He closed his eyes momentarily and tried to imagine what it had been like back in Leah, in the Highlands, in his home. He couldn't do it. It was so far away, so removed from the present, that it was little more than a memory, fading with a past that seemed lost in another lifetime.
He gave up on the Highlands and instead tried to imagine what it would be like to have Grianne as his sister. Not just in name, but in fact. To have her accept that it was so. To have her call him Bek. He failed in this effort, as well. As the Ilse Witch, Grianne had taken lives and destroyed dreams. She had done things that he might never be able to accept, no matter how mistaken she had been or how much contrition she exhibited. Her life was wrapped in deception and trickery, in a misdirected search for revenge, in isolation and bitterness. It was not as if she could simply wipe away her past and begin fresh. She could not become someone different all at once simply because he wanted it to be so. That was asking for a child's-fable ending of a kind that had long since ceased to be possible. Whatever he expected of her, it was probably too much. The best he could hope for was that she would come to realize the truth.
He pictured her in his mind, standing before him in her gray robes, austere and imperious. He could not imagine her being happy. Had she laughed even once since she had been stolen away? Had she ever smiled?
Yet he had to find a way to bring her back to herself, to something of the girl she had been fifteen years ago, to a little part of the world she had abandoned and disdained as meant for lesser creatures. He had to help her, even if by helping he should cause her greater pain.
How could he manage this, when their next encounter would likely result in her trying her very best to kill him?
He wished he had Quentin with him-Quentin, with his sensible, straightforward approach to things, always able to see with such clarity the right way to proceed, the best thing to do. Had Quentin survived the battle at Castledown's ruins? Tears filled his eyes at the thought that his cousin might be dead. Even thinking such a thing seemed a betrayal. He could not imagine life without his cousin-his confidant, his best friend. Quentin had been so eager to come on this voyage, so anxious to see some other part of the world, to learn something new of life. What if it had cost him his own?
Bek knotted his hands together in frustration and stared out into the trees, into the growing sunlight, the new day, and his determination hardened into certainty. He must find Quentin. Maybe even before he found Walker, because the fact of the matter was that Quentin was the more important of the two. If they were stranded in this strange land, if their airships were lost to them and their companions dead, at least they would have each other to see the worst of it through. To face what lay ahead, however bad, in any other way was inconceivable to him.
Look after each other, Coran Leah had urged them. They had promised each other as much-long ago, in Arborlon, when there had still been a chance to turn back.
He sighed wearily. At least he had Truls Rohk to help him. As strange and frightening as the shape-shifter was, he had shown himself to be a friend. As conflicted as his life had been, he was perhaps the most dependable and capable of the ship's company. There was a measure of reassurance in that, and Bek embraced it eagerly.
Because he had nothing else to embrace, he admitted. Because sometimes you took comfort where you found it.
Truls Rohk was not gone long. The light had not yet chased away the last of the night when he reappeared through the trees, his cloaked form crouched low, his movements quick and furtive.
"On your feet," he hissed roughly, pulling the boy up. "Your sister's on our trail and coming fast."
Bek tried to keep the fear from his eyes and throat, tried to breathe normally as he glanced in the direction from which the shape-shifter had come. Then they were running into the trees and gone.
FOUR