by Liz Williams
‘How do you think?
‘You must have something to eat, dear,’ Thea said, anxiously. I didn’t trust myself to speak. Instead, I nodded and sat down at the opposite end of the table from Alleghetta, who might have been carved out of stone.
‘Where’s my sister?’
‘In her room,’ Alleghetta said.
‘Well,’ Thea added quickly, ‘isn’t this nice? All the family together again. It won’t be long before Canteley’s old enough to eat with us, too.’
‘Oh, do stop babbling, Thea,’ Alleghetta snapped.
‘Where’s Canteley?’ I asked. The meal already had a dreamlike quality: this morning, I’d been out on the Crater Plain dodging vulpen. ‘I haven’t seen her yet.’
‘She’s been at her lessons all day. She’s doing very well. Won’t you have some soup, dear?’ Thea looked as though she was on the verge of collapse. One of our silent serving maids wafted in with a tureen. A thousand meals in this very dining room, a thousand thin soups served out of this same tureen of faded ancient china. It made me depressed all over again. I started thinking about Earth to cheer myself up: I still hadn’t relinquished that particular dream.
‘I’ll have a little soup,’ I said. We ate in silence: all through the soup itself, and then the meat in fruit sauce, then a sorbet which tasted as cold as the dusk outside looked, and then tea. It was all remarkably tasteless – strange, after the erratic meals of the last few days.
I would be surprised, I thought, if Leretui was still here in the morning. I didn’t think anything we could do would be enough to keep her within Calmaretto’s walls. But as usual, I’d reckoned without Alleghetta.
Excusing myself abruptly, I headed for my sister’s chamber. They’d put her in her old room, not the Malcontent’s sealed prison, but I couldn’t see this as evidence of any softening on Alleghetta’s part. But when I knocked on the door, there was no answer.
‘Leretui?’ I was beginning to get déjà vu when my sister’s voice snapped, ‘Go away!’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Yes. Now leave me alone.’ The same sort of conversation we’d had growing up. Some things never change. At least she was still in there. But although tiredness was starting to beat down on me in waves, I did not seek my bed. I crept back downstairs, feeling like the child who’d tried to eavesdrop on her mothers’ dinner parties: that fascinating, golden world of adult conversation which, once I’d joined it, turned out to be merely dull. I wished Hestia was here. But Hestia was gone, who knew where, and Leretui had turned into Shorn, and I was alone.
Except for Canteley. My little sister ambushed me halfway down the passage, eyes wide.
‘Essegui! You’ve come back! What about Tui? Is she with you?’ A torrent of questions, all falling over one another.
‘Yes, and yes. She’s in her room – the old one,’ I added hastily.
‘But where did you go?’
‘Somewhere very far away. But we’re home now.’ I felt my tongue stumble over the noun.
You were very brave, to follow her,’ Canteley said. I didn’t disabuse her. Our mothers wouldn’t have told her about the geise, and although the servants gossiped, it didn’t seem to have reached my sister’s ears. Or perhaps Alleghetta had been more prudent than I’d thought, and news of the majike’s visit had not got out.
My little sister lowered her voice. ‘Did you see – him?’ Her eyes grew even wider with the transgression of uttering the forbidden pronoun and my heart sank. Romanticism could be dangerous and never more so than now.
Gently, I said, ‘No. No, I didn’t. He – it – didn’t rescue her, Canteley. She rescued herself.’
And as far as I knew, it might even have been the truth.
I made Canteley go back to bed. There were voices coming from Alleghetta’s parlour. I kept an eye out for weir-wards, but the only one I glimpsed was a faint, screaming soul that saw me, recognized me for one of the household, and drifted away. I suppressed a grin: Alleghetta would have done well to have reconfigured the house to react to me, too, but perhaps that would have been too troublesome. It was always my mother’s weakness, I thought, to underestimate her children. I put my ear to the parlour door and listened.
‘. . . don’t now know what to expect.’ That was Alleghetta, speaking tightly.
