The War in the Waste

by Felicity Savage

  “They haven’t forgotten everything, though, have they?”

  Jaseras had fallen at her feet in a rain of feathers. There had been no sound of a blow, and no marks on the corpse. The demogorgon had simply been extinguished. By a Wraith?

  Hannah shrugged. “All we have left is our instincts. The tribes are all split and gone. Before the war started, we had at least our dignity, and the underground homes we built when our houses were seized by the trickster women. Now we are no better than animals. And by the time the war is over we will be no more. The Ferupian army, as it is pushed east, is cutting down the trees rather than relinquish the daemon spawning grounds to the Kirekunis. And when the last acres are cleared, the last Wraiths will die, too. Unlike the daemons, who cling to the Waste only out of animal habit, we are bound here by our hearts. Me, for example. I am Ferupian in all but skin, but even I haven’t left.”

  Rae wanted to say, The war will never end. There’s no need to be bitter. Everyone is going to die at the same time.

  Tears prickled her eyes.

  “It’s funny how you would have no idea there’s a war going on,” she said in a voice that trembled, looking out of the window at the rain-shot blackness. “Apart from the planes, I mean.”

  “Well, it isn’t a rout. Or rather, it is, but on such a grand scale that it doesn’t seem like one. In my lifetime the Lovoshire Parallel has moved back twice. It’s about fifty miles west of here now. Since the war is supposedly being fought to preserve the daemon industry, King Athrenault decreed ninety years ago that we trickster women must not be distracted from our real business in order to provide for the army. And his son Ethrew and his granddaughter Lithrea have upheld the decree. The sparing of the Wraithwaste—of all the western domains, in fact—the entire slice of country between the Thavon War Route and the Salzeim War Route—is the only aim of the Ferupian war effort which has been accomplished. And yet if this house were fifty miles farther west, we’d be the slaves of the army! All rules fall by the wayside once you actually get within sight and sound of the war. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. There’d be officers quartered in Holstead House. All our daemons would be commandeered by the air force. If we were still there when the soldiers arrived, we’d be pressed into manufacturing screamer daemons. That’s what’s been happening to trickster women for almost a hundred years.”

  “But what will happen when the Waste is completely cleared?” Rae asked, maintaining a casual tone with a huge effort. “To the daemons, I mean? When there are no more Wraiths, and all the trickster women are in the employ of the army?”

  “Well. This is what all of us at Holstead House think,” Hannah said, still looking into Rae’s face. Her gaze was so steady that it was eerie. “There are just as many daemons as ever there were. More. But the Wraiths are almost gone. Old Jacithrew, down the road—his family was killed by the army, and he went half-mad after the experience, and forgot everything he ever knew. More or less the same thing happened to his child, I believe. And the Wraiths are—how shall I put it? We’re the chain that binds the daemons. How shall I put it?”

  “The knot in the center of the strings,” Rae said.

  “That’s good, kitten!” Hannah’s voice was soft, meditative. “It has nothing to do with the actual Waste. Trees are just trees, after all. It has to do with the fragile balance between masters and slaves. A global balance of blood. For now the knot holds. But when the Wraiths are gone, it will unravel. The daemons that were once of the Waste will ooze out across the world, voiding their hate, killing one person here, one there, ten over there. And their freedom will coax the enslaved daemons out of their cells. It’s not silver, or oak, that really holds them, but something more occult.” It’s the Queen, Rae thought. Who is descended from Wraiths. Comprehension was coming to her. “And when the slaves are free, the destruction will really start. Because people have been spreading splinterons across the whole world for two thousand years, it will not be localized. Everywhere that humans are, daemons will kill. Have you noticed that smell which follows Liesl and Anthea around? It’s the smell of their pet daemons. It would poison you if you were exposed to it for long enough. It’s what causes trickster women to age faster than ordinary people. And it’s not even a taste of what dematerialized daemons could do if they put what is left of their minds to it.” Hannah tucked her feet under her, getting comfortable.

  Rae, frozen, could not move.

