Winterstrike (34 page)

I couldn’t hear or see anyone. I thought of a sledge, gliding silently down the curve of the canal, taking my sister away for ever. I never thought I’d have entertained such an
emotion, but I was aware of a sudden sympathy for Alleghetta.

And after what had happened to me already, I didn’t feel safe out here. I was just about to turn back when movement caught my eye. Someone – Leretui? – was standing at the very
edge of the canal. I slunk between the trees until I could see more clearly.

Then the figure turned its head and a cold rushing shock went through me. It wasn’t Leretui. It was a vulpen. I could see its skull gleaming in the lamplight. The inhuman head turned to
and fro, moving slowly, searching the length of the canal. Then lamplight caught it and I realized: it was Leretui after all, wearing the vulpen’s mask from Ombre. It was almost as great a
shock as the first. I had to fight the impulse to run down the bank and wrench it from her head. Relief and anger warred, and relief won, but not for very long. What did she think she was doing? I
felt that Leretui had been playing some weird game all along: as if we were the experiment, not she. The thought made me even colder. I’d believed I’d grown up alongside my sister,
ourselves arrayed against our mothers, and now I was wondering whether I’d ever really known her at all. Little Leretui, her big atlas in her lap, bore small relation to this masked
thing.

Leretui raised a hand. There was, I saw for the first time, someone standing on the opposite bank. It was tall, wrapped in a draped coat against the cold. Its head was bowed and it gave no sign
that it had recognized Leretui, or even seen her. I had the impression that its hands were clasped before it, an attitude of modesty that seemed uncalled for. Leretui gave a strange low whistle,
not something that sounded as if it came from a human throat. At that, the figure’s head came up and its hood fell back. I saw a narrow head, a face as white as the snow surrounded by
writhing black hair. It was a demothea, and as I watched, it sent out a field of blacklight, sparkling over the snow and the icy surface of the canal. Leretui held out her hands and the blacklight
disappeared into them as if she had absorbed it.

I nearly called out to her, but bit it back. The confidence of her gesture appalled me. The demothea was gone as if it had never been. I shrank back into the meagre shelter of the weedwood trees
as Leretui spun on her heel and strode back to the house. She had pushed the vulpen mask up over her head and I saw that she was smiling; a smile that had once seemed shy and now appeared sly,
instead. I waited until she had vanished into the old cellar entrance and then, cold to the bone, I followed her, taking care to stay out of sight of the opposite bank. I didn’t like to think
of what might be watching.

When I entered the house again, Leretui was nowhere to be seen, but there were snowy footprints leading a pattering dance up the stairs. I went slowly back to my room, and when I reached it, the
first thing I did was to peer out behind the concealment of the heavy curtains. The garden was empty, and nothing was standing on the opposite shore.

TWENTY-SEVEN

In the morning, I went outside shortly before dawn. A cold wind was scouring the face of the saltmarsh and land was a mass of bleak shadows. Suddenly I longed for Mars in this
dim, monochrome world: for the depth and richness of its colours. Then the sun came up over the rim of the sea and the marsh was flooded with silver light, the shadows banished to subtleties of
grey and pearl. A beautiful place after all, until one remembered what was living out in those banks of reed and the walls of the sea ruins.

‘Morning,’ the Library said, appearing at my shoulder and making me jump.

‘The demothea we captured,’ I said. I jammed my hands into my pockets, trying to generate some warmth. ‘Is it still here?’

‘Yes. I’ve been watching it all night. It hasn’t moved. I think it’s in some sort of trance.’

‘Maybe it’s injured,’ I said.

‘Some of the Changed can will their own death,’ the Library informed me.

‘If its purpose was military, it might very well have some kind of suicide mechanism.’

‘Someone’s coming,’ the Library said, and faded into the morning air. Evishu bustled out from behind one of the huts.

‘Ah, it’s you,’ she said, peaceably enough. ‘I thought I heard someone.’

‘I couldn’t get back to sleep,’ I explained. I didn’t want to tell her that my dreams had been full of water and writhing blackness.

‘Hard, in a strange place,’ Evishu sympathized.

‘Now that you have your demothea,’ I said, ‘what will you do?’

