His train of thought had been returning to the same subject over and over again, whenever enough silence had passed.
Lucia betrayed no sign of impatience, but she did not respond. She had feared he might bring it up again. A few minutes ago Lucia had experienced an unpleasant intuition that Flen’s father – the object of his musing – had been killed. She could not say for sure, but it would be far from the first time her instincts had informed her of something she could not possibly have known otherwise. Perhaps she had unconsciously picked it up from the indecipherable sussurus of the spirit-voices that surrounded her, some half-gleaned shred of intention or meaning that hinted at revelation. She had, after all, been giving Flen’s father a lot of thought on her friend’s behalf.
Flen looked up at her, expecting her to reassure him; but she could not. Hurt flickered in his eyes. She hesitated a moment, then slid nearer to him and hugged him gently. He hugged her back, looking over her shoulder into the darkness that surrounded them, and the two of them embraced in the dim island of illumination for a time, the lines of sunlight from above moulding to the contours of their shoulders and faces.
‘They’re all being killed,’ she whispered. ‘And it’s my fault.’
‘No,’ Flen hissed before she had even finished. ‘It’s not your fault. What the Weavers did isn’t your fault. It’s their fault you were born with the abilities you have; it’s their fault. You didn’t do anything.’
‘I started this all,’ she said. ‘I let Purloch take that lock of my hair. I let him go back to the Weavers with proof I was an Aberrant. If I hadn’t done that . . . Mother might still be alive . . . nobody would be dying . . .’
Flen clutched her harder, his own troubles forgotten in the need to reassure her. He stroked her hair, his fingers running onto the burned and puckered skin at the nape of her neck, gliding over its nerveless surface.
‘It’s not your fault,’ he repeated. ‘You can’t help what you are.’
‘What am I?’ she said, drawing back from him. Had it been any other girl, he would have expected tears in her eyes, but her gaze was fey and strange. Did she feel remorse or guilt as other people did? Did it make her truly sad? Or had what he had taken as self-recrimination simply been a statement of fact? So long he had known her, and he would never understand her properly.
‘You said it yourself. You’re an avatar.’
Lucia studied him carefully, and did not reply, which prompted him to explain himself.
‘It’s like you told me,’ he said. ‘The gods don’t want Aricarat back, but they won’t interfere directly. So they put people like you here instead. People who can change things. Remember how the Children of the Moons saved your life when the shin-shin were after you? Remember how Tane gave his life up for you, even though he was a priest of Enyu and he was supposed to hate Aberrants?’ He wrung his hands, not sure that he was articulating himself properly. He imagined that Lucia did not like to be reminded of Tane’s sacrifice, though he told himself that she did not always react as he thought she should. ‘He must have known that his goddess wanted you alive, even though you stood against everything he believed in. Because Aricarat is killing the land, and the Weavers serve Aricarat, and even though you’re an Aberrant – because you’re an Aberrant – you’re a threat to the Weavers. Just like the moon-sisters wanted you alive, so you could help fight against their brother.’
He took her hands earnestly, trying to make her see what seemed so clear to him. ‘If you hadn’t been born the way you are, there’d be no Libera Dramach. There’d have been no Saran, and we’d have never known about Aricarat at all until it was too late. The gods might have been fighting this war ever since the Weavers first appeared, but it’s only now that we know what we’re fighting about.’
‘Maybe,’ she conceded. She smiled faintly, but there was no amusement in it. ‘I am no saviour, Flen.’
‘I didn’t say you were a saviour,’ he replied. ‘I just said you were put here for a reason. Even if we don’t know what that reason is yet.’
She seemed about to reply, her lips forming a response for her friend, when her