The Wraeththu Chronicles (100 page)

suppose you must have, but, well, we often used to wonder what he was really like . . ."

"I saw him," I said. I hadn't meant to put all that feeling into those words. It wasn't a deliberate clue so that I could show off to Lolotea. I just couldn't deny the feelings inside me.

"And what about Cobweb, the famous consort, or should I say the famous first consort? Did you ever get to see him too? Is he as beautiful as people say?"

I made an exclamation, remembering. "Oh yes! You could say that Cobweb and I actually got to cross swords a couple of times!"

"Really?" Lolotea was not sure whether to believe me or not.

"I suppose I'm saying too much," I said.

"No! Not at all. Please go on." He wasn't stupid.

"It may just be stories. How do you know I'm not making it up?"

"I'll take that risk. It's entertaining anyway, even if it is bullshit."

"What do you want to know?"

"Cal . . ."

"No, Calanthe," I butted in.

"Calanthe," he said thoughtfully, staring at me very hard. I could see a certain dawning of realization creeping over his face, but it was too wonderful a coincidence for him to believe at first. He said casually, "Wasn't . . . wasn't Terzian's second consort, you know, the one that caused all the trouble in Forever, named Cal? He had yellow hair too, didn't he ... like yours."

"He was called Cal, yes, among other things," I replied, filled with aweird kind of relief. I wanted him to know. I didn't know why. Lolotea raised his glass at me and smiled.

"It's not a common name," he said and drank thoughtfully. "Well, I'm not even going to attempt to work out why the consort of Terzian the Varr is working as a kanene in a dead-end pit like Fallsend . . . er, if he is doing so, of course! I thought that all of Terzian's family came under the protection of the Gelaming after Fulminir fell. Terzian's son went over to the Gelaming, didn't he? Swift, wasn't it? As I recall, he came out of it all very well! Some say too well."

"You don't know the circumstances," I said, defending Swift who certainly deserved it. "He acted in the only way possible. Galhea must be quite a mighty metropolis by this time, I would imagine."

"I don't know," Lolotea said. "I came over to Thaine before the Gelaming ever really got a hold on Megalithica. It seems we're both old crows together, doesn't it! Maybe one day, I'll tell you my story. If you tell me the rest of yours, of course!"

"That's a deal!" I said, having no intention of ever doing so. We clinked glasses, laughed, and drank. Now I had a friend. Perhaps things were not as bad as I'd thought.

Body for Sale

"I have been one acquainted with the night. "

 
—Robert Frost, Acquainted with the Night

1 am Uigenna. I am sixteen years old. The world has gone now, the world that I knew. My family is probably dead. I don't care. I really don't. I tell myself they never liked me. I still don't know if that is true. Seel went to the Unneah. That was because the Ugenna were too wild for him, too ferocious. We meet sometimes, on those crazy borderlands that exist in cities like this. It has changed so much in such a short space of time. I feel like I've lived for a hundred years. There is Wraeththu blood in my veins and I feel like God. Human life means nothing to me. They are so small. I hate them. I have to kill. Every time I kill, I see a mocking, threatening face. Such faces followed me in the past. Such faces drove me to what I have become. They shouted out to me, menacing, vulgar, ugly. But no more. They are dead and those that still live shall die. In the shadows of perpetual night, in the light of dancing flames, I meet a har named Zackala. We intrigue each other in an outlandish courtship. Our nuptial bed is a heap of debris, broken windowframes, wreckage of love. He bites me. We laugh. Pain makes me strong. I live in this place. It is always with me. At night, I do not dream. I just remember. There are no nightmares.

Lolotea and I returned to Piristil very late. There were several minutes of drunken giggling as we tried to sneak up the creaking stairs.

Lolotea paused by his door. "You'd better go to Astarth," he said.

I pulled a sorrowful face. "I suppose I'd better."

"Goodnight Calanthe." He closed the door on me. Astarth was asleep when I went in. I did not wake him. I curled myself in blankets on the floor and lay staring at the ceiling until I fell asleep.

