Winterstrike Read online

  ‘That’s . . . sophisticated,’ I said.

  ‘You think it’s only the city folk who have that kind of thing? My mother’s mother’s mother grew this mesh, from an old brain. Trapped spirits in the marshes, gave it its power. We each had a bit of it, my sisters and me. Just enough to protect us.’

  ‘What does it do?’ An intrusive question, but I was fascinated.

  ‘Likely you’ll find out,’ Peto said, with what I hoped was neither warning nor threat. Conversation died after that and I took refuge in the excuse of making more tea.

  Although other vessels had followed us through the cut, they now sailed far behind. Peto thought that the first one had encountered some administrative difficulty, because it was an hour or so after we’d got through that the next vessel showed up on the radar. So the barge glided on up the lock skein in solitary splendour. We left Temperire on its crag, and the locks increased in frequency: we were rising. At last I looked up from the tiller and got a shock, because far from the hovering sameness of distance that they’d displayed all day, the mountains now looked as though they were hanging right over my head, gilded with sunset against an arctic sky.

  ‘They say Mantis went mad because of the view,’ Peto said, appearing suddenly at my elbow and making me jump. ‘Looks like they’re going to come right down on you, doesn’t it?’

  It did. ‘So, what happens now?’ I asked. ‘More locks, and then – what?’

  ‘It’s actually not as close as it looks,’ Peto admitted. ‘There are step locks from now on – you can let the boat handle them, they’re remotely activated. All you have to do is keep steering straight, so that’s why we’re going to pull in for the night. You needn’t worry about being hit. Everyone else will do the same and if they don’t, they’ll just have to wait.’

  The stream was wide enough still for more than one boat. ‘Are you stopping in mid-channel, then?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why, because of wandering spirits?’

  Yes.’

  So that was that.

  We slept down in the cabin, along with Rubirosa. Peto had clearly activated some kind of ward, for when I went back on deck for a final check, the air was filled with a silvery humming and the air around the barge glistened. I touched the coal in my pocket and it felt less cold, almost comfortingly warm, in fact, but there was still no sign of the Library. I watched the air for a moment all the same; I found that I missed the warrior’s grisly presence. Besides, she might be able to tell me what the hell was happening in Winterstrike. I’d tried, as surreptitiously as possible under the dual suspicions of Peto and Rubirosa, to contact Gennera again, but the coder had stayed silent and there had been no reply. The only stuff on public channels was allegedly morale-boosting propaganda, utterly useless unless one happened to have been born an idiot. I chafed under the lack of information, but I couldn’t do much about it. I suppose it was sad that, even with a wired-up-and-about-to-explode boat, wandering ghouls and flying dreadnoughts, my life right now was calmer than it had been for some time.

  Time for a change. I needed a way out of this game, needed to break free.

  A low moon was hanging over the mountains, glowing yellow, and as I watched, the other climbed up above the glacier rim. In the west, Earth was a lamp. I remembered my cousin Leretui, poring over the atlas that depicted the changes of Earth, her longing to go there. Maybe I could go to Earth, too. I hoped they’d let Leretui keep her books in that cruel imprisonment. Knowing Alleghetta, probably not, but I trusted Essegui to sneak things in to her sister, just as she had done when they were children. She and I.

  It was growing colder. Water slapped gently against the sides of the barge, interfacing with the wards and producing an occasional electric hiss. I went back down the stairs, to find Peto and the marauder staring at each other like a couple of cats.

  ‘Is all well?’ Peto asked.

  ‘As far as I can tell. It’s pretty quiet up there. Your wards are holding.’

  ‘Good,’ the captain said. She wrapped herself in a blanket and lay down to sleep. I did the same, fully intending to keep a secret watch until Rubirosa, too, fell asleep. But my last memory of that evening is of the marauder’s red eyes in the lamplight, watching me instead.

  When the disturbance came, however, Rubirosa was as startled as Peto and I. There was a sudden, thunderous bang from the deck. We all leaped from our beds, senses conditioned to immediate action, however unwise. Rubirosa and I knocked heads like some comedy act. We both swore. Peto was already running up the stairs, armed with an ancient scimitar that I hadn’t even seen before.

