by Liz Williams
There was another gate. It was much bigger than the gate near the market, high and arched, topped with a dome made of a pale green stone. I thought it was beautiful. I couldn’t stop staring at it, to such an extent that when House Father turned and saw me, he gave an impatient curse and struck the side of my head. It was a light blow, for which I was grateful, but I did not want another one and so I scurried on.
In the centre of the square that lay before the great gate was a strange thing: a tall turret, with a chain hanging from it. Crowds milled before it, not just men and their womenfolk, but traders selling food and baskets of things that, later, I understood to be religious symbols. House Father bought a basket of cracked corn for himself and First Joy. There was nothing for us, and I could see that Boy-Next-Time, who was greedy, wanted some, so I slapped her before she could howl. House Father would have hit her harder and I did not want that.
All of a sudden, however, the crowd fell silent. Everyone turned to the thing at the centre of the square as if they knew what was about to happen. We did not. We just stared. Beneath the green dome, the gates began to creak open: an awful sound of metal on metal. It reminded me of the forge down the road, which scared me – the showers of sparks, the terrible clanking and hissing noises – so that I always crossed over the road on market day and did not have to walk past it. I clasped my daughters’ hands more tightly and took a step back.
They were the Hierolath’s militia. They were bringing a woman through the gate, dragging her as if she was asleep. Now, I realize she had been stunned. A man stepped up to the base of the turret and started saying something in a loud voice, which naturally I did not understand. Every so often there would be cries and shouts from the men in the crowd. I stole a look at House Father and he was staring raptly at the man on the stage, his mouth slightly agape.
The militiamen hauled the woman like a sack of roots up to the stage. She was starting to wake up now. She looked wildly around her and she did not have control of her mouth: she was dribbling, saliva pouring in skeins down her chin. The ranting man on the stage grabbed the end of the chain and it came rattling down to hit the stone flags of the square with a crash. The woman flinched when she heard it and so did I. Very quickly, the militiamen attached the end of the chain to a ring round the woman’s ankle. The man on the stage touched something set into the turret that I could not see – a winch, perhaps. The chain again rattled up, taking the woman with it. She was screaming. I looked up and saw her outlined against the burn of the sky, jerking and twisting from the chain that held her leg. A white bird fluttered up from somewhere and flew around her head, close enough that its wings brushed her twitching head. It made me hot and sick to look at the bird, though I did not know why. When they saw it, many of the men cried out as if they, too, were afraid.
More words from the man on the stage. Boy-Next-Time, Luck-Still-to-Come and I all stared in anticipation. The chain was released. The bird disappeared. The woman crashed to the floor and her head struck the flagstones. It burst like a melon dropped out of a window. Blood and something grey, like sponge, spilled out across the flagstones. The weight of the chain fell across her unmoving body.
The men all gave a great sigh, as if they spoke with a single voice. The women were silent. After that, we went home, but I looked back just as we were about to leave the square and saw that a swarm of hornets had settled on the body of the woman and were busy stripping it down to bone. The militiamen were going back through the gate, and I could not see the man who had been on the stage at all. No one was paying any attention to what was happening to the woman’s body.
I dreamed about it that night, and for many nights to come. I still dream about it, and on the day when Khainet fainted, it came back with such force that I felt as though I’d lived through it all over again.
I woke to the stuffy heat of Tare’s house, with the shadows falling long across the floor. Nothing stirred. I got to my feet. The heat sickness had faded and I felt clear-headed and light, too much so, as though I’d been detached from my body and was floating. It felt so strange that I almost nipped my arm with my nails, to make sure that I wasn’t still dreaming.
I went out into the street, just in time to see Tare hurrying along it.
‘Oh!’ she said when she saw me. ‘You’re up. I didn’t want to wake you.’
‘I’m all right. How is Khainet?’
‘She fainted. We took her to one of the houses and put her to bed. She’ll be fine.’