  “Humans are defenseless against the kind of hate that kills with a touch. That’s how we fear it will be. But it probably won’t happen within our lifetimes. And it may never happen at all. It is merely trickster speculation. And we are notorious pessimists.” Hannah giggled.

  The light had been coming up slowly and steadily all the time Hannah spoke, and now it burned bright in the middle of Rae’s mind, hollowing it out, erasing everything except the words which constituted the other half of the story, the last piece of the jigsaw. (Hannah lacked it. That was why she and the rest of the trickster women were really just as ignorant as the man in the street. They could and did fall back on it-may-never-happen patriotism. Rae did not have that option.)

  The Queen is the knot.

  The cutting of the knot would not cause plague or floods. Just the slow rebellion of the lower classes—the real lower classes, whom too few even factored into the balance, as a result of which all their prognostications were tragically flawed.

  The reversal of the equation, she thought wildly. There’s nothing of justice about it. It’s just the law of ebb and flow, the law that caused the Kirekunis to make war on Ferupe, that makes barbarians fight settled people, that makes a ferret bite its owner, that makes a netful of fish pour out and kill the fisherman when the net tears. The law of retribution. She strove to hide her shudders. She was not the same person anymore. She had not been since this morning. The razor-pinioned bird was flapping to and fro across the inside of her mind, obscuring her vision. And yet there were circumstances. A dead forest, a farmhouse, a rainy night. A woman sitting on the foot of her bed. The existence of the bed. The existence of her body. These things meant she was still Rae Ash, and had to behave accordingly.

  She bent her mind to the concerns of her “self” with a tremendous effort—and realized that if she tried to act as though nothing had happened, she would scream. She needed time to think. She needed—

  “I’m really sorry,” she said, and was surprised at the steadiness of her voice. “But—but do you think I could go to sleep now? All this history has worn me out.”

  Hannah stood up. There was something of anger in her brusque movement. It was as if she were trying to control disappointment. “Yes. Forgive me for my volubility. You probably weren’t counting on such a long lecture! But you won’t hear it from anyone else here—they like to dole out secrets slowly, over the course of years, whereas I feel that as a woman who is not Ferupian, not exactly, you deserve to know the other side of the story immediately. That way, you can choose whether to stay or go.”

  “But it’s not the other side of the story.” Rae lay back on her pillows, stifling an urge to yawn. Exhaustion battled despair and nameless need. Hannah stood over her, her face in shadow. “There isn’t any other side,” Rae said tiredly. “There are only lies. And truth.”

  “Very perspicacious,” Hannah said. “And you haven’t even eaten your supper. You really must forgive me. Do you want it now?”

  “No. It’s all right,” Rae said. The daemon glares blurred together into a band of light around the tops of the walls.

  “Poor child.” Hannah stooped over her, smelling deliciously of newly washed hair and not-scent. One still took care of oneself, didn’t one? There were certain standards that had to be maintained. That was why Rae had had to leave the Dynasty. They went too far. Their neglect of the standards around the maintenance of which day-to-day life was based had killed Saonna and it had been going to kill Rae, too. You still had to live, even if you were going to die tomorrow. You had to live as though you wer
e going to die tomorrow.

  “I’ve tired you. There you are... let me tuck you in... poor thing!”

  Rae buried her face in the pillow. Blessed sleep. Hannah was stroking her hair.

  “The truth is that no one knows much about the war,” Hannah said. No, Rae thought: I can’t stand it, I can’t bear to hear any more. “The fact that the army is being pushed back is a well-kept secret, even outside the west. The soldiers who are invalided home are brainwashed into describing it as a series of strategic retreats. What a strategy! The Wraiths here know about the retreats—they know all too well—but they don’t have a clue as to the whys of it. They are just carried along like rag dolls on a river. And when the river goes over the cliff—”

  Hannah snapped her fingers.

  Rae turned onto her back and looked up. Hannah’s face was very close. “Did you learn all this from the trickster women? Or from your own people? Is that why you can’t talk about it with the others?”

