'Where are we going?'

'Somewhere safer than this,' Asara replied. She caught the look on Kaiku's face, saw her frustration at the answer, and offered one a little less vague. 'A secret place. Where there are friends, where we can understand what happened here.'

'You know more that you say you do, Asara,' the other accused. 'Why won't you tell me?'

'You are disorientated,' came the reply. 'You have been to the Gates of Omecha not one sunrise past, you have lost your family and endured more than anyone should bear. Trust me; you will learn more later.'

Kaiku crossed the hollow and faced her former servant. 'I will learn it now.'

Asara regarded her in return. She was a pretty one, despite the temporary ravages of grief on her face. Eyes of brown that seemed to laugh when she was happy; a small nose, slightly sloped; teeth white and even. Her tawny hair she wore in a feathered style, teased forward over her cheeks and face in the fashionable cut that young ladies wore in the capital. Asara had known her long enough to realise her stubborn streak, her mulish persistence when she decided she wanted something. She saw it now, and at that moment she felt a slight admiration for the woman she had deceived all this time. She had half expected the grief of the previous night to break her, but she was finding herself proven wrong. Kaiku had spirit, then. Good. She would need it.

Asara picked up a cured-leather pack and held it out. 'Walk with me.' Kaiku took it and slid it on to her back. Asara took the other, and the rifle, from where it had been drying by the fire. The previous night's rain had soaked the powder chamber, and it was not ready to use yet.

They headed into the forest. The branches twinkled with starfall

as it gently drifted around them, gathering on the ground in a soft dusting before melting away. Kaiku felt a fresh upswell of tears in her breast, but she fought to keep them down. She needed to understand, to make some small sense of what had happened. Her family were gone, and yet it did not seem real yet. She had to hold together for now. Resolutely, she forced her pain into a tight, bitter corner of her mind and kept it there. It was the only way she could continue to function. The alternative was to go mad with sorrow.