by Liz Williams
‘It’s gone.’
‘Not for long,’ the kappa said. ‘They’re amphibious, not aquatic. She’ll have to come up sooner or later.’
And a moment after that, she did: like a fishing bird breaking the surface. I saw the smooth arch of body, a tentacle curl, and then the demothea was shooting forward.
‘We’re almost at that tower,’ Rubirosa said. I’d been so busy concentrating on the demothea that I’d missed the passing scenery. I glanced up and saw that the tower was rising before us, its massive rusty legs striding out of the water. Weed had crawled up it, giving it a green glisten, and birds had nested in it. The untidy heaps of reeds starred its joints, and as the orthocopter whirred closer, a long-necked white form uncurled itself and glided down over the water. More followed, disturbed by our proximity, until the air was filled with wings.
‘Can’t see a damn thing!’ Rubirosa shouted.
‘Mind the tower.’ If we hit that, you could say goodbye to any plans of returning to Mars. Rubirosa veered the chopper around but there was no sign of the demothea.
We’ve lost it,’ the kappa said.
‘Not yet,’ I said. I could see something at the base of the tower: the demothea, swimming. Then it coiled an arm around a strut and pulled itself up. Determination seized me.
‘Open the hatch,’ I said.
‘What?’ Rubirosa turned, open-mouthed. ‘You’re not going out there.’
‘Give me the stun gun.’
The kappa was struggling with the hatch. I suspected this had less to do with compliance with my instructions, and came more from a feeling that I was probably dispensable. She thrust the stunner into my hands and I fitted it to my belt, grasping the handle by the hatch with one hand. As the hatch opened and Rubirosa took the orthocopter dangerously near, I stepped down onto the tower. I could see the demothea clearly now: its upturned face and the lamp-like eyes far below me. I thought, though could not have sworn to it, that there was a flicker of something in those eyes as it looked at me. Recognition? Triumph? My own imagination? I could not say for sure, but the demothea started to climb.
TWENTY-EIGHT
Essegui — Winterstrike
Next morning I woke stiff and sore, feeling as though I’d run a marathon. I’d been dreaming about my sister, a ruined tower, a demothea . . . and then I realized that all of it was true. Dismayed, I crawled out of bed and dressed in that winter uniform of leather skirt and silk blouse: the uniform of the bell guardian. It made me feel less disoriented, as if life was normal after all and not the nightmare tangle it had become. I studied my face in the mirror. My white countenance, combined with the straight dark hair that fell in wings on either side, reminded me too much of the demothea, and of Leretui. I went thoughtfully downstairs.
If my mothers had been silent yesterday, they were not so today. The dining room was an agitation of printed-out news-feeds: something had happened in the night, when I’d been cavorting about after Leretui, or fitfully sleeping.
‘They’ve declared war on both cities,’ Thea was saying.
‘Don’t be so stupid. How could they?’ Alleghetta said.
‘Who?’ I asked. Thea waved the paper at me.
The Noumenon. There was a strike on the city this morning – some new kind of haunt-weapon. There are ghosts in the streets, ones that no one has seen before.’
‘Are you sure it’s the Noumenon? Not Caud, pretending?’
‘They’ve issued a statement.’
‘What kind of ghosts?’
‘Men-remnants,’ Thea hissed. ‘And the Changed. Things no one has seen for generations.’
I’d like to have said: What harm can ghosts do? But I knew all too well how badly weir-wards could affect people, disrupting spirit and body alike, and the little pieces of my own missing soul were also there to remind me with their lack.
It was, however, almost refreshing to have something else to worry about. No one mentioned Leretui, and so neither did I. I went with Thea into the study, to scan the antiscribe for public announcements.
These were numerous, and characteristic. The Matriarchy of Winterstrike expressed outrage and shock. The Matriarchy of Caud spoke of their rage in being betrayed, though since the Noumenon had never been an ally of Caud, I could not see how.
‘Maybe it’ll bring us closer together,’ I said, and wished I hadn’t.
‘Winterstrike needs no assistance from Caud,’ Alleghetta snapped.
‘Mother, this is an entirely pointless war. Started over what? Some snippet of the Crater Plain that no one really wants, surely?’
