Winterstrike

by Liz Williams

  Then cities were rising up around me, the old cities of the Crater Plains and the start and heart of the Martian mythos. Yere and Shua, Tokamay and Khalt, cities of the saltmarshes and the deep deserts. A woman rushed past me, gaunt and tall, armour-clad with black hair streaming. Her mouth gaped, her eyes stared; I remembered the mad matriarch Mantis and thought of ghosts.

  ‘There she goes,’ a familiar, creaky voice said. I blinked. Old Mars was gone. I lay on a pallet bed, a blank cracked ceiling above me. Thin air was trickling in around the warped frame of a window, a breath upon my face. The Library stood looking out, feet braced, her back towards me.

  ‘Who—?’ I remembered the woman. ‘That was Mantis? Where are we?’

  ‘You’ve seen it before,’ said the Library.

  ‘This is Temperire? Mantis’s tower?’ I got off the bed and went to the window, instinctively moving to shoulder the warrior aside and nearly stumbling as I passed through her. It was almost dark, but there was a last gleam of sun low on the horizon and in its light I saw the canal, with the lamps of ships slowly passing up it to the Noumenon. The shadows of the rocks lay squat and black, scattered over the plain.

  A tall door, almost too high and narrow for a normal person. Our ancestors were different, after all: experimentation, resulting in the Changed. The door was locked and though I rattled it, it would not budge. There was none of the feel of haunt-tech and yet the place felt infested, all the same.

  ‘It’s not a mechanical lock,’ the Library unnecessarily informed me.

  I sat back down on the pallet. I felt bruised; my rib burned and the confusion of the last half hour was overwhelming. All I wanted to do was to lie down and close my eyes, but I had to think. Had the Noumenon fallen? I wasn’t even sure.

  That weapon I’d delivered to Gennera. What exactly did it do? I fought back dismay.

  Like the door, the window was bolted shut, but in this case the bolt was rusty and old. After some minutes of determined tugging, the whole thing gave way in a shower of rotten wood and ancient nails. I breathed in snowy air. The sill was narrow, but a short distance away was another window. The only difficulty was the drop, which I estimated to be in the region of a thousand feet or so. It was now dark enough that I couldn’t see what lay immediately beneath, but it was probably rocks.

  ‘Are you going out there?’ the Library asked. I thought I detected a familiar note in her engineered voice: the sort of tone that reminds you of your mother.

  ‘It’s the only way out,’ I said. ‘I don’t get vertigo.’ Well, not much. I hauled myself up over the sill and stood, teetering over nothing. Flattening myself against the wall, I stepped out and caught a handhold on the frame of the next window. As I stood on the sill, the Library hovered disapprovingly beside me in midair.

  ‘It’s all right for you,’ I said. I squinted in through the window. Another small room, but this was empty and the door was open – in fact, it didn’t look as though there was a door there. I kicked the window in with the heel of one foot and it bounced on its frame. Next moment, I dropped into the room.

  Whether or not the ruin used haunt-tech was irrelevant. The room was full of ghosts: I could hear their whispering spirits trapped in the old walls, which breathed out damp and must and despair.

  ‘Very busy,’ was the Library’s only comment.

  ‘Is that Mantis?’

  The warrior frowned. ‘I don’t – I should not say her name, if I were you.’

  ‘Very well.’ I was beginning to conceive an unreasonable fear of Mantis, long dead but somehow, I felt, still here and still mad. The vision of the woman with the streaming hair was forcibly to the forefront of my mind. I told myself that I was infected with fairy stories, the legends dredged up by Peto on the barge as we crossed the plain.

  ‘What brought me here?’ I whispered to the warrior.

  ‘Someone who isn’t human.’

  Not very helpful, even if accurate.

  ‘Do you mean a haunt-engine? Do you know why?’

  The Library shook her head. ‘I can’t read this place,’ she confessed. ‘Not well.’

  ‘Yet part of you is from the same epoch?’

  It was a guess, but a ripple passed over the face of the Library, a shimmering alteration that, brief as it was, left her looking concerned. The flayed brow furrowed.