The following day, Astarth informed me, with unmistakable relief, that he would be working until the evening. My training session would have to wait until then. At lunch, I took the opportunity to examine in more detail the other occupants of the house. I entertained myself conjecturing whether their eating habits gave any clues as to their personalities. Flounah glared at his food, eyeing it with suspicion and chewing distastefully. Ezhno read a book throughout the meal, shoveling forkfuls into his mouth abstractedly. Both Salandril and Rihana sorted out their food, before eating, into piles of what they liked and what they wouldn't touch. This, of course, was the only fitting behavior for hara whose tribe were reputed to be innately catlike. All of them were of averagely lovely Wraeththu appearance, which to me signified that they must all be villains of one color or another. Astarth sat at the head of the table, moodily ignoring his food and taking only wine. I had been surprised by the quality of the wine, which was excellent. Piristil was a place of contrasts.

There was a knock at the front door, which we all ignored. It came again. Sighing, Astarth fastidiously wiped his mouth with a napkin and graciously rose from the table. "Orpah!" he yelled unnecessarily as he left the room.

I had come to realize in a relatively short space of time that the staff of Piristil were inordinately apathetic about many of their duties, answering the door being one of them. Presumably, this was why Jafit had seen fit to caution me about my attitude toward them. Apart from Orpah, there were three others in the house; Wuwa, Tirigan and Jancis, who was the cook. All of them had that half-finished appearance of the unsuccessfully incepted. Relations between the staff and the kanene were not of the warmest kind.

"You have ruffled Astarth's feathers," Ezhno remarked to me as Orpah put his head around the door and said, "What?" We ignored him. I made no comment on Ezhno's observation. "Don't pull his hair too hard, that's all," he continued mildly. "Astarth is lord of the hearth in this place. He won't like it if you challenge his authority too much."

"I didn't realize I had," I said, wondering how much Lolotea had been blabbing to the others.

"Astarth perceives challenges to his authority in all kinds of innocent behavior," Flounah pointed out morbidly. Of them all, he was the most bewitching creature. Pale, attenuated, with smooth black hair like a sheet of silk. His slanted eyes must be the envy of the Kalamah. He is not to be trusted, however.

On my way upstairs that afternoon, I had my first glimpse of one of Piristil's customers. He was coming out of Jafit's office, accompanied by Jafit himself. I'm not sure what kind of monster I'd been expecting, but from what I could see, the Har looked merely ordinary. No manic eyes, no clawed hands anxious to do business with the flesh of a kanene. I had seen many such hara as warriors in my late consort's army. This har looked no different, dressed in black, scuffed leather, his hair tied behind his head, his eyes tired.

"Kruin, I'd like you to meet our latest arrival," Jafit said indulgently, as if bestowing a great honor. I bowed appropriately.

The har named Kruin inclined his head awkwardly and said, "Er . . . hello."

"Be so good as to summon Rihana," Jafit ordered, so I called "Rihana!" and went

upstairs to find Lolotea.

He was in his room and invited me inside. "Comfortable!" I said. .

"I try. Do you want to go into Fallsend again?"

I could tell from his voice that he hoped I didn't. "No, I don't think so. What do you usually do to keep entertained when you're not working?"

"Sleep!"

"That boring, huh?"

Lolotea lay down on his bed and stretched and groaned. "Not really. We could be artistic and paint pictures, we could tell each other stories or we could get very drunk."

"The last of those suggestions seems the most promising," I said.

"I agree. What do you want, wine or betica?"

"I've never drunk betica, so I'll have that."

"You sure?" Lolotea laughed, but sprang off his bed and poured us both a large drink. The liquor was yellow and its taste better left undescribed. However, after half a glass, the mouth is sufficiently numbed not to be alarmed by it. Lolotea flopped down on his bed again. "God, I'll be glad when you get paid, Calanthe! I don't suppose you've got any cigarettes, have you!"

"No, but you have." I helped myself.

Lolotea laughed but did not protest. "So, mysterious one, tell me about life in Galhea."

"Oh, it's not that interesting," I said. Everything that happened to me in Galhea was, naturally, intensely interesting, but I didn't like talking about it.

Lolotea thought for a moment, stroking the rim of his glass. He looked enchanting and mischievous. "Is Terzian really dead?" he asked, "or is that an indelicate question?"