‘Mardian Hill is ours by right,’ Alleghetta said, and told me why, all over again. I stopped listening halfway through. I was thinking about ghosts.
‘They say it isn’t safe to go out,’ Thea quavered.
‘Nonsense! We have the ball, had you forgotten?’ She turned an outraged glare on Thea, who quailed.
Winterstrike at war, and all Alleghetta was worried about was her position. I supposed that was typical, as well.
‘You’ll be coming with us,’ Alleghetta informed me.
‘What about Leretui?’
‘She’ll be quite safe here,’ my mother said, and swept out, leaving me gaping in her wake. After all the precautions and paranoia, as well as what had so recently happened, I couldn’t believe that Alleghetta had slid so easily into this new insouciance.
‘She’s very worried about your sister,’ Thea said, reproachfully.
‘Well, so am I! How do you think I feel?’
Thea recoiled; I might just as well have struck her.
‘There’s no need to snap,’ she said.
I went over to her and leaned forward, putting my hands on her shoulders.
‘Leretui was living in a nest of vulpen, Thea. She was living with a man-remnant. She didn’t want to come home. How does that make you feel?’
Thea’s plump face twisted. She didn’t cry, but I thought it cost her not to. She slumped in my grip and I felt a mixture of pity and irritation.
‘I just wanted another daughter,’ she whispered. ‘And then Alleghetta got to know that – that woman, Gennera Khine. And the next thing I knew, we were involved in some government experiment. I didn’t know what she was going to turn into!’
There were tears in her eyes after all, but more for the loss of her domestic dreams than from any real sympathy for Leretui, I thought. They were both as bad as each other. I let her go. I wanted, for an instant, to tell her that everything would be all right, but it so patently would not that the words died in my mouth.
‘Maybe it would be best to send her back,’ I heard myself say. ‘The Matriarchy created her, after all. Let them clean up their own mess. You’ll still have me and Canteley.’ If I stayed at Calmaretto, which was seeming more and more unlikely. And there was another question, too.
‘Thea,’ I said. I found my gaze burning into the panelled walls of the study, boring a hole through the polished wood. ‘What is Canteley? Was she another gift from the government.’
There was a very small, still pause, and at last Thea said, ‘I don’t know.’
‘What do you mean, “don’t know”?’
‘Alleghetta oversaw all that. She was the one who ordered Canteley.’
‘That surprises me.’
‘It surprised me, too,’ Thea said with sudden heat. ‘I begged and begged for another child after you, and when she gave in and we had Leretui it was – well, you know now what the conditions were. After that, I didn’t think she’d ever agree to another daughter and then, all of a sudden, she came up with a set of making documents – I wasn’t even here. We’d gone to the summer house, all of us, and Alleghetta had stayed behind in Winterstrike.’
I remembered that summer, up in the hills: as close to carefree as we’d ever been. A short, fine summer, endless days sliding down into the brief, bright nights of the north and the grass burning golden on the hillsides. There had been parties on Lake Rule, which we’d been just old
enough to attend.
‘When we came back,’ Thea went on, Alleghetta had sorted it all out and Canteley was already being grown. I never asked her why, I was too afraid.’
‘I think you’d better ask her now,’ I said. And if you don’t, I will.’
But Alleghetta was nowhere to be found. When I questioned her maid, Jennai told me that my mother had gone to an emergency meeting of the Matriarchy. So I went in search of Leretui instead, more to see if she was still there than because I had anything to discuss with her.
Seeping under the door of Leretui’s room, there was a small puddle of water, staining the rug. It stank.
‘Leretui?’ I said. I knocked on the door. And as I’d almost expected, there was silence. All right,’ I said, aloud. I had the key to her room on the ring at my waist: Calmaretto kept to a combination of the old-fashioned and the modern, and the key whispered its haunt mantra as I inserted it into the lock. The door swung open and I knew what I’d find when I stepped inside: an empty room, a missing sister.
But she wasn’t missing. She was still there, or what was left of her. Wet black threads filled a quarter of the room, hanging from the poles of Leretui’s bed like a web. She lay cocooned in the middle of it, strands curling out from her outstretched fingers, which were already starting to break down. Her eyes were staring wide and filmed with cataract. Her mouth, too, was slightly open and I could see a thin black thread moving about inside it, as if searching for something.
