Winterstrike Read online

  We had paused outside a door. No sound came from inside it.

  ‘If Mantis is there . . .’ the jailer said. She shot a fearful look at the door.

  ‘I can’t hear anything,’ I told her. I put my ear to the wood. Nothing. ‘You’re sure she’s in here?’

  ‘This is her chamber.’

  Very carefully, I touched the lock and the door swung open. So Shorn wasn’t a prisoner, unless the lock only worked one way. At first I thought the room was empty. There was a bed, but it was not occupied. Then I saw that there was a figure sitting with its back to the door. She was half-hidden by the curtains that ringed the bed and gazing out of the window. Over her shoulder, I could see stars and the chewed orb of Deimos.

  She said, and it was Shorn’s familiar voice, ‘You came back.’

  I didn’t think she was speaking to me. ‘Leretui,’ I whispered.

  The figure on the bed gave a start and turned, clutching at the curtain. In the unlit room, Shorn’s face was as pale as the little moon’s. ‘Hestia ?’

  ‘It’s me,’ I said. I beckoned to the little jailer, who was still hovering at the doorway. ‘Can you keep watch?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Her hands grasped the curtain like an anchor. ‘I saw you in the pit, I didn’t—’ she faltered into silence.

  ‘I could ask the same of you.’

  Shorn looked confused. ‘I – they let me out for Ombre.’

  ‘And you escaped?’ Thea had said nothing about this in her message. I’d assumed that Shorn had still been locked up.

  ‘No. I went back to Calmaretto. They shut me up, of course.’ The bitterness was clear. ‘And then I came here.’

  Mantis. But why would a cloned ancient queen bother with an outcast like Shorn? The only connection I could see was that this was clearly a stronghold of the vulpen and Shorn had met one . . .

  ‘How did you get here?’ I came to sit by her on the bed. She smelled odd: an acrid overlay, like fear.

  ‘I don’t remember. I think she—’ she hesitated.

  ‘Do you mean Mantis?’

  She turned on me with sudden fierceness. ‘She’s been kind to me!’ Defensive, too, though I didn’t think it was merely the fact that Mantis had apparently become a friend; there was something else, too. I didn’t think I’d imagined the fear. After what my mothers have done . . .’

  What a sorry state of affairs, I thought, that one of the Changed should have been kinder to her than her own family. But knowing Calmaretto, I wasn’t entirely surprised.

  ‘Leretui, I know they locked you away, but—’ What could I say to her? That they couldn’t really have done anything else, under the circumstances.

  Next thing I knew, my little cousin was up off the bed and at my throat. I grabbed her hands and forced them apart, but she was strong, far stronger than she looked. Leretui stepped back and I barely recognized her. It was like looking in a distorted mirror, the black eyes milky, the bones of her face standing out in angular ridges.

  ‘Leretui, what—’

  ‘This is what they made me!’ she hissed. I still didn’t understand. ‘Mantis is my sister.’ She started to laugh. ‘A real family affair, wouldn’t you say?’

  ‘Your sister? But Mantis has demothea genes.’ Then I looked at her and saw. ‘What the hell?’

  Leretui looked smug, as though she had an advantage that I did not. ‘Did you never wonder how Alleghetta got as far as she has in the Matriarchy? She made a bargain.’

  ‘With whom?’

  With a majike called Gennera Khine.’

  I felt as though the floor of the tower had opened up underneath me. I sat down on Leretui’s bed.

  ‘Gennera commissioned Mantis and me. And more of us, probably. She told Alleghetta to bring me up in exchange for power, to see what I became. If it was a successful experiment, she’d give Alleghetta a place on the council. But when the vulpen came for me, they disowned me, shut me up, on Gennera’s instructions, I suppose. Showing my true nature, you see.’

  ‘Leretui,’ I said, ‘what is your true nature?’

  ‘Can’t you tell?’ she said. ‘They don’t call us the Changed for nothing. And I’m changing.’

  There was a sound from beyond the door. This was bad, and I needed time to work out all its ramifications, but for now, we had to get out of here.

  ‘Shorn – Leretui – listen to me. I’ve got to get out of here. Come with me.’

