Flydd and Irisis, once her friends, were nearly as bad, hey'd lied to her, used her, and when they didn't want her any longer, they'd simply abandoned her.
Her body's will to live drove Ullii to the surface. She stood op in the shallow water and breathed. The screaming had stopped but the pain was still there, and it was unendurable. Reaching inside herself, Ullii flicked the switch that severed her consciousness. Blessed oblivion.
An hour later she was still standing there, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, feeling nothing.
A memory woke in her and Ullii realised that she was standing in waist-deep water, tears streaming down her cheeks. Her beloved Mylii lay in his blood in the clearing, alone and abandoned.
Ullii had no idea where she was. In that fit of madness and grief she might have run in any direction. She searched the lattice for her brother's knot, which had appeared so miraculously last night, but it was not there. Mylii was dead; his knot had vanished forever and she was lost.
The sense of abandonment grew stronger. Mylii, Mylii, lying on the hard ground all alone. Was there a way to find him? He'd left no trace in the lattice, nor had the other dead at the air-floater. Not even the unfortunate little pilot made a mark now, for death wiped all knots away.
But the air-floater was powered by a controller, and it must still have a working crystal. She sought for it but found nothing – Flydd had taken the crystal with him and he was beyond range. Deeper, further, she sought; there had to be some trace left. At last she picked up a tiny smudge of aura, a chip broken off the controller crystal in the crash. It gave her the direction. Ullii turned that way and started running.
It was only an hour off dawn when she got there. The declining moon slanted across the clearing to light up the canvas of the air-floater from behind. The collapsed airbag was a crumpled rag outlined by black struts and wires. The little pilot lay with her head over the side, her neck bent at an unnatural angle.
Ullii only had eyes for the slim shape lying in the moon-shadow: beloved Mylii. She did not run. Ullii was afraid to approach him too quickly.
Stopping on the far side of the clearing, she stared at her brother Unlike the pilot and the soldiers, who all looked dead, he just appeared to be sleeping. She felt as her sensitive eyes strained to pierce the blackness that she saw his chest rise and fall She tried to make out his features but they blurred into the dark.
She allowed herself to hope that it had just been a horrible nightmare. She did not want to wake him in case it turned out to be real. How could he be dead? Nish was a kind, gentle man who had done so much for her. He would not harm Mylii. It had to be a dreadful mistake, a dream that she had woken from. Or was it? She felt so confused.
Ullii took a slow, fluid step, careful to make no sound. Any noise might wake her brother and everything would turn out wrong. A warm breeze soughed through the treetops, curling round the clearing and tickling the back of her neck, lifting the hair of her nape just as it lifted the dry leaves on the floor of the clearing, sending them whirling like fairy dancers in a circle. It made her smile. Mylii would have loved to see it – he had always been fond of music and dancing.
She took another step, and her brother's prone form seemed to shift, as if moving to a more comfortable position, before settling back into sleep with a little sigh. The gesture was so familiar that it made her heart ache. Tears sprang to Ullii's eyes and suddenly she had to take him in her arms.
Her small feet made barely a sound as she ran. From halfway across the clearing, Ullii called her brother's name Again he seemed to move, then suddenly went still, and with every step she took Mylii grew more rigid. The silver bracelet on his wrist was a manacle fixing him to the earth.
'Mylii!' she cried, but he no longer seemed to be breathing.
She crossed the short distance that separated them and threw herself at him. 'Mylii!'
He did not move. Mylii was as unyielding as a log. Ullii pushed her arms under his back. A bubble burst in his throat and the remaining air sighed out of his lungs. The ground was damp beneath him. His whole back was wet, and when she withdrew her hands and held them up, his congealed blood was black in the moonlight.
'Mylii.' she wailed, picking him up in her arms, holding his body tightly as she rocked hack and forth, back and forth…
A faint ticker-tick-tick roused her this time. It was an air-floater, not far away. Ullii sat up, not so much listening as watching its knot in her lattice. It was roving back and forth across the country south of here, coming steadily closer as if searching. It had come after the wrecked air-floater, and something far more precious – Mylii the seeker.
The machine turned, flying directly towards the clearing. They were coming to take Mylii away. They must not get him. She tried to lift her brother, but he was heavier than he appeared. Ullii had him halfway to her shoulder when a sharp pain in her lower belly reminded her of the baby.
Taking Mylii under the arms, she tried to drag him, but had only gone three steps when the air-floater was overhead. It was bigger than the crashed one, and she could tell that there were scrutators aboard, though in her distress Ullii could not identify them.
'It's down there!' roared a barbed voice. 'Stay well up, Pilot. Captain, your troops must be ready for anything.'
If the scrutators caught her, they would use her in place of Mylii. She had to let her brother go. Gently laying the body down, she crouched beside him for a moment, saying her farewell. Her eye caught a gleam from the bracelet and she tried to unfasten it, as a token of him, but the clasp would not budge. No time to work on it; they were coming. Ullii scuttled into the trees.
The air-floater remained hovering above the clearing while soldiers came down on ropes. They were big, heavily armed, and Ullii was repulsed by the smell of their unwashed bodies. The first three assumed positions at the points of a triangle, crossbows thrust out, while the remainder came to ground inside the triangle. They formed more points and expanded outwards.
Lanterns were unshuttered and directed at the forest. The troops, heavily armoured and helmeted, looked like savage demons. Ullii could not bear to look at them – nor away from them.
Search it." said the captain, pointing to the wreckage of the air-floater. He shouted orders.
Powerful lanterns illuminated the wreckage. Two soldiers headed for it while others moved towards the edges of the clearing. Ullii crept away and, climbing a slender tree, little more than a sapling, took refuge in its canopy. It was so small they would never look for an enemy there. She had to stay close; she could not leave her brother.
The soldiers had set up their lanterns on poles and some began to quarter the clearing while others moved into the forest.
'Here's one,' someone called, bending over the still form of her brother. 'Hey! It's the black-haired seeker. He's dead.'
Dead! As the word echoed through her skull, Ullii almost fell out of the tree. Mylii was dead; she could no longer deny it. The leaves rustled and a man cried out, 'There's someone in the forest!'
The grimly efficient soldiers searched everywhere. They found more bodies: one of the soldiers from the first air-floater, then the dead in the wreckage. Ullii clung desperately to the trunk, fighting down an impulse to scream.
Finally the clearing was secured and the captain called up to the hovering air-floater, 'It's safe. There's no one about. It was just the wind.'
Someone shouted back, 'They're coming down. Stand to attention.'
Ropes whirred through pulleys and a big man in robes was lowered in a suspended chair.
Ullii choked, recognising him now. It was Chief Scrutator Ghorr, and he made a barbed, tangled knot in her lattice. She remembered Ghorr from the visit to Nennifer months ago. He had shown nothing but contempt for her. 'Scurry away, little mouse,' he'd said sneeringly. But subsequently Ullii had done what had never been done in the history of the world. She had used her lattice to get Irisis out of her cell without breaking the spell on the lock or setting off the alarm, and Ghorr's rage had shaken the foundations of Nennifer. Ullii was more afraid of him now, for she knew he wanted that secret even if he had to tear it out of her living body.