And then he was gone, walking away from her, and she was alone again.
She sat for a long time and thought on what he had said. Then she returned to her house and began to pack what things she needed.
She was going to see her mother.
EIGHTEEN
Few slept in the forest that night, but for Kaiku it was not out of fear of dreams.
She wandered the emyrynn village alone after Tsata had left her, traipsing listlessly between the iridescent columns and swirls and spikes that clung to the trees and sprawled along the ground. Fretfully replaying the moment in her mind when they had kissed, picking it apart to find what meaning she could therein. What had been in his eyes when she had halted him? Would it have been better to have let him kiss her again before giving him news of his ailing kinswoman? Did he interpret it as an excuse for rejection? And indeed, in Kaiku's intention, had it been that? Did she shy from him on purpose, using Peithre as an excuse to get herself out of it? Gods, she did not even know herself what she had wanted then; but retrospect was a hard eye to cast upon her actions, and she was full of regrets and uncertainties.
She had achieved no resolution by the time dawn came, and she heard Phaeca's scream.
Her meanderings had almost brought her back to the camp when the sound reached her. It took longer to process than it otherwise would, for the sleeplessness was beginning to tell. She wasted a second on incomprehension before breaking into a run, sprinting around the tent cluster where others were getting to their feet. She reached the alien dwelling where Phaeca had been resting, pushed aside the soldiers who crowded around the entranceway and went inside.
Phaeca was still screaming. She was hunkered against the tree bole that formed one wall of the room, her possessions and bedding scattered across the floor. Blood ran from the walls and lay in pools on the floor, smeared at the edges where her heels had slipped in them. Chunks of smoking flesh and blackened bone were strewn about. Some of them were whole enough to still have the fur on. White fur, soaked in red.
Kaiku stared at the scene, aghast. 'Phaeca, what have you done?' she breathed. Her voice rose in anger and disbelief. 'You killed one of them? You killed an emyrynn?' She crossed the room and grabbed hold of Phaeca's shoulders, shaking her roughly. 'Why? Why?'
'It was trying to kill me!' Phaeca shrieked. 'It was in my room! I woke up and it was in my room!'
Kaiku squeezed her eyes shut. The scene as it might have happened played across the darkness: Phaeca, awakening from a nightmare to find an unfamiliar creature before her, lashing out with her kana. She was already in a state of questionable sanity, driven to raving and feverish mutterings by the malevolence of the forest. The sight of the emyrynn must have been too much for her. Or maybe it had attacked her. Maybe she was telling the truth. It didn't matter, in the end. She had killed one of them.
'This is not your room,' she said, her voice quieter now. 'You were sleeping in its home.'
A cry of alarm went up in the camp, and those soldiers at the doorway turned back to look. 'There's something moving out in the trees!' came the shout.
'Do you know what you have done, Phaeca?' Kaiku said, her tone heavy with despondency. 'Your actions will be the death of us all.'
At that, Phaeca's face twisted into a snarl, and she launched herself at Kaiku.
Kaiku did not expect it in the least. Perhaps, had she thought on it, she would have been more careful in her words. She knew how fragile her friend was in this place. But though she had worried about Phaeca's state of mind over the past few days, she had never once thought that she might become violent. Even in the wake of what she had just discovered, she assumed the killing of the emyrynn was an accident, a reaction rather than a premeditated act. The sight of the Sister's face twisting into a contortion of such utter hatred made her quail; and then she was being carried out of the doorway of the dwelling by the weight of the attack, scattering the soldiers there, and she fell onto the blue-green grass outside with Phaeca atop her.
The savagery of Phaeca's assault stunned her; she only resisted at all because instinct drove her to. Phaeca raked her face with her nails, slapped and punched at her head, shrieking and screaming oaths and curses in a coarse Axekami dialect that was entirely unlike her usual mode of speech. Two of the soldiers, unable to credit what they were seeing, reached down to pull the crazed Sister from her victim; they were flung back and away by an invisible force that flattened the grass and cracked the sap wall of the emyrynn dwelling.
It was the outrush of Phaeca's kana that brought Kaiku to her senses. The wrenching of the Weave sparked an answer in her own body, a surge of energy that she fought to curtail before it broke out of her, fearful of hurting her friend.
She should not have done so. It took her too long to realise that Phaeca's kana was not only directed at the soldiers, it was also directed at her. Phaeca was attacking her in the Weave, and that made her intent lethal.
She surrendered herself to the will of her kana. Time decelerated to a crawl in the world of the five senses, while beneath its skin the Sisters clashed at blinding speed. Kaiku's fractional hesitation had afforded Phaeca an advantage. Only when she had cast aside all doubts and had realised that her friend really meant to kill her, that this was a fight for her very life, did she lend her will to the conflict and begin resisting in earnest.
But by then it was too late. Phaeca had undermined her, laid traps that foiled her attempts at constructing defences. Kaiku constructed labyrinthine tangles only to have them come apart at a single tug. She built snares to delay her opponent and watched them fall to pieces when they were sprung. By the time she had got her barriers up, Phaeca was already behind them, and Kaiku was forced to abandon them and back away further. The assault was relentless, furious; she crumbled under it. Phaeca was not as good as Cailin, but she was still better than most Weavers, sliding and shuttling like a needle. And Kaiku had been taken totally by surprise, had still refused to believe it even when she had realised what was happening.
Phaeca burst through the holes in Kaiku's stitchwork and reached into her body, grasping, encircling her heart, sewing into muscle and bone. Kaiku screamed in horror, a wordless mental anguish at the violation, the knowledge that she had no way to fight back now and that this cry would be her last.
Then the pain hit her. Phaeca was tearing her apart. She had done it to others before, and always wondered what it must have felt like, the kind of agony they would suffer in the instant before they died. Now she knew. It was as if her every vein and nerve were being pulled forcibly from her flesh, sucked out like tendrils through her skin to be cast away. The torture was incredible, overwhelming…
… and suddenly gone.
She was alone in the Weave. Phaeca had disappeared, with only an aching pulse of sadness left in her wake.
Her mind settled again, reorientating her senses. She left the Weave, her kana turning inwards and scouring her for damage. Her red eyes refocused and the light of dawn in the forest filtered back.
There was a weight atop her. A booted foot braced against it and shoved it off. Asara. She reached down and helped Kaiku up.
'I had no choice,' Asara said. 'It was her or you.'
She forced herself to look at Phaeca. The Sister lay face-down, her hair bloody. Shot through the neck.
'It was her or you,' Asara said again.
Asara's voice was dim and tinny in Kaiku's ears, cushioned by a numb blanket that had settled on her. Her vision had narrowed, the periphery hazed. She felt fractured from her surroundings, barely aware. Around her, gunshots and cries, denting the whine of the blood in her ears. She could not reconcile the figure lying before her with the woman she had known. The fact that this husk of flesh was here did not equate with the certainty that she would never see nor speak with Phaeca again.