‘It must have been the heat,’ I said, but the thought made me uneasy. Khainet hadn’t long come out of the desert, and she’d been ill enough when she first arrived: what if I’d worked her too hard? Or what if she was still ill, with something we hadn’t seen? We had no real medical knowledge, although we were learning. None of us had been doctors in the past: all the medics were men, of course. We relied on a few herbal painkillers and stomach remedies, but when someone got seriously ill, we couldn’t save them or cure them. All we could really do was watch helplessly as they got better or died. If Khainet were among the latter – I remembered that beautiful face and graceful walk. If I’d seen my daughters grow up, I’d have liked them to look like that, though I knew full well they would have been just like me. Khainet’s hair was the only odd thing; it fascinated me, but although it was long, it was too much like a man’s in colour.
Tare took me to see her, but she was sleeping. She looked smaller already, as if she had shrunk, and the guilt for making her work washed over me like a wave, even though she’d insisted on helping. Together, Tare and I left her and walked back up through the town in what was now the evening cool. The clouds were still building up: big anvil thunderheads above the walls, lining the bell tower with indigo and flashes of golden light as the sun broke through.
‘Storm on the way,’ said Tare.
I nodded. I hated these coastal storms: building up all day until they filled your skull with pressure, then bursting once darkness had fallen to send hissing rains against the walls of the bell tower and thunder rolling overhead like a drum. It had been bad enough in the north. The girls had been calm enough, oddly, but my son had hated thunder, and, I realized now, hated me for seeing his fear. I felt a cold prick of shock at the thought.
It was almost dark now. I wanted to get in before the storm broke, and for Tare to be back at home. I wished that I’d stayed with Khainet, but she was safe enough where she was. I still felt responsible and once inside, even with the four walls of my chamber around me, I couldn’t sleep.
The storm came an hour later, with the first downpour of rain. Lightning, a livid pink, lit up the chamber, casting the shadows into nightmare figures. I decided to forget about sleep: this storm would last until dawn. I got up again and made tea. The act of steeping herbs in the hot water was soothing, almost a meditation, but then there was a crash so loud that I wondered whether the bell tower had been struck. The walls shuddered and the tea slopped in its clay cup. It turned out to be the worst of it, though. After that, the storm rolled away a little, and shortly after that, there was a knock on the door.
My immediate thought was for Khainet. She had died. And when I saw Seliye standing on the step I knew that this was what she had come to tell me. So when she spoke, it took me a minute to understand her.
‘There’s a boat out there,’ she said. ‘With women on it.’
All the way to the shore wall, through that lashing rain, I thought she must be wrong. There was no boat. Or there was, but it was crewed by men. I asked Seliye over and over again if she was sure, until she became irritated with me and snapped that I would just have to see for myself.
Word had spread fast, in spite of the storm. There was a crowd on the shore wall, sheltering under sacks. Everyone was wringing wet, all the same, but they did not seem to mind. They were chattering and laughing as though it were a holiday.
‘They see it as a sign,’ Seliye said. ‘First Khainet and her naming, and now this.’
‘As a sign of w
hat?’ I asked.
She looked as me as though I’d spoken treachery. ‘Of hope, of course.’
But I was not so sure. I could see the boat now – a little thing, a white oval with a ragged sail. But I stared at the raging sea, split with long lines of spray, and could not see how anything might survive it. Far out towards the horizon, I couldn’t even tell what was sea and what was stormy sky.
‘Seliye,’ I whispered. ‘They’re not going to make it to shore.’
We had never considered the possibility that anyone might ever arrive by boat, not over that toxic sea. Years ago, one of the women had gone mad: her name had been Melay, I remembered. She had run screaming through the colony, shouting out that we were all devils and the men were right to take our tongues and our minds. Then she had run up to the rocks and thrown herself off into the high tide. The sight of her falling, limbs outflung, her graceless shrieking dive, imprinted itself on my memory like a burn scar. Now, the scar had flared up again and I saw her still. Her body had washed up a day later, eaten down by the sea until she was nothing more than a huddle of bone and rag. We had no boats, to go out and help this one, no grapples or ropes long enough to bring it in. All we could do, as so often, was watch and be helpless.
But the boat was still coming closer to the shore. We could see the crew: three women, half naked, clinging to the spars and paddling furiously. And to my amazement, they were bringing in the boat. As soon as they saw this, some of the women ran shouting down the steps on the outer side of the wall to the rocks.