  “Sweetheart, I learned nothing from my people. My mother barely had time to bear me before she died. Although I am of the Waste, I am not one-tenth so much Wraith as I am trickster woman. The difference between me and the others, if you will, is that they refuse to talk about these things—and I need to. I have to. That’s why you must forgive me. I used you.” It was said lightly, with a rueful smile.

  Rae yawned. “At least you’re honest about it. The others aren’t. And they tell me it’s for my good.”

  “Oh, honey,” Hannah said, and suddenly, startlingly, bent and brushed her lips against Rae’s forehead. “Don’t be grateful. Don’t be grateful for anything you’re told here. If you only knew!”

  Rae struggled to raise herself on her elbows. “If I only knew? Is there more? If I only knew what?”

  But Hannah had moved away from the bed. One by one, she was extinguishing the daemon glares. She might have been blowing on them—Rae could not see—or doing something else. As each daemon flared out, the Wraith woman dropped a pinch of something that looked like dried herbs into the bowl-like bottom of its cage. There was a smell of soot. Blessed darkness descended on the room. From near the ceiling came a faint scrabbling noise—like mice in the rafters—and Rae knew it was the sound of the half-dead daemons feeding.

  “Sleep now,” Hannah said.

  “But,” Rae said in confused desperation. “But—”

  The currents of sleep wrapped around her like wavelets of warm water.

  “Sleep while you can. The traders will be here in a few days and we’ll all be busy little bees.”

  Hannah moved to the door. A crack of light appeared, silhouetting her. “Anthea and Liesl are in conference, my sweet Kirekuni. They’re close to making a decision about you. Why do you think Anthea didn’t come herself tonight? She runs hot and cold, and tonight she’s running cold. Now do you see why you must forgive me?”

  “Hannah,” Rae whispered. She felt as if she had been drugged. Had she? She would not put anything past them. “Hannah, do you mean I’m not going to be allowed to stay? Is that why you spoke to me? To get your own back on them by giving away their secrets to someone who doesn’t matter anyway?”

  “No.” The door knocked shut, and all at once Hannah was bending over her, giving her another kiss. Without really thinking about it, Rae parted her lips. She felt Hannah’s tongue meet her own and circle it, entering Rae’s mouth. During the course of a long, sweet moment a simple kiss became an exquisitely sexual probing. Rae wrapped her arms around Hannah’s neck. But the other woman pulled away. Her dry, callused fingers lingered for a moment on Rae’s hair. Rae savored the taste of her mouth. “The most important thing is that you get a good night’s sleep.”

  “Hannah... ”

  The door closed.

  Rae was asleep almost before the daemons had stopped feeding.

  And next morning she was surprised to find that she had dreamed not of Hannah, not of Crispin, not of death or destruction, but of the rolling, patchwork hills of Plum Valley Domain. Only now there were no crops in the fields, no orchards, but lengths of material that undulated like seaweed in the currents of the ocean, brushing seductively against her face and bare arms. The tops of the lengths grew much higher than her head. She was lost.

  Every length was silk or velvet. There must have been a king’s ransom growing in those fields. And they were brighter colors than Rae had ever seen, each length shaded from violet at the root through blue and green to yellow and orange, with brilliant red at the top, where the flower ought to be. A legion of little rainbows sunk into the earth. She pushed between the cloths, her shoes sinking into soft, fertile earth, calling out desperately for help. She could not hear her own voice. She didn’t know who she was calling for. When she woke, she believed herself for a moment back in the Seventeenth Mansion.

  I could not

  Speak, and my eyed failed, I was neither

  Living nor dead, and I knew nothing,

  Looking into the heart of light, the silence.

  Oed’ und leer das Meer.

  —T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland

  Say the Words!

  The traders arrived in the afternoon. It was dry and chilly. They were late. The women of Holstead House were in an evil mood; they had sat up all night waiting for the trucks to rumble down the road. More than once one of the twins, excitable with anticipation, had mistaken the sound of a plane overhead for wheels. Lunch had been a silent, sorry affair. But Rae thought the trickster women hid their bad humor quite effectively as they hurried toward the trucks and embraced the dismounting men, kissing cheeks, asking after wives and children.