Liquid oozed over the floor towards me with a purposeful motion that it should not have possessed, and I took a quick step back. Leretui was beyond any discussion, that much was plain – she was beyond human. I swallowed panic, locked the door behind me and ran downstairs to find Thea.
Alleghetta’s ’scribe had been turned off: presumably because she was in a meeting. Thea was of little use, wringing her hands and entering a meltdown that rendered her as uncommunicative as her daughter. ‘You have to fetch Ghetta,’ she kept saying. ‘She has to know.’ Which I interpreted as ‘pass the problem on’, Thea’s usual way of dealing with unpleasantness. I suspected the sherry would be taking a heavy hit once I’d left her, but for once, I really couldn’t blame her.
I thought that it wasn’t just Alleghetta who needed to be informed, but also Gennera Khine. Whatever she might have done to me, she was still the closest thing to an expert that I had and, anyway, there was still the issue of my broken soul. I told my lamenting mother that I was going to find Alleghetta -drag her out of her meeting by the hair if I had to – and take her to the majike. If they removed Leretui from the house, well and good. From the look of it, we’d become a demothea’s breeding ground, and if that was the case, I told Thea, war or no war, I was going to take Canteley and find a hotel.
She didn’t reply, so I left her wringing her hands in the study, pulled on my greatcoat and left. On the surface, little enough seemed to have changed in Winterstrike: the decorations from Ombre hung limply from eaves and lamp-posts. Street vendors sold snacks – patties of meat, fragments of fried dough – out of steaming pans. But people were hurrying. A woman herded her group of schoolgirls in front of her with flustered anxiety, hustling them into a gateway and slamming it behind her. I caught a glimpse of her white pinched face as the door closed, sealing her into a snowy garden. Bitter cold: as I drew closer to the gilded dome of the Opera, its weather vanes drifting as the breeze changed, more flakes of snow started to fall, starring the leather of my skirt and the hem of my coat.
The outer wall of the Matriarchy now curved before me: a rough red semicircle, darkened by snow. Even though it was still relatively early in the morning, the winter gloom meant that lamps had been lit along the top of the wall, casting swirling shadows down into the street. An old fortification, this, built in the Age of Children but looking more like some castle from the distant past of Earth. I almost expected to see slits for arrows, like some of the fortresses in the south of the Crater Plain, but the wall presented a blank face to the outside city, keeping its secrets hidden.
When I reached the main gate, which was haunt-bolted, I held up my pass to the reader and my eye to the gate, a double precaution of bureaucracy and soul. I had a moment of doubt, there – what if the missing fragments of my spirit caused the lock to fail to recognize me? But after a moment it whirred and let me through.
Inside, the hall was full of people, all rushing about in a tight silence, many whispering into antiscribes or clutching leather-bound portfolios. I pushed my way through the throng to the main desk. Here, an elderly woman with a close helmet of lacquered hair beneath an iron-coloured snood sat peering into a screen.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said, with polite insincerity, infusing my voice with a note of command that I’d learned from Alleghetta. ‘I need to speak with my mother, on a matter of urgency.’
She looked up at that. ‘Your mother? Oh.’ It was her turn to apologize, but the look of suspicion didn’t leave her eyes, all the same. ‘I’m sorry, mistress Harn. I didn’t recognize you, for a moment. Your mother’s in a meeting.’
‘I’m aware of that.’ She waited, but I did not continue.
‘I can’t just interrupt her, you know.’ A note of reproach.
‘I’m aware of that, too. I’m afraid I wouldn’t try to interrupt unless it was extremely important. There’s an emergency at home.’
‘I see.’ She didn’t – how could she? – but I could only wonder at the rumours that must have been flying around the Matriarchy over the course of the last year. The look of suspicion had now been replaced by curiosity. ‘Well, if it’s really an emergency—’ she sounded doubtful and I couldn’t blame her. We were, after all, at war, and here was I claiming attention for some domestic difficulty. But I saw her put a message through all the same. Then she looked up.
