by Jaine Fenn
He glanced down as another indicator lit up on the board: an incoming message, on the frequency the Minister had called the ‘common channel’. Unsurprisingly, his com system didn’t recognise the tag, but he could guess who the message was from. He hit receive.
‘Enemy! Enemy! Warning: we tell ye, tell ye to consensor! Ye hear us? Ye hear? Aye-okay?’ The strident voice had an accent so thick Jarek wasn’t sure he was hearing the man’s words correctly.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t—’ he started, but the strange voice cut him off almost at once.
‘Query: what sept ye? Tell us wha sept. We tell of ye!’
‘I’m sorry,’ he tried again, ‘I don’t understand what you’re trying to say. I’m a visitor. I’ve come to see—’ But he hadn’t been given a name, he’d just been told to wait until he was contacted. ‘Er, I don’t suppose you’d like to take me to your leader?’
The man responded with an impressive if incomprehensible string of what sounded like swearing, then cut the connection.
Jarek wondered if First Contact situations always went this well. Hopefully the lightship wasn’t armed. He looked out again to check the damage he’d done to the irate local’s sail, but the hole was gone, which was impossible . . . unless the sail had mended itself.
That meant sophisticated nanotech, the sort not found in human-space. Nanofactories were rare, even on those worlds without religious proscriptions against messing with Creation at an atomic level, for they required massive power inputs and were notoriously unpredictable. No religious proscriptions here, though, and the locals had zepgen and the massive intellects of male Sidhe to overcome any technical difficulties. But if they were that advanced, why the hell were they sailing around in lightships?
Another incoming message. Jarek took a deep breath before accepting.
‘Greetings: be welcomed!’ This voice was friendly and easily comprehensible, if strangely accented. ‘Be warmly welcomed to Aleph, Captain Reen.’ It was also unmistakably female.
CHAPTER NINE
Kerin was stuck inside the rocky fastness of the Tyr, and so she did not see the fire in the sky. Urien told her later that citizens abroad in the hour before dawn spoke of light silently blossoming overhead, near the Navel of Heaven, then slowly dying away. Though few actually witnessed it, word spread fast and speculation abounded as to the significance of this strange event.
No one save herself, Urien and Damaru knew the truth: that what those below had witnessed was the destruction of the Sidhe ship. And only the three of them knew that the unmoving star high above Dinas Emrys which people called the ‘Navel of Heaven’ was, in fact, the very non-heavenly structure at the top of the silver thread. Kerin and Damaru had visited that structure, and Kerin’s account of her experiences there had convinced Urien of a truth he had already begun to suspect. For everyone else around them, the world above remained the divine realm of the Skymothers.
Urien, ever the pragmatist, used the appearance of the heavenly light to their advantage, and started a rumour that it was a divine vindication of the changes he and Kerin were beginning to make.
Kerin tried not to consider how big a part luck had played in their victory. What if the Sidhe ship had arrived when Damaru were not present? What if this ‘cutting light’ that he had harnessed had not been something he could turn against their enemies? They knew so little of the technology put here by the Sidhe!
There was one fortunate side-effect of the incident: Damaru grudgingly admitted that he needed to learn his letters; if her son could combine his instinctive understanding of the device with the ability to read the console’s display, they would be in a far better position to deal with future crises.
Damaru attempted to renew contact with the ‘rock throwers’ after the Sidhe vessel had been destroyed, and when the console remained uncooperative, he took it apart, exposing thin smooth tubes of many sizes and colours that made Kerin think of the bloodless guts of some strange beast. He rested and ate only when Kerin insisted. He made occasional odd requests: for blades of skymetal, bone needles, even bowls of burning embers. The monitors did their best to hide any confusion when Kerin conveyed these requests to the guards outside; they knew a skytouched boy shared her room, even if their assumption about his relationship to her was wrong. If their goddess chose to indulge the boy, they would not question – not to her face, at least. Kerin could only hope that Damaru knew what he was doing. The complex workings of the console looked impossible to comprehend, even for a skyfool.