‘Of course not.’ A woman’s voice, not Thea but familiar. It spoke in smooth, reassuring tones and there was a twinge inside my head, at once and unlike the geise. The majike, of course. The little centipede – which I’d missed when I undressed and bathed – crept from my sleeve and sat on the back of my hand, rearing up as if listening. I didn’t know how to discourage it and besides, it might be that the Queen had a right to know. I left the creature where it was.
‘How could you know, when they have not told you? But I understand your suspicions.’
‘We’ve seen them.’ Thea spoke urgently, and all at once I realized where Canteley had got her manner of tumbling speech. I’d never noticed it before.
‘In the house?’ the smooth voice said.
‘No. Not as close as that.’ There was an unfamiliar note of relief in Alleghetta’s voice. ‘But in the garden, on the canal. They seem to float.’
‘It’s an illusion. They’re good at that. They exude mental alterators, it was part of their design specifications.’
That may be so,’ Alleghetta said, and it seemed to me that she shared my unease. ‘But it isn’t natural.’
‘Nor is disappearing,’ Thea said, still rushing, as if they were trying to keep her silent. ‘She vanished out of a locked room, right under our noses, and came back the same way.’
‘I doubt that,’ the majike said. I pictured her squatting in the middle of the parlour like a toad. I could almost feel Alleghetta, staring.
‘What do you mean?’ Alleghetta said.
‘I think it is much more likely that on that first occasion, your daughter was in that room all the time. You just didn’t see her.’
‘Impossible. My other daughter was the first to find her missing. She searched the room. Although Essegui has not always been the most obedient child—’ I could hear her mouth turning downward, too, and thought: too bad. ‘—I do not suspect her of any collusion.’
‘I’m not suggesting that, either. Didn’t you hear what I said? That they can create and control illusions?’
‘You mean she made Essegui think she wasn’t there?’ Thea said.
‘Yes. And then someone came for her. But now – her abilities will be growing.’
Alleghetta was silent. I imagined her mulling over the majike’s remarks, trying to assess what manner of thing she was dealing with, in her daughter and her adviser both. At this point, I thought I heard a faint sound behind me. I spun round but there was no one there. I told myself it was only one of the weir-wards, briefly active.
‘But a – a demothea?’ Thea said. Ironic, I reflected, that the word contained part of her name, as if the clue had been staring us in the face all the time and none of us had grasped it.
‘Leretui was an ordinary enough child,’ Alleghetta said slowly, ‘if frail.’
‘Are you so sure?’
‘She suffered from fainting spells. That’s all.’
‘Demotheas are slow to mature,’ the majike said. ‘That was one of their flaws, perhaps the reason why so few survived. Many of them were wiped out in their hatcheries when the Age of Children came to an end.’
‘If what you say about my daughter is true,’ Alleghetta said, ‘then what now?’ My daughter. Never ‘our’, as though Alleghetta had herself given birth to Leretui in some archaic manner, not merely lifted the mix of DNA from the vat.
‘Well,’ said Gennera Khine, as if amused. ‘It won’t be entirely your decision, believe me.’
‘We’ve done everything you asked.’ Alleghetta sounded sour again.
‘You have indeed,’ the majike said, soothing, ‘and I won’t cast you adrift. Don’t worry. I’ll take care of things.�
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‘I cannot afford to lose any more status.’ Alleghetta sounded agitated. ‘The ball is in a few days’ time – I’m to be encouncilled then.’
‘I know. And so you will be. We’ll concoct a story. Leretui’s disgrace was a matter of public record, little could be done about it, even by me. This is different.’
I didn’t like the sound of that. Leretui might have changed -literally, from what the majike had said – but she was still my sister.
There were sounds from inside the parlour, indicative of movement. I backed hastily along the corridor and ran up to the landing. Soon there were footsteps on the stairs below. I looked down at the sleek black head of Alleghetta – now devoid of her Ombre curls – the untidy blondish one of Thea, and the majike’s hat. She was pulling on her gloves as she walked. The lights from the canal suggested that a sledge was waiting for her.
