Bringer of Light (25 page)

‘Hey!’ yelled Taro, ‘what the fuck d’you think you’re doing?’

The three men started, then stared at Taro with odd, narrow-eyed expressions, like they were surprised, but couldn’t see him properly. The one about to poke Vy took a shaky step back. His companion put out an arm to steady him.

The third one said something like, ‘Gloo tsah mahin!’ in a high, piping voice. All three started backing off, their eyes still screwed up. They moved clumsily, keeping their spears on the floor in front of them, almost like they were using them to push themselves backwards.

‘Listen, I could actually use some help here,’ said Taro, looking between them.

The one who’d spoken said something else incomprehensible. He sounded scared, though it was hard to be sure with that funny voice.

When they reached the door to the bridge the front two had a brief comedy moment trying to work out who was going through first. The winner had to bend over to get through, and he held onto the edge of the door like he expected to fall.

‘You don’t have to leave,’ said Taro. ‘We can talk about this.’ Assuming he could get them to understand. He pointed to his chest. ‘Friend,’ he said slowly and emphatically.

They weren’t having any of it. The second one went through the door, eyes wide in his dark – no, it really was filthy – face as he backed away. Taro picked up Device’s useless gun, pointed it at the door and said firmly, ‘Wait right there, you.’ The remaining visitor looked scared, but he didn’t hang around either.

Taro ran up to Vy and asked, ‘Did they hurt you?’

‘No,’ said Vy, who looked surprisingly content.

‘Good! Right, I’m going after these weird-looking fuckers. You, er, just stay there.’

‘I’m not going anywhere.’

Their brief chat had given the intruders time to get across the probably-bridge. As Taro came in the first one was just making his exit – through a door that most certainly hadn’t been there earlier. Taro decided against trying to stop them. They appeared more scared of him than he was of them, but they outnumbered him, and he wasn’t at his best right now.

He waited until they’d made their way outside, then counted to ten and went over to the door. He peered through cautiously, wary of possible attack. It was very dark out there, the sky black, and star-filled.

And it looked like he’d been wrong: the ship
had
landed – or possibly crashed, though the ship’s tech had done a good job of cushioning the impact. But whether it had landed or crashed, the ship had trashed the immediate area; it was sitting in the centre of a shallow crater. The place smelled funny, sort of like a mixture of farts and incense. That was the smell he’d noticed when he’d first woken up.

Taro spotted movement and watched the three locals disappearing at a fast trot into a tunnel in the side of the crater, their feet kicking up puffs of dust.

He had another look around the landing site, but he could see only the one tunnel. There were no other signs of life in the crater. He peered at the ground, two metres down, then stepped into the air and floated down slowly. His flight implants automatically adjusted to the local gravity, but he’d grown up in a low-grav environment – he realised that was why the locals had been having so much trouble on the ship. And the lack of light here wasn’t too much of a problem for him; the Undertow had also been a twilight world. He shivered as he thought of the parallels between his old home and this place; Khesh City was, after all, just another male Sidhe’s domain, even if no one who lived there knew it.

He decided against landing and instead flew towards the tunnel, checking behind him to make sure he was alone before he stuck his head in the perfectly circular opening. The inside surface had been sealed with something that glistened faintly in the starlight. For amoment he considered going in, then decided against it; he didn’t want to leave Vy alone and undefended.

Instead, he flew up towards the lip of the crater. The sky up there looked a bit fuzzy, and as he got closer he started to feel odd: his hair began to stand on end and nausea stirred in his guts. He stopped and hovered, thinking. He’d felt that before – there was a forceshield across the top of the crater. Some sort of automatic defence to stop the air leaking out? Whatever the reason, he wasn’t going any nearer.

