Winterstrike Read online

  It didn’t look like a normal flame. It was white and blazing, so bright that I had to shield my eyes, and that meant ire-palm. I slammed the doors shut. My hands slipped on the metal, sweating, as I fumbled at the lock. There was no way I could face the bridge, not in those conditions: one touch and I’d go up like a torch. I ran back down the corridor, all longings for the bell tower abandoned: I had a vision of the fortress as a tall iron oven, with myself roasting at its heart.

  I’d no inclination to be cooked. I’d never been down into the cellars, but I’d studied the plans of the building when I’d first started working there, and I knew roughly what was there. A spiral staircase led downward, twisting until it was lost in the shadows. I followed it down, footsteps pattering on the metal struts, until I felt dizzy. Looking back up, the ceiling seemed impossibly far away. I thought of fire and kept on descending.

  I stepped out into a long, dusty room lined with stone blocks. This looked even older than the rest of the fortress: red Martian sandstone, grooved as though water had at one time flowed along it. Double doors at the far end of the room were heavily bolted, but at some point a more modern haunt-lock had been installed. I ran across and tugged at the bolts, which after some minutes gave way in a shower of rust. Then I put my eye to the haunt-lock and heard the familiar whirring of the soul-scan. The doors swung open, to my mingled relief and apprehension. I didn’t know what might be waiting on the other side of the exit.

  But they opened onto night and nothing. I came out into the expanse of the crater floor and a bitter smell. Glancing up, I saw the ire-palm burning out on the bridge, and a second after that the centre of the bridge gave way. Outlined against the night-glow of the city, a section of the bridge collapsed, to hang for a moment in the void, and then to fall in seeming slow motion into the crater. There were shouts. An excissiere orthocopter, lights blazing, swung low overhead, veered up, came back around. I flattened myself against the wall of the fortress and watched as the burning section of the bridge came to rest in a blinding flare. The reek of ire-palm filled my mouth and nose; I choked. The floor of the crater was an expanse of ice and snow, melting out from the burning bridge. Dodging out of sight of the craft and hoping that any heat-sensitive equipment would be baffled by the ire-palm, I started to make my way to the crater wall.

  I looked back once, saw the vitrified wall of the fortress rising straight up out of the crater. Above, a swarm of figures, tiny as insects, were milling around the shattered bridge. The light from the torches along the lip of the crater flickered, sending my shadow skittering along the snow ahead of me in an uneasy dance. I reached the crater wall and breathed again. But there was life in the hollows and crags of the wall. Eyes glittered out at me as I sidled towards the steep steps that led up the side of the crater. The orthocopter came in lower yet and someone dropped down onto the remains of the bridge; I saw the glint of a wire as she landed. I hadn’t done anything wrong, but I still hoped not to be noticed: being in the wrong place at the wrong time in Winter-strike never turned out well, in my experience. So I hitched up my skirts and started to climb, my calves twingeing in protest after the long descent from the fortress. I’d get fitter, at least. If I survived.

  SIX

  Hestia Mar — Caud

  Once the childhood visions had faded, I concentrated on trying to get out of the Mote. I knew this would not be easy: I’d already failed once and it seemed I was a valuable prisoner. The next guard who came to the door of the cell was soulless: I could see the slack lack of it in her face. They’d taken her speech as well. I asked her name and she stared at me vacantly, clearly not comprehending. A slave? But as she raised her arm to shove the meagre bowl of food through the interlock, her sleeve fell back and I saw the tracery of old and intricate scarring upon her skin: a former excissiere, then, subject to the most extreme punishment short of death. It was pointless to try anything more. I ate the food shed given me in silence and returned the bowl to the lock. Then I sat down to consider my options, which were few.

  When I looked up again, the Library was back.

  ‘Hello,’ I said.

  The flayed face of the warrior tightened into a grimace. ‘I can’t help you,’ I said, aloud. ‘I can’t help myself.’

  The warrior’s lips moved but no sound came out. After a moment, as if there was a time-lag in a recording, I heard her say, ‘Something is coming.’

