Winterlong (14 page)

I was on the other side. Justice hesitated before he bellied against the slick ground, yelping as the wire tore his cheek. In a few seconds he stumbled to his feet beside me. We kicked rocks and leaves to cover the shallow opening, then stood staring back at the rainbow Fountain, the glittering emerald lawns sloping above us beneath their diadem of watchlights. As the baying of the dogs shook the hedges we fled into the black and dripping woods.

During the last centuries the trees had grown unchecked. Decaying leaves muffled our footsteps. I stumbled on toadstools the size of dinner plates that expelled acrid clouds of brown spores. After a few minutes Justice whistled for me to stop.

“Wait.”

The forest fell back around a clearing studded with the domes of mausoleums and kudzu-covered pillars. A stand of young gingkos littered the ground with their leaves, already bright yellow. Tombstones lay everywhere like discarded dominos poking through the undergrowth. I tipped my chin westward toward Linden Glory.

“So why—” I began.

“No—listen.” He wiped the rain from a tombstone before leaning against its mossy flank. “Can you hear?”

The dogs’ howls grew more frantic, then abruptly stilled. “They can’t have given up already. But where—”

Then I heard it. From high overhead a very soft whirring, persistent as the rain. Something huge and black crept across the floodlit lawns of
HEL
, a shadow like that of a vast cloud.

“Wendy.” Justice stared at the sky. Without looking at me he made a strange gesture, crossing his hands at the wrist. “Wendy, it’s a strike …”

More lights sprang on in the towers. Shouts and the clang of doors opening. On the lawn I could see the mastiffs waiting, tails wagging uneasily as they stared up. Behind them their keepers ran across the grass. From the highest turret searchlights pierced the night until they found their target.

An airship, one of the great dirigibles called fougas. Immense and nearly silent, its vast hull drab blue except where a white hand surmounted by a crescent moon had been painted near the rear propellor.

The sigil of the Balkhash Commonwealth.

I had never seen a fouga, and started to my feet in amazement when Justice grabbed me. Yelling, he pulled me with him into a mausoleum.

Rotting acorns popped beneath our feet. A cracked marble slab leaned in front of a tomb robbed decades before. Justice shoved this out of our way and dragged me after him. Inside it smelled of decaying leaves. He tore the hem from his jacket, wrapping it around my head. I tried to push him away, but he silenced me and pointed outside.

Against the black sky I saw the fouga silhouetted, hovering over the lawn in a near-silence eerier than any roar or siren. Brilliant streams of light suddenly erupted from its gondola, sweeping across the grounds of
HEL
and touching the edge of the woods. As we watched, the viral strike began.

A gentle pattering upon the lawn and the canopy of trees. A wind like the promise of spring. A sweet smell seeped through the damp air, the odor of a million roses masking the chemical stench of the mutagens. Watchlights swept the lawn and candled shallow pools where the viral rain had gathered. Beside me Justice stared, his hands on mine cold and unmoving.

Then, as quickly and quietly as it had come, the fouga retreated. Its lights winked out; the shadows crept back across the lawns. Outside, the forest dripped black and still. I crept forward to peer at the stricken gardens of
HEL
.

On the grass stood the mastiffs, shaking their heads. One had collapsed and was licking its front leg. Another pawed repeatedly at its face, as though to dislodge a burr or tick. Their human keepers staggered nearby. I could hear one screaming, the muted voices of the others moaning or calling for help as they tore off their clothes. A siren began to shriek, too late to warn the denizens of the Human Engineering Laboratory. Justice let his breath out in a shuddering sigh. I turned back and crouched beside him.

“Were they after us? Who were they?”

He shook his head. He also looked dazed. “I don’t know. Rebels, I guess. Fougas supplied by the Commonwealth.”

“But what are they doing here?” I unpeeled the cloth he had wrapped around my face, coughed at the cloying scent of roses. I leaned against the wall, trying to find a comfortable spot.

Justice shook his head. “Who knows? The Aviator, maybe; maybe they were making a show of force to impress him, maybe—”

“But he’s gone. He left a week ago, he went into the City with his guards.”

In the darkness I could feel Justice next to me, brushing aside stones and dead leaves. “Maybe they don’t know that. Or maybe they do and don’t care. Or maybe he’s already dead, and this is their way of telling us.”

