So Kaiku would be leaving Mishani again, after so short a time. She swore bitterly. This war was taking everything from her, little nibbled increments of her soul being swallowed as the harvests passed by, leaving her with just enough hate and determination to go on surviving. Her own side did not even appreciate her sacrifices. Her friends were torn away from her again and again. And it seemed they had not gained ground on the Weavers once since this whole affair began, since the death of the Blood Empress Anais. The best they had managed was to stall their retreat temporarily.
Something had to give. She could not continue this way for another ten years.
Take heart, then, a sardonic inner voice told her. The way things are going, the Weavers will have us all before the summer.
The chime sounded outside the door of the house. Kaiku looked up. For a moment, she considered not answering, but the lanterns were lit so her visitor knew she was in. Eventually curiosity got the better of her. She arranged herself quickly in the mirror, walked to the door and slid it open.
It was Asara. Kaiku recognised her even though she wore the form of a stranger, a dusky-skinned Tchom Rin woman with black hair in a loose ponytail hanging over her shoulder. She was wearing a robe of silver-grey.
'What do you want?' Kaiku asked, but she could not muster the effort to put any venom in her voice. It all seemed so pointless suddenly.
'Am I to take it, then, that you still resent me after our last encounter?' Asara guessed by Kaiku's tone that she had surmised her identity.
'A grudge worth holding is a grudge worth keeping alive,' she replied.
'May I come inside? I wish to talk.'
Kaiku thought about that for a moment, then she turned away and went into the house. Asara followed and slid the door shut behind her. Kaiku stood in the centre of the room, and did not invite Asara to sit.
'The attire of the Red Order does not suit you,' Asara said. 'It makes you into something you are not.'
'Spare me the criticism, Asara,' she said dismissively. 'If I had been a Sister when last we met, you would not have been able to deceive me as you did.'
'Perhaps that would have been better for both of us.'
'It would have been better for me!' Kaiku snapped, finding her anger.
But Asara did not rise to it; it seemed to slide off her. 'I came here to apologise,' she said.
'I am not interested in your apologies. They are as false as that skin you wear.'
Asara looked faintly amused. 'This skin is my own, Kaiku. It just happens that I can change it. I am Aberrant, just like you. How is it that you can celebrate your own abilities and despise mine?'
'Because I do not use mine to deceive other people,' she hissed.
'No, you use them to kill other people.'
'Weavers and Nexuses, demons and Aberrant animals,' Kaiku returned. 'They are not what I would call people. They are monsters.' She missed the hypocrisy of Asara's statement, for she had no knowledge of the lives that had been given to feed her, to fuel the metamorphic processes in her body.
'You killed several men on Fo; have you forgotten?'
'That was your fault!' Kaiku cried.
Asara raised one hand in a placating gesture. 'I am sorry. You are right. I do not want this to become an argument. But I would have you listen, even if you do not believe me.'
'Speak, then,' Kaiku said; but her arms were crossed beneath her breasts, and it was clear that nothing Asara said would appease her.
Asara regarded her for a moment, her gaze unreadable, made smoky by her eyeshadow.
'I have never meant to be your enemy, Kaiku. I did deceive you in the past, but I did not intend to harm you. Even that last time.' Her voice dropped a little. 'I would have stayed as Saran Ycthys Marul. You would never have known. We could have been happy.'
Kaiku opened her mouth to speak, but Asara stopped her.
'I know what you would say, Kaiku. It was foolish of me. I thought I could create myself anew, spin a new past: to wipe the slate clean. And you were ready to love Saran. You were, Kaiku.' She overrode Kaiku's weak protest. 'You would not love me, but you would love him.'
'He was not real,' Kaiku said in disgust.
'He was as real as Asara was. As I am now.'
'Then you are not real either,' Kaiku returned. 'The Asara I knew was only the face you wore, the role you took on, when first I met you. Is that who you are? How many faces had you worn before that? Do you even know?'
Asara saddened. 'No,' she said. 'No, I do not. Have you an idea what it is to be me? I do not even know what I should look like. Counterfeits are all I have.'
'You will get no pity from me,' Kaiku laughed scornfully.
Asara's face became stony. 'I do not want pity from anyone. But sometimes…' She looked away. 'Sometimes I do need help.'
This shocked Kaiku more than anything Asara had said so far. Asara had always been fierce in asserting her independence; this was a terrible admission for her. Despite herself, she softened for a moment. Then came the memory of Saran Ycthys Marul, looking at her with Asara's eyes as Kaiku, half-clothed, wept with the shame of betrayal.
'You do not deserve my help,' she said.
Asara glared across the room, her beautiful face cold in the lantern-light. 'I do, Kaiku. Honour demands that you discharge your debts, and you owe me your life. I did not merely save you from dying. I brought you back from the dead. Nothing you have done for me has ever come close to repaying that.' Her voice was flat with menace now. 'You nearly killed me, and I have never held you accountable. I watched over you for years before your kana emerged, and I rescued you from the shin-shin when they would certainly have had you. You think me so deceitful and cruel, but I have been a better friend to you than you realise. I have forgiven you everything, and asked almost nothing in return.'
Kaiku was unmoved. Asara tossed her head and made a noise of disgust. 'Think on what I have said. You count yourself honourable; well, honour does not extend only to your friends and your loved ones. The time has come to pay me back what is owed. Then we will be even, and I will leave you forever.'
With that, she walked to the door and slid it open. On the threshold, she looked back.
'I am going with you into the forest. We shall resolve this later.'
Then she was gone, and Kaiku was alone again. Sometimes, when the fumes of the amaxa root had swaddled him in their plush and acidic folds, Yugi thought he could glimpse the spirit that haunted his room. It hid in the corner where the ceiling and two of the walls met, a spindly thing all bones and angles, black and beaked and half-seen. It was never still; instead it was in constant jittering motion, shivering and twitching with a rapidity hard for the eye to follow, making it blurred and unfocused. Yugi would study it while he lay on his sleeping-mat, puffing at the mouthpiece of his hookah. It was a part of the night to him, and night was where he found his peace, where he could be left alone and the jagged rocks of his memory could be blanketed in a narcotic fog.
He had been watching the spirit, lost in a haze, when he noticed a movement at his doorway. It took him a moment to establish who his visitor was. She came and squatted down next to him, laying her rifle aside.
'Bad habit,' she murmured.
'I know,' he replied. His mouth was dry and the words felt thick in his throat. He felt her hand grip his jaw gently, move his head left and right, looking into the cracked whites of his eyes.
'You're under,' she said. 'Thought you could handle this.'
'Want some?'
'No.'
She took the pipe out of his hand and put it back in its cradle on the hookah, where a wisp of smoke drifted up towards the white stone ceiling. Yugi tried muzzily to focus on her.
'I'm sorry about your face,' he mumbled.