Genetopia (25 page)

Flint stared at him and he felt completely empty. What if Amber had been bought by Henika? What if she was in there now?

The Marshall turned and spoke to one of his assistants and then walked away. Instantly, overseers for each of the two squads started to snap instructions at their men.

There was still some distance to go through the whitewood trees, and they moved as silently as a body of sixty men could move.

Eventually, Flint detected a thinning of the trees ahead, and a short time later he stood looking out over an area that had been cleared.

In the middle of the open area, two barns and a timber farmhouse sat, each squat and square in the Tenkan style. And, from within, there came the sound of singing.

Nimmo nudged Flint and pointed towards the door of one of the barns. Inside, there appeared to be logged timber piled high, but suspended from the frame of its wide doorway a body sagged. It was hard to be sure at this distance, but the thing was naked and appeared to be covered with dark hair. A mutt, then. Had the rebels turned on their own, or was this a grisly memento of the way Henika had treated them, perhaps the catalyst for Shade’s Rebellion?

Flint wanted to walk away from this, right now, but he knew that was not possible.

Nimmo said something about stringing them all up, but Flint had turned away from him and did not hear his words clearly.

“Okay, boys.”

That was their overseer, Tontenka.

Flint looked at the farm again, just in time to see two arrows plunge their flaming heads into the building’s bleached shingles. He swallowed. He had seen this before: arrows twisted around with belly-pulp and dipped in stick-spirit so that they would burn.

Flames skipped up the sloping roof. White flames at first, from the spirit, and then yellows and reds as the wooden tiles ignited.

More arrows, lodging in the farm’s walls, and in the barns.

The singing in the farm had stopped now. They knew their end was near.

Purgists closed around the buildings, crossing the open area between trees and farm.

Flint was in the second rank.

So close! He thought they would have to go into the buildings after the rebel mutts. Indeed, if it had not been for their earlier singing he would have thought the place deserted.

And then, finally, doors opened and mutts spilled out into the yard, coughing and screaming, some of them fighting each other.

Purgists aimed with crossbows and fired.

Flint looked on, sick, studying each mutt that fell, each mutt that tried to flee or tried to go back into the burning building.

Smoke spread across the clearing, and someone ordered the purgists to slow their advance, not to leave any gaps.

Ahead, some of the men were in the farmyard already, some fighting at close quarters with the frenzied mutts. Flint had never thought he would see anything like this.

Shade stepped out of the farmhouse.

Through drifting smoke, Flint recognised him immediately as the mutt he had seen at market in Trecosann: short and ghostly pale, with teeth too big for his mouth and an unchallengeable expression that was out of place on a mutt’s face.

The smoke appeared to part around him and Flint sensed a sudden lull in the battle. The mutt had such presence about him it was little wonder that he scared the Tenkans so much.

He raised a hand and Flint sensed that he had been biding his time. Then, when his hand fell, Flint heard a groaning, a shifting of large weight... like the felling of a giant tree.

He looked at the nearest barn, where neatly trimmed logs were stacked high to the eaves and the mutt’s body still hung.

The logs were moving.

One at the top fell, careening down the sloped face of the wood pile and then others shifted, started to tumble forwards.

Flint looked down to see what lay in the wood’s path and he saw perhaps a dozen purgists and only three or four mutts. It was as if the moment was suspended in time and Flint was powerless to do anything.

The log-pile collapsed, submerging those in its way.

And in its wake, the dangling body of the mutt now swung from side to side, having been struck by the racing logs.

~

The farm was burning well now, its structure collapsing, the heat intense as Flint moved closer.

He found the body of a female mutt, turned her over to see her face, moved on.

The fighting still went on around him, although more sporadically now. The logs had been Shade’s gesture–he had known he had no chance against the Tenkan purge.

Flint had not seen Shade fall, but he had found his body, his head clubbed so that it resembled a mangled fleshfruit, but his pale skin and scarred back unmistakable.

Now, he found another fallen mutt, a male. He moved on.

Nimmo lay, curled up like a pup on Leaving Hill, what looked like a slender cane sticking out of his side.

