She glanced down to ask Varakapi of it but snapped her mouth shut. He was gone. She snorted her grudging half-admiration. Cunning beast. Yet not truly a beast. A man-ape, child of the jungle, ward of the Queen of Witches, Ardata.
It was long after dusk when they reached the structure. Saeng was in an awful mood. The last stretch had been the worst she’d experienced yet: low-lying swampy ground plagued by biting insects. She was filthy with sweat and reeking mud. And the evening downpour was gathering in rumblings and distant flashes of lightning. The wide causeway that led to the bridge emerged from the muck as if from the sea. Saeng imagined the river must have flooded countless times, or shifted its course, since the edifice was built. Indeed, huge jungle emergents crowned the causeway. They had pushed aside its cyclopean blocks the way a child might knock over toys. The river coursed ahead, silent and dark.
‘We may just make it …’ Hanu murmured.
‘Not tonight. Not in the dark.’
He glittered now in the night. The rain had cleaned the dust and mud from his inlay mosaic of semi-precious stones. Sapphire, emerald and gold flashed keenly as he moved. He gestured aside. ‘Perhaps there is cover from the rain below.’
‘And beasts.’
‘Nothing you cannot handle, Saeng.’
She followed, wishing she shared his confidence in her abilities. There was cover where the wide arch of the stone bridge cleared the shore, but there was also thick clammy mud that weighted her sandals. Hanu led her to a modest hump where the mud had dried to a hardened cracked surface. She spread her thick sleeping blanket and sat, tucking her legs beneath her.
‘I will try to find dry wood,’ Hanu said and pushed off through the tall stands of grass and cattails.
Once Hanu had been gone for a time the dead came.
Saeng turned her face away; she did not want to deal with them now. Their endless demands and neediness. Who would have imagined that the dead should be so needy? But they were. They did not know the meaning of the word surcease. Which was probably why they wandered, ever searching — searching for something they would not even recognize should they find it.
They watched her silently from among the brush. On all sides their sad liquid eyes implored her. Girls mostly here. Young women. ‘What do you want?’ she hissed, keeping her gaze lowered.
‘Help us,’ they whispered in her thoughts, pleading.
‘How?’
‘Help us.’
The barest hint of their longing and profound grief touched her then and she felt tears mark their hot descent down her cheeks. ‘Go away. I cannot help you.’
‘Help us.’ Something disturbed them then and they retreated into the gloom. Their fading was like a heartbreaking sigh in the night. Hanu emerged from the dry brush to set down an armload of driftwood. He started preparing a fire.
After the blaze came alight, he sat back to regard the surroundings. ‘This is a sad place,’ he said.
‘Yes. The misery here is so strong even you can sense it, Hanu.’ She edged closer to the fire to dry her skirts. ‘It seems that for many centuries this bridge has been a favourite site for suicides. Both voluntary and involuntary. Young girls mostly.’
‘Involuntary?’
‘Yes. Pregnant, or lovesick, or just plain despairing, they drowned themselves here. Or were drowned.’ She rubbed at her neck. ‘I can feel them, Hanu,’ she said, her voice growing ever more faint. ‘Hundreds of hands at my throat, choking. I am peering up through the water at the faces of brothers and fathers, some rapists, some not. I know that later I will be blamed for my own death. But the most tragic thing is, Hanu, that even now, I still love my family. Even as they-’
‘Saeng!’ Hanu exclaimed, horrorstruck. ‘Do not torture yourself. There is nothing you can do.’
‘They seem to think there is.’
‘Well … they are mistaken.’
Saeng didn’t know if they were or not — no doubt they pleaded for help from everyone who could sense them. She lay on her side and pulled her legs up close to her chest, tucking in her skirts around them, and stared into the dancing flames of the fire. Something ought to be done. She just had no idea what.
Hanu straightened and turned to face away from the fire.
‘You still will not sleep?’
‘No. I will keep watch. The … treatments … and conditioning leave me able to answer that need while remaining awake.’
‘I see.’ She wanted to say she was sorry, but worried that perhaps she shouldn’t. After all, this was how he was now and nothing could be done.
With the dawn they ate a very meagre meal of a few remaining scraps of dried fish, the last of their rice and foraged overripe fruit. Then they walked round to climb up on to the broad course of the stone bridge. Saeng had no idea how old it was but was certain her people could never have raised such an immense edifice. It was ancient, then, and cyclopean. Like a mountain of stone laid across the river. Yet some sort of equally vast trauma appeared to have assaulted it. Wide columns and plinths to either side lay fallen or sheared, broken ages ago. The arches no longer ran true, but had been pushed to the side as if a giant had heaved against them. From the silts of the flood plain a massive stone face stared at the sky, its eyes now clumps of grasses, its lips buried in the mud. Cruel, that face appeared to her. Or perhaps merely unfathomable. Saeng brushed at the eternal clouds of insects that surrounded her, while shimmering dragonflies darted about partaking of the massed offering.
Hanu stilled. A man stood awaiting them in the middle of the bridge. With a hand at his back, Saeng urged him onward.
‘Greetings,’ the man welcomed them, bowing. He was old, dressed in rags that might have once been robes of some kind. His wild hair was a halo about his sun- and wind-darkened wrinkled features and his eyes and grin had a touched, manic look to them. ‘Please, accompany me. We get so few visitors. It is an honour! Please,’ and he gestured, inviting.
In answer Hanu drew his yataghan and pressed its honed point to the man’s bony chest. ‘Hanu!’ Saeng cried.
‘He is one of them.’
‘Thaumaturg?’
The old man nodded jerkily, grinning his antic manic grin. ‘Yes, yes. Such things cannot be hidden from our very own servants, yes? Yes, once. Now I am not. I fled them — but I could not escape them. Yes? You know what I mean. Follow me!’ And he turned abruptly, heading off with a quick shuffling gait.
‘He is mad,’ Hanu whispered.
Saeng merely arched a brow. ‘What makes you say that?’
‘No — I am certain. It is one of the curses the Thaumaturgs level against any among their number who disagree, foment trouble, or desert the common orthodoxy.’
Following along, Saeng answered, ‘Wouldn’t it be easier just to kill them?’
Hanu’s armoured boots scraped over the huge paving stones. He walked with his hands clasped at his back. ‘No. You miss the point entirely — which is to your credit. You do not understand cruelty. The Thaumaturgs value their thinking minds above all else. To have that torn from you is punishment indeed. Also, keeping such unfortunates about is most instructional to the rest of the rank and file, yes?’
Saeng shuddered. ‘You are right. I do not understand the regimen of cruelty.’
‘For that I am glad.’
The madman waved them on, grinning like a child on his birthday. ‘Come, come. Follow my lead.’ He sidled up close to Saeng and lowered his voice as if conferring a secret: ‘Though in truth you cannot, as I think differently now and see things which my blinkered brethren are incapable of.’