Fortunately, with Midsummer over, the holy calendar was relatively empty: just the Sevenday service in the great square and, the day after that, a blessing to celebrate the birthday of a Consort who had been born in Dinas Emrys, now long gone to his less-than-heavenly fate. Kerin hated speaking at services dedicated to Consorts because she knew what had really happened to them when they had ascended the silver thread. Fortunately the ceremony required only a few ritual responses, delivered from the high balcony where she made most of her formal public appearances.
She had planned to spend some time catching up on her studies, but she found it hard to concentrate while Damaru was fiddling and muttering; at the same time, she did not want to leave him, in case he needed her assistance.
Finally, after four days, Damaru made a sound of disgust deep in his throat and jumped to his feet.
‘What is it?’ she asked, looking up from her desk.
‘Will not work!’
‘You are saying you cannot regain control of the rock throwers?’
Damaru grunted.
‘Well, you tried, my lovely boy, you tried.’ Kerin forced herself to smile. ‘And at least we have the cutting light, aye?’
Kerin knew that expression.
‘So that does not work either?’
Damaru muttered something in an irritated undertone.
‘Damaru! Speak up, please.’
‘Not sure. It . . . fades.’ He waved both hands in front of his eyes. ‘Cannot see, cannot see properly! So cannot fix.’
‘Could you see properly if we were up there with the technology?’ Kerin pointed upwards. ‘Is there anything on the Setting Sun that might help us?’ Taking the carousel up the silver thread was an option she would not take lightly – witnessing an unscheduled visit to ‘Heaven’ was likely to have a profound effect on those below. And she was far from enthusiastic about returning to the abandoned Sidhe ship moored to the silver thread, even though the Sidhe who had crewed it were all dead.
‘Not sure. Perhaps.’ Damaru sounded interested, but that was more his desire to play with technology. She suspected he had no more idea than she did whether a trip into the sky would solve their problems. Of course, Sais might know – but he was not here.
‘All right. For now, just put the console back as it was, please.’ She almost smiled at herself: that constant mother’s plea, asking her child to tidy up. Except Damaru was not a child any more, at least not in body.
Damaru sighed in a put-upon way, then sat down and began to rebuild the console with painstaking care.
As Damaru was putting back what he had taken apart he could probably manage without her. She decided to escape for a while.
She went to a wooden clothes-chest against one wall and dug out skirts, a shirt, a shawl and a headscarf, all clean but plain. The shirt was the one she had worn when she had first arrived in Dinas Emrys, a few weeks and lifetime ago. Her other clothes were not suitable: the upland style of dress would stand out in the city and she wished to walk unnoticed. She completed her disguise with the striped tabard that identified her as a servant of the Tyr.
She explained carefully to Damaru that she needed his help; he made no comment save to tut at the interruption, and follow her over to the rich red velvet hanging covering the wall between her bed and Damaru’s newer, smaller one. When she drew the hanging back, the rock wall behind looked unusually smooth. A closer inspection revealed faint lines and markings.
Kerin pointed to a slightly
darker patch to one side of the hidden door. ‘If you please, Damaru,’ she said.
He pressed his palm where she had indicated, and the door slid smoothly and silently into the wall, just like the doors Kerin had seen on the Setting Sun. ‘Thank you,’ she said as she slipped through. ‘I will not be too long.’
She had learned not to jump when the door closed noiselessly behind her and the light globes on the rock walls lit themselves; unlike the lock on the secret passage, they did not require the touch of a Sidhe to operate. Though Sais had tried to explain, using terms like ‘latent expression’, ‘recessive traits’ and ‘sub-type mutation’, she still did not know how she, an ordinary woman, could have given birth to a child who was, at least as far as the machines of the Tyr were concerned, a Sidhe. She was not convinced Sais understood it himself.
