Winterstrike (20 page)

The woman smiled as the thing slipped onto my lap. I tried not to flinch. ‘They belong to the Queen. They are hereditary, very ancient technology.’

‘I see.’

‘Don’t worry. It won’t hurt you again. Let it do what it must with the bite.’

I watched as a glistening droplet of moisture seeped from the centipede’s jaws and ran down one sharp pincer. It fell directly onto the bite and there was a numbing sensation, then a
coolness, not unpleasant. The centipede withdrew until, to my great relief, it was no longer visible within the woman’s robes.

But with that drop of moisture came images.

There was a palace, a colonnade of stout stone columns. A vine climbed up them, bearing crimson and gold flowers, and the windows of the palace blazed with light. Voices came from within: it
sounded like a party and reminded me of Calmaretto and the balls my mothers had hosted when we were growing up. Water flickered over the surface of a canal but it did not feel like Mars.

Then, dense jungle with a temple in the middle of it, all ruined and shattered, but clearly once a large construction – a ziggurat, carved around its base with figures in erotic
configurations, and at its summit a round bowl of plexiglass, also ancient, I thought, but still much later than the temple. A thought came to mind: this is the Queen’s observatory.

Then I was standing on a boat and coming in to a long shoreline, edged with buildings under a hot blue sky. Everything was azure and gold and white, the buildings high-rise and shining, and I
took a quick breath, because I knew that this was Earth. A light, bright place – but then the boat on which I was standing skimmed over choppy water and I looked down through the clear depths
to see buildings far below. Earth the Drowned, and that made me realize that what I’d just seen was real.

The scenes flicked out like a dead broadcast. I said, ‘I had a vision.’

‘It stores memories. Sometimes there’s a little bleed.’

‘Was that Malay?’

‘Most probably. Its recent memory selection will be of Mars. I downloaded, but possibly not all. You need a good clean, don’t you?’ she added to the thing inside her
sleeve.

From the front, the driver said, ‘We’re almost there.’

I looked over my shoulder at the receding mountains. We’d passed the main road out of Winterstrike – the one on which the pilgrimage had come – some time before and now were
crossing the greater plains in the direction of what I estimated to be the Grand Channel, not far from Caud.

‘Caud’s at war,’ I murmured, just in case they’d forgotten.

We know.’

More traffic was appearing now. We passed a big government vehicle trundling along a commission way, bearing city colours. Caud, not Winterstrike. It only increased my unease. Then other
vehicles started coming into view, lots of them, of all different kinds, straggling out across the plains. Refugees, fleeing the stricken city. The old ground car wove its way between them, deftly
avoiding the heavier traffic, the thundering long-wheel-base trucks and buses without air capacity. All of them looked crammed full: I’d be surprised if there was anyone left in Caud.

Shurr spoke rapidly into the comm, in a clickety language that I did not recognize. A moment later, a reply crackled back.

They’re not far away,’ Shurr reported. We were in the thick of the refugees now but I could see the gleam of the canal in the distance. Then pennants and a tall construction. All the
women in the car gave a little shout, like a ritual exclamation.

‘I take it we’ve found them?’ I said.

That’s the jaggernath, yes. The Queen’s waiting for you,’ Shurr said.

I could have found it by myself, I thought later. It did not look at all Martian, being covered with signs and symbols, with the delicate tracery of haunt-wards that looked nothing like those
you found on Mars. The air around it seemed clearer than the surrounding plains, as though it was accompanied by its own atmosphere. Tall poles and banners clung to it. The ground car shuddered to
a halt not far away and a girl ran out of the construction and clung to the step of the car. The woman in the back opened the door and let the girl inside, speaking to her in their own
language.

‘Am I to meet the Queen now?’ I asked.

‘First, preparation.’

I didn’t like the sound of that, but it turned out to simply mean a wash. If I’d been the Queen, I suppose I’d have objected to meeting grubby Martians, as well. A truck
followed the Queen’s own vehicle, and in it I found a makeshift sonic washroom with a change of clothes, slightly too large. I decided against these, apart from the underthings, and remained
in my black-and-bone. Then I waited, was brought tea and bread, and then more tea, and waited some more. We kept moving all the time, travelling at a snail’s pace parallel to the Grand
Channel. I amused myself by trying to identify passing ships, without great success. The geise snapped at me from time to time, but the centipede’s antidote, or whatever it had been, seemed
to have put a dampener on that, too. I can’t say I wasn’t grateful.

