The Stars Are Legion(59)

“They were running,” I say, “not attacking.”

“From these people?”

I nod. “You know them?”

“Maybe,” Casamir says. She tries a couple more languages, but from the look this giant of a woman is giving me, I have a feeling she understands me just fine.

“I’m Zan,” I say, “or at least that’s what I’m told.” I introduce Casamir and Das Muni and tell her we’re looking to go up another level. “Above,” I say, pointing. “To the surface. You know the surface of the world?”

“The sea,” she says.

I know the word; in my mind I picture a flat, viscous expanse of dark water in a deep, cavernous crag of the world. “You’ve been to the sea?” I say, wondering if there’s one of them, or many.

“Above us is the sea,” she says. “We all come from the sea, and we all return to it.” She crouches next to her dead companions, and I have a twinge of sympathy, remembering the slaughter of my sisters.

I kneel next to her. “I’m sorry we couldn’t save them,” I say.

“You saved me,” she says. “It has to be enough.”

“Were they attacking you?” I ask.

She shakes her head. She pulls a bracelet made of bone beads strung in sinew from the wrist of one of the dead and slides it onto her own wrist, which is already heavy with a dozen of them. “We are a hunting party,” she says. “We hunt them. They kill our birthers and our chattel. They eat flesh without honor. They do not understand sacrifice.”

“If you point us in the direction of the sea,” I say, “we’ll go.”

She stares at the bodies, then her open palms. Shakes her head. “I cannot leave their bodies here for the scavengers. I must bring them back.”

The six dead will not be easy to carry, not for her or for us. Das Muni won’t even be able to move a single thigh, let alone a body.

“I’m not sure we’re the best at helping with that,” I say.

When she raises her head now, her eyes are filled with tears. “Help me bring them home,” she says, “and I will guide you to the sea.”

I glance back at Casamir. She hugs her shard of diamond to her chest. “You going back?” I say.

“I have what I came for,” she says.

I nod and point back into the dark. “You’re free to go back, then,” I say.

She picks up her torch and heads to the door.

I survey the bodies and try to figure out a way to transport them. “We can make ropes,” I say, “maybe haul them behind us?”

“Can we make a sledge?” Arankadash says.

I pull the twisted garrote from my pocket. “Maybe if we twist together—”

Casamir sighs and trudges back to us. She sets down her pack. “You can carry them on long bone poles,” she says, “from the boneyard. Tie them up and suspend them between you. There’s four of us. We can manage two, carrying two bodies apiece.”

“That’s still heavy,” I say.

“Easier than dragging them,” she says. “Must I think of everything?”

Casamir and I head back to the foot of the mountains, hunting for bones long enough to suspend between two people. Luckily, we don’t have to go far. Our scavenging turns up four good-sized poles.

When we return, Das Muni is keening. I drop my bones and run through the door to find her on the ground, Arankadash on top of her, hands around her throat.

I rush Arankadash and knock her clear of Das Muni. I pin her to the ground. She fights me, but I’m heavier and faster. I lock her arms at her sides. “What are you doing?

“She is a mutant!” Arankadash spits. “She must die like the others!”

“She’s my friend!” I say. “You accept my help, you accept hers. You understand? She may be a mutant, but she is my mutant. I’m responsible for her.”

Arankadash sneers at me but stops struggling. “Fool,” she says. “They all turn. They seem normal, for a time, but they all become mad. They eat flesh and murder and hunt. That is all they do.”

“You tell me you were the one hunting,” I say. “They were running from you into us. So, who’s the hunter, then?”

“Do not trust her!” Arankadash says.

Casamir comes up behind me, still carrying her bones. “She’s all right for a mutant,” Casamir says. “Just ugly.”

“Fools,” Arankadash says.

“Do you want the help of us fools or not?” I say. “Because I’m happy to leave you here to haul your kin back one by one and get eaten by mutants or bugs or whatever else is up here along the way.”

She snarls something in another language. Then: “Fine, but we are enemies now.”

“All right,” I say, “as long as you’re the type of enemy who keeps her promises, and you’ve promised to take me to the sea.”

“You are undeserving,” she says.

I release her. “I can say the same of you. Apologize to Das Muni.”

“No.”

“Then at least promise not to harm her again. Because the next time you try, I’m not going to be so nice.”

“I’m not nice either.”