Winterstrike (40 page)

‘Someone is dealing with it.’

I looked back and saw that a high van with blank sides had pulled up beside the copter. Something was being loaded into it on a gurney

I ducked into the waiting car and the door slid shut behind me, trapping me in cool air and an abrupt end to the stink of the street. Malay was rank, sweat and spice and shit and a pungent odour
of decay. Many of the people I saw held handkerchiefs over their faces, or wore masks in fanciful animal shapes. The heat had made me dizzy. I leaned back on soft leather and closed my eyes for a
moment. When I opened them again, I found that we were already moving: the car’s motion an undetectable glide despite the roughness of the road surface. We were moving along a broad avenue,
running parallel with a canal and sharing the road with every manner of vehicle: small smoky cars, rikshaws, motorized bicycles and the occasional air-car gliding down amongst the road traffic
before veering upwards once more. Compared with Mars, everything seemed compressed into too small a space. Paradoxically, I felt that if I had been outside, I would have suffered from a bad case of
claustrophobia.

‘Where’s the Queen’s palace?’ I asked the kappa.

‘In the city, not far. But we’ll be going to her summer residence, high in the hills where it’s cooler.’

That sounded better. I missed the cold. The avenue opened out onto a broad sweep of bay and I realized that we were already in sight of the war-junk. The sun was sinking, red in a roseate sky. I
saw more kappa, squat toad-shapes holding their mistresses’ parcels, and one over-tall flat-faced thing with mottled skin. The car passed a magnificent colonnaded building, stucco peeling
from its façade. Behind it, and the jewel-fringe along the bay, lay a maze of back alleys. We drove past poverty similar to that of the outlying provinces of Mars; leprous children,
shrivelled ancients, all watching the car go by without expression.

I said, ‘This can’t last. Can it?’

‘It’s lasted since the war,’ Evishu said.

‘Which war was that?’

A shrug. ‘A gene war. Fought in the hills, over land. What else is there to fight for, these days?’

We have too much land,’ I said, but I thought of Mardian Hill, the excuse for the conflict with Caud.

‘If you won’t let us settle, what else can we do?’ Evishu replied, unresentfully as far as I could tell. I thought of the dry basins of Mars, the empty plains. Did I really
want them filled with the children of Earth? But we were all children of Earth, once upon a time. I was guiltily glad when the car pulled away on a wide white road out of town, leaving the slums
behind. Now, the view was of tranquil rice paddies, a maze of irrigation ditches turned bloody by the fading sun. We started to climb, leaving the fields behind us and reaching the edges of the
jungle.

‘Not far now,’ the kappa said, in quite a kindly tone, as though I was a child. Great hanging ropes of vines now fell across the roadway and the car slowed to shift itself over tall
grass growing down the centre of the track. The ditches were thick with fallen leaves and undergrowth.

‘How often do people come this way?’ I asked.

‘More often than you might think. The Queen doesn’t encourage visitors. You’re very honoured.’ She spoke as though she meant it. I forbore from pointing out that the
Queen, having been abducted, now had little enough say in the matter.

The road narrowed until we drove through a tunnel of green, the vegetation rustling along the sides of the car. Above, something gave a sudden shriek, making me jump in my seat. It could have
been a bird, but it didn’t sound like one. Evishu leaned forward and said something to the driver that I did not catch. Then we were out into a clearing, and a building glimmered ahead.

THIRTY-FOUR

Of all that nightmare time, I sometimes think now that the strangest and most dreamlike night of all was the night of the Matriarchy ball itself. I could scarcely believe that
not more than a month before, I’d gone with Thea to a dress store on one of the smarter canals, a place the family had used for decades, and bought a gown. Standing in the bedroom at
Calmaretto, with the city in its ominous curfew silence, under threat of invasion and filled with ghosts, I looked at myself in the mirror. The gown – dark red, high-necked, long-sleeved
– made me look like a column of blood. I longed to take the armour of my greatcoat, but the thing was too battered for formal wear, so I settled for packing my skating boots into a bag, just
in case, and selected a velvet coat from the wardrobe instead, with a growing sense of unreality: we were at war, my sister had turned into a monster, and here was I worrying about my clothes. I
took a last look at my swathed reflection and then, carrying the skates, went downstairs to where my mothers and Canteley were waiting in the hall. It reminded me painfully of the night of Ombre
itself: I almost turned to see if Leretui was following.

