The Red Queen (9 page)

I drew a long breath, understanding clearly now why they had spoken so much about cohabitation, and why Swallow had offered for Ana. It was to protect her from a specific match. Given what had happened with her brute of a brother, I could imagine that a forced cohabitation would be even more abhorrent to her than it was to me, and I loathed the idea.

‘What is the blood offering?’ I asked.

‘That is a matter known only to Committee members,’ Dameon said.

‘What of Dragon, then?’ I asked.

‘Like Tasha, who shares the same communal sleeping hut, Dragon is not regarded as full grown so no man can offer for her. But it will not be long.’

‘How long?’ I asked.

‘Perhaps the next darkmoon ceremony,’ Dameon said flatly. ‘Ultimately it is the Committee’s decision to raise a child to adult status.

I thought of the way Tasha’s hands had fumbled when Dameon had raised the subject of cohabitation and wondered if the Speci girl was any more enamoured of the idea of enforced cohabitation than I.

‘Of course, even if she were to come of age tomorrow, it would take some time for the Committee to consider the offers. Then there would be another gap of time between the making of the blood offering and the granting of God’s approval. Or not. And if not, it starts all over again.’

‘I see,’ I said, both relieved and determined that we would all be well away before Dragon or I were truly endangered. But it might be as well if Dameon offered to cohabit with me, just the same. I would have suggested it, but I was not sure of how such matters were handled in Habitat. It was also possible that some Speci woman had already expressed a desire to cohabit with Dameon. Certainly he was a handsome, well-made man with charming, gentle manners, and many had shown an interest in him at Obernewtyn. He had always seemed immune to their attractions, and it had never come to anything. Ceirwan had been convinced Dameon used his empathic Talent to steer women away from making an approach or declaration in order to avoid any sort of painful confrontation. If so, he would have done the same to Speci women.

Dameon’s thoughts had moved in a different direction. ‘When the Committee come, you will be asked to recite the Covenant. If you manage it and can answer all of their questions satisfactorily, they may ask you to pledge then and there. Otherwise, they will wait until the darkmoon ceremony to have you make a formal and ceremonial pledge in front of the whole of Habitat.’

‘I will do my best,’ I said, though I had no intention of being in Habitat a sevenday, let alone a full moon.

Dameon began speaking again, this time about the sort of duties I might be given, and my mind drifted, until I sensed someone else enter the hut. It had grown darker, I noticed, so that there was no light visible through the uneven window slats.

‘Elspeth,’ Swallow said. ‘Tasha told me you are eager to try walking. It is very early but it will show the Committee that you are eager to become a good and useful Speci. Ana and Dragon will be along in a moment with clothes and sandals.’

When Analivia and Dragon entered moments later, Swallow and Dameon went outside to wait. I could not see their faces but Dragon embraced me fiercely, though she did not speak. When she released me, Ana squeezed my hand and kissed my cheek, but her words of greeting were very calm and almost indifferent, reminding me that we were being observed. Between them, they pulled and heaved me into a sitting position and wrestled my weak limbs into loose trews with a drawstring waist, a long sleeveless shift and flat sandals. They had not lit a lantern or candle in deference to my eyes, and the feeling of being tended by shadows was enhanced by the fact that they did not address me other than to utter vague encouraging noises. I might have resented being treated like a mindless doll, if I had not been assailed by violent nausea the moment they got me upright. This resolved into a clamminess that made me fear I would faint or vomit. It was will alone that enabled me to do neither, nevertheless my head was spinning by the time they got me to my feet. Ana and Dragon held me upright, supporting my weight between them. I was dismayed by the extent of my weakness as we moved across the chamber, but I drew a deep steadying breath and assured myself it was only to be expected, given how much time had passed since I had last used my legs.

I had expected to be led outside, but they brought me to a chair, sat me down and began dressing my hair in some elaborate way that kept it from my eyes but allowed a portion to hang down my back. From what I could make out, their hair was bound up, too. They took so long that I began to collect myself, and by the time they tried to fasten a blindfold on me, I felt less unsteady. I waved it away, saying I would close my eyes when the light was too bright. Even so I could not help them as they positioned themselves either side of me again, and manoeuvred me through a rattling curtain of what felt like hanging reeds fastened to the lintel above the entrance. Though I could see it was dark outside, I closed my eyes instinctively as I passed through them.

