Winterstrike (21 page)

The Queen had seen me looking. ‘Yes, he is,’ she admitted. ‘Although to come here, a physical change was necessary.’

‘She’s – he’s – been modified?’
He.
How odd that sounded, that archaic Martian word, uttered without vilification or even revulsion. Despite my
sympathies for Leretui, I had to stop myself from bolting out of the room; it was worse than the centipedes, in a way. And from the look in the young man’s eyes, the relationship between
herself –
himself,
I corrected – and the Queen was not platonic.

Unnatural. But not, it seemed, on Earth.

Now, back in the swaying wagon, I thought of Leretui and of the dead and of men. I’d asked the Queen more about the None, but she hadn’t known, or claimed not to: it was a name from
the far past, the lost long ago, a name around which terror still clung. It had been hard to make much sense out of the Queen’s ramblings. Something ancient had returned, or seemed to have
done, and Leretui was connected with it in some way, but I could not see how.

They’d said they could help me find Leretui, but they hadn’t told me how this would be done, either. The Queen had seen what I’d seen, that fairy-tale vision, but neither of us
knew how to interpret it. I didn’t even know if it was Leretui’s real location, or a metaphor for something: such things had happened before. If only she’d been looking out at a
public monument . . .

I was so lost in my thoughts that it was a few minutes before I realized that the wagon had stopped moving. What amounted to a refugee convoy had progressed in fits and starts, so I thought this
was just some inevitable hitch. I got up and went over to the window hatch, nonetheless.

Outside was a sea of vehicles, stretching across the Plain. People were shouting and calling to one another, more than the usual subdued hubbub. There were cries from up ahead and the place
where we’d come to a stop was strangely dark, though faint sunlight washed over the rest of the Plain. I went quickly to the back door of the vehicle and jumped down. Outside, I cannoned into
Shurr, who was running round the side of the wagon. Her dark face was a distorted mask. She cried, ‘The Queen! The Queen!’

‘What’s wrong—?’ I started to say, and then I looked up.

It was enormous. It was green and gold, like a beetle, shot with amethyst. From its gleaming carapace hung a thing like a huge hook, bristling with wires and sparks of electricity. It brushed
against one of the pylons of the Queen’s vehicle and a shimmering radiance washed out into the air, penetrating the shadows in which we stood. Shurr was already running towards the
Queen’s wagon, brandishing a small slim weapon, but the whole vehicle now was enveloped in sparkles of light, like the sun on water. I remembered the blue place I had seen, the place on
Earth: Khul Pak. A terrible, desolate cry came from the interior of the wagon. The hook jerked and then the thing that hung above us was shooting upwards, a squat upper-atmosphere craft that
quickly became a bright star in the heavens and was gone.

Shurr threw open the doors of the Queen’s wagon. The young man sprawled unconscious, or perhaps dead, at the threshold. But the Centipede Queen of Khul Pak was nowhere to be seen.

SEVENTEEN

Rubirosa got to her feet. I’d have followed her, but I was still transfixed by the spectral faces that were seething out of the white wall in front of me. I recognized a
couple of generic types – these were women of the Southern Plains Matriarchy, that oval-faced girl with the sharp bones was surely from Ord. Haunts, used to power something and possibly
connected with the bomb itself, and now released into the atmosphere. They shrieked upwards like rockets, trailing a smoky mist behind them.

Someone was shouting: ‘Get out! Get out!’ I dragged myself away from the released ghosts and followed Rubirosa among the maze of awnings and fallen plaster. The shine of the
marauder’s armour led me through the dim regions at the back of a tea-house and then we found ourselves in the kitchen.

I straightened up. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘Listen,’ Rubirosa said. She put out a warning arm, stopping me from going forward. Outside the tea-house, there was a high, painful whine.

‘Something’s coming down!’ A moment later, it hit. The teahouse shook and more plaster fell from the ceiling, but the beams held.

The whole place is under attack. Anything to do with you?’

‘Not that I know of.’ The marauder turned to me with a frown. ‘I don’t think either of us is
that
important, are we?’

Another hit and the tea-house would be down around our heads, I thought. I rattled the kitchen door, which had stuck, and wrenched it open. We fell back out onto the street, into a sea of
panicking people.

