‘What have you found?’ Flick asked.
‘It’s not Cal,’ Colt said.
‘Then who?’
Colt glanced above Flick’s head at the crowd. It was clear that not everyhar yet knew what grisly secret lay within. ‘Just not Cal,’ he said, ‘but somehar who ran into Cal.’
‘Let me through,’ Flick said.
‘If the sight of what you saw at home made you pass out, you won’t take this,’ Colt said, but he lowered an arm.
Flick walked past him. The darkness of the interior was intense after the sunlight outside. He saw Seel, Stringer and a couple of other high-ranking hara doing something at the far end, near the altar. They were limned in light coming through a high window, framed in the act of cutting something down. There was a smell: terrible, meaty, sweet and foul. Flick turned his head away. He had seen a white, blood-streaked, dangling arm. He closed his eyes for a few moments, taking deep breaths, then went back outside.
‘Can I do anything?’ he said to Colt. ‘Does Seel need me to do anything?’
‘Are you up to cleaning the mess at home?’
Flick nodded slowly, his lips drawn into a thin line. ‘I could do that.’
The house was quiet, but for the lazy buzzing of flies in the kitchen, circling endlessly in the centre of the room. There air was sickly sweet. Flick went into the pantry and pulled out a mop and bucket. He filled the bucket at the sink. The water was bright and sparkling like diamonds, the sound it made so loud. Slopping water onto the floor, he lifted the bucket from the sink. He’d overfilled it: water went everywhere, over his clothes, his feet.
He began by the door, and by the time he’d reached the table, he had to change the water. He felt light-headed, disorientated, as if he was watching a movie of himself. This blood would never be cleaned away. Too much of it. He was just spreading it around, a thin film of Orien throughout the house. He kept seeing Orien’s face before his inner eye. Orien, smiling, laughing, his tawny hair hanging in tendrils around his face. Orien, who had brought him to Saltrock for inception. Orien being kind when Flick was sad. Orien’s words of wisdom. Silenced forever. It seemed to Flick as if the whole floor was red. He threw down the mop and surrendered to a fit of weeping, sinking down until he was crouched against the wall, surrounded by bloody handprints that looked like ancient cave paintings.
Seel found him there a couple of hours later. Seel had tied up his hair, but his shirt and hands were red. Without saying anything, he hunkered down and took Flick in his arms, kissed his hair. Flick fell against him, choking.
After a while, Seel hauled Flick to his feet and gestured at the mop. ‘Don’t bother with this,’ he said. ‘I’ll get somehar to come and do it. Go to the other room. I’ll get us a drink.’
Flick fumbled his way, half blind, into Seel’s parlour and lay down on the couch. There was no blood in here.
Seel came in and gave Flick a glass of brandy. ‘What’s left of it,’ he said dryly.
The taste, even the smell, made Flick feel nauseous. He remembered those hands on his body, the laughter, the smell of Cal. But he took the glass and drained it quickly.
Seel sat by Flick’s head and stroked his hair. ‘We have to suppose,’ he said carefully, ‘that Orien came back here last night. It’s clear that… it happened upstairs. The body was dragged from here to the Nayati.’ He paused. ‘I know this is tough, Flick, but I have to ask. Did you see anything at Orien’s house when you went there? Any evidence or clues?’
Flick shook his head. ‘I… I didn’t go.’
‘Why?’
Flick shrugged. ‘I felt sick. I was looking for you. Saw the crowd at the Nayati.’
Seel shifted a little beside him. Flick knew what he was thinking. Why wouldn’t Flick go directly to Orien’s house, which was nearer than Colt and Stringer’s? Why wouldn’t he run to fetch the one har on who they depended? Flick realised he should have lied.
Flick could hardly breathe in the silence. He could feel Seel becoming tenser beside him. Eventually, Seel said, ‘Flick, you didn’t know, did you?’
‘No, no, of course not! I just didn’t know what I was doing. I thought Cal was dead.’
‘Well, don’t be relieved because he’s not.’
‘Seel!’
Seel touched his shoulder. ‘Sorry, that was foul. This is… This is just the worst thing.’
