A Secret Man of Blood

Chapter Eighteen

Picking up the object, Squad feels an awareness on the gleaming frontiers of his mind, turning the item over in his hands to examine the gold casing.

"Should you really be touching that?" Anya asks.

"Good question," Squad replies. The item is about three feet in length and Squad opens the end of it, sliding another object out.

"It looks like a scroll," Anya says, nudging Squad out of the way and ablaze with interest, as she handles the scroll.

"So much for not touching it," Squad smiles.

Anya unfolds the paper and reads it. "It's a...bible. A very old one, by the looks of it."

"And that means?"

"Well, they say that the original text was written by Caliban—"

"Or God, as he's more properly known," Squad grins.

Anya's eyes never leave the text as she explains. "Well, the main god for the Western world – creator of the Elves and worshipped by many humans too. But organised religion is made up of mortal people and obviously, as the years go by, they introduce their own ideas, prejudices bleeding into every text and belief, becoming doctrine. This," she touches the scroll, "could be something else entirely. A bible from before mortal hands took hold of its message."

She looks startled. "Wait a minute! Something's been written here, added to the text—"

A noise causes Squad to shoot around, swords drawn. "Get ready!" he tells Anya.

Nothing happens, but Anya puts the scroll back in its case and slings it over her back.

"We should get moving," she tells Squad. "I want to find Indigo and Sig."

They march on, down into what might be a plain but the mist spreads like gauze, occluding their vision within a handful of metres. "There are projections on the mist," Squad cautions.

Anya nods; she can see and recognise some of the images. There's warmth in her eyes, but also something like a sweet crystalline cry, smothered quickly by her strength. She turns to Squad. "I see them. Let's keep moving."

Somewhere in his mind, Squad is putting together the images he's seeing, which are coming as flashes on the mist. He pretends not to be able to make sense of any of it. Then he asks anyway, because he can't help himself.

"I've never really asked you much about your family: what's your mum like?"

Anya turns and gives Squad a look that makes it clear she knows exactly why he's asking; he gives her the classic, no, I did not just see your life playing out on a magical mist look that's standard in these situations.

There's an instinctive shake of her head, but it's not bad-natured. "My mother would always limit my ambitions. If I said I wanted to be a military leader, she said military historian. If I said I wanted to advance the cause of women, she said I should invent a new hairclip."

Squad smiles gently. "She must have read Sig's book – Women and Their Practical Uses."

"Can you imagine if Sig actually wrote a book?" Anya asks.

"Can you imagine if Sig could read?"

Anya smirks and, where a patch of mist has cleared, looks out across the plain; a flock of birds move like a migraine across the sky, disappearing and then reappearing where they were five seconds before, on a loop.

"She's a complicated person, my mother. I don't think she was ready for Indigo's condition and it spoiled her attitude to children – maybe she was expecting it to be a transformative experience and when it turned out to be really difficult, she just packed up and left us with a nanny."