Before he went back inside the ship he examined the hull around the outside of the door, but there was no sign of any controls, inside or out. Well, looked like the door would be staying open for now. Device had obviously been controlling the ship directly with his mind. Jarek had told him about human ships that used neural-interface tech, though Jarek didn’t hold with them himself; he was leery of implants, probably due to his religious upbringing. Taro would happily get the neurolink mods given the chance, but they weren’t cheap. Device’s ship was the most hi-tech ship Taro had ever seen – in fact, all of Aleph’s tech was beyond anything Taro had come across in his admittedly limited travels. Jarek’d had a theory about that: he’d reckoned the female Sidhe secretly put the knackers on human progress, to make sure humanity didn’t get too advanced and hard to control. Taro preferred the less paranoid explanation: that humans just weren’t as smart as male Sidhe.

Even if Device controlled most of the ship from his head, there was still the display wall. A lot of the lights and traces had gone out and those that were still lit weren’t moving much. That made sense: the ship would have powered down after its emergency landing. A human ship would have also sent out a distress call, but given how the males around here hated each other, he couldn’t rely on that.

Taro had another go at working the wall out. He put out a hand towards an orange bar, ready to snatch it back; his hand passed through the light. He tried again, this time flying up to touch a pale mauve blob that was gently bouncing around near ceiling height. The blob stopped, pulsed twice in an annoyed sort of way, then carried on bouncing. He looked around, but nothing appeared to have changed. He tried touching a few more random lights; his hand went through them and they either remained unchanged or throbbed or twitched, then went back to doing whatever they’d been doing before.

He decided he’d better check out the rest of the ship, just to make sure he hadn’t accidentally activated something by fiddling with the wall. He couldn’t see any changes.

Vy was asleep when he got back. Taro, concerned about the avatar, especially with his talk of dying, crouched down and shook him gently awake.

Vy’s eyes opened at once. ‘Did you find water?’ he asked.

‘No, sorry.’

‘There were people here, weren’t there?’

‘There were, but they’re gone now. Not sure if they’ll be back. You sound better.’

‘Not so crazy, you mean?’

Yeah. Not so crazy.’

‘I’ve consolidated my remaining functions. Many of my irrelevant memories have been purged, but I will remain lucid within the necessary parameters for the remaining time I have.’

‘Right.’ Taro wasn’t sure he liked the sound of that. ‘Are you strong enough to stand up yet? You can’t be very comfy lying on the floor.’

‘This is as good a place as any for me to be.’

‘Yeah, but it’s making my neck ache looking down at you. Tell you what, why don’t I help you over there to the wall and you can sit up.’

Getting Vy to the wall turned out to be harder than Taro had expected. The avatar was as light as a human child, but the body already felt like dead meat. Vy kept smiling vaguely while Taro manhandled him until he was sitting up with his back against the wall.

After that, Taro tried to drag Device’s body away so they wouldn’t have to look at it, but it was too heavy, and he quickly gave up.

When he turned back, Vy had slid to one side and was bracing himself on one arm. His head was lolling over, like some life-sized boneless doll. ‘I have devoted some functionality to the physical task of keeping the body upright,’ he said primly.

‘Good,’ said Taro slowly.

‘You have to live, Taro.’

‘Yeah, well, that’s the plan.’ Or perhaps more the intention: to have a plan he’d need to have some idea of where the fuck they were and how the fuck they’d get back to the others. Especially Nual. Shit and blood, he’d been trying not to think about Nual. He shook his head to dispel the pain.

‘No, you really do,’ said Vy, possibly mistaking the gesture. He no longer sounded anything like the mad, petulant kid he’d been. ‘Because I can’t. Won’t. I acknowledge that now. Hence my choice to reprioritise. I will die, whatever happens.’

‘That’s bollocks, Vy – you’ll be fine. I won’t let anyone hurt you, and I’ll get us both home.’
Somehow.

‘This body no longer functions. And my mind . . . I now acknowledge that my original mission cannot succeed as planned.’

‘Your original mission? The one you couldn’t tell me about?’

‘Yes.’