‘The sledge is waiting,’ Alleghetta informed me, resplendent in gold brocade that made her look like a pair of curtains. Thea, in bright blue, was similarly conspicuous.

‘You both look lovely,’ I said, insincerely. Canteley in black and white, seized me by the hand. ‘So do you!’ Her eyes were brimming with excitement and I vowed to have a
quiet word with Alleghetta as soon as possible, regarding the advisability of taking a child into a target zone. But looking at my little sister, I saw that she couldn’t really be described
as a child any longer, and was Calmaretto any safer? Maybe Canteley would be better off under my nose.

When we stepped out onto the garden path it was quiet and dark and cold. Winterstrike under curfew made me realize how well lit the city usually was, with lamplight gleaming from the gilt
cornices, from the domes and weir-ward vanes. Now, it had become as much of a spectral city as the Noumenon, a realm of shadows. The only glitter came from the blacklight lamp on the prow of the
sledge as it waited at the dock. Alleghetta went first, stepping over the side of the sledge and wrapping herself in furs. Her expression made it look as though she’d locked her face:
determined that this night should still, despite it all, constitute her triumph. What must it be like, I wondered as I joined her in the sledge, to clutch and cling so tightly to a dream? My gaze
went out to where I’d seen the demothea dancing, and I made myself glare straight ahead instead.

The sledge set off. The bare branches of the weedwood flickered by and then we were speeding down Canal-the-Less. We shot past the bridge where Leretui had met her disgrace and then the sledge
made a quick turn into the Long Reach, the only really straight stretch of water in Winterstrike, which bisected the city across its widest points. Halfway down the Long Reach sat the island of
Midis, where the canal split into two semicircles and then joined up again. The Matriarchy hall stood on Midis, separate from the Matriarchy itself and dating from a later and more frivolous
period. Looking down the stretch of the Reach, the ghostly gold domes of the hall rose up from the ice, catching the faint trace of moonlight and spinning it back from its reflections. It looked as
unreal as I felt. I watched as we shot down the canal towards it, Thea chattering nervously away until I thought Alleghetta might turn and slap her. Only Canteley, swaddled in her white and black
furs, was genuinely looking forward to this: she was young enough to find it all exciting.

‘What was that?’ Alleghetta turned sharply in her seat as something dropped down into the canal – something solid, from the hole it left in the ice. But then the hole closed
over, as swiftly as it had been made. I looked for writhing limbs under the ice but the sledge was speeding on and the ice was silent and dead.

Subconsciously, I think I’d been expecting us to be the only people stupid enough to venture out to a ball when the city was under such threat. I’d expected, at any moment, the sky
to erupt around me, everything ending in a firework night, but when I looked up, all I could see were the stars, the reach of the Milky Way snaking overhead and the spangle of constellations over
the city, interrupted by the bright sparks of the Chain. Usually, Winterstrike was too brightly lit for the stars to be seen; this was like being out on the Crater Plain, where the burn of them had
reminded me of what Mars had once been like, before its atmosphere had been released.

As we came around the curve of Midis, the water-steps leading up to the hall were thronged with crowds and the canal beneath was a mass of sledges. It looked as though the whole Matriarchy had
turned out for this. I glanced at Alleghetta and in the dim blacklight glow I thought her face was flushed, triumphant. They’d come in defiance of war, out of an innate and perverse
conservativism that suggested one should not flinch merely
because
of conflict, but I didn’t think Alleghetta would care. Half of Winterstrike was here and that was all she was
interested in.

The sledge was slowing. We waited, impatient and chilly, while the ushers engineered a parking place and we were guided out onto the steps, helped by staff in the Matriarchy colours. Thea took
my arm as we moved out onto the terrace, and as she turned to me I caught a whiff of alcohol on her breath.

‘Are you all right?’ I hissed as I steadied her.

‘Perfectly!’ She stumbled. ‘Whoops! Very icy!’

Oh dear, I thought. Meanwhile, Alleghetta was staring around with a sort of relentless, sweeping motion of the head, like a gun turret seeing who might have been coming into its sights. Canteley
was hurrying ahead, presumably eager to see if any of her peers or scribe-mates were present.

