Glorious Angels

by Justina Robson

  For a second the hubbub dimmed as everyone gawped. Minnabar stared with her eyes as wide as they could be. In the first moment she was so rapt and so ready that she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing; the colours, the shapes, they didn’t link up into anything she knew. There was a background of sandstone walls, a foreground of yellow dust. The long shadows of brown-clad men formed a dim pool between. From this emerged a white and blue figure. It stood in the light, rippling, until perception snapped into place within her mind’s eye. As the crowd went silent the creature, the Karoo, finished his long top-to-toe doglike shake and looked with surprise in their direction.

  Minnabar felt Marina’s fingers close tightly over the top of her own, a clammy, strange crab. His basic shape, massive shoulders, tiny girlish waist, long, powerful legs, the low tilt of his head with its forehead-first weight, all said man. The breath that moved his entire body, his poise, the lash-twitch of his long tail and the energy all directed towards her said animal. His eyes were human and intelligent, bright as those of a picturebook devil. In the split second that his attention went that way she felt their gazes lock together and across the silent wire of that gap a question and answer pass instantly. Then he was turning away, snorting and tossing his heavy mane of white as he laughed at the state of the soldiers lying about on the ground spent, still throwing their boots about like boys while Minnabar was frozen in place; liquid bronze cooling down into the statue that single question and answer had made. She’d felt lust a hundred times before, knew all its angles, but this was a new thing to her. She didn’t understand it at all. In that single, nearly unseeing look, she knew he had seen her, acknowledged her and gracefully passed on her. Until then she didn’t know that she had been on offer. She was a tourist. She was a voyeur, not a participant. There had never been any question of a deal. She’d come to see a monster.

  By the sounds of the conversation suddenly bursting around her in explosions of verbal colour she wasn’t the only one who’d had an odd moment.

  ‘Minna, did you see that?’ Marina demanded, looking up to her for an explanation.

  Minna, who knew it was not a see but a feeling, that it was more than a look – was a contract, understood and could not say because to put it into words made it ridiculous and her with it. She looked down and returned the clasp of Marina’s fingers. Marina’s green eyes reflected absolutely the surprise and near alarm of her own. The blush on her cheeks was hot, intensified by the reddening sun. Minna felt it on her face too. Then as one they all craned for another peek, safe now that his back was to them. There was as much outrage and jeering as there was anything in the rising noise. Minna could understand that.

  ‘Veterans,’ Marina hissed to her, shrinking closer as a man near her bawled for the Karoo’s head on a stick. Then Minna realised it was his death they wanted.

  It was the first time Minnabar had given a thought to the war as an actual thing that affected people near her. She looked at the man who’d shouted and read such a hatred in his face that she had to look away before it was turned on her. But before anything more could happen a fanfare of horns at close range stalled everything once more. There was a scramble, a mutter and mumble and shove as everyone turned and attempted to get enough room to bow to the white entourage of the Empress.

  The worst thing about the passage of the Empress was that you wanted to see her, Minnabar thought, but because you had to bow and look presentable, you didn’t. You saw a glimpse of the white-robed men carrying the banners to either side of the magnificent black stallion she rode, the ones picking up its skirts and her train, the backs of them as they went on their way… You saw, if you were lucky, the naked torso of her bodyguard Hakka the Steppe Hunter who had been slave-stolen from the uttermost barbarism of the east and broken like a horse to her hand, or the fabulous swish of the tassels on his glinting polearm. You might see the girl runners around her, handing out sweets to the children from their flat baskets of glittering papered gifts, tiny vials of scent to the men and tickets to the women for opera, science or dancing. But you never saw her. Now Minna caught glimpses as the cortege passed slowly between the spectators and passed within inches of her nose as they moved between the gates.

  Her face was covered in the scholarly veil and the rest of her was coated in gold and white. They said her battle armour was less of a fancy get-up but Minnabar had never seen this outfit. Now she looked after the Empress’s small, upright back as it sat the fiery horse with ease and wondered again if she really was plain, like they said. She had to shuffle, squeeze and complain as soldiers rushed up to push back the iron bars in the wake of the snowy cavalcade.