Bizarrely, he smiled up at Flint’s crouching figure. “I found it,” he gasped. “That moment. Nearly there. Taking the last breath and then... what’s after? Nearly...”

He stopped talking and tried to moisten his lips, but his tongue was clearly dry.

The smoke hung heavy around them and so Flint was startled when a figure suddenly emerged. A woman, or a girl. Scared. She paused, then backed away and was lost. She would not get far.

When Flint looked back at Nimmo he was dead.

~

They were welcomed on the streets of Tenecka as returning heroes. Word must have passed ahead of them that Shade’s Rebellion had been put down and now crowds lined the main thoroughfare as the purgists trekked dismally back into town.

“They think we have won,” said Lorin, marching at Flint’s side. “They do not understand that this will happen again and again if True humans are to defend their position.”

Many of the purgists believed that they had won, too, and soon the city was overtaken by a spirit of celebration.

Flint went to their camp on the outskirts and joined some of the others in a communal bath to soak the smut and blood from their bodies.

Later, he looked for Wend but could not find her in the room she shared with her sister, or back in the temporary brewhouse at the camp where she worked.

He found Lorin instead, and they drank burn spirit and beer, chasing one drink with the other like true comrades at arms.

“What next, Lorin?”

“Dunno. The purge isn’t done yet, is it?”

“Never be done. Like holding back water with a stick.”

They drank more at the camp–for Nimmo, and for all they had been through–and then wandered along the river path into the heart of Tenecka.

“What next, Flin’?”

“Dunno. My sister. Keep looking.”

“You mean you really had a sister? Thought you were telling stories. A noble mystery to hide behind. Is what I thought...”

Flint thought. “I really had a sister,” he said, finally.

Later, somewhere in town where trees grew by the road and people were cooking meat over open fires, Flint joined a double line of people dancing in and out of the tree trunks to the sound of a drum band.

Head pounding, burning like he had a fever, throat raw, he leaned against a wall and coughed until he thought his insides were coming out.

Straightening, he saw Wend, out in the middle of the street, her fingers interlocked behind the neck of a man who was either a purgist or trying to look like one. They were dancing, pressed together, her head tucked into the gap between jaw and shoulder. She would feel his stubble against her temple, would smell the smells of fighting, the sweat and dirt and smoke–his clothes were filthy, he clearly had not bathed since returning from action. Another to share the small sleep mat in the room she occupied with her sister.

Flint staggered across the road, barging past dancing couples and racing children. His head was pounding again, his skin hot.

“Hey,” he said, and they paused, looking at him.

“Leave it, Flint,” said Lorin, from somewhere behind him.

He ignored the advice and slapped out at the man’s arm.

~

He woke in the dormitory cabin, his head sore, throat dry and rough. He crawled out into daylight, to where a bladderpump spilled water into the dirt. He doused his head, drank greedily, turned to find Lorin laughing at him.

“He
hit
me! The bastard hit me...”

Lorin shook his head. “No he didn’t,” he said. “He didn’t have to. You fell over flat on your face when you went after him.”

Later, he sat cross-legged by the river, trying to find inner solidity.

She came to him, eventually. Somehow he had known she would.

Sitting by his side, a short distance between his left knee and her right, she said, “It was nice, Flint, but that’s all. Do you understand?”

He shook his head. “Not really,” he told her.

“I like you,” she said. “We had a good time.”

He could have used the same words and yet meant something else entirely.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “I’ve seen enough of the Ten.”

“What will you do?”

“I’ll carry on looking for my sister. You see, she went missing from Trecosann–that’s why I left home: to try to find her.” He told her about his search for Amber, about how he had gone to Greenwater, and then decided to go to Carnival in Farsamy but was diverted along the way. “I came so close! One of the traders told me he’d sold a girl who fitted her description–sold her as a mutt. I spent a mad day trying to track down the man who had bought her, but didn’t find him. I’m sure it was her: the description was so close, and she’s so distinctive.”

“How do you mean?”

“She has one feature which marks her out from most: when she was a small girl she had an illness that left her with jaundice for most of a year, and stained the whites of her eyes permanently yellow...”

He let his words trail off, seeing a sudden change in Wend’s expression.

“I... Oh my...”

