by Jaine Fenn
‘I think they are trying to turn off the weapons! The weapons in the sky – Sais said that when the Sidhe come they must – ah – send something – an override code – because otherwise the sky-weapons will destroy them.’
‘I think you may be right,’ said Urien grimly. Then his expression changed. ‘Wait! Look—’ He pointed to a new message, which was repeated three times. ‘Request denied,’ Urien read for her.
‘Does that mean the Sidhe’s attempt to override the weapons has failed?’
‘That is what it looks like to me. It appears we may yet see off those who would reclaim our world for themselves.’
Kerin felt a fierce grin pull at her face. Her miraculous skytouched son was fighting the unseen battle for them, and he was winning. She wanted to throw her arms around him, though she knew better than to interrupt him when he was busy.
The alarm, which Kerin had almost managed to forget, died in mid-peep.
Urien was frowning at the screen. The display had changed again: the original message was gone, to be replaced with moving words and numbers.
Damaru snorted; he was angry at having been thwarted.
‘What is it?’ she whispered urgently.
Urien, still focused on the screen, must have assumed she was speaking to him. ‘I think . . . There is an error. A – a lost connection of some sort.’ He sounded unsure.
Desperately she asked her son, ‘Damaru, have you still got control? Are the sky-weapons doing your bidding?’
Damaru grunted, obviously annoyed, but said nothing.
Kerin had a sudden, foolish desire to grab his shoulders, but she forced herself to stay calm and silent.
‘It keeps repeating the same message,’ said Urien, ‘“Contact lost”; oh wait, there is another message appearing now: “Platform status unknown” – and then the words “All Units”, which keep flashing. By the Adversary, I wish I knew what all this meant!’
‘Gone.’ They both jumped when Damaru spoke. He sounded forlorn.
‘What is gone, Damaru?’ asked Kerin, trying to keep her voice soft and low. ‘Are— Have the visitors gone?’ Please let that be so, she hoped silently, please let those evil creatures be dead and destroyed in the vast beyond, so those below may remain free.
‘No,’ said Damaru.
‘They are still coming, then?’ asked Urien. ‘What is the contact that has been lost?’
Damaru did not appear to hear the Escori. Kerin crouched down next to her child and laid a hand on his arm. ‘Please, can you tell us what has happened, Damaru? Have you succeeded, my lovely boy? Have you turned the Sidhe’s weapons on them?’
‘No,’ he said again, ‘cannot see the rock throwers!’ He sounded peeved.
Kerin said patiently, ‘I do not know what these rock throwers are, Damaru. Can you tell us?’
Damaru sighed, as though she were the fool. ‘Throwers of rocks. In the sky. To destroy!’
Urien said, ‘Kerin, you said Sais compared the sky-weapons to great crossbows: could they perhaps fire rocks instead of quarrels?’
‘Aye, I think they could. Is that it, Damaru? Are the rock throwers the sky-weapons?’
‘Aye.’
‘And you cannot see them any more? What does that mean, precisely?’
‘Not in the pattern. Gone.’
Urien said, ‘Are you saying you have lost contact? That you can no longer observe or control the weapons?’
Damaru looked up, as though noticing the Escori for the first time. ‘Aye,’ he said tetchily, then went back to staring into the machine.
‘Could that mean they have done their work?’ asked Kerin, not wanting to let go of hope.
Damaru shrugged.
‘Can you still talk to the watching devices, Damaru?’ asked Urien. ‘Do you know if there is anyone out there now? Or have the weapons destroyed them?’
‘I will look again.’ Damaru’s already unfocused gaze grew vaguer; from the way the muscles in his wiry arm were flexing Kerin could imagine his fingers moving deep in the arcane device. Finally he said, ‘They still come.’
Kerin felt the cold fear expand to knock at her heart. ‘Can— Can you do anything, Damaru?’
‘I try to grasp the cutting light,’ he announced.
‘And what is that, Damaru?’