Thank you for coming,’ Alleghetta was saying, stiffly, as if forced.
‘We’re old friends, aren’t we?’ Gennera Khine said. There was a cosy note in her voice which made my skin creep. ‘Don’t worry. All will be well.’
I watched, covertly, as my mothers escorted her down the stairs and into the main hallway, moving across its black and red tiles like pieces in some ancient game. There was a blast of cold as they opened the river door and through the coloured glass I saw the shadow of the majike moving down the path to the canal.
In spite of my exhaustion, however, I still couldn’t sleep. The geise might be gone, but my soul was still incomplete. At last I got out of bed and went to the window, throwing aside the heavy drapes. The majike’s sledge had long gone and so had the bulk of the daytime canal traffic. Beneath its blanket of snow the garden looked peaceful, and I had to remind myself that this was still a city at war. I’d looked up the newsview a little earlier in the evening, but it had held nothing of great interest: it seemed that my own journey had taken place in a lull. It wouldn’t last. I tried to imagine Winterstrike under weapons fire, perhaps even occupied, but the attempt failed: the city still held the stifling sense of continuity that it had always done. I wondered whether they’d repaired the bridge to the bell tower, and went over to the anti-scribe to take a look. If I couldn’t sleep, I might as well read.
There were a few headlines about the bridge. Caud had been blamed, and had not bothered to issue a denial. Repairs had already started, but the bell tower was off limits. Just as well. As I was scrolling down the latest report, the scribe chimed with an incoming message.
‘Accept,’ I told it.
‘Esse?’ My cousin Hestia’s face appeared on the screen, curiously fractured and pixellated.
‘Hestia? You’re very faint. Where are you?’
‘I’m on Earth. We—’ Hestia glanced over her shoulder at a background of static.
‘I didn’t catch that. What are you doing on Earth?’
‘. . . to get out of the Noumenon. I—’
But her image was gone. I tried to put a track on it, which ended in a jumble of numbers: no address that I recognized and one that would not allow incoming messages. I sat staring at the scribe in dismay, thinking What now?
It was very late. I hadn’t thought I’d been lying there for all that length of time. I switched off the mainscreen of the scribe, first asking it to alert me if there were any more messages, and went back to the window to draw the drapes.
Someone was hurrying down the path. I caught sight of a figure, swathed in a heavy coat, disappearing between the weed-wood trees, and I recognized her walk. It was Leretui.
So, I thought, she’d got out after all. I threw on boots and my greatcoat over the shift and hurried down the stairs.
The river door was still bolted shut and a blacklight crackle showed that the weir-wards were in place. I knew where Leretui had gone: the little cellar door that had once led below the building and now opened out onto a short flight of steps. It was warded, but as a child, Hestia had discovered the ward key and all of us knew how to turn it on and off. It had been years since I’d used the cellar door; I’d imagined that the codes would have been changed a long time before, but it seemed they had not. Sure enough, the door was ajar. My sister’s footsteps led out across the snow like the trail of a mouse. I followed.
I couldn’t hear or see anyone. I thought of a sledge, gliding silently down the curve of the canal, taking my sister away for ever. I never thought I’d have entertained such an emotion, but I was aware of a sudden sympathy for Alleghetta.
And after what had happened to me already, I didn’t feel safe out here. I was just about to turn back when movement caught my eye. Someone – Leretui? – was standing at the very edge of the canal. I slunk between the trees until I could see more clearly.
Then the figure turned its head and a cold rushing shock went through me. It wasn’t Leretui. It was a vulpen. I could see its skull gleaming in the lamplight. The inhuman head turned to and fro, moving slowly, searching the length of the canal. Then lamplight caught it and I realized: it was Leretui after all, wearing the vulpen’s mask from Ombre. It was almost as great a shock as the first. I had to fight the impulse to run down the bank and wrench it from her head. Relief and anger warred, and relief won, but not for very long. What did she think she was doing? I felt that Leretui had been playing some weird game all along: as if we were the experiment, not she. The thought made me even colder. I’d believed I’d grown up alongside my sister, ourselves arrayed against our mothers, and now I was wondering whether I’d ever really known her at all. Little Leretui, her big atlas in her lap, bore small relation to this masked thing.
