Winterstrike (30 page)

Light flooded in and I blinked. The Centipede Queen was staring down at me and in the swimming sensation caused by sudden illumination it seemed as though something crawled behind her eyes.

‘We’re landing,’ the Queen said, and blinked.

I couldn’t stay in the drawer, because if they came for the Queen, there would be no one to let me out. The Queen, I’d decided, could pursue her own agenda: she
clearly had one, and I was under no obligation to rescue someone who didn’t want to be rescued. Besides, as the geise told me in whispered reminders of increasing insistency, I had an agenda
of my own.

So I slipped out of the Queen’s chamber, making sure that no one was in view, and found a lockless storage unit in which to wait out the landing. The centipede came with me. It might, the
Queen said with her customary vagueness, prove useful. I suspected it was a way of keeping an eye on me, and – remembering the bite – a means of control. But I saw little point in
returning the thing: it was so small that it could easily slip back into my clothes without my noticing. So I accepted the Queen’s doubtful gift and made my way back into the depths of the
ship.

The dreadnought had obviously been a high-tech craft in its day, but times had moved on. Despite the speed with which it was clearly capable of moving, its descent was bumpy and I had to brace
myself against the sides of the storage unit, eventually sitting down with one arm wrapped around my knees and another gripping a nearby wall-bar. We shuddered to a bruising halt and the whole ship
rang: it was like being back in the bell tower and I felt an acute and painful nostalgia which took me by surprise. At least life at Calmaretto had been predictable. Until my sister’s
transgression, anyway.

Once the ship had stopped moving, I cautiously let myself out of the storage unit and found the nearest viewport. This revealed a high, bright sky and a quantity of red crags and gullies.
Olym-pus’s cone rose far across the plain, visible at the end of a wash. We had not, in fact, come all that far from the point at which I’d been abducted, but were still up in the
Saghair, not far from the Noumenon. From the position of the sun, it looked as though it was mid-afternoon: a bright winter’s day.

I hastened down the corridor, listening for any signs of life. The ship appeared deserted and there was a breath of fresher air across my face, making me realize just how stale the atmosphere of
the ship had become. I followed the freshness, seeking a way out. After ten minutes or so, I found it: a hatch set into the wall of the craft that was ajar. Checking to see that there was no one
around, I swung it open and climbed down the steps.

The ship sat on a plateau of rock, sloping down into the wash but surrounded on all four sides by the high rim of an extinct crater. The red walls completely concealed the dreadnought from all
sides, apart from the end of the wash itself, but from the angle of the ship I didn’t think it would be visible. That was saying something: the dreadnought towered above me, a huge curving
shell of green-bronze, its sides pitted and scarred with patches of rust. From this close outside view, it was at once both less and more impressive: I had time to note the baroque detailing on its
flanks, the intricate care with which the rims of viewports and gun emplacements had been ornamented. But the decay was also highly evident: it was clearly a very old ship.

When I went around the side of the thing and looked across the plateau, a small procession of people was making its way to the slope of the wash. From here, I saw that there was a structure high
on the crags on the far side of the wash: some kind of tower. It looked like many of the ruins that were scattered over the face of the Crater Plains: as ornate and twisted in its way as the
dreadnought itself. The procession was making for it and I thought I glimpsed the dark, sleek head of the Centipede Queen. Mantis’s veil was a shadow in the sunlight.

I followed the procession, taking care to skirt the edges of the plateau where the rocks provided some concealment. If anyone might be watching from the ship itself, they’d have a pretty
good view of my movements, but I had to take the chance: I couldn’t skulk in the shadow of the ship until nightfall, in case it took off again, in which case I might be killed or sucked back
into it. Neither appealed. Besides, it was good to be back on the ground, even under such doubtful circumstances: to feel the cold wind on my skin and the red dust beneath my feet. The air smelled
dry, of nothing, apart from an occasional sweet-musty scent of sagebrush from deeper within the wash.