  Finally, the gates closed but the retinue effectively blocked everything that Minnabar was able to see, even when she climbed. She stuck it out until the white reorganised itself. The massing clouds of banners and the drifting veils of shining witchmist, set up to screen the Empress from the common gaze or unknown assassins, moved like smooth oil. There was a pause as the yard was filled with white fog that curled in on itself, and left cold droplets to trickle on the gate bars. She could see the edges of it evaporating away into the hot air and hear the far side gate that led on to the palace high road opening up. By the time the mist had dispersed the yard itself was empty except for a series of soldiers standing at attention looking baffled.

  The remaining officers bowed to the crowds as the last vapours drifted to the ground and sparkled out of existence. Some of the tiny lights became silver coins which lay there until a sergeant picked them up. He gave them to the boot-cleaners who had run in last but Minnabar was looking everywhere for the tiger. However, the Karoo had vanished. Of course, the Empress had taken him.

  ‘You know what that was,’ Marina said as the crowd began to scatter and they were able to gather themselves.

  ‘No,’ Minnabar replied, still wondering over what that glance had meant. If the Empress had taken him personally, she had done so as a public sport. Why had the army not sent him if she were interested? She scented trouble and it made her smile.

  ‘Well I think it was a rebuke. Like she hasn’t had her turn.’

  Minnabar nodded, seizing Marina’s hand and taking the path upspiral as fast as she could. It was nearly dark now and she hadn’t been so far downtown in a long time, certainly never this late. Suddenly her adventure seemed more foolhardy than it had before but she wasn’t about to let that slip to Marina. ‘You’re right. It will be the talk of tomorrow. And we saw it all! Let’s get back up to the Sun in Stone before everyone else does!’

  The Sun in Stone was a tea house in the midst of Starred Circle, the heart of the high city and its gossip hub. Many webs used it as a base of operations in good weather, loitering for hours between classes and appointments under its red and yellow awnings. Minna’s web, the Scarlets, usually took a table in the middle. Thanks to the speedy footwork of Yenie, small, mousy, sweet tempered and malleable enough to be persuaded that reserving the space was a more important job than going with Minna to the barracks, it was ready and waiting for them.

  Yenie sat beside the favoured spot, her reward. Minna sat in it, brimming with importance and the sensation that something was about to happen – she didn’t know what or to whom, but something. All talk centred on the Karoo.

  ‘They are part of the Circle,’ Daraon said with conviction from his position at Minna’s feet, a place he had taken lately to lounging in with apparent careless and natural submission.

  This statement caused all the less serious jabber to stop, and not only at their table. Faces turned from other webs, both female and male.

  ‘But that would make him an enemy,’ Yenie said, so quietly she was almost inaudible.

  ‘Top marks for voicing the obvious again,’ Marina said. But nobody seemed to want to join her and another moment of silence passed.

  ‘I don’t know that he is really related to the Karoo.’ This from Sarine, a rival web’s vital axis. The Ivory Circle specialised in occult historical knowledge
as the chief marker of their exclusivity so her remark carried a great deal of weight. Daraon by contrast was known only for his intentions to join the army as soon as he was legitimately able.

  ‘Do go on,’ Minna invited, even though this was a hijack of a private discussion. Her generosity was never dispensed without reason however, and she was gratified to see members of both webs brace minutely in preparation for defence.

  ‘They are from the extreme north, the Resolute Forests. Records of contact between them and the Empire or them and the Steppelanders all suggest they are extremely reclusive and highly intolerant of trespassers. There haven’t been any noted meetings between Karoo and Imperial peoples in over four hundred years.’

  ‘And now one just happens to turn up and join the army,’ Daraon said sarcastically. ‘For no reason at all. Certainly not because this is also the first time in history that an Imperial war has brought us into conflict with Karoos.’

