shook him. When that produced no response, she shook him again, his head lolling back and forth as she did so.
Puzzlement turned to alarm. He had not been hit hard. What was wrong with him? She had no training in herbcraft or healing; she did not know what to do. The cushioning folds of exhaustion were not enough to suppress the new horror rising up inside her. Yugi was her friend. Why was he not waking up?
Omecha, silent harvester, have you not taken enough from me already? she prayed bitterly. Let him live!
‘Poison,’ said a voice by her shoulder, and she looked round to see Tsata crouching by her. His face was bloodied with a deep gash, and his right eye was swollen shut. When he talked, his bruised lips made a smacking noise.
‘Poison?’ Kaiku repeated.
‘Demon poison,’ Nomoru said, from where she stood over them. ‘The ruku-shai have barbs in their tails.’
Kaiku remained staring at the face of the fallen man, which was turning steadily a deep shade of purple as they watched.
‘Can you help him?’ Kaiku said, her voice small.
Tsata put his fingers to Yugi’s throat, feeling for a pulse. Kaiku did not know to do that. It was not part of a high-born girl’s education. ‘He is dying,’ Tsata said. ‘It is too late to remove the poison.’
The mist had almost sunk back to the ground now, and in some peripheral part of her mind Kaiku realised that they were three-quarters of the way through the marsh. The cultists on the other side were gone.
‘You get it out,’ said Nomoru. It took Kaiku a moment to realise who she was addressing.
‘I do not know how,’ she whispered. She did not trust the power inside her enough. Suddenly she felt a crushing regret for all those years she had spurned Cailin’s advice to study, to learn to master her kana. Wielding it as a weapon was one thing, but to use it to heal was a different matter entirely. She had almost killed Asara with it before, and later she had almost killed Lucia, all because of her lack of control. She would not have Yugi’s death on her hands, would not be responsible for him.
‘You’re an apprentice,’ Nomoru persisted. ‘An apprentice of the Red Order.’
‘I do not know how!’ Kaiku repeated helplessly.
Tsata grabbed her collar and pulled her towards him, glaring at her with his good eye.
‘Try!’
Kaiku tried.
She threw herself into Yugi before her fear could overwhelm her again, placing her hands on his chest and squeezing her eyes shut. The veined film of her eyelids did nothing to block the Weave-sight as the world turned golden again. She plunged into the rushing fibres of his body, knitting past the striations of muscle and into the weakening current that kept him alive.
She could sense the poison, could see it as it blackened the golden threads of his flesh. The slow thunder of his heart throbbed through her.
She did not know where to start or what to do. She had hardly any formal knowledge of biology and none of toxicology. She did not know how to defend against the poison without destroying it and Yugi with it. Indecision paralysed her. Her consciousness hung within the diorama of Yugi’s body.
Learn from your surroundings. Mould yourself to them.
The words that came to her were Cailin’s. A lesson taught long ago. If all else failed, go limp and let the flow of the Weave show you how to move.
Yugi’s body was a machine that had run efficiently for over thirty years now. It knew what it was doing. She only had to listen to it.
She began a mantra, a meditation designed to make her relax. Against all odds, it began to ease her, and the rigid form of her consciousness began to disseminate, to melt like ice into water. Kaiku was startled by how easily her kana responded to her command. What had moments ago seemed an impossible task became simple. She allowed herself to be absorbed into the matrices of Yugi’s body, and let nature instruct her instincts.
It made perfect sense: the circulation of the blood, the flickering of the synapses in his brain, the tiny pulses through his nerves. By becoming part of it, she found his body as familiar to her as her own. She found that she knew what to do on a subconscious level rather than a conscious one, so she let her kana guide her.
The poison spread like a cancer, with even the tiniest part blooming