Winterstrike (26 page)

‘Not yet. She’ll be a valuable ally if I can persuade her to join us.’

The vulpen hissed. ‘I told you. Why are you wasting your time with her? She’s not the same as us: she is many, we are one.’

‘She has a matriarchy of her own. She is Changed, so are we.’ Mantis sounded stubborn.

‘Her kind have always gone their own way. Besides, they’re not even Martian.’

Mantis said stiffly, ‘She came here to find us, didn’t she? She came after Leretui.’

‘She came to take her back to Earth. Your Gennera experiments on demotheas. So does the Queen. Why else are her people hiding in the marshes of Ropa, looking for your kindred?’

‘Looking for alliances, I’m sure.’

‘Mantis – you are so loyal,’ the vulpen said, and there was definite affection in his voice. ‘You believe we’re all the same, that we can all be one happy
clan.’

‘I think we can,’ Mantis insisted.

I hadn’t moved, but Mantis’s head went up all the same.

‘What was that?’

Time for me to go, I thought. I slid away from the door. The haunt-armour kicked in at once, whispering advice. There was a room around the corner, in which I could hide. I wasn’t going to
turn down free information. I dodged behind the door as Mantis and the vulpen strode by, and then I made my way out of the turret and into the night.

Ropa. That was on Earth, one of the drowned western continents. A long way from Malay – because I had no doubt that the Queen to whom Mantis had referred was the Centipede Queen herself.
And it had sounded as though Mantis had access to her: was she out on the Plains still, or here in the tower?

When I got back to the ship, I found that Rubirosa had regained consciousness but not her freedom. And even though I’d locked the craft up, Shorn was nowhere to be seen.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ Rubirosa said, very sour. Any chance of setting me free?’

She’d obviously been trying to escape her bonds, from the state of her wrists. I grinned.

‘I don’t think so. Where’s Shorn?’

‘I don’t know. She was speaking to someone, in the back. I couldn’t hear what she was saying. Then she got the door lock open and bolted. I don’t suppose it would be too
much trouble to give me my armour back?’

‘Yes, it would. Sorry.’

‘Look,’ she said. ‘There’s something you’d better know. When I told you about Gennera, I wasn’t being entirely honest.’

There’s a surprise.’

‘Gennera thinks I’m working for her.’

And are you? She sent you to spy on me, didn’t she?’

‘Yes. But I’m reporting back to someone who’s watching her. Someone in the Matriarchy.’

And who would that be?’

‘Her name’s Sulie Mar.’

‘My
mother?

Your mother’s a powerful woman, Hestia.’

‘I’m not doubting that,’ I said. ‘I didn’t think she was that worried about me.’

Rubirosa snorted. ‘She’s not worried about
you.
You were incidental to all this. She’s worried about what Gennera’s up to.’

You can prove this, can you?’

‘Talk to your mother.’

‘I will.’

‘And in exchange, how about some information from you?’

‘Very well. Gennera’s been breeding demotheas,’ I said.

‘What? They don’t exist.’ Her look of surprise could be genuine, or it could not.

‘It seems I just left you locked up with one.’ I hesitated. ‘How would you like a trip to Earth, Rubirosa?’

‘I think you’d better explain,’ she said.

So I did.

Interlude: Shurr – Mars

Segment Three was nipping at her wrist. She felt a sudden cool surge through her body, memories and images flooding in along with antiseptics, rejuvenators,
anti-spasmodics, as the bioengineered segment did its medicinal work.

‘Shurr! Are you all right?’

She raised her head. The Martian sky wheeled above her and the odours of sage and cold came as a shock. The wagon stood a short distance away and her companions crouched by her side. The Queen
was not among them. They were alone on the plain; the refugee convoy had moved on.

The woman – Essegui—’

‘She’s fled,’ Mhor said.

‘She attacked me,’ Shurr said, sitting up. She was aware of an all-encompassing sense of failure. ‘Ghuan—’

‘Ghuan is dead. We’ll grow another one,’ her companion, Mhor, said reassuringly. She put out a hand and lightly touched Shurr’s head.

‘But the Queen—’

There’s been a message. Come inside.’ Mhor helped her to rise and led her back inside the wagon. The Queen’s perfume hung heavily in the air: Shurr might almost believe that
she was still there. The pheromone-enhanced scent soothed her.