“What?”

“I went to Carnival this year. I travelled with the brewkeeper Esher and his family. I met someone. Henritt Elkyme. He was fun, and he was so arrogant! I spent one evening with him, but then he lost interest. I thought he was probably keener on the young bondsman he went around with, until I found out that it was a mutt he liked better, the creep.

“He bought her, Flint. Henritt Elkyme bought your sister.”

Chapter 21

He was deserting the purge, he supposed. He did not know if that was regarded as some kind of offence by the Tenkans and he only cared as far as it might hinder him on his way.

Travelling alone along a route that connected Tenecka with the main Ritt settlement of Ritteny, he passed many groups of travellers, mostly heading north out of the Ten.

Some were Lost, he knew, although they did their best to hide any obvious signs.

They seemed harmless enough, though. For the first time he had a sense of two communities living in interlocking territories, as tree martens occupy the upper reaches of the canopy and yet give way to nub mice and cane kits lower down.

The wilds belonged to the Lost, and he had to pass through these lands to get to Amber.

He camped out under the trees on the seven nights of his journey. He listened to the sounds of tree crickets and frogs, the high chitterings of hunting bats and the soft cooing of oak flowers in the breeze.

As he walked, he wondered if he could really be nearing the end of his journey. What if he came to Rittasan and found that they refused to release Amber? He would deal with that if he had to. He could, at least, do his best to ensure that she was treated well.

He remembered Henritt Elkyme, all right. He had visited Trecosann and he was the one at the stall who had negotiated with Sister Judgement about fibre trade and indentures for two young Riverwalkers. Arrogant, yes. Wend’s description was fair.

Also: Flint had confronted him when he found that a mutt fitting Amber’s description had been bought by someone sounding very like Henritt. He had denied it, sending Flint off on his mad search for someone else who may be the one who had bought her. “Plenty more mutts out there,” he had told Flint.

~

He had expected Rittasan to be far grander than this, given Henritt Elkyme’s manner. The imperious representative of Clan Ritt at Carnival had, in reality, only been the representative of a backwater.

The buildings were an assortment of seed-grown podhuts and tent-like cabins made from stretched sheets of smartfibre, giving the place an air of transition. In some ways it was like returning to Trecosann. Rather than enfold itself with high defensive stockades, the town was surrounded by managed fields and paddies, acting as a buffer between settlement and wilds; only the inner cluster of buildings was enclosed by defensive earth banks, and that would be little help if subjected to the kinds of pressures Flint had seen in the gang-farms of the Ten.

He wondered how long this sense of security would last, given the upheavals only a few days’ journey to the south.

He was stopped at one of the main entranceways to the settlement, where a semi-circular fibre arch looped over a road that was raised on a ridge between rice paddies.

A man with a long whipping cane stood before him, two mutts armed with hardened fibre shortswords to his rear. The man was a head shorter than Flint, and several years older. He looked bored.

“I am a Riverwalker,” said Flint, simply. He knew there were Riverwalkers here, and it was known that their kind often travelled alone from community to community. It was only natural for him to call here.

The man nodded. “Certainly look like one,” he said. “But you’ll forgive me for doubting you. All sorts have been passing through recently–driven out of the Ten, so I’ve been told.”

Flint nodded. “You have two of my fellow Riverwalkers here,” he said. “Brother Watchful and Sister Oftheclouds. They will vouch for me.”

~

Henritt Elkyme was not as Flint remembered him. He seemed older and when he looked into his eyes the depths were greater than before.

A brief shake of the head was all the response Flint needed to confirm that Amber was no longer here, that his journey was not over yet.

Henritt took him by the arm and led him back to a lemon grove behind one of the larger podhuts. They sat, and drank from a jug one of the mutts brought out.

“I’m sorry,” said Henritt.

Flint had expected this to be more difficult, a battle of wills, a struggle to extract the truth from someone who had already proved himself to be an adept liar. But he believed this young man when he said that he was sorry.

“You did not explain yourself clearly in Farsamy–you did not tell me that it was your sister you sought. And... I would probably still have lied to you. She was beautiful. She had me possessed.”

“‘Was’?”

