The Cause, Page 2

practice in keeping with their twisted minds. A prisoner’s body must be as healthy as possible so it could be redistributed after execution.

  Perhaps they were busy with Lew, perhaps he was slashing his way through the grey uniforms. Well, that was his job after all. Only it wasn’t his job. She faltered in her smooth, cat stride. His job had been to protect her father’s interests. Did honour call for her to return and fight beside him? She was confused and she had always been taught that confusion was death. Her code was so tied in with the hierarchy of the Kingdom. Now that she was suddenly outside it, she was aware that she had lost all her bearings.

  Even while she thought, she picked up her pace. It was more likely that Lew was dead, and if she slowed, she would never make the shelter of the caves. She knew there were caves, had seen them as they flew low on their way to the Assembly. Besides, if Lew had decided to turn against her father, he was outside the world of honour. She supposed that she was too. In which case she could never hope to act honourably again.

  She stopped abruptly as the realisation of her exile came down on her. For the first time she noticed the star-filled and glittering sky. The stars useless to her in their unfamiliar constellations.

  Time to plan. Time to make a decision. But she must move. Hesitation was death. She had never hesitated until today. She stood, frozen.

  Lew had fought as if he had dedicated himself to her, had assigned his own responsibility. As if he had not been for the cause at all. She shivered. It was incomprehensible. The longer she thought of it, the colder she got. The fervor that she thought came from dedication to her father but in fact came from something else. It was a betrayal of all their ideals. She sprang up and ran, thinking of nothing but making one smooth stride after another. Only the caves could save her from the sun.

  After hours running on the dunes she was gasping and badly winded. A lightening was all round her. The sun was coming. It was only now, in the face of her own death that she saw it clearly. Lew’s prehistoric gaze was the desert sky, stretching from horizon to horizon, until the foundations of her life were made tiny and the previously minuscule whispers of disbelief swelled and engulfed her. As she stood, the first glare of dawn stung her eyes. The world around her was gradually revealed, white sand, fine as ash, blasted by a million days of white heat.

  He had not hesitated. As her execution was pronounced, Lin had turned, cold faced and walked away from her, her childhood companion, a model of self control. Admirable. Yet barely had the line gone quiet when Lew’s arm arced toward the throat of the nearest guard. He must have taken a stylus from the debrief room. Sythe did not even see it reach its target. She had understood what his action would mean in a room of only one door, a room of charged weapons. He must have known it too.

  Walk! Do not stop! She ordered herself. The sun inched higher. It was a full globe now. She could see a blue line ahead. The line of mountains. There would be shelter there. Many, many miles away. She refused to acknowledge that the distance was impossible. She walked smooth as a big cat, disciplining her body, all her new thoughts slowly obliterated in the wash of heat. Too late to go back anyway. Breathe in, breathe out. Left leg, right leg. She had quickly grasped that honour did not function in this desert. Economy of movement must now be her cause.

  The sun pulsed with it’s own heart beat. One hour passed. Her suit was blistering. Muscles torn from sinking through deep sand. She walked on, detaching her mind from the pain until it was only left leg, right leg, smooth as a machine. She recognised that she was in her spirit now, walking beside her shamefully failing body.

  And yet, despite her determination to detach, it seemed her spirit would not let her be, kept drifting back to the room of one door. If she had not left. If she had fought them. If she had comprehended his look for what it really was. Dedication to her, as if she could be a cause in herself. The revelation was much too late. That a cause could exist between two. She was beginning to see how her new cause had sprung forward the instant the old one had died. And she had instantly deserted.

  The whipping air swirled letters at her feet. Delusion. Heat exhaustion. She disciplined herself not to read. But the letters were so persistent she began to put them together. Do not run. Do not run. She stopped, staring down at the shifting particles. There was a low hum in the air. She turned her aching, disbelieving eyes to the sky.

  The pilot holding the craft low so that the fine sand swirled in a mist. Two men before her, quailing, hands gripping their weapons.

  ‘We are taking you into the protection of the Prison Complex,’ said one, leveling his weapon at her.

  She laughed aloud in pure joy. A parched sound that cracked her lips painfully. For her it was the work of moments. And then she was flying, the bodies already vanishing to slowly blister and liquefy in the sun-blasted dust below her. She lifted the plane higher and sped back towards the silver curve of the Assembly. No doubts now. Like all new converts, she ached to fight for her cause.

  ****

  END

  ****

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