‘Some of us will stay. Myself, I will take the creature back. I suggest you come with us. Your own ship can perhaps be salvaged, but best you leave that to us.’

I nodded. We couldn’t stay here, and the ship was useless.

‘When are you heading out?’ I asked.

‘Today, if you’re willing.’

‘I’ll talk to Rubirosa and—’
Don’t mention the Library.
‘—and I think so.’ I was already getting restless. I looked out to where the sun
was climbing, sending white shards of light across the choppy water. There was no warmth in it. I went to find Rubirosa.

The marauder was sitting on a bench in the hut that had been allotted to us, sipping something from a bowl and grimacing.

Tastes like hot pond water.’

‘It probably is.’

‘If it’s all the same to you, we’ll be leaving later on. Evishu wants to get the demothea back to her base.’

‘Sounds good to me,’ Rubirosa said. She glanced out of the door of the hut, to where a light drizzle was starting to fall. ‘This is a shithole,’ she added, gloomily.

I found it hard to disagree. ‘At least the thing hasn’t escaped in the night.’

‘I suppose that’s something.’

‘Evishu implied that it might die.’

Rubirosa gave an exasperated sigh. ‘Maybe it will. Apparently the other one has. No loss, if you ask me. At least they could dissect it.’

Privately, I thought that was the best way to treat them. Yes, species ought to be preserved, and if I was still back in Winter-strike, maybe I’d be able to have the luxury of a
compassionate view. But something about the sinuous form of the demothea had repelled me so much that I found it difficult to care. When Rubirosa next said, ‘Let’s go and have a look at
it, shall we?’ I had to battle with myself not to refuse.

The demothea lay in an adjacent cell: bound tightly in some kind of netting. When I laid eyes on it, I thought that Evishu had probably been right and that it was dying. The lustrous skin looked
dull and dry and the tentacles that emerged from it seemed to have shrivelled and withered.

‘Not pretty, is it?’ Rubirosa said.

The demothea’s eyes were closed, or at least, not open; it did not appear to have proper lids. It looked as though its eyes had sunk back into the surrounding flesh to leave blank skin,
with a tiny hole at each centre.

‘It’s disgusting,’ I said.

‘Evishu said they could create illusions,’ Rubirosa said. ‘I don’t think we want to spend too much time around this thing.’

I agreed, gratefully. Perhaps Rubirosa, too, shared my revulsion. We left the demothea lying there and went back to the hut. Shortly after that, Evishu appeared and announced that we would be
leaving at noon.

Apart from the small, narrow boats, I hadn’t seen any evidence of transport, so when it arrived it was something of a shock. I heard it before I saw it: a low humming, out across the
marsh. At first, I thought the sound was a wave and had to fight down panic. Then I saw the dragonfly shape skimming over the reeds.

When it came in over the camp, it was bigger than I’d thought, too. Some kind of military orthocopter, with massive blades and a deep body, all vitrinous so that whoever travelled in it
would have a 360-degree view. And it would look as though you were sitting on nothing, too.

‘Malayan,’ the kappa explained. It had an emblem on the side and on the big water runners that now swung down from the body of the craft. When it landed, fragments of reed lifted up
from the roofs of the huts and whirled away on the wind. It looked far too technological for the hunched figures of the kappa and their little huts.

Two of the kappa brought out the demothea, strapped to a stretcher, and the pilot, a human woman, helped them to load it on board. I could see the demothea through the glass and it seemed to be
twitching.

‘Has it regained consciousness?’ I asked Evishu.

‘Somewhat. But it’s hard to tell.’ Evishu looked uneasy. I couldn’t blame her. Rubirosa and I were invited on board and belted in; Evishu and another of the kappa
followed. Looking through the glassy walls of the orthocopter, I spotted the Library looking back at me. Gradually, she faded.

‘Hold tight,’ the pilot said and the blades started up again. The roar in the long cockpit was immense. We swung up over the settlement and I could see, now, how tiny it really was
in all that expanse of reed and water. The striped sandbanks I’d seen as we came in were still prominent and there were shadows in the shallows. I wondered what kind of buildings they had
been; who had lived here all those centuries before when the shallow seas rose up and took the land. They would be as alien to me now as the kappa themselves, perhaps more so. The settlement was
soon lost behind us. We turned south in an arc and I strained to see the place where the ship had come down, but couldn’t make it out. The craft turned again. Clouds had come up now, sweeping
across the ocean, and soon the orthocopter was enveloped in mist. It was not, I noticed, a haunt-craft.