Eventually Shurr reappeared and announced that the Queen would see me shortly: she’d had some unexpected business to take care of. We were to follow the jaggernath and wait until called.
So I walked out onto the plain and followed the vehicle of the Centipede Queen, with the cold grass lashing against my legs and the watery wind from the canal on my face. It was one of the last
peaceful moments that I remember from that time.

But it did not last long. Shurr and I had been walking for perhaps fifteen minutes when an awning at the back of the vehicle rattled up to expose some steps and a narrow doorway. We were
beckoned inside by a tall, slim person who immediately struck me as
wrong,
although I could not have said what was the matter with her. A round face and plum-black eyes, with similar ritual
scarring to the others.

When I stepped through the doorway, it took my eyes some moments to readjust to the low level of light. There was a lamp high on the wall, emitting some kind of smoky substance, and the air
smelled heavy and drugged. I had to struggle not to cough. Several people were standing in front of me: two of them I knew from the pilgrimage and my rescue, but the third – who was similar
– was unknown to me. They all bowed, as if I was an honoured guest.

The Queen will see you now,’ the third person said, and stepped aside.

She isn’t human.
That was my first thought. The thing that looked expressionlessly up from the couch was as lovely as a doll: almost naked, with skin as white and hard as the
carapace of one of her centipedes. Her arms appeared boneless, but then she shifted position and I saw spines moving underneath the skin. Her face was oval, with huge dark eyes and a sullen mouth.
Black hair fell smoothly from a central parting and was then caught up again in a complicated topknot. I could not see, but I strongly suspected that her spine was as ridged as the back of her
arms. Her breasts were bare and lacked nipples, and her crotch was protected by a black metal patch that looked as though it had been inset into the skin; similar patches were set along her shins
and around her wrists. From the look of them, they were probably some kind of haunt device, but I knew very little about Earth tech.

And I didn’t really want to find out.

‘Your name is Essegui Harn?’ She spoke with wondering slowness and I became almost certain that she was drugged.

‘Yes. Matriarch,’ I added, just in case. No one had told me how to address her, so I opted for standard courtesy.

The Queen patted a cushion and something slid deeper beneath it. ‘Come and sit here by me.’

I didn’t want to obey, but didn’t like to refuse, either. I did as she asked, feeling that it would be a considerable social solecism to squash one of the Queen’s bio-eng pets.
Nothing reacted, fortunately.

The Queen immediately put up a hand, much faster than I’d have expected of someone in her apparent condition. Four white fingers and a thumb, as hard and smooth as glass, attached
themselves to my face. I pulled back but the hand came with me until the back of my head was flattened against the seat. The pressure was unbelievable, coming from someone who looked as fragile as
the Queen. She looked straight into my eyes and I could not look away: it was like staring down a well.

‘Don’t be afraid,’ she said. Too late for that. I felt like some little animal caught in a predator’s snare. The bite started to throb and ache, the previous numbness now
quite gone.

‘I’ll try,’ I said out of a dry and nearly speechless mouth.

The Queen opened her lips and breathed. It was like being trapped in Mantis’s haunt device. The Centipede Queen took from me all the visions that Mantis had conjured, and there was one
more, too: one that had nothing to do with alien planets and drowned landscapes.

Instead, I saw my sister.

A fairy tale: a princess is imprisoned in a tower. She sits sadly by the window, her long black hair unbound and wild, her hands knotted in her lap, gazing out across a mountain range, at dusk.
There are stars above her head and one of them suddenly falls, shooting out of the sky and burying itself with a smoulder in the stony earth. The princess gasps. There is someone at her shoulder.
She reaches up and holds out a faltering hand. Someone takes it, someone who is
wrong,
just as the woman at the door of the jaggernath was also
wrong.
Someone – a thin dark
woman in clothes the same colour as her hair – bends down and whispers in her ear. Then the window closes, shutting out the stars and the night, and the princess, from outside view.