“Sorry:
is
. She’s out there somewhere.” He waved a hand. The wilds. “She did not stay here long. She ran away. I can show you the direction she took and I can wish you well and offer you supplies, but I’m afraid I can’t do more than that. I don’t know where your sister is.”

“Can you tell me ... how she is?”

Henritt met his look. “She is Lost,” he said. “But you knew that, I’m sure. There is great diversity in the Lost and your sister passes easily as a mutt–too easily.”

“I’ve heard stories that some of the traders can craft people like that. They use changing vectors that guide the transformations into types familiar to us.” He smiled grimly. “It is a technology my own clan has refined.” He thought of Callum and his changing vats, of how his cousin and Father Grey would try to guide the changes once the fevers had taken hold.

Henritt nodded. “I suspected that, when Cedar explained to me that she must be one of the Lost.”

“Cedar?”

Cedar–
Cedero
?

“I went after her when she ran away,” explained Henritt. “I was attacked by a group of travellers and later rescued by one of the Lost. He called himself Cedar. A tall man, completely hairless, clothed in animal skins.”

When Cedero had emerged from the changing brew... when Flint had stolen down to the holding pens that night and seen him in the grip of the changing fevers... his former teacher’s hair had been falling out in great clumps.

Had the past finally come back to haunt him?

“Had he seen her?” asked Flint.

He let loose the breath he had been holding when Henritt shook his head.

What would Cedero do if he found Amber? Probably, he would not even know her: so much time had passed, and Amber had only been a small girl when Cedero had been banished.

“Where was this Cedar?” asked Flint. There was still half a day’s light to use.

Henritt stood immediately, sensing Flint’s urgency. “Calig!” he called, and a big mutt came running. “Get Stutter to pack some food and water for Walker Flintheart. And get Fleet and Merit: we’re escorting Flint up the Ritteney Way.”

~

The track was a thin trail, worn through wood grass, but Henritt assured Flint that it was the main trail from Rittasan to the west. They passed a junction, and Henritt gestured the other way along the larger trail they had joined. “That way is Farsamy,” he said.

“And the other?”

“More Ritt settlements. And wilds–what we call the Badlands.”

It all looked reasonably familiar to Flint, the vegetation similar to that he knew from around Trecosann. Thicket oaks and bellycane, various tree ferns with dangling fronds of moss. Here in the wilds, of course, they could all be subtly different, subtly changed.

Eventually they paused.

To one side of the trail, a dense stand of conifers crowded towards the light, their trunks tall and naked, like the tines of an upturned brush. The canopy shaded out any undergrowth here and Flint saw that it would be easy to leave the trail and pass through the stand.

“I came back through the finger pines here,” said Henritt. “I remember wandering in them, thinking I was lost and that Cedar had tricked me when he gave me directions. And then: the relief of stumbling onto this track and feeling the sunlight on my skin.

“It was something like thirty days ago,” he told Flint again. “They won’t be there now.”

“But they were,” said Flint. “And if they have left behind any signs then I will find them and follow them.”

~

Alone, he found the fallen tree, new trunks thrust upwards from its fallen length. New life amid death.

This fitted Henritt’s description of the place where Cedar had killed the boar.

There had been a fire here, some time ago. Presumably it was where Cedar had cooked the hog’s meat.

Beyond the tree, he found a shallow gulley and that was where he found the grave. It had been disturbed by animals: branches pulled aside from where they had covered the body, bones protruding.

The skull was that of some kind of animal, and from the extended canine fangs, Flint decided that this must be where Cedar had buried the unused remains of the beast he had slaughtered.

Thirty days was a long time. Other than the fire and the stripped, half-buried carcase, he found little evidence that anyone had been here.

Then, later, as the sky burnt a fierce red, he found an ancient hut. It was almost completely submerged by growths of thorn-bush and scrub, but someone had been here and cleared the way through to the entrance.

Within, there was no more sign of occupation.

He chose to spend the night here, and look more closely the next day.

~

Nothing.

The sun was high above and the heat intense, despite the dappled shade of the forest canopy. Flint emptied the contents of one of his sweetwater bladders into his parched mouth.