The procession soon took itself out of sight. It was a little later than I’d thought; soon, the shadows of the crags were lengthening and my own danced long in front of my own steps. I
went down into the cool dimness of the rocks, leaving the plateau and the ship and heading into the wash itself. I hoped nothing dangerous was living down here: it would be ironic to escape death
at the hands of several kidnappers only to be devoured by vulpen or awts in the mountains. But there was no sign or smell of anything down here, only the dust and the sage. Thinking of the vulpen,
however, prompted thoughts of Leretui. Where was she now? Was she even alive? If I couldn’t find her, I decided, I’d work passage to Earth and find a majike there to treat me, where no
one would know me, or be likely to inform my mothers.

These thoughts were interrupted by a hail from the tower, which now lay ahead around a fold of rock. It sounded like a horn being blown, an ancient, atavistic noise that made the hair on the
back of my neck stand up. It was answered by a cry from up ahead, and then I saw them.

I’d been wrong to worry about wild vulpen living in the rocks. These were a party of four, robed and somehow stately as they walked out from the folds of rock to greet the procession,
which had now come back into view. One of them held a long staff and their faces gleamed in the shadows like lit bone. I saw Mantis run forward, a sinuous gait, and greet the staff-bearer with
enthusiasm. She even touched him and I repressed a shudder. The Centipede Queen was looking around her with what might even have been interest and I wondered what spiny minions she was sending out
into the landscape. I glanced down at my wrist but this time there was nothing there. The wound had almost healed, but not entirely: a faint mauve stain on my skin, seeping a little.

The vulpen clustered around the procession, drawing them closer to the tower. I lingered in the shadows of the rocks, waiting until the women and the men-remnants had disappeared, and then I
followed them.

Vulpen. I thought of a figure, skating swiftly round a bend, reaching out to take a woman’s uncertain hand. The texts in the bell tower of Winterstrike had told me that answers, if there
were any, might be found in the mountains of the Noumenon and now here I was, with the red crags arching up behind me and the ruins ahead. I walked down through the wash, weaving through the
boulders, towards the tower.

TWENTY-FIVE

For a moment, I didn’t recognize the thing that sat in the centre of the chamber, surrounded by the kappa. It took me a moment to realize that it was actually caged: the
walls of its cell were vitriglass and so clear that only a stray reflection betrayed their existence.

There on the banks of the canal at the end of the lawn of Calmaretto, under the weedwood trees, dancing on water and fractured light . . .

It was a demothea, but it looked old: the tangle of tentacles that framed its head were drooping, released from the tight knots that coiled them in, and the huge eyes were dulled in its elegant,
bony skull. It looked listlessly around, head moving from side to side, almost as though it did not see the throng of kappa, or as if it did not care. I suppose I should refer to it as
‘she’, but there was something sexless about it, something so inhuman that normal gender terms did not apply, and as such, it reminded me more of the men-remnants than anything else, of
the vulpen with their white countenances and bony, spiny hands. The demothea’s skin was like wax; the eyes the colour of polluted milk. Its long hands twisted together in its lap, as a woman
might express regret in some ancient play, but somehow the gesture did not seem to have the same meaning. It was as though the demothea was engaged in some kind of private communication. Skeletal
feet, with an unnatural arch, protruded from the edges of its robe. Its toes tapped erratically on the floor, beating out a staccato rhythm. Its mouth, a small, prim oval, occasionally
twitched.

I stepped back, passing inadvertently through the Library. Rubirosa was frowning. We withdrew around the bend.

‘What’s she doing here?’ Rubirosa hissed. ‘That’s a demothea, isn’t it?’

‘I don’t know if you noticed,’ the Library said, ‘but some of those kappa were armed.’

‘A private army?’ I suggested. But the demothea had looked too listless, too infirm. ‘They were holding it prisoner,’ I added.

‘But why? They’re all the Changed, aren’t they?’ Rubirosa said.

Well, not all the Changed get
along,’
the Library said didactically. I relayed this to Rubirosa. ‘There are factions and divisions, just as there are in the human world. We
just don’t get to hear about them.’

The Library put out a warning hand. ‘They’re coming back.’

The kappa were filing out of the room. Followed by the others, I ducked into a storeroom, which turned out to be filled with boxes of roots. An earthy, musty smell, not unpleasant, imbued the
air. I could hear the kappa talking quietly amongst themselves in their own language. Then there was silence.

