Winterstrike (2 page)

‘I won’t be going away, Canteley,’ Shorn said, but as she said this she looked to me as though the walls were falling in on her.

‘Is it true what they say, that the vulpen steal your soul? That they put you in a trance so that you can’t think of anything else?’

‘No, that isn’t true,’ Shorn said. She took our little sister’s hand and led her through the door.

I won’t be going away.
But better the devouring mountains than the windowless room, I thought. Better the quick, clean cold. I should never have let our mothers shut her away, but
Shorn herself had been too dazed, with grief and bewilderment and incomprehension, to protest. Now, she’d had time to think, to become as clear as ice, and I needed to know what she was
planning.

‘Canteley, I’ll talk to you later.’ She gave our sister a swift hug. ‘Go downstairs. I’ll join you in a minute.’

I lingered behind the door, watching through a crack. Once Canteley had gone, Shorn took a pair of skates from the wall and stood looking down at the long, curved blades. Then, holding the
skates by their laces, she followed our sister down the stairs, and I followed her.

They were all standing in the doorway, staring upward: Canteley and our mothers. Of the two, Thea was by far the shorter, and so it must have been Alleghetta behind the demothea’s mask,
its white, pointed face wearing a simpering smile. Shorn looked from one to the other before descending. No one spoke. As Shorn reached the last step, our mothers turned and pushed open the double
doors that led out onto the steps to the street. Blacklight crackled, a weir-ward shrieked, and winter filled the hallway. The gongs rang out in the twilight, filling the street and the house with
sound. It must have seemed very loud to Shorn, used as she had become to the cushioned silence of the windowless room.

The mothers grasped Canteley firmly by each hand and pulled her through the doors, so decisively that I was the only one who had time to turn and see a flickering twitch of Thea’s head in
the direction of Shorn. As for myself, I was wearing a cenulae’s mask: a fragile countenance, painted in green. When I stepped out, I saw the bland cat face smiling back at me. Then Shorn
ran, stumbling on unaccustomed feet across the black-and-white mosaic of the hall floor, through the scents of snow and fire-cake and polish, out through the doors and into the street to stand
uncertainly in the snow.

Canal-the-Less, on which Calmaretto stood, was frozen solid and filled with skaters bearing snow-lamps. They wove in and out of one another with insect skill. Shorn, breath coming in short gasps
in the cold, was evidently tempted to take the round cat’s face from her own and fling it into the drifts, but she did not, though I saw her hands trembling around her face. She tied on the
skates with quivering fingers and lowered herself over the bank of the canal onto the ice. Then she was off winging down Canal-the-Less towards the culvert that leads to the Great Canal. I
followed.

The Canal itself was thronged with skaters, milling about before the start of the procession. Shorn twisted this way and that, keeping to the side of the Canal at first, then moving out to where
the light was less certain. The great houses that lined the Canal were blazing with snow-lamps and torches, mirrored in the ice so that Shorn and I glided across a glassy, shimmering expanse. She
was heading for the Curve and the labyrinth of canals that led to the island of Midis and then the Great North Gate.

Behind us, the crowds of skaters fell away. Ahead, I could see a mass of red gowns, the start of the procession, led by the Matriarchs. Our mothers, not quite so elevated, would be just behind,
amongst their peers. A pair of scissor-women sped by, the raw mouths of holographic wounds displayed across the surface of their armour. They were unmasked. Their faces were as sharp as their
blades and I flinched behind the mask, until I realized that to them, Shorn was nothing more than a tall child, and not the Malcontent of Calmaretto. But I watched them go all the same, then slunk
behind my sister from the Great Canal and into the maze.

It was much quieter here. The houses along the waterways had already emptied and there were only a few stray women lingering beneath the lamps or the bridges, waiting no doubt for assignations.
Shorn skated on, though the long months of forced inactivity must have taken their toll. Even my own calves were burning. I did not want to think of what would befall Shorn if she made it past the
North Gate: the vast expanse of snow-covered plain, the mountains beyond. I hoped only that it would be a swift death and that she made it out of Winterstrike. It would be her revenge on the city
and on Calmaretto, to die beyond its walls. I knew that this was not rational, but Shorn and I had left reason by a canal bank, a year before.

