All the Windwracked Stars (The Edda of Burdens) (11 page)

It fell, and crooned exhaustedly.

It is not far
, Kasimir said, waiting.
Come. I cannot carry you. I am not built for giving succor.

“But that one does anyway,” the rat-creature answered, without lifting its head.

We do not always do what we are built for.

“No,” it answered. And then while he watched, it somehow got hold of a branch, and pushed itself to its knees and then its feet, its naked pink tail dragging heavily behind it. “One does not always.” It paused, breath whistling through its teeth, head lowered. And then it pushed itself up and shuddered. “Go on. Slowly. This one
can
walk. This one
will
.”

O
n a windy, clear day in September, Thjierry Thorvaldsdottir arrived at Muire’s studio much as had Gunther Watsen, five years before: unheralded and with an armful of dinner. She came accompanied, however, and not entirely as a stranger. Muire knew her slightly, from University functions and the social circle that surrounded the irrepressible Gunther.

They were cordial enough, in that way that people can be who have nothing in common and little to talk about. Muire was satisfied with the lack of depth in that relationship, even as Thorvaldsdottir’s political activism lead her to celebrity and a series of public confrontations and condemnations over the Eiledain Thing’s handling of the current crisis.

Muire had never expected
the
Technomancer, as people were beginning to call her, to come to her door.

She took Professor Thorvaldsdottir’s wrap, and nodded in acknowledgment when the Technomancer said, “Please, call me Thjierry, as I must call you Muire.”

It was rare for a truman to cede the social capital of a real human name to one of the undercastes. “Thank you,” Muire said, and would have led them into the workshop, but Thjierry paused by the door. “This sword. Did you make it? Or is it old?”

“Very.” Muire stretched her back against the brick wall, joints crackling in several places.

“It’s fascinating. May I ask where you came by it?”

“Would you believe on a beach, cast up by the waves?”

“Up North?”

Waelcyrge didn’t lie. But they didn’t always need to press the truth.

Muire nodded.

“A lot of interesting things are cast out of the sea,” Thjierry said, through a smile. “Carved amber and ivory turns up there, too.”

“I’ve heard. Glass beads, bits of old ships.”

“Maybe when this is all over the Institute can send an expedition.”

Muire shrugged and offered tea, and Thjierry confessed that she had forgotten her bowl. Muire fetched a spare from the kitchen upstairs and filled it, while Gunther cleared off one of the work tables and laid out a repast of cheese spread on crisp-bread and sliced oranges.

Oranges.

There almost weren’t any left by then.

Thjierry was a sturdy woman in her early middle years, with a mechanic’s hands and a fondness for neutral colors. She
had sallow skin, and her eyelids were beginning to droop in a fashion that emphasized her epicanthic folds: obviously a heritage from her mother’s side of the family, given her name. She wore dark-brown hair cropped at the sides, showing a stippling of silver, and long enough to curl at the top.

The oranges were dry, tacky, their best past. Muire licked the bitter aromatic oil of the peel from dry fingers and wondered if she would ever taste it again. And Thjierry eyed her and made small talk at first, but that was not why she had come.

She had come to talk about magic.

And eventually, she took a deep breath. Her eyes—a hazel shade, between brown and green—flickered around Muire’s studio, taking in the foundry and the half-finished wrought-iron railing that would, once complete, decorate the stair. And when she let the breath out, she said, “Gunther tells me you’re something of a sorceress.”

Muire poured more tea, stroking her fingers along the slick blue glaze of the pot. The purple-brown around the rim had been dipped on before the pot was fired so individual runnels slid beneath her fingers with smooth, irregular rise and fall.

“I used to be a poet. A historian. Now I play fiddle,” she answered. “And bass.”

Those words: so soft, so short and so uninflected.
I used to be a poet.

And then she had stopped loving history.

She used to be all sorts of things.

“Bass for heavy work?” Thjierry asked. She sipped her drink; Muire nodded.

The Technomancer drained the bowl, and with a smile produced a flask from the pocket of her tan corduroy swing jacket.
She poured herself a measure of something transparent and jewel-gold before holding the little bottle out. Muire held up her bowl, and Thjierry filled it, then did the same for Gunther.

The Technomancer cleared her throat and said, “Galdr, spell-singing. Skaldry’s a man’s magic, Muire.”

“So are the runes,” Muire answered. “And the art of the forge and the wire. But the Technomancer of Eiledon is a woman.” And because she had it in her to say it, she added, “And the second-wickedest seithr I ever knew was a man, who could drive minds mad and make hearts forgetful of love.”

The Grey Wolf had used the rune-magic, too. But Muire did not feel the need to cloud the argument.

Thjierry’s face remained impassive as a statue’s. Muire could imagine stroking the clay into place along her age-softened cheek, notching her upper lip with the pressure of a thumb.

“Who was the wickedest?”

“History suggests a name,” Muire said. She touched the liquor to her lips. It curled soft flame across her palate. “There was Heythe, of course—”

“Mythical monsters don’t count,” Thjierry said, softly. “So you have never practiced seithr?”

“No,” Muire said. “I am not a witch. Nor have I any gift to spae. I am no seeress, no volva. And I have learned to have little love of those who would prophesy. Or claim to know the ancient law.”

“How unwomanish,” Thjierry said, but she smiled.

Beside Muire, Gunther cleared his throat.

Muire peered over at him. “Your comment?”

He shook his head, eyeing her over the top of his bowl as he sipped the spirits therein. And Thjierry said, “The refugees are coming from Starkhaven.”

The city had fallen only days before. Muire closed her eyes and spoke around a heart’s denial. “I know.”

Across the corner of the table, the Technomancer sipped her liquor and coughed. “I am pressing the Thing to elect a Thane to lead us through the war. They are divided, but there will be a vote. I mean to have a corps of sorcerers—technomancers, seith-wives and seith-men, skalds, seers—behind me when I go to them.”