We were silent for a long time. Outside, the siren ceased its bleating. I wondered if anyone would come searching for us now.

“No,” said Justice, as though he had read my thoughts. He reached to take my hand. “We’re safe, I think. Anyone at
HEL
will assume we were caught by the rain. No one will look for us, at least not tonight. They’re afraid of the rebels; they’ll be trying to trace the source of the attack.”

“But what of us? Won’t the lazars find us out here?”

He made a face. “We’ll have to chance it. But I think we’re safe for now, at least this side of the river.”

He hugged me. “We’re free, Wendy. By morning we can leave. I know a place we can go for a few days—”

“But,” I stammered, “what will we do?”

I could imagine his mouth pursed in the darkness, thinking. “We’ll go to the City,” he said at last. “I have people there; they may help us.” But he sounded doubtful.

“But what about me: they’ll know who I am.” I pulled closer to the wall, disliking this enforced proximity. I felt stronger since he had given me my medication, and wished morning would come. I wished he would leave.

“No one knows who you are, Wendy,” Justice said softly. “Outside of
HEL
no one has heard of you or the others.”

“Won’t they look for you?”

“They terminated me two days ago, but it’s been so disorganized that the release code wasn’t changed yet. One of the servers let me in. They won’t bother with me. I’m only an Aide.” He hesitated, then added, “And I’m not an Ascendant.”

I flopped back against the tomb wall. “What about me?” I had never been outside of
HEL
, except for chaperoned visits to the riverwalk and giddy forays to the ziggurat with Anna and a few of the other empties.

“Can you do anything?”

“I can assist in emotive engram therapy.”

“Well.” He did not sound impressed. “My—
people
—are in the City. They may be able to help. Or there’s others might be interested in you.” He regarded me critically. No one would recognize you like this.”

“No one knows me outside of
HEL
,” I said. The thought evoked an echo of Dr. Harrow’s sorrow and loneliness, and I shivered. He drew me closer.

“You can use another name. Travel in disguise. It might be exciting.” He rubbed the nape of my neck, brushing the short hairs the wrong way. “We’ll say you’re a Curator.”

“My name is Wendy Wanders.”

“Take another; take a boy’s name.”

I thought for a moment, then said, “Tell them to call me Aidan.” And I stretched out upon the dank marble floor beside him and fell slowly into sleep.

I slept fitfully. Although undisturbed by the rush of wind in the leaves or the faint footfalls of passing animals, I could not grow accustomed to the unfamiliar weight of Justice beside me, the flickering shades of his dreams intruding upon my own. Several times I started awake in terror, seeing a pair of glowing green eyes fading into the confines the tomb’s walls. And Dr. Harrow’s voice echoed over and over in my mind, calling my name and her brother Aidan’s until finally she faded into silence.

Once, near dawn, I woke to feel Justice’s hands sliding beneath my shirt.

“Get away,” I said, although there was nowhere for him go. As I tried to edge from him I could smell his arousal, he pressed me against the wall, his jacket falling about us like a tent. I tried to bite his shoulder, but he shoved me back so that my cheek grazed the marble. Then holding my face in his hands he kissed me, murmuring my name as he ran his hands across my skull. I bit his tongue. With a choked cry he yanked away from me, but not before a little blood trickled into my mouth: enough that his desire exploded in my brain and I shut my eyes, trembling.

Cursing, he touched the tip of his tongue, drew away finger spotted with blood. In the near-darkness he might have been a stone angel fallen from atop one of the vaults. He turned back to me, his eyes clouded with anger.

“You ungrateful—”

A drop of blood welled onto his lip and I tilted my head to kiss him. My tongue flicked across the tiny cut and tasted what blood remained, the bright flash of his anger melting into disappointment and confusion. He fumbled to put his arms about me, but I crouched against the back of the tomb. Without a word he lay down again, his back to me. I sensed his wakefulness long afterward.

At first light he crept from our hiding place. A few minutes later he returned to wake me.

“Get up,” he said. He braided his hair, tying the end with a black silk ribbon. “Even if they think we’re dead we can’t stay here.”

“But the virus?”

