All the Windwracked Stars (The Edda of Burdens) (29 page)

When the summons came, they were in the sciences quarter between Engineering and Oneiromancy, and Muire was trying to remember the way to a particular stone bench she had been fond of. Gunther’s teasing was interrupted by a chime and Thjierry’s voice. “Muire. Will you join me in the pavilion, please? Your friend, too, if he likes.”

This was not a conversation Muire cared to have in front of witnesses. She suspected she would only escape diminished in her own eyes. She did not care to be as diminished in Cathoair’s.

“Wait for me,” she told him, and walked away.

Running from or running to. There wasn’t so much difference in the end.

Thjierry was where Muire had left her, attended by the same pair of unmans. They must be her best, her personal favorites.
The house-pets,
Muire thought, her mouth sticky and dry. If she had ever envisaged a reunion, this would not have been it.

But her sword was at her back, and Kasimir only a whisper of his name away. She was as well-defended as anyone might be who strode into the lion’s den.
Literally,
she thought, eyeing Selene’s sleepy-eyed compatriot. His hands—paws—were like great soft gloves with razorblades peeking from the fingertips. She didn’t care to test his reflexes or his resolve.

“Hello, Thjierry,” Muire said, as if she did not see the moreaux at all. There was a chair for her this time, a small table set between the two. She sank onto the edge of the wicker rather than crouching like a cat at the Technomancer’s feet. Whatever happened now, the hour for theatrics was done.

“Hello, Muire.” Thjierry didn’t gesture, but on the moment, another unman appeared with a tray and tea service. His long golden-furred ears partially obscured his face as he bent down to pour. He withdrew before Thjierry reached out with gray fingertips and nudged one bowl closer to Muire.

Muire took it up and touched it to her lips without drinking. The liquor was pale amber, and bits of leaves drifted across the bottom. A jasmine petal floated by the lip, and Muire thought how long it had been since she smelled blooming jasmine. “I need to know what you wish of me,” she said. “Before I can decide—”

“Cooperation,” Thjierry answered. “Simply put. There is no other option. We have so little, so very little to sustain us. And you can give us more.”

“I don’t understand,” Muire said, though she had an uneasy sense she might. Someone else might say the old woman was mad, but Muire did not think that was the right word.
Obsessed,
rather, and terrifying with it. “I won’t give you my sword—”

“The sword wouldn’t be enough.” Thjierry drank, and must have finished her tea, because she reached for more. And the
plate of lemon cookies. “Do you remember when you saved the children, Muire? You were always soft of heart.”

“The refugees. Yes. When we went against the Thing.”

“We saved a lot of lives.” A pause, while a cookie was dunked and consumed. Muire, in the hesitation, collected one for herself and balanced it on the edge of her bowl. It smelled crisp, sweet, citrusy, and her mouth watered. “So many lives.”

“You still do.”

Thjierry smiled, if you could call it that. “So you
will
help me.”

“Tell me,” Muire said in soft patience, “what it is that you want?”

“Oh, but that means laying all my cards out for you—which, you are right, is as it should be. If we are to be allies again.” She sighed. “Drink you tea, Muire. You used to like strong drink. Do you still?”

“Bourbon,” Muire said. “That’s not something that can be had in the city any longer. Bathtub gin, I can find you—”

Thjierry nodded. “We get a little. I can send—”

“No.”

From the way her head jerked back, Muire suspected it had been a long time indeed since anyone interrupted the Technomancer.

“Just please answer my question?”

“You must have known,” the Technomancer began, slowly, “that you could not send your creature back and forth across the Defile willy-nilly, without drawing my attention. He is very large, after all, and a sorcerous machine. And not precisely subtle.”

Muire could not remember the first time adrenaline made her blood sing in her veins in response to a threat. She nodded,
and kept her suddenly cold hands folded in her lap. “Of course not,” she said.

“You might
not
have been aware that there are still a few operational satellites. And you probably could not have had any way to know that we would use one to follow you, the last time you left the city with your beast.”

“Gunther,”
Muire said, disappointed.

“Sorry,” he said, miserably. And it wasn’t fair to hold him accountable. It wasn’t as if he had options. “How did you cast the perception cloak over that valley, though, if you don’t mind my asking? It took me most of a day to get through it, even when I saw
exactly
where you’d vanished.”

“I’d prefer not to answer that at this time.” Not a lie. In fact, close to the truest thing she’d ever said.
Perception cloak?

Cristokos is a mage.

Of course he was. The unmans were turning out full of surprises. “You want the valley.”

“For experiment only,” Thjierry said, one hand upraised. “It endures. Somehow. The soil is alive. Somehow. Your doing?”

Muire shook her head. She ate the damned cookie, and drank the damned tea. Even waelcyrge have their limits.

“I want to find out why it was not destroyed. And duplicate it. And likewise your creature. And then—”

“And what if you destroy it?”

“Excuse me?”

“In the process,” Muire said. “What if you destroy it?”

Thjierry lifted her bowl to her lips and sipped, but Muire could see that it was empty. “We won’t.”

Her stare was calm and challenging; a weight of absolute conviction settled across her face. Muire turned her head away
and glanced at the unmans as if nervous. The lion stood impassive, arms folded, as if he heard nothing. But Selene—

The leopard’s gray-gold eyes rested inscrutably on Muire, and when Muire met that gaze, the leopard stared hard for a moment and then glanced away.
Thank you,
Muire thought. It was nice to have one’s judgment of a lie confirmed.

Cathoair also says she is lying.

Uh. How does Cathoair know?