We had been flying for perhaps half an hour when I first became aware that something was wrong. It started as an indefinable sense of unease, a hollowness at the pit of my stomach. Looking
round, I saw what must have been a similar expression to my own on the face of Rubirosa.

‘Evishu?’ I heard her say. My vision went momentarily dark. and when I looked out of the front of the cockpit I saw a vast black cloud rising up before us. The pilot cried out. All
of a sudden I was reminded of the weir-wards at Calmaretto, the instinctive fear that they were geared to instil, and I did the meditative exercise that had served me so well in the Mote. The fear
ebbed, leaving my vision clear again.

‘Evishu!’ I shouted. ‘It’s the demothea!’ The kappa was already making her way to the back of the craft, holding a stunner. We plummeted, dropping like a stone. The
kappa, swept off her feet and dropping the gun, grabbed a stanchion and clung. The pilot, responding to something that only she could see, flung her arms up in front of her face. Rubirosa swore.
When the orthocopter briefly righted itself, I hurled myself at the front of the cockpit. The pilot struck out, blindly. I saw panic in her face.

‘It isn’t real!’ I shouted, but she wasn’t listening. I dragged her out of her seat and Rubirosa grabbed her arms. They wrestled as the orthocopter dived nose-down into a
murk of cloud. I snatched at the controls and the orthocopter came up again. I could feel what the demothea was trying to do now, and it was the same thing as a weir-ward: the same summoning of
impressions and forces from the beyond. But I knew how to deal with that now, and while the demothea continued to throw illusions at me, I took the vehicle on into the rain.

We seemed doomed not to escape the swamp, I thought, as I searched the geographies for hard ground. Most of it looked like sandbank, but there was something just on the edge of the scanner, a
round rim of shore . . . I headed for it.

The craft lurched as we broke through the cloud. There was a cry, abruptly cut off, from the back of the orthocopter but I didn’t dare look round from the unfamiliar controls to see what
was happening. Rubirosa had left the pilot in a heap on the floor. Cloud streamed past us and I could see the shore below: waves breaking white on a long curve of rock – no, wall. It looked
too regular to be natural and I could see the remains of what had once been a massive barrage reaching out from it. I remembered what the Library had said about a city.

Now that we had found land, my problem was finding somewhere on it to set us down. The wall itself was too broken; years of battering by the sea had reduced it to a series of teeth. Behind it, I
could see further structures and what might be a roof. It was flat, anyway; I’d just have to hope that it could take the weight of the orthocopter. It looked solid enough as I took the craft
down through a veil of rain. Once the orthocopter was safely landed, I turned.

Evishu was pressing herself against the wall. A flicker of blackness whisked in front of her face. Rubirosa and the second kappa were flat on the floor.

‘It’s getting loose!’ Evishu shouted. The tentacle snapped like a whip across the body of the second kappa and the kappa stiffened and did not move again. Next moment it struck
the pilot and she, too, dropped.

‘Rubirosa! Get back!’

The marauder rolled under the bench, the whip missing her by inches. I threw open the hatch and Evishu disappeared backwards onto the roof. The smell of rainy air was invigorating and I realized
how stuffy the interior of the craft had become. Next moment, the demothea rocketed out of the holding cell. It clung to the ceiling for a moment like a spider, and its oval head swivelled from
side to side. Its skin was still dry and flaking, but its eyes were huge. A thin tongue flicked out and tasted the air, then the demothea was gone through the hatch, arrowing like a squid.

Evishu was shouting, but there was a high wind blowing outside and I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I paused briefly to check the body of the fallen kappa, but as far as I could tell
she was dead, and so was the poor pilot. I didn’t know what the demothea had done to her – electrocution? – but it had certainly been lethal. Rubirosa was already out of the hatch
and I followed.

It was pouring with rain. The kappa was a small blur at the far end of the roof and we ran to meet her. She was looking down into what had once been a street: pale stone buildings, their windows
reinforced against wave action, stood in a canal of grey water.