  ‘I think that’s true. I can’t remember.’ Her gaze turned inward, as if processing. I gave up. By now, the passage had taken us deeper into the ruin, ancient layers of stone and metal, buckled out of shape as if by fire. The stone itself looked vitrified, but that was common in much of Winterstrike itself, a relic of earlier days.

  Most of the doors had gone: blasted off their hinges, from the look of the tangles of metal in the side of each frame. The air smelled of gunpowder, like the fireworks they set off along the Great Canal at every festival except Ombre. Something huge and silent fluttered against my face and I nearly cried out, thinking it to be a haunt, but then I saw that it was only a moth. Its wings shone with phosphorescence and it blundered into the wall and clung to the stone. I watched it crawl upward, a blind thing as large as my outstretched hands.

  And then I heard voices. They were coming from somewhere up ahead, but they were so faint that I couldn’t tell whether they were really there, or yet another product of this haunted place. ‘Listen,’ I said to the Library. ‘Can you hear them? Are they real?’

  ‘By “real”, do you mean human?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I cannot tell.’ The Library’s face rippled once more, as though she stood in a wall of heat. ‘Something is interfering—’ And then she was gone. At that point, I wasn’t sure whether the Library was more of a help or a hindrance, in any case. I went cautiously towards the voices, but as I turned a corner I saw someone and dodged back behind an outcrop of stone. It looked as though this corridor had been subject to some kind of bombardment; the stone was pitted with thousands of tears and holes, so that it resembled lace. I remembered the Mote in Caud, turned into a ruin in an instant. I peered through a gap.

  Two people were walking along the corridor. One of them held the other firmly by the arm, and there was something familiar about this drooping figure: she wore a long black dress, of a style in fashion in Winterstrike a year or so ago. Its hem dipped to her ankles, a swathe of material trailing behind. This was no ghost of long ago, but someone real.

  Her companion wore leggings and high boots, a long-tailed jacket. Her hair was hidden by a long veil in the manner of some of the southern cities: Eremis, perhaps. I could not have placed her in any particular time. She moved with a jerky, elegant angularity, a mincing walk that reminded me of some of the Changed.

  As they turned the corner and disappeared from view, I slipped after them. Their footsteps receded, knocking hollow on the stone flags, and I took care to be quiet: this was a palace of echoes. Periodically I halted, just in case someone was following, but the passage behind me remained quiet.

  When the attack came, therefore, it was all the more shocking. The vulpen dropped down from the ceiling in a flurry of robes, a whirling white shape. The razor-edged staff that he held snapped out, striking the stone wall as I dodged away. Sparks filled the air. I glimpsed the long bone skull, the ridged hands: a thing that had once been called man.

  I struck out, aiming for his knee, and felt my kick connect. The vulpen staggered, the white robes swirling, and I found myself looking down into the pallid face. He hissed. I glimpsed razor-sharp teeth and a pointed tongue, forked like a serpent’s, flickered out. It lashed across my hands with the burn of poison. I was already leaping back and cannoned against the wall. The vulpen grinned. I kicked out again, the vulpen dodged, striking out with a clawed hand. I jumped and this time my foot connected with the vulpen’s jaw. The head spun round, more than a human’s should have done, and the thing collapsed. It looked like a broken puppet; I thought its neck had snapped, but I didn’t want to risk bending over it to check. Instead I ran, in the direc
tion that the two humans had gone.

  A murmuring roar filled the caverns, rustling like the sea. Two figures stepped out of the walls – not a niche in the structure, but from the walls themselves. I cried out as they grasped my arms and led me forward.

  The hall was huge, a domed cavern that had been hollowed out of the rock. I could still see the stubs of stalactites, protruding like broken horns down from the roof. From the distance I had come, I thought we were probably in the foundations of the castle, though it made me queasy to think of all that rock and mortar sitting on top of this great gap. But I was queasier still at the sight of the crowd in the cavern.

  Many were vulpen. Some were the Changed, but female remnants rather than male. I saw aspiths, nothing like the little thing at the temple, but feral and snarling. There was something else, too: a being that was snake-limbed and snake-haired. Mottled black and white skin gleamed in between the straps of a harness, an elongated medusa with a simpering oval face and eyes that shifted from dark to light. What the hell was that ? She reminded me a little of the masked women outside the theatre, long ago, and the thing I’d glimpsed dancing on the surface of the canal outside Calmaretto – but demotheas weren’t real. Were they? There were others, too, more beings I did not recognize: some no larger than children, their bones clearly visible beneath stretched skin.

