‘Use it how?’ Tralane offered him more water but he turned it down.
‘Not to use this.’ He looked around, indicating the entire artefact. ‘But it is new, unusual, powerful, and full of magic. The Karoo don’t do magic like you, but they want to. Whatever’s here she uses to gain advantage. But she has rivals. Outside. Big rivals.’
‘The one who changed us.’
‘Yes,’ he groaned and moved to sit upright. ‘You should know I had to give her all I had. The Empress traded her, something. Now she and this new one fight.’
‘The Empress?’ Carlyn said.
Tzaban glanced at her. ‘Torada had faith in paying. Doesn’t listen. It was in my blood.’
‘Tzaban,’ Tralane said firmly and his attention slid directly to her. ‘How is it that this new one is so human looking? How is it that she speaks, knows?’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Never saw female do that before, but… hm, how you say, she is a half half, not female or male, both. Can do both things. Sometimes made that way, accident.’ He sighed in a bubbling breath. ‘She knew trouble here when couldn’t make me serve her. Then she grabbed your girl.’
‘Does she understand we must stay alive if anything is to come out of here?’
‘Yes but, hn, law of diminish returns soon. Only look human. Only sound human. Not caring about these things.’ He closed his eyes and slid down to the floor where he lay with one arm under his head, breathing in a laboured way, making a hnnn-hnn sound to himself.
‘Tzaban?’
‘Rest,’ he said. ‘Soon she comes. Torada close. Dahn closer.’
Tralane looked around at Carlyn. ‘You’re the people person – what do you guess?’
Carlyn looked at Tzaban, her face white. ‘It was a mistake,’ she said quietly.
‘Forget that for now,’ Tralane said sternly. ‘I need you to consider what the Empress was thinking with all this. Where it could go. I need you to concentrate on that. Soros, is the line to Glimshard open?’
‘Minute or so maybe,’ Soros said.
‘We have to warn them what’s going on in here.’
‘And what is going on in here?’ Carlyn asked. She had her arms folded and was trying not to shake. The other engineers had returned to their stations but kept looking back and to the door.
‘If we don’t get out of here very soon there is a good chance we won’t get out at all,’ Tralane said. ‘We need to disable that other Karoo male or kill it, and we need to get hold of that other one. Dahn. Tzaban, can you kill her?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Never kill females.’
‘Well, can I kill her?’
‘Will die same as you, likely.’
‘What are you asking him for, he’s finished,’ Soros said. ‘Line’s up by the way.’
They all paused to listen. Across a hiss of static interference Isabeau’s voice came through, unemotional but clear. ‘Artefact team, stay at your station away from the door. The area outside is to be cleared. A rescue team will come for you once that is done. Stand fast.’
‘What does she mean, cleared?’ Carlyn said.
‘The city has weapons of its own,’ Tralane said. ‘I think she means razed to the ground. With fire.’
Tzaban groaned. ‘No. Tell Torada to talk. Talk to the forest. Night knows how.’
Tralane got up and relayed his message. She knew Isabeau would know her voice, as she was comforted by hearing Issa’s. There was a pause and then a hesitant, ‘All right, Mom.’ Then the line closed. It clicked back on. ‘We’re still clearing around you. Wait for update.’
Tzaban groaned again and tried to get to his feet.
‘Sit,’ Tralane said to him but he shook his head and looked up at her.
‘Listen to me. I ate enough human and smelt enough Karoo to know something I didn’t know before. Karoo brought you here, whole city, as trophy pile. Understand? I did not know, now I do. Figured it out.’ He smiled briefly at her, shy pride in the look that made her heart go out to him. Then pain made him speak faster and more urgently. ‘Karoo eat you enough, become like you, no more need for you. They used me to help bring you. You smart humans, can’t let any buried thing alone. Karoo found this thing. Brought you here. Thousands of you. It was not my will. Know that, Tralane Huntingore.’
‘I believe you,’ she said, more afraid now that he was going to die and leave them defenceless.
