Chris Wooding - The Fade

Feyn is struggling. His eyes aren't as good as ours, and the roof of the trench oppresses him. I can see it in the way he hunches his shoulders. The trench must be forty spans high and three times that wide, but it's still crushing him.

'Stop,' Feyn says, and we stop, chests heaving, looking back at him.

'It is me they are following,' he says again, his face bearing an expression of helpless honesty. 'I will go another way.'

Nereith turns to me. It's what he's been thinking for some while. I know he's already agreed, but he's waiting to see what my reaction is.

'You go,' I tell him. 'I'll go with Feyn.'

'No!' Feyn protests. 'Go with him. You will not be followed.'

I ignore him. 'You can find your way back?' I ask Nereith.

'I told you I could,' he replies. His eyes flick from me to Feyn and back again. 'What do you think you're doing?' he asks me.

I don't answer that. He wouldn't understand.

The raka howl somewhere down the trench. Nereith shakes his head in despair. 'I hope you make it,' he says, but it's empty. He already believes we won't.

He heads along the slope at an angle, but before he gets five steps I say his name one last time. He gazes back at me inquiringly.

'I have a son,' I tell him.

'I know.'

'How?'

'Massima Leithka Orna, married to Venya Ethken Rynn. I hadn't heard you had a child, but considering the state you were in when you arrived, I guessed someone close to you had been killed and I assumed it was your husband. In light of events since-' he looks at Feyn, '-I put two and two together.'

Of course. With a Khaadu's memory, it's not so surprising, even if I find myself resenting his insight.

'Last I heard he was stationed at Caralla,' I say. The words don't come easily. They have to be forced through a knot in my throat. I don't know why it's so difficult to talk about Jai. 'If you could tell him…'

Tell him what? Your mother was alive last time I saw her, but by now she's probably not? Tell him I love him? I'm not entrusting that to Nereith. Abyss, I don't even know if he's heard his father is dead yet.

I just want to see him. The words will come then, I'm sure of it.

'Tell him there's a letter,' I say. 'There's a letter, from the Dean of Engineers of Bry Athka University, in a drawer in my room. Have him send someone to collect it. If I don't make it back… he needs to know about the letter.'

'I'll pass near Caralla,' Nereith says. 'If the Gurta haven't taken it yet… well, I'll do what I can to get there.'

I smile sadly. He turns away, pauses, turns back.

'Should you reach Veya… should you ever come across a problem without a solution…' He trails off, his face grave. 'Remember who I am.'

I remember alright. He's one of Silverfish's men. And he's offering to be a contact for me: a connection to the faceless legend of the Veyan underworld.

In all the years I've spent trawling the murky depths of the city, trading information and digging out secrets in the service of my master, I've never even got close to Silverfish. He's a whisper in the dives and cut-joints, his name steeped in paranoia. A ghost of the alleyways.

I've run across his trail many times, though. His secretive network of operatives wields enormous influence in the underworld, but unlike the other gangs you never know who's working for Silverfish and who isn't. There's a good deal of doubt as to whether Silverfish exists at all, or whether he's the mythical head of an organisation without a leader. Nobody knows. I have to admire that.

And now here's Nereith, telling me he can put me in touch, if ever I have the need. If ever I make it home.

It's as close to a thank-you as I'll get from him, I suppose.

He begins to climb down toward the bottom of the trench, branching off in a different direction from us. I watch him depart with the feeling that I'll never see him again, and there's a small part of me that regrets it. I respect him. I wish I'd known him longer.

'Ready?' I say to Feyn.

He nods, but he holds my gaze for a long time, and I just can't tell what he's thinking. 'We will not escape them this way,' he says.

'No,' I say. 'We probably won't.'

'Then we must go where they will not follow.'

'There's nowhere they won't follow us. They'll chase us till they drop. It's the Gurta way.'

'Will they follow us to the surface?' I don't know how long it is before we find an upward-slanting channel. I know that we're both light-headed and weak from exertion and hunger, and I know every muscle in my body aches from climbing and running. If only we could find water we'd stand a chance of throwing them off the scent, but there's nothing.

We're in the trackless barrens of the Borderlands, a webwork of inhospitable caverns and chasms that have separated Gurta and Eskara for as long as our civilisations can remember. A war-torn, disputed wilderness crawling with troops and bandits of all kinds. Neither side wants it but neither will let the other have it. Why is it only now that I can see how utterly ludicrous that is, in the face of the thousands upon thousands who die over this wasteland? I suppose I never had to care until now. I hadn't known what it was to lose someone to the Borderlands, to be faced with the threat of losing another.

Feyn has gathered several clumps of fungi that he pronounces edible, and we chew them whenever our hands are free. They're vile and bitter but he assures me that they're safe.

'A SunChild must be sheltered from the sun, like you,' he says. 'When the Season of Days is, we are in the high caves. These grow there, like here.'

I trust him, because I'm not going to make it otherwise. I have to fight to keep the fungi down, but it eases the worst of the hunger.

We take the way up, following the breeze. The upward tunnel becomes a shaft, ten spans across at its widest part, a slanting, near-vertical crevice. Water trickles down its folds. Feyn tastes it, pronounces it clear – though clear of what I don't like to ask – and we drink.

The Gurta are close. As we haul ourselves up the teeth of the shaft, I'm comforted only by the fact that the raka won't be able to make it up an ascent this steep. The soldiers will have to follow on their own. If we can get ahead of them, we can lose them.

I want to lie down and sleep and not care if I never wake up again. But I've come so far. I'm not stopping now.

I have to slow my pace for Feyn, but his endurance is surprising. Perhaps his kind are tougher than they look. I'd thought him fragile, because he's so slender and passive, and because he wept when he was beaten. But then I remember how he never complained or flagged at the slurry-trough. He comes from a race of travellers who live in a world deadlier than mine, hardened by generations of life on the surface. He's strong enough.

I don't think about how far we have to go. I think only of the next handhold, the next shelf, the next upward lunge. I concentrate on the tapping of the water as it runs from pool to pool, trying to solve its rhythm. I think of the way the chaotic surface of the pools reflect the light of the phosphorescent patches that have grown beneath them, and how its eddies and impacts have never stilled for thousands of years. I meditate as I climb, and reality becomes elastic.

The pain in me dims. It's only physical pain. I've known much worse.

The shaft begins to switch back on itself as we near the top, broken by some ancient quake. It tightens dramatically, so much that we can barely fit through. I'm worried Feyn will freeze up in there. Claustrophobia's not unheard of even among my people; it must be worse for his.

He takes a deep breath, lets it out, and squeezes through the fissure. I don't know what keeps him going, but though he's as tired as I am he's showing no signs of giving up.