‘Good evening.’ I turned to see Gennera Khine. She’d made some attempt to disguise her illicit profession: the bone necklace had been replaced by an iron lattice and iron drops
hung from her ears, against a black formal bonnet of disquieting complexity.

‘Why, it’s you, Mistress Khine,’ I said. Alleghetta greeted her with a murmur that I did not catch and then we were all going in together, one big happy party. At least it was
a relief getting out of the cold: torches lined the steps and we were struck by a blast of warmth. Under my slippers, the ground was already dry and I could feel the underfloor heating seeping up
through the soles. Inside, the hall was a hothouse, with great bunches of engineered orchids cascading over the window-frames and light beating down from immense chandeliers. It was so hot I took
the velvet coat off and found myself still too warm. There were a lot of women in dresses that were no more than straps and scraps; out on the terrace, I’d have said they were mad, but in
here, I envied them.

Canteley plucked at my sleeve. ‘Essegui, there are cocktails! Can I have one?’

Ask your mothers.’

‘I can’t find either of them. Can I?’

‘Oh, go on then,’ I said. Looking around I saw that she was right: there was no sign of Alleghetta or Thea. They’d disappeared in a remarkably brief time and that made me
nervous. I couldn’t see the majike either, but when I dispatched Canteley in the direction of the cocktails and headed for the hallway, I glimpsed Gennera marching down the corridor,
threading through the crowds with eel-like skill. I seized her arm.

‘Where’s Alleghetta?’

‘I’d like to know that myself the majike said sourly. ‘I need to speak to her. Never mind. You’ll do.’

‘What’s happened?’ I asked, as foreboding filled me.

‘I sent out a team to try to intercept your sister. She was seen by the Northern Gate; by the time they got there, she was gone.’

‘She’s left the city, then?’ I was ashamed of how relieved I felt.

‘Or wants us to think she has. What do you think, Essegui?’

I smiled. A passing staff member, a young woman in shadow-grey thrust a platter of fluted glasses at me and I took one. The chilled wine gave me a moment of astonishing clarity, almost
transcendental. Maybe this was the answer: simply drink more. ‘Think? Why ask me, majike? Why don’t you just look at that bit of stolen soul? She’s not my sister any more, is she?
She never was.’

That’s actually debatable,’ Gennera said. She frowned at the drink in my hand as if she disapproved. ‘She grew up as a human, knowing no different. The clone of Mantis, as I
told you earlier, was the same, although Mantis was placed with people who knew what she was. In retrospect, a mistake.’

‘Why would anyone take on an inhuman child?’

The family were the Changed. I bargained, in return for citizenship favours. They were grateful, or appeared so. They filled Mantis’s head with ideas.’

‘About equality?’ Impossible to blame them, it seemed to me.

Gennera snorted. ‘Wasn’t much equality in their opinions. More like domination.’

Thank you for telling me,’ I said. ‘Frankly, I hope she’s gone.’

‘I don’t,’ Gennera answered. ‘If Caud gets hold of her—’

‘If Caud gets hold of her,’ I said, ‘it’s likely that we’ll already be past the point where it matters.’

We did not appear to have any more to say to one another. I went in search of Canteley Dance while your city burns, I thought. The glass of wine had produced a welcome degree of insulation from
reality, but I’d better not have any more. The orchestra had elected to perform a work that had last been popular in wartime some two hundred years before – not the most tactful choice.
It now scraped and screeched its way through a mournful aria, while the members of Winterstrike’s Matriarchy made their ponderous way around the floor. At last I caught sight of Alleghetta,
her brocade billowing around her and clasping an elderly hatchet-faced woman whom I recognized as one of the council.

‘Essegui?’ I turned to find Canteley standing behind me. Her face was rosy with the warmth of the room and probably with cocktails, but she looked too worried to be properly drunk.
Thea’s – not very well.’

I should have expected that, but I’d only been out of the room for twenty minutes. How much had Thea drunk before we left Calmaretto? ‘All right,’ I said. ‘We’d
better go and find her.’

My mother was sitting slumped in a chair in a side parlour, with the crowd eddying around her. She’d evidently put the time since our arrival to good use, because she’d already
reached the maudlin stage of inebriation.