  ‘Something? What kind of something?’

  The warrior did not reply. Instead, she looked up, as if staring at what lay beyond the ceiling of the cell and the Mote above it.

  ‘Can you hear it?’ the warrior whispered.

  ‘Hear what?’ But she was right, there was something – a thin, whistling noise like a child’s flute.

  ‘What—?’ I started to say, and the moment I spoke the world exploded. There was a soundless, incandescent flash that had me throwing my arms across my face. Reflections cascaded behind my retinas, a kaleidoscope of fractured colour. I felt something sinewy gripping my wrist, but only for a second, as if the Library had become real and reached out and touched me. I still don’t know what it really was, only that it was oddly reassuring. I opened my eyes again and saw that although the afterimages were still blasting through my sight, my vision had cleared enough to allow me to see the rest of the cell.

  The walls of the Mote were melting. It looked, to my astonished gaze, as if the stone had turned to wax and been held in a flame. The veins in the marble ran like blood, trickling down to the floor, and the stone sloughed away in its wake. It was like ire-palm, but on a much larger and faster scale; it turned the place into a ruin.

  ‘What in the world?’ But the warrior was standing right before me, saying urgently, ‘You must go, now, before they see.’

  She was right. And I wasn’t known for succumbing to dazed stupidity. I went through one of the gaps in the wall and out through the blacklight chambers.

  The machinery of the haunt-equipment resembled metal lace, ancient and rusty, corroded almost to nothing, even though I’d seen it in action literally hours before. I touched a panel and it disintegrated under my fingers. I couldn’t say I was particularly sorry about that. I pushed past it, slammed my hand against a door that collapsed, showering the floor with brittle splinters, and went out into a passage.

  I could hear distant shouts: the Mote had become a hive in panic. I couldn’t blame it: looking around, the whole thing seemed to be coming apart. There were huge holes in the ceiling and floor: I had to skirt around them in order to avoid falling through.

  But from my own condition, which was unchanged as far as I could tell, and the scurry of voices from somewhere up above, the weapon – if weapon it had been – did not appear to have affected the humans in the Mote. I didn’t know of anything that could do that: it was no technology possessed by Winterstrike or, I was fairly sure, by Caud. But I’d heard of much older devices that were able to destroy rock, even mountains: the Fused Cities of the Demnotian Plain gave some truth to those myths, although scientists now thought that this had been caused by some natural phenomena. And the gaping hole where the tower of the old Memnos Matriarchy had once stood was yet another reminder.

  But what if they were wrong? And – since this was a strike at the heart of Caud – what if this had been a weapon from data that I’d just delivered to the Matriarchy in Winterstrike?

  Hell, I thought. It was certainly impressive, whatever it was.

  I flattened myself behind a dripping pillar – the last remnant of one of the walls – as two exicissieres ran by. They were conversing rapidly, the wounds flickering across their skin, and their scissor-weapons were out and at the ready. I did not fancy engaging them in conversation. I waited until they had passed and then I ran back the way they had come, reasoning that they’d emerged from somewhere higher up in the Mote.

  This turned out to be correct. As I turned a corner I saw the warrior once more; she had vanished for a time, but now was back, looking ghastlier than ever. The
dimming lights made her flayed countenance appear drowned.

  This way?’ I asked her. She gestured assent. I ran around the corner and found myself in what might, an hour ago, have been the main hall of the Mote: a massive chamber lined with green marble pillars, now melted into stalagmites. The place swarmed with excissieres and I ducked quickly back behind one of the decaying pillars, but they didn’t seem to see me. Some kind of command and control was going on: an armoured woman stood on a platform, rips and tears flickering over the surface of her gear as though she was being invisibly attacked. Excissieres were dispatched in all directions and just as the last group was leaving the chamber, the ceiling caved in.