  ‘Why should I?’ It was the voice of a small girl, made to do what she did not want to do. But I listened to my intuition and said, ‘Because you’re afraid of Mantis, aren’t you?’

  ‘Where would I go, now?’ Shorn hissed. ‘Back to Winter-strike? Back to Calmaretto to be locked in my room until I rot and die, or stuck in one of Gennera’s labs? Out onto the Plains to be eaten by ghosts? I’ve seen what’s out there now, Hestia.’

  It was on the tip of my tongue to say, ‘I’ll look after you,’ but I wasn’t sure that was even close to the truth.

  ‘This is the only place that will have me,’ Shorn said. ‘They treat me like a matriarch.’

  ‘You were in a cage, Leretui.’

  That was to keep me safe.’

  Maybe she was right. I crossed over to the window and looked out across the mountains, faint and white in the light of the moon. Earth was rising, a blue spark over the mountain wall.

  ‘What about Earth?’ I said. Essegui had spoken of taking her sister to Earth once, when we were quite certain of not being overheard. Up in the winter garden on the roof of Calmaretto, hiding from my aunts, while a blizzard whirled white outside the windows and hid Winterstrike, too, from sight. But Essegui hadn’t been in a position to act then, for their mothers would never have let Shorn out of Calmaretto. Now she was free, at least free of her family, and it was I who was caged, by the bonds of duty. Caged, but maybe not for much longer.

  Shorn looked at me with a mixture of scorn and hope. ‘Earth? How would we get there?’

  There are ways, Shorn. Disguise, a soul-mask. I’ve got contacts.’ This was true, although what I didn’t say was that those contacts were criminals. She’d realize that, if she had any sense. But I wasn’t sure now how much damage had been done to her, whether there was really anything of the old Leretui left, or whether she was simply Shorn indeed. And Shorn wasn’t human.

  ‘You’d do that for me?’ Now she just sounded unsure.

  ‘You’re my cousin, Leretui. And besides . . .’ I think they've treated you monstrously Maybe they felt they had no choice, but all the same, if what you say is true . . . I didn’t really know what to think.

  Shorn gave a rapid nod. ‘All right, then.’ She stood and I took her cold hand and led her to the door.

  Outside, the tower loomed over us like something out of a nightmare. I kept expecting to encounter vulpen, but the jailer had informed me in a whisper that they slept in a pit beneath the building; I had a vision of a huddled, naked mass. The thought disgusted me. I couldn’t understand how Shorn had been able to bear their close proximity, but perhaps this also said more than anything else about how she had been treated at Calmaretto. And why she’d become an outcast in the first place.

  The jailer led us down a series of steps cut into the wall of the tower. These were steep and often broken and I do not like to recall that long journey down, treading carefully on crumbling stone while the yawning drop spun beneath us. There was no handrail and I was forced to clutch at the wall of the tower, pressing myself against it.

  When we reached the bottom, I paused to catch my breath. Far away, above the mountain was a dim glow: the lights of whatever remained of the Noumenon. I could hear water somewhere close, rushing and gushing through the rocks; a far cry from the slow slap of the canal. It raised my spirits.

  ‘I can’t – I have to go back,’ the little jailer said, with a nervous glance over her shoulder.

  ‘What about the temple?’

  ‘I’d like to see it one day. B
ut I—’ she was afraid, faltering, and then she was gone, back to what she knew. I hoped her loss of nerve would not result in a betrayal of us, but I couldn’t trust in her discretion.

  ‘Come on,’ I said to Shorn, but she stood rigid, staring at a figure that had stepped out from beneath the shadow of the tower. ‘Hello, Shorn,’ Mantis said.

  There was no sign of any of the vulpen. Mantis stood alone, silhouetted in the glow of moonlight on water. But Shorn’s fingers tightened around my hand and she tugged at it. ‘Hestia!’ she breathed. ‘Run!’

