Thirty-Five

F U G I T I V E S

 

In the end they waited three days for the city gates to open again, eating berries mostly, and a fish Arianna managed to spear from the banks of the lake with a pike she’d made by sharpening the end of a bough with her sword. The worst thing had been the cold. It was more than half a day before she or Neythan were able to rid themselves of the lingering bone-deep chill from having remained in the open air and dew of the lakeside wood for two straight nights, huddled together with only fodder and a small fire for warmth.

When Caleb eventually emerged from the city he came out on a mule-drawn cart he’d traded for, exchanging the sword and cloak Neythan had left behind, and making up the rest of the price with a small golden trinket he’d taken from the tomb of Analatheia in Hanesda. Neythan only looked at him when he explained that part. Caleb, unconcerned, shrugged back. Neythan wondered what else he might have taken but was too grateful for the cart to ask.

Neythan and Arianna met him where the road turned by the forest, running up from behind and leaping into the trundling cart to cover themselves. They used the waiting blankets in the cartbed to hide and stay warm as Caleb drove along the road out. It wasn’t until they were beyond sight of the city watchtower that Neythan told Caleb to turn them west, toward Ilysia, before going on to explain why the woman they’d been hunting for the last half year was now in the cart with them, along for the ride.

“So, I have fulfilled my end of the bargain then,” Caleb said.

“You have.”

“And you will not forget our covenant.”

“You know that I cannot, Caleb.”

All of which Arianna observed with interest, declining to ask for explanation as she lay down beneath the blankets in the cart and finally went to sleep.

It was late evening when they arrived at the township. A broad sprawl of houses, tents and sheds stretched out along a narrow grassy stream, a city in almost every way save the lack of a wall and watchtower and the untidy make-do way the houses clustered together. They tethered the mule against a mooring post nearby a wadi on the outskirts of the settlement, leaving it to lap at the water whilst they set a shelter by turning the cart on its side and fastening tent sheets between it and a young tree.

“I’m surprised you believed her so readily,” Caleb said quietly when Arianna had wandered down to the water to bathe.

“I’m still not sure I do.”

“Then why is she here?”

Neythan shrugged wearily. “The things she said… they make sense. They make sense of everything really. Why she killed Yannick. Where she’d been in the time since. Why she was with the sharíf… And then there is what she has said of Elias. It all points the same way.”

“And what way is that?”

Neythan looked sidelong at him. “A heretic among the elders.”

Caleb’s eyebrows climbed.

Neythan waited. “You’ve nothing to say? I thought you’d be glad to hear me finally say it.”

“I’m glad for you to heed the truth, however uncomfortable it may be.’

“Well. Be satisfied then. I’ve heeded.”

Again Caleb didn’t answer.

“Did you bring the book?”

Caleb raised a finger and turned to the sack of provisions to rummage. He pulled out the foot-long scroll and put it down in front of them.

“Thank you, Caleb.”

Neythan uncovered the scroll and slowly unrolled the page, bringing it to the last place he’d examined.

“Thing must stretch thirty feet,” Caleb said.

“Further, I think. The roll’s an inch either side of the pin. Whatever story it tells is a long one.”

“You’re obsessed with it.”

“I’m just interested.”

“Why? What’s so interesting?”

“You’ve seen the name that marks the cover, Caleb. Qoh’leth was father of the Brotherhood.”

“What I see is that no matter how many times you look at the thing the words remain unreadable, whatever the name of the book.”

Neythan just shifted the pin, lengthening the scroll to see more of the strange dots and glyphs. They seemed pressed into the page, lifting from it like scars, and there were patches of fabric and thin shards of bone, wood and metal threaded into parts of the vellum. “There must be a way to read it.”

“If there is you’ll not find it by ogling the thing every night.”

“You’ve a better suggestion?”

Caleb shook his head and turned from sifting through the provisions to squat by the fire with his long palms outstretched. “You and your lust for meaning, Neythan,” he said slowly. “And so now we go to Ilysia.”

Neythan turned from the page and looked at him. “You’re displeased.”

Caleb rubbed his hands above the warmth and shrugged.