“Implicit support and implied threat. The Thing will not wish to relinquish power.”

“No one ever does,” Gunther said. His hair had stuck to the corner of his mouth and his lips and cheeks were pink from the alcohol.

“Everyone has a price.” Thjierry turned her bowl with her fingertips. “I hope I—we—can find theirs.”

Muire wound the end of her braid around her hand, over and over like a ribbon, until her left fist rested against her shoulder. “I hope so too,” she said. “You will have my support.”

“Good,” Thjierry said.

Muire let the braid slide between her fingers, and decided she would cut it as soon as Gunther and Thjierry left. It was a relic, and better gone. “And in case they prove obdurate, we must consider other options.”

“We need an army,” Thjierry said. “I know.”

T
he day after her encounter with the Grey Wolf, Muire—dressed now in street clothes rather than armor, Nathr concealed under a draped cloak and her right hand back in a sling—crossed the bridges at Rivereye and made her way north to Ark before the sun went low.

She had argued with herself, and lost. However much Ingraham Fasoltsen’s red craving for vengeance picked at her, however swiftly she, herself, burned to see the Grey Wolf made to pay, she first needed to pay her respects to Fasoltsen’s widow. Information learned there could be valuable. Even if the Grey Wolf killed indiscriminately—and Muire was not yet certain he did—there might be a pattern. Something about the victim that would show her how Mingan had chosen him, and lead her to where he might strike again.

The weight of Kasimir’s opinion had nothing to do with it. And she would keep telling herself that. She would not permit him to bully her.

He just happened to be right this time.

It was easy enough to find the place. Fasoltsen knew his own address; Muire merely followed him home. He resisted her—he was the chosen dead, and all things were consumed in
the flame of his desire for vengeance—but in the end Muire prevailed.

His codes gained them entrance to the arcology, and her mockery of his voice called the lift. Not that security systems were of much concern to a child of the Light, but Muire was still walking the border of exhaustion, and a fresh attempt at sorcery wouldn’t speed her recuperation.

Instead, knowing it was a shocking thing to do, she disembarked the lift on the 105th floor, walked through the dappled oblongs of watery light that fell through the windows of the lobby, and presented herself at Gjerta Ingrahamswif’s door. She considered the announcer, and instead—in the time-honored fashion of bearers of bad news—raised her hand and knocked thrice hard.

The Ark was closed to outsiders by decree, but whatever men could build, men could find a path around. Muire was aware that she was observed and catalogued quite carefully before the door slid open, and if she was not facing automated weapons she would be enormously surprised.

On that topic, Fasoltsen was significantly silent.

But when his wife answered the door, Muire felt his response to the shadows under her eyes, the carelessness of her dress. Over Gjerta’s shoulder, Muire glimpsed a glamorous home. Expensive self-aligning furniture scattered at apparent random across a carpet of living violets, under a faux-sky ceiling.

Muire took a deep breath, met Gjerta’s gaze, and started to extend her right hand, only to find it restrained by the sling. “Gjerta Ingrahamswif?”

She nodded, wary. Her eyes were a modified green inside bruised-looking circles, her hair cycling through a pattern of pinks and pale reds.

Tasteful.

“Don’t be afraid. I’m Muire,” she said. “I was the last person to see your husband alive.”

Eyes narrowed, Gjerta appraised her. Muire stood, hands at sides, and tried not to look like a con artist or a burglar. “You didn’t report the death,” she said, at last. “You left him lying in the street.”

Muire inclined her head. “He died in my arms,” she said.

“I—”

“You could have
helped
him,” the woman said, bitterly, her body still blocking the door. Behind her, though, Muire saw something that made her stammer in surprise rather than guilt.

There was a moreau in the apartment, a slight beagle-headed creature with blunt, deft hands. It was clearing away the tea things, and it was all Muire could manage not to turn her head and stare.

Only the Technomancer made unmans. And she did not, as a rule, lend their service to any but her closest associates.

Muire hated them, dull-eyed and docile things. She hated remembering animals—real animals, wolves and horses, bulls and cats and hounds—and knowing that this alone remained.

“I did what I could,” Muire said. “By the time I arrived, he was already gone.”

Gjerta’s glower never wavered. Muire counted breaths, though, and after four of them Gjerta nodded and touched the tether, permitting the door to swing wide. “You were afraid of the Mongrels,” she said.

“I’m not truman.” Muire stepped into the apartment, past its mistress, and allowed herself to be led to the couch. The mobile slouched a little to accommodate her lack of height, warm
and just the right blend of soft and firm where it cupped her body. “The Mongrels—”

“I understand,” Gjerta said, though Muire noticed she sat down farther away than she might have been about to. “You spoke with him.”

“For seconds,” Muire said, while Ingraham caroled in her head like a cat. “Only. He failed fast. I do not think there was any pain.”

A facile understatement, Muire knew, for the shriveling pleasure Ingraham had known before he died.

Gjerta worked her lower lip back and forth between her teeth. “Did you . . .” She stopped, worrying at her words.
Did you see what happened, do you know who did it. . . .

“No,” Muire said, and as if the words had released her, Gjerta sagged forward, arms crossed over her belly and her elbows on her knees.

“And you came because?”

“He wanted you to know,” Muire said, “that his last thoughts were of you. And Brynhilde.”

At the child’s name, Ingraham reacted with all his passionate, mindless force. Muire might have gasped, even doubled over with the force of his desire to see her, but she had been braced for it. And that request would surely mark her as a predator. Truman children were creched. Protected.

When they grew older, they might earn an education with service in the Mongrels. The boy Mingan had slaughtered had been some household’s hope and pride.