  But when we reached the deck, nothing was there.

  ‘What was that?’ The marauder’s armour was glittering as though wet, and her wrists bristled with weaponry. She turned from right to left, swinging with swift, economical movements. Peto was hunched over the sword. I prowled around the circumference of the deck, looking for incursion. The only anomaly was a long scorch mark close to the bow, as though something had tried to enter and been fried by the wards. ‘Peto!’ I called. ‘Look at this.’

  The captain’s face was dour as she surveyed the damage to her deck. ‘Ghosts,’ was all that she said.

  ‘All right,’ said the marauder, looking from side to side. ‘Where are they now? There was more than one of them. My armour tells me that.’

  We peered cautiously over the side of the barge. The water seemed untroubled, but I thought I glimpsed something moving in the depths, far below.

  ‘What was that?’ I started to say, and then all hell broke loose. There was a cannon-like boom as the wards on the starboard side activated and then fused, with a shriek that knocked me against the railing. Something shot overhead, a white gleam against the frosty stars. Beside me, Rubirosa cursed as her armour shorted out with a high-pitched whine. She started stripping the cuffs, trying, I presumed, to get manual access to her weapons.

  That won’t do any good!’ Peto snorted. I turned. The captain’s face was aglow. She’d told me that she’d had a mesh implanted. What she hadn’t told me was that it penetrated the entire dermis: her square face and stubby hands sparkled with a quick, unfamiliar haunt-fire, a wet marsh gleam. High above us, a thing like a white bat rattled down through the sky. It wrapped its bony wings about it as it fell and as it came below the mast, it turned into smoke. Peto’s mouth opened wide and inside, it too was glowing. She swallowed the smoky thing and shut her mouth with an audible snap. I couldn’t see why she’d even bothered with the scimitar, which now hung listlessly from her hand.

  There’s more where that came from,’ she said.

  We looked up. A swarm of the things was flying at us. Rubirosa gave a yell and swung upwards with a knife: not an ordinary blade, but one that was filled with red fire, as though she held a flame in her hand. One of the white things lashed through it and disintegrated into smouldering fragments on the deck.

  ‘Watch out!’ Peto cried. I turned. Three of them were whistling towards me and before I could duck, dodge or defend myself, they were passing through me as though I did not exist. An unpleasant stinging sensation started to pass through my gut, but as soon as it had begun, it was extinguished. Abruptly, I felt something in my mouth. I put up my hand and removed three little fragments, like splinters of burned wood, from the surface of my tongue. The remaining swarm was off and up into the darkness, to be swallowed by the shadows of the mountain wall.

  This time, it was the turn of Peto and Rubirosa to gape at me.

  ‘How did you do that?’ Peto asked. ‘You have no mesh. I saw nothing.’

  And you have no armour,’ Rubirosa echoed. ‘My own system read nothing in you.’ She sounded more offended than alarmed.

  I smiled. ‘Oh, I have my own kind of protection,’ I said, and swaggered past them down the steps to below deck, leaving Peto to resurrect the wards of the barge. In fact I had no idea how I’d done it. The only anomalous thing about me was that I still carried the Library. I fingered the sphere in my
pocket, but it was the same temperature and consistency as before.

  ‘I wish you’d tell me what’s going on,’ I whispered under my breath, but the Library was silent. The warrior did not come to me, and I did not dream of her for what remained of that night.

  In the early hours of the morning, however, I woke up again. Even in the relative safety of the cabin, my breath steamed on the air. Peto was fast asleep, wrapped in a huddle of blankets. The marauder sprawled in a chair and at first, with a start, I thought she was awake, for her eyes were open. But when she made no attempt to look at me directly, I realized that she was still unconscious. In sleep, her face had lost a little of its ferocity and she looked as peaceful and as fragile as a statue.

  I was not, however, deceived. Rubirosa’s armour gave an occasional flicker, signalling that its haunt-capacity was once more working and would probably warn her if I made any move. I did not do so. Instead, I put my hand down to where an uncomfortable sensation had awoken me. Inside the folds of my pocket, the sphere was icy.

