A couple of the goons stood over them, grinning. One of them shoved a wooden bowl of glop at him. When he tried to move, every muscle shrieked protest and he sat back with a stifled groan.
The girl smiled. “You’re sun-touched. You’ve stopped sweating. Here.” She passed him a waterskin. “There’s salt in the food – you’ll need it.”
His mind was struggling with the concept of dreaming – a dream within the program, that was fucked up. He shook his head, flicked through ocular modes, squinted skywards to see threads of cloud through the gathering dusk. He felt like shit.
“How the hell do you know what I need?”
She blinked, withdrew. “I’m Tarvi, I look after the health of these idiots. Pareus, our tan, you know, the rest of them –”
“Don’t bother.” He sat up this time, took three mouthfuls of lukewarm water and started on the glop with a grimace.
Determined to be friendly, she smiled at him. Her voice sparkled. “We’ll head back to the city at the end of our patrol, take you to Larred Jade.”
Round a mouthful of food, he said, “Great.”
“Don’t you want to know what we’re doing?” She was bugging him, completely unfazed by his skin, his eyes, his teeth. Her hair shone with red highlights in the setting sun.
And he had no fucking clue why he’d just noticed that. He scalded his lips on another tasteless mouthful and turned away.
Around him was a small, flat campsite, defended by a low bank. The squad had put up a lean-to and a scatter of tents, though most of them were gathered with the critters at one corner. As Ecko glanced, one of them threw a bucket of slop water over his mate.
“We’re making good time,” Tarvi said. Greatly daring, she brushed her fingertips over the back of his hand. “Doesn’t that hurt?” His skin shone at her touch.
He snarled at her. “Yeah, I’m a freakshow.”
Not waiting for her hurt expression, he stretched, heard his joints pop and crackle. He felt like he’d been kicked round Wembley fucking Stadium. Picking up glop and waterskin, he shambled over to the fire.
Fire. He’d been dreaming about fire. Detonation. Power...
“You’ll need this, mate!” Another goon threw a heavy, fabric roll across to him – a bedroll of some sort. He caught it without thinking. “Get your basher up, it’s gonna piss. And tomorrow? You do your own damned chearl!”
Do what with it? Ecko finished the glop, feeling the firelight warm on his face – then, rebelliously, pushed the bowl into the flames. For a moment, it lay there as they worried at it, bubbling, blackening – then it suddenly caught, roaring into fierce life. Bright flame shot skywards, heat slammed into him. The fire was his friend, his security – he understood it and he welcomed it. In London, he’d made his name with it, beaten Pilgrim with it, made them remember that they didn’t own the city...
For a second, a fragment of the dream came back to him – the last run he’d done, the one that’d gotten him the info on Grey. How it felt to be that powerful, to have that much skill at his fingertips...
Not like now, stuck out here weaponless and eating mulch, without even a fucking sleeping bag that he actually understood...
He watched the flames, trying to reach for more images, a fragment of home, something familiar. He almost felt like London was waning, getting less real as the plainland around him got more so.
Over him, the sky faded to grey, to deep blue, and at last to silver-accented night. Tarvi was still beside him.
The air became cold. He unrolled the strange bedding, pulled it round his shoulders. He missed London, Lugan; he missed the Bard. Hell, right now, he missed his fucking mom.
Both of them.
Over him, the moons shone insanity – one, silver body swollen, far too low and far too big, lit the plainland to alien freakishness. The other was a crescent, a golden fingernail. Above them, the black sky was completely devoid of stars.
The night noises were all-the-fuck wrong.
“What the hell am I doing out here?” He didn’t even realise he’d said it aloud until Tarvi turned to look at him, face warmed by the fire.
“Huh?”
He didn’t meet her gaze. “Out here. It’s all fucking wrong. Why don’t’cha have any stars?”
“They were cast down by Samiel, Godsfather.” In the night’s stillness, Tarvi’s voice was perfectly serious. “All except one.”
“How fucking literary.” He chuckled. “That’s right up there with your moons being gods, for chrissakes.”
“Of course the moons are Gods.” She laughed at him. “They’re brother and sister. The sagas say they committed a... ah... terrible indiscretion and they gaze in yearning upon one another, only to know it can never be, and so they turn away.”
Faced with her sincerity, her soft skin in the firelight, he lost the ability to be scathing.
“Impossible – and incestuous,” he said. Something about it made him grin. He glanced sideways at her, head tilted. “How’d you know that?”
“I read?” She shrugged. “The yellow moon is named for Samiel’s daughter Calarinde, she who not only tempted her brother, but also lay with the last of the stars – causing him, too, to be cast down. Yet because his crime was one of love, he was condemned only to loneliness – he was sent here, as our guardian and champion. Tales say he walks the mortal world to this day.”
He walks the mortal world...
“Yeah.” Ecko tucked the bedroll closer round his shoulders. “That guy. I gotta bone to pick with him.”
The fire was warm on his face and it left its colours in his skin. He didn’t speak again.
* * *
Ecko watched Tarvi watching the ruin.
She was small, round faced and round figured, though her fitness pressed tight muscle against the fabric of her garments. Her days on the trade-road had sunburned her nose, she scratched at loose skin at its edges.
Her hair was haphazardly tied back, though wisps escaped the leather band and drifted constantly into her face. She blew at them, stirring ash. Ecko stifled a sudden urge to push them back.
You can’t go there and you know it!
Flanking her, the two spearmen were sharp-eyed, covering her back and each other’s.
They ducked beside a wall. Tarvi slipped along its length to peer out...
...and stopped dead, hands gesturing.
Low to the ground, he raced rodent swift to stand almost behind her, crouched upon a fallen crossbeam.
Before them was a small and blasted square, flagstones cracked, buildings seared and crumbling to every side. It was close to the heart of the explosion and even the stone had melted. The ground was still hot, colours spiralled lazily into the darkening air.
Who could do this – what the hell had this kind of power?
On the far side of the square, there was motion.
On a crumbling upper floor, inside a black-edged window. Tarvi held her spear and waited. Ecko hugged what remained of the building sides, slipping round the edges of the destruction.
His telescopics spun, found nothing, spun again. Whatever it was, it was below the level of the windowledge. Blinking, he flicked back to his heatseeker but the thermals of the square defeated him.
He reached the base of the building.
Behind him, Tarvi hadn’t moved. She and the spearmen were crouched in the partial cover of the wall. She was flicking gestures at Pareus. Ecko saw the commander call the patrol to his side. Keeping to cover, they moved to the edge of the square.
Ecko touched his fingertips to the wall.
It was shaking – just enough for his sensitive touch to detect. Its foundations fucked, it was coming down – and whatever was up there was coming down with it.