  I was thrown to the floor underneath a shower of plaster. When I raised my head, the stars blazed through the shattered roof. I suppose I should have felt proud, or at least relieved, at the notion that the information I had imparted to Winterstrike had caused the destruction of Caud’s cruellest institution. But I just felt numb. The degree of devastation horrified me. This is what’s known as growing soft, I thought. I couldn’t feel ashamed of it, either. I shook myself free of plaster and scurried past the crumbling pillars to where I thought the main door was located.

  Caud should have been under curfew by now – from the position of the constellations it was late in the evening – but light streamed in through the street. The main doors of the Mote – the official entrance, not the various means by which they took in prisoners – had been blasted open and now hung on their hinges. I squeezed through and out into the street.

  I’d learned young that when you lose your focus, let concentration drift – when you think you’re finally safe, if only a little – that’s when terror really strikes. I should have known better. Maybe it was the unreality of what had just befallen the Mote that made me drop my guard – but I’d also been taught not to rely on excuses. Drop it I did and nearly lost my life in the process.

  She came out from the shadows, faster than any I’d seen before. Excissieres are known for being quick and deadly, but they are human when all is said and done. This one moved like an animal, a flicker on the eye. I didn’t even see her strike. Suddenly there was a stinging pain along my thigh and I looked down to see a gash in the leather, blood welling up through it. A second movement, a blur at the edges of sight, and there was another slice along my arm. A half-inch more and she would have hit the artery.

  I’d like to say I fought, was brave. But let’s not be stupid here: she was the best I’d seen and I was unarmed. I leaped backwards, running without looking, as I’d been taught, relying on senses that were on the very edge of panicked flight. The excissiere stopped, as if amused, her armoured head on one side.

  She was almost naked, but her skin didn’t look like human flesh. It had a sheen to it, a hardness, and the lights of the city reflected dimly from it. At the same time, she seemed faintly wet, a kind of eldritch glisten; I didn’t know whether that was innate to her nature, whatever that was, or whether she’d just emerged from one of the canals. There was a flutter at her throat, something that might have been engineered gills, or a wound, opening.

  ‘I don’t speak your language,’ I said. I glanced over my shoulder and saw that there was a wall of fallen masonry behind me, and all around. I’d have to leap high if I wanted to escape and fear started to rise in my throat. The excissiere grinned and I saw that her teeth had been sharpened. Her shaven head was as white as bone, and ridged, like some ancient helmet designed to deflect sword strikes. Her breasts were vestigial, with no sign of nipples. She appalled me. I said, ‘Make it quick, then.’

  The excissiere’s head turned even further to the side, an odd, cocked movement: Where would be the fun in that? it seemed to say. She pounced, feinted, struck – I was in a foetal ball on the ground by now and I’d have died, without doubt, if the warrior-shape of the Library had not risen up between us. A great gaping wound appeared across the warrior’s chest, from collarbone to crotch. It laid her open, revealing the neat, pallid mass of her internal organs. The Library looked down at her wound with slow contempt. The excissiere’s lips drew back from her teeth in a smiling snarl. She struck again, laying open the Library’s face. The warrior showed no sign of agony, only a remote disdain. I did not understand how she was even experiencing such wounds, unless – bizarre thought – she and the excissiere were communicating rather than fighting. I saw the warrior’s ruined lips move, speak a word. A slice of ripped skin appeared down the length of the excissiere’s body: she looked at it in amazement. Her mouth pursed into an ‘O’, a theatrical, exaggerated gesture. The warrior spoke again, a string of words I was not able to hear, but each one blossomed a wound on the excissiere’s body. The artery of her wrist opened up, displaying a viscous flow of blood: it seemed that this, too, had been artificially slowed. I suppose she might even have been dead, technically speaking. But gradually, totteringly, her eyes glazed over and she collapsed onto the rubble, a broken, malignant doll.

  By this time I was back on my feet and staring. I turned to the Library, to thank her. But the warrior was no longer there. Instead, there was only a small glowing thing on the ground, like an icy-hot coal, burning blue. I looked at it for a moment and then I recognized it: it was the sphere of the Library itself. It must have fallen out of my pocket. I picked it up, finding it quite cold, and put it back. Leaving the excissiere’s shattered form behind me, I strode from the remains of the Mote and out into Caud.