  I thought: very well. I pushed aside the blankets and made my stealthy way back on deck. Peto had done a good job with the wards, for they were once more up and running. Ahead, the mountains floated on the morning shadow. Venus hung bright in the east. I took the sphere out, holding it in a twist of material, trying not to juggle it. At its present heat, I’d probably drop the damn thing in the canal. I was surprised it didn’t burn its way through the cloth.

  When I looked up again, I saw with a leap of the heart that the warrior was standing there. My relief at seeing her took me aback, but she was much more fragile than she had been, transparent, like a real ghost. The sinews and veins of her exposed skin followed the distant striations of the mountains, as though she had been enfolded into the landscape.

  ‘I’m glad to see you,’ I said. The warrior looked at me without recognition for a moment, then she took a deep rasping breath, more like one who experiments than one who truly needs to breathe – for of course, she was not real.

  Ah,’ she said. ‘ This is where we are.’ Something like satisfaction flickered across her dead face. ‘I remember this place.’

  ‘You’ve probably got books about it,’ I said.

  ‘In life, I knew this place. I fought here. A sad sour place.’ The warrior frowned. I did not see how she could really remember, being no more than a simulacrum, but maybe the Library contained some implanted memories to add to its verisimilitude.

  ‘It’s not the happiest,’ I agreed. ‘The ghosts, or whatever they were – did you get rid of them?’

  ‘They gave me energy.’

  ‘Well, that’s good. At least you’ve come back.’ I paused. ‘Why? Is it just because I’m the one with your projector, or whatever it is?’

  ‘I’ve been asked to help you,’ the Library said.

  ‘By whom?’

  ‘I am under orders not to say.’

  ‘That’s not reassuring.’

  The Library’s frown deepened. ‘I can’t help that. They’re looking for you. Also, did you know there’s a bomb on this barge?’

  Two pieces of bad news, not that either came as any great shock. ‘They. Who? The excissieres?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been shielding you, and thereby, myself. It’s taken a lot of energy.’ The warrior’s form fluttered, as if about to dissipate into the morning mist.

  ‘Hey, don’t go,’ I pleaded. ‘I might need you around.’

  ‘I’m still here,’ the warrior said. Then she gave another breath like a sigh and disappeared, leaving me staring at the empty air.

  FOURTEEN

  Essegui — Crater Plain

  The effects of the haunt-tech that Mantis and One had used to extract information from me – or whatever that alien vision had been – lasted for most of the night. I was exhausted, and slept a fitful sleep even on the hard mattress they’d provided. I kept having broken dreams – of Calmaretto, of my cousin Hestia, who now looked at me across a great span of land with sad dark eyes and mouthed words that I could neither hear nor understand.

  Then, towards dawn, the effects of the tech and the drug ebbed away and I found myself awake and startlingly clear. I got off the bed, and although I was shaky, was able to stand without holding on to anything and, shortly, to move about. I made a thorough investigation of the cell, which reminded me uncomfortably of searching Leretui’s locked room, back in Calmaretto. And like Calmaretto, there was no sign of any way out. I could not have slid a razor’s edge between those slabs of honed stone and the floor was a seamless sheet of rock. The only opening was the grille in the door, and that was far too small to clamber through. I sat back down on the bed, temporarily defeated.

  The air shivered. For a moment, Alleghetta was standing before me. She did not look pleased. She said something I couldn’t hear and I could see the wall through her body.

  ‘Mother, what—’ But she was gone.

  Then something knocked on the wall, a sharp, deliberate sound. Having little to lose, I knocked back. The sound came again, a quick tapping that, after a moment of incomprehension, I recognized. It was the pattern of the bell of Ombre, the same precise rhythm that I had rung out across Winterstrike only a few days before. When it ended, I tapped it back again.

  A pause. I wondered if this was going to continue indefinitely: it was the only code I knew, after all. But the knocking stopped and I heard an odd, half-familiar rustling. There was movement at the grille. I saw a long, segmented body glide through the grille and down the wall.

