by Tim Lebbon
Keera stared at him for a long time. The pain eased in his face, enough to reassure him that his nose was not broken, and the flow of blood into his mouth lessened. He sat up again, slowly, and still the emissary did not break eye contact with him. Kel could read nothing on her face, nothing in her eyes, and as the rain halted and the first hints of dawn touched the sky inland, he felt his life hanging in the balance.
“I buried it,” he said, to break the silence.
“You’re the first Core we’ve ever captured,” she mused, her voice loaded with threat. The Core had tried many times to interrogate a captured Stranger, and in the early days, so it was said, many Core members had died doing so. Did Keera and her fellow Komadians know the fates of all those Strangers they had sent? Those spies, infiltrators, invaders? The Core had always assumed that the arcing proboscises were communicators of some kind.
He wondered whether revenge formed a part of their makeup, much as it often dictated events and lives in Noreela.
Perhaps all he could hope for was a quick death.
“The Core is coming.”
Her grin broadened, and she prodded him in the chest. “Let them.” Then she stood, backing away from Kel and still smiling.
Here it comes, he thought. Whatever’s going to happen, here it comes.
“I could take you to Komadia,” Keera said. “There are still many thousands of my people in their crystal cells. Interested?”
“I’ll never let one of your things take my body,” he said, desperate and hopeless.
“Don’t think you’d have any choice, Noreelan. Choice is way beyond you. All of you.” She leaned forward, her eyes glittering and her expression one of glee. “But no, that’s not to be your fate. The thought of walking past you on Komadia as we take the island here, and there, and somewhere else… seeing your face for eternity, knowing what you did to Lemual …” She turned away, averting her eyes just as he saw the first glint of tears.
“What, then?” he asked.
“Like I said, you’re the only Core we’ve caught. I’m sure with the right persuasion, you can tell us plenty.”
Just kill me, he thought. And all the Core training in existence could do nothing to shelter him from the terror.
NAMIOR SAW WRAITHS in the mist. The dawn confused her vision, casting misleading light across shadows that refused to fade. The shapes made holes in the mist, moving slowly, drifting across the periphery of her senses, and as she focused on one so another would move more, as though to distract her attention.
She had seen wraiths before. They haunted the growing shadows of dusk and the retreating shades of dawn, sometimes visible through shimmering heat haze when the sea breeze was just right. Once or twice she had been touched by one, when her power as a healer was not enough, and the departing spirit gave thanks for her efforts. And all those times she had never been afraid …
Namior knelt on a small eastward-facing slope, staring out across the depression in the land before her and wishing that the sun would rise faster. That heat would burn away the mist, then she would no longer see what terrified her so.
She cursed the Komadians and what they had done. They had shown her things beyond her knowledge and magics she could not know. They had made her afraid when there should be nothing there to fear.
A sudden movement to her left drew her attention, and from the corner of her eye to the right she saw something quickly closing on her. She gasped and dropped to her side, drawing her knife, dropping the coat-wrapped crystal.
The swirl of mist beside her faded away, like a breath through smoke.
The crystal had come to rest against something. It should still be rolling, but it was motionless. The more she concentrated, the more ambiguous the mist seemed, curling around solids that were not there and filling voids just made.
“Put the knife down,” a voice said.
Shock made her drop the blade and wince back against the slope. She brought her hands before her face and looked up, because the command had come from above.
A shape manifested from the mist, taking on color, solidity and weight. It was a machine the likes of which Namior had never seen before—a tall thing standing on three long metallic legs and topped with a cylindrical body. Sat astride the body was a man.
“Who…?” Namior said, but she could barely speak. It’s them, she thought. The Komadians. They went farther inland than we knew, guarding, expanding, exploring …
The machine buzzed, and the man’s hand rested on a series of levers sprouting from its metal back like stiff hairs. Namior saw no steam, nor did she hear its hissing anywhere inside. Several curled wires hung from the underside of the machine’s main body, trailing against the ground. Its long legs were thick and heavily jointed, not slender and graceful, and she saw the slick of grease leaking from where they joined the torso.
“You look confused,” the man said. “Never seen anything like this before?”
“Not quite,” Namior said, then everything around her changed.
Four figures faded in from the mist. In the space of a beat they shimmered, sent shudders through the surrounding skeins of vapor, and took on color and mass just as the tall machine had moments before. There were two men and two women, one of the men pointing a large crossbow directly at her chest from five steps away.
“Core?” Namior said.
The man sitting astride the machine frowned, then barked an order in a language she did not know.
Two women and a man came at her, knocking her to the ground, grabbing her arms and sitting on them so that she could not reach for any concealed weapons. One woman pulled a knife and slashed at Namior’s jacket and undershirt buttons, ripping them open and exposing her chest and stomach. Then the other woman and man rolled her over and pulled the clothes from her shoulders and down to her elbows. They pressed her facedown into the heathers.
Namior knew what they were looking for. “I’m not one of those fucking monsters!”
“She’s clear,” a woman’s voice said.
“Test her anyway.”
“I’m from Pavmouth Breaks, they’ve come and attacked our village, and—”
“Say one more thing before we’re sure about you,” the man on the machine said, “and we’ll cut out your tongue.”
