by Glen Cook
She settled into the one chair standing on her side of the room, waiting. A shaken Bagnel hovered in no-meth’s land. He sped Marika a look of appeal.
“I am waiting,” she said after half a minute of silence.
They had found their strategy wanting, though they took its failure well. One of the males finally said, “Not long ago you placed the brethren in a tight position. You tied us up so we had no choice but to do something we considered despicable.”
“That is just beginning, old-timer. If you persist in arming, training, sending out criminals to attack silth, you are going to find yourselves in even tighter places. You will find the Reugge have so many criminals under sentence we will be selling their sentences to Communities that have a shortage of condemned laborers.”
Her confidence rattled the male for a moment. But he recovered, held unswervingly to what had to be a prepared line of argument. “We have decided to do unto you as you did unto us.”
“Really? Why do I get the feeling I am about to witness the unfolding of a grand delusion?”
“We do not delude ourselves!” he snapped. She could almost hear him thinking, You silth bitch.
“Arrogant silth bitch,” she corrected aloud. “Come ahead, then. Try me.”
For the first time the Serke looked genuinely uncertain. The appearance of confidence becomes confidence, Marika reminded herself.
The male who had not yet spoken did so now. From several glances he had thrown Bagnel’s way, Marika inferred that he must somehow be her friend’s superior. He said, “Some time ago you ambushed a joint force in the Ponath. You once threatened to make the circumstances public. We would like it noted that the same event can be used to your detriment. If you refuse to cooperate with us.”
Marika was not surprised. She had expected that Kublin would come back to haunt her eventually. But she had let the matter float, hoping she could do the right thing intuitively when he did.
The male suggested, “You might want to send your guards outside.”
“I might not. There are two Serke of exalted status here. I might not be able to kill both of them quickly enough to keep you from sticking a knife into me. Go ahead with your threats.”
“As you wish. You allowed a littermate to escape that ambush. Surrounding circumstances suggest that you did more than that to assure his safety. Suppose that were made known?”
The one thing Marika had done about the matter was to send a group of huntresses, picked by Grauel, to Critza. They were under instructions to lie low and capture any snoopers. So she controlled the physical proofs. “Go ahead. If that is your best.”
“What we have in mind is presenting the evidence to your most senior. She, I believe, is your principal anchor within the Reugge Community.”
Marika shook her head, honestly less worried by the moment. “Go with it. See what it gets you. While you are at it, though, why not up the stakes? Why not try to buy me somehow?”
That caused more consternation.
“We will present Most Senior Gradwohl with the evidence.”
“I said go ahead. You will have assembled a fair file on me by now. You know I do not bluff.”
“We know your bluff has not been called. We know you are young. A characteristic of youth is that it takes long risks, betting that older, more cautious heads will not hazard stakes as dangerous.”
“Play your stakes,” Marika said. “Grauel, our presence here seems pointless. Tell the bath to ready the darkship.”
“Wait,” one of the silth said. “You have not heard what we want.”
“To tell the truth, I do not care what you want. It would not be anything in my interest, or in the interest of the Reugge Community.”
“You could become most senior of the Reugge if you cooperated.”
“I have no wish to become most senior. That is a job that would distract me too much from those things that do interest me.”
“Is there any way to reach you?”
“Almost certainly. We all want some things so badly we will befoul ourselves to get them. Witness yourselves. But I cannot think of anything that is within your power to offer. At least nothing I cannot take for myself. I suggest you stop trying to steal the Ponath. Accept the fact that the Reugge control it. Deal for the petroleum and pitchblende. Frankly, I find it impossible to comprehend your frenzy for outright control.”
Marika looked at the tradermales, hoping they would understand that she actually had no trouble at all understanding. “I will go now. You four squabble over the ways you may have planned to stab one another in the back.”
With Grauel and Barlog covering her, she backed to the doorway. She paused there, added, “The most senior is away this month, as she often is. You will not be able to contact her for some time. However, she will return to Maksche for a two-week period beginning the fifth day of Biter — if you feel compelled to present your evidence. My own proofs are held by a trusted sister at TelleRai, under seal. She is under bond to break the seal in the event of my death or prolonged disappearance.” She left. But after she had taken a few steps, she turned back to add, “After me, my fine thieves, the end of the world. At least for you and yours.”
Her feet flew as she dashed to the darkship. She had gotten away with yanking their whiskers. Very nearly with yanking them out by the roots. She had left them completely at a loss. It was wonderful.
It was the sort of thing she had wanted to do to some of her elders almost from the time she had grown old enough to reason.
She took the darkship up, on a long flight, pursuing the rogue orbit of a small retrograde moon. She pushed hard, glorying in the cold air’s rush through her fur.
After the crude joy began to fade, she halted, floated high, where the air was thin but cut like knives of ice. She looked southward. Far, far down there were the great cities of the world. Cities like TelleRai, which spawned the Gradwohls and silth like the Serke she had faced tonight. And thousands of miles farther still lay the equator, over which orbited many of the tradermale satellites.
