Eventually, for Asara seemed so uncertain, it was Kaiku who spoke first. 'What is my debt, Asara?' she asked. 'What would you have me do to redress the balance between us?'
'You admit that you owe me, then?' Asara said quickly.
'I do owe you,' Kaiku said. 'But do I owe you enough to do as you ask? I will hear what you have to say before I decide.'
'Very well.' Asara still seemed wary. 'But you must swear first that what I have to ask you will never be repeated by you to anyone. To anyone. Whether you agree or not.'
'You have my oath,' said Kaiku, for she knew that Asara would go no further without it, and she wanted this done.
Asara regarded her carefully in the darkness, her eyes glittering. Debating whether to trust her.
'Asara,' Kaiku snapped, impatient. 'You have followed me this far. Do not fool yourself into thinking you are making a choice; you made it some time ago. You have shadowed my footsteps too long. What do you want?'
'I want a child,' Asara hissed.
There was silence between them. Asara retreated, spent by the effort of the admission. Kaiku stared.
'I want a child,' she said again, quieter. 'But I cannot bear one.'
'Why not?' Kaiku asked, slightly dazed. This was her secret longing?
'I do not know why not,' Asara replied. 'I can… change myself, but only to an extent. I can take on the forms of men and women, but not of beasts, nor of birds. I can alter my skin and my shape, but I have limits. What I can do, I do by instinct. I do not know how it happens. I cannot see inside myself. I cannot fix myself.'
It made sense to Kaiku then. 'You want me to make you fertile.'
'You can do this!' Asara said, and there was naked hunger in her voice. 'I have heard of the deeds you and your kind are capable of. I have seen Sisters bring men back from the brink of death, healing with their hands. I watched you save that Tkiurathi woman's life just hours ago! You have the power to repair whatever is wrong with me.'
'Perhaps,' said Kaiku.
'Perhaps?' Asara cried.
'I am not a god, Asara,' Kaiku said. 'I cannot create what is not there. I do not know what kind of changes Aberrancy has wreaked in you. What if you have no womb? I cannot give you one.'
'Then look! Look inside! You can tell me!' Asara was desperate now; her hopes had been vested in this for so long that the possibility of them being dashed was too much for her to take. For so long, lonely and empty; ever outcast, ever unable to fill the void that yawned inside her. There were none like she was, even among the Aberrants. In all ninety of her years, she had never found another. And it was Shintu's cruellest trick indeed to make her ageless and yet rob her of the power to procreate.
But Kaiku's brow was creased in a frown. 'I will have to think on this, Asara.'
'You owe me,' Asara spat, her fear turning to fury. 'I gave you a life; now you give me one!'
'And what would you do with it, Asara?' Kaiku asked. Her hair hung across one eye, but the other one regarded Asara steadily. 'What would I be unleashing if I allowed more creatures like you into the world?'
'It is the right of every woman! I was denied!'
'Are you even a woman?' Kaiku asked. 'Were you one to begin with? I wonder.' She had lapsed into the tone she used when she wore the make-up of the Sisterhood: stern, authoritative. 'Perhaps the gods had a reason to deny you. Perhaps one of you is enough.'
'Do not pronounce moral judgements upon me!' Asara raged. 'Not when you and your Red Order plot and scheme towards the throne. Your conscience is not unstained, Kaiku. Ask Cailin why your kind let the Weavers take the Empire. Ask her if hundreds of thousands, if millions of lives were worth sacrificing so that the Sisterhood could rise!'
Kaiku gazed at her levelly. 'Perhaps I will,' she said, and she turned and walked away. She could sense Asara's hateful glare prickling against her nape, and was half expecting the spy to attack her out of sheer thwarted anger; but Asara let her go.
Kaiku let the quietude of the forest envelop her, broken only by the sinister ticks and taps in the distance. Once her mind was still, she began to consider what Asara had said. They spent an uneasy night within the emyrynn village, but when dawn came they were still all there. None of them were in good shape, however. Terrifying dreams haunted them, and the early watches had been punctuated by the shrieks of waking men. Most gave up trying to sleep, too afraid of what lurked just beneath the skin of unconsciousness. Those that persevered caught snatches of slumber, a few minutes at a time, before awakening in a worse state than they had been before. Tempers were fraying among the men. They resented the forest and the spirits and so, lacking targets, they snapped at each other.
What was worse, it became clear soon afterward that they would not be going anywhere that day. Peithre had improved a little, but Phaeca had become sick. Kaiku talked with Doja, who admitted that it was foolhardy to go on with one of the Sisters down and the other one determined to stay. He broke the news to his men, sweetening it by pointing out that he believed they were safe from the forest in the emyrynn village.
Kaiku was dubious about this last statement, but it served her purpose. The soldiers accepted their fate with stoic expressions, though later there would be dissent amongst them. The spirits were bad enough, but the sleeplessness was getting to them too. There was something in this place that poisoned the mind, and they did not want to linger a moment more than necessary. She knew how they felt. There was no telling how much longer it would take them to get to the Xhiang Xhi, and every day there was a day back.
She visited Phaeca. Against Doja's wishes, Phaeca had moved herself out of her tent and inside one of the emyrynn dwellings, where she had unrolled her sleeping-mat. It was warm and oddly sterile there, an irregularly shaped room with the curve of a tree bole as one wall. Protuberances of sap were moulded from parts of the floor and ceiling, things that could have been sculpture or which might have had a mundane and utilitarian purpose. A thin tunnel, too small for anything bigger than a mouse, opened out into the room. From what Kaiku could determine, it wound all the way up the tree until it was lost in the branches, but she could not imagine what it was for.
Phaeca was making little sense. She was babbling as if feverish, but she had no temperature, and though she was agitated she was not sallow. She slapped Kaiku's hand away when it was laid on her cheek, and muttered unpleasant things about her as if she was not in the room. Kaiku knelt by her for a time, deeply concerned. There was no healing possible: she had defences to keep others out, even other Sisters. Besides, the more she studied her companion, the more Kaiku worried that the affliction was not physical at all. Her shrieks had been the loudest last night. Like Lucia, the forest was battering her, and Kaiku did not know how well her sanity would hold.
Gods, why did we ever come to this cursed place? she thought to herself, but she already knew the answer to that one. They came here because it was their last chance.
She glimpsed the emyrynn a few times that day, flitting among the trees in the distance. Each time, she stared out into the blue and green folds of the forest and wondered about the nature of their curious hosts. She went to see Peithre, who was very weak but awake, and spoke with Tsata for a time. But he seemed odd to her today: there was something in his manner that she could not fathom, and eventually she gave up on trying and left him alone. The atmosphere in the camp depressed her, but she was stuck here, as they all were.