Damaru gestured vaguely upwards with his free hand, shaking off Kerin in the process. ‘Above us, the cutting light on the silver thread!’
Kerin considered asking for further explanation, then thought better of it. ‘And can this cutting light destroy the Sidhe?’ she asked.
‘Aye.’ But he did not sound sure.
‘I know you can do it,’ she said firmly, though she was not.
He wrinkled his nose and sucked in his lips; the expression might have been comical, but Kerin knew it meant he was concentrating as hard as he could.
Kerin drew back. She turned to Urien. ‘We should leave him to work.’
Urien nodded tersely. ‘Aye.’ He was still watching the screen, which appeared to have frozen in place.
Kerin wished she had some idea whether this was a good sign or not. She made herself stand up straight and take a step back, though her legs felt weak and shaky.
If Damaru did not succeed, then the Sidhe would descend the silver thread and enslave her world again. Though she feared them beyond reason, she would not run. She would face them here, in what had been the heart of their power. She would arm herself as best she could, and do everything possible to hurt them before they killed her. She had killed a Sidhe once, and though that memory still haunted her, she hated them enough to do so again. But she must send Damaru away first – if she could persuade him to leave without her.
She realised she was wringing her hands. Cursing her foolishness, she made herself stop, and smoothed them down the side of her robes instead.
If Damaru did stay, he could help— No, he must live; though she might fail and die, his life must go on!
Her palms stung; she had been pressing them down repeatedly on her thighs, hard enough to make heat.
The screen went blank, fading all at once to featureless grey. Kerin looked to Urien, his face unclear in the soft lamplight.
‘I have no idea what that means,’ he murmured.
More time passed, and Kerin forced herself to stay calm and silent. Nothing she could do or say would help now. It was all up to Damaru.
Eventually, Damaru drew his hand out of the device and straightened slowly; he looked exhausted. Kerin reached out to help, but he shrugged her off.
‘What has happened, Damaru?’ asked Urien.
‘All done.’ He sounded satisfied, or possibly he was just too tired to care.
‘That is good,’ said Kerin, responding to his tone, rather than the content. ‘What of the Sidhe, Damaru?’
When he turned to her his eyes were still unfocused, but he was smiling his secret, clever smile. ‘They burn,’ he said.
CHAPTER FOUR
Perhaps, thought Jarek, shiftspace is hell – not the Salvatine hell, of eternal and creative punishment, because however much the shift messed with your head during a transit, everything went back to normal as soon as you dropped back into realspace. Physically, the worst he’d ever experienced in the shift had been weird bodily sensations – pins and needles, itchy skin, feelings of emptiness, or bloated guts.
He found himself briefly distracted by this transit’s Persistent Illusion. He managed to turn his head away, and found his blurred vision falling on the bridge controls, all safely disabled for the transit, though still sparkling a little, as objects often did in the shift.
No, what he meant by— He caught the thought he’d been chasing: what he meant by shiftspace being hell . . . What he meant was that it made you think about the dead, and thinking about them could make you believe they were there, with you in the shift. Which explained why he kept seeing his sister out of the corner of his eye. She looked faintly disapproving, or perhaps disappointed. At least she wasn’t trying
to talk to him. He risked another look over at her and said, ‘I wish you could’ve forgiven me.’ His voice sounded flat and small, like he was talking through a cheap com. The Persistent Illusion gave no sign of having heard him.
It made sense – as much as anything did right now – that he’d see Elarn. After all, they were heading for the place where she’d died. He tried to control his wandering thoughts by recalling the number of transits there should be between the Hetarey and Tri-Confed systems. He soon gave up: though trying to remember cold facts distracted him from the Illusion, it also reminded him that what they were doing right now (if there is a ‘now’ here . . . or a ‘here’ here— Stop that and focus, damnit!) was meant to be impossible. The only other time Taro and Nual had shifted point-to-point it had seriously messed them up, and they’d only missed out a couple of transits that time. The Confederacy of Three was in a whole different sector. He tried to force his thoughts away from the more unpleasant possibilities – the transit never ends, we come out inside a star, we come out inside-out— but ended up thinking about the third component of the strange trinity currently propelling them through the un-universe of shiftspace: nameless and mad, the darkness in the heart, as Nual had once called it. No, not it. Him. And unlike his passengers, that individual was far from unique. Oh Elarn, if only you’d known just how vile and insidious the Sidhe’s influence really is—
The thought was snatched away, and he found himself staring at the console again. It was no longer sparkling, and suddenly he felt heavy, coherent, real.