The worst thing, Flick thought, is that I didn’t come directly to wake and tell you last night. Now I have to hide in a nest of lies. Cal has made me like him.
Flick felt responsible for Orien’s death, as if his silence had prevented help getting to Orien in time. But in his heart he knew Orien had already been dead by the time Cal had dragged him to the Nayati. ‘How did… what had Cal done to him?’ Flick asked. He didn’t want to hear the answer, but to punish himself he had to know.
‘We found him hanging,’ Seel said and paused before saying, ‘by his guts. Hanging by his guts. He was butchered.’
The pain of those words was like a penitent’s whip across Flick’s mind. ‘Why did he come back here? Why?’
‘God knows,’ Seel said. ‘To talk to Cal, I suppose. To try and help him. We’ll never know.’
‘We should have heard,’ Flick said. ‘Seel, why didn’t we hear and wake up?’
Seel had the fingers of one hand pressed against his eyes. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps the bastard made it happen like that.’
‘I didn’t realise how much he hated Orien, how much he blamed him.’
‘I think we had a glimpse last night,’ Seel said, ‘but I’d have never believed he’d go so far. It’s his Uigenna blood.’
‘But you have it too.’
‘Uigenna indoctrination, then. I wasn’t that affected.’
‘How do we go on from here, Seel? What will we do?’
‘I don’t know. In the old world, we took so much for granted, criminals being hunted down and brought to justice. What do we do now? Hunt him down ourselves? He’s long gone, and an experienced traveller. We’d never find him. So, we tell the Gelaming? That’s the nearest we have to a peace-keeping force, isn’t it? Do you think they’ll find him for us?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘They won’t,’ Seel said, standing up. ‘They’re dealing with whole rogue tribes, inter-tribal wars and such like. One bad har won’t mean much to them.’
‘So, he just gets away with it?’
Seel sighed, shook his head slowly. ‘There’s nothing we can do,’ he said. ‘We’re powerless. He came here to do this. It was his purpose. He played with us all, like a cat with its prey, then he made his kill. I’m just gratified he’ll never be happy, never get true satisfaction from this. I tell myself to think of his hell, which he lives in continually. It’s the only comfort.’
Before they went to bed that night, Flick told Seel he wanted to change the bedding. He said he wanted to put the previous night well behind them. Seel accepted this and let Flick get on with it. Flick wanted to burn the sheets he’d removed earlier, even though the marks on them were scant. Perhaps it hadn’t really been necessary to change them, but that was Orien’s blood that would be pressed against his skin as he slept. Even if there were only a faint stain, it would burn him like acid.
The blood could be cleared away, the body burned, but the wounds Orien’s murder left on the Saltrock community would take a long time to heal. Hara found it inconceivable that anyhar could infiltrate their safe haven and commit such an atrocity. Seel organised a lengthy ceremonial funeral for Orien, and his body was burned on a great pyre in the middle of the town. Hara stood around numbly, confused. This was never meant to happen. How would they carry on without Orien, their shaman, their rock? Who was there to replace him? Nohar.
The day after the murder, Seel went to Orien’s forlorn empty home and collected all his cats, but they kept running away from Seel’s house, back to their old home. After a couple of days, two hara moved in to Orien’s place, just to look after the animals.
r /> Flick rode out to the soda lake, taking with him the cook’s knife from the kitchen. He threw it into the corrosive bath of minerals and steam, and said a prayer. He did this alone, although in the shimmer above the waters, he thought he saw shadowy cloaked figures walking towards him, carrying staffs and dressed in long black cloaks. But they never reached him.
Over the following weeks, Seel and Flick moved awkwardly around each other, as if they’d lost their senses. Cal had duped them both, but this shared mistake didn’t bring them closer together. Flick didn’t have the energy to look after the house, and Seel spent nearly every day in his office, where the plans for a greater Saltrock lay spread out on his desk. He sat with his back to the window and his head in his hands, staring at the marks on the papers as if he’d never seen them before.
One morning, Flick went into the room without knocking. Seel looked up blearily.
‘I have to go,’ Flick said.
Seel just stared at him.
‘I’m sorry. It’s the only way. I can’t stay here. There’s a promise I made. I mean to keep it.’
