Winterstrike (32 page)

Up and up. There was no sign of the vulpen, though I could still smell that odd, rank odour. Turning a corner, I caught sight of them: Mantis and my sister. I ran down the passage, in time to
see Mantis speak to Leretui, invisible now behind a door, and go on ahead.

I waited a moment until I was certain that she wasn’t coming back immediately, then knocked on the door.

‘Leretui!’

‘Who is it?’ my sister’s faltering voice asked.

‘It’s me. It’s Essegui.’

The door opened immediately and Leretui’s pale face peered through the crack. ‘Essegui!’ I couldn’t interpret her expression: as much dismay as anything else, replaced
swiftly by a kind of calculation that I didn’t recall seeing in my sister’s face before.

‘Did our mothers send you?’ That wasn’t quite what I was expecting, either. ‘You’ve come!’ or ‘Thank heaven!’ would have been more like it.

‘They tried,’ I said. Partly true: they’d succeeded, as well. ‘Can I come in?’ Standing out in full view of whoever might come down the corridor was making me
nervous.

‘I suppose so,’ Leretui said. I didn’t give her a chance to change her mind and stepped into the room.

The light was better in here, and the room might actually have been described as well appointed. I closed the door behind me. Leretui looked different: no longer the timid girl, nor the bitter
Malcontent. There was a glitter in her eyes which reminded me of my cousin Hestia, when she was in the middle of plotting something.

‘You’ve come for nothing,’ my sister said, and that sounded more like Shorn than Leretui. ‘When Hestia was here—’ I jumped at the name, as though she’d
pulled it out of my head ‘—there were things I didn’t understand. Now I do.’ She looked smug and the note of self-importance wasn’t one I’d heard in her voice
before, either. She turned to the window, to the single shining moon, tossing her hair back over her shoulder. She sat down on the bed with her back to me.

‘Did you leave of your own accord?’ I asked.

‘Of course not.’ Scornful, without turning round. ‘How could I? You saw how they kept me. You
helped’

I started to say
I didn’t have a choice,
but the words died on my tongue.

‘I know how strong they are,’ Leretui said. ‘Our mothers.’ There was the note of condescension in her voice now, also unfamiliar. ‘I know how hard it is to resist
them.’
But you didn’t even try.
I wasn’t sure whether I heard the accusation in what she did not say, or whether it was my own guilt, speaking.

‘How did you get out?’ I asked.

‘I don’t really know.’ This time, she sounded unconcerned, without even the wonderment one might have expected. For her, it was clear, the episode was past and gone, with only
the bitterness remaining.

You must have
some
idea,’ I insisted.

‘Why does it matter?’ Finally, Leretui turned. She gave a small smile. ‘I’m here now.’

‘Is Hestia still here?’

‘I don’t know.’ Leretui looked even more smug, as though she’d done something particularly clever, and I wondered where my timid little sister had gone. Perhaps we
ourselves had killed her. ‘She asked me to go with her. We went to – other places. But I ran away. Couldn’t trust her, you see. Her friend was planning to take me back to Gennera
and I couldn’t have that.’

‘Who is Gennera?’ I asked, and that was when she told me what my mothers had done.

When she fell silent, I stared at her. I’d have found it hard to believe, but I could see it in her face: the likeness to Mantis. And I knew what the majike – Gennera – had
done to me. I didn’t know what to say. I took a step back and Leretui smiled.

‘Where was Hestia headed?’ I asked, trying to regain some control. ‘Did our mothers send her after you, too?’ It would have made more sense, I thought, than sending me:
Hestia the Matriarchy spy had abilities that I did not.

‘I told you. I don’t know.’

I didn’t want to hear the answer to the next question, but it forced its way out. ‘What about the vulpen?’

‘What about them?’

‘This is a vulpen stronghold, isn’t it?’

‘You—
’ she spat the word out, ‘you and my mothers turned me into a pervert. That’s what you said I was, a deviant, because I was seen with a male creature
for less than a handful of minutes. You took my name away and you shut me up in that house and so now, why should I not take a male as my lover and be what you have made me? I know what I am now,
so get out, Essegui. Get out of my room and my home and be thankful that for the sake of the childhood we had, I haven’t turned you over to them.’