I wanted to know why it was here. The thing I’d seen on the canal at Calmaretto had, I realized now, never really stopped haunting me. The ethereal re-creations outside the theatre had
born no relation to this hunched thing. I said, ‘I’m going to take a closer look at it.’

‘What if it sees you?’ Rubirosa asked.

‘I’ll make certain it doesn’t.’

The marauder looked doubtful but she gave no further protest. I slipped out of the root store and made my way back to where the demothea’s cell had been. The door was closed, but there was
a small, roughly cut panel in it, set with a grille. Through it I saw the demothea, slumped on the seat. Its head drooped. A trickle of viscous blood ran down its pale face. I kept well back, but
then the Library was there, stepping out of the air in front of me. The warrior said, in old Martian, ‘Can you understand me?’

The demothea’s head came up slowly, as if it moved under water. So she could see the Library, then.

‘A Martian. Who are you?’ Through the grille I saw a spark of curiosity in the huge eyes.

‘I’m – here by accident. Yourself?’

The demothea grinned, startling on that narrow face, with that small mouth. I glimpsed thin ridges of teeth.

‘They captured me. Are you going to set me free?’

‘That depends,’ the Library told it. ‘What were you doing here?’

‘That is my own concern,’ the demothea said. Its head came up abruptly and met my eyes in the shadows. I felt a sudden, sucking pull, as though I’d been caught in a current of
a river. I ducked my head to one side and felt that something physical had given way.

‘Be careful,’ the Library said, unnecessarily. But it was almost too late. Dizzy, I stepped out of the room.

‘I looked into its eyes,’ I said to the Library, who had followed me.

‘Soul-stealers,’ Rubirosa murmured, coming up behind.

‘Is that what’s said of them?’ It’s what they said of me.

‘Who knows what they can do?’

I could hear it in my mind, whispering.
Free me, free me,
like the hush and rush of the sea.

‘I think we should go,’ I said. My interest in the demothea had evaporated into fear: I did not like to think of what it might do to me if I hung around. The thought of travelling
with that thing whispering and muttering at me was not to be borne.

We left it there in its dim prison and made our way back towards the root store. I could smell fresh air, Rubirosa agreed, and when we followed it we found a hatch in a wall that led onto the
outside world.

‘Surely they’ve realized we’ve gone by now,’ Rubirosa said. But either the kappa had not realized, or they did not care. There did not seem to be anyone around and this
struck me as eerie: that we had only just seen a crowd of the kappa and now the little settlement felt as though it had been uninhabited for years, just as it had done when we first set foot
there.

‘If they’re the Queen’s research team,’ I said, ‘we need to find them. If only to see what they’re doing.’

We made our wary way back onto the causeway and the track that led into the marsh. The moon sailed out from behind a wisp of cloud, illuminating patches of scrub, treetops that rose up out of
the water and in which something was hanging. Then the moon was gone again and the glimpse with it. I didn’t consider it wise to stray too far from the causeway.

‘Get an hour or so away from the village,’ Rubirosa said, as if she read my mind, ‘and then camp.’

‘Agreed.’ We’d deal with it in the morning, I decided. I was by no means convinced that the kappa settlement housed the research team: it just seemed too primitive. But I also
wasn’t sure what else they could be doing there, with a captive demothea. I did not, however, feel like tackling the kappa tonight.

The air was settling into a clammy chill and there was a faint sea mist rising up off the salt flats. But then our plans were abruptly overturned. A drawn-out, keening cry came from somewhere
off to my left, among the flats. It didn’t sound like anything human. Rubirosa’s hand shot out towards my arm in an instinctive clasp and was as swiftly withdrawn.

‘What was that?’

‘I think that’s the kappa,’ I said.

‘Must have discovered we’re missing.’

‘This is the only obvious track out,’ I told her. My heart was sinking. The kappa knew these marshes, as we did not, and were surely accustomed to the pathways through them. Slow and
blundering they might be, but they had the advantage of knowledge, and that was likely to prove our downfall. We could run now, but we couldn’t run for ever. And I didn’t know how
powerful the kappa’s sense of smell might be. Rubirosa and I started to jog along the track, hampered by the lack of light and unfamiliar terrain. I stumbled once, followed shortly after by
the marauder. We helped one another, muttering curses. The cry came again, this time from up ahead.