  Mantis stepped forward and immediately it was as if a net had closed around me. Without hesitating any further I turned and sprang onto the rocks after my cousin, ignoring the chasm that opened up below the outcrops and the thunder of water beneath. Shorn moved like a mountain goat, quite different to the languid, fragile child she had been, and I wondered whether it was fear that lent her the motion, or something else. But I didn’t pause to see if Mantis was behind us; I simply ran. There was a psychic tug at my senses, immensely strong, like the haunt-tech that had been applied by the excissieres. Halfway up the rocks Shorn lost her footing and stumbled, but regained her balance. I glanced up and saw that a semicircle of vulpen had appeared on the summit of the cliff, their gaunt faces ghostly pale. Behind me, I heard Mantis laugh. It didn’t sound human at all.

  ‘No!’ Shorn cried, and I felt something blast out around me, similar to the psychic net cast by Mantis but even darker and stranger in feel. The rocks shifted under my feet and I fell, but the moment of brief horror that I experienced as the river swung up to meet me was knocked out of me in the next minute as I hit solid earth. That shouldn’t have been possible. When I raised my head, what I saw wasn’t possible either.

  There were lights all out across the plain and not far away I could hear the murmur of voices. Someone stumbled into me and I started, until I realized it was Shorn. She clutched my arm. ‘Where are we?’

  ‘This is the canal,’ I said, recognizing the rim of mountain against the livid twilight sky. It wasn’t winter any more but there was a storm on the wind; I could smell rain and iron. ‘There’s the Noumenon.’ I pointed to the cliffs, where the shadows of buildings clung to the rocks. Turning, I saw the tower perched on its crag, but it was much further away than it had been a moment ago and the course of the river was different, too, though I was still able to hear it. Lamplight shone from the upper windows and I realized, with a bolt of shock, that it was no longer a ruin. This was a functional fort, with a keep and a gatehouse and the glint of armoured women high on its battlements.

  ‘Never mind where,’ I said to Shorn. ‘It’s more a question of when.’

  Shorn looked at me, eyes wide. ‘We’ve travelled in time? How?’

  ‘If you can move in space,’ I said, ‘maybe you can move in time as well.’

  Shorn shook her head. ‘I didn’t move myself. Mantis helped me.’

  What concerned me was that there was a familiar smell in the air and it was the burnt odour of haunt-tech: familiar technology, used for unfamiliar ends.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ I said. ‘Let’s move away from the camp, at any rate.’

  We skirted the rows of tents that dotted the plain. I heard snatches of conversation from within and it was definitely Old Martian, that rasping, grasping speech, spoken forward in the mouth, as if reaching out to devour what lay in its path. We’d learned it in the schoolroom but I’d never heard it spoken beyond, and it took me a moment to realize that I could understand it, at least in part. Tactics, the day’s battle. Mention of ‘Her’, and I thought I knew who that might be, at least. From the design of the tents – round fungi-like things, with blood-red spirals decorating their eaves – I was becoming more and more convinced that this was the original Mantis’s day.

  Interesting, but also appalling. And where was Mantis herself, in either of her incarnations? Had she come after us? Trying not to breathe, Shorn and I moved onward. Soon, the tents clustered so thickly that we were unable to avoid the encampment and had to move among it, weaving our way with care over the tent ropes and the thick pegs that anchored each mushroom to the ground. At this time of year – what I estimated to be late summer and a traditional time for war in this less advanced period of Mars – the earth, which had been bare when Peto and I had made our way up the canal, was covered with thick sage scrub and its fragrance rose up to meet us as we crushed it under our boots.

  We hoped to be unobtrusive, and indeed, it seemed as though the camp was settling down for the night. Not far away, figures moved amidst fires and I glimpsed a vehicle rumbling over the scrub and disgorging a contingent of soldiers. Their voices floated across the plain, describing recent skirmishes, and their ornate breastplates glittered in the firelight. I’d always wondered what it would be like to visit the far past, and now I knew.

  There was a shout. A great bolt of fire shot outwards from the summit of the tower and struck the ground not far away from us, sending tents hurtling into the sky and spattering Shorn and myself with hot soil. We threw ourselves to the ground just as another bolt came down and gouged a furrow in the earth like some supernatural plough. Mad Mantis was, it seemed, battling back. Cries of fury came from the camp and the vehicle started up again, spinning its wheels in a violent turn and hooting back the way it had come. Cautiously, I looked up, but the tower was again silent and waiting. From across the encampment, there was a noise like a huge snapped wire and something shot through the sky, falling short of the tower – except that I couldn’t see how it had done so, given its trajectory. A shimmer of the air around the tower and a fleeting glimpse of a shadowy form suggested that they’d erected haunt-defences. I knew how they’d fought in these distant days: with haunt-tech still in its infancy, each side had sought to inflict the maximum damage on the foe and enrol the deceased casualties for its own war engines: a depressing thought, that you couldn’t get free of the army even if you died in the course of your military service.