  I’d last seen that thing, or something very like it, disappear up the sleeve of a shrouded woman on the road out of Winterstrike. Involuntarily, I clapped my hand to my bitten arm. Next moment, there came a hissing voice.

  ‘Stand away from the door,’ it said. ‘Let it do its work.’

  The centipede dropped down onto the floor with a rattle. Its body broke into separate parts, neatly disjointing. The legs of each segment carried the body under the door in a sideways scuttle. There was a moment of stillness, then the bottom of the door started to glow. I watched, fascinated, as the lower half of the door, then the whole thing, crumbled into ash and fell apart. I stood in the centre of the room, staring out at the woman who stood on the other side of the door.

  I’d seen her in a shroud, behind the brown veil. Now, the veil and her long sleeves had been pushed back and she stood revealed: slanting brown eyes in a skin that was not far from the colour of her veil, the shade of mountain earth. Her cheeks were scarred, contoured in a series of spiny patterns and stained indigo, and the scarring continued along her arms. She smiled, baring small pointed teeth, and said, ‘Well, so here you are.’

  ‘Who are you?’ I said.

  ‘A servant of the Centipede Queen,’ she said. She looked sidelong. A companion came out of the shadows, a smaller, older woman bearing similar facial scarring. ‘We ought to go. They’ll be waking soon.’

  The woman reached out and clasped my hand. Knowing what was up her sleeve, I took it gingerly. Her fingers closed over mine with a strength that hurt. I tried to free myself and couldn’t. She pulled me through the door and out into the musty corridor. We ran along stone, under beams – some half-fallen – and through arches leading into endless rooms. The warren seemed to go on for ever, but my rescuer appeared to know where she was going: I had no idea how. There was something faintly ignominious about being rescued. Never mind, I thought. You’re being saved. So shut up.

  But saved from what, exactly? And saved for what?

  The darkness grew until I could not longer see in front of me. The hand that clasped mine twisted strangely and I felt the tickle of spiny legs against my wrist. Next moment there was the rush of cold fresh air against my face and I was abruptly released. We were standing on the hillside, among trees, with a cold moon above.

  ‘Come on,’ the woman commanded.

  I followed her down the hillside, stumbling through untrodden snow, until we came to a ground car. It was an ancient object, rocking o
n its stabilizer jets, embellished in an ostentatious black and gold trim. Most of this was flaking off.

  ‘Where did you find this?’

  We borrowed it,’ the servant of the Centipede Queen explained. ‘It is the belief of the Queen that all property is hers by right.’

  ‘I see.’ How convenient. I climbed into the ground car, which was dusty and smelled of musk. The other women were already seated in it, one of them at the controls. She touched a panel and the car glided away through the trees. I expected the bikes to come roaring out after us at any moment, but behind us the forest remained dark and still.

  ‘I’m afraid I’ve never heard of your Queen,’ I said, as much to fill the silence as to gain information.

  The woman waved a hand, dismissing my ignorance. ‘Few people have, on Mars at least.’

  ‘And elsewhere?’

  Again the smile. ‘On Earth, of course.’

  ‘Of course?’

  ‘The Queen is from Earth and so are we, her servants.’

  That explained why I hadn’t recognized the accents, but not why these people from Earth were going out of their way to effect my rescue. Unless they had something else in mind. ‘Which part?’ I asked.

  ‘Khul Pak, in Malay. The north, from the islands.’

  ‘But what are you doing on Mars?’ Of course, people travelled between the worlds, but very few that I had met, even in the sheltered luxury of Calmaretto. It took money to travel so far. Money and a very good reason.

  ‘The Queen is – looking for someone. An old enemy, returned.’

  ‘Do you mean Mantis?’

  ‘Yes and no. Mantis has taken an interest in you, however. She’s tried to capture you twice before.’

  ‘You’ve been watching me? Was that why were you on the pilgrimage?’ I looked around. ‘Is one of you the Queen?’

  Sly looks and shy laughter. ‘Why, no. The Queen is in the west, not far from Caud. She sent us to—’ the woman paused.