They were out of the shift.
Jarek twitched and shuddered. He felt the expected wash of exhaustion and its accompanying post-transit headache, but it was no worse than usual. Compared to the first time they’d pulled this stunt it was looking like he’d got off lightly. He smiled to himself; maybe bypassing the rules of interstellar navigation got easier with practice.
Like dying, dreaming . . .
. . . like waking, remembering.
The void was gone.
Taro became aware of his body, and of the weight of Nual’s body against it. Against him. This was him: one body; one mind. He was himself again: just himself.
Nual wasn’t quite conscious yet, but even though she’d’ve had a worse time of it, he knew she’d be all right. Without opening his eyes he turned and kissed the top of her head. She was the one who’d forced the ship’s transit-kernel to make an impossible leap through shiftspace, though she could do it only by drawing on his strength – which he gave freely, of course.
But it left him so fucking tired. He let himself drift towards sleep.
‘Water?’
‘Uh . . .’ Taro opened his eyes to see Jarek standing over them, a drinking bulb in his hand. He reached out to take it. ‘Thanks.’ He took a long pull himself, then pressed it into Nual’s hands, sending a silent query her way.
Nual’s voice was clear in his mind, though her hands were shaking when she lifted the bulb.
‘I don’t think it was as bad that time,’ said Jarek, hopefully. When Taro didn’t comment he added, ‘How’re you two doing?’
Taro thought Jarek didn’t look too grim, though he was gripping the back of the ladder up to the bridge for support; Nual had insisted they sat up against the drive column before going into shiftspace, to get as close as possible to the transit-kernel. ‘Oh, we’re just top prime,’ he rasped. ‘How’s the ship?’ The first time they’d done this, Jarek hadn’t had time to do a proper shutdown, and they’d paid the price when they came back into realspace. They were learning.
‘Everything came up clean.’
‘Thank fuck for that. And we’re in the Tri-Confed system?’
‘That’s what the navcomp tells me – as do local Traffic Control.’
Taro managed a weak grin. ‘Bet they were surprised to see us.’
‘Oh yes.’
‘What’d you tell them?’
‘I said we came in from Mystil, and had to leave in a bit of a hurry.’
‘That’s . . .’ Taro searched his memory; though this was his home system, he’d spent his first seventeen years in the mazeways of the Undertow, the slum below Khesh City. He still didn’t know very much about the universe outside. He compromised with, ‘That’s a pretty smoky system, ain’t it?’
‘Yep, just the kind of place where the rules sometimes get bypassed by reckless traders. Of course, they might want to check my story . . . and they’ll definitely want to fine us for such a reckless arrival – which is why I need you on the bridge as soon as you can manage it, I’m afraid.’
‘Don’t suppose I’ve got time for a caf?’ he asked a little plaintively.
‘You can have caf, sleep, whatever you want, once you’ve made contact with—?’ Jarek searched for the right word.
‘Khesh,’ supplied Taro, ‘though it’s the Minister who’ll probably meet us.’
‘Right. Khesh.’
‘Just give us a moment,’ said Taro, and silently asked Nual,
Taro untangled himself and Jarek stood back as he activated his implants to let him float up the ladder onto the bridge, where he folded himself into the pilot’s couch. He took a moment to clear the last remnant of sleep from his head, then looked at Jarek for permission to com out. At his nod, Taro cleared his throat and announced, ‘Tri-Confed TC, this is the Heart of Glass.’