Leretui raised a hand. There was, I saw for the first time, someone standing on the opposite bank. It was tall, wrapped in a draped coat against the cold. Its head was bowed and it gave no sign that it had recognized Leretui, or even seen her. I had the impression that its hands were clasped before it, an attitude of modesty that seemed uncalled for. Leretui gave a strange low whistle, not something that sounded as if it came from a human throat. At that, the figure’s head came up and its hood fell back. I saw a narrow head, a face as white as the snow surrounded by writhing black hair. It was a demothea, and as I watched, it sent out a field of blacklight, sparkling over the snow and the icy surface of the canal. Leretui held out her hands and the blacklight disappeared into them as if she had absorbed it.
I nearly called out to her, but bit it back. The confidence of her gesture appalled me. The demothea was gone as if it had never been. I shrank back into the meagre shelter of the weedwood trees as Leretui spun on her heel and strode back to the house. She had pushed the vulpen mask up over her head and I saw that she was smiling; a smile that had once seemed shy and now appeared sly, instead. I waited until she had vanished into the old cellar entrance and then, cold to the bone, I followed her, taking care to stay out of sight of the opposite bank. I didn’t like to think of what might be watching.
When I entered the house again, Leretui was nowhere to be seen, but there were snowy footprints leading a pattering dance up the stairs. I went slowly back to my room, and when I reached it, the first thing I did was to peer out behind the concealment of the heavy curtains. The garden was empty, and nothing was standing on the opposite shore.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Hestia — Earth
In the morning, I went outside shortly before dawn. A cold wind was scouring the face of the saltmarsh and land was a mass of bleak shadows. Suddenly I longed for Mars in this dim, monochrome world: for the depth and richness of its colours. Then the sun came up over the rim of the sea and the marsh was flooded with silver light, the shadows banished to subtleties of grey and pearl. A beautiful place after all, until one remembered what was living out in those banks of reed and the walls of the sea ruins.
‘Morning,’ the Library said, appearing at my shoulder and making me jump.
‘The demothea we captured,’ I said. I jammed my hands into my pockets, trying to generate some warmth. ‘Is it still here?’
‘Yes.
I’ve been watching it all night. It hasn’t moved. I think it’s in some sort of trance.’
‘Maybe it’s injured,’ I said.
‘Some of the Changed can will their own death,’ the Library informed me.
‘If its purpose was military, it might very well have some kind of suicide mechanism.’
‘Someone’s coming,’ the Library said, and faded into the morning air. Evishu bustled out from behind one of the huts.
‘Ah, it’s you,’ she said, peaceably enough. ‘I thought I heard someone.’
‘I couldn’t get back to sleep,’ I explained. I didn’t want to tell her that my dreams had been full of water and writhing blackness.
‘Hard, in a strange place,’ Evishu sympathized.
‘Now that you have your demothea,’ I said, ‘what will you do?’
‘Some of us will stay. Myself, I will take the creature back. I suggest you come with us. Your own ship can perhaps be salvaged, but best you leave that to us.’
I nodded. We couldn’t stay here, and the ship was useless.
‘When are you heading out?’ I asked.
‘Today, if you’re willing.’
‘I’ll talk to Rubirosa and—’ Don’t mention the Library. ‘—and I think so.’ I was already getting restless. I looked out to where the sun was climbing, sending white shards of light across the choppy water. There was no warmth in it. I went to find Rubirosa.
The marauder was sitting on a bench in the hut that had been allotted to us, sipping something from a bowl and grimacing.
Tastes like hot pond water.’
‘It probably is.’
‘If it’s all the same to you, we’ll be leaving later on. Evishu wants to get the demothea back to her base.’
‘Sounds good to me,’ Rubirosa said. She glanced out of the door of the hut, to where a light drizzle was starting to fall. ‘This is a shithole,’ she added, gloomily.
