I follow his finger. Dark spots against the purple glow of sunset above Duat. Moving gradually apart. Getting larger. “What do we do?”
“We can’t make it. Not without leaving tracks.” He comes to the decision swiftly. “We have to hide.”
“How?”
“This way.” He jags off to the left, directly toward the oncoming specks. I move carefully after him, gaze twitching between my job and those distant blots. I still don’t know exactly what the Gleaners are, but I believe Caeror’s fear of them well enough.
Within a half minute we’re suddenly scurrying across sand that’s shallow, hard and uneven underfoot, small pools of white contained by craters of wind-smoothed rock. Harder to traverse quickly, but I can immediately see the advantage. I follow Caeror’s darting footsteps as he leaps from one solid surface to another in a crouching run.
“Here.” I gasp my relief as Caeror brings us to a skidding halt after another two minutes. The shapes in the sky are larger against the dying violet light, but still not enough to make out detail. They’re swinging back and forth, I think. Tracing a systematic path toward us, rather than a direct one. “Lie on your stomach. Arms forward, cloak over your head to create an air pocket. I’ll cover you.”
I go where he points without hesitation. We’re somewhere in the middle of the rocky surface, and I’m quickly prostrate in one of the smaller white-filled breaks, about ten feet wide. “Will this work?”
“Wind’s enough that most of our tracks will be gone. And dusk will help.” Not the most comforting answer. He starts frantically kicking sand over me. It’s fine and still hot and trickles everywhere. “I’ll let you know when it’s safe. Until then, whatever you do, stay perfectly still,” his muffled voice warns me from the dark.
The soft crunch of fading footsteps, then silence.
I lie there in tense discomfort. Muscles cramping. Breath thick and painful. There’s a constant tickling at my skin from the shifting grains trickling their way beneath my clothes. There’s no sound.
Long minutes pass. Ten, at least. Maybe twenty. The acidic air starts to taste stale. I begin to wonder if something has gone wrong.
A particularly strong gust of wind. A flash of dim light as the corner of my cloak is tugged from my aching fingers. Sand slithers in. Then another gust before I can snag it again. My protection folds away. My head is exposed.
I lie there, frozen. I’m facing west. At first there is only horizon and the embers of sunset. Then something shifts in the sky. Floating soundlessly. I clamp my teeth together.
It’s a person.
They’re at least a hundred feet off the ground. Looking in the opposite direction. Upright and arms at their sides, as if standing, but nothing to support them. Swathed in a covering white robe, which flows behind them unsettlingly as they hover.
I watch, not breathing, as the figure drifts to the side. A controlled movement as they observe the horizon. Its arms are all wrong. Too long, too thin.
Then it turns slightly to the north, the dying light glints off a polished surface, and I realise they’re not arms at all.
They’re two blades.
I can’t take my eyes off them. Symmetrical and yet different from each other, I recognise numbly. Obsidian on the left. What looks like granite on the right. Not being gripped, though. Just hard surface up to the elbow, then some sort of stone sleeve affixing them to each bicep. Nightmarish, razor-thin replacement limbs.
I repossess myself enough to slowly, ever so carefully, find the hem of my cloak. Gradually, gradually draw the covering back over my head with a trembling hand. Squeeze my eyes shut, hold my breath and pray that whatever is outside won’t spot the exposed linen.
An eternity of thudding heartbeats, and then my cloak is abruptly being pulled aside. I sputter and hack and flinch away as sand rains down.
“They’re past.” Caeror’s voice is low as he drags me to my feet, helping me brush off the worst of the grit as I spit more. The sun has completed its descent below the horizon. “Wind blew some sand off your cloak. You were lucky.”
“It blew the cloak off my gods-damned face. What …” My voice is shaking, though I have the presence of mind to match Caeror’s near whisper. “Whatwasthat?”
“You saw one?” Caeror chokes an aghast laugh as he takes in my affirmation. “Rotting gods, Vis. Lucky doesn’t begin to describe it, then. That was a Gleaner.”
“But it was aperson.”
“A dead person. Well. Most of a dead person. Those blades aren’t gloves.” He pats me on the back reassuringly as he examines the darkening sky. Unperturbed. Just a fact of life, out here. “They’re a kind of iunctus, controlled by Ka. By the Concurrence. There are dozens, maybe hundreds of them. All connected somehow. Able to share information with one another, instantly and over vast distances.”
“Gods’ graves.” I shudder, anxiously scanning the horizon myself. “Where does all the Will to imbue them come from?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I suspect from other iunctii. They can cede—and you can bring them back for less than you gain from their ceding. Which as I’m sure you can imagine, has absolutely no potential for abuse by Ka.” He doesn’t give me time to take in the horror of that concept. “We’re safe to move. Keep covering our tracks, but we don’t need to be too worried: they never sweep the same area within a few hours, and the wind will have erased everything by morning.”
I don’t respond. Don’t know what I can say, to that. We walk for a while without talking, my mind racing.
“On Solivagus,” I eventually say quietly. “When I asked how I could possibly stop a new Cataclysm, you said I was here to kill a god.” The statement’s been hanging over me, even through the insanity of all this.