Namior believed him. So this is the Core. She had so much to tell them, so much to show, but, silenced, she had to let them find their own way for a while.
They let her roll onto her back, then the two women knelt on her arms again. The one on her left had long, dark hair and pale skin, and Namior realized she was seeing her first Shantasi. Kel had told her a little about them, and Namior had so much more she wanted to ask. But the woman stared back without expression. In her left hand she held a knife pressed against Namior’s throat.
The woman on her right was short and thin, and looked as if a gust of wind could break her. One side of her face was a mass of scars, and her left cheek looked as if it had been smashed and reset by an inexperienced healer. Bone shattered, Namior thought. I’d have used a curve of reglet egg to reform that shape, rather than leave her… The woman glanced at Namior as if she knew what she was thinking. Namior tried to smile. The woman looked away.
The man, his hair a startling mass of ginger with scarlet shells braided into its many twisted strands, sat astride her hips. Namior was aware of her exposed breasts, but he seemed unconcerned, picking through the contents of a small circular tin.
“Hurry!” the man on the machine said.
“Mallor, they’re difficult to catch.” He grabbed at something in the tin and held it up to dawn’s first light.
An insect struggled between his thumb and forefinger.
“What are you—?” Namior gasped, but the Shantasi lifted her knife and laid its blade across Namior’s lips.
The man nodded to the Shantasi woman, and faster than Namior could see, the woman sliced a small cut below her left breast. It took a few beats for the shock to pass and the sting to burn in,
and by then the man had dropped the insect into the dribble of blood.
Namior felt it running across her skin and down toward her stomach. Then she heard a sizzle, a harsh spit, and all three Core members stood from her and backed away, eyes wide.
“Not Noreelan!” the Shantasi said. “But …”
“No markings, no gills,” the scarred woman said.
“I am Noreelan!” Namior sat up and pulled her jacket shut. The movement caused alarm amongst the others. The Shantasi woman flipped a bow from her shoulder and strung an arrow, and the soldier bearing the heavy crossbow leaned forward. Namior could almost hear the tension in the firing mechanism, the creaking as his finger applied more and more pressure to the trigger.
The man on the machine, Mallor, passed his hands across its controls, and it took three steps back. Then its legs shortened and thickened, and a tubular appendage emerged from its belly aimed at Namior.
“Mallor, I don’t know—” the scarred woman began, but Namior saw advantage in their confusion, and she knew she might only have a few beats left.
“I’m from Pavmouth Breaks. I’m a witch, a healer, and I came here to find you. You’re Core, yes? I brought that to show you.” She pointed at the crystal, apparently forgotten in the confusion, and she wished it had rolled out of the jacket so they could see.
“The signal?” Mallor asked from the machine’s back.
“Sent by my lover, and now he’s—”
“Your blood killed the pod beetle,” the ginger man said. “Noreelan blood would nourish it.”
“My great-grandmother… she was a Komadian. She fled them a long time ago.”
“Komadian?” the Shantasi asked.
“The invaders. They’re here.”
The five Core were silent for a beat, all of them looking at her with a mixture of confusion and incredulity. The Shantasi took one step back, bow still raised, and Namior perceived a sudden calmness in her features.
She was going to shoot.
“Kel Boon sent you his message! He brought you here, and now they have him.”
“Boon?” the scarred woman said, obvious recognition in her voice. The Shantasi glanced at her, then back at Namior, confused once again.
“Pelly,” the ginger man said, “who’s Boon?”
“He was with me in Springchain Park,” Pelly said. “When all those children died. You remember that? When I got this?” She touched her face. “It was all his fault.”
Mallor sighed, the softest sound. “I’ve heard of him. Everyone thinks he’s dead.”
“He ran away,” Namior said, her voice low. “He’s been living here for five years. I only knew… he only told me about the Core after the waves came.”
“Waves?” the ginger man asked.
“Him,” Pelly whispered, stroking the ruin of her cheek and looking somewhere far away in place and time.
“Deserted,” the Shantasi said. “That’s as good as dead, in my eyes.”
Namior stared at the pale woman, past the arrow aiming at her face. The Shantasi stared back. It was Mallor’s voice that broke the silent stalemate.
“U’Nam, keep her covered. The rest of you, ease down. And you … what’s your name?”
“Namior Feeron.”
Mallor touched the machine’s controls and it lowered him to the ground. He was very tall, and older than Namior had thought at first. When he walked to her, she felt the weariness in his every step and breath.
“Namior Feeron,” he said, “I’m Mallor, General of the Western Core. You need to tell us everything.”
AS SHE TALKED, the sun burned the mist away, and the landscape was slowly revealed. She told them about the storm and the waves, the island that had appeared out to sea, the visitors. She told them everything, and she was disturbed at how calmly they listened to all that she said, even when she relayed information about their strange steam machines and the Strangers with their projectile weapons. She cried when she talked about her great-grandmother’s revelation, certain somehow that the old woman was already dead. Her observers should have been standing in fear and shaking their heads in wonder. But these were Core, and she knew that they had seen and done more than most in Noreela. Theirs was a world within a world: their wider understanding of Noreela and what might lie beyond existing within the constraints of a blinkered and inward-looking land. Cynicism, she supposed, must come naturally to them.