  SEVEN

  Essegui Harn — Winterstrike

  It was only when I got to the top of the crater that I allowed myself to stop and look back. The cold air burned its way into my lungs, making me wheeze, and my eyes were watering, but the main points of interest were still clear: the shattered bridge, the smoking hole in the snow where the ire-palmed section had fallen, the fortress still punching its way out of the crater like an upraised fist. The excissiere orthocopter had landed by now, thundering down into the crater as I huddled against the wall, hoping that my black coat and hair would stop me from being too noticeable. Just as I came over the crater lip, another craft hurtled overhead with the yellow-green flash of heavy bulb cameras: a news team. I would later learn that the Matriarchy had conveniently blamed Caud, and indeed, it might even have been true. I didn’t stop to have my picture taken. As the news copter swung out over the crater, I grasped the upper rail with a shaky hand and pulled myself across the lip onto the slick stone of the plaza. Then I walked swiftly, but not at too obtrusive a run, across the plaza and past the Temple. The little aspith that had haunted me on the Temple steps was nowhere in evidence, though I kept a sharp eye out for her. Inside my head, the geise and speculation about the Noumenon warred for place, making genuine reasoning difficult. I was trying to remember everything I’d ever heard about them: a morass of rumour and theory, very little of it based in fact, or so it had always seemed to me. But the feeling that it was here that answers were to be found lay in my gut like a stone. It seemed to me that I needed to go to the Noumenon to find out what had happened to my sister, and I had no idea how I was going to get there, not with the world in the state that it was and winter already firmly bedded in. Somewhere, a small cold voice told me that this was not even rational, but I didn’t listen to that.

  News of the strike on Caud was all over the newsboards just beyond the plaza, along with a continual gallery of images. No doubt they were manufactured; I paid no attention to them, but walked quickly on until I came to the northern stretches of Canal-the-Less. This was some distance from Calmaretto, a much less attractive district based around the docks, where ships came in from the Small Sea and the canals of the Plains, bringing a stream of cargo into Winterstrike. I’d always liked the docks, the smell of spice and chemicals and tea; the shouts and banter as the boats were unloaded. Now, in winter, the shipyards were quieter, with many of the cargo vessels ice-locked in the southerly ports of the Plains, waiting for spring. I debated whether to try to take a boat and dismissed the idea as unfeasible at this tim
e of year. Instead, I skirted the dockyards and headed for the Great North Gate.

  Winterstrike is built on classical lines, dating from the very early days of the city and following the dictates of Earth. That didn’t last long: the wide streets and gracious avenues, the elegantly appointed civic structures, soon gave way to wars and botched experiments and earthquakes and air strikes. That enormous crater at the heart of the city was evidence enough, although there were those who felt that it had actually given Winterstrike more room, since as I’d just seen, people lived in the crater walls. The Age of Children, the Rune Memory Wars, all of these had started in Winterstrike and forced the city’s contraction and expansion and contraction again, like some unnatural birthing process. But, somehow, the four quarters of the city had remained and the North Gate itself dated back to the Age of Dissonance, when Earth and Mars had been separated for generations and we had forgotten our origins, tried to forge ourselves anew.

  The Gate was, correspondingly, a monstrosity. It rose up out of the dust and dishevelment of the docks like a great red trunk, two slabs of Plains marble, red and mottled black like most of the city, surmounted by a looming guardhouse that was supposed to protect the northern way out of Winterstrike, but which had suffered a kind of blight during the latter stages of the Age of Children, when stone-plagues were so rife. It bulged and blossomed, lumps of marble excrescing outwards from its originally smooth surface. Occasionally, they dropped off, injuring pedestrians and inviting calls for a public inquiry, which inevitably proved futile. The Matriarchy of Winterstrike did not approve of interfering with historical artefacts, no matter how repulsive or dangerous they proved to be.