‘Be careful!’ Seliye called. ‘Don’t get too close to the spray!’
It would be hard to avoid, I thought, and the women were running towards the edge of the rock. One of the women on the boat stood up unsteadily and threw what looked like a chain. A miss, another miss, our hearts in our mouths and then the women on the shore caught it. More had poured down to join them now, and they hauled the boat onto the rocks. The women tumbled from it without looking back, clutching a bag.
Like Khainet, they did not look like us. They were taller, still very dark, but with round faces that resembled one another. I wondered if they were sisters. There was no sign that they had been burned by the sea: they couldn’t have been in it for long enough, and that was a mercy.
Shouting and celebrating, the crowd took them to the nearest house complex, Tare’s home, and into shelter. Seliye threw everyone out except myself and the house complex’s mothers. We all stood staring at one another in sudden quiet and yellow lamplight.
‘You’re welcome here,’ I told them, the formal greeting, even though I knew they would not yet have language. But to my surprise the tallest woman – almost as tall as a man – spoke. It was guttural and strange, and I could not understand her. Seliye’s face was a mask of shock.
‘They can speak,’ she said.
Another language. And so, maybe, another colony, somewhere. We weren’t alone. There were others.
I glanced up and Khainet was standing in the doorway, clutching a robe around her. She was staring at the strangers, and I could not tell what was in her face.
EIGHTEEN
PLANET: MUSPELL (VALI)
Eld and I left the hostel the next morning. We saw no one and took care to go out by a back entrance that took us directly into the forest. I approved of such caution, but all the same, there seemed little point. Skinning Knife knew we were after her, knew where we were, could walk through a locked door as easily as a blade through air – I had to steer myself away from such thoughts, for they served no purpose except to increase my paranoia, already running at record level.
All the same, I asked Eld where we were heading. I didn’t even know any more whether we were hunters or hunted and when I voiced that thought he gave me a sideways look and did not reply. The silence hung heavy in the air between us for a few minutes. Then Thorn said, ‘You have to understand. It does not matter whether we pursue or are pursued, as long as we find her.’
‘She’s already found us first, Eld. What if you were wrong, and it was indeed murder she had in mind?’
‘She likes to play, Vali. I’ve seen it in her before.’ He paused and looked up into the cloud-grey trees, dripping with snowmelt. The air sang with cold. ‘A cat with mice. It’s a characteristic of both vitki and valkyrie, probably of Morrighanu as well. You do not understand it, I think. You are perhaps a more efficient killer.’
‘If I am efficient, Eld, it is because I don’t take any pleasure in killing. I see it as a necessity, nothing more.’
Eld gave his little smile. ‘You are not attached to it. That’s a good quality, Vali, and one that I believe I share.’
I wondered whether that was true. In him, or in me. Frey had enjoyed killing, and so had his Mondhaith girl. Gemaley was dead, drowned, but I kept thinking of her: tall, lovely, the ice-blue eyes and star-clasped hair, the sharp teeth and sharper smile. A demon princess. Gemaley’s primary interest had been in hurting people. I suppose everyone should have a hobby.
Beside me Eld shivered, suddenly, so that the moisture on the lynx pelt flew in all directions.
‘You haven’t told me where we’re going.’
‘That’s because I don’t know.’
‘Ah. So we are standing in the middle of a forest, in enemy territory, because . . .?’
‘She’ll have left traces.’
‘Are you sure? I’ve seen nothing.’ Since we had started making our way through the trees, I had been searching the air, sending out the seith for her, even though I feared what I might find. Apart from our time on Nhem, I had been able to track Frey as easily as if he had left his scent glowing upon the air, but Sull Forest felt dead to me. No birds sang; nothing rustled in the undergrowth. Perhaps it was a result of the devastation that the forest had apparently endured elsewhere, and perhaps not. I looked at moss, at lichen, at the slabs of bracket fungus that layered the tree trunks, checking for wind direction and the fall of infrequent sunlight. I looked at the ground, too, ashy with leaf fall, but there were no small footprints patterning it, no sign of animal life.
‘She will have left something,’ Eld said with grim confidence, and marched on into the gloom of the trees. Towards noon, we discovered just what she had left.