I really meant to go. She was right, it seemed to me. Even if she was not, then whatever dreadful circumstances she found herself in now – among men-remnants, among outcasts and exiles
– seemed better than what she had left. The geise was shrieking in triumph in my head and it had Alleghetta’s voice. A flicker of movement caught my sight and I looked across the room.
Alleghetta stood there, more solid than before, and smiling.

‘What are you staring at?’ Leretui asked.

‘Bring her back!’ Alleghetta commanded.

‘She doesn’t want to come,’ I said aloud.

‘Who are you talking to?’

‘It doesn’t matter whether she wants to or not,’ Alleghetta said. She made a quick gesture and her gaze flicked off to the side. ‘She’ll come. Tell her to open the
way.’

‘I don’t—’

Tell her!’ Alleghetta demanded, and the geise rose up in my head, singing in a high-pitched humming buzz that made me clap my hands to my ears.

‘Alleghetta—’ I whispered.

‘What is it?’ Leretui got to her feet and took me by the shoulders, shaking me. ‘What are you doing?’ Then she looked up. I felt the geise detach itself from my soul,
taking part of it away. I think I cried out. I saw the geise flicker between Leretui and myself and knew that its ability to remove itself depended on the physical contact between us: we made up a
circuit along which it could travel. I tried to push Leretui away but her hands were gripping my shoulders with the force of rage and I could not break free. It sparkled as it flew, a little
blacklight matrix glittering in the air. It entered Leretui’s left eye and she screamed, clapping a hand to her face, but it was too late. Something was opening up behind my sister: a rip in
the air, expanding fast. Beyond it, I glimpsed the Eldritch Realm, haunt-space, and we were falling through.

‘No!’ Leretui cried and the loss in her voice seemed to tear the air even further. ‘No!’ But the gap was closing. I lost consciousness for a moment, dying, and when I
opened my eyes we stood in sudden silence in the mansion of Winterstrike, with Alleghetta before us and someone else standing triumphant.

She reached out and grabbed Leretui by the hair. My sister screamed and at once I was back in our childhood, with Alleghetta raging at Leretui, at Hestia, at myself. Hestia and I had known early
on to avoid her, to run and hide in the greenhouses or the cellars or the winter garden, but Leretui had always been slower, dreamier. It seemed, however, that she’d learned something from
the vulpen. She snapped round and sank her teeth into Alleghetta’s wrist. It was my mother’s turn to yell. I stepped in, seizing Alleghetta by the arm and forcing her round.

‘Let her go!’

Someone stepped forward and dragged Leretui off. For a moment, seeing a dumpy figure, I thought it was Thea, then realized it was the majike, Gennera Khine. Her black garments fluttered as she
touched something to my sister’s neck and Leretui slumped to the floor, dazed but not unconscious. Alleghetta’s wrist was bleeding heavily: surely Leretui’s teeth weren’t
that sharp?

‘Essegui, leave us,’ the majike commanded.

‘I don’t think so,’ I retorted. ‘How did you bring us back?’

The majike looked smug. ‘I wasn’t expecting it to work.’

Even though a fragment of my soul had gone with it, the relief left by the departure of the geise was enormous, eclipsing everything else. ‘She didn’t want to come back. Can you
blame her, after what we’ve done to her?’

‘You stupid girl,’ Alleghetta hissed. I wasn’t sure which one of us she was speaking to. ‘You think you were being punished?’

‘What else could you call it?’ Leretui answered. Her face was white and blazing, barely human. ‘Shutting me up out of sight, keeping me from everyone and everything? What else
could it be but punishment?’

‘Actually,’ Alleghetta said icily, ‘one might call it “protection”.’

Leretui stared at her. ‘From what?’

‘What do you think? From what you did and what you found.’

Alleghetta,’ I said. I stood and faced her, though I found that I did not like to turn my back on my sister. I wanted confirmation. ‘What is Leretui?’

A sly look crept over my mother’s face, one that I had seen a thousand times before. And free of the geise, I slapped her.

I’d always stopped short of physical violence before now, though I’d come close. Duty, if not love, had held me back, because she’d certainly merited it. Alleghetta grew
perfectly still. The mark of my hand burned red on her white cheek. Leretui watched, avid. This should, I thought, have happened long ago. Then Alleghetta said, very politely, ‘Essegui, would
you come with me for a moment?’

