Winterstrike (29 page)

‘I don’t think we should stay here. It’s not far from dark.’ Already the sun was a low yellow smear over the marshes and the air was humming with insects. I slapped a
biting fly away from my face and more took its place. If we did find somewhere else to camp, I thought, we’d have to light a fire or be eaten alive.

‘I agree,’ Rubirosa said. ‘It’s all very well for
you
.’ She nodded in the direction of the Library.
‘You’re
not real.’

The Library’s face might almost have betrayed hurt. ‘I am as real as you!’

‘I just heard something,’ I said. Rubirosa and the Library fell silent. A thin, distant scratching came from beyond the hut.

‘Beetles?’ Rubirosa said.

‘Go. Now!’ But we were too late. As I stepped through the doorway of the hut, shapes were rising out of the ground in the twilight, short squat forms which did not move like humans,
or smell like them.

‘Kappa,’ the Library said. Damp webbed hands caught me by the wrists and twisted back my arms with surprising strength. Rubirosa’s armour flared and, hissing, extinguished
itself. The kappa were all around, murmuring in soft, angry voices. Someone struck me in the face with what felt like a handful of wet moss, a pungent, astringent odour. My knees buckled then, and
I went down.

When I came round again, it was completely dark and my wrists and ankles were shackled. After a moment, my eyes adjusted, but all I could see was earth, a low peat ceiling. I could hear the
kappa not far away, talking among themselves: the Library might have been able to understand them, but I could not. At that thought, the Library was at my side.

‘Sorry,’ the warrior said. ‘Can’t do much with low tech.’

‘I don’t expect you to,’ I whispered in reply. ‘Where’s Rubirosa?’

‘In another room. We’re underground, in case you hadn’t worked that out. Of course, the kappa live primarily in burrows. I should have remembered.’

‘It would have been helpful,’ I said, but I found it difficult to blame her.

‘There’s not a lot I can do,’ the Library repeated. ‘They’re scavengers, as far as I can see. Bits of passing ships seem to be incorporated into the
architecture.’

‘Bits of wrecked ships, you mean.’

There’s an old antiscribe,’ the warrior went on, as though I had not spoken, ‘and a couple of devices I’m not familiar with. Might be weapons. Might be food-mixers. I
can’t activate either of them, in any case.’

I sighed, nodding in the direction of my bound limbs to indicate that I’d make a start in trying to free myself. The Library melted away. I tugged and twisted and achieved nothing. One of
the kappa came to stand over me. There was no expression of triumph over an enemy in its large, liquid eyes: only a melting sadness.

‘What’s your name?’ I asked. ‘Can you free me? I am a friend of the Queen.’ Not strictly true, but worth a try. I’d made a stab at the patois tongue of Earth,
but the kappa just continued to stare at me, uncomprehending. Then there was a sudden sound from outside the chamber, a kind of rippling wail. The kappa stumped off, leaving me alone in the dim
room.

I started working at the bonds again. Squinting down, I thought they were reed pith, a stretchy, tough substance. Angling myself up against the wall, I pulled my bound feet through my arms, so
that I could get at my wrists with my teeth. Several minutes of determined chewing ensued. The pith tasted disgusting, like rotting weed. After a while, a bitterness seeped out over my tongue and
my mouth became numb, which was a mercy because it meant that I could no longer taste anything properly. I kept listening as best I could. There were faint sounds from beyond the chamber, rustling,
and voices.

Finally, with a tug, the bonds separated and my wrists were free. I set to work on the shackles around my ankles, tearing at the pith with what was left of my nails. At last this, too, came free
and I got off the bed and stood up. There was nothing in the room that would serve as a weapon, but there were two blankets. A hasty arrangement gave one of them the vague impression of a huddled
figure, not that I thought this would fool the kappa. The Changed on both worlds were different, not stupid, no matter what many folk believed.

Cautiously, I peered around the door. The chamber led into a rough earth corridor, with white roots snaking through the ceiling. Primitive, but it was dry and did not smell unpleasant. I suppose
there were worse boltholes. I slipped down to the next doorway and found Rubirosa stripped of her armour and pinned to a bench, rather as I had been, with bonds of plant material. The door was
open. I went in and freed her hands.

‘They’ve taken the armour,’ Rubirosa hissed, once she’d got rid of the gag that blocked her mouth. She sat up, dressed in a thermal tunic and leggings, also dark red.
‘Bloody stupid. They can’t know what to do with it. They can’t know what it
is.’

