‘This was once a plateau on which the Short-Tails built a city. But now, as you can see, it is shattered. Now there is nothing but these dread slabs all pitched and angled-yet we have been working our way downward. Did you sense this? We will soon reach the centre, the heart of this crater, and we will see what destroyed this place.’
‘The ruins,’ said Udinaas, ‘remember cool shadow. Then concussion. Shadow, Wither, in a flood to announce the end of the world. The concussion, well, that belonged to the shadow, right?’
‘You know things-’
‘You damned fool, listen to me! We came to the edge of this place, this high plateau, expecting to see it stretch out nice and flat before us. Instead, it looks like a frozen puddle onto which someone dropped a heavy rock. Splat. All the sides caved inward. Wraith, I don’t need any secret knowledge to work this out. Something big came down from the sky-a meteorite, a sky keep, whatever. We trudged through its ash for days. Covering the ancient snow. Ash and dust, eating into that snow like acid. And the ruins, they’re all toppled, blasted outward, then tilted inward. Out first, in second. Heave out and down, then slide back. Wither, all it takes is for someone to just look. Really look. That’s it. So enough with all this mystical sealshit, all right?’
His tirade had wakened the others. Too bad. Nearly dawn anyway. Udinaas listened to them moving around, heard a cough, then someone hawking spit. Which? Seren? Kettle?
The ex-slave smiled to himself. ‘Your problem, Wither, is your damned expectations. You hounded me for months and months, and now you feel the need to have made it-me-worth all that attention. So here you are, pushing some kind of sage wisdom on this broken slave, but I told you then what I’ll tell you now. I’m nothing, no-one. Understand? Just a man with a brain that, every now and then, actually works. Yes, I work it, because I find no comfort in being stupid. Unlike, I think, most people. Us Letherii, anyway. Stupid and proud of it. Belongs on the Imperial Seal, that happy proclamation. No wonder I failed so miserably.’
Seren Pedac moved into the firelight, crouching down to warm her hands. ‘Failed at what, Udinaas?’
‘Why, everything, Acquitor. No need for specifics here.’
Fear Sengar spoke from behind him. ‘You were skilled, I recall, at mending nets.’
Udinaas did not turn round, but he smiled. ‘Yes, I probably deserved that. My well-meaning tormentor speaks. Well-meaning? Oh, perhaps not. Indifferent? Possibly. Until, at least, I did something wrong. A badly mended net-aaii! Flay the fool’s skin from his back! I know, it was all for my own good. Someone’s, anyway.’
Another sleepless night, Udinaas?’
He looked across the fire at Seren, but she was intent on the flames licking beneath her outstretched hands, as if the question had been rhetorical.
‘I can see my bones,’ she then said.
‘They’re not real bones,’ Kettle replied, settling down with her legs drawn up. ‘They look more like twigs.’
‘Thank you, dear.’
‘Bones are hard, like rock.’ She set her hands on her knees and rubbed them. ‘Cold rock.’
‘Udinaas,’ Seren said, ‘I see puddles of gold in the ashes.’
‘I found pieces of a picture frame.’ He shrugged. ‘Odd to think of K’Chain Nah’ruk hanging pictures, isn’t it?’
Seren looked up, met his eyes. ‘K’Chain-’
Silchas Ruin spoke as he stepped round a heap of cut stone. ‘Not pictures. The frame was used to stretch skin. K’Chain moult until they reach adulthood. The skins were employed as parchment, for writing. The Nah’ruk were obsessive recorders.’
‘You know a lot about creatures you killed on sight,’ Fear Sengar said.
Clip’s soft laughter sounded from somewhere beyond the circle of light, followed by the snap of rings on a chain.
Fear’s head lifted sharply. ‘That amuses you, pup?’
The Tiste Andii’s voice drifted in, eerily disembodied. ‘Silchas Ruin’s dread secret. He parleyed with the Nah’ruk. There was this civil war going on, you see…’
‘It will be light soon,’ Silchas said, turning away.
Before too long, the group separated as it usually did. Striding well ahead were Silchas Ruin and Clip. Next on the path was Seren Pedac herself, while twenty or more paces behind her straggled Udinaas-still using the Imass spear as a walking stick-and Kettle and Fear Sengar.
Seren was not sure if she was deliberately inviting solitude upon herself. More likely some remnant of her old profession was exerting on her a disgruntled pressure to take the lead, deftly dismissing the presence ahead of the two Tiste warriors. As if they don’t count. As if they’re intrinsically unreliable as guides… to wherever it is we’re going.