‘Sit,’ Mhor instructed. Shurr did so, and Segment Three slid onto her lap. Shurr held out her wrist and the centipede bit. The Queen appeared, superimposed over the empty couch, and
smiling.

‘Shurr. If you live. I hope so. Don’t come after me. Our enemies have found me now, but don’t be concerned. They won’t hurt me and even if they do, I have left
instructions at the palace. A new queen’s being grown.’ The Queen leaned forward, her beautiful, empty face compassionate. ‘Don’t be angry with me, Shurr. I’m where I
need to be.’

Then she faded, shimmering against the air. Shurr made a small, inarticulate sound and immediately Mhor was there, an arm around her shoulders. Segment Three coiled about her wrist.

‘She’s left instructions,’ Mhor said. ‘She’s recruited locally, she said. We’re to return to Earth without her.’

‘But—’

‘All will be well.’ Mhor’s face was serene, but Shurr could not sustain that level of faith, even though she knew it to be a betrayal.

They’re not like us,’ Mhor said, when she voiced this thought. ‘They work from a different perspective.’

‘I know that, but all the same—’

‘You know the Queen isn’t as you see her,’ Mhor said. ‘Remember, when the old Queen died?’

And Shurr did remember, how could she not: the lovely face and perfect body cracking open, the shell breaking to reveal the mass of squirming symbiotes within, tiny organisms except for the
massive central spine. Remembering how Khant had reverently picked up the fragments of the spine as it came apart, placing each one in frozen stasis apart from the pincered head with its faceted
diamond eyes, the processing core which would form the memories of the new Queen.

‘We’re here to do their bidding,’ Mhor said, with only the slightest hint of reproof.

‘I know.’ And Shurr was a little more content then, though a trickle of forbidden thoughts tugged at the very edges of her mind: who put us in thrall to this organism, this hive
mind? Where does it come from? Did it evolve, or was it made, or did it come – as she had heard whispered – from the far stars? But those thoughts were not permitted and they soon
faded, like dreams, or like the smiling image of the Queen herself, gone into the shadows of the alien day.

TWENTY

There wasn’t time to run, from where I was hiding amongst the boulders. The ship glided over us, coming low, just as it had over the Caud refugee camp. I felt,
impossibly, my shadow snatched by the shadow of the dreadnought, as though it was a physical extension of my own body. I was pulled in its wake, like someone caught in a riptide. I had a swimming,
incoherent view of the landscape below me, then a moment of blackness as if I’d passed out, though I didn’t think I had. My feet touched metal and I staggered back against a wall,
banging my elbow. The pain gave me clarity. I was in a hold, a huge arching chamber beneath metal struts like the ribcage of some mechanical beast. My elbow hurt but this wasn’t all: my soul
felt bruised, as if it had been beaten with some unnatural hammer, and even the geise seemed to crouch, whimpering, in a corner of my mind. At the end of the chamber, a wind was roaring in and I
saw the tips of the red mountains, parallel with the doorway: we were rising. The floor tilted as the ship lurched, sending me onto my knees; I grasped at a strut and only just stopped myself from
rolling out of the hatch. Steely fingers closed around my wrist. I tried to wrench my hand away and failed. I looked up and to my horror Mantis was standing over me. Something stung my arm and the
world blurred. Mantis said something I didn’t understand, but I suspected it was:
You’re coming with me.

In the cell, I passed the time by counting the number of people who had now attempted to kidnap me. So far, I made it about a dozen, including the excissiere who now sat
hunched on a chair outside the cell, filing nails that were more akin to talons. Occasionally she glanced up, rarely in my direction, apparently focusing on something I could not see and speaking
to someone I could not hear. Spirits, or something in her head? Impossible to say. I asked for water and was ignored. Eventually one of the red-robed women came in and spoke in a low voice to the
warrior, who rose and strode out. I was left alone in the cell, but not for long.

‘Essegui Harn?’ someone said. I spun around. Another ghost stood behind me in the cell: a woman with a flayed, grinning face. The image was so ghastly I took a step back.

‘I’m a friend of your cousin’s,’ said this thing. ‘I’m the Library.’

‘Sorry?’

‘Hestia?’ the ghost said, patiently. ‘Your cousin? We met in Caud. I tagged along.’ She tried to look self-deprecating and failed.

