as soon as the kanks and Mahtra are rested—”
“Now,” Mahtra interrupted. “I need no rest.”
And maybe she didn’t. There was nothing weary in her strange eyes or weak in the hand she wrapped around Pavek’s forearm.
“The bugs need rest,” he said, and met her stare. “The day after tomorrow or the day after that.”
She released her grip.
“I’m going with you,” Zvain said, which wasn’t a surprise.
“Me, too,” Ruari added, which was.
Akashia looked at each of them in turn, her expression unreadable, until she said: “You can’t. You can’t leave Quraite. I need you here,” which was a larger surprise than he could have imagined.
“Come with us,” he said quickly, hopefully. “Put an end to the past.”
“Quraite needs me. Quraite needs you. Quraite needs you, Pavek.”
If Akashia had said that she needed him, possibly he would have reconsidered, but probably not, not with Hamanu’s threat hanging over them. That, and the knowledge that Kakzim was wreaking havoc once again. He started for the door, then paused and asked a question that had been bothering him since Mahtra spoke her first words.
“How old are you, Mahtra?” He deliberately asked it where Akashia could hear the answer.
She blinked and seemed flustered. “I’m new, not old. The cabras have ripened seven times since I came to Urik.”
“And before Urik, how many times had they ripened?”
“There is no before Urik.”
As Pavek had hoped, Akashia’s eyes widened and the rest of her face softened. “Seven years? Escrissar—”
He cut her off. “Escrissar’s dead. Kakzim. Kakzim’s the reason to go back.”
Pavek left the hut. Mahtra followed him, a child who didn’t look like a child and didn’t particularly act like one, either. She slipped her arm through his and stroked his inner forearm with a long fingernail. He wrested free.
“Not with me, eleganta. I’m not your type.”
“Where do I go, if not with you?”
It was a very good question, for which Pavek hadn’t an answer until he spotted a farmer couple peering out their cracked-open door. Their hut was good-sized, their children were grown and gone. He took Mahtra to stay with them until morning, and wouldn’t hear no for an answer. Still this was one night Pavek wasn’t going back to Telhami’s grove. He stretched out in a corner of the bachelor hut.
Tomorrow was certain to be worse than tonight. He’d get some sleep while he could.
Chapter Six
How old are you?
A voice, a question, and the face of an ugly man haunted the bleak landscape of Mahtra’s dreams.
Seven ripe cabras. A whirling spiral with herself at the center and seven expanding revolutions stretching away from her. The spiraling line was punctuated with juicy, sweet fruit and the other events of the life she remembered. Seven years—more days than she could count—and all but the last several of them spent inside the yellow walls of Urik. She hadn’t known the city’s true shape until she looked back as the huge, painted bug carried her away to this far-off place.
Mahtra hadn’t remembered a horizon other than rooftops, cobbled streets, and guarded walls. She had known the world was larger than Urik; the distant horizon itself wasn’t a surprise, but she’d forgotten what empty and open looked like.
What else had she forgotten?
There is no before Urik.
Another voice. Her own voice, the voice she wished she had, echoed through her dreams. Did it tell the truth? Had she forgotten what came before Urik, as she had forgotten what stretched beyond it?
Turn around. Step beyond the spiral. Find the path. What before Urik? Remember, Mahtra. Remember…
The spiral of Mahtra’s life blurred in her dream-vision. Her limbs became stiff and heavy. She was tempted to lie down where she was, at the center of her life, and ignore the beautiful voice. What would happen if she fell asleep while she was dreaming? Would she wake up in her life or in the dream, or somewhere that was neither living nor dreaming?
Somewhere that was neither living nor dreaming…
Mahtra knew of such a nowhere place. She had forgotten it, the way she’d forgotten the colors and shapes on the other side of Urik’s walled horizon. It was the outside place, beyond the memories of the cabra-marked spiral.
A place before Urik.
* * *
A place of drifting, neither dark nor bright, hot nor cool. A place without bottom or top, or any direction at all, until there was a voice and a name:
Mahtra.
Her name.
Walking, running, swimming, crawling, and flying—all those ways she’d used to move toward her name. At the very end, she fought, because the place