‘Flick, don’t leave me,’ Seel said.
‘I have to,’ Flick said.
‘Where will you go? This is your home. You’re an important part of Saltrock.’
‘It doesn’t matter. None of it matters. I can’t live with myself here. Don’t you understand?’
‘No,’ Seel said. ‘I don’t. It wasn’t your fault, what happened.’
‘I could have prevented it,’ Flick said.
‘You couldn’t. Don’t kid yourself. He used you.’
‘I’m going,’ Flick said. ‘You can’t say anything that will change my mind.’
‘Then he’s won completely,’ Seel said bitterly. ‘This is what he wants – Saltrock to fall apart. Let me guess. He told you that you should leave?’
‘This is my decision,’ Flick said.
‘You mentioned something about a promise,’ Seel recalled, his eyes narrow. ‘What did you mean?’
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Don’t let him use you still,’ Seel said. ‘Please, Flick, be careful of what you’re doing.’
Flick nodded. There was nothing else to say. He couldn’t thank Seel for all he’d been given. He couldn’t promise to come back one day.
Outside, the afternoon was just beginning, the sun high in the sky. Flick saddled his pony, fixed his supplies and a tent to it. Seel didn’t come out of the house.
Flick mounted the pony and urged it out of Saltrock. There was nohar to say goodbye to. He headed towards the northwest. The sun was leading him down the sky. He was heading towards the past.
Chapter Six
During the day, when the sun was at its most deadly, Ulaume would find somewhere for him and the harling to crouch: beneath an overhang of rock, or amongst the spiky fingers of a spindly bush. He used the piece of fabric the child had been wrapped in as a canopy for them both, and while they waited for the sun’s fierce eye to close, Ulaume would talk constantly to his companion. In the mornings and the evenings, they would travel, but in the cold tomb of the middle of the night, they would sleep, huddled together for warmth. The coyote had stayed with them, albeit at a distance, but she led them to water at sundown. Sometimes she led them to caves, where blind bats huddled in a creaking leathery mass, only to pour forth after dark like a curse. Ulaume found it easy to acquire food. It was as if what he was doing now was meant to be. He killed the small desert hares, and quick emerald serpents. He knew which roots to dig up and chew. And while they ate, he would observe the child of wonder sitting before him: straight-backed, legs poking out, gnawing on a bone.
From the very first day, the harling rode upon Ulaume’s shoulders, fists plunged deep into his hair. It was only when he’d felt hot liquid running down his back that Ulaume was faced with the task of keeping the harling clean. Whoever had exposed it in the desert had wrapped its loins in absorbent cloth. Now it was soiled. Ulaume lifted the child down and untied the cloth. ‘Don’t piss on me,’ he said, knowing with a sinking heart the harling could not yet understand. He hoped it would learn such things as swiftly as it had learned to crawl. The harling laughed and kicked at him. ‘You’re pretty, so you’ll get away with a lot, but not this,’ Ulaume said. He was surprised to discover the harling did not have fully developed sexual organs, but perhaps that was because of its age. He did not know how Wraeththu were supposed to develop, but it crossed his mind this might be why the harling had been exposed. If so, it seemed stupid. Were the Kakkahaar so frightened and ignorant they would shun this precious gift, just because it didn’t yet look like them? It didn’t make sense, yet the harling seemed perfect in all other ways. The more he thought about, the more Ulaume believed that Lianvis wouldn’t have rejected the harling unless absolutely necessary. Then the thought occurred to him that the child might be dangerous in some way, but if so, he couldn’t imagine how. It was a delightful creature, full of joy and curiosity.
Ulaume realised the only way to train this wise little animal was through example, so he made the harling watch him urinate and defecate, and explained how it was important to bury the result. He indicated they should do this duty together, at certain times of day, and very quickly the harling realised what was required. It was so gratifying, Ulaume realised it would not be a great trial to teach his new charge anything.
