to the killings in the alley - the way Arak had taken pleasure from cutting a boy's throat; and how she had run away with Vania, not wanting to be alone.
Arak was big for his age. Slate-skinned, dark-eyed and muscular, his family had moved to Kohidra from the south. There was a swaggering insolence in his manner. A sneer always sat on his crooked mouth.
'You have to play with us,' he said.
'It's a game for all of us,' said Vania.
'Some of us hide,' said Arak . 'The rest of us hunt. The hunters and the hunted have to try to hit each other with a stone. If you're hit, you're dead - out of the game.'
Hexiya shook her head a fraction.
'No choice,' said Arak . 'We need the whole garden and you're in it. Or do you want to try to escape?'
Hexiya shook her head again. The entrance of the school was guarded by a fat man with a face destroyed by drink. His slavering dog was even more fearful. There was no doubting the severity of the punishment anyone would receive if caught trying to leave the school during school hours.
'Let's play,' said Kaledria, and Hexiya did not miss a note of challenge in her voice. It was aimed directly at Arak .
They walked around to the front of the school building. The children were all gathering there, more than forty of them. They had collected small stones and were putting them in a pile.
They fell silent when Arak and Vania walked up to them. All except a tall, pale-skinned boy called Varai. 'Who's hiding first?' he shouted.
'Stand in a circle,' said Arak . He was holding a stick. One end was sharpened. 'Whoever this points to. We need four people.' And with that he tossed the stick spinning into the air. It landed on the ground at his feet.
'Javanti!' said Vania triumphantly, pointing at a small girl with red hair who seemed to crumple under her scornful gaze.
Arak threw the stick again.
'Oriv!' This was a big, fat boy with a face like a plate.
Again Arak tossed the stick.
'Hexiya!' cried Vania.
Hexiya felt no surprise. It had been inevitable. She did not know how Arak could have thrown the stick so accurately, but she had not doubted the result.
'Wait,' said Kaledria, as he was about to throw it a fourth time. 'I'll be the last.'
'All right. Why not?'
The children all ran for the pile of stones. They were small, but would still do some damage if any of them struck anyone in the face. Soon everyone had a stone each.
'You have a minute to hide!' said Arak , malice unmistakeable in his voice. 'Then we'll be coming for you.'
They ran. Javanti and Oriv went in opposite directions, just wanting to get away.
'Stay with me,' said Kaledria to Hexiya.
The two of them headed back around the school building. Then they made their way down one side of the garden, keeping close to the perimeter wall.
Less than a minute had passed by the time they reached the end of the grounds. Here there were a lot of hillocks, and rocks and boulders jutted from the earth. Everything was overgrown. Trees arched overhead.
'Up!' said Kaledria as they reached a tree with wide, sprawling limbs.
They climbed.
'Go further. Up to the next branch.'
Hexiya reached the higher level just as a shout went up from near the school building. It sounded like Oriv or Javanti had been found and was being chased.
'Lie flat now,' said Kaledria from the lower branch. 'The bough's too thick for them to see you from below.'
'What about you?'
'We'll see.' And she stayed where she was, crouching low, peering out through the foliage, gazing up the slope towards the school.
The children were spreading out through the grounds now, singly or in pairs or threes. A couple passed by not far away. No one looked up.
'Look,' whispered Hexiya, pointing. Javanti was creeping through the underbrush not fifteen yards away from them, shielded on one side by a hillock.
They watched as she crawled under a bush. A moment after she had hidden, Arak came running over the ridge. His face was flushed and sweaty. There was an animal excitement in his eyes.
To Hexiya's shock and surprise, Kaledria suddenly dropped from her branch to the ground. She landed gracefully, easily and almost silently despite the height.
Arak heard her, but by the time he had spun round and looked, she was concealed behind a rock.
A moment later he passed within a yard of Javanti. From where she lay, Hexiya saw the red-haired girl trying to huddle further down beneath the bush that concealed her. Her face was white and drawn with fear. Though she clutched her stone and could easily have hit Arak from where she was, she seemed to have forgotten about it.
