by John Meaney
Alisha was talking to a Luculenta.
The woman was tall, dressed in black and silver. No wonder Alisha had ignored her friends; even from here, in a crowd of thousands, Roger could sense the woman’s charisma.
All around was distraction: holoflames and fireworks, a thousand illuminations and—
There. Darkness, moving in impossible ways. Then gone.
I’m hallucinating.
But it seemed he was not. Just for a moment, in a gap between revellers, he spotted a pale-faced woman he knew for certain - Dr Helsen - and beside her a stocky man, who might be the friend he had seen her with before. Then the crowd moved like one massive creature, shifting position, hiding Helsen and the other man from view.
Alisha was leaving the plaza, walking with the Luculenta. Roger was tired and going crazy, so the sensible thing would be to find food and a place to sit down, maybe sleep. But his feet moved by themselves, and he continued to follow.
In this crowd, no one would notice his behaviour.
The reveller dressed as Anubis took an ice-cream from a vendor. As he licked it, the cone seemed to disappear inside his jackal’s head, the Horus holomask. After a moment, he made a gesture, and the mask faded.
Now he could eat his ice-cream more naturally. As he did so, he watched two pairs of figures leave the plaza in opposite directions: Helsen and Ranulph one way, the Spalding girl and Rafaella Stargonier in the other. Young Roger Blackstone chose to follow the latter.
The question for Superintendent Keinosuke Sunadomari was, who should he be watching?
TWENTY-EIGHT
EARTH, 777 AD
From the camp came the sound of drumming and the cheers of dancing warriors. Tall carved poles were hung with shields. Orange light blazed from massive fires. For a temporary location, there was a lot of organization involved in setting up this place.
There was no point in asking whether anyone else heard disturbing music among the drums - Ulfr knew it was only him. His mood disquieted Brandr, the warhound occasionally growling.
It was not just that Ulfr felt no sense of celebration, either at the troll’s defeat or at the way several dozen chieftains had managed to come together in peace. For he was used to slipping in and out of dreamworld, often guided by sweet Eira back home. Since Heithrún had led him into trance the previous night, strange dreams kept recurring: of himself among warriors whose bodies did not appear like normal flesh, looking more like the crystal that topped Heithrún’s staff, with which he had driven the troll’s spirit out of its stony body.
‘If they are elves of the light,’ he said to the hound, ‘then we could do with their presence. For we have an elf of the dark among us.’
Brandr growled at the mention of Stígr. They had spent all day hunting, mostly to be alone, away from the poet’s growing tale of the travellers’ battle against the troll - the battle that, as far as Ulfr could tell, Stígr had observed while cowering beneath his cloak, tucked face-down behind a small outcrop.
During the hunt, Ulfr had surprised a young fawn who had strayed from her mother. She was within an easy spear’s throw, and Ulfr was downwind; but her legs were slender and fragile, and her big dark eyes - when she finally saw him - held a surprised awareness that reminded him of Jarl. In earlier life, not meeting his end bound to a doorpost, cut apart by axes and hammers.
‘You should grow older,’ Ulfr had said, ‘and make deerlings of your own, before sacrificing yourself to men.’
The fawn had skittered, then galloped away.
After a moment, he pulled himself out of memory. The drumming had stopped at some point, and the only sounds were the crackling of fires and a lone voice, speaking.
There was a hillock to one side of the camp’s centre, and two figures stood on it. The man speaking was Gulbrandr, chief of the party that Stígr had travelled with. The other figure, wide hat low over his face, was Stígr himself.
Were Stígr’s lips moving? From this distance, and because of the shapeless hat, it was hard to tell. Besides, it was Chief Gulbrandr whose words boomed across the warriors, and everyone’s attention was on him.
And on the misty visions growing in the air above them.
Sorcery!
Could no one else see it?
‘By Mjǫlnir, they are ensorcelled.’
Brandr was silent, a warhound ready to attack.
‘—to south and west and east,’ Gulbrandr was saying, ‘where the folk are rich and soft, no longer warriors. Their ancestors’ strength is gone.’
Ulfr was not sure of that. But the entranced warriors had no doubts.
‘A-viking, a-viking,’ they chanted. ‘A-viking! A-viking!’
Their dreams were visible above their heads: the glory of battle, golden spoils, and Valkyrie, the soul-choosers, swooping down to fetch the shades of the slain.
It was real; and it was wrong: turning honourable courage to something dark. But there were so many warriors between him and the two men on the hillock.
‘We take from the weak,’ roared Gulbrandr.
‘A-viking! A-viking!’
‘We take from the cowards.’
‘A-viking! A-viking!’
‘We take their women and their gold!’
‘A-viking! A—’
Ulfr grabbed a warrior’s head and twisted.
‘—viking!’
‘Because together we are greater—’
He forced another two men aside, used his elbow, kicked another in the back of the knee, creating space.