  A vehicle was rumbling back through the encampment: a juggernaut, with the huge ridged tyres that suggested it was for use in the deep desert, further yet than Tharsis. I glimpsed a figure standing in the bubble turret on top of the vehicle, black-clad, her head encased in a helmet that reminded me of a giant insect. She was pointing at the tower. Fire spattered over our heads and Shorn and I ducked.

  ‘Shorn!’ I shouted. ‘Over there!’

  A gully ran alongside the encampment, one of the dry waterways that crossed the Crater Plain. In winter, they were prone to flash floods and I was not enthusiastic about going down there; we kept high on the bank of the gully, slipping and sliding on the loose shale, but heading away from the camp and the fire. A burning figure stumbled in front of me and I cried out, before realizing it was a ghost. A moment later, it was gone. Shorn was shaking. As we followed the twists and turns of the gully, she said, ‘We’re heading back to the tower.’

  ‘I know. But there’s nowhere else to go.’ I glanced back to where the gully was blocked with washed-down boulders. It was upstream or nothing.

  Shorn said urgently, ‘What if Mantis is there? Where did she go?’

  ‘I don’t know, Shorn.’ I couldn’t tell whether she asked out of fright or longing, or perhaps both. ‘Did she say anything to you, about moving between times?’

  She shook her head. ‘She didn’t say much about that. Only about what we were.’

  There were voices up ahead, speaking low and urgently. Shorn and I crept between the boulders, keeping low. I wasn’t even sure whether we could be seen, but I didn’t want to take any chances. We drew nearer to the voices.

  ‘Where is she? Where has she gone?’ I felt Shorn’s cold fingers close around my own and I clasped her hand as we crouched in the lee of a boulder.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They’re talking about me,’ Shorn hissed.

  ‘You don’t know that. I went missing too. Now be quiet.’

  The voice was frantic. ‘If
she’s decided to go out there – you know how she is.’

  ‘She’s mad, not stupid.’

  There’s a difference?’

  ‘She’s here.’ The voice was strident, and it came from above us. I squinted up to see an armoured figure standing on the summit of the boulder, legs braced. She carried a haunt-bow, which hummed and sang to itself. A black plume fluttered from her helmet, caught by the night breeze, and in the light of the moon her armour was the colour of blood. I could not see her face. She raised the bow. Something spat over the rocks. The second figure in the shadows of the tower cried out and reeled back, clutching at her face. The first speaker melted back into the shadows: a wise move, I thought. This had to be Mantis the Original. She leaped down from the boulder, landing a few feet in front of us. A glance over her shoulder revealed a pair of glinting black eyes in the depths of the helmet, but she gave no indication that she’d seen us. I held Shorn firmly by the arm, all the same. She was skittish enough to do something foolish.

  ‘Matriarch—’ the soldier faltered. Mantis walked straight past her and said, ‘So, they want a siege, do they? Then let’s give them a siege.’

  A black gaping hole opened in the side of the tower. A voice, unexpected, said into my ear, ‘Go in.’ I turned to see the spectral shape of the Library, ghostly pale and insubstantial, by my shoulder.

  ‘You’re joking. What for?’

  ‘I’ve just remembered,’ the Library said, ‘that there’s something in there I want to take a look at.’

  Inside, the tower was much as it was in its future incarnation, but with more tapestries. Battles appeared to be a dominant theme, and hunting. But one of them, hanging from floor to ceiling, depicted Earth: a lovely, luminous globe, worked in silver and blue. I saw Mantis’s gauntleted hand flick out as she passed it in a gesture that might have been superstition, or might simply have indicated greed. Shorn and I followed her up a flight of stairs, surrounded by her fluttering lieutenants, and into what was evidently some kind of war room. Narrow slits of windows showed fires across the plain.