‘What
are
you?’

Well,’ the ghost said, sitting down on the bench that served as a bed. ‘Technically speaking, I’m not the whole Library. I’m a particular archive. Don’t need to go
into that now.’

‘So what’s an archive and a friend of my cousin doing here? And what is this thing we’re in?’

‘It’s a relic. Like me, I suppose. Have you heard of Mantis the Mad?’

‘I’ve met her.’

‘She used to be a figment of fairy stories. In the country districts, people used her to frighten their kids. They were right. This is her ship.’

‘But she can’t be that old.’

The Library inclined her ravaged head. ‘She’s a clone. I met the first version, long ago.’

‘But you said you were a Library.’

The Library frowned. ‘Yes, and yet, I have memories . . . Mantis and I were contemporaries. I think.’

‘Caud wasn’t more than a – what? A settlement, at that point?’

‘Caud
started as a
library,’ the warrior said. ‘A building in the secret hills, holding texts rescued from the cities of the plain when society began breaking
down.’

‘I’d never heard that.’ I shot a look at the chamber beyond the cell. The stanchions bore the metal faces of demons, only subtle distortions from the faces of the Changed
themselves, probably a superstitious attempt to protect the ship from whatever waited for it in haunt-space. I couldn’t even remember whether they’d had haunt-tech in Mantis’s
day.

‘So why are you here? What have you got to do with Mantis?’

A vested interest,’ the Library said. Her image flickered. ‘Your cousin’s in trouble.’

You know what Hestia’s doing?’ Realizing that the Library might in some way be connected with my cousin made my spirits rise.

Yes.’ A grim smile. ‘You’re closer than you know. Mantis has gone after her. And so has the one who’s after Mantis.’

‘What?’ But then the dreadnought shuddered under my feet and I realized we’d changed course. I had a sudden dizzying sense that the huge ship had plummeted.

‘Excuse me,’ the Library said. ‘I’ve got things to do.’ And she was gone into thin air. But not before she’d reached out and opened the door of the cell.

I fled through it before anyone had a chance to come back and stop me. Running through the corridors of the ship was itself like travelling through some ancient castle: Mantis must have found it
a home from home. Everything was of a dull burnished metal, rimmed with rust. That didn’t inspire me with confidence: it seemed all too likely that the ship might simply disintegrate if put
under too much strain. The twisted faces of the demons stared out at me from every corner, making it seem as if I moved through a haunt-infested realm. After a while I stopped noticing them.

This particular bay of the ship had, unexpectedly, a viewport. It was rimed with frost and heavily stained, but I could look out through its small bulbous eye and see the mountains swinging
below. That city – clinging to its steep cliffs above a snaking river – must be the Noumenon. Then the ship veered up and I saw a little craft shoot out from below the curving side. I
thought of the Library: was that my cousin in there?

‘Hestia,’ I whispered. But I didn’t want to risk discovery while I was gazing out of the viewport. Then the geise twinged inside my head, making my hands go to my forehead. I
leaned, panting, back against the wall, then glanced out of the viewport again. The little ship was gone and we were moving away from the Noumenon, the city falling behind as the dreadnought glided
out into the red sunlight. The Crater Plain stretched beneath and I saw Olympus reaching up into the aquamarine sky.

Around the corner, I caught up with Mantis again. She was bending over a console, a thing like a bronze pedestal, growing out of the floor. Hiding behind a stanchion, I could see what looked
like an early version of a map array flickering over the surface of the console, and realized that Mantis was punching in coordinates. Seen from this viewpoint, her angular frame reminded me
somewhat of the gaezelles of the Crater Plain: knobbed vertebrae along the curving spine.

The ship was descending. I didn’t know whether we were coming down onto the Plain itself, or whether we had turned back. I wished the Library would return, my only objective source of
information. And then I felt something tickling my wrist. I jerked, almost betraying my presence: Mantis’s veiled head snapped up to stare in the direction of the stanchion, but then she
turned back to the console. I looked down at the tiny thing looped around my wrist. It was a centipede.

TWENTY-ONE

I looked towards the place where the Noumenon lay: at the ghostly houses with their spectral occupants, at the column of smoke rising into the morning sky and at the still-dim
expanse of cold land into which my cousin had vanished.