It pained Kaiku to see her so isolated. Mishani's visit had reminded her of Yugi's stinging words, how he had accused her of neglecting her friends while she subsumed herself in the teachings of the Red Order. Once, Lucia had been like a younger sister to her; now, Kaiku was not so sure.
Eventually, Lucia lifted her head and stood. She picked her way barefoot along the knolls, retrieved her shoes from where she had left them at the edge of the glade, and then joined Kaiku.
'Daygreet,' she said with a beatific smile, and then hugged Kaiku impulsively. Kaiku, faintly surprised, returned it.
'Gods, you are the same height as me now,' she said.
'Growing like a weed,' Lucia laughed. 'It's been too long since you came to see me, Kaiku.'
'I know,' Kaiku muttered. 'I know.'
Lucia put her shoes on and they began to walk back towards Araka Jo. Kaiku dismissed the bodyguards and sent them ahead: their charge would be safer with her than with twenty armed men, and they recognised her even without the makeup and attire of the Order. She and Lucia ambled along the narrow forest trails. Lucia chattered happily as they went. She was in an unusually ebullient mood, certainly not the state of dreamy detachment that Kaiku had come to expect from her.
'The blight is retreating,' she said out of nowhere, interrupting herself in the process of telling Kaiku about her day.
'It is?'
'The ipi can sense it. Since the witchstone beneath Utraxxa broke. The land here is recovering, little by little.' She watched a bird arrowing through the treetops as she spoke. 'We are not too far gone to go back. Not yet.'
'But that is wonderful news!' Kaiku cried. Lucia gave her a sidelong grin. 'No wonder you are so cheerful today.'
'It is wonderful news,' she agreed. 'And I hear you have news also.'
Kaiku nodded. 'Though I am not so sure whether it is good news or bad.' And she went on to tell Lucia about her and Cailin's encounter with the leviathan. The Weave-whale, as Cailin had come to call it.
'I am afraid of them,' she admitted. 'For too long we had ignored them as they ignored us, assuming them forever out of our reach. But we have attracted them now, I think. They have noticed what was once beneath their notice. Our meddling in the Weave is drawing creatures to which the Weavers' capabilities for destruction pale in comparison.'
'But what are they?' Lucia asked.
'Perhaps they are gods,' came the reply.
Lucia did not comment on that, but it sobered her. They walked on a short way in silence through the sun-dappled forest. A raven hopped from branch to branch overhead.
'Lucia, I truly am sorry,' Kaiku said at length. 'I have neglected you for some time now. I was so caught up in learning how to use what I have that I… forgot what I had.'
Lucia took her hand. It was a gesture from the old Lucia, the child, before she became a young woman.
'It is the war,' she said. 'Do not be sorry, Kaiku. You are a weapon, as am I. What good is a weapon if its edge is not sharpened?'
Kaiku was shocked at the fatalism in her tone. 'Lucia, no! We are not merely weapons. If I taught you nothing else, I taught you that.'
'Then you believe we have a choice? That we can turn away from all this now?' She smiled sadly, and relinquished Kaiku's hand. 'I can't. And I don't believe you can, either.'
'You have that choice, Lucia!' she insisted.
'Do I?' Lucia laughed again, and this time it was bitter and made Kaiku uneasy. 'If I wanted to duck the expectations the world has of me, I should have done it long ago. Before the Libera Dramach reorganised; before the battle at the Fold, even. Too many people have died in my name now. I cannot go back. That time has passed.' She looked down the trail, and her eyes became unfocused. She was listening to the rustle of the forest. 'I've become what they wanted of me. I've become their bridge to the spirits, for what good it will do. I am a weapon, and a weapon is useless if it is not wielded. I cannot stay useless for very much longer.'
'Lucia-' Kaiku began, but was interrupted.
'You think I don't know about the feya-kori? How we have no defence against them, no way to strike back? How long before you all call on me, then? Your last resort? Your only hope?' They had stopped walking now, and Lucia looked fierce. 'Do you know how that is, Kaiku? To spend your whole life knowing that your options are narrowing day by day, that eventually you must deliver on this promise that you never made! They look to me as their saviour, but I don't know how to save anyone!'
'You do not have to,' Kaiku told her. 'Listen to me: you do not have to.'
Lucia looked away, not remotely convinced.
'In my life I have known people who are so selfish that they would sacrifice anything and anyone to bring advantage to themselves,' Kaiku said, putting her hand on Lucia's arm. 'And I have known a man so selfless that he was willing to throw away his life too cheaply for the good of others. I believe the right path lies somewhere in between. I have told you before, Lucia: you need to be a little more selfish. Think of yourself for once.'
'Even at the expense of this land and everyone in it?' Lucia replied scornfully.
'Even then,' said Kaiku. 'For as much as you think it might, the fate of the world does not rest on your actions.'
Lucia would not meet her gaze. 'I'm afraid, Kaiku,' she whispered.
'I know.'
'You don't know,' she said, and her expression revealed a depth of something that made Kaiku scared to see it. 'I'm changing.'
'Changing? How?'
Lucia turned from her, staring out into the forest. Kaiku's attention fell upon the burn scars on the nape of her neck. The stab of guilt at the sight would never go away, it seemed.
'I realise I am distracted sometimes… most of the time,' she said. 'I realise how hard it is to talk to me. I do not blame you for not coming to see me so often.' She raised a hand to forestall Kaiku's protest. 'It's true, Kaiku. I can't pay attention to anything any more. Everywhere I go, there are the voices. The breath of the wind, the mutter of the earth; the birds, the trees, the stone. I do not know what silence is.' She turned her face sideways, looking over her shoulder at Kaiku, and a tear slid down her cheek. 'I can't shut them out,' she whispered.
A lump rose in Kaiku's throat.
'I'm becoming like them,' Lucia said, her voice small and terrifying in its hopelessness. 'I'm forgetting. Forgetting how to care. I think of Zaelis and Flen, of my mother… and I don't feel. They died because of me, and sometimes I can't even recall their faces.' Her lip began to tremble, and her face crumpled, and she rushed into Kaiku's arms suddenly and clutched her so tightly that it hurt. 'I'm so lonely,' she said, and began to cry in earnest then.
Kaiku's stomach and heart were a knot of grief that brought tears to her own eyes. She wanted to reach Lucia somehow, to do something to make things better, but she was as helpless as anyone. All Kaiku could do was to be there for her, and she had been sadly remiss at that these past years.
And as they held each other on the narrow forest trail, the leaves began to fall. First one, then two, then a dozen and more, drifting down from the evergreens to settle on their shoulders and pile around their feet. Lucia was weeping, and the trees were shedding in sympathy.
THIRTEEN
The Tkiurathi appeared one morning soon afterward, on a slope south of Araka Jo. By the time anyone noticed them, they had already made cook-fires, strung up shelters of animal hide, and dozens of them were sleeping in the boughs like cats. A makeshift village of yurts and hemp hammocks had sprung up overnight amid the tree trunks. To all appearances, they might have been living there for weeks.
Tsata was sitting in the crook of a tree, where the branch met the bole, one leg dangling. He was idly sharpening his gutting-hooks on a whetstone, his attention elsewhere. From his vantage point at the north side of the village he could see up the dirt trail towards Araka Jo. He believed at first that he had chosen this spot at random, but he decided in the end that he was fooling himself. He was keeping an eye on the trail. Waiting to see if Kaiku would come to him.