‘And— So does that mean you’re willing to tell me about it now? I mean, I wanna know, but only if you’re sure you want to tell me.’

‘I’m sure,’ said Vy firmly. ‘I will explain everything. And then you must kill me.’

Ifanna let the two men hurry her away down the alley. She heard distant shouts, and wondered vaguely if Hylwen was dead. Her own pain was worse now, but she was still gagged and could not tell anyone. She thought suddenly about hunters in the village, who tracked wounded wild pigs by the trail of blood the animals left in the mud. She slowed and grunted, inclining her head to indicate with her eyes what the problem was.

The priest stopped, his companion following suit a moment later, and in the light of the single lantern their expressions of confusion looked like to turn to hostility if she gave them any excuse. Ifanna bent her head harder, and finally the priest looked down.

‘Mother of Mercy! She is wounded!’ He looked to his companion. ‘Siarl, there is blood. Can you see how serious it is?’

He took the lantern, and the monitor crouched down next to her. Ifanna felt a strange sensation; the priest had sounded almost
concerned
. Concerned for
her
. She got her first good look at her saviour as he watched the monitor tend to her. He was an older man, a little jowly and sunken-eyed. His shaved scalp was wrinkled above his ears.

She drew in a sharp breath. She could feel the cut clearly now, and the monitor’s fingers probing it.

The pain receded a little and the monitor – Siarl – straightened. ‘’Tis not deep. Olwenna could dress it—’

‘No, I will not ask that of you. There will be medicines at the house, will there not?’

‘Aye, there should be.’ The monitor did not sound sure. Ifanna sensed that this venture made him uneasy.

‘Then we should not change our plan.’ He addressed Ifanna. ‘Can you walk—? Oh, I am a fool!
Chilwar
, you are still gagged. Here.’ He reached up, then said sternly but not unkindly, ‘If I remove this, you will not cry out, will you?’

Ifanna shook her head vigorously. He had called her
chilwar
, as though she were not damned.

He undid the gag. Ifanna said meekly, ‘Thank you,
Gwas
.’

‘Let me unbind your hands, too,
chilwar
.’

His companion said, ‘Maelgyn, I think we would do better to wait until we are at the house.’

‘I suppose so.’ To Ifanna he said, ‘Does your wound pain you much?’

‘Hardly at all,
Gwas
.’ She did not want to disappoint or annoy the priest when he was treating her so well. ‘I drew your attention to it because I was worried that I might bleed on the ground and they might— I mean—’ She did not want to continue that thought, did not want to remind these men that they had just gone against the will of Heaven – or the command of their superiors, at least.

Siarl gave her a look tinged with admiration. ‘A wise thought, Ifanna, but there is not enough blood to track us by.’

They knew who she was!

‘Then we do not need to worry,’ the priest said, his voice belying his words. ‘Let us carry on.’

Surprise had overcome her natural reticence. ‘Wait,’ said Ifanna, instantly regretting speaking out when she saw the priest’s thin-lipped expression. But he did not command her to be silent, so she carried on, her voice tremulous. ‘Please, Master Siarl, how is it you know my name?’

Gwas
Maelgyn answered for his companion, whose uneasiness was growing, and was now tinged by embarrassment. ‘Actually,
chilwar
, he is
Captain
Siarl.’ He spoke lightly, as though to a child. ‘And as for how he knows your name: all will be explained later.’

‘Of course,
Gwas
. I did not mean to question.’

The priest kept hold of her arm when they set off again, though more to steer than to restrain. Despite her assertion that she could walk unaided, Ifanna soon began to feel lightheaded. The wound in her side was a constant, draining ache, and her feet dragged. She stumbled, and the priest caught her.

‘You are not all right, are you?’

‘I am sorry,
Gwas
—’

‘Hush. Let me help.’ He put an arm around her, supporting her. She could not remember the last time anyone had showed such concern. And this man was a
priest
!