My feeling was that they probably knew only too well. For these kappa, lost in the middle of their marsh, anything that came their way could be used as a weapon. Especially a weapon itself. With
my lips to the marauder’s ear, I whispered, ‘They don’t know about the Library.’

‘I suppose that’s something.’ Rubirosa was grudging. ‘But without technology, the Library can’t do a whole lot.’

As she spoke, the warrior appeared behind her. ‘Good!’ she said, all approval. ‘You’re free.’

‘For how long, though?’ I said, since Rubirosa, deprived of the haunt-armour, could not see or hear the warrior. ‘Can you find us a way out of here?’

The Library sighed. ‘This is a maze. I’ve explored some of it. You should see what’s down the corridor.’ She gestured.

We followed her down the passage, ears cocked for movement. But though the low sound of voices went on, the kappa themselves remained out of sight.

The Library would not tell me what lay beyond, perhaps fearing that we might be overheard, or perhaps – with nearly human glee – wanting to keep it a surprise. She was partly a
teaching mechanism, after all. I was expecting anything from ancient palaces, buried beneath the rising flood, to undersea caverns. But what we walked into was a munitions dump.

‘How
old
is this?’ Rubirosa asked, wandering around boxes and crates marked with the old skull symbol, a grin for danger.

‘This is a latent explosive,’ the Library intoned. ‘Deliver it, and it can take months to activate, burning through its half-life. The crates are shock-proof

‘It looks like they’re using it as a shrine,’ I added, relaying this to Rubirosa. I was standing in front of one of the boxes, which had been pulled slightly forward from those
above it in order to make a shelf. On the shelf stood a row of what looked like dolls: some of them as squat as the kappa themselves, but some attenuated, with twig bodies and limbs made of reeds.
Tufts of red and blond wool created hair. Rubirosa came to stand beside me.

‘That’s sad,’ she said.

‘Why so? It’s the custom of primitive peoples.’ But I didn’t think the kappa
were
that primitive, all the same.

‘Latent Life destroyed cities, when this was an empire,’ the Library said. ‘Londress and Hagen, Dam and Vennen. Paris, the nearest city to this place. All gone now, underneath
the waters. But they were dead before they drowned.’

‘I’ve never heard of those places,’ I said.

‘They lived thousands of years ago. I have only fragmentary references to the wars that devastated them. Much was lost.’

‘And this has been here all the time?’

‘Just think what you could do with this,’ Rubirosa breathed. Her marauder’s face betrayed the avarice of the warrior.

‘If it’s still active,’ the Library said. ‘It may not be.’

‘Maybe the kappa are the best guardians,’ I said. But I was more interested in where the cavern led than in what it contained, although I filed the information away for future use.
I’d already delivered one weapon to the Matriarchy, however. I wasn’t particularly enthusiastic about delivering another.

At the back of the shrine was a door. It opened easily enough and there was no sign of a lock, which struck me as odd. I was the last one through and checked the room behind, but it remained
empty. I got the impression that the kappa, having captured us, had not really known what to do with us.

Narrow stairs and walls made out of pitted concrete, slimed with damp and earthstain. The Library paused, causing me to walk right through her.

‘Don’t do that!’

‘Sorry,’ the Library said, with faint surprise. ‘It doesn’t affect me, you know. There’s someone up ahead.’

We proceeded with caution. The Library was right: I could hear someone shuffling about, muttering and mumbling. I didn’t recognize the language, but it had to be one of the kappa.

‘If there’s only one,’ Rubirosa whispered, ‘we can tackle her.’

‘Agreed.’ With the Library close behind, we hastened ahead. The muttering was growing louder. I stepped through a doorway into dim light and stopped dead. The kappa had not been
behind us all this while. They had been ahead of us. They stood in a semicircle, whispering to themselves, around someone who sat in a small pool of light in the centre of a huge hollowed
chamber.

TWENTY-FOUR

The centipede’s feet were sharp against my skin, like pins. As they scratched, information came to me: the vessel was descending, which I already knew, and the location
lay within the mountains. And also, I was given the whereabouts of the Queen: a chamber not far from here, a series of left turns. I didn’t have anything to lose, I thought. I waited until
Mantis had finished her work at the console and moved on, then followed the directions I’d been given.

The door was locked from the outside, an old-fashioned punch-lock. The centipede was too small to activate it, but when I touched it, it obediently swung open.