  And they were shouting. ‘Send her in! Send her into the ring!’

  I was shoved ahead. ‘Library?’ I whispered, but the warrior did not come. One of the child-sized things minced forward, stepping on high-arched feet. It carried a flail. Its small mouth curled upwards, grinning. Its eyes were yellow and when it blinked, there was a roaring in my head and the world changed.

  We were standing on a red plain. Not far away rose the walls of a city, all squat russet turrets, and I thought I recognized the ancient settlement that would one day become Tharsis. Flags fluttered from the gateposts and below them sat skulls, mounted on the stonework. They didn’t look particularly human.

  ‘Yes,’ my opponent said. ‘This is the Age of Children, when the world was young and Earth forgotten. This is when things begin again.’ It had a high, lisping voice. Neither its mouth nor its tongue looked the right shape for human speech. It tucked a wisp of hair behind its ear and swung the flail. I dodged away. The flail struck a rock and left a long deep groove in its side. Not equipped with a weapon, I was disinclined to be choosy. I picked up a stone and threw it as hard as I could. The child-thing dived away, but not quickly enough. The rock glanced against the side of its skull. It shook its head like a wet animal and drops of black blood spattered the ground. The child-thing’s curling mouth smiled wider. It spat, and a burning welt appeared across the back of my hand as its saliva struck. The pain stung me into further action: I bent down, snatched another rock, and as the child-thing ducked away in anticipation, I rushed forward instead and beat the rock down at its head.

  The child-thing collapsed. After the previous injury, I expected a lot of blood. But this did not happen. Instead, the child-thing melted away under my assault and I was left standing alone on the plain outside old Tharsis. The moons had risen now, and hung pale in a rosy sky, just over the long ragged ridge of mountain that separated Tharsis from the mass of the Demnotian Plain. The gates clanged open and I turned as if in a dream, still clutching the rock in my hand, and a figure on a galloping animal shot out of the city towards me. A reptile, moving on long loping legs, the animal sped towards me and a moment later it was upon me. It passed straight through me and I realized that I was the ghost, not the world itself. Then the cavern rose up again and the baying crowd was back.

  I looked up. A fragile cage made of thin struts of metal hung over the fighting pit. A woman stood in the centre of it, the same woman I’d seen before in her Winterstrike attire. She was staring down at me and I saw the shock of recognition in her eyes. It was mirrored in my own, because this was my cousin Leretui Harn, now known as Shorn, free of her imprisonment in the city and here at large outside the Noumenon.

  I was not allowed to speak to Shorn, though I saw her turn in the cage and address the veiled woman with urgency. The woman smiled and shook her head. She reached out and put a finger to Shorn’s lips, a playful gesture. By Shorn’s side, a vulpen leaned over and nuzzled at her ear. I watched with revulsion, but Shorn didn’t seem to mind: she closed her eyes and swayed towards the vulpen, her lips parted. Then the shadowy figures returned and took me by the arms. I struggled, but their hands were steely and they ignored my efforts to free myself as though I was nothing more than a moth. They took me away into a maze of passages and small cells, and there they left me.

  I had no idea what was going on. As for what had occurred outside Tharsis, that had been simply bizarre: I knew I’d been somewhere, because the welt on the back of my hand still burned and stung, but where? I could only assume that there was some kind of holographic game overlying the reality of the combat pit. Perhaps it had different historical settings. That must, I thought, be the most logical explanation.

  But whatever had actually befallen me, two things remained. I wanted to find out what Shorn was doing here. And I had to get out.

  This time, however, the cell was sealed. I explored every crack and crevice, without result. Some time later, a person appeared with a bowl of soup. She was not one of the shadowy figures and she looked quite solid, but not entirely human all the same. The bones of her face were the wrong shape. She reminded me of the little aspith at the Temple of the Changed, but she didn’t have the fierce aspect of the ones I’d seen earlier. I didn’t know whether trying to steal the soul of one of the Changed would work, so I did not try. The aspith said, in a rapid whisper, ‘They told me I was to feed you.’

