Dawn by Tim Lebbon

“Good.”
    “You’re being unfair to her.”
    “She’s talking Mage shit, Trey. We’re beaten. Just look around; you can see that. You may be used to darkness, but we live in daylight up here, and we welcome it.”
    Trey sat beside him, and Kosar welcomed the companionship. “Last time I traveled with fledge, Alishia exuded the same blankness as Rafe. There was something in her that pushed me away.”
    “The same as Rafe?” Kosar asked, trying not to sound interested.
    “The same. The two of them shared a lot without any of us knowing, of that I’m certain.”
    “None of us know anything,” Kosar said, “other than the fact that the Mages are back. There’ll be a second Cataclysmic War, and this time Noreela will lose. They could be gone in ten days, leaving nothing behind but the bodies of every dead Noreelan.”
    “Is that what you believe?” Trey said.
    “I don’t know.”
    “Don’t give in so quickly, Kosar. There are the Shantasi! They’ll put up a fight, won’t they?”
    “Against magic that can turn day to dusk?”
    Trey was silent for a few moments, staring up at the sky as if to discern the truth in its darkness. “Well, I trust the girl,” he said. He rose to walk back to the lifeless machine, but Kosar stood and stopped him.
    “If you trust her, tell her to show us something. Rafe brought that boat up out of the river; he cured A’Meer. Tell Alishia to show us something, and maybe I’ll believe as well.”
    “It’s not like that,” Trey said. “She’s not like Rafe. She told me he was never born.” He shrugged Kosar’s hand from his shoulder and walked away.
    Never born, Kosar thought. He did not understand. He wished A’Meer were here, someone he could truly talk to. He sat down again, but this time he looked south toward the mountains. He had been as far as Kang Kang’s foothills once, and he’d vowed never to go there again.
    “Am I being a coward?” he whispered. “Can I be so wrong?” But the night remained silent, offering no easy answer.

    RAFE WAS NEVER born, Hope thought. This girl was. And yet she says she’s growing younger. She watched the sleeping girl until Trey rose and went after the thief. Then she shuffled closer. She lay down so that she could feel the girl’s heat through her own clothes, and whispered in her ear, “What are you?”
    Alishia did not answer, and gave no sign of having heard.
    “What are you carrying?”
    Still no response. Hope looked after Trey and Kosar, shadows against the darkness. They had their backs to her. The big thief had never trusted her, but she supposed he now believed there was no reason to keep up his guard.
    The witch laid her hand on Alishia’s forehead. The girl was hot, and a slight shiver passed through her body. Hope closed her eyes and bade magic enter her, but there was nothing, no sense of power or promise or worth. She took her hand away and cursed.
    But she’s growing younger, Hope’s inner voice chimed in, and she nodded. The big thief didn’t care, the fledge miner didn’t understand and Hope was the only one ready to deal with what this could really mean. I’ll take her wherever she wants to go, she thought, because there’s something of the boy in her. Because Rafe was never born. He was the offspring of the Womb of the Land in Kang Kang, just as the old prophecy passed down to her from her mother and grandmother had predicted. And now Alishia wanted to go there, and maybe it was the Womb she sought.
    “I’ll take you,” she whispered in the sleeping girl’s ear. “With or without the fledger and the thief, I’ll take you into Kang Kang.”
    Hope lay down beside the girl once again and breathed in some of her stale breath, hoping that Alishia’s exhalations would talk to her. But there was nothing.

    TREY PAUSED AT the edge of the grounded machine and looked in at Alishia and Hope lying together. He was still unsure of the witch. She had seemed as concerned as any of them about Rafe’s