‘I don’t know if she’ll come . . .’
‘Perhaps I should wait somewhere else,’ I said. I glanced over my shoulder at the crowds bustling through the hallway. My own snow-trodden footsteps were fading on the red marble, forming a wet line to where I stood. The receptionist looked dubious all over again. I leaned down and said, conspiratorially,
‘Is there a waiting room?’
‘I suppose you could sit in the back office,’ the receptionist said, involuntarily drawn into my intrigue. I didn’t want everyone seeing Alleghetta rush out to berate me, or, conversely, not come at all and leave me standing at the desk. There had been enough covert glances already.
In the end the receptionist let me into a cubbyhole situated a little way down the corridor, away from the echoing vault of the main hall. Here I perched on a leather chair like a child, waiting for my mother. But when she swept into the room, I rose.
‘Essegui! What in the world—?’
I stepped forward, grasping her arm and murmuring urgently in her ear, ‘Is this room secure? I doubt it.’
Alleghetta might have been psychotic, but she wasn’t stupid. She gave my face a single searching look, and whatever she found there must have convinced her, for she said, loudly, ‘You’re obviously not well, Essegui. Let’s get some fresh air.’
I followed her through the sombre corridors of the Matriarchy, red marble and then black granite as we drew closer to the inner, older vaults. I’d been here before, on various matters, and I found the place oppressive, without the individuality of the bell tower, or its charm. I always felt as though I was falling over invisible secrets, stored in racks along the hallways. I was glad when we turned a corner and there at the end of the corridor was a set of tall, fragile glass doors. Alleghetta put her eye to the lock and we stepped out into the chilly day. The terrace we stood on looked out over the inner courtyard of the Matriarchy: black-branched trees in overly formal configurations, laced with heavy snow, interspersed with shapeless stone sculptures. Once, I’d been given to understand, these had represented human forms: perhaps the first venturers to Mars, but time and weather had worn them down into lumps. Behind it rose the ringed walls of the Matriar
chy. It was not an appealing view, but I was grateful to be outside.
‘Now,’ Alleghetta said, rounding on me. ‘What?’
‘Leretui’s changing,’ I said. ‘I went into her room and she was unconscious, in the middle of some kind of cocoon. She’s breaking down, Alleghetta. To turn into what?’
Alleghetta’s grey eyes were wide. ‘Changing?’ She sounded both furious and intrigued.
‘You got a demothea cross-breed,’ I said. ‘I think you’re ending up with a pure demothea.’
Alleghetta seized me by the shoulder. ‘Have you told anyone about this?’
‘No. Thea knows, and I can’t speak for the servants, by now. I thought you needed to know, as soon as possible. And probably your majike does as well.’
‘She’ll have to be removed,’ Alleghetta said, to my relief. ‘She can’t stay at Calmaretto. If she does change, there’s no telling what she might do. We might all be slaughtered in our beds.’
‘The Matriarchy made her,’ I said. ‘Let the Matriarchy take her back.’
‘Thank you for this,’ my mother said, surprising me. ‘You’ve been a good enough girl, Essegui, in spite of – well, never mind that.’
I tried not to smack her. ‘What are you going to do now?’ I asked.
‘I can’t leave without telling them why.’ Alleghetta brought her hand down onto the low wall of the terrace in frustration, dislodging a small fall of snow. ‘Can you go to Gennera, Essegui? If I tell you where to find her?’
After a moment, I nodded. ‘As you wish.’
I was heading for a laboratory at the back of Olympus Street, an address that, my mother had informed me, did not officially exist. She’d given me a password to use, and when I came to a gate in the wall I whispered it with only a little hope, and not a little apprehension. The gate opened, letting me through into a garden that, in summer, would be substantially more pleasant than the one that lay at the centre of the Matriarchy. A frozen fountain stood in the middle of it, and I saw the silver forms of fish gliding beneath the ice. When I rang the old-fashioned bell that hung from the veranda, the sound pealed through the garden, causing an icicle to crash and shatter. A moment later, the door opened. Gennera Khine stood there, wrapped in voluminous black: a garment at once religious and practical, with tight sleeves and a high neck.