In summer, the Curve is lined with cafés and weedwood trees, black-branched, with the yellow flower balls spilling pollen into the water until it lies there as heavy as oil, perfuming the
air with a subtle musk. Now, the cafés were cold and closed – all the trade would have moved down the Canal for the night.

My heart pounded with exertion and memory. It was here, a year ago, on this stretch of the Curve beneath the thin-arched bridge, that something –
someone,
I corrected myself, angry
at my own use of our mothers’ term – had drifted from the darkness to stand as still as snow.

Shorn glided to a halt. I’d been out on the canal that night, but not with Shorn. I had replayed this scene over and over in my mind ever since I’d first learned what had happened:
the figure outlined against the black wall and pale ice, the long head swivelling to meet Shorn’s gaze, the frame shifting under the layers of robes and the sudden realization that this was
not just another reveller, but real: the mild dark eyes set deep in the hollow of the skull, the ivory barbs of its teeth. What she had taken for the curve of skate blades beneath the hem of the
robe was its feet. One of the Changed, a vulpen, from the mountains: the genetically altered remnant of ancient man.

They were said to tear women limb from limb in vengeance for old woes: the phasing out of the male by Matriarch geneticists. But this one merely looked at her, she told me, and held out its
hand. She should have fled; instead, she took its long fingers in her own. It led her along the Curve, skating alongside with inhuman skill. Nothing else befell her. The vulpen gazed at her as they
moved, blinking its mild eyes. It said:
I have been waiting for you.

And as it spoke, they turned the bend and ran into a squadron of scissor-women. Unlike Shorn, the warriors took only a moment to realize what was before them. They skated forward, scissors
snicking. One of them seized Shorn, who cried ‘No!’ and struggled in the warrior’s grasp. The other three surrounded the vulpen, who suddenly was springing upward to land on the
bank on all fours, blade-feet skidding, casting the disguising robes away to reveal a pale, narrow form, the vertebral tail whipping around. Its erection resembled a bone, and when they saw it the
scissor-women shrieked in fury. Then it was gone, into the snowy night.

They took Shorn back to Calmaretto on a chain, and sat with her until her family returned, laughing and exhausted, at dawn.

Remembering this now, I was moved to wonder if any of it was even real. It seemed long ago and far away – and then it was as though I had stepped sideways into Shorn’s own memory,
for the figure of a vulpen once more skated from beneath the arch. I think I cried out, but whether in hope or dismay, I could not have said. It held out its hands, but did not attempt to touch
her. Shorn skated with it, back along the Curve in a haze and a dream, myself following behind, flying through the winter dark, until we were once more out onto the Great Canal, passing the Long
Reach that led down to the Winter Palace of the Matriarchy, then the curving wall of the Matriarchy parliament itself.

The procession had passed. Circling, whirling, Shorn and the vulpen danced out to the middle of the Great Canal, and now I was beginning to understand that this was, after all, nothing more than
a woman in a mask. Thoughts of Shorn’s flight, of dying beyond Winterstrike, skated through my head and were gone.

She let the woman in the vulpen’s mask lead her back to Calmaretto. As they stepped through the door, the woman pulled off the mask and I saw that it was not a woman after all, but a girl.
It was Canteley

‘I could not let you go,’ Canteley said, and Shorn, exhausted, merely nodded. Together, Canteley and I led her up the stairs to the windowless room and closed the door behind
her.

In the morning, Winterstrike was quiet. Ribbons littered the ice and the snow was trodden into filth. I woke late, my head ringing with explanations that I would later have to
make to Vanity. I went to the heart of the house and opened the door of the windowless room.

Shorn sat where we had left her, upright, the cat’s face beaming.

‘Shorn?’ There was no reply. I went haltingly forward and touched my sister’s shoulder, thinking that she slept. But the brocade gown was stiff and unyielding, moulded in the
form of a woman’s figure. I tugged at the cat’s mask, but it would not budge. It remained fixed, staring sightlessly across the windowless room, and slowly I stepped away, and once more
closed the door.