  ‘Am I going back in the pit?’

  ‘Not tonight. I don’t know when. But you will go back.’

  Since she seemed disposed towards conversation, I said, ‘The girl in the cage. The one who looks like me. Do you know who she is?’

  ‘She’s Mantis’s protégée.’

  I frowned. ‘The Matriarch Mantis?’

  ‘Yes. She’s come back to us.’ The aspith beamed with pride.

  ‘How? She died long ago.’

  The little jailer glanced nervously around. ‘They say it was through black science. But I don’t know for sure.’

  ‘Is Mantis human?’

  The aspith looked shocked.

  ‘Oh no. She’s a demothea.’

  ‘A demothea!’ When I’d thought her reminiscent of the women outside the theatre, it was a notion, nothing more. They’re not supposed to exist.’

  ‘But they do. Mantis said once that everyone thinks they’ve died out but it isn’t true. There are others. Mantis is—’ The aspith hesitated, then lowered her voice as if making an indelicate confession. ‘Mantis is not pure-bred. She’s part human.’

  ‘Is that possible? To mix human and demothea?’

  ‘It must be, if Mantis is here,’ the aspith said with simple logic.

  I stared at her. She did not seem to think she had said anything extraordinary. But then, my closest friend right now was a Library. I leaned closer, trying to grasp her soul as I’d clasped the soul of my excissiere jailer, back in Caud. But she was looking away from me, her eyes downcast. ‘Listen to me,’ I said, urgently. The girl – Mantis’s protégée – is my cousin. I have to talk to her. Will you help me?’

  The jailer blinked. ‘Why should I?’ she asked, reasonably enough.

  ‘We’re rich,’ I said. ‘One of the foremost houses of Winter-strike. My family will reward you.’

  With what?’

  ‘Money?’

  ‘I don’t need money. Mantis gives me what I need. She gives all of us what we need. And she gave us a place here, where everyone else cast us out.’

  A thought struck me. ‘How long have you been living here?’

  ‘I was born in the mountains. And my mothers before me. That was long before Mantis came back, of course. Things were different
then.’

  ‘In Winterstrike,’ I said, pitching my voice low, ‘there is a temple for your kind. You’re right. Things were different then. Your people are no longer persecuted. They’re allowed to move freely throughout the city.’

  The jailer looked uncertain. ‘You’re lying to me.’

  ‘No, it’s true. If Mantis told you otherwise, then she’s the one who’s lying. Look. If you take me to Shorn – to Mantis’s protégée – then she’ll tell you the same.’

  The jailer’s small face became even more uncertain, like a child tempted with a sweet. ‘I should like to see that temple,’ she faltered.

  ‘Then let me go.’

  With a swift, sudden movement, as if she did not want to give herself the chance to change her mind, the jailer reached out and touched the lock. It disappeared, melting into the metal cage that imprisoned me. Before she could protest, I was through the door. ‘Where’s Shorn?’ I said.

  She took me back up through the maze of passages, higher and higher into Mantis’s tower. The ghosts were silent, perhaps sated by their glimpse of blood. Someone in the ancient days of Earth had once described ghosts as hungry, but as a child I had never understood this: they were part of the technology around me, and it made no more sense to say that a spirit hungered than to say that a kettle did, or an antiscribe. But out on the haunted vastness of the Crater Plains, or here in this rotting ruin of a dead queen’s fortress, I knew what the ancients had meant. I could feel the hunger all around me and though the spirits that generated it slept, the hunger continued, seeping out of their dreams.

  ‘We’re almost there,’ the jailer whispered, ‘but if she’s with Mantis, or someone else—’

  I’d been trying not to think about this. I’d never known what to think about Shorn’s alleged perversion: in a world where merely being seen in the company of a male creature was regarded as evidence of moral decay, I’d not been sure whether she’d sought the vulpen out or whether, as her sister Essegui had claimed, it had sought her. Shorn had been lucky to live in Winterstrike, a city seen by some as epitomizing a dangerous liberalism. In the old days in Caud, or in modern Tharsis, she could have been put to death. But perhaps it might have been kinder. Yet here was Shorn, inexplicably, in a haunted castle in the company of vulpen.