The first thing I was aware of, stepping down from the hut, was the indescribably lovely feel of a cool breeze against my bare skin. The second was the sweetness of the air, which carried the scent of growing things. I had longed for this when I woke to the blank darkness of the Galon Institute, and I felt an almost unbearable euphoria when I lifted my head and opened my eyes. The dark sky glittered with the pinprick brilliance of a million stars, visible only because there was no moon. Their distant sparkle did not hurt my eyes, so I dared to lower my gaze and look around.

It was very dark, and though I was frustrated not to be able to see Ana and Dragon clearly even now, I could make out the hut I had come from, which was white, as were those either side of it, and those lined up opposite. All were identical, each with a dark rectangle of an entrance and a single square window. No light showed in any of the huts, which ran away in two rows until the darkness swallowed them, but there were glowing transparent tubes protruding from the ground a little distance away, either side of a stony path of crushed white stone. Perhaps I flinched at the sight of them, for Ana squeezed my arm and said gently that I need not be afraid of the nightlights here for they were dim enough not to trouble my eyes. It was the far brighter lights around the common buildings and in the fields, to enable Speci to make their way to night work, that I would need to avoid.

Swallow and Dameon rose from a narrow bench under the window in front of the hut, and as they came to us, they passed close enough to the tube lights that I could see they looked little different from my last clear memory of them coming to greet me in the valley of the Skylake. Dameon’s hair had grown just long enough for it to be bound back in the same way as Swallow’s.

‘Here,’ the gypsy said, stepping smoothly forward to take Ana’s place at my side. Then Dragon relinquished her place to Dameon. Both men were tall enough that after I had passed an arm around their shoulders and they straightened, my feet did not touch the ground. I protested that this would deprive me of any benefit from the walk, and they adjusted their grip so that my feet just touched the ground. Then Ana came closer and looked searchingly into my face. We had moved closer to one of the dim blue nightlights, and for the first time I could see her face. I was reassured to see that she was the same tall, wiry woman with bright yellow hair who had prevented her father’s soldierguard from beating me long years past. Like Dameon, her hair had grown slightly and the cloud of pale buttery waves and coils had been tightly braided at the top into a sort of intricate cap.

‘Elspeth are you well enough for this?’ Ana asked sternly. Without waiting for an answer, she glared at Swallow. ‘See how pale she is. You should have waited until she had got used to –’

‘No,’ I croaked, cutting off her accusation. ‘Too much time . . . wasted already . . .’

Dameon squeezed my waist and gave me a warning prod of empathy and I wondered irritably if he really imagined that some device was listening to us outside the hut. Then Dragon drew closer. I was relieved to see that all evidence of the violence done to her by Moss had long since healed and that she had put on much-needed flesh. There were other, subtler changes but the one thing that had not changed was her extraordinary beauty. Despite the quelled hair and long, drab tunic she wore, all but identical to Ana’s, I experienced the same wonderment I always felt at the perfection of her features, the deep lovely clarity of her eyes accentuated by thick, long dark lashes and arching brows, the astonishing wealth of hair.

‘I am . . . glad to see you . . . safe,’ I said.

‘Oh Elspeth, I was so afraid I would never see you again!’ Her eyes shone with tears and she rushed at me with such force that I would have fallen flat on my back without the two men to brace me. As it was they staggered a little and we all laughed and suddenly the constraint between us was gone. I had no arms free to return Dragon’s exuberant embrace, so I kissed her hair and laid my cheek on her head, vowing fiercely to myself that I would get her free of Habitat untouched and unharmed, for it was my fault that she was here. Dameon must have sensed something of my oath from the surge of my emotions and once again I felt the insistent pressure of an empathised warning.

I repressed the urge to snap at him that I understood I was to be careful, and asked brightly, ‘Where will we walk?’

‘Elspeth, it may truly be better to wait until you are stronger,’ Ana said. ‘You are only just resurrected and none of us moved about so soon.’