‘But the city is here now,’ Carlyn said. ‘Karoo can’t take that. They have no chance.’ She sounded more hopeful than convinced.
‘Not by assault,’ Tzaban said. His breathing was laboured and the purple depths around his eyes had become pale lilac. ‘But you will stay to study this. You will always come. Maybe you will think you fight Karoo back a little to a distance. You will come.’
‘This Dahn queen. What does she gain if – if she has us?’
‘She needs you alive,’ Tzaban said. ‘But not all of you. Needs you to feed herself until she becomes like you. Then she has no more need of you. It will take time. She knows there is none, now the city is here, and outside is the other queen who took the Empress’ gift.’
‘So she might do anything. To win?’
‘Eat or be eaten. Karoo way,’ Tzaban said with a deep sigh that ended as a groan. ‘I think Torada gave gift to help talk. Make talk. I don’t know. I can’t see these things.’ He smiled very briefly again. ‘Was a good gift. Or we would be dead.’ He made a huge effort to get to his feet and got them under him. By the time he made it upright Tralane had helped him there and he stared at her, reluctantly grateful, as she supported his weakened side. ‘Let go.’
‘Really?’ she said, exasperated now. ‘And what are you going to do?’
‘Go back, kill other male. Queen does not come, won’t send her. Your girl.’
‘Forgive my scepticism,’ she said, not letting go. He swayed. She wasn’t sure he could even make it up there alone. ‘Anyway, there’s another problem you’re not aware of with regard to that.’ She told them all about the suspected bomb.
‘Now, what?’ Soros asked. ‘The top team are signalling for a link.’
‘In twenty seconds you will open the comm, and say that Carlyn has used a human weapon to disable Tzaban, show him. You will say I have been taken ill with stress and have been given a sedative. You will then conduct with them whatever business must be done as if this is true.’
‘And what about you?’ Soros said, weaving the link spell around his fingers.
‘I’m going to sort it out by myself,’ Tralane said. ‘They’re all there together, they won’t expect me to come alone.’ She helped Tzaban closer to Soros and then left him, gingerly, as if he were a house of cards, and said to him, ‘When you see them, fall down.’
‘’Lane, it’s too dangerous,’ Carlyn said. Her face was white, her hands gripped together in front of her.
Tralane felt a burst of irritation that bordered on hatred. ‘You stay there and don’t do anything,’ she said. For a moment they shared a glance. She knew Carlyn had only acted, as she was about to act, from the necessity of fear. She understood it, having seen what the Karoo had done. She could not find it in herself to forgive the particulars of the cowardice however and turned to go before her heart hardened further. ‘Don’t say a word. I’ll see you later.’
Nobody tried to stop her.
CHAPTER THIRTY
ISABEAU
Isabeau stood on the edge of the pit under the beating noon sun and looked down into its cracked, scorched mud where the magefire had touched down. The edge of its swathe made a perfect circle just inside the hole. Piles of ash tried to lift in the slight breeze but failed. The humidity had already made the fragile flakes too heavy to rise. At the centre of the destruction the angled thorn spike of the artefact jutted upwards, coated in a patina of black. She wondered if it had always looked like that.
Behind her she heard the shouts and cries of dismay as the guards located the bodies of more Glimshard soldiers in the wreckage of
the small fort which had sat atop the bank. The search had been going on for more than ten minutes and she had been held back with a couple of assistant engineers and a few personal guards while it went on. She gathered from the shouts and the silences between them that what she had glimpsed of dismembered bodies and blood was only a prelude to the rest. What surprised her most was that the jungle stank. Mud, blood, plants, rot, water and flowers of a peculiar sickly sweetness left telltales in air as thick as syrup. It clung to her face and her clothes hung heavy with it. Nearby she heard Night and the Empress talking in hushed tones. She still felt it wrong but Torada had insisted she descend to the site herself. Isabeau was grateful in a way – the presence was comforting. She finished her inspection of the city’s work on the ground and lifted her gaze to the green wall of forest on the far side of the pit.
