Winterstrike Read online

  Shorn glided to a halt. I’d been out on the canal that night, but not with Shorn. I had replayed this scene over and over in my mind ever since I’d first learned what had happened: the figure outlined against the black wall and pale ice, the long head swivelling to meet Shorn’s gaze, the frame shifting under the layers of robes and the sudden realization that this was not just another reveller, but real: the mild dark eyes set deep in the hollow of the skull, the ivory barbs of its teeth. What she had taken for the curve of skate blades beneath the hem of the robe was its feet. One of the Changed, a vulpen, from the mountains: the genetically altered remnant of ancient man.

  They were said to tear women limb from limb in vengeance for old woes: the phasing out of the male by Matriarch geneticists. But this one merely looked at her, she told me, and held out its hand. She should have fled; instead, she took its long fingers in her own. It led her along the Curve, skating alongside with inhuman skill. Nothing else befell her. The vulpen gazed at her as they moved, blinking its mild eyes. It said: I have been waiting for you.

  And as it spoke, they turned the bend and ran into a squadron of scissor-women. Unlike Shorn, the warriors took only a moment to realize what was before them. They skated forward, scissors snicking. One of them seized Shorn, who cried ‘No!’ and struggled in the warrior’s grasp. The other three surrounded the vulpen, who suddenly was springing upward to land on the bank on all fours, blade-feet skidding, casting the disguising robes away to reveal a pale, narrow form, the vertebral tail whipping around. Its erection resembled a bone, and when they saw it the scissor-women shrieked in fury. Then it was gone, into the snowy night.

  They took Shorn back to Calmaretto on a chain, and sat with her until her family returned, laughing and exhausted, at dawn.

  Remembering this now, I was moved to wonder if any of it was even real. It seemed long ago and far away – and then it was as though I had stepped sideways into Shorn’s own memory, for the figure of a vulpen once more skated from beneath the arch. I think I cried out, but whether in hope or dismay, I could not have said. It held out its hands, but did not attempt to touch her. Shorn skated with it, back along the Curve in a haze and a dream, myself following behind, flying through the winter dark, until we were once more out onto the Great Canal, passing the Long Reach that led down to the Winter Palace of the Matriarchy, then the curving wall of the Matriarchy parliament itself.

  The procession had passed. Circling, whirling, Shorn and the vulpen danced out to the middle of the Great Canal, and now I was beginning to understand that this was, after all, nothing more than a woman in a mask. Thoughts of Shorn’s flight, of dying beyond Winterstrike, skated through my head and were gone.

  She let the woman in the vulpen’s mask lead her back to Calmaretto. As they stepped through the door, the woman pulled off the mask and I saw that it was not a woman after all, but a girl. It was Canteley

  ‘I could not let you go,’ Canteley said, and Shorn, exhausted, merely nodded. Together, Canteley and I led her up the stairs to the windowless room and closed the door behind her.

  In the morning, Winterstrike was quiet. Ribbons littered the ice and the snow was trodden into filth. I woke late, my head ringing with explanations that I would later have to make to Vanity. I went to the heart of the house and opened the door of the windowless room.

  Shorn sat where we had left her, upright, the cat’s face beaming.

  ‘Shorn?’ There was no reply. I went haltingly forward and touched my sister’s shoulder, thinking that she slept. But the brocade gown was stiff and unyielding, moulded in the form of a woman’s figure. I tugged at the cat’s mask, but it would not budge. It remained fixed, staring sightlessly across the windowless room, and slowly I stepped away, and once more closed the door.

  TWO

  Hestia Mar — Caud

  I was in a tea-house in Caud when the ghost warrior walked in. I turned, hoping to see everyone staring at her, tea glasses suspended halfway to gaping mouths, eyes wide. But the only person they were staring at was me, responding to my sudden movement. I couldn’t afford to attract attention. I looked back down at my place and the glances slid away. Conversation resumed about normal subjects: the depth of last night’s snow, the day’s horoscopes, the prospect of war.