“It doesn’t live more than an hour in the open air. But we can’t trust Leslie or the others not to come looking for your corpse.”

“Will the lazars hunt us?” I stretched, wondering what we would be able to eat.

Justice stood, hands slouched in the deep pockets of his jacket as he watched me tuck in my shirt. “This is probably the best time to avoid them. After the rain of roses they’re—sated.”

“I have never seen one,” I admitted, and smiled. “I’m thirsty.”

Justice stared at me as though waiting for me to say something else; to apologize, perhaps. I adjusted the cuff of my shirt, wishing I’d brought other clothes. After a moment he shook his head.

“Well, come on, then,” he said. We left the tomb.

Sunrise misted the eastern edge of the woods, where through the deep green leaves I glimpsed the chromati haze of the Glass Fountain and the purer emerald of
HEL
lawns.

Justice said, “You can go back if you want. Go ahead: see what happens.”

“I don’t want to go back.” I turned from this last sight of my home to follow him. “You didn’t have to free me. I’ll go on alone now if you want.”

“Hah.” He snorted, but paused to hold a wiry sumac hip while I passed beneath it. “No point letting you get killed out here after all that trouble.” As I passed, his voice rose slightly. “Why’d you bite me last night?”

“’I don’t like to fuck.”

“’Then why did you kiss me?”

“I tapped you.”

His eyes darkened as he stepped beside me, kicking at mushrooms and damp leaves. “What?”

I squinted to find a path among the ancient trees. “I can read blood.”

He stared at me for a long moment. I met his gaze, finally shrugged and turned to make my way through the tangled forest.

We walked in silence until the sun hung high overhead, Justice seemed to find his way by the sun, and by following the river. Occasionally we glimpsed it through the trees, a litter of blue and gold.

A heavy jasmine-scented steam began to rise from the earth. This came from carpets of white flowers that covered the ground like moss, their blossoms no bigger than my fingernail. As I stooped to watch them the tiny blooms opened and closed like little gaping mouths. When I touched one it snapped at my finger.

“Look, Justice! It’s hungry—”

He shook his head and pulled me to my feet. “No, Wendy.”

“Are they poisonous?”

“Sometimes. Things change, after the rain of roses.”

I followed him. When he wasn’t looking I would kick at the mats of white flowers and watch them seethe as we passed.

We skirted the rotted foundations of small wooden buildings, the collapsed tangle of steel walls and cavernous bunkers and commercial ziggurats that during the Third Ascension had been built upon the earlier ruins. On the decaying ziggurat steps I saw copperheads drowsing in coiled knots and other, larger snakes, blue-black and with scales so long and fine they looked like feathers. The fallen steel archways were pied with lizards, golden-eyed and blue-tongued, waiting patiently for crickets to waken and warm themselves on the metal. I was hungry. In the trees ahead Justice waited for me to catch up. I waved to him to go on ahead, waited for him to turn away so that I could capture a lizard as it dozed. It was lovely, raised rounded scales like tiny rust-and-azure studs. I wished I could save its skin; but I killed it quickly by biting its neck. I sucked the little blood there was from its body cavity and made quick mouthful of the meat in belly and tail. A flicker of the animal’s hunger and heat sparked in my brain: the warmth of insects and then the quick slash of my own teeth through its spine. That was all it gave me. I was sorry about the pretty scales.

I skipped ahead to join Justice and we continued in silence for a time.

“You’ve never been this far outside before, have you?” he said at last.

“We had no need to leave
HEL
.”

For what? Dr. Harrow had warned me that the world outside was a decadent place, and dangerous. Certainly the ruined City of Trees was no place for a creature dependent upon a carefully administered regime of chemicals and stolen dreams. But Justice only motioned for me to follow him to the edge of the forest. We left the cool shelter of the trees behind.

“Where are we?” I asked, stepping among shattered blocks of granite.

“Near the Key Bridge.”

A path of white stones curled from the edge of the broken road and stretched through the trees. Justice hesitated, squatting on a ledge of tarmac.

“Are we lost?”

He shook his head. “No. But it will be dark soon. That’s the City, there.”

He pointed to the far shore of the river. Through a green scrim I glimpsed broken roofs and towers vying with tree tops for the afternoon sun.