TWO

I was in a tea-house in Caud when the ghost warrior walked in. I turned, hoping to see everyone staring at her, tea glasses suspended halfway to gaping mouths, eyes wide. But
the only person they were staring at was me, responding to my sudden movement. I couldn’t afford to attract attention. I looked back down at my place and the glances slid away. Conversation
resumed about normal subjects: the depth of last night’s snow, the day’s horoscopes, the prospect of war.

Under my lashes, I watched the warrior. I was alone in Caud, knowing no one, trying to be unobtrusive. The tea-house was close to the principal gate of the city and was thus filled with
travellers, mostly from the Martian north, but some from the more southerly parts of the Crater Plain, Ardent, perhaps, or Ord. I saw no one who looked as though they might be from Winterstrike. I
had taken pains to disguise myself: bleaching my hair to the paleness of a northern woman, lightening my skin a shade or so with pigmentation pills. All my family looked the same, the result of
snobbish and conservative selection in the breeding tanks, and all of us were typical of old Winterstrike: sheaves of straight black hair, grey eyes, sallow faces. Even our mothers had found it
hard to tell my cousin Essegui and me apart, growing up.

So disguise was essential. And I had been careful to come anonymously to Caud, travelling in a rented vehicle across the Crater Plain at night, hiring a room in a slum tenement and staying away
from any haunt-locks and blacklight devices that might scan my soul-engrams and reveal me for what I was: Hestia Mar, a woman of Winterstrike, an enemy, a spy.

But now the warrior was here, sitting down in the empty seat opposite mine, a flayed ghost. And it seemed that no one else could see her except me.

She moved stiffly beneath the confines of her rust-red armour: without the covering of skin, I could see the interplay of muscles. The flesh looked old and dry, as though the warrior had spent a
long time out in the cold. The armour she wore was antique, covered with symbols that I did not recognize. I thought that she must be from the very long ago: the Rune Memory Wars, perhaps, or the
Age of Children, though she could be more recent – the time when the Memnos Matriarchy had ruled not only the Crater Plain but Earth itself. But that Matriarchy had fallen long ago, and only
a few clan warriors now remained in the hills. I did not think she was one of these.

Her eyes were the wan green of winter ice, staring at me from the ruin of her face. Her mouth moved, but no sound emerged. I knew better than to speak to a ghost. I turned away. People were
still shooting covert glances at me. This red, raw visitation was the last way I wanted to draw attention to myself. I rose, abruptly, and went through the door without looking back. At the end of
the street I risked a glance over my shoulder, fearing that the thing had followed me, but the only folk to be seen were a few hooded figures hurrying home before curfew. Hastening around the
corner, I jumped onto a crowded rider that was heading in the direction of my slum. I resolved not to return to the tea-house: it was too much of a risk.

Thus far, I’d been successful in staying out of sight. My days were spent in the ruin of the great library of Caud, hunting through what was left of the archives. I was not the only
searcher, sidling through the fire-blackened racks under the shattered shell of the roof, but we left one another well alone and the Matriarchy of Caud had other things to deal with. Their
scissor-women did not come to the ruins, though a less distracted government might have regarded us as looters. Even so, I was as careful as possible, heading out in the dead hours of the afternoon
and returning well before twilight and the fall of curfew.

My thoughts dwelt on the warrior as the rider trundled along. I did not know who she was, what she might represent, nor why she had chosen to manifest herself to me. I tried to tell myself that
it was an unfortunate coincidence, nothing more. Caud must be full of ghosts these days, and I’d always been able to see them: it was, after all, why I’d been picked by the Matriarchy
to do what I did.
Soul stealer, weir reader. Sensitive. Spy.

Halfway along Gaudy Street the rider broke down, spilling passengers out in a discontented mass. We had to wait for the next available service and the schedule was disrupted. I was near the back
of the crowd and though I pushed and shoved, I couldn’t get on the next vehicle and had to wait for the one after that. I stood shivering in the snow for almost an hour, looking up at the
shuttered faces of the weedwood mansions that lined Gaudy Street. Many of them were derelict, or filled with squatters. I saw the gleam of a lamp within one of them: it looked deceptively
welcoming. Above Caud, the stars blazed, and I could see the eldritch glitter of the Chain, dotted with the specks of haunt-ships departing for Earth and beyond.