Consorts of Heaven (44 page)

‘Only if we let them.’

‘
Only if we let them?
Kerin, you are a woman of rare perception, but have you forgotten that we are trapped within this strange room of Sais’s ‘technology’? We cannot save ourselves, let alone help our world!’

For the first time in some while, Kerin felt a smile tugging at her face. ‘We are not as powerless as you think,’ she said. ‘Sais told me much of technology, and you yourself have used it, in controlling the bridge in the testing room.’

‘That may be so, but we are still trapped!’

‘No, we are not. Wait here.’ She went back to the carousel. Urien, looking uncertain, stayed where he was. She went up to Damaru’s box. ‘The Sidhe have power over these devices, even those we cannot operate ourselves. And not only the Sidhe.’ She was still not sure how she felt about Sais’s claim that Damaru was Sidhe. For now, all that mattered was the result. She woke Damaru gently while Urien looked on. Despite her bold words, she was trembling. This was the true final test. She told Damaru what he must do, then led him past Urien and up to the door. Urien trailed after her. Prysor remained on the floor.

At the door, she whispered to Damaru, ‘Will you let us out now?’

Damaru looked at the door, frowned, then reached for the palmlock.

Kerin held her breath.
If Sais was wrong—

The door slid open.

She heard Urien’s expelled breath behind her. Ahead, the corridor was as they had left it. She turned to Urien.

‘Do you have people in the Tyr you trust?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Some,’ he said.

‘Then I suggest you might want to get them to help. Prysor should be ministered too, and Lillwen is also returned and in need of aid. In addition there are five sleepers who Damaru will wake. They are innocents, used by the Sidhe. It may be fitting that each Escorai is assigned one to care for. ’

Urien’s dubious expression had matured into stark disbelief. ‘What Escorai? There is only myself and Prysor, and he has all but lost his mind.’

‘There must be changes. I will need your help. The first task is to appoint new Escorai. Do you have candidates in mind?’

Urien looked at Kerin in amazement. Then a cold, canny smile crept onto his face. ‘Do I take it,’ he said slowly, ‘that you yourself are laying claim to a position you believe to be vacant?’

Though her innards twisted, Kerin kept her expression composed and her voice even. ‘I cannot see any alternative. Lillwen was only ever an unwilling tool. Of course, the Sidhe will return one day, and they will wish nothing more than to put one of their own back in place, and return us to the servitude and ignorance in which they have held our people for untold generations. Is that truly what you wish for our world?’

Urien shook his head, his expression dark. ‘Of course not, but this is . . . absurd. You are hardly qualified to rule!’

‘I have some knowledge of the devices here, and I know how the world works. My son understands the devices better than I, and, more importantly, he has the ability to make them work for us. You need this. Our people need this.’

‘It is unthinkable.’

She spread her hands. ‘Urien, please. I am no politician. I do not crave power - but it has been given to me. I will need good advice. I wish only to find the path that will save those I care for from further harm.’

Urien narrowed his eyes and looked at her long and hard, a gaze nearly as sharp as the Sidhe’s, though without the malice. Then he said, ‘You brought water from Heaven to quench the thirst of a stranger who may have been your enemy.’

‘But one whom I hoped would be my ally,’ she whispered, her voice beginning to fail.

‘Aye,’ said Urien. ‘So you did.’

Kerin said nothing. There was no other argument she could use.

Finally Urien said, ‘We should go. I believe we have much work ahead of us.’ He moved aside to let her through first. ‘After you, Divinity.’

With Kerin safely on her way home, Sais went back to his ship. As he stepped on board the
Judas Kiss
he said to himself, ‘My name is Jarek Reen, and this is my home.’ He almost believed it now.

He slaved his com to the ship’s so he wouldn’t miss Kerin’s call, then tried to call out, but he couldn’t connect. There was no beevee reception in this system, which meant no active beacon - which meant he’d been taking an even bigger chance than he’d thought when he slipstreamed the Sidhe ship here. And finding this place again would be a bastard. He wondered how the Sidhe managed to travel here regularly if there really was no beacon to guide them out of shiftspace.

He set to plundering the
Setting Sun
. Before Damaru left he’d convinced the boy to unlock everything that could be unlocked, from the physical clamps holding his ship, to the virtual access blocks on the computer. His attempts to scan the ship’s files soon ran up against encrypted or inaccessible data. Rather than risk scrambling the data irrevocably by trying to read or copy the files when he didn’t have full system access, he physically pulled the entire memory-core. He’d worry about what he’d got later.

He did some physical pillaging too, stocking up on spares and supplies. He also took the comabox containing the unconscious pilot. It might have been more merciful to kill the man, but the pilot knew more about the Sidhe than any human he’d ever met, or was likely to meet. He planned to have a long, frank talk with the man at some point in the near future.

He was on the bridge of the Sidhe ship, having a last look around, when the com beeped. About time too: he was beginning to worry.

Kerin, standing in front of a hanging of heavy red fabric, looked flushed and excited. ‘Sais? Oh, I see you!’

‘How’s the brave new world? Everything all right?’

‘Aye. Though I look forward to finding time to rest soon.’

‘So the Escorai have accepted you as the Cariad?’