The trees at the edge here were small and the spaces between very narrow. Bushes and vines filled up the gaps quickly so that she could see only a few spindly uprights between splashes of green, and beyond those a blurred darkness that seemed to have a still, attentive quality focused enough that it seemed to watch her in return. She stared, trying to see who was there. People ran behind her, voices highly charged rushed back and forth, but she paid no attention.
A touch at her shoulder from one guard made her turn away. ‘Engineer. The Empress requests your company through the camp.’
Turning her back seemed imprudent but she went, following Torada and Night as they in turn followed a cadre of guards. Alongside her, the small, grey figure of Shrazade the infomancer strode with grim determination, not giving her a glance. Shrazade was an unwilling visitor here, more used to minions doing footwork, and her anger was palpable.
Isabeau looked cautiously to left and right as they went, driven by curiosity. The bodies had been ordered and covered up here in the early part, but then they were laid in lines as they neared the centre of the camp – nothing left to cover them. Where the bodies were not whole they were also laid in line in the flat grass. Flies clustered on them in the bright sun, black carapaces sparkling.
They reached the only standing structure left – a ragged tent with loose, flapping sides that was open to the front. Guards parted before them. The smell of the flowers was even sweeter here, though Isabeau didn’t see any.
Shrazade’s sudden hiss startled her so that she looked at the woman, and then followed the line of her gaze between Torada and Night’s heads to a figure seated in a chair by a small table, just visible inside the tent’s shade. She moved forwards and saw General Borze, his uniform stained and ruined with red, green and brown. His short hair was crusted in filth and his scabbard hung at his hip, empty. A bandana hung in his fingers where his hand was fallen at his side, quivering with a bizarre nervous tension that also opened his eyes and animated his face. His wide eyes did not recognise her, but stared glassily at the Empress. A foam had collected at one corner of his mouth.
A sensation of slow prickling cold ran over her from toes and fingers, up her arms, up her spine, as if her skin tried to shed itself. At the same moment a horrible, unexpected opening happened inside her chest and belly as if her guts were sliced open and spilled out, all warmth gushing with them towards him. She recalled all her words, all her papers. She saw his face in the steam room, his hand on her wrist, water rolling on his face like sweat rolled on it now. All empty. All worthless. The Empress spoke and he replied like a dreamer who walks in their sleep and can be talked to as if they wake, but are not awake.
No, she thought, watching him, her face stone as her body’s energy drained away through her open centre like water down a gutter. Don’t wake.
The Empress spoke. ‘I am Torada, Empress of the Imperia Aethera. I come to deal with you for peace and mutual gain.’
He replied in a slow, laboured drawl, the words pulled carelessly out of his mouth as if on a string. There was no sign of anyone else in the tent, or the camp, or the forest. ‘Your offer is accepted. For now.’
Isabeau stood in shock, frozen to the point that whatever they said meant nothing to her. She hadn’t known that a person could be undone this way. She’d thought that because it was only bodies it didn’t matter. Now all that kept her standing was the fact that her body was emptied out and couldn’t move. Had she been in love with him? How could that be and she not notice it? She hadn’t believed in it but it was still true, discovered inside her after all this time.
She remembered throwing the book into the garbage bin. It had never occurred to her that the mind had its worlds – a billion planes – but the body had only one, and they did not necessarily ever meet. What could they say to one another when they were from different realities? She had written off her body as merely her vehicle and now it was mortally wounded and all her realities wanted to die.
Beside her, Shrazade touched her arm and she looked down into the shorter woman’s eyes and saw a peculiar compassion there. It was so unexpected she nearly recoiled. Then she realised that the telepath was reading her. She was reading everyone. Until this moment Isabeau had never given a thought to what that kind of ability meant or the power it gave the person who was able to use it at will. Now she knew why Torada demanded she stay close – only proximity would give the Empress’ presence enough leverage to remain in command of Shrazade: which meant that what happened here was against Imperial will. And it meant that Torada was withstanding the force of the other Empresses. She filed this away for future reference, noting that her mind operated, clickety clack, unhindered by her heart. For the first time in her life this disgusted her and she tried to make herself look back at what had become of her abandoned lover.