  Under my lashes, I watched the warrior. I was alone in Caud, knowing no one, trying to be unobtrusive. The tea-house was close to the principal gate of the city and was thus filled with travellers, mostly from the Martian north, but some from the more southerly parts of the Crater Plain, Ardent, perhaps, or Ord. I saw no one who looked as though they might be from Winterstrike. I had taken pains to disguise myself: bleaching my hair to the paleness of a northern woman, lightening my skin a shade or so with pigmentation pills. All my family looked the same, the result of snobbish and conservative selection in the breeding tanks, and all of us were typical of old Winterstrike: sheaves of straight black hair, grey eyes, sallow faces. Even our mothers had found it hard to tell my cousin Essegui and me apart, growing up.

  So disguise was essential. And I had been careful to come anonymously to Caud, travelling in a rented vehicle across the Crater Plain at night, hiring a room in a slum tenement and staying away from any haunt-locks and blacklight devices that might scan my soul-engrams and reveal me for what I was: Hestia Mar, a woman of Winterstrike, an enemy, a spy.

  But now the warrior was here, sitting down in the empty seat opposite mine, a flayed ghost. And it seemed that no one else could see her except me.

  She moved stiffly beneath the confines of her rust-red armour: without the covering of skin, I could see the interplay of muscles. The flesh looked old and dry, as though the warrior had spent a long time out in the cold. The armour she wore was antique, covered with symbols that I did not recognize. I thought that she must be from the very long ago: the Rune Memory Wars, perhaps, or the Age of Children, though she could be more recent – the time when the Memnos Matriarchy had ruled not only the Crater Plain but Earth itself. But that Matriarchy had fallen long ago, and only a few clan warriors now remained in the hills. I did not think she was one of these.

  Her eyes were the wan green of winter ice, staring at me from the ruin of her face. Her mouth moved, but no sound emerged. I knew better than to speak to a ghost. I turned away. People were still shooting covert glances at me. This red, raw visitation was the last way I wanted to draw attention to myself. I rose, abruptly, and went through the door without looking back. At the end of the street I risked a glance over my shoulder, fearing that the thing had followed me, but the only folk to be seen were a few hooded figures hurrying home before curfew. Hastening around the corner, I jumped onto a crowded rider that was heading in the direction of my slum. I resolved not to return to the tea-house: it was too much of a risk.

  Thus far, I’d been successful in staying out of sight. My days were spent in the ruin of the great library of Caud, hunting through what was left of the archives. I was not the only searcher, sidling through the fire-blackened racks under the shattered shell of the roof, but we left one another well alone and the Matriarchy of Caud had other things to deal with. Their scissor-women did not come to the ruins, though a less distracted government might have regarded us as looters. Even so, I was as careful as possible, heading out in the dead hours of the afternoon and returning well before twilight and the fall of curfew.

  My thoughts dwelt on the warrior as the rider trundled along. I did not know who she was, what she might represent, nor why she had chosen to manifest herself to me. I tried to tell myself that it was an unfortunate coincidence, nothing more. Caud must be full of ghosts these days, and I’d always been able to see them: it was, after all, why I’d been picked by the Matriarchy to do what I did. Soul stealer, weir reader. Sensitive. Spy.

  Halfway along Gaudy Street the rider broke down, spilling passengers out in a discontented mass. We had to wait for the next available service and the schedule was disrupted. I was near the back of the crowd and though I pushed and shoved, I c
ouldn’t get on the next vehicle and had to wait for the one after that. I stood shivering in the snow for almost an hour, looking up at the shuttered faces of the weedwood mansions that lined Gaudy Street. Many of them were derelict, or filled with squatters. I saw the gleam of a lamp within one of them: it looked deceptively welcoming. Above Caud, the stars blazed, and I could see the eldritch glitter of the Chain, dotted with the specks of haunt-ships departing for Earth and beyond.

  By the time I reached the tenement, varying my route from the rider stop through the filthy alleys in case of pursuit, it was close to the gongs for curfew. I hurried up the grimy stairs and triple-bolted the steel door behind me. I half expected the flayed warrior to be waiting for me – sitting on the pallet bed, perhaps – but there was no one there. The power was off again, so I lit the lamp and sat down at the antiscribe, hoping that the battery had enough juice to sustain a call to Winterstrike.