When she explained about their sea journey to the island of Komadia, what they had seen, and what they had brought back, the ginger man and Pelly unwrapped the crystal from the jacket and gasped. Its surface was pale and dull, and Namior could see nothing of its depths. Perhaps beyond the scope of Komadian magic, the thing inside had died.
They quickly put it down and covered it again, wiping their hands on their clothes.
“We should go in,” U’Nam said.
Mallor shook his head. “There are not enough of us.”
“Even so, who’s to say what’s happening in there right now?”
“More’s the reason to wait.” Mallor raised one hand when the Shantasi went to protest some more. “U’Nam, you’ll get your fight. But right now it’s contained, and these Komadians seem only to be concerned in forming their beachhead.”
“And the longer we leave them,” Pelly said, “the stronger they’ll be when we attack.” She nodded at Namior. “You heard what she said about those towers, or whatever they are. They’re building defenses. Leave it another day, and maybe we won’t be able to break in at all.”
“And without magic?” the ginger man said. He hefted his crossbow. “I’m as good as any hand to hand, but if we’ve no machines to back us, where’s the hope?”
“We can’t just sit here!” U’Nam said.
Mallor was quiet, staring past where Namior still sat toward the village beyond, hidden behinds hills and down in the river valley. Namior sensed a sad wisdom in the old man, and she wondered how long he had been preparing for that day.
“This is all new to us,” Mallor muttered. “The Core has always known the day would come when we make contact with more than single, solitary Strangers. We’ve become efficient at finding, tracking and killing them. But this …” He nudged the crystal with his foot. “All new. So we send the news to the other Core, tell them all to get here as quickly as possible, and when we’re strong enough, that will be the time to act.”
“It’s the whole village at risk!” Namior said. “My family, friends, and if you just leave them—”
“Your great-grandmother is one of them, you said that yourself!” Mallor did not raise his voice, but confusion was evident in his eyes. He was doing his best, feeling his way through the maze of new information and into an event he had, perhaps, thought would happen after he was dead. He was tall, confident and wise. But he was also terrified.
“She left them willingly, which means they must have their weaknesses. If you can only find them, take advantage, then maybe—”
“And they happen to appear where your old relative has made her home?” U’Nam asked.
Namior looked down at the ground. “Maybe there are refugees from Komadia all across Noreela.”
“Speculation,” Mallor said. “That’s not what we need. Caution is required here. If we expose ourselves now, they’ll come at us with everything, and that will leave nothing between them and the rest of Noreela.” Mallor’s voice brooked no argument, and when he turned away Namior could find no words to call him back.
“Boon,” Mallor said to Pelly. She blinked, wide-eyed.
“Kel’s talked about you,” Namior said, looking at the scarred woman. “His guilt brought him here.”
“He’s a fucking deserter and deserves to die,” U’Nam hissed. “And when this is over …”
“He’s been fighting them every step of the way!” Namior said. “When their emissary stepped off the first boat in front of the whole village, he was at her with a knife, checking her for gills and those things on their backs. She had none. But
he could have been killed by his own people, as well as by theirs. We were ready to welcome them in, because they were helping so much after the waves, and they made themselves out to be just as much victims as we were, and we fell for every word. All but Kel. If he hadn’t been living in Pavmouth Breaks, no one outside would know what’s happening. None of you would have been called here if it weren’t for him.”
“No excuse for cowardice,” U’Nam said.
Namior held her shirt and jacket shut and stood. The ginger man raised his crossbow and pointed, but she ignored him, taking three steps forward and standing nose to nose with the diminutive Shantasi warrior. “It’s his failures that torture Kel,” she said. “The Komadians have him now, and he won’t say a word.”
“He’ll likely have no choice,” Mallor said. “We have to assume they know the Core has been contacted.”
U’Nam stared at Namior, but her words were for Mallor. “I’m not for sitting around playing with myself,” she said. “So what do we do?”
“Very well.” The old man sighed. He nodded at Namior. “You can help.” When he smiled at her his eyes twinkled, and Namior thought she saw confidence in his expression for the first time. “You know Pavmouth Breaks, so you can lead three of us in to reconnoiter, ready for when the rest of the Core arrive.”
Namior sighed, her shoulder slumping with both fear, and relief. I can do something to help, she thought. Ruined though her village was, and living through its darkest time, she could already feel it drawing her back.
“And Boon?” U’Nam asked.
“You don’t know him,” Pelly said. “I once did.” And that seemed answer enough.
THE BEATING IS torture enough. Disparate pains meld into one, the world turns around him, confusing up and down, left and right, and the time soon comes when he wishes for death, craving an escape from the pain the two Strangers are subjecting him to while Keera Kashoomie watches, the bruises and cuts, and the sharp heat of other things they’re doing to him; touches with steaming tendrils extruded from their metal forearms, and a scorching blue light that dances across the hairs on his arms and hands and is so cold it’s hot. As yet, they have asked him nothing.
