The single breathed word banishes any lassitude. I sit up, panic pounding through my chest before I force a steadying breath. “Where?”
“They’re going tomb by tomb. A couple of dozen of them.” A pause. “Half from the entrance. The others flew past toward the Channel. I’m guessing they’re sweeping from the opposite direction.”
Vek. “They know we’re here.”
“Yes.”
I’m on my feet. “Can we get to the garden?” Our first point of refuge, in the event of a Gleaner incursion. The symbols to open the door shouldn’t be known to the Concurrence.
“Maybe. But we need to go now. They’ve lit their blades, so they’ll be easy to spot.” Scuffling in the darkness, and then someone positioning me, guiding my hand to a shoulder. Then a hand gripping my own shoulder. “Let Tash lead. He grew up here, doesn’t need to see to get around.”
“Tashis here?” The iunctii quarters are a distance away, in the opposite direction of the garden.
“He’s the only other one who knows what you can do.”
I swallow. Of course.
Tash moves beneath my touch, and I follow.
We walk out into the utter darkness, only Tash’s sharp turn and the vaguest sense of open space to my left suggesting that we’ve left my tomb. We’re on the third level up, and I find my heart hammering not just from the threat Caeror has woken me to run from. A fall from this height will kill as surely as a Gleaner.
We make our way with excruciating caution down steps and along the rocky, uneven floor. I count my steps but even after months living here, it’s impossible to tell how far we’ve come. I hold my breath, half the time. Ears and eyes straining. None of us talk.
And then faintly, ahead, the symbol-covered walls bleed into view. A crimson,flickering light, its source still hidden by the natural twists and turns of the chasm. Tash stops. Silhouetted now.
“They can’t have cleared all the tombs to here,” I mutter back to Caeror.
“Advance scout,” he agrees in my ear, grip steady on my shoulder.
We take refuge in the nearest of the tombs as the reflected light grows rapidly brighter, pressing backs against the cold stone by the door. There’s no sound as the shadows sharpen and direct light spills briefly through the doorway before sliding on.
I’m in a better position; Caeror nods to me and I move with breathless caution, peering out.
The Gleaner is already thirty feet away, its back to me. It floats silently along the middle of the chasm, bladed arms at its side. Both swords seem to smoulder, deep red casting a bloody illumination that retreats as the iunctii glides around the next bend. Caeror’s told me it’s how they navigate at night—some sort of coating on the blade that burns for hours. This is the first time I’ve seen it in person, though.
“It’s gone.” My whisper shakes. “What was it doing?”
“Probably checking for ambushes. Communicating about what’s ahead to the others.” He motions, barely visible now in the rapidly vanishing glow. “Hopefully everyone else realised the same; as long as they didn’t get spotted when it passed, they should be waiting for us in the garden. Let’s move.”
We venture once again into the dark, our progress as fast as the lack of visibility allows. Five minutes. Ten. Even adjusted as they are, my eyes make out only the blackest of shadows, the vaguest of outlines that suggest where walls might be. My heart never ceases to pound.
And then more light ahead. Too soon.
We slow, but this illumination doesn’t seem to be coming toward us so we creep forward, hugging the wall. Caeror wordlessly directs Tash to wait in the nearest tomb—the iunctus’s entire body is trembling, a miracle he’s made it this far—and then slips past me, peering around the rocky corner of the next chasm bend.
“Oh, gods.” He whispers it. Sinks back against the stone for support, white. There’s agony in his voice.
He motions desolately with his head for me to see. Heart dropping, I carefully position myself and then peek. Parallel red lines near either wall provide much of the light, the substance from the Gleaners’ blades inscribed somehowonto the chasm’s floor for at least a hundred feet. Clearly showing everything in their radius.
The bodies are arranged neatly between the two.
There are at least a few dozen of them; it has to be the majority of the Qabrans, maybe all of them. We’re close enough to see the glistening crimson patches on their robes, the angry slices across their faces and arms. I recognise most by sight, though I do not know their names.
A half dozen Gleaners hover thirty feet up, motionless as they keep guard. Facing away from us, standing on the ground amongst the corpses, is another. As I watch, it raises its red-pulsing blades. Brings them both down sharply into a woman’s chest.
She gasps, and bucks against the burning stone piercing her body, and begins to talk.
I shudder and pull back. Look at Caeror. He is staring into nothing. For the first time since I’ve met him, the light utterly gone from his eyes. I don’t know what to say to him.
