eye rose above the louring clouds to warm the canyons and valleys of the Xarana Fault. For a long while, nobody spoke. Nomoru led them into narrow pleats that angled down to the lower depths, where they could pass unobserved through the wild land about them. The jagged and bumped horizon was consumed by high walls of scree-dusted rock, rising before and behind and to either side. They passed out of Nuki’s sight, and into the cool shadow.
The western side of the Fold was guarded by a tight labyrinth of fissures and tunnels known as the Knot. Here, ages ago, the same springs that had flowed east from the lip of the valley to sculpt the land on which the town was built had also flowed westward, gnawing through the ancient stone. As time passed the water would undermine some vital support, or the earth would be shaken by the tremors and quakes that ran through the Fault from time to time, and the rock above it would collapse and divert some of the tunnels elsewhere. Now the water was gone, but the paths remained, a maze of branching dead-ends that led tortuously downward. It was possible, and much faster, to go over the top of the Knot, where there was a bare hump of smooth stone a mile wide, like a horseshoe around the western edge of the Fold; but up there was no kind of cover and anyone attempting to cross it would be visible for miles around. In the Fault, secrecy was the watchword.
The dawn had grown into a bright morning by the time they emerged from the Knot. They clambered out of a thin crack onto the floor of a ravine, sloping gently upward ahead of them. Kaiku caught her breath as she saw it, and even through the weight of misery that she carried she felt a moment of awe.
The walls of the ravine rose sheer to over a hundred feet above their heads, a weathered mass of creases and ledges on which narrow swatches of bushes grew where they could find purchase. The floor was an untamed garden of trees and flowers, leaves of deep red and purple mixed in amid the green. A spring fed into a series of small pools. The sun was blazing over the rim at a shallow angle, throwing its light to the far end of the ravine and leaving the near end in shade. Bright birds nested in the heights, occasionally bursting out to swoop and tumble, chattering as they went. The air was still and hazed with a dreamlike glow. They had stepped into a secret paradise.
‘This is the edge of our territory,’ Nomoru said. It was the first anyone had spoken since they set out, and her harsh and ugly Low Saramyrrhic vowels jarred against Kaiku’s mood. ‘Not so safe from now on.’
The Xarana Fault was an ever-shifting mass of unacknowledged borders, neutral ground and disputed areas. The political geography of the place was as unstable as the Fault itself. Like gangs, each faction held their territory jealously, but from one month to the next entire communities might be sacked or overthrown, or defect to join a more powerful leader. The Fold was at constant war to keep its routes open to the outside world, and bandits preyed upon the cargoes that were smuggled in to supply the Libera Dramach. Other forces had other agendas: some were relentlessly expansionist, pursuing the hopeless ideal of dominating or uniting the Fault; others wanted merely to be left alone, and poured their efforts into defence rather than aggression; still others simply hid. The business of knowing what their neighbours were up to was a perpetual drain on the time and resources of Zaelis and the Libera Dramach, but it was vital for survival in the cut-throat world that they had settled in.
They headed onward with renewed vigilance. The terrain was hard, and Nomoru seemed to choose difficult routes more often than not, for the most inaccessible ways were often the safest. Within hours, Kaiku had utterly lost her sense of direction. She glared resentfully at the wiry figure leading them, blaming her for their ordeal; then she caught herself and realised how unfair that was. If not for Asara, she would have been glad to come on this expedition. If not for Asara.
She found herself lapsing into dark thoughts again in the absence of conversation. Yugi was unusually subdued, and Tsata rarely said anything unless it was worth saying,