Perhaps Javanti moved. Perhaps Arak heard her breathing or somehow sensed her nearness. Suddenly he turned and kicked at the bush. Seeing her, he raised his arm to throw his stone into her face.
'Hey!' said Kaledria in a sharp whisper.
He whirled round.
With all the grace and beauty of a hunting cat, she leapt from her cover. With three bounds she was within a few yards of him.
He threw his stone at her. Effortlessly she caught it left-handed, then threw her own with her right.
It struck him hard, right in the centre of his forehead.
He crumpled, his hands going to his face. Even from where she lay, Hexiya could see blood welling between his fingers.
Kaledria crouched by Javanti. 'Stay here,' she said softly, retrieving the stone that had hit Arak . 'Give me your stone too.'
Wordlessly, the red-haired girl handed it over.
Hexiya saw two more hunters approaching from the west side of the garden. Though Kaledria could not have seen them from where she crouched, she looked about suddenly, alert, aware of danger; and stood slowly, peering through the brush.
Arak rolled upon the dirt, gasping with pain.
'You're dead,' said Kaledria, and there was menace in her voice. 'So shut up.'
She stalked forwards through the bushes and between the hillocks. Then she waited, low and ready.
The two hunters walked right past her, close enough for her to reach out and touch.
She came to her feet behind them.
They heard her and turned. She threw two of her stones simultaneously, one from each hand. Both found their marks - the centre of each child's forehead.
They cried out, though she had not thrown the stones hard. When she pushed each of them in the chest they fell backwards to the ground.
'You're dead,' she said. 'So lie still.'
She took their stones from them.
And so it went on. In ones and twos and threes the hunters came to investigate the overgrown end of the garden. Each time, Kaledria knew where they were and where they were going. She threw stones that hit them on the back of the head, in the chest, or in the centre of their foreheads - always with unerring accuracy.
The children she hit in the face were the ones she most disliked.
Eventually there were only a few hunters left and they were staying away from the end of the school grounds. So Kaledria stood up and walked openly towards the school building, out of the brush and across the grass.
Three hunters ran for her. One - Varai - threw his stone, but she contemptuously ducked aside.
Spinning like a dancer, she threw three stones straight to their marks. Three children gasped at the stinging pain.
A minute later Kaledria had disposed of the rest. Vania, slow and fat, was the last person she found - a hunter who had become hunted. For her she saved two stones. From a distance she hurled them. One hit her in the mouth, knocking a tooth loose and splitting her lip. The second struck her hard on the temple.
By this time the rest of the children were back on their feet and making their way to the school building. Some were already forgetting about the game. Others were angry.
Hexiya went to join Kaledria. As she neared her she saw Varai furiously dabbing blood from his forehead and speaking urgently with Arak . Tears of rage were in his eyes as he pointed towards where Kaledria stood. Arak , however, put a restraining hand on Varai's shoulder.
Hexiya did not misread the message. He was telling him to wait until later for their revenge. Later, when the gentler of the children would not be present. Later, outside the school when there would be no risk of punishment.
2
Back in the classroom, the atmosphere was strange. Twenty pupils were in the lower - Hexiya's - class. Though Arak , Vania and Varai were in the upper class, their friends in the lower were subdued - some of them with a visible bruise. A few of the other children glanced at Kaledria now and again with a mixture of admiration and awe.
Kaledria herself acted as if nothing had happened.
Hexiya looked on and wondered. Kaledria, she suspected, was creating something of a revolution. Arak and his cronies had bullied the other children for too long. And suddenly the other children were beginning to suspect that they had a champion in her.
'What have you all been up to?' asked their teacher - stony-faced, tonelessly - as she looked around the class at the rather dusty children. But it was a rhetorical question. Probably she did not want to know.
3
Kaledria and Hexiya walked through the Old Town together, past the Temple of Stars and the Temple of the Red Moon. They went quickly. For all Kaledria's apparent fearlessness, they both knew that Arak and his minions were likely to be after them as soon as they got out of school.
'Maybe you'd like to come round?' asked Kaledria as they went. 'Avassia asked if I'd like to bring a friend over. Maybe you could stay the night.'