From above, the forest would have appeared impenetrable, but Eld led me sure-footed through the trees. Either he had some vitki means of tracking, or was using a more reliable map implant than the one I possessed. I kept a watchful eye on the sun, marking the twists and turns that we were taking: if anything happened to Eld, I did not want to be lost in the middle of Sull with an assassin out for my blood. I’d learned not to rely on my map implant. Technology, pitted against the harshness of worlds, is never all that reliable no matter what we want to pretend.
It was not just Skadi who was worrying me, nor concerns about the progress of the war, which were never far from my mind, but also the thought of what else might be lurking in these woods. Despite the lack of animal tracks, I was sure that there was bound to be something in the deep forest, perhaps further from human habitation. Fenris, sabre-toothed lynx, dire-wolf, aurochs – although the trees would have discouraged the latter. Like those of Mondhile, the ancestors of both Eld and myself had taken to engineering fauna imported from Earth with a lamentable degree of enthusiasm: reconstructing all those northern species that had perished amid Earth’s climate changes and woeful record of pollution. No doubt they had considered Muspell’s forests and ranges to be the ideal wildlife arena, and though I sympathized with the ideal, reality left much to be desired in these hostile, dripping woods. Moreover, no one in the Reach really knew what indigenous life Darkland might possess: I remembered the thing I had once seen in a tree outside Hetla, half-human, half-other, dying in a burst of flame as the tree exploded. I had no idea what it might have been. My far-back ancestors would have spoken of huldra or fey. This thing had been alien in some sense of the word: maybe genetically engineered like the Mondhaith or simply indigenous. Our ancestors were supposed n
ot to have colonized worlds with their own sentient life, but accidents happened. And more than accidents, too. Intention.
With all these thoughts running through my mind I was well on my way to spooking myself even before Eld discovered the body.
We were crossing a stream, a narrow race of melt water through the tree roots, when I heard him exclaim. Balancing on a mossy rock in mid-torrent, I looked downstream to see him crouching over something in the water. The rocks made regular, if uneven, stepping stones and I went cautiously down to join him. He looked up at me, face white in the shadow of the trees, the lynx fur bedraggled where it was trailing, unheeded by Eld, in the water. A swirl of scarlet was welling up from the clear bottom of the channel.
I took a step back and nearly fell into the torrent. I could feel it in the air now, as though a rent had been torn through the air, a gateway into death. The place sang with the echoes of recent violence. Whoever lay at the bottom of the stream had been killed, brutally.
I looked over Eld’s shoulder into the water. Someone lay there, face down, but the stream was clear enough for me to see the long lesion where the spine had been, the flesh fluttering in the water-flow like the tentacles of an anemone. Here was a man, killed in the same manner as Idhunn.
Eld was eloquently silent. I drew the seith around me, merging myself with the rush of the water and the slow presence of the stones. To anyone who might be watching, I would not be invisible, exactly, but hard to see. Their gaze would glide over me, seeing me merely as part of the landscape. I would be of so little interest as to be unnoticeable. It was hard to do, in the wake of this atmosphere of violent death, and I doubted whether it would fool Skinning Knife, but it made me feel better. Eld watched without comment.
‘Do you feel her here?’ I asked.
He shook his head. ‘Not any more, but I confess I can’t be sure. Help me bring him up, Vali.’
Even through slickskin gloves, the water chilled me to the bone. Together we pulled and tugged at the filleted corpse, which had either become wedged, or had been deliberately secured, amongst the rocks on the stream bed. With Eld taking the head, and myself the feet, we managed to bring the body over to the opposite bank and set him down on a carpet of curling fern shoots. Eld rolled him over, revealing a young man with long dark hair, now matted into a sodden mass. His jaw was wedged open in rictus, a soundless shout. Sea-blue eyes stared up at us. Eld and I stood looking down at him, noting the patched slickskin, the knives at his belt. She had not bothered with his weapons and they had not been enough to save him. A hunter, clearly, probably a local. I wondered whether he had crossed her in some way, or whether he had simply been unfortunate enough to be the first one she met who would serve as a demonstration model, a gory clue to be thrown carelessly in our path. Somehow, I had no doubt that we had been meant to find him.
