Awakening Read online

  Her stomach rumbled as they passed a fruit seller setting up her stall. ‘I’m hungry, did you bring any coin?’ she asked, stepping over a box of carefully wrapped apples.

  ‘No. Whoops!’ Tuon grabbed for her hand as she almost tripped over another box of fruit a young boy had suddenly shoved into her path.

  ‘Hey, you two!’ A huge woman in a flowing red dress was making her way toward them. ‘What do you think you’re doing? Get away from my fruit. You ruin it and you’ll be paying for it with your skinny bones!’

  Feeling suddenly reckless, Shaan bent down and pretended to fiddle with her sandal, glancing up at Tuon with a grin. It was an age-old thief’s trick and it only took her a moment to snatch the fruit.

  ‘Stop it!’ Tuon gripped her arm. ‘She looks big enough to throw us both in a refuse cart.’ She tugged at her elbow, pulling her away.

  ‘Oh, come on! That fat sea cow would never catch us.’ Shaan followed Tuon at a jog, deftly lifting some hot morsels off a tray of pastries as a man carried it past her.

  ‘Here,’ she caught up and handed her a pastry then pulled the apples from the front of her dress. ‘We’ll eat the evidence.’

  Tuon shook her head with a smile. ‘You are a thief, Shaan.’ She looked back to see that the large woman’s way had been blocked by a couple of fighting boys. ‘But you are a lucky one.’

  The woman glared at them over the heads of the boys, but could not get past and, flinging a few choice insults at them, she turned and went back to her stall. Catching Tuon’s eye, Shaan laughed and they pushed further into the maze of stalls until they reached the gardens, stopping under the shade of some trees by the fountain to eat the food. In the centre of the bubbling pool was a statue of a naked woman holding a fish and, on the far side, partly obscured by the statue, three richly dressed men were talking, their heads close together. Standing near them, a tall man in a black leather jerkin with a sword at his waist watched the area around them with a keen gaze. His skin was tanned and dark hair hung to his shoulders, a day or two of beard growth shadowing his jaw.

  Shaan’s stomach dropped when she saw him and she quickly averted her eyes and kneeled by the fountain, sluicing water over her face, feeling him scrutinising them. Tuon give a sharp intake of breath as she kneeled next to her. Men like him made them both nervous. The black jerkin marked him as a member of the Faithful, the city’s band of elite armsmen.

  He was the wrong kind of person to notice you, worse than the city guards by a long stretch. It was said the Hunters of the Faithful could track and capture anyone or anything, and the Seducers could turn your mind to their will. They were the most powerful and most feared of Salmut’s law keepers, the Guardian’s chosen warriors, charged with keeping watch against the Fallen’s return.

  Shaan kept her head down and wondered what such a man was doing in this part of the city. She risked a glance through dripping eyes and saw that he was now deep in conversation with the others. She gave a sigh of relief and stared down into the shallow pond, drawing circles in the water and chewing on the pastry. Beside her, Tuon sipped from her cupped hands then sat up on the lip of the fountain, her back rigid with tension.

  Shaan watched a leaf sink in the water. The market used to be one of her favourite spots to work when she’d run with the street packs. Easy pickings with so many distracted by the hustle and bustle. Before the Crooked Man took over anyway, she thought sourly. She was lucky she’d gotten out of the packs before he took all of them ‘under his wing’, as he put it. She looked sideways at Tuon. She’d had a run-in of some kind with him. It was the reason she’d come to work at the Red Pepino, arriving not long after Shaan herself. But she never talked about it. She wished she would tell her; how bad could it be?

  Shaan played with the leaf. ‘Why won’t you ever tell me what the Crooked Man did to you?’ she said quietly, glancing up at her.

  Tuon looked at her, her face pinched. ‘For the same reason you don’t talk about your time running with the street packs, or your dead mother,’ she replied curtly. ‘It’s over. Finished. There’s little point in recounting it, so stop asking.’

  Shaan pulled her hands out of the water and perched on the edge of the fountain. ‘Sorry,’ she said.

  Tuon only shook her head, still staring out at the market and sighed. ‘It’s not your fault.’