  ‘That explains nothing, because he’s from the north, nowhere near the battles,’ Sarine countered, undaunted. ‘But there is something odd about it because the Karoo have always been shamanistic, dedicated to nature, and to peaceful existence. The reason they shun humans and magi is because they’ve always judged us to be wantonly destructive and careless. They have never had any kind of warriors even though there have been rumours of violent put-downs when the Steppelanders got too close. And that Karoo there was nothing like any reports or images we have of them either.’ She got out her tablet and swept her hand across its blank grey face, a trail of blue fire showily revealing her considerable magical powers as she summoned up the document she wanted, causing an image to emboss itself into the semi-malleable clay before hardening it. She showed this around.

  ‘That looks like a tree,’ Marina said scathingly. ‘It’s hardly even humanoid.’

  ‘Well they all look like that,’ Sarine said. ‘And this was an image capture, not a drawing.’

  ‘They don’t, clearly,’ Daraon replied, leaning on Minna’s leg. ‘That one down there looked like a beast.’

  ‘Half a beast,’ Minna said, eager to have her part in things. ‘He looked like a man with fur and a tail and a mane.’

  ‘ A really big man,’ Marina added.

  ‘The colours were amazing…’ And they were off again.

  Nobody had captured an image of him, at least not on the public mage net. After searching for and failing to summon down any of these they had to satisfy themselves with the hastily drawn and coloured sketches done by the few artists who had managed to catch a glimpse – one of whom must have been in the army for his picture was extremely detailed and, to Minna’s mind at least, accurate.

  ‘Who did this one?’ she drew up the signature marks but it was unfamiliar. Parillus Gau Tam.

  ‘He’s the general’s second,’ Daraon said, glancing at it once. ‘Some say lover but they’re just jealous of his position. Gau Tam oversees the welfare of the men while Borze directs their actions.’ He drew up an image of the man himself from the public array.

  It showed a man in dress uniform purples, his face clearly of Glimshard aristocratic stock – sculpted and rather refined with the careful pose of one who is making the most of themselves. His dark hair was pulled back although the pins on it demonstrated that it was cut in a fashionable flop, the sides razored with patterns that matched the Empress’ formal livery. Minna considered him with more interest then than she might have. A dandy soldier, as opposed to the ones Daraon seemed to idolise. Now she looked down at Daraon with a thought,

  ‘Where were you this afternoon? You were supposed to be looking out for us.’

  ‘I was on the battlements watching the training,’ he said, flicking his hair back over his shoulders with what she had always felt was devilish abandon and now suddenly saw as coquetry. ‘Who do you think sent in the first report that the Karoo was here? Anyway, I don’t know what all the fuss is about. He doesn’t look so much like any beast I know. More like a girl’s toy. All orange and purple – where in the world would that be a camouflage?’

  Minna had to admit he had a point. She hadn’t thought of this. ‘Then it mustn’t be for camouflage.’

  ‘Unless he can change colour,’ Yenie said and when they looked at her with a gaze they had mastered over the years which said, ‘Oh, not your childish imagination overdoing it again! When will you grow up?’ she frowned and muttered, ‘I’m just saying. There were things in the news about Karoos changing colour and other things. They are…’ She hesitated and they all felt her anxiety about what she was about to say, damnation or acceptance hanging on a single word. She whispered it in the end, after such a long delay, so unconvinced that nobody heard her or cared to pay attention, ‘Bioplastic.’

  ‘Perhaps it’s for female Karoos.’ Marina suggested over the top of Yenie’s statement. ‘They might like that.’

  Then the conversation went predictably and Minna floated in it, witty, charming, alluding to an apparently vast knowledge of sexual mores and conduct as they laughed in speculation about Karoo mating principles but all the while that moment, that look through the bars across the yard, burned away like acid in her stomach. Seen and passed over. She persuaded herself she’d imagined it. In Glimshard there was no greater power than being an attractive, well bred young woman. Well, there were two but both were irrelevant.

  One such power was being a mature and titled, moneyed, educated or otherwise endowed woman; this was all for Minna’s future as the automatic inheritor of her mother’s titles to the Huntingore estate and assets, a private stock of gold to be spent as time revealed it. She couldn’t now compete with such women nor did she attempt it as it would have been quite stupid but then again, they were not in the same market. All Minna had to do was continue on her way until time bestowed position in those ranks.