‘There is only Urien - Sefion is dead and Prysor is insane. Urien reminds me of Arthen, back in the village. He listens to everything and misses nothing, but he says only what needs to be said. And he puts the good of his people first. Given his position, that means the good of all our people.’

‘How about you? How’re you dealing with being a goddess?’

‘I am not a goddess, you know that!’ She laughed, and Sais knew that she’d never fall pray to the temptations felt by the Sidhe Cariads. Then she looked sombre. ‘As for what I should believe now . . . as Urien says, just because malevolent beings pretended to be goddesses, that does not mean there is no divine power beyond our comprehension. It merely makes the seeker’s job far harder. Too hard for some.’

Like Einon
, thought Sais. He said, ‘Urien’s giving you good advice, Kerin. There are plenty of people who believe in some form of god, though thanks to the Sidhe, goddesses have rather gone out of fashion.’

‘Do you?’ Trust her to call his bluff.

‘Do I believe in a god?’
Not any more
. ‘No, but that’s just me. I don’t claim any special knowledge on the matter.’

She nodded as though satisfied, though she must have been hit hard by having her religion yanked out from under her. Then she said, ‘Did you manage to contact your friends?’

Typical Kerin: dealing with an enormous hole left by her loss of faith, faced with an uncertain and difficult future, and she still thought of others first. ‘I’ve had some trouble with the local beevee - the network that sends information between the stars. I’ll have to wait until I leave this system to get my messages out. Which reminds me: I’ve found out the name of your world.’

‘The name? Oh, yes, of course - if everyone out there called the globe they live on “the world” things would get very confusing, would they not?’

‘They certainly would. The people who first came here called this system “Serenein”.’

‘Serenein. That is a word meaning “our star” - not much more original than “the world”, I suppose.’

He laughed. ‘Maybe not. So, you reckon you’ll be all right, then? You don’t need me to come down and scare the priests into behaving?’

‘They are quite scared enough. Urien is doing a good job of reassuring them, but I need to be seen to be around.’

‘How about Lillwen and Fychan?’

‘Urien ordered that Fychan be released from the Tyr’s dungeons. He will be given money and told never to return to the City. Lillwen is recovering. I hope she will one day be able to rebuild her life and find her daughter.’

‘I guess you’re stuck in the Tyr for good now.’

‘I am not! I may have to appear as the Cariad when required, but once things have settled down I will be going out - with enough paint and powder I could pass as a Putain Glan - though that is one tradition I intend to put a stop to - and Damaru has already found pictures showing ways out of this place into the City that no one else knows about.’

That’s my Kerin
. ‘How’s Damaru coping?’

‘He is as happy as I have ever seen him. He is showing me how the technology works, though he keeps getting annoyed because I am too slow for him; a bit of a change from the normal way of things! He is staying with me here - I’m in the Car—in my sleeping chamber, in case you had not worked it out.’

Sais was going to say that the ruler of the world shouldn’t have to share a room with her son, until he remembered that for much of her life Kerin had been content sharing a one-room hut with him. ‘But you’re getting the hang of the tech?’

Kerin pulled a face. ‘Slowly. Damaru has no such problems. Except’ - she looked down - ‘he is having trouble with the weapons in the sky. As you said, we need to have control of them if the Sidhe come back.’

They both knew it was
when
, not
if
. Sais had been afraid that this particular bit of tech might be a problem: the Sidhe wouldn’t want the Cariad controlling the orbital weaponry in case she went native. ‘I’m sure he’ll work it out,’ he said with more confidence than he felt.

She looked away for a moment. ‘Urien is at the door. He gives me little peace! I should not complain - that he includes me in so many decisions means he trusts me. But there is so much to do!’

‘No shit. You should go.’

‘I should, aye. And you must let people know what has happened here.’

‘That’s the plan.’ Part of the plan, anyway.

She hesitated, then said, ‘Will you come back?’

Sais thought of the thirty-seven Consorts in stasis in the cargo-bay of the
Setting Sun
, every one of them capable of taking out a Sidhe. ‘Rely on it.’

‘Though you will not be “Sais” then. I suppose you are not now. I mean, the pilot called you by your real name.’

‘Yeah, he did. Right now I’m sort of between names.’

‘Well, you will always be Sais to me. Until we met again, Sais - farewell.’

‘Goodbye, Kerin.’

It was only after he’d signed off that he remembered she was still technically his wife. He locked down the bridge controls as far as his inadequate DNA would allow, then walked through the darkened corridors back to his own ship.

The story continues in
Guardians of Paradise

 

Coming soon from
GOLLANCZ

Firstly, gratitude and love to Dave Weddell, who never tires of letting me bounce ideas off his brain, and whose own brain I never tire of. My thanks to the Tripod crit group: Jim Anderson, Mike Lewis and Alex Bell; and to Milford class of ’07. Thanks also to beta-readers Vaughan Stranger, Emma O’Connell and James Cooke, who all provided different perspectives, and helped me get the distance I needed in the limited time I had. Thanks to fellow author John Meaney who hypnotised me in the cause of research, and who resisted the temptation to make me think I was a chicken (as far as I remember). And thanks, finally, to my editor Jo Fletcher, and agent John Jarrold who will, between them, make a proper pro of me yet.