he unwittingly was to her at times.
Perhaps it was the strange, faintly unreal atmosphere of the moonstorm, or the sudden feeling that she had been cheated out of her secrets while he still kept his, but she decided then to risk it.
‘Why are you here, Tsata?’ she asked. Then, once the first step was taken, she said with more conviction: ‘Why did you come to Saramyr? Gods, Tsata, I have been with you practically every moment for weeks now and I still know nothing about you. Your people seem to share everything; why not this?’
Tsata was laughing by the time she had finished. ‘You are truly an amazing people, your kind,’ he said. ‘I have been tormenting you all this time and you have resisted your curiosity so.’ He smiled. ‘I was interested to see how long you would hold out.’
Kaiku blushed.
‘Forgive me,’ he said. ‘You are so obsessed with manners and formality that you have not dared ask me about any information I did not volunteer first. With all you have learned about me and the Tkiurathi, have you not guessed the value of openness yet?’
‘It is because you are so open that I did not want to ask you about things you had not mentioned,’ she replied, feeling embarrassed and relieved at the same time.
He laughed again. ‘I had not expected that. I suppose it makes a kind of sense.’ He gave her a wry glance. ‘It seems that I am not as familiar with your ways yet as I thought.’
The skies screamed overhead, and a jagged shaft of vermilion lightning split the distant horizon, making Kaiku cringe unconsciously.
‘Saran was the same,’ Tsata said. ‘He never asked me my motives, was content in ignorance. He believed that it was my business, I suppose, and not his.’
‘Hers,’ Kaiku corrected bitterly. Kaiku had told him about Asara, though not about how she had almost coupled with her. Tsata had not been in the least taken aback by the deception, or by the idea of an Aberrant that could take on other forms and other genders. There were frogs in Okhamba that could change sex, he had told her, and insects that could rebuild their bodies in cocoons. She was not without precedent in nature, only in humanity.
Tsata became thoughtful for a moment. ‘The answer to your question is simple,’ he said at length. ‘Saran told me of his – or her – mission, and of the danger the Weavers posed to Saramyr. He also spoke of what he believed might happen if they won this continent. They would invade others.’
Kaiku nodded at that: it ran concurrent with what she had already guessed.
‘I went with him to the heart of Okhamba to see if his theories bore weight. I returned convinced.’ He rubbed absently at his bare upper arm, fingers tracing the green swirls of the tattoo that covered him. ‘I have a responsibility to the greater pash, that of all my people. So I determined to come to Saramyr and see the threat for myself, to observe what your people’s reaction would be and to carry the news back home if I could. I will need to tell my people as Saran told yours. That is why I came here, and that is why I will have to leave.’
Kaiku felt abruptly saddened. It was no more than she had expected, but she was surprised at her own reaction. Their time in this isolated existence was limited, and his words were a reminder that it would have to end soon. The return to the real world, with all its attendant complications, was inevitable.
‘That is what I had surmised,’ Kaiku said, her voice not much louder than the hiss of the rain. ‘It seems I am learning to predict you also.’
Tsata gave her an odd look. ‘Perhaps you are,’ he mused. He looked out over the bleak, rain-lashed landscape for a short time, listening to the horrible racket of the moonstorm.
Kaiku stiffened suddenly. She scrambled to the edge of the rock shelf and looked about.
‘Did you hear something?’ he asked, appearing next to her in a crouch.
‘The barrier is down,’ she said.
Tsata did not understand her for a moment.
‘The barrier is down!’ she said, more urgently. ‘The shield of misdirection. It is gone. I can sense its absence.’
‘We should get back to the flood plain,’ Tsata said.
Kaiku nodded, her expression grim. The barrier had come down. The Weavers were not hiding any more.
She dreaded to think what that might mean.
Cailin tu Moritat’s