Gunther is letting him watch the feed.
Her displeasure—oh, go ahead and call it fury—must have been evident, because she had a distinct impression of Kasimir ducking his heads, ears wobbling as he shook out his manes.
He
said
he was invited.

And so he had been. Hoping her face had not given too much away, Muire nodded. “Can I have a day?”

“Twelve hours, how’s that? It shouldn’t be too hard a decision. Agree and the world lives; demur, and the world dies.”

“And Cathoair? Now that you have me, may I stand surety for his freedom? Surely, my parole—”

Thjierry, Muire thought, did not have to take quite such transparent delight in interrupting her, in turn. “You have it backwards,” she said. “You’re not surety for his cooperation. He is surety for yours.”

T
his time, Thjierry was not so eager to release Muire on her own nominal recognizance. When Muire left the pavilion, Selene came with her. She would not have been alone even without the moreau, though, for Kasimir counseled her silently.

This changes nothing.

I had only thought myself too old for heartbreak.

We are never too old for that.

Walking beside Thjierry’s noble abomination, Muire scrubbed her face across her hands.
Was she a good woman once? That is how I want to remember her.

Any hero might have bent under that weight,
Kasimir said slowly.
If we are not too old for heartbreak, neither is she.

Muire must have been moving like the shambling dead, because as they climbed a broad stair into a garden of pansies, Selene put out a hand to steady her. She used the back of her fingers only, and said, “Are you unwell?”

“Overwrought,” Muire said. “That’s all.”

Still, Selene stayed close beside her, though what she meant to do about it with those talons if Muire fell was unclear. Not so different, Kasimir and Selene. The legacy of war had made of each of them something that could not touch.

“Why do you carry the whip?” Muire asked when they had ascended to the level of the garden. It was something to say. “I would think you were more than adequate in your own person—”

As if Muire’s question had made Selene herself wonder, her hand rose to her belt and unhooked the coil. She stroked it softly and then fitted the butt into her palm. The static field that held it harmless released with a static hiss. “The white one. On the left.”

And then her hand moved and there was a sound like tearing paper, and a flower that had been twenty feet away lay at Muire’s feet.

“A creature’s reach should exceed her grasp, don’t you think?” Selene said, and coiled the whip away.

Muire bent to retrieve the pansy. It was velvet-purple at the heart, more the ghost of lavender than truly white. Its stem might have been severed with a knife. “I see,” Muire said, and tucked the bloom into her neckline.

Selene was already moving forward again.

They rejoined Cathoair on the steps of the campus museum. Despite the overcast, he’d stripped off his shirt and was stretched out on the dished marble steps close by an ancient magnolia tree whose twisted branches were supported by wires and mortar pillars. It was past bloom for the year, but the withered once-white petals remained scattered on the steps like letters scribbled in sepia. Cathoair seemed to have nothing more on his mind than watching the boys and girls go by.

But he rose when Muire and Selene approached, letting his shirt and jacket dangle from his hand; they offered no assistance as she tried not to be distracted by the muscles of his
stomach and the fine line of hair disappearing behind his waist-band. He glanced warily from one to the other. “Everything good?”

Muire shrugged. He stuffed his hands into the frayed pockets of dark grey trousers.

“We need to talk,” Muire said, and looked at Selene.

“I can request a room. Gunther?”

“Don’t say Hi or anything, Muire.”

“Hello, Gunther.”

“Yes,” he continued. “The conference room on the sixth floor of the library is available. Will that serve?”

“Thank you,” Muire said. “I know the way.”

They trooped up the stairs single file, Muire in the lead and Selene trailing. Muire doubted not that the unman was prepared for violent action if Muire made her think it necessary.

The core of the library was as ancient as any in the world, a converted chapel that had housed the books of the Thane of Eiledon since the city was no more than a stone-and-thatch settlement huddled on the banks of a river only bridged within living memory.

The modern building had risen up beside the ancient chapel, dwarfing it, but the university’s collections were too vast even to be held here. In this structure, they walked past polycarbonate cases in which hung racks and racks of real books, the rolls of paper weathered at the edges, the scroll dowels yellowed or blackened, nicked and gouged. Some were gilt, some silvered—the silvering black with tarnish now—some of vermicular wood so friable Muire thought it would shatter at a touch. She despaired of the scrolls of those books, and passed them by.

In the reflections, Selene seemed unmoved. Cathoair stared
about himself uncomprehendingly, and finally reached out left-handed to touch a protective case. “These are all books.”

“Books,” Muire said. “Or nostalgia. All the research data are digital, holographically stored in nearly indestructible crystals. Like monks in an age of oblivion, hoarding whatever history they can find.”

“Did that happen?”

“It’s happening now.” She turned and looked over her shoulder at them both. “You won’t find many ages darker than this. And here’s the conference room.”

Turning aside, she entered as if it were a foregone conclusion they would follow. They did, and Selene shut the door behind them.

“No chance of privacy?” Muire asked, and Selene shrugged.

“Sorry.”

“So what’s going on?” Rather than flopping into a seat, Cathoair leaned one buttock on the table edge, dropped his shirt across the surface, and folded his arms. “I’ve never felt quite so like a conspirator as since I met you.”

There was water in a carafe, and Muire poured herself a glass and drank it while she organized her thoughts. It gave her an excuse to glance out the window; the prospect could not have been better for her purposes if Gunther had selected it on purpose. When she drew aside the curtains, Muire faced the Arcology and all its mirrored gleaming windows.

Ideal
.

Excellent. Is there any reason why we can’t just jump back to Midgard to make our escape, as Mingan does?

The Grey Wolf would seem to be able to look between the worlds before he moves from one to the other.