He was pleased with himself for being shocking. Kindly, I tried to appear shocked. "Foully indelicate!" I answered. Lolotea raised his eyebrows. "Yes, he's dead ..." I

sat down on the bed beside him. "And no, I'm not grieving for him, before you ask. I must admit, I do sort of miss Galhea though. I had a good life there. Besides, I was rich in Galhea, I lived in a grand house; now look at me!"

"You look just fine to me, Calanthe," Lolotea remarked. I was not sure of his motive in that. He might possess a perspicacity I'd not given him credit for.

"I'm a survivor," I said.

"You will need to be here," he answered, although I didn't agree. Piristil, in its way, is just as womblike as Forever had been. No outside world. I would have liked to enlighten Lolotea about just what real survival entailed, but there was little point, and I didn't want to reveal that much about myself. Instead, because I like to turn and turn and trample in a new nest to make it comfortable, I said, "Lolotea, I would like to take aruna with you this afternoon."

Lolotea laughed and I'm quite sure that his first reaction was to ask, "why?," but it was not part of the image that he wanted me to have of him. "I hope you don't want to try out your newly acquired skills of pelcia and chaitra on me," he said with a smile.

"Is that an answer?"

"You didn't ask a question."

"OK, will you? I know it's probably not the sort of thing you do for relaxation around here, but the truth is, I'm desperate for a cuddle and need my faith restoring in physical contact."

Lolotea pulled a face. "Do you know, when I think about it, I haven't taken aruna for years, not proper aruna. I suppose we get kind of sexless, what with our work being what it is." He looked at me. "Maybe I need my faith restoring too. Faith! Ha!" He threw one hand over his face and laughed coldly. "What did all our dreams come to, Calanthe? Have we realized any of them? Look at us! My self-development went right out of the window as soon as my need to earn a crust for myself came in! Were we kidding ourselves that it was all going to be better? Are we really better than men?"

"Oh, give it a rest, Teah!" I said. "Leave the heavy bullshit for those who've got the time to worry about it. Right now, I want you. That's magic. No amount of failed dreams can take that away from us."

He sighed. "You're right. Undress me. And do it slowly. Let's make the best of it."

We did.

Maybe taking aruna with Lolotea woke up parts of me that had been sleeping (or catatonic), I don't know. But I remember how when I left his room that evening, the sun had struggled from its mantle of clouds; the hall and stairs of Piristil were bathed in a beautiful sunset glow. I could feel mysenses, lifted with the kinder light, waking up, sniffing, looking around and thinking, "Ah yes, time for work to begin again." For too long I'd been aimlessly shuffling around the countryside, with no direction in mind, abandoning my skills, living like a scavenger. Look what it had brought me to! I might as well have been human. OK, I'd got a whole book of excuses for what might be termed my "breakdown," but the time of healing was over. No more excuses. From here, it's one way: up.

I went to Astarth. "Reporting for training," I said, with a smart and sassy salute.

Astarth shook his head and nearly smiled. "I can teach you nothing, Calanthe. From now until your room's ready, sleep with Lolotea. He can train you instead. I've asked Jafit, so it's alright. In a few days, I'll see what you've learned. OK?"

"Very OK," I said. And that was that.

We come to a place where humans still have control. It is not a large city, but from where we are stationed on the hill, it appears to cover the entire valley floor beneath us. Zack holds up his knife to the hazy sun. The clouds have not yet lifted. Pale ribbons lead into the town below us; empty roads. There is smoke rising and little sound. We begin to descend the hill. There are maybe just over a hundred of us, well-rested, well-fed. Now our leader is Wraxilan; Manticker the Seventy is no more. Wraxilan, Lion of Oomar rides a slim, brown horse that tosses its head impatiently as it picks its way down the narrow path. The Lion's hair flows yellow down his back, like girl's hair, beneath a metal helmet that covers nearly all of his head, giving him the face of some feral, gleaming animal. We trot like wolves and, before us, we can now see the barricades that have been built around the town. Feeble fortifications. Do they really think they can hold us back, stem the relentless waves of Wraeththu? We that beat patiently, like water, licking like flames, like fire.