‘—than those who hide inside—’
Brandr bit a man on the calf, allowing Ulfr to push past.
‘—city walls like rats!’
A huge warrior swung at Ulfr but he moved inside, cycling punches and slaps to knock the man down, and then he was into a clear space. Gulbrandr’s eyes widened. The nearer warriors grew silent, though the others continued to chant.
‘A-viking! A-viking!’
Twisting curtains of black light fell on him, but he was faster, sprinting across the gap, leaping high - stay back! - as ravens from nowhere clawed at his eyes, but too late - bastards - and his elbow smacked into Gulbrandr’s forehead, splitting the skin.
But he was not aiming to put the chief down - he was going through him. Stígr’s arms were raised high, about to call down some dark magic, but Ulfr’s kick scythed across his legs, he hammered with the side of his fist, then Stígr was down.
Ulfr dropped knees-first on to Stígr’s chest, feeling the crunch of ribs breaking; but the man was already unconscious, and the dream-images overhead were evaporating. The ravens screamed, wheeled through the air, and were gone.
Gulbrandr looked puzzled. Then he stared at Ulfr.
‘You have killed the poet.’
‘He lives, Chief.’
‘Violating the peace oath in a gathering.’ Gulbrandr’s mind was returning. ‘Warriors, bind this man and—’
‘No,’ called a woman. ‘He saved us all, when I could not.’
‘Heithrún, is that you? Hold, warriors.’
The young volva limped forward, her leg still splinted from yesterday’s injury, supported by a white-haired woman, surely another volva.
‘Some of you know me,’ said the older woman. ‘I am Eydís, one-time teacher to Heithrún, and she has the right of it.’
‘Sorcery?’
‘Aye, Chief. And neither I nor Heithrún could move against the spell.’
At that, Stígr’s one eyelid moved, and his groan was loud.
‘Don’t let him speak,’ said Heithrún.
‘Warriors.’
Two men grabbed Stígr, while a third undid a leather cord from around one calf - the man that Brandr had bit: he grinned at Ulfr, then at the warhound - and wound it around Strígr’s head, deep into his mouth.
Finally, Stígr came awake, his one eye shining as he focused on Ulfr.
A normal man would have wriggled and moaned, testing his bonds, cursing or trying to persuade. But he just lay ther
e, staring.
‘He’s just a poet,’ said Gulbrandr.
But then shadows twisted in a way only Ulfr could see, discordant notes sounded while ravens cawed, and the air shivered.
Stígr was gone.
‘Thórr’s blood!’ Gulbrandr made the sign of the hammer. ‘He is a dark one, in truth.’
The man who had gagged Stígr now clapped Ulfr on the shoulder.
‘Well done, warrior.’
‘Yes,’ said Gulbrandr. ‘You have saved us. Warriors, I show you a hero!’
Cheers became a crescendo of relief and celebration. Against the noise, only Ulfr could hear Eydís’s words.
‘You have an enemy in the darkness now.’
Then he patted Brandr and raised a victory fist. Tonight he would carouse with these warriors - among them he could see Chief Folkvar nodding and grinning - and let the dawn deal with whatever evil the Norns would throw at him next.
For now, he lived!
TWENTY-NINE
FULGOR, 2603 AD
Superintendent Keinosuke Sunadomari smiled as he trailed his suspects through the festival crowds. He was a Luculentus peacekeeper; to be keeping a Luculenta under surveillance was a worthwhile challenge. But then his smile attenuated to nothing.
Daniel, if she was responsible, she’s going down.
This had started with his suspicion of the Blackstones, a family with a secret he had not deciphered yet. And now, following the son - as the son in turn trailed Alisha Spalding and Rafaella Stargonier - it became obvious that Roger Blackstone had received some basic training in surveillance. But a part of Sunadomari’s awareness, in Skein, despatched an investigative netSprite that came back in milliseconds with an answer: the lad enjoyed espionage holodramas, particularly Fighting Shadows. Perhaps he had picked up tips that way.
The irony was that, several years back, poor dead Daniel Deighton had himself written several episodes for the series, under a pseudonym and without revealing any current operational procedures that villains would not know already.
But was there a different connection here? Because Daniel had been one of nine Luculenti to die strangely, and he had been in his glider at the time. Naturally, investigators back-tracked the flightpath, but found nothing. Yet Sunadomari had no need to access the logs in Skein - he remembered that the glider had passed over Mansion Stargonier.
His friend Daniel had been more analyst than frontline operative; but he was a peacekeeper and a Luculentus, therefore not easy to kill. Young Roger Blackstone could not have done it; but perhaps Rafaella Stargonier could.
He sent off another flurry of netSprites and netAngels in Skein.
Meanwhile, in reality, he walked along a ribbon-spiral path, through colonnades where bubblefish swam in the air, finally coming out at the top of a wide custard-yellow ramp that led down to Parallaville. The crowds were thin here, and down in Parallaville there were few pedestrians at all.