I shoved through the crowd, heading in the direction of the barge. A haunt screamed past me like a gunpowder rocket. Rubirosa grabbed my arm. ‘Look!’ She pointed upward.

Something was descending through the cleft of the mountains, something familiar. It took me a moment to recognize it, then it turned and I saw the dreadnought I’d last glimpsed out on the
plains, rising up from the Grand Channel and capsizing a ferry in its wake. Haunts were being sucked up toward it like moths to a flame, sizzling out against its flickering sides. A blast of light
from its port bow sent fire shooting out across the valley and briefly illuminated a building at the summit as it erupted into flames, but I did not think it had been aiming at the building itself.
A shadow passed over the peaks: another aircraft. Fragments of burning material rained down and one thin strand clung to my sleeve. I knew better than to brush it off: that was a good way to become
possessed. I dodged under an awning, Rubirosa close behind, and we dived down a flight of steps. If I’d got my geography right, the mooring was not far away, but I wondered at the wisdom of
returning to the barge: not the world’s swiftest craft, especially with a bomb on board and a captain I couldn’t trust.

‘The thing you put on the barge!’ I shouted to Rubirosa. ‘How sensitive is it?’

‘Not sure.’

‘So all this haunt activity might set it off?’

The marauder gave me an uneasy glance. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘But you’re not certain?’

Another blast from the dreadnought swallowed Rubirosa’s words. We ran for the mooring, arrowing through angled streets and leaping over fallen masonry. Then I leaped for what I took to be
a low wall and fell heavily: the wall was low, but only on one side: the floor had caved into a cellar and I now sprawled on the rubble. Rubirosa’s face appeared over the top of the wall,
looking somehow inhuman.

‘Are you all right?’

I was winded but not, I thought, seriously hurt, though there was a sharp ache in my ribcage when I breathed in which suggested bruising or a crack. ‘Yes.’ But then the shattered
walls around me started to shimmer and break apart. A huge lump of rock came loose from the main wall and hurtled towards me. I tried to roll out of the way, but then it struck . . . and passed
straight through. I had a sudden glimpse down into a gaping chasm, right through the middle of broken walls and floors, all the way down to what looked like a black pool. A moment later, I was
lying by the side of that pool as the city broke down around me.

I didn’t understand what had happened. Rubirosa’s face was nowhere to be seen but the stars above the city were very bright. I got to my feet, with a stab from the rib, and hobbled
around the perimeter of the pool. It wasn’t until I reached the opposite point, halfway round, that I realized there was someone there: standing motionless in the shadows. I stopped dead.
Beside me, the Library suddenly shimmered into sight. She said, whispering in my ear, ‘Do you see her?’

‘I see.’

The figure was shadowy and wore a long hood that concealed her face. For a moment she shivered and I saw the outline of the wall behind her. ‘She’s a haunt,’ I said. ‘Or
a hologram.’

‘She registers as real,’ the Library said.

And she was real enough when she stepped forward and a sharp stinging constriction came around my throat. The figure raised a hand and pulled me in; I went stumbling, like an animated doll. Her
hand closed over my face, I tried to fight but could not. Behind me the Library cried out, or so I thought, but this was not like the battle with the excissiere. From the corner of my eye I saw the
Library collapse inward, folding down into herself, and then there were only shadows.

I can’t say I was unconscious. I was dimly aware of what was going on, but it was vague and inchoate. I was led through a myriad of rooms and passages, some of them modern – all
metal and polished stone – and some antique, no more than channels in the earth. For a few minutes I thought I walked across the surface of the planet as it had been before humans ever came,
before there was any life at all except the thin smears of bacteria deep in the ice-locked caverns. I could breathe but the cone of Olympus reared up over me, pressing me down. My boots scuffed in
red dust. Above me, the sky was a pallid ochre. It was very cold, colder even than Winterstrike in the depths of Ombre, but just as I was about to faint from it, a chilly wind blew and green curled
up in the dust under my feet. Soon I walked through a landscape of needle pine and pitchwood, the early engineered conifers, saw the glint of water ahead. Olympus was still there, shadowy at the
edges of my sight, but now its huge summit was white with snow and I could see lights on its slopes. I thought of spirits, of the old stories of the haunted hills, and shivered.