She came to some steps, and descended. At the bottom, the passage turned and at the end she collected the items she had left here previously: a basket with a purse of coins in the bottom and a short, sturdy log. She rolled the log up to the door at the end of the passage, which slid open by itself, and kicked the log into place to hold it open, then went back for her basket. The door was not only hidden by a sacking curtain, far less opulent than the one in her chamber, but it was located behind packed shelves in a rarely-used grain storeroom. As Kerin pulled aside the sack curtain her nose was filled with the burnt odour of malted barley. She paused for a moment, recalling the glow of the hearth in her hut back in Dangwern. Then she put the memory aside. Save for the few happy years with her long-dead husband, her old life was not something she looked back on with fondness.
The scant light from the half-open door was barely enough to see by, and she had to take care crossing the packed storeroom. She made a mental note to bring a lamp next time; this was only the third time she had used the hidden exit from her room and she was still working out the details. She listened at the wooden door to make sure no one was outside. A lowly kitchen-maid such as she now appeared to be would not normally be permitted in this part of the Tyr; she must procure other disguises if she was going to make a habit of this.
All was silent, so Kerin opened the door, slipped out and pulled it closed behind her. She crept along the passage, taking the third left, then the second right, following the route she had memorised. When she heard voices from up ahead she ducked into a side-turning and pressed herself against the wall. Somewhat to her surprise, the two approaching speakers were female. One was saying, ‘The Escori of Frythil? As well as the young Consort, you mean?’
‘Aye,’ said the other, who sounded older, ‘or so I hear.’
‘’Tis her right, of course.’ The younger one laughed delicately, then added, ‘But for her Divinity to take all these lovers, after not letting any man grace her bed for so long – one cannot help but wonder what she is thinking!’
They passed the end of the passage and Kerin had a glimpse of revealing white robes, carefully curled and sculpted hair and pale, painted faces: Putain Glan. The older one said, ‘Nothing that we should question, that is for sure. You should watch your tongue when you speak of the Beloved Daughter of Heaven!’
‘Of course, I meant no disrespect . . .’
As the voices died away, the waft of their perfume reached Kerin, and bile rose in her throat. The Putain Glan were allowed to move freely about the Tyr, and Kerin had considered disguising herself as one of them, but even if she knew how to use artifice to hide her plain appearance, she risked any priest she met demanding the use of her body. And had she wished to leave the Tyr, she would have required a sponsor’s letter and a brace of monitors to guard her. She had come to her position hoping to put an end to the tradition of holy prostitution, but had already realised that the priests would not give up that privilege easily.
She met no one else until she was in the outer precincts, at which point her basket and air of hurried purpose were enough to avoid unwanted attention. At her chosen exit, she opened the plain wooden door with the key from her purse. It opened onto a quiet street of townhouses, all built with an extra storey on the downslope side to compensate for the steep incline. The buildings leaned towards each other conspiratorially, as though trying to hide the street from the looming bulk of the Tyr.
Kerin wanted some green herbs and fresh fruits; the smell of the herbs would stay with her when she returned to the sterile stone of her rooms, and she could share the fruit with Damaru. The best market for such produce was near the Mint, and she took her time getting there, enjoying the sensation of being under the open sky and taking pleasure in the pretence that she had only the cares of a household and family to concern her, rather than those of a whole world. How odd, she thought, that what was once common drudgery is now a luxury.
Kerin was glad to find the market was not busy, and that high cloud diluted the summer sun. Coming from the highlands, she was still unaccustomed to both crowds and heat. She shopped slowly, drinking in the sights, smells and sounds of the world she was striving to save. Though the purse hidden in her basket was full of coins, she haggled, purely for the pleasure of such ordinary interaction.
A faint twinge as she leant over to reach for some early strawberries reminded her to find a treatment for her wounded arm. She had already heard one seller of medicines extolling the virtues of his cures to passersby; he claimed he could ease toothache, bad blood and the unpleasant – though rarely fatal – flux that was the latest ailment to sweep the city. No doubt when the winnowing times had held the land in their grip he had claimed to cure the falling fire too. Of course, there was only one cure for that. She doubted even this quack’s best remedy would be as effective as the miraculous drugs Sais had procured when her arm had been wounded up on the Sidhe ship. Those healing machines and potions on the Setting Sun would be beyond this hedge-doctor’s comprehension.
