Winterstrike (3 page)

By the time I reached the tenement, varying my route from the rider stop through the filthy alleys in case of pursuit, it was close to the gongs for curfew. I hurried up the grimy stairs and
triple-bolted the steel door behind me. I half expected the flayed warrior to be waiting for me – sitting on the pallet bed, perhaps – but there was no one there. The power was off
again, so I lit the lamp and sat down at the antiscribe, hoping that the battery had enough juice to sustain a call to Winterstrike.

Gennera’s voice crackled into the air and a moment later her face appeared on the little screen, pasty and familiar. Her bone earrings swung as she leaned forward and one snagged on the
black lace of her ruffled collar. Her small eyes were even chillier than usual.

‘Anything?’

‘No, not yet. I’m still looking.’ I did not want to tell her about the warrior.

‘You have to find it,’ Gennera said. ‘And quickly. The situation’s degenerating, we’re on the brink. The Caud Matriarchy is out of control.’ Her mouth pursed
primly, as if commenting on a particularly inferior dinner party.

‘You’re telling me. The city’s a mess. Public transport’s breaking down, there are scissor-women everywhere. They seek distraction, to blame all their economic problems
on us rather than on their own incompetence. The news-views whip up the population, night after night. There are posters everywhere saying we’ve desecrated Mardian Hill, that the shrine
belongs to Caud.’

‘Nonsense. The shrine was built by the Matriarchy of Winterstrike, it’s documented, no matter what fantasies Caud likes to tell.’

‘Caud’s constructed on fantasies. Dangerous ones.’

And that’s why we must have a deterrent. Even if we don’t go to war, they’ll find some other excuse in a year or so’s time.’

‘If a deterrent is to be found, it will be found in the library. What’s left of it.’

They’ve delivered an ultimatum. Hand over the shrine, or they’ll declare war. You saw that?’

‘I saw. I have three days.’ There was a growing pressure in my head and I massaged my temples as I spoke into the antiscribe. ‘Gennera, this isn’t realistic. You know
that.’

‘Find what you can.’

A fool’s errand. I’d said so when the news of the mission first came up, and I hadn’t changed my mind. I’d have added that it was me risking my life, not Gennera, but
that was part of the deal and always had been: I was indentured and I didn’t have a choice. It was pointless to think I could argue the toss.

‘I have to go. The battery’s running down.’ It could have been true.

Gennera frowned. ‘Then call me when you can.’
And be careful, look after yourself,
I waited for her to say, but it didn’t come. The antiscribe sizzled into closure as I
reached out and turned the dial.

I put a pan of dried noodles over the lamp to warm up, then drew out the results of the day’s research. There was little of use. Schematics for ships that had ceased to fly a hundred years
before, maps of mines that had long since caved in, old philosophical rants that could have been either empirical or theoretical, impossible to say which. I could find nothing resembling the
fragile rumour that had sent me here: the story of ancient weapons.

‘If we had something that could be deployed as an edge over Caud, it would be enough,’ Gennera said. ‘We’d never need to use it. It would be enough that we had it, to
keep our enemies in check.’

If I believed that, I’d believe anything.

The Matriarchy remember what you did in Tharsis,’ Gennera said. ‘You have a reputation for accomplishing the impossible.’

‘Tharsis was not impossible, by definition. Only hard. And that was nine years ago, Gennera. I’m not as young as I was.’ That sounded pathetic. I was in my late twenties, and
making out that I was middle-aged. I certainly
felt
middle-aged. But I wasn’t surprised when she gave a snort of derision.

That should benefit you all the more,’ Gennera said.

‘If I meet a man-remnant on the Plain, maybe not. My fighting skills aren’t what they were, either.’

Even over the antiscribe, I could tell that she was smiling her frozen little smile. ‘You’d probably end up selling it something, Hestia.’

But I had not come to Caud to sell, and I was running out of time. Not just my time in Caud, either. When I looked at my life, the years seemed to be slipping away, lost in Gennera’s
bidding. I’d been indentured to her for a decade now, still knew little about her. I’d had reservations at the start, but she offered a way out from under my mother’s Matriarchal
thumb, a life that promised adventure. Powerful in her own right, she’d protected me against my mother’s temper and my aunt’s bids for authority.