  Shaan looked away, following her gaze, watching a vendor threading meat onto sticks. Something was bothering Tuon. She was never that curt and she especially never mentioned Shaan’s dead mother so bluntly. She knew it hurt her to be reminded of the woman who had loved the drug crist more than her own daughter. She’d died of the addiction when Shaan was just five, leaving her to the street packs, the legion of orphaned children that thieved to survive.

  Shaan rubbed at a ragged nail on her right thumb. She barely remembered her mother. She recalled red hair and pale brown eyes in a thin face. Shaan’s eyes were such a dark blue they seemed almost purple. Indigo she’d called them in her lucid moments.

  ‘Shaan,’ Tuon’s voice brought her back. ‘Think too much on the past and it will drown you. Didn’t you say you had fish to catch?’ She raised an eyebrow.

  Shaan took a deep breath, feeling weary. ‘Yes, in a moment.’ Tuon shook her head, but Shaan couldn’t muster the energy to get up. The fish would still be there in an hour.

  Behind them, men’s voices were rising and falling beneath the sound of the water. They sounded fractious and she turned a little to watch them from the corner of her eye.

  Tuon suddenly elbowed her in the side and hissed, ‘Don’t look at them!’

  ‘Ow!’ Shaan glared at her. ‘I wasn’t.’

  ‘You were! Men like that are dangerous. And if they found out you’d overheard anything, how do you think they’d react?’

  ‘They wouldn’t know. I didn’t spend six years on the streets without learning something.’

  ‘One of them is of the Faithful,’ Tuon snapped.

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘Then you should also know he’s very high ranking. Dangerous.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Shaan frowned at her. There was nothing on his jerkin to claim rank.

  ‘I just do,’ Tuon said.

  ‘How?’

  But her face closed up and she looked away, smoothing her skirt. ‘Don’t mess with them. It’s not worth it.’ She rose. ‘Come on, you’ve got fish to catch.’ And she started to walk away.

  Shaan watched her for a moment before rising to follow. She was acting very strangely of late. She glanced sideways at her face as they walked. Tuon had been both mother and sister to her since she was eleven, but lately she’d been distant and had taken to staring pensively into space, a frown often between her brows.

  A shadow passed over and Shaan looked up to see a purple and gold serpent angling in from the west. It was very close to the city. Too close. She stopped, pulling Tuon to a halt beside her.

  ‘It’s flying very low,’ she said.

  ‘What?’ Tuon still sounded irritated.

  ‘It’s too low,’ she repeated. ‘Look.’ She pointed upwards.

  The serpent was coming closer and closer, its great wings tilted down toward them. It was so close Shaan could see the rider and hear the rushing air beneath the beast’s wings. An acrid, sharp scent rode on the wind, like oil burnt to black in a pan.

  Her heart pounded as she stared up at it. Riders never brought their serpents this close to the city. Around them other people had also stopped talking and were looking up at the beast as it came lower and lower. It dropped down toward them like a stone thrown by the gods. Its hide gleamed in the sunlight and as Shaan squinted up at it, a strange numbness came over her. She watched its tail unfurling behind it like a pennant in the sky as it streaked down upon them and, without knowing why, lifted a hand to it, stretching her fingers upward.

  Suddenly it shrieked, a long, low screech that lifted the hairs on the back of her neck.

  ‘It’s attacking!’ Someone shout
ed, and the market erupted in panic. People ran for cover, pushing each other aside as they tried to reach the safety of the surrounding buildings. But few were fast enough and the serpent fell upon them in a hiss of wind and clash of talons, like knives scraping on rock.

  ‘Shaan!’ Tuon grabbed her arm dragging her back toward the garden, pulling her down as they went. Stumbling, her knees skinned as she hit the paving. All around was screaming and panic as people threw themselves to the ground or under carts. Dazed, Shaan rolled on her side and saw the man in black running, his face grim, staring beyond her. She followed his gaze to see the serpent swoop down and across the middle of the square. Sparks flew as the barbs on its tail scraped stone. Its wings, spread full, shattered carts and awnings, crushing the people beneath and knocking down a muthu fleeing in terror. The wind of its passing smelled of smoulder and ash.