The city quarter was a jumble of trompe-l’oeil illusions, mixing holo with physical architecture in ways that beguiled the eye. This was the first day of Lupus; by the end of the festival, Parallaville would be teeming with revellers out of their heads with hallucinogens, looking to freak themselves even further among impossible polygons, trick staircases and doorways leading nowhere.
Some fifty paces beyond the foot of the ramp, Rafaella Stargonier stopped. She turned, but Roger Blackstone had sunk out of sight, apparently inside a solid wall. It was a nice use of holo cover.
Luculenta Rafaella Stargonier walked on, into the heart of Parallaville, with Alisha Spalding beside her.
If the Stargonier woman could illegally access building systems - or even SatScan - she would probably have spotted Sunadomari already. But her behaviour indicated awareness of something: probably the Blackstone boy, not him. Still, Sunadomari did not want to take the risk of surveilling in Skein and having his data compromised - it had not escaped him that one of the other murder victims was a Skein designer, Hailey Recht, who should have been able to stop any kind of physical or psychological attack and call for help, for she had knowledge and capabilities far beyond those of an ordinary Luculenta.
Besides, Sunadomari had his own tricks, and he rarely got to deploy them for real.
The bracelets on his wrists were quickglass, which was not unusual. But any watchers - there were none - would be surprised to see the quickglass morph into six floating teardrop shapes, each half the size of a fist. Mini flying cameras were decidedly old school and low tech, but the quickglass used chameleoware to be invisible to SatScan from above - and sent back data using protocols that were entirely his own, all they way down to the core trinary, bearing no relationship to anything used in Skein.
‘Fly now,’ he murmured.
All six spydrops rose into the air.
Once more Roger had to duck out of sight. This time he commanded a quickglass wall to form an alcove, using commands that would not set off alarms - not here in Parallaville, where the public were encouraged to tweak the architecture at their whim - but would be perfectly open to official scrutiny of the building’s memory.
Several laughing, drunken festival-goers staggered past without detecting him.
Why am I doing this?
It was Helsen who set off all his alarms - she of the darkness, she and her creepy friend - but it was Alisha he cared about.
So why should I mess up her chance of upraise?
If she was supposed to be networking with the Luculenti élite, that was fine. But he remembered that it was Helsen who had told Alisha to make contact with someone called Stargonier. He had no way of knowing for sure - if he tried an image search in Skein, he might attract peacekeeper attention - but his intuition was that this Luculenta was Rafaella Stargonier. For one thing, he thought that Alisha did not know many Luculenti.
Then he saw the Luculenta in clear, and the back of his neck felt cold.
‘Trust your intuition,’ Dad had told him more than once. ‘Civilized people disregard the wisdom of four billion years of evolution, and step inside a room or vehicle with someone who makes them uneasy, or let someone help them carry things for them out of politeness, while their reptile brain is screaming alarm signals. Becoming a victim out of embarrassment is stupid.’
Predators and psychopaths have unusual biochemistry - neither cause nor effect, for behaviour changes hormonal balance, while hormones alter behaviour, in a feedback loop that can be benign (optimism produces health produces optimism) or deadly. The reptilean part of every human brain can smell danger.
Roger knew this because he had consciously learned it, with the civilized part of his mind. When he looked at the Luculenta, his intellectual understanding reinforced the automatic emotion.
She scared him.
Up ahead, Alisha nodded to the Luculenta, touched fists and walked away. She headed through a maze of vertical levitated flanges that formed a smiling human face or a scowling tiger, or merely a jumble of shapes, depending on the angle.
And was that a hungry look on the Luculenta’s face, as she watched Alisha leave?
His tu-ring chimed.
Shit.
But he accepted the incoming comms request, perhaps because of his unease, in case there was something wrong.
‘Hey,’ said Stef in a virtual holo. ‘I just talked to Alisha.’
‘In reality?’
‘No, she’s not with us, and neither are you. But you’re not together, either.’
‘Was that semantically null, or are you just babbling?’
‘You’ve used that line before. Don’t you play double-bind games with me, Roger Blackstone.’
‘Tell me you’re sober.’
‘I’m sober. Just don’t expect me to tell the truth. Except we want you back here now.’
‘Maybe—’
Beyond the virtual Stef he could see the real Luculenta, the presumed Rafaella Stargonier. A masked man was approaching her - he wore a holo fox’s head, a yellow cape - and he was staggering a bit,
laughing. Propositioning her?
The man fell back, hand clutching his forehead as his fox mask disappeared.
A Luculentus, playing with altered mental states for recreation - he could have sobered with a single well-formed thought - but now he stood there, swaying. The Luculenta stared at him, trembling, then she pulled back, turned, and stalked away, heading for a mirror-bright ramp that led into the heart of Parallaville.