The ice was advancing because the world had cooled. The world had cooled because not enough solar radiation impinged upon it now that it had entered the interstellar cloud. To halt the ice required only an increase in the amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet. Someday, and perhaps not that long now, she would begin throwing more coals on the fires of the sun — as it almost had to be said in the dialect of her puphood, naked as it was of technical and scientific terms.
II
Marika had won again, apparently. Neither the Serke nor brethren appeared inclined to test her.
A quiet but busy year passed.
Three months after the confrontation in Bagnel’s quarters, third chair came open. Gradwohl moved her up. Marika clung to those security functions pertaining to the rogue male problem. She continued to expand them as much and as often as she dared, though she operated with a more delicate paw than had been her custom. With more to lose and more to gain, she invested much thought before making more enemies.
Third chair meant having to monitor meetings of the Reugge council at TelleRai. Tradition insisted third chair accompany first chair, or senior, at each such gathering. Marika refused to attend in person, though Gradwohl herself often urged her to make herself known to the sisters of the ruling cloister.
She audited the meeting electronically. She did not feel comfortable leaving the heart of the network she had begun building.
She spent seven months in third chair, then second came open. The All was a persistent taker during those years at Maksche, an ally almost as valuable as Gradwohl herself, hastening her rise till it rattled her almost as much as it did her detractors.
At every step of her elevation she was the youngest ever to hold her position.
Gradwohl moved her into second chair. And within the month her ally the All passed its shade across the order’s ruling council itself. Gradwohl appointed her seventh chair, a step which shook the entire Comm
unity. Never before had an order-wide chair been held by one less than a cloister senior. Never before bad two chairs been held by sisters from the same cloister.
Marika ignored the grumbles and uproar. Let the most senior deal with it if she insisted on elevating her favorite over others who felt themselves more deserving.
Again the most senior urged her to make herself known at TelleRai. Her arguments were basic and irrefutable. One day she would have to deal with those meth regularly. She should get to know them now, while they could yet become comfortable with her.
Again she demurred, wishing to remain near the root of a growing political power.
She did not have to be in TelleRai to know what they were saying down there. It was the same old thing, on the larger scale of the sisterhood. They did not like one so young, from the wilds, acquiring so much power within the Community. They were afraid, just at the sisters of Maksche and Akard had been afraid. But the resistance down in TelleRai was even more resistance of the heart than of the mind. They did not know her at all. Only a few had encountered her during the campaigns in the Ponath. The silth there recognized her accomplishments. They were not as bitter as the silth at Maksche. Even those silth gave her very little real trouble, preferring to hate her in their hearts and minds while hoping she set herself up for a fall.
Marika slept very little that year. She pushed herself hard, developing her antirogue force, making of it a personal power base she insinuated into every Reugge cloister. Cynically, she made strong use of the rumors about a great wehrlen lurking among the rogues. If Gradwohl understood what she was doing, she said nothing.
With Braydic’s reluctant help Marika developed stolen technology into tools suited to her tasks. Her finest became a listening device she planted in the quarters of those she suspected of trying to thwart her. Toward the end of the year she began having such devices installed in the quarters of anyone she thought might someday get in her way.
The listening devices, unknown outside her circle, gave her a psychological edge on her enemies. Some of her more superstitious sisters came to believe that she could indeed become invisible as in old silth myth. Her revenges were subtle but emotionally painful. Before long all Maksche lived in fear of offending her. The terror of her sisters remained mainly a terror of what she might become, not a fear of what she was.
Each such tiny triumph of intimidation strengthened her. In building her power base she switched back upon her past, in other cloisters, and tried to recruit the most reactionary silth to manage the rogue program.
Her efforts in that direction yielded results sufficient to convince the most doubting silth that there was a grand conspiracy against the sisterhoods, with the Reugge the chosen first victim. Every criminal male taken and questioned seemed to provide one more fragment fitting into a grand mosaic of revolution.
The warlock began to take substance, if only as a dreadful shadow.
Marika’s first contacts outside her own Community came not as a result of her place on the council at TelleRai but because several of the more friendly sisterhoods became interested in creating their own rogue-hunting apparatus before the problem in their territories swelled to the magnitude of that in the Reugge. They came to Marika for advice.
The parade of outsiders impressed the Maksche sisters. Marika made of that what she could, gradually silencing more of her strongest critics.
Yet silence bought nothing. The more widely known she became, the more hated she became by those who had chosen to stand against her in their hearts.
There was no conquering irrationality. Especially not among silth.
There were nights when she lay awake with the pain of unwarranted hatred, vainly consoling herself with the knowledge that all silth who attained any stature did so at the cost of hatred. Few of the Maksche council were well liked. No one liked Gradwohl. Were the most senior there more often, instead of away doing what no one knew what, she might have absorbed some of the hatred directed her favorite’s way.