Where might Amber have gone? He felt so
close
.

There were various indistinct trails through the jungle here. Animal spoor indicated that many were created by regular passage of hogs–animals he had heard snuffling about outside the wood hut the previous night. Others perhaps indicated alternative thoroughfares used by the Lost in preference to the well-worn routes between the settlements of the True. If so, that made any hope of tracing Amber more remote–so many more, likely hidden, routes to find!

But then, the fact that Cedar had directed Henritt back to the trail suggested that he might regard the more established human pathways as the obvious routes to take. And if Amber travelled alone, and she was still able to think clearly, then he felt sure she would have stuck to the trail, heading away from Ritt settlements. She probably wouldn’t know she was heading towards the region Henritt had called the Badlands...

In any case, he had to choose one direction to pursue
somehow
, and heading away from Rittasan seemed the best bet.

He headed back through the cooler shade of the finger pines. When he found the trail again he headed east.

~

Ahead, where the track wound up a scarp face, he saw that he was catching a small party of travellers: six adults and several children and dogs running around them.

He remembered Henritt’s story of being attacked. The group he had encountered were different in number, but the lesson held good.

He trailed them for some distance, straining to see if any of the tiny figures fitted the description of Cedar, or Amber.

It was impossible to see.

They might be legitimate travellers, freemen plying trades from settlement to settlement, or even genuine clanspeople on some business or other.

Equally, they could be Lost.

He did not know how to juggle the risks: if they proved to be violent, he was outnumbered and almost certainly out-armed, as he carried only his combat staff and a knife. But probably his only hope of progress was to ask people he met for information about other travellers.

Finally, the decision was taken from him, as one of the dogs caught wind of him and set up a mad barking. One of the adults raised a hand towards the dog and it cowered and stopped barking. The group paused, looking back down the trail towards Flint, and then they resumed their journey.

That was a good sign, he felt.

He watched to see if any of them slipped away from the path, again recalling Henritt’s story of how one of his assailants had sneaked up behind him.

Trees obscured his view and he felt vulnerable, imagining them stealing back through the forest to ambush him. But each time the group became visible, above and ahead of him, their number was unchanged.

He allowed his pace to increase, the gap to narrow.

They looked a peaceable party, glancing back occasionally to scrutinise him.

He took comfort in the knowledge that people seemed to identify him easily as a Riverwalker: the occasional itinerant preacher between settlements a familiar and harmless figure.

They waited, when he came close. Watchful as the lone traveller approached.

Two of the children had the stocky physique of mutts. One of the men had only one arm, although it was unclear whether it was a defect of birth or the result of a later injury.

Flint bowed his head to them. “Greetings,” he said. “May you travel in the Lord’s peace.” He felt slightly guilty playing up to his preacher’s image.

“Greetings, master,” said a man, who appeared to be either their leader or spokesman.

“Make you travel in peace. Be travel with fellows?”

The man’s Mutter was indistinct, his accent strange. Flint was unsure whether he was asking him if he was, indeed, alone or if he wanted to travel with this group.

“I travel alone,” said Flint, choosing words that answered both questions. “I am looking for someone. Two people. One is a man, tall and bald and dressed in animal skins. The other is my sister. She has chestnut hair, yellow in her eyes. Both are Lost.”

Just as this group were Lost. Or Lost with two young orphaned or rescued mutts, Flint guessed.

“Done see plenty Lost,” said the man. “None how you done say, master.”

Flint nodded. He waved along the trail ahead of them. The ground here started to level out, the trees thinning on the exposed and rocky crest of the hill. “Where are you heading?”

“Been lookin’ for Harmony, master. Some say it out here. Been lookin’ long time.”

Flint nodded to the man, and then to the rest of the group. “Travel in peace,” he told them.

He left them mumbling farewells to him, and strode on ahead.

Soon the trees were around him, thicker again, and the group of travellers was lost to view.

~

He slept sitting upright with his back against a lime trunk. Lorin had taught him this technique when they had been forced to sleep out during the purge. It meant that you were never fully asleep, always ready to respond to strange sounds in the night. And it made the warm cavities of nostril and ear less accessible to wandering insects and bugs.