  It passed by them so close, Shaan saw its rider, his face full of fear as the beast rampaged beyond his control. For a moment he looked straight back at her and then he was gone as with another shriek, the serpent soared up and winged away to the east.

  2

  Clan lands. Jalwalah territory

  Tallis gripped his spear and stood perfectly still, watching the mar rat’s burrow. Slowly, tentatively, a brown nose surfaced and sniffed the early morning desert air. The muscles in Tallis’s right arm ached from holding the short spear to strike, but he remained motionless. Any sound would send the animal scurrying back underground. Patience was the hunter’s best friend, his father had told him. Slowly, the small animal crept from its hole. As long as his forearm and covered in soft, dark hair, the mar rat had exceptional hearing, but its eyesight was poor.

  Tallis waited until it had emerged fully and then he braced himself for what must come. For a brief moment the earth beneath his feet seemed to drop away. The sounds and scents of the desert faded, the rock-strewn sands blurring at the edge of his vision. Only the mar rat remained focussed. He felt its fear. He was connected to it as though by an invisible thread, stretched thin between them. He knew instinctively he could make it do anything now, if he thought it, if he set his mind to it. A suggestion was all it took. He’d done it before. It wasn’t right. And yet all men must hunt.

  He drew back and the world came suddenly back into focus as he let the spear fly. The mar rat fell to the sand, carried back by the force of the blow. Its legs twitched once then stilled. Tallis fought the brief shot of sickness that always followed a kill.

  ‘That’s two to you now already,’ Jared spoke behind him.

  Taking a breath, Tallis turned and regarded his earth brother. ‘And what of it? If you spent less time binding your braids you might have caught one by now as well.’ He grinned. Where Tallis had only the usual two braids, one on either side of his face, Jared had eight smoothly-oiled, brown braids, fastened with a band of silver at each end.

  Jared grinned. ‘You only wish your clumsy hands could braid this well. But luckily they can hunt, so why should I tire myself? If we stay out here all day you can catch enough to feed the whole camp and we can go home early and have the hot springs all to ourselves. No goat hunting and all the women.’ He winked.

  Tallis couldn’t help smiling. Jared had just entered his eighteenth year, making them the same age, but he had been charming the women of the clan since he was a boy. Two heads taller and with a lighter build, Jared had a handsome face and a ready smile that had sent more than his fair share of women tumbling into the hot springs to hear his jokes.

  Tallis shook his head and tapped his spear on the sand. ‘Stay out here all day? My father would have us sharpening spears for a week. Perhaps if you threw your spear half as fast as you talked, you could catch enough meat to feed the whole clan. But, since you would rather talk, you can get my kill and gut it.’

  ‘Not likely beetle dung face,’ Jared laughed. ‘I’m going to catch my own rat and you can clean it.’

  Tallis snorted and pushed him hard in the shoulder as he went to collect his kill. Jared always made him smile, but it faded quickly. Every hunt, every kill, was a reminder of the secret wrongness inside. A man should not be able to do what he did. He bent down and picked up the mar rat, deftly slicing open the throat to bleed it before scraping out its gut.

  A breath of wind brushed his skin and he stood and stretched, facing into it, looking out across the desert to the horizon. They had left the camp as the sun had started to show above the line of dunes in the distance; now the sun hung above the horizon and the moon was a faded half circle in the sky; the cool air of the desert night quickly dissipating. The yellow sands were tinged pink and long shadows stretched toward him from scattered patches of rock. It was at moments like this the Guides were said to walk the land. Old Serita said she had seen one once: the third Guide, Sabut, drifting like a wraith across the sands.

  The wind dropped. How quiet the desert had suddenly become, soundless and thick as though he were immersed in the warm waters of the spring. His skin prickled and an echo of his sickness came back to him: the metallic taste of blood that always lingered seconds after the kill.

  He scanned the landscape and, as often happened, his gaze was pulled to the west, beyond the ranges to the country of the Wetlanders. The familiar urge unsettled him. Always, part of him had sought to see what lay beyond the clans, to the west, the sea. It drew him, tugging at his insides. But it should not be that way. It was the desert lands he loved, the dry air, and the hot sands, rough under the soles of his feet. Why did he yearn for lands he didn’t know? He forced himself to turn away, his eyes tracing a shadow stretching from an outcrop of rock. It looked strangely like fingers curling toward him.