Often when Marika did sleep she fell into a strange dream wherein she rode a surrealistic, shifting beast across a night infested with stars, without a wind stirring her robes and fur, without a planet below. There was peace in that great star-flecked void.
Mornings afterward she would waken with her determination refreshed, no longer caring if anyone loved her.
She was alive for the sake of a creature called Marika, not for anyone else. She would salvage the freedom of the Reugge if she could. She owed the Community something. If she succeeded, so much the better. If she did not, she would not much care.
She would help the Serke if there were no other way of opening her pathway into the great dark.
She was second chair, yet Gradwohl tinkered with it in a manner that there were no duties for her at Maksche. In time her campaign against the rogues was so successful she had little to do but monitor reports of ever-dwindling criminal activity. She began to find herself with time on her paws. That left her time to brood. She began to feel hemmed in, pressured, restless.
III
I t was the anniversary of Marika’s confrontation in Bagnel’s quarters. She had extended her morning exercises by an hour, but they had done nothing to stay her restlessness. A call to Bagnel had proven fruitless. He was tied up, unable to entertain her. She faced a long and tiresome day of poring over stolen texts, searching for something she did not already know; of skimming reports from Braydic’s intercept teams and plant listeners, finding the same old things; of scanning statements from informants seeking rewards for helping capture members of the rogue movement.
She had had all she could stand of that. She wanted to be free. She wanted to fly.
“This is not what I want to do with my life. How do they get anyone to take first chairs? Barlog! Tell the bath to prepare my darkship.”
“Marika?”
“You heard me. I am sick of all this. We’re taking the darkship up.”
“All right.” Barlog disapproved. She had found herself a niche, helping direct the movement of information, which suited her perfectly. And she did not like Marika’s laying claim to the ship. It was not yet assigned her formally. It still belonged to the cloister generally, though no one else had used it all year. Barlog was becoming very conscious of place and prerogative. “Where will you be going?”
“I don’t know. I’ll just be going. Anywhere away from all this. I need to feel the wind in my fur.”
“I see. Marika, we have come no nearer finding the warlock.”
Marika stifled a sharp reply. She was tempted to believe the warlock a product of rogue wishful thinking. “Inform Grauel. She’ll need to find a sub if she has cloister duty today.”
“Do you expect to be up long?” Barlog looked pointedly at a heap of reports Marika had yet to consider.
“I think so. I need it this time.” She had done this before, but only for brief periods. Today, though, demanded an extended flight. The buildup of restlessness and frustration would need awhile to work off.
“As you command.” Barlog departed.
Marika scowled at her back. For one who had come to set so much stock in place, Barlog was getting above herself. She shuffled papers, looking for something that might need immediate attention.
For no obvious reason she recalled something Dorteka had said. About a museum in TelleRai. The Redoriad museum? Yes.
TelleRai. Why not? She was secure enough now. Both in her power and within herself.
She summoned one of the novices assigned to run and fetch for her. “Ortaga, get me some medium-scale maps of the country south of here. The Hainlin to the sea, the coast, and everything west to and including the air corridor to TelleRai. As far south as TelleRai.”
“Yes, mistress.”
The maps arrived before Barlog returned. Marika laid out a flight path that would pass over outstanding landmarks she had heard mentioned by bath and Mistresses of the Ship with whom she had spoken. She told the novice, “I will be gone all day.
I expect to return tonight. Have the other novices sort the papers the usual way. Tag any that look important.”
“Yes, mistress.”
“Barlog. At last. Is the darkship ready?”
“It will be a short time yet, mistress. The bath told me that they will want to fulfill the longer set of rites if you intend an extended flight.”
“I see.” Marika did not understand the bath. They had their own community within the greater Community, with private rites they practiced before every flight. The rites apparently amounted to an appeal to the All to see them through unscathed.
There were Mistresses, like Bestrei of the Serke, who considered their bath in the same class as firewood. They cared not at all for them as meth. They drew upon them so terribly they burned them out.
Even lesser and more thoughtful Mistresses had been known to miscalculate and destroy their helpers.
Marika took some coin from her working fund, then donned an otec coat. Otec fur was rare now. The coat was her primary concession to the silth custom of exploiting one’s status. Otherwise she lived frugally, dressed simply, used her position only to obtain information. Any sort of information, not just news about rogue males or about the space adventures of the dark-faring Communities. She had accumulated so much data she could not keep track of it all, could not keep it correlated.
Grauel joined her as she and Barlog reached the grand court where the darkships came and went. Workers were removing hers from its rack. It was so light only a half dozen were needed to lift it down and carry it to the center of the square. They unfolded the short arms and locked them into place. Marika eyed the line of witch syrinxes painted on shields hung along the main beam.
“Someday I will have a darkship all my own. I will have it painted all in black,” she said to no one in particular. “So it can’t be seen at night. And we will add Degnan symbols to those of the Reugge.”