My sister surged forward and seized Alleghetta by the arm, as if my act had permitted her own motion. The majike stepped forward again, but held back. ‘You’re not going to shut me in
again!’

Alleghetta gave her a long, considering look. ‘No,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I will.’ Leretui stepped back, surprised. ‘But I do need to speak to your sister
alone.’

A day before, I’d have told her that whatever she had to say could be said in front of Leretui as well, but now I was not so certain. I kept silent, wondering where Thea was. After all, we
had two mothers, however ineffectual Thea might be.

‘Very well,’ Leretui said, stung into concession. She wrapped her arms around herself and walked out into the corridor. We followed.

‘My study, please, Essegui,’ Alleghetta said. It actually sounded like a request, not a command: perhaps the slap had done some good after all. Leretui was standing by one of the
tall windows on the landing, looking outwards. Glancing over her shoulder, I saw that it was mid-afternoon, with a drift of snow floating down over the city and the lamps already lit. A barge
slipped quietly along the canal, a black block between the leafless branches of the weedwood trees. Whatever had been done to me here, whatever remained to be done, this was still my home, a long
way from the Crater Plain and that sinister ruin, and suffused with unexpected relief I followed Alleghetta down the hall, our heels tapping on the marble like the tick of an ancient clock.

Alleghetta’s parlour was a wide room on the first floor, looking out over that same view of lawn and canal and weedwood grove on one side, but on the other facing the northern part of the
city. The bell tower was sometimes visible in a direct line of sight, when it wasn’t snowing. Now, all I could see were a neighbouring mansion and the dome of the Winterstrike opera house,
which rose in a black lamplit curve through the falling flakes. I watched the snow come down. I could sense Alleghetta watching me and forced myself not to turn around: I didn’t want to give
her the satisfaction.

Eventually, Alleghetta said, ‘Essegui?’

‘What?’

‘Where did she go? What was it like out there?’ There was an odd wistfulness in her voice, and for the first time it struck me what a constrained life Alleghetta must have led:
consumed with duty and appearance and formality. It was only at the summer-house that she’d ever seemed close to relaxation, in a stiff sort of way.

We were in the Crater Plain,’ I said. ‘A tower, a ruin. Close to the Noumenon.’ Instinct warned me away from any discussion of the vulpen, or my cousin, but it seemed that
Alleghetta was forewarned, for she said, ‘The men-remnants. Were they there?’

‘Yes.’

As I feared,’ Alleghetta murmured, half to herself, I thought. ‘Like calls to like.’

I turned to face her, putting my back to the snow. ‘I repeat: what is Leretui?’

‘What did she tell you?’

That you were paid by that majike to have her created. That you’d raise her in exchange for a position in the Matriarchy, if the experiment worked. Is it true?’

‘I certainly wasn’t expecting her to turn into a deviant and vanish into thin air, if that’s what you mean.’

And what about me?’

‘You were a usual sort of child. There was nothing special about your creation, put it that way. Thea wanted a baby and of course we needed an heir, so you were it. If something had
befallen you, we’d have had you replaced.’

‘It’s
so
nice to be wanted.’

There’s no need to be sentimental. Look at what you’ll gain from it, when Thea and I are gone.’

‘What are you going to do with Leretui, now?’ It struck me that Alleghetta might simply try to have her done away with. After all, everyone would now know that the Malcontent of
Calmaretto had gone missing, and apart from Alleghetta and myself, no one knew she’d returned. That familiar, shifty expression came back to my mother’s face.

‘She won’t be confined – not in the room, anyway. But you do see that she can’t be allowed to leave the house? For her own safety.’

‘Who is she in danger from, exactly?’ I myself had been the recipient of several attempts on liberty and life. I wanted to know who I was dealing with.

‘I don’t know.’ Alleghetta was lying, I thought. ‘The Matriarchy was very insistent that I should keep her confined, for her own sake. I know what you thought. But it was
all for her own benefit.’

‘If she’s already managed to escape from a sealed room, I don’t see how you propose to keep her in the house.’

‘Don’t worry about your sister,’ Alleghetta said, with a return to confidence. I felt her hand touch my shoulder and tried not to flinch. ‘She need no longer be your
concern. I’m actually very pleased with you, Essegui. You carried out your task.’ If I’d waited for her to apologize for placing me under the geise, I’d still be standing in
front of that parlour window.