  Of course any visitor would be a cause of excitement, she told herself, lingering in the edge of the trees, breaking a twig into pieces. Man or woman. Look at the attention they had lavished on Rae herself! (Although Liesl and Anthea had both been markedly colder since the night she spoke with Hannah, and there had been no more invitations to the daemon dell.)

  Their behavior toward the traders seemed out of keeping with the fathomless woman-bond which manifested itself in their obsession with testing each other’s weak points and their habitual disparagement of the male half of the daemon industry. In their flirting, she saw confirmed what she had guessed: the traders played a far more important role in their lives than they had admitted. Sex was almost certainly the key to the puzzle. It was depressing.

  But the razor-pinioned bird fluttered around her head. This morning at breakfast, Hannah, who apparently thought she and Rae were allies (and did not seem quite so overjoyed as the others about the arrival of the traders) had commented on her silence. Rae could only shake her head mutely, causing everyone at the table to laugh. It was not pleasant laughter.

  With a man on each arm, Anthea tripped back toward the green garden and pretended to catch sight of Rae for the first time. She fluted, “Darling! Come meet Mr. Hepplewhite and Mr. Ellary!”

  Rae shook the traders’ hands. To her dismay, she found she could not keep her eyes off them. Her sensibilities seemed to have realigned themselves without her knowledge. How long had she been at Holstead House? Only a few clays. But already she could not accept the men as natural beings. Their heavy shoulders and stubbled chins fascinated her: they were unnatural, monstrous. She had always, she realized, thought of women as senselessly lumpy variations on human form. Now the men seemed the odd ones out, rough-hewn, unfinished variants on woman.

  She shook the younger trader’s hand and said in her most sincere voice, “Hello. Rae. I’m very happy to make your acquaintance.”

  A huge smile broke out on the man’s face. “Jem Ellary. Delighted.”

  His voice was like farm bread, soda-harsh with the accents of Valestock.

  “Isn’t she a darling,” Anthea trilled. “Now you must let me take you up to the house. You’ll want to wash before supper. You haven’t said how many nights you’ll be staying; of course, you’re welcome here for as long... ”

  “Long as it takes us to load up,” Rae heard the g
rim-faced Hepplewhite saying as the trio moved into the trees. “Three trucks this time, see. Increased demand from bases. Hate to ‘pose on you, Anthea, but—”

  Anthea’s answer was girlish laughter. Rae really believed, for the first time, that the trickster woman was not yet thirty.

  She gazed at the trucks which hulked in the road. How many daemons would they hold? Would the menagerie be empty after they left? Did they plan to stay three days or three weeks? Everybody seemed to think she was acquainted with the logistics of these things. She wasn’t a trickster, only a costumier’s assistant; although she wasn’t even that anymore. The razor-pinioned bird had taken it away from her for good and for all. The trucks stood about twenty feet apart, their trailers bending the branches aside—green on one side of the road, brown on the other. Chewed ruts followed them to their parking places.

  She looked again. One of the trucks...

  It couldn’t be. Could it?

  Liesl, Sally, and Millie were talking with the remaining truckers between two of the vehicles. (Hannah had not elected to join the greeting party.) One of the men was eagerly unfastening a tailgate to display the supplies they had brought Holstead from Valestock. Same game, same two-step that people danced everywhere.

  Rae slipped out of the trees and around the back of the last truck. Quietly, she examined the main latch of the tailgate. In the daylight, the scratches were obvious. She tiptoed around the far side of the vehicle. Not obvious unless you were looking for it, but there was the dent where Crispin had smashed the would-be thief’s head into the truck. She could even make out a trace of something dark. That night rushed back to her in a storm of dizziness and confusion. She leaned against the truck. The knowledge that she was going to die tasted like blood. Splinters dug into her fingertips.

  The conversation around the front of the truck subsided into an incomprehensible buzz. Her ears rang. She put her hand to her mouth.