As he talked and moved listlessly, twitching, jerking at the commands of the unseen queen she knew that Borze was no more. She was looking at a body that looked like someone she once knew. The horror remained but it was dulled. She looked back at Shrazade and noted the haunted expression, the gaunt face, the tired eyes. Infomancers did this to one another too, until they figured out who was strongest, the Unassailable. Shrazade’s face slowly deformed as the conversation plodded remorselessly to its conclusion, becoming a mask of loathing. She feared possession, Isabeau saw, and looked across at Mazhd, standing on her other side. A rigor of self-command kept him from anything but sadness. He was resigned to it, she thought. She determined that his was the best course of action, and that she would take it now: resign herself to reality and move on. Then she glanced at her new Master, Night, and saw there calculation, as cool and precise as the revolving tumblers of a lock. She leaned, just a little, towards Torada.
On the breeze, the smell of sweet flowers could not disguise the odour of decomposing flesh. It eddied around, both scents together, while they concluded arrangements and formed the ingress party. Isabeau was left to herself for a few minutes as last-moment decisions were made. She moved as far away from the tent and its dreadful effigy as she could. From her bag she took out the goggles that her mother had so liked to tinker with. She had kept them with her since Tralane left the house, thinking she would find a use for them although now she knew it was as a way of staying in contact even though she hadn’t tried to use them for that purpose. There hadn’t been any free time since she’d been up to the lab and dropped them into the kit, even to look at them herself. Now that she did, she found they were fascinating.
‘Time to go!’
Mazhd surprised her – she had become so lost in the intricacies and the unexpected compactness of the mass of spells that were crammed into such a small device. ‘Just a minute!’ She sniffed, blotting tears from her nose with her sleeve, and quickly opened a part of the weave up in the goggles’ peripheral weft, writing a message quickly in summary of all that she could that seemed important. Then, as she was stitching it up again, she noticed a blinking signal in the viewer. She put the goggles to her eyes to see what it was.
It drew her up to look at a point in the sky, covered by the heavy clouds of a traditional jungle afternoon. Tiny readouts kept at
tempting to unfold some kind of pictogram, but failing. She let it go and shut the device down – there wasn’t time to figure it out now. It was probably something her mother had been working on and she should leave it anywhere, or risk spoiling it perhaps.
Mazhd was still waiting for her. Instead of moving straight off to join the crew he hesitated and held on to her arm, looking into her face. He got a lot into three words, ‘Are you okay?’
‘I will be,’ she said and pushed the goggles against his chest, as much to get him to let her out of his spotlight as to hand them over. ‘Here. These are Mom’s. Give them to her when you go inside. She might need them.’
He nodded and secured them inside his jacket pocket, holding his hand over them. ‘Will do. Try to go back to the city. I’m sure they’ll take you up if you ask.’
She looked to the other side of the sky where Glimshard itself hung, impossible and vast. That it was her doing seemed ludicrous, but it strengthened her. ‘No, I’m going to wait until you both come out, thanks all the same.’
‘If there is any trouble promise me you will go straight back,’ he said, flinching as he did so. Behind him, a distance away, Isabeau could see Shrazade, impatient.
‘I will,’ she said.
He nodded and turned obediently to go. She watched him join the guards, engineers and Shrazade and then walked over to do her part, following them down the ramp into the pit. At the door she pushed aside the warped shape of the access panel and activated the door cartouche.
‘S’open.’ After all that it seemed funny. She nearly smiled, until she glanced guiltily back up at the tent on the rise. She pushed and the pressure-close released. The door swung silently inwards.
‘Signal them that we are coming,’ Shrazade said. ‘Your methods will be preferred to mine I am sure.’
Isabeau nodded dumbly and began to do as she asked. Shrazade nodded and Mazhd went first into the opening, followed one at a time by the rest. ‘Wait!’ she said, hearing a voice from the door com. ‘Someone’s coming up.’
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