Chris Wooding - The Fade

Thulia Iolo was either very brave or very ill-informed.

Then Liss was away on another tack, rhapsodising about how she felt like a woman at last, now that she was the object of a great man's affection. My hopes of seeing Rynn before he left dwindled to nothing. I settled in and resigned myself to a long session of counselling. The needs of a Bondswoman were secondary to the needs of her masters and mistresses.

Once, my life had been simple. So very long ago. Once there had been a farm, a mother who cooked wonderful meals and a father who was invincible and would never let anybody hurt me. Once we told tales by firelight and I didn't have a care beyond what games I would play with my little brother. Once the White-skins were only a story to frighten children into obeying their parents.

I wanted those times back. I wanted a world that was straightforward and clean, a world where I didn't have to kill anyone and nobody tried to kill me and I could be a mother to my son and a wife to my husband.

But that world, if it existed, had passed far beyond my reach.

'You're pregnant?'

I looked at Rynn, my eyes hard. Daring him to follow through on the shock and horror in his tone. Daring him to imply it was my fault.

He was normally oblivious to non-verbal cues – my husband didn't do subtlety – but he got this one. I saw him swallow the words he was going to say.

'This is bad,' he murmured.

I knew it was bad, but I still chose to take his words the wrong way. I was nineteen, scared and furious and spoiling to take it out on somebody.

'I'm glad the thought of our having a child brings you such joy,' I spat at him sarcastically.

'Don't be stupid, you know that's not what I meant,' he barked back at me, and I shut up. That was why I loved him. He didn't take any of my shit.

He stood immobile, framed against the circular window that looked out over Veya from the heights. Our rooms in the Caracassa mansions were lit with soft lanterns, throwing low shadows across the polished rootwood floor.

'How?'

'Well, when a man and a woman like each other very much, they-'

'Voids, Orna, I'm not in the mood!' he snapped.

I was stung. Foolish of me. I dealt with my fear by joking, but he didn't. He used anger. And he was terrified.

'I was sick,' I murmured. 'You remember? Sometimes the potions don't work when you're sick.'

He remembered. The illness took me out for twenty turns. It's not easy for a man like Rynn to go that long without sex. The moment I felt up to it, he was at me with breathtaking fervour. We should have waited till my body was back in balance.

He glanced at me from under his heavy brows. Determining whether I was blaming him. I wasn't.

'We have to tell Ledo,' he said.

'Yes,' I replied, but I had gone cold at the thought.

'Do you know what-'

'I'm keeping the baby,' I told him.

'That's not your choice,' he said.

I looked away from him, crossing my arms. Mind made up.

He stormed across the room, a shadowy hulk of rage. Grabbed my arm, thrust one thick finger at the symbol on my left cheek. Three diagonal slashes: the Bond-mark.

'Do you really know what this means? Do you? It means you're property. It means you're Ledo's to do whatever he wants with. How do you think he's going to react when you tell him?'

I pull away from him. 'He'll tell me to get rid of it,' I say.

'And if you refuse?'

My voice is smaller. 'He could execute me.'

'He will execute you both,' Rynn corrected. 'He could execute you just for getting pregnant. He could execute me too.'

'He wouldn't. He wouldn't waste two of his Cadre that way.'

'Are you sure? Are you sure of anything where the aristocrats are concerned?'

'He wouldn't,' I insisted.

Rynn calmed a little, stepped away. He walked to the window and looked out. After a long silence, he said. 'You're his property, as I am. You've already proved yourself one of his best. You'll be out of action for whole seasons. Even after you're back, will you ever take the same risks again? Will your mind be on the job, or on our child? Will mine?'

It was a speech of exceptional length from my husband. Usually he chewed matters through in his own head, not aloud. He must have been really scared if he felt that he had to share it with me. This wasn't something he could handle alone.

'I'm not giving it up,' I said again.

'He'll kill you, Orna. There's a process. We should have asked permission. Our first duty, above all others, is to serve him.'

'I swore myself into Bond when I was ten,' I said. 'Don't tell me about loyalty. He won't execute me because I'm too good at what I do.'

'He'll execute you if you disobey him.'

And he was right. What use were Bondsmen if they were not utterly obedient? Death was the inevitable consequence of rebellion for the Bonded. And still, it didn't seem to make a difference to me. The threat of what might happen had paled in comparison with the threat of not having this child. I saw the logic of the situation – voids, it's not as if I hadn't thought it through myself a hundred times – but it didn't seem to connect with the process of choice. It just didn't matter.

Even while contemplating the possibility of my own execution, I had been drifting into fantasies. A baby, a place of our own. Rynn coming home from his work, something mundane and boring and safe, me staying at home, learning to cook, trying out my culinary experiments on my hungry husband. I dreamed normality, the life of the Veyans that ran shops, shuffled papers in banks, bid in the auction-houses. The simple life, where husband and wife were never apart for more than a few turns and nobody had to die.

But fantasy was all it was. We could never be other than Bonded. Rynn could never have a job other than the one given him by Clan Caracassa, and they would never consider it because, like me, he was so good at what he did. I would never be allowed to be a mother, because what use was that to Caracassa? Our children would not be Bonded. Rynn was the last in a three-generation lifedebt and I had only sworn my own life away, not that of my children.

They would make me give up the baby. But I couldn't do that.

'Do you want me to get rid of it?' I asked him.

His back was to me. I saw him tense slightly. Then he exhaled a long breath. It was the question he had been dreading.

'If we get rid of it now, Ledo doesn't have to know,' he said slowly.

'Then we can ask him for permission. If he grants it, we can try again.'

'I know that,' I said. 'Do you want me to get rid of it?'

He sighed again. Rynn was very careful with making definite decisions, because once made he almost never went back on them.

'No,' he said. 'I want us to keep it.'

Tears welled up in my eyes. I blinked them back. 'Can we run?'

'If there's no other choice.'

'You mean it?'

'I said so, didn't I?'

He did mean it. A life of poverty and probable starvation, of being rejected by society, eking out a living on the borders of Eskara. Nobody would trade with us or give us jobs. Our friends in the Cadre would devote their lives to hunting us down.

Better than nothing.

'First we talk to Ledo,' he murmured. 'See what he says. Agree with whatever he orders us to do. Then we run, if we have to.'

I could barely speak. There wasn't room for air in my chest with the utter and total love I felt for this man.

'There's another way,' I said quietly. 'Casta and Liss.'

He turned back to me, a frown on his face. 'Ledo's sisters? You barely know them.'

'They like me. Especially Liss.'

'You think you can ask them for a favour like this?'

'If anyone can persuade Ledo to be lenient, it's them.'

He thought about this for a time.