The Queen lay on a divan with her back to the wall. The air had that same curious smell of musk, a heady narcotic drift. Since her captors were unlikely to have provided her with an actual drug
– unless she had talked the equivalent of One into giving her something – it seemed that this was some natural secretion of the Queen. It made her seem even more alien.

‘Hello?’ I said, pushing the door to behind me but making sure that it did not lock. Slowly, the Queen turned her head.

‘It’s you,’ she said, with a mild wonderment. Her words didn’t seem to be entirely in phase with her lips.

‘Yes. They captured me, too – at least, I’m not sure if they know that I’m on board.’

‘They may have picked you up through our tracker,’ the Queen said. ‘They have something which locks onto my people. They plan to use us.’ Her beautiful face reminded me
of a porcelain doll that one of my aunts had given me as a child. I’d never liked it. I laughed.

‘I don’t know what use I’ll be to these people, I’m sure.’

‘I spoke of
us,’
the Queen said, patiently. It took a moment to work out what she meant: herself in the plural, not herself and me.

‘I see,’ I said carefully, though I did not. The Queen smiled.

‘It’s happened before.’

‘Someone’s kidnapped you?’ She’d had an exciting life, for so young a woman.

‘No. I mean, to my lineage.’

‘Why? How do they try to use you?’

‘In many ways,’ the Queen said. She yawned. She seemed remarkably unconcerned about being captured and imprisoned and I wondered again about drugs.

‘We need to try and get out of here,’ I said. ‘When this thing lands.’ My shadow, outlined by the dull lights of the Queen’s cell, gave a twinge of pain.

‘No,’ the Queen said, placidly. ‘I wish to stay. I want to find out what they want, who they are.’

‘I can tell you who they are,’ I said. I related to her what the Library had said to me. The Queen leaned forward with the first signs of real animation I’d seen in her.

‘Mantis is a queen? From the past? How exciting!’

‘I’d far rather have a quiet life, myself I said.

Another gentle smile. ‘You are not a Queen.’

I wondered whether all of them were mad, then thought of Alleghetta, who hadn’t made Matriarch yet but who’d be a Queen if only she could. That would be
ayes,
then.

‘You must do as you please,’ the Queen said, as though we were on holiday. She waved a pallid hand. ‘I should not keep you here, if they don’t know you are
aboard.’

But there were footsteps behind the door and the sound of voices.

‘Over here,’ the Queen said, her voice suddenly sharp. She undulated from the couch and drew out a long drawer: it looked as though the room had been used for storing bodies.
Perma-sleep for space flight, or simply a morgue? I darted across the room and lay in the drawer. The Queen shoved it shut.

I could hear, but the darkness was oppressive and stifling, making my head ache along with the geise. Mantis’s voice said, ‘Have you reconsidered?’

‘I have not done so. I don’t think I’ll join you.’ She sounded as though she was talking about a party: I could imagine her examining her fingernails as she spoke.

‘Why not?’ Mantis sounded astonished, and angry.

‘It isn’t our history,’ the Queen said.

‘You think you’re better than us, don’t you?’ Mantis’s anger was growing. ‘They created you, just as they created us.’

‘Perhaps,’ the Queen said. She did not sound as if she greatly cared.

‘They must be overthrown,’ Mantis hissed. ‘We’ve suffered enough.’

‘You
have suffered. But I am a Queen. We are worshipped, we give guidance to our people. We are the mothers, not the children.’ She spoke with a distinct condescension; I
couldn’t entirely blame Mantis for becoming annoyed. I wondered who Mantis meant by ‘they’. I had a feeling it might be anyone who wasn’t of the Changed.

Then you can be mothers alone,’ Mantis snapped.

Lying there in the dark, in the sudden charged silence, I thought Mantis had a point. The Changed had, after all, been created by the ancient Matriarchy of Winterstrike with the expectation that
they were to be an evolved form of the human species. It hadn’t worked out that way. The men-remnants were debased, bestial. I thought of the vulpen and shuddered. The female species were
fragile, often weak, often simply mad. If you knew this, and your people had been reduced to a menial, marginal position in human society, why wouldn’t you rebel? But that didn’t mean I
had to become a fellow traveller: these issues dated from the old days, they were nothing to do with us . . . Whatever my familial issues with the current Matriarchy of Winterstrike, I needed to
let them know about this.