Just a fleeting snatch of image, but of course I knew her. It was Leretui, known as Shorn, looking different. Looking mad.

‘She’s alive,’ I heard myself say. Inside my head, the geise leaped and twisted like a fish on the end of a hook.

‘Who is she?’ The Queen’s voice was rasping, hypnotic.

‘She’s my sister,’ I said. ‘She’s missing. But I don’t know where she is. I don’t know how I saw what I saw.’

‘Missing from a locked room,’ another voice said, across the chamber, but my head felt too heavy to lift and look. I felt something tickling the back of my hand and forced myself not
to glance down. ‘How interesting.’ She leaned forward and opened her mouth again. I could see right inside it: not pink like a normal human’s mouth, but quite white and glassy,
with a small spiny tongue and sharp ridges of teeth. She breathed once more and this time I found myself possessed of an unnatural and unfamiliar clarity. There was a strong fresh smell in the
chamber, cutting through the musk.

‘Better?’ asked the Queen, with an arch of eyebrow.

Thank you, yes, I think so, I’m not sure,’ I said, all in a rush. The Queen smiled.

‘Someone will bring you some tea. A good idea? Yes.’ She answered her own question. ‘So, now we know what you are.’

‘And what’s that?’

A sister.’

‘Well, yes.’ Obvious enough, but the Queen went on, ‘Do you know what a whisperer is?’

‘Someone who whispers?’

A whisperer is an old word for someone who hears things. Whispers, in the night. Long ago, they maybe thought they were hearing spirits, or demons, or gods. They are not. Now, of
course—’ her mouth curled indulgently ‘—we realize how foolish and primitive such notions are, for we understand the nature of death, its animations. But then they did not.
And later, equally foolish, they thought that the voices that they heard were evidence of madness.’

‘So what are they?’

‘Transmissions.’

‘From where?’

‘Let’s say – from the past. From things that should have died out long ago, and yet did not. Things who possessed the ability to speak mind-to-mind, through the medium of the
dead world, the Eldritch Realm. I think you are sensitive. I think you can pick up things from other people, perhaps broadcast them.’

‘What do you mean, the past?’

‘Ah,’ the Queen breathed. ‘You know how it is, these days. The time of the bleed, my people call it. Ghosts are everywhere, the dead return through the aid of machines, those
who are supposed to be long gone live on. Mars and Earth have had their day, Essegui Harn. Everything’s breaking down.’

I said nothing.

‘And some people can hear the voices of the dead. Maybe your sister is one.’ A sly glance, as if she knew much that I did not.

‘I see.’ I remembered Leretui, folding to the ground beneath the weedwood trees in the summer light. But I thought the description applied more to Hestia, with her ability to steal
souls and glimpse the future.

‘You said you heard whispering in me. That’s not from the past. That’s something my mothers did to me, and a woman called a majike – do you know what that is?’

The Queen gave an indulgent smile. A sorcerer. Yes, I can hear that you’re cursed. But there are other whispers in your head. Echoes.’

‘I don’t understand,’ I said.

The smile grew sweeter. ‘Neither do I. I wonder if your sister does. You’re an echo of her, you see.’

‘Why are
you
here?’ I asked. And how do you know about this?’

‘My family has ancient texts, from before the Drowning. They give codes of contact, emblems that have reappeared. Symbols that were used by certain of the Changed, once upon a
time.’

‘What if someone else has just – well, stolen them? The original species might have died out by now.’

‘No one steals from the None,’ the Queen said.

‘The None? Who are they?’

The dead-who-speak. It’s what they call themselves.’

‘What does everyone else call them?’

The Queen smiled. ‘Everyone else just calls them
destruction.
’

I was escorted back to one of the accompanying wagons. The group would, so the Queen had told me, release me soon and I would be free to resume my search for my sister. Shurr
would be sent with me, to assist. I asked why they were prepared to help me, pressing the point, but the Queen would not reply. She asked me to tell her the story of Leretui’s disappearance
and I did so, but I did not get the impression that she really understood the nature of my sister’s crime. When I mentioned the vulpen, and the act of transgression that Leretui had
committed, the Queen’s gaze slid up to meet that of the dark-eyed girl, and of course it was then that I realized.