The harling nibbled constantly on the talisman around its neck, until after only a few days it disintegrated. Ulaume gathered up the bits, feeling they shouldn’t be lost. He felt strongly that the harling’s hostling had tied the talisman there. There was a resonance within it of grief and love. Inside, among twigs, feathers and leaves, he found a scrap of parchment, and upon this was written the word, ‘Lileem’. He did not know this word, but decided it must be the harling’s name. ‘You are Lileem,’ he told it. ‘And I am Ulaume. Yoo Law Me. Can you copy that?’ He touched the harling’s throat gently. ‘The noise comes from here. Ulaume. Say it.’
The harling grinned at him, but didn’t attempt to make a sound.
Ulaume had no idea of where to go. He was heading roughly northwest, driven by the conviction that eventually he’d arrive somewhere important. It was as if the landscape itself aided his journey. The desert wilderness was treacherous and harsh, and many hara had died in it who were experienced desert-dwellers, yet every day Ulaume found food without too much trouble, and the coyote sniffed out water. Every time he and Lileem needed shelter, he found it almost at once. And the harling developed with alarming speed. It was as if he had been designed to be on the run shortly after birth, and perhaps because Wraeththu were in some ways usurpers in this world, that was the idea. Ulaume thought of the child in terms of ‘he’ rather than ‘it’ now, because the young personality was blossoming. Lileem embraced life with a loving madness. He raced about, naked and free, mimicking the sounds of the desert creatures, of the wind whispering through the scrub. He had an impressive array of yowls, clicks and whistles, but so far had not tried to talk. He was a demonstrative affectionate creature, who would throw himself against Ulaume’s legs and grip them fiercely. Without ever having been shown how, he planted wet kisses all over Ulaume’s face before they went to sleep. He sang to himself in a sweet wordless way. He sang to Ulaume’s witchy hair and made it dance like snakes.
Often, Ulaume thought about the hostling who had abandoned this child. He did not even know the har’s name, and the idea of Rarn’s consort was shadowy in his head. They must have met countless times, but no face remained in Ulaume’s memory. Once, when Lileem’s wileless behaviour had been exceptionally enchanting, Ulaume lay awake in the night, his arms about the harling, and sent out a strong, clear call to say that Lileem lived and was well. He didn’t know what level Rarn’s consort was at magically, or whether he’d be able to pick up the message, but felt he had to try. He was sure the har wouldn’t have surrendered Lileem willingly. It was as if a mist of his love still lingered about the harling, like a wistful ghost. r />
Eventually, they reached the mountains that the Kakkahaar called Hubisag’s Crown. Here, in the foothills, Ulaume lit a sacred fire into which he cast a lock of his own hair. It writhed within the flames and made a sound, as it burned, like a high-pitched scream. Ulaume prayed to Hubisag and thanked the deity for helping them through the desert. As he prayed, Lileem danced around the fire, singing, and nearby, upon an overhanging ledge of rock, the coyote sang also to the stars.
His rite concluded, Ulaume crouched beside the fire and wondered where his instincts would lead them next. He imagined Pellaz sitting opposite him, on the other side of the fire, almost invisible through the dancing flames. ‘Do you have a task for me?’ Ulaume asked. But, as ever, there was no response, either in reality or imagination.
The following morning, Ulaume sniffed the air to decide which way to go. He really needed to find somewhere he could acquire clothes for Lileem. The harling was clearly a hardy creature, and rarely seemed affected by cold or heat, but beyond the desert there would be greater temperature variation in the seasons, and Ulaume knew it could get very cold, even though he had never been to such places before. His own clothes were hardly suitable for travelling, and he had a strong sense that now they had left the wilderness realm, they had fallen into reality where physical needs would become more pressing. The flight from his tribe had so far seemed like an agreeable dream, but here the air smelled sharper and more immediate, rocks were spikier beneath the feet and there was a danger of running into rogue hara of inhospitable tribes.
A mountain path led to the west and Ulaume chose to follow it. Lileem wanted to run ahead as he usually did, but Ulaume called him back. He felt wary now. Lileem was not pleased to be restrained, but Ulaume took hold of the harling’s hand firmly. ‘You have to learn about danger,’ he said. ‘It’s not always safe to run about. You’ve seen me kill hares and snakes? Well, you should know that some hara might want to do the same to us.’