The image of a female Traffic Control officer appeared on the holoplate in front of him. She looked impatient, and mildly confused. ‘Thank you for finally responding, Heart of Glass. Are you aware that you do not have sufficient funds to pay the fine for your unscheduled transit?’
‘We don’t?’ Taro favoured her with the best Who, me? look he could manage with a shiftspace hangover. ‘Then we’d better do something about that.’
‘Yes, you had. To whom am I speaking?’
‘I’m Taro sanMalia – hang on, I’ll append my ID.’ He quickly checked it was his real-and-genuine(ish) one before comming it over. ‘Could you do me a favour and connect me to Sirrah Emet Krand on Vellern, please,’ he added, politely.
‘Sirrah Krand?’ The officer’s expression hardened. ‘The High Speaker of the Vellern Assembly?’
‘That’s the one. He’ll clear this up for us.’
‘I seriously doubt that.’
‘I can see how you might think that, but I can assure you he’ll sort this out. I’m asking you to connect us rather than using the comnet and having to, erm, reverse the charges.’ Taro sounded like he really didn’t want to inconvenience anyone.
‘Well, Sirrah sanMalia – and without meaning to be rude – I’d say that the chance of a near-bankrupt adolescent freetrader getting through to one of the most powerful men on Vellern without an appointment or good reason is slightly less than your ship’s chances of not getting impounded for non-payment of fines. However, we’re having quiet day here, so I’ll see what I can do.’
Taro could see she was suppressing a smile. Must be a quiet day there – although if what Jarek had told him was right, they’d probably have to make their own fun out there a lot of the time. Tri-Confed was a high-population system, not just a lone settled world, and their shiftspace beacon was a long way out from the primary. The locals had built a station near the beacon to run their interstellar traffic; he guessed the Traffic Control posting wasn’t the most exciting of assignments.
‘I’m going to put you on hold while I make the call; please don’t cut the connection, as I still need to discuss that fine with Captain Reen.’ The image froze.
Taro swivelled round and grinned at Jarek. ‘I love it when they call me “Sirrah”.’
‘That’s not what they’ll be calling you if this “High Speaker” doesn’t want to talk to you.’
‘Don’t worry, he will.’ Taro hoped he sounded confident; though Vellern was no longer his home, he was owed a debt there, a massive debt that couldn’t be ignored. N
ual was too, of course – and she might’ve had a better chance of getting through to the people they needed, if she’d had her shit together and not been so screwed up after the shift. After all, she’d been an Angel for the seven years she’d spent on Vellern, one of the Concord’s most notorious and valued assassins; he was just a local boy made good who’d only got his Angel implants just before he left the City. But Nual was also known to the Sidhe – hell, they’d been willing to fuck up an entire city to kill her – while Taro had managed to stay below their notice so far.
After what felt like several minutes the image on the holoplate unfroze and flickered to show an elderly man with a high forehead and an expression of frank surprise. ‘Back already?’ he said. ‘I hope you haven’t got yourselves into trouble. Or if you have, I hope you haven’t brought it with you.’
Taro shook his head. ‘No trouble, Sirrah, but we’d like to ask a favour.’
‘Really? Well spit it out then.’
‘Well, the main favour—’ He paused, then said, ‘I think it’s better if we come and meet you.’
‘When you say me—?’
‘The Minister,’ Taro said decisively. ‘He’d be the best one.’
‘Yes, he would. And he will meet you when you arrive – but you hardly needed to call me out of a briefing session with my senior Consuls to arrange that!’
‘No, Sirrah, it’s just that we arrived here a bit unexpected-like, and there’s fines and questions and shit – stuff—’
‘And so you need me to ensure you have a smooth passage in from the beacon, without any unnecessary problems with Traffic Control or Customs? I see.’
‘That’d be good, if you don’t mind, Sirrah.’
‘It can be arranged.’
‘And the fine?’
‘Good grief, boy! I’m not your father, you know.’
‘Well, no – I never had one of them. But it’s only credit, ain’t it?’