  Gennera’s voice crackled into the air and a moment later her face appeared on the little screen, pasty and familiar. Her bone earrings swung as she leaned forward and one snagged on the black lace of her ruffled collar. Her small eyes were even chillier than usual.

  ‘Anything?’

  ‘No, not yet. I’m still looking.’ I did not want to tell her about the warrior.

  ‘You have to find it,’ Gennera said. ‘And quickly. The situation’s degenerating, we’re on the brink. The Caud Matriarchy is out of control.’ Her mouth pursed primly, as if commenting on a particularly inferior dinner party.

  ‘You’re telling me. The city’s a mess. Public transport’s breaking down, there are scissor-women everywhere. They seek distraction, to blame all their economic problems on us rather than on their own incompetence. The news-views whip up the population, night after night. There are posters everywhere saying we’ve desecrated Mardian Hill, that the shrine belongs to Caud.’

  ‘Nonsense. The shrine was built by the Matriarchy of Winterstrike, it’s documented, no matter what fantasies Caud likes to tell.’

  ‘Caud’s constructed on fantasies. Dangerous ones.’

  And that’s why we must have a deterrent. Even if we don’t go to war, they’ll find some other excuse in a year or so’s time.’

  ‘If a deterrent is to be found, it will be found in the library. What’s left of it.’

  They’ve delivered an ultimatum. Hand over the shrine, or they’ll declare war. You saw that?’

  ‘I saw. I have three days.’ There was a growing pressure in my head and I massaged my temples as I spoke into the antiscribe. ‘Gennera, this isn’t realistic. You know that.’

  ‘Find what you can.’

  A fool’s errand. I’d said so when the news of the mission first came up, and I hadn’t changed my mind. I’d have added that it was me risking my life, not Gennera, but that was part of the deal and always had been: I was indentured and I didn’t have a choice. It was pointless to think I could argue the toss.

  ‘I have to go. The battery’s running down.’ It could have been true.

  Gennera frowned. ‘Then call me when you can.’ And be careful, look after yourself, I waited for her to say, but it didn’t come. The antiscribe sizzled into closure as I reached out and turned the dial.

  I put a pan of dried noodles over the lamp to warm up, then drew out the results of the day’s research. There was little of use. Schematics for ships that had ceased to fly a hundred years before, maps of mines that had long since caved in, old philosophical rants that could have been either empirical or theoretical, impossible to say which. I could find nothing resembling the fragile rumour that had sent me here: the story of ancient weapons.

  ‘If we had something that could be deployed as an edge over Caud, it would be enough,’ Gennera said. ‘We’d never need to use it. It would be enough that we had it, to keep our enemies in check.’

  If I believed that, I’d believe anything.

  The Matriarchy remember what you did in Tharsis,’ Gennera said. ‘You have a reputation for accomplishing the impossible.’

  ‘Tharsis was not impossible, by definition. Only hard. And that was nine years ago, Gennera. I’m not as young as I was.’ That sounded pathetic. I was in my late twenties, and making out that I was middle-aged. I certainly felt middle-aged. But I wasn’t surprised when she gave a snort of derision.

  That should benefit you all the more,’ Gennera said.

  ‘If I meet a man-remnant on the Plain, maybe not. My fighting skills aren’t what they were, either.’

  Even over the antiscribe, I could tell that she was smiling her frozen little smile. ‘You’d probably end up selling it something, Hestia.’

  But I had not come to Caud to sell, and I was running out of time. Not just my time in Caud, either. When I looked at my life, the years seemed to be slipping away, lost in Gennera’s bidding. I’d been indentured to her for a decade now, still knew little about her. I’d had reservations at the start, but she offered a way out from under my mother’s Matriarchal thumb, a life that promised adventure. Powerful in her own right, she’d protected me against my mother’s temper and my aunt’s bids for authority.

  And all I’d really done had been to exchange one kind of dependence for another.