'I want to visit my mother. After that I have to help Serriss with the meal. But I could come by after that, if she'll let me.'
Kaledria smiled at her, pleased. Then she looked suddenly sombre. 'Your mother?'
'She's in the asylum,' said Hexiya, grimacing. 'She won't speak. She hardly even moves. They say she killed my father. That she went really crazy.'
'Do you want me to come with you?'
'If you want.' She glanced at her. 'Avassia gives you a lot of freedom.'
'That's true. But I like helping her with things anyway. She's . . .' Kaledria seemed to struggle to find the right word, then settled for: '. . . wise. And kind.'
4
Before long they reached the asylum - heavy, brooding and built like a prison to keep the afflicted away from the sane in case their condition might be contagious. Every time she saw it, Hexiya felt that its very shape was a portrayal of black insanity - a depiction in stone of the madness of the people within.
The guard on duty at the entrance - a tall, kindly man - recognised her.
'She's doing well today,' he said, looking down at her. There was sympathy in his voice.
They heard distant shrieks as they stepped into the entrance hall, but no one was around. The smell of the place was unpleasant - of unwashed bodies, urine and antiseptic.
'This way.'
They passed a room where some guards were wrestling with a patient - a huge, bear-like man with a full beard. He quietened just as they walked by.
'Wait!' he yelled.
Hexiya stopped, took a step back and regarded him. The guards that had been struggling with him glanced at her.
'You're one of us!' said the big man. 'You are!' And suddenly a beatific smile crossed his face. He went limp in the hands of those who had been trying to restrain him and allowed them to tie him down upon his bed.
Kaledria took her arm and they continued down the corridor.
'In here,' said Hexiya, indicating a room that overlooked the hospital's atrium.
Before they went in, Kaledria halted. 'What is your mother's name?' she asked.
'Havena,' replied Hexiya.
They knocked and entered.
'Mother?'
She was sitting with her back to them and did not turn her head or acknowledge their presence. Though the door to her room was always unlocked, a chain was fitted to a manacle around one of her wrists. The other end was attached to the wall beside her.
Every time Hexiya came here she looked a little thinner. Her skin was like pale marble. Her light grey eyes were sunken and seemed to be looking inwards. She wondered how she could possibly be a danger to anyone.
'Mother?'
She hesitated, then kissed her on the cheek. Did she see an infinitesimal smile touch her mouth, a minute crinkling of the skin around her eyes?
'I brought a friend of mine. Kaledria.'
Kaledria took Havena's hand for a moment and squeezed it.
'Mother,' said Hexiya. 'Please speak to me.'
But the lady did not move.
As always, Hexiya did what she could to bring her back from the inner place to which she had retreated. As always, it did no good. Today her mother did not seem to see her even if she sat right in front of her. She merely stared ahead of her, her eyes unfocused. When Hexiya moved away, her gaze remained utterly still - directed now at the yellow creepers that grew over the sills of the wide windows. But she did not seem to see them either.
At length they took their leave. There was nothing they could say or do that would change anything.
Hexiya shook her head as they stepped out of the asylum into the afternoon sunlight. Standing in the dusty street, she turned to Kaledria and saw the concern with which her friend was regarding her.
'I used to think of my mother as eternal,' she said. 'Like a presence that surrounded me and filled me, always warm and protective.
'Once she read me a bedtime story about a goddess who created the world and cared for it. And it was good to imagine that there was this wise and ageless woman who was one with the whole planet and who loved it. I remember the tale very clearly.' She sighed. 'That's what I thought my mother was like. A creator-goddess. Someone of immeasurable power. Someone who would never leave me.'
Kaledria looked deep into her eyes. Her light blue gaze was brilliant in the light of the suns. When she spoke, emotion made her voice hoarse. 'I thought my parents would always be there too,' she said. 'And then they were slain by reavers.' She bit her lower lip then said: 'It happened in a moment. There was nothing I could do.'
The two girls walked for a while together, in silent understanding. At length they had to part company to go to their homes. Kaledria described to Hexiya exactly where she lived so that she could find the place without difficulty.
'I'll come by later,' said Hexiya, 'if Serriss and Voitan will let me.'
**