Then cities were rising up around me, the old cities of the Crater Plains and the start and heart of the Martian mythos. Yere and Shua, Tokamay and Khalt, cities of the saltmarshes and the deep
deserts. A woman rushed past me, gaunt and tall, armour-clad with black hair streaming. Her mouth gaped, her eyes stared; I remembered the mad matriarch Mantis and thought of ghosts.

‘There she goes,’ a familiar, creaky voice said. I blinked. Old Mars was gone. I lay on a pallet bed, a blank cracked ceiling above me. Thin air was trickling in around the warped
frame of a window, a breath upon my face. The Library stood looking out, feet braced, her back towards me.

‘Who—?’ I remembered the woman. ‘That was Mantis? Where
are
we?’

‘You’ve seen it before,’ said the Library.

‘This is Temperire? Mantis’s tower?’ I got off the bed and went to the window, instinctively moving to shoulder the warrior aside and nearly stumbling as I passed through her.
It was almost dark, but there was a last gleam of sun low on the horizon and in its light I saw the canal, with the lamps of ships slowly passing up it to the Noumenon. The shadows of the rocks lay
squat and black, scattered over the plain.

A tall door, almost too high and narrow for a normal person. Our ancestors were different, after all: experimentation, resulting in the Changed. The door was locked and though I rattled it, it
would not budge. There was none of the feel of haunt-tech and yet the place felt infested, all the same.

‘It’s not a mechanical lock,’ the Library unnecessarily informed me.

I sat back down on the pallet. I felt bruised; my rib burned and the confusion of the last half hour was overwhelming. All I wanted to do was to lie down and close my eyes, but I had to think.
Had the Noumenon fallen? I wasn’t even sure.

That weapon I’d delivered to Gennera. What exactly did it do? I fought back dismay.

Like the door, the window was bolted shut, but in this case the bolt was rusty and old. After some minutes of determined tugging, the whole thing gave way in a shower of rotten wood and ancient
nails. I breathed in snowy air. The sill was narrow, but a short distance away was another window. The only difficulty was the drop, which I estimated to be in the region of a thousand feet or so.
It was now dark enough that I couldn’t see what lay immediately beneath, but it was probably rocks.

‘Are you going out there?’ the Library asked. I thought I detected a familiar note in her engineered voice: the sort of tone that reminds you of your mother.

‘It’s the only way out,’ I said. ‘I don’t get vertigo.’ Well, not much. I hauled myself up over the sill and stood, teetering over nothing. Flattening myself
against the wall, I stepped out and caught a handhold on the frame of the next window. As I stood on the sill, the Library hovered disapprovingly beside me in midair.

‘It’s all right for you,’ I said. I squinted in through the window. Another small room, but this was empty and the door was open – in fact, it didn’t look as though
there was a door there. I kicked the window in with the heel of one foot and it bounced on its frame. Next moment, I dropped into the room.

Whether or not the ruin used haunt-tech was irrelevant. The room was full of ghosts: I could hear their whispering spirits trapped in the old walls, which breathed out damp and must and
despair.

‘Very busy,’ was the Library’s only comment.

‘Is that Mantis?’

The warrior frowned. ‘I don’t – I should not say her name, if I were you.’

‘Very well.’ I was beginning to conceive an unreasonable fear of Mantis, long dead but somehow, I felt, still here and still mad. The vision of the woman with the streaming hair was
forcibly to the forefront of my mind. I told myself that I was infected with fairy stories, the legends dredged up by Peto on the barge as we crossed the plain.

‘What brought me here?’ I whispered to the warrior.

‘Someone who isn’t human.’

Not very helpful, even if accurate.

‘Do you mean a haunt-engine? Do you know why?’

The Library shook her head. ‘I can’t read this place,’ she confessed. ‘Not well.’

‘Yet part of you is from the same epoch?’

It was a guess, but a ripple passed over the face of the Library, a shimmering alteration that, brief as it was, left her looking concerned. The flayed brow furrowed.

‘I think that’s true. I can’t remember.’ Her gaze turned inward, as if processing. I gave up. By now, the passage had taken us deeper into the ruin, ancient layers of
stone and metal, buckled out of shape as if by fire. The stone itself looked vitrified, but that was common in much of Winterstrike itself, a relic of earlier days.