“All our aims meet there. You want to know who betrayed you all those years ago. And I want to know the truth of… of all this. Why they decreed for Yannick to kill Ari, if they did. Why the elder met with the sharíf’s chamberlain in the brothel. I must know if she is a betrayer, and to what end. Or if some other truth lies at the heart of all this.”

Caleb chuckled quietly into the fire, wagging his head.

“What’s so funny?”

He straightened, standing over the short flames. “Some other truth, you say… and tell me, Neythan. What is truth?”

Neythan laid the scroll aside.

“After all you’ve witnessed. And still you do not consider yourself, Neythan.”

“Consider myself?”

“You’ve seen your friends butchered at the hands of one another. You’ve journeyed half the length of the Sovereignty. You’ve even seen the countenance of a Watcher… and yet you’re still seeking for the world to have an order to it.”

“I’m seeking for answers to what was done.”

“And what if there are none. Or only some.”

“Then why do you seek your betrayers?”

“Vengeance, Neythan. Only vengeance. That is all this world is. There is no order. No great law to it all, no perfect and pleasing way from which things have fallen. There are only men and women, with their greed and their pain and their pleasures, and all they are, all they do, is to seek whatever ends those appetites determine.” He squatted down again and took a stick and began turning the half-cut of log in the flames, watching the cinders spark as it rolled. “You’ll not find answers in the hearts of men, Neythan. Only ever deepening fog, and a continuing desire for those things that are his own, whether kin or riches. Seek your meaning and answers a hundred years or more, whether in Ilysia or in that scroll. But you’ll find none. There is no right. No law. Man is without reason, save for whatever reason serves his belly and that fog, and the desires that lie beneath it. Kin and riches, Neythan. There is nothing else.”

“Then why are there Watchers? Why did you believe I’d witnessed one?”

“Why shouldn’t I? I’ve seen a great many strange things I’d have not thought true of the world. But I do not assume their virtue. No. If there is a law that all living things hold to then it is this. Whether man, beast or Watcher, each holds to what is his own, and in this way each is a law unto himself.”

“And so what then? You’d have me seek nothing?”

“I’d have you seek what can be found, Neythan. As I do.”

“As you do what?” Arianna came stalking slowly up the damp grassy slope from the wadi, rubbing at her wetted hair with the ragged towels Caleb had brought from Qadesh. She came to a stop beside him and stood there in front of the fire, her face glowing with its colour. She looked at each of them. “Well, don’t stop on my account.” She prodded the towel into her ears to dry them and then tugged at the tunic she’d changed into, patting herself down. “It’s a little baggy but I think it’ll do. It’s warmer than the dress.” She glanced up at them again and gestured. “I’ve interrupted?”

“No,” Neythan sighed. “No interruption.” He began to roll up the book again. “It’s getting late. We should get some sleep.”

“Ah,” Arianna said. “About that… it may be we’ll have to leave a little sooner, or, well… soon.”

“Why?”

She continued rubbing at her hair and turned, looking for a blanket. “When I was bathing, you see, a couple of men saw me and, well… I suppose they thought they’d come in and have their way… I don’t think it’ll be long before someone finds them.”

“Finds them?”

Arianna turned to Neythan. She saw the look on his face. “Why always so dark-minded, Neythan? They’re just… sleeping. I expect they’ll wake by the morning. It’s just I hadn’t the energy to hide them very well. I’ve eaten no more than half a loaf and a few berries in three days. We need to do something about that, by the way.”

Caleb shook his head, smiling. He glanced across the fire at Neythan. “You know, she’s growing on me, I think.”

“That’s because you’ve already had a chance to wash.”

Arianna shrugged and grimaced in commiseration. “Sorry?”

Neythan sighed. “Where are they?”

“Amongst the reeds by the water.”

“Come, then. It’s too dark for us to journey on anywhere else, and we need the rest besides. We’ll hide the men together. And then set up camp elsewhere along the wadi.”

“But I’ve only just got dry.”

“Come, Ari.”

Arianna sighed and looked at Caleb. “Have you put him in this mood?”

Caleb, still amused, brandished his palms in disavowal.

“Arianna.”

“Fine, fine. I’m coming.”