  A feeling of wrongness swept through him. His stomach clenched and he staggered, his eyes closing as he gripped his spear for balance, his breathing harsh. And then it was gone, disappearing as fast as it had come. He stood blinking and unsteady and shook his head, trying to clear it. He must be tired, or perhaps had sun sickness from the hunt yesterday. His heart beat unsteadily in his chest.

  It was time to go. He looked for Jared and saw him crouched nearby behind an outcrop of rock; no doubt there was a mar rat burrow on the far side. Careful to stay downwind, Tallis crept up to sit beside him. Jared pulled out his hunting knife, crouched, and in one smooth movement hurled it. There was no sound, but the satisfied look on his face said it had found its mark.

  Jared turned and looked down. Something of Tallis’s uneasiness must have shown in his face, for instead of his usual boast, Jared frowned and uttered only one word, ‘Camp?’

  Tallis nodded wordlessly. Jared quickly collected his kill and they walked back toward the rise of dunes. Sensing Tallis’s change in mood, his earth brother said nothing. He had grown used to his ways. Jared had seen him vomit from the sickness after Tallis killed his first sand goat when they were boys, and had said nothing of it then, nor of the times that followed.

  He had joked that Tallis could not handle the blood. But he had known it was not that. They both knew it was not that. But it was something men should not speak of. It was a power. It could even be the power of the Guides and that was not for men. Only women could harness the touch of the Guides, only women worked the ways of the moon.

  Tallis’s stomach tightened, the muscles in his shoulders tense. His mother was from the people of the Ice Mountains, not the clans. He had always been regarded as something of an outsider because of her race, for that and for his oddly coloured eyes. No other clansman had eyes of such a blue they sometimes seemed black. Was it always going to be his fate to be so different?

  They reached the dunes and he punched his feet into the sand, pumping his legs through, propelling himself upward. Jared came behind, breathing hard. Tallis topped the dune and stopped to catch his breath, looking down at the camp. Hide tents were spread in a circle around a central fire pit, his family tent on the far side. His father sat at the opening sharpening his spear, and Tallis easily spotted his mother’s dark head near the fire, working the d
ough for the morning pan bread. The murmur of quiet voices reached him and the snort of the humped muthu. The scene looked so normal and familiar, yet he felt strangely detached. A feeling of dark premonition swept across his skin and the wrongness roiled in his gut again.

  His father, Haldane, looked up, spotted him and waved, motioning him to come down.

  ‘Come on,’ Jared said. ‘Let’s go roast these rats.’ He jogged down the dune to the camp.

  But Tallis didn’t move. He hardly saw Jared or the camp as he recalled another time, another place, when he had felt the same premonition, the same sickness. He had been fourteen and his older brothers, sons from Haldane’s first heart mate, had come to say goodbye. Cale and Malshed were leaving to fight the Raknah Clan for the Lake of the Fifth Moon. He had felt the wrongness whispering inside him then. A trickle of sweat ran from the base of his hairline down his neck. Cale had not returned from the battle with the Raknah, neither had Malshed. Many had not returned.

  He raised an unsteady hand to his forehead and rubbed his eyes. He was so weary of carrying this difference inside him; it was not right for a man to feel these things. He watched Jared reach the bottom of the dune and stop to talk with Farrin. Laughter carried dully up to him.

  ‘Tallis!’ His father’s shout cut into his thoughts. Even from here he could see the frown of irritation. Better not to keep him waiting. He took a breath and made his legs move. One foot in front of the other, down the soft sand hill, the mar rats’ bodies bumping against his hip. There was a meal to be cooked and still more hunting to be done. They needed to catch enough sand goats today to feed many families back at the Jalwalah Well. He buried his fears, pushing them deep in his mind. There would be time to think on them later. Besides, what could happen out here in the lands they all knew like the womb of their mothers? Surely the Guides would watch over them here.

  3

  ‘S how your pass.’