And all I’d really done had been to exchange one kind of dependence for another.

In the morning, I returned to the library. I had to dodge down a series of alleyways to avoid a squadron of scissor-women, bearing heavy weaponry. These morning excissiere patrols were becoming
increasingly frequent and there were few people on the streets. I hid in the shadows, waiting until they had passed by. Occasionally, there was the whirring roar of orthocopters overhead: Caud was
so clearly preparing for conflict. My words to Gennera rose up and choked me.

I reached the ruin of the library much later than I’d hoped. The spars of the blasted roof arched up over the twisted remains of the foremost stacks. The ground was littered with books,
still in their round casings. It was like walking along the shores of the Small Sea, when the sand-clams crawl out onto the beaches to mate. I could not help wondering whether the information I
sought was even now crunching beneath my boot heel, but these books were surely too recent. If there had been anything among them, the Matriarchy of Caud would be making use of it.

No one knew who had attacked the library. The Matriarchy blamed Winterstrike, which was absurd. My government had far too great a respect for information. Paranoid talk among the tenements
suggested that it had been men-remnants from the mountains, an equally ridiculous claim. Awts and hyenae fought with bone clubs and rocks, not missiles, though who knew what weaponry the enigmatic
vulpen possessed: they were said to have intelligence, whereas awts and hyenae did not. The most probable explanation was that insurgents had been responsible: Caud had been cracking down on
political dissent over the last few years, a dissent spawned by its economic woes, and this was the likely result. I suspected that the library had not been the primary target. If you studied a
map, the Matriarchy buildings were on the same trajectory and I was of the opinion that the missile had simply fallen short. But I volunteered this view to no one. I spoke to no one, after all.

Even though this was not my city, however, I could not stem a sense of loss whenever I laid eyes on the library. Caud, like Winterstrike, Tharsis and the other cities of the Plain, went back
thousands of years, and the library was said to contain data from very early days, from the time when humans had first come from Earth, to settle Mars. There were folk – the Caud Matriarchy
among them – who considered that to be heresy; I considered it to be historical fact. There had been a time when all Mars, dominated by the Memnos Matriarchy, had believed ourselves to be the
world on which human life had originated; we were more enlightened these days.

Civilized.
Or so it was said.

I made my way as carefully as I could through the wreckage into the archives. No one else was there and it struck me that this might be a bad sign, a result of the increased presence of the
scissor-women on the streets. I began to sift through fire-hazed data scrolls, running the short antenna of the antiscribe up each one. In the early days, they had written bottom-to-top and
left-to-right, but somewhere around the Age of Children this had changed. I was not sure how much difference, if any, this would make to the antiscribe’s pattern-recognition capabilities:
hopefully, little enough. I tried to keep an ear out for any interference, but gradually I became absorbed in what I was doing and the world around me receded.

The sound penetrated my consciousness like a beetle in the wall: an insect clicking. Instantly, my awareness snapped back. I was crouched behind one of the stacks, a filmy fragment of
documentation in my hand, and there were two scissor-women only a few feet away.

It was impossible to tell if they had seen me, or if they were communicating. Among themselves, the excissieres, as they call themselves, do not use speech if they are within sight of one
another, but converse by means of the patterns of holographic wounds that play across their flesh and armour, a language that is impossible for any not of their ranks to comprehend. I could see the
images flickering up and down their legs through the gaps in the stack – raw scratches and gaping mouths, mimicking injuries too severe not to be fatal, fading into scars and then blankness,
in endless permutation. A cold wind blew across my skin and involuntarily I shivered, causing the scattered documents to rustle. The play of wounds became more agitated. Alarmed, I looked up, to
see the ghost of the flayed warrior beckoning at me towards the end of the stack. I hesitated for a moment, weighing risks, then rose silently, muscles aching in protest, and crept towards it,
setting the antiscribe to closure as I did so in case of scanning devices.