  In the morning, I returned to the library. I had to dodge down a series of alleyways to avoid a squadron of scissor-women, bearing heavy weaponry. These morning excissiere patrols were becoming increasingly frequent and there were few people on the streets. I hid in the shadows, waiting until they had passed by. Occasionally, there was the whirring roar of orthocopters overhead: Caud was so clearly preparing for conflict. My words to Gennera rose up and choked me.

  I reached the ruin of the library much later than I’d hoped. The spars of the blasted roof arched up over the twisted remains of the foremost stacks. The ground was littered with books, still in their round casings. It was like walking along the shores of the Small Sea, when the sand-clams crawl out onto the beaches to mate. I could not help wondering whether the information I sought was even now crunching beneath my boot heel, but these books were surely too recent. If there had been anything among them, the Matriarchy of Caud would be making use of it.

  No one knew who had attacked the library. The Matriarchy blamed Winterstrike, which was absurd. My government had far too great a respect for information. Paranoid talk among the tenements suggested that it had been men-remnants from the mountains, an equally ridiculous claim. Awts and hyenae fought with bone clubs and rocks, not missiles, though who knew what weaponry the enigmatic vulpen possessed: they were said to have intelligence, whereas awts and hyenae did not. The most probable explanation was that insurgents had been responsible: Caud had been cracking down on political dissent over the last few years, a dissent spawned by its economic woes, and this was the likely result. I suspected that the library had not been the primary target. If you studied a map, the Matriarchy buildings were on the same trajectory and I was of the opinion that the missile had simply fallen short. But I volunteered this view to no one. I spoke to no one, after all.

  Even though this was not my city, however, I could not stem a sense of loss whenever I laid eyes on the library. Caud, like Winterstrike, Tharsis and the other cities of the Plain, went back thousands of years, and the library was said to contain data from very early days, from the time when humans had first come from Earth, to settle Mars. There were folk – the Caud Matriarchy among them – who considered that to be heresy; I considered it to be historical fact. There had been a time when all Mars, dominated by the Memnos Matriarchy, had believed ourselves to be the world on which human life had originated; we were more enlightened these days.

  Civilized. Or so it was said.

  I made my way as carefully as I could through the wreckage into the archives. No one else was there and it struck me that this might be a bad sign, a result of the increased presence of the scissor-women on the streets. I began to sift through fire-hazed data scrolls, running the short antenna of the antiscribe up each one. In the early days
, they had written bottom-to-top and left-to-right, but somewhere around the Age of Children this had changed. I was not sure how much difference, if any, this would make to the antiscribe’s pattern-recognition capabilities: hopefully, little enough. I tried to keep an ear out for any interference, but gradually I became absorbed in what I was doing and the world around me receded.

  The sound penetrated my consciousness like a beetle in the wall: an insect clicking. Instantly, my awareness snapped back. I was crouched behind one of the stacks, a filmy fragment of documentation in my hand, and there were two scissor-women only a few feet away.

  It was impossible to tell if they had seen me, or if they were communicating. Among themselves, the excissieres, as they call themselves, do not use speech if they are within sight of one another, but converse by means of the patterns of holographic wounds that play across their flesh and armour, a language that is impossible for any not of their ranks to comprehend. I could see the images flickering up and down their legs through the gaps in the stack – raw scratches and gaping mouths, mimicking injuries too severe not to be fatal, fading into scars and then blankness, in endless permutation. A cold wind blew across my skin and involuntarily I shivered, causing the scattered documents to rustle. The play of wounds became more agitated. Alarmed, I looked up, to see the ghost of the flayed warrior beckoning at me towards the end of the stack. I hesitated for a moment, weighing risks, then rose silently, muscles aching in protest, and crept towards it, setting the antiscribe to closure as I did so in case of scanning devices.

  The ghost led me along a further row, into the shadows. There we waited, while the scissor-women presumably conversed and finally left, heading into the eastern wing of the library. I turned to the ghost to thank it, but it had disappeared.

  A moment later, however, it was back. It stood over a small tangle of data cases and it was pointing downwards. I smiled. I didn’t see how it could possibly know what I was looking for, but I knew a hint when I saw one. I sidled over to it and crouched down, scooping the data cases into my pack. They didn’t look anything special and a couple of them were scorched.