  The other greater power was to be Empress. There was but one of these in Glimshard and Minna was not she.

  However, those things aside, she was the hub of her web, the daughter of an impoverished but respected house, and she had enough support from her mother to do whatever she wished and little enough interference. Unlike bookish, hopelessly naïve Isabeau whose awareness seemed suited to imaginary worlds and clockworks she was well used to being an object of desire with all its possible pleasures. She had never in her life come to the attention of a male and been concluded irrelevant. It was galling. But at the same time as she wanted to take insult she found it difficult. There had been something polite about the gesture, a sort of ‘Thanks, but no thanks’. To offer herself up and be turned down by any man was… It was… unimaginable. Her entire life was spent blissfully turning aside the overtures of others, especially men. Even older men who were not of interest had to politely offer her their admiration and she was always careful to flirt, but not too much. Enough to make him feel appreciated. Little enough to be sure there would be no further pursuit. When the admiration was embarrassingly sincere or exceeded a polite deference to beauty, she displayed heartless ingratitude as the only reliable method of discouraging such awful behaviour. Anything but sincerity in old guys! Deploring the shameful situation of men being allowed to reach desperate straits like that was always a good topic of conversation though whose responsibility it was they were never sure.

  And now she had apparently offered herself up to this creature which was not even a man – doing him the most outrageous favour, unthinkable really. And he said no. Just like that.

  Thanks, but no thanks.

  ‘Minna!’ She was being poked hard by Daraon in the side of the leg.

  ‘What is it!?’ she snapped, furious.

  ‘Would you or wouldn’t you do the funky monkey with the purple tiger guy?’

  She realised she had drifted off and now was stuck for a moment. He said no. But Minna, although hurt, was not stupid. She took a quick inventory of faces, read the likely signs. ‘Not unless it was for a very large bet.’

  ‘But so furry,’ said Yenie wistfully.

  Minn
a looked at her. If Yenie thought it was a worthwhile idea she could safely discard it. ‘Gross,’ she said, ending the matter although everyone was grumpy with her because she was supposed to be the wild one.

  She didn’t know why she had said it then. She didn’t know how she could get things this wrong. She was always right about what to say and when to keep things running smoothly and everyone on her side. The feeling of being foolish now was unbearable. As if operating on some fiendish schedule Astor Banch chose that moment to appear.

  Languid and tall, intelligent and a favoured scholar at the University, Astor was exactly the devil Minna would wish on her sister. They would have made a perfect pair. Unfortunately, he had no detectable interest in anything other than astronomy, physics and claiming superiority for his vocational net over social webs such as the Scarlets.

  ‘Don’t you ever talk about anything but sex and fashion?’ he said as he passed her on his way to the group of mostly silent, studious men waiting for him at the edge of the café.

  ‘No, Astor,’ she said, so out of joint that she couldn’t even sit up and flash her corseted cleavage at him. Her only consolation was that she knew she sulked prettily. ‘Only the important things merit attention. Go back to your books, there’s a good boy.’

  ‘I would have thought you’d be boning up on your biology about now,’ he replied smoothly, adjusting the large case of crystal he was carrying. ‘Won’t you be needing that to figure out how to seduce the Karoo? I hear they have surprising anatomical differences. It would be a shame to fall flat on your face in the middle of a seduction, now wouldn’t it?’

  His delivery could almost lead a person to believe he was sincere, Minna thought. Almost. If you didn’t know exactly how smart he was. But she suddenly wondered if he were right, if he knew so much more, if he had seen a truth in her that was too hard to stand: she was shallow, she was fickle, she was out of her depth and was about to be revealed as strictly small-time business, just one more young woman who played all her cards on her sexual attraction and used it to manipulate men… Oh this spiel was well known to her. There were more than a few all-male nets who held fiercely antagonistic views on the subject. Astor however was not among them. He just wanted to prove himself a superior being and the general superiority of intellect over everything else in life, especially sex. Astor longed for the world to run on rational rails, greased with information, rewarding only those who were proven correct. He was simply baiting Minna, and to her chagrin she was biting.