The ghost led me along a further row, into the shadows. There we waited, while the scissor-women presumably conversed and finally left, heading into the eastern wing of the library. I turned to
the ghost to thank it, but it had disappeared.

A moment later, however, it was back. It stood over a small tangle of data cases and it was pointing downwards. I smiled. I didn’t see how it could possibly know what I was looking for,
but I knew a hint when I saw one. I sidled over to it and crouched down, scooping the data cases into my pack. They didn’t look anything special and a couple of them were scorched.

‘Well?’ I whispered, looking up at the warrior. ‘Do you approve?’ But the warrior’s face did not change. ‘I don’t think I should even be trusting
you,’ I added. The warrior’s only reply was to fade. Typical.

I debated whether to leave, but the situation was too urgent. Keeping a watch out for the scissor-women, I collected a further assortment of documents, switching on the antiscribe at infrequent
intervals to avoid detection. I did not see the ghost again. Eventually, the sky above the ruined shell grew darker and I had to depart, stowing the handfuls of documentation away in my coat as I
did so. They rustled like dried leaves. Then I hurried back to the tenement to examine them more closely.

The ghost might have given me a helping hand, but it wasn’t much of one. The data cases themselves were damaged beyond repair, unreadable, and if they’d once contained vital
information, it had been lost. Among the cases, however, I found something strange: a small round object like a vitrified egg, gleaming black as coal. The same size as my finger joint, it had a
hole through the centre. A memento of Caud, I thought, a souvenir. I considered stringing it on the chain around my neck that held my fake identity chips, but in the end I tied it onto a loose
thread in an inner pocket instead and forgetting about it, sought sleep.

The knock on the door came in the early hours of the morning. I sat up in bed, heart pounding. No one good ever knocks at that time of night. The window led nowhere, and in any case was bolted
shut behind a grille. I switched on the antiscribe and broadcast the emergency code, just as there was a flash of ire-palm from the door lock and the door fell forward, blasted off its hinges. The
room filled with acrid smoke as the lock quickly began to melt. I held little hope of fighting my way out, but I swept one of the scissor-women off her feet and tackled the next. The razor-edged
scissors were at my throat within a second and I knew she wouldn’t hesitate to kill me. Wounds flickered across her face in a ghastly display of silent communication.

‘I’ll come quietly,’ I said. I raised my hands.

They said nothing, but picked up the antiscribe and stashed it in a hold-all, then made a thorough search of the room. The woman who held the scissors at my throat looked into my face all the
while, unblinking. At last, she gestured. ‘Come.’ They bound my wrists and led me, stumbling, down the stairs.

As we left the tenement and stepped out into the icy night, I saw the flayed warrior standing in the shadows. The scissor-woman who held the chain at my wrists shoved me forward.

‘What are you looking at?’ Her voice was harsh and guttural. I wondered how often she actually spoke aloud.

‘Nothing.’

She grunted and pushed me on, but as they took me towards the vehicle I stole a glance back and saw that the ghost was gone. It occurred to me that it might have led the scissor-women to me, but
then in the library, it had helped me, or had seemed to. I did not understand why it should do either.

They took me to the Mote, the Matriarchy’s own prison, rather than the city catacombs. This suggested they might have identified me, if not as Hestia Mar, then as a
citizen of Winterstrike. That they suspected me of something major was evident by the location, and the immediacy and nature of the questioning. Even Caud had abandoned the art of direct torture,
but they had other means of persuasion: haunt-tech and drugs. They tried the haunt-tech on me first.

‘You’ll be placed in this room,’ the doctor on duty explained to me. At first, with a shock, I thought I was looking at Gennera. This woman looked more like a majike than a
proper doctor: the tell-tale symbols hanging from her pierced ear lobes, the faded mark of a tattoo visible underneath her greying hairline. Black science, for a world in which what had once been
superstition was now fact, and much of that illegal. Even Caud had standards, however often they’d violated them. But then again, Winterstrike was supposed to have standards, too.

‘The blacklight matrix covers the walls. There is no way out. When you are ready to talk, which will be soon, squeeze this alarm.’ She handed me a small soft black cube and the
scissor-women pushed me through the door.