Her route to the medicine-seller took her across the square, towards the speaking-stone. There were several such platforms around the city; Urien called them playhouses for earnest fools. Kerin concluded her business quickly, buying a salve whose smell spoke of recent animal origin; as she turned to go, she heard a growing commotion. The current speaker was having some effect on the crowd. Kerin drifted towards the speaking-stone.
It was a man, of course – any woman who tried to take the stand would be shouted off before she could even open her mouth. He looked like a merchant rather than a craftsman, though his clothes did not speak of great wealth. As she got closer, he responded to a shouted comment from his growing audience.
‘It is not blasphemy! I do not preach against the Mothers – they made us; we are their children. What I say is that the priests, who are mortal men, have lost their way!’
From the crowd a voice shouted, ‘They are the servants of the Skymothers. Their steps are guided by Heaven.’
‘I once believed that to be true. But something has changed—’
‘Aye,’ shouted someone else, ‘the lights in the sky!’
‘I too have seen those nightly apparitions, but I do not presume to understand their meaning. All I say is that we may no longer be able to trust the Tyr to lead us.’
The crowd was becoming restive. Some, it seemed, agreed. Others did not. More shouts were exchanged. The speaker tried to call for calm and was ignored. A moment later he ducked as something was thrown at him. Yellow spattered the wall behind his stand. Nearby, a scuffle broke out.
A helmeted head ploughed through the crowd, intervening between the two men who had come to blows. They quieted at once. In the silence that followed the monitor’s intervention someone – Kerin thought it was the man who had first accused the speaker of blasphemy – called out, ‘Will you not arrest that man?’
The monitor’s response was loud in the now-quiet square. ‘I will not. I serve the Mothers first, and the Tyr second. He has a right to speak, though if he is wise he will not say any more.’
The speaker took the hint and climbed down from his stone. The monitor’s presence held the crowd in
check. Once the focus of the commotion was gone, the crowd relaxed. A few still argued or muttered, but many started to drift away. Kerin turned to two women standing near her, and said, ‘What times we live in!’ She still cringed inside at treating strangers with easy familiarity, but such behaviour was normal in the city.
‘You speak the truth there, mistress,’ the older one responded.
‘And did I hear aright, that there have been further lights since that most unnerving sight a few nights gone? I have been so busy, and not had call to look outside at night recently . . .’
‘You did hear aright! My daughter has seen them for herself, have you not, Meri?’ said the woman eagerly. Kerin resisted the urge to smile; she had chosen this pair well.
The younger woman turned her hollow-eyed gaze on the currently sleeping child in its sling and said, ‘Aye, for this little one keeps me up half the night.’
Kerin made the expected noises of appreciation over the oblivious baby, then added, ‘Are these lights you have seen as bright as that first one?’
‘Oh no, they are not. But they started only after the great light appeared then faded,’ said the girl. Pleased to be seen as a source of authority by older women, she continued, ‘They are a little like the Heavenly rain at star-season, save they do not fall to the ground; they merely flash and are gone.’
‘They are a mystery and a worry,’ said her mother. ‘Whatever can such omens mean? We must pray that these uncertain times soon end!’
‘Indeed we must,’ said Kerin absently, and took her leave before they could ask her to share gossip from the Tyr.
CHAPTER TEN
‘Nual! Wake up! Please, you have to wake up—’ Taro knew she wasn’t dead – he’d know if she died, even if she was on the other side of the galaxy. Or in a different one entirely. But she was totally out of it; he could barely sense her in his head. He was still trying to decide whether he should shake her, hug her tighter or crawl off to the medbay when the shakes hit. He raised a hand to his face; his fingers came away crusted with dried blood. It was just a nosebleed; Nual’d had one too.