‘I am a fast healer,’ I said pointedly, willing her to remember that my body had the capacity to heal itself. Yet even as her eyes widened in comprehension, I wondered if she might not be right. I was aware of a light nausea and a pressure behind my eyes that might turn into a headache.

‘We will only go to the common and Elspeth can lie and rest for a time there before we bring her back,’ Swallow said persuasively to Ana, but he flicked a pointed look at me and something in it made my heart quicken.

‘Yes,’ I said, adding that I was truly sick of lying abed. Ana shrugged her surrender with a brooding look that told me her doubts about the wisdom of the walk were real enough, but Swallow gave me a rakish, reassuring smile, a brief flash of white in his dark face.

He and Dameon set off, striding along the path of crushed stone that ran between the rows of huts, carrying me with them. Although my feet were touching the ground, they were carrying almost the whole of my weight and it was impossible to make my legs move fast enough to keep up even a semblance of walking. No one watching would believe this walk was meant to exercise an invalid, which told me the others feared being overheard, but not being seen. No doubt sensing my confusion, Dameon leaned close and murmured to me to relax and let them do the work. I nodded, now certain that the purpose of this walk was not to exercise me, but to get to a place where we could talk freely.

So I hung between Dameon and Swallow like a sack of oats and concentrated on fighting nausea and a sickening dizziness, only wondering whether all of the Speci were obediently abed with their lights out, meek as a new intake of novices in the Farseeker wing.

None of the others made any attempt to speak as we walked, so I held my tongue, too. Ana and Dragon were ahead of us and I noticed that the garments they wore, for all their similarity to the Beforetime clothes I had been given at Oldhaven, lacked their impossible symmetry. The cloth looked to me to be woven on a simple loom and I guessed, given the little I had taken in about life in Habitat, the Speci had woven it and made the clothes. But the huts we were passing were so exactly alike they had assuredly been built using Beforetime technology.

‘How do you feel?’ Swallow broke into my thoughts, panting slightly.

I turned my head to assure him I was well enough, and he gave me a dry half-smile that doubted it and I realised he and the others must have endured the same weakness and lack of control. But we did not slow until we were approaching a hut with a drooping bush growing before it.

‘That is the hut I share with Dameon,’ Swallow murmured. ‘I planted the bush so I need not count huts every time I wanted to find my way to my bed, but it troubles the Speci because they see conformity as harmony, so the desire to be different is regarded as a tendency to disharmony. They find it hard to believe that the bush was merely a practical solution to a small problem.’

‘Better to destroy the bush than risk troubling the harmony in Habitat,’ Ana said, turning to glare at him. I could not tell if she was really angry or if her words were part of the ongoing magi play they had all performed to some degree or other since my awakening.

‘It may be wiser to err on the side of caution,’ Dameon murmured tranquilly.

‘I do all that is asked of me, willingly and well,’ Swallow said, and though his tone was light, his grip around my waist tightened involuntarily. ‘After all, I am still a man even if I am a good Speci. I have a mind of my own.’

‘You would do well to exercise it now and then,’ Ana said tartly.

I lost interest in their quarrel when we reached the end of the row of huts and I saw that the darkness before us was not the vague star-pricked black of night but an immense wall. It had to be the one surrounding Habitat, I thought, marvelling at the height of it, which must surely exceed that of the wall surrounding the black city on Herder Isle. No wonder there was nothing visible beyond it. Even a scraper would need to be close by to be seen, let alone trees and lower buildings. That meant Habitat might be on the outskirts of Pellmar Quadrants after all.

I wondered how thick the wall was, and if there were any rooms or tunnels constructed within it, as in the wall about the black city. It was far too high to throw a grappling hook up, if one could be made, and climbing it would be a frightening business even with a rope, let alone without one. A better target would be a gate, though for just this reason they were likely guarded or protected by some sort of formidable weapon.

I frowned, wondering suddenly if any of the others had attempted an escape. Surely Swallow had tried, before Ana had been resurrected and he had to accept that the rest of us might follow. Unless an escape attempt would lead to a person being considered a bad Speci. I thought again of the man found cut to pieces in a field and felt a knife of ice slip between my ribs. That he had been a loathsome raper did not lessen my horror at the strange secretive brutality of his death.