by Jaine Fenn
The corridor turned left. While Sais peered round the corner, Kerin got her knife out. ‘All clear,’ he whispered, then added, ‘this might sound odd, but if we do meet a Sidhe we’ll stand a better chance if we’re not together.’
‘You think we should split up?’ As though she was not scared enough, sneaking through these stark, shining passages where every door might hide an enemy - now he was suggesting that she should do it alone!
‘Not exactly, just leave a gap between us. That way the Sidhe won’t be able to attack us both immediately: if she goes for one of us, it might give the other one a chance to fight back.’
‘So you will go first?’
He grimaced at her. ‘Only if you know how to use a crossbow.’
‘Ah.’ He was asking her to be the bait in his trap. ‘If you think that is for the best . . .’
‘Forget it. You’re right. It’s a stupid idea.’
‘No, Sais, it makes sense. If having me walk ahead to attract our enemy’s attention is necessary, I will do that.’
‘No one can accuse you of not having balls - figuratively speaking, ’ he said with a faint laugh. ‘All right. Off you go. I think we need to take the next left.’
Kerin crept up to the turning, breathing hard, and peered round. Nothing. She walked round the corner. There was a right turn off the passage up ahead. She looked back, waiting for Sais to tell her what to do now.
He did not come round the corner.
She thought she heard a faint sound, a sort of fast swish, like an expelled breath. She had heard a sound like that recently.
Then she heard another noise, this one louder. It sounded like a body hitting the floor.
She froze, her thoughts caught in terror like a fly in honey. She turned around. Not daring to breathe, willing her heart to be silent, she peered back round the corner.
The first sound had been a door, of course. It was still open, and a woman was standing next to it, her back to Kerin. She was dressed in a shirt and breeches. The shirt was half tucked in and her hair was messy, as though she had dressed hurriedly. Even so, Kerin felt the force of her presence. Here was someone of importance. Beyond her a scantily dressed woman - the mute - was bending over something on the floor.
Sais.
At once, Kerin’s instinctive reverence for the clothed woman dissolved into anger, the same hot passion she had felt as she ascended. This was a Sidhe, and she had hurt her husband. More, she meant to hurt her son. More still: her people had been hurting Kerin’s people for generations.
She wrapped both hands round the hilt of her knife, raised the blade above her head, then stepped forward, ready to plunge it into the Sidhe’s back.
The Sidhe turned.
Kerin felt something try to pierce her mind, like an invisible blow behind the eyes. At the same moment her knife connected with the Sidhe’s arm. Cloth ripped and Kerin felt the blade tear flesh.
Though she knew this creature could destroy her, Kerin was in the grip of righteous fury. They fell, the Sidhe toppling backwards, Kerin on top of her. By the time they hit the floor, the only thing Kerin was aware of was that this was an enemy she must destroy.
For my son. For my world.
She drew her arm back, stabbed again, and again. She felt the blade go deep into the Sidhe’s chest and warmth erupted over her hands. She watched herself lift the bloody blade free one more time, saw it come down into the hollow of the Sidhe’s neck, and as it did, so the life went out of those wondrous dark eyes.
Her breath coming in frantic gasps, Kerin half-crawled, half-fell off the Sidhe’s body. She looked at Sais, who was kneeling up. He had twisted the arm of the mute behind her and pinned her to the floor.
He looked back at Kerin, then beyond her to what she had just done. ‘What I said about the divorce?’ he said. ‘I’m not going to ask you do to anything you don’t want to do - not ever!’
Kerin started to laugh, until she saw how her hands were red with blood, then the laugh cracked and before she could catch herself she spewed what little there had been in her stomach across the floor. She began to tremble.
She had just killed someone. How could she have done that?
Sais gave her a look of silent sympathy. He pulled the mute to her feet. The woman acted pliable, witless. Kerin watched her rather than look at the body.
Suddenly Kerin wanted to run back to the big room and just shut herself in the box that had brought her here, hide away, let someone else deal with these impossible horrors that looked like beautiful women.
But it was too late to go back now. She must finish what she came here to do. Sais wanted to escape and warn his friends, but she needed to save her world. She had to see this through.
Sais helped her stand. He pushed the mute through the door the Sidhe had emerged from, into what looked like a private room. The Sidhe must have been asleep when the servant found her. Though clean and large and luxurious, the room looked lived-in. The bed was unmade, clothes were thrown over a chair, and a dressing table displayed a mess of pots and coloured bottles, with a filmy green and silver scarf discarded over the stool. This was a normal place where someone lived, dressed, slept . . . and would never sleep again, because Kerin had killed her. She pressed the back of her hand against her mouth and swallowed convulsively, then pulled her hand away again as the smell of blood filled her nostrils.
The mute watched silently as Sais swept the clothes off the chair. She let him tie her to it with the scarf. Her gaze was dull, uninterested.
Then Sais fetched Kerin some water. He made her drink it, and helped her to wash the worst of the blood off. Kerin found herself desperate to remember the Sidhe’s face, because to have killed and be unable to recall her victim made the awful act even worse.
Sais’s expression said that he understood Kerin did not want to talk about what she had done, that perhaps she never would.
‘The Sidhe was sleeping, not on this “bridge”,’ she said when she had calmed down enough to consider what they should do next. ‘Do we still need to go there?’
‘Don’t you want the cure for the falling fire?’
She had been wrong about Sais. He did want to help her. ‘Aye. I do.’
‘Then let’s go get it.’
Finally, he understood: it all made sense! He had thought through everything, examining the facts as a seeker of knowledge should, and despite the distracting whimpers from the false Cariad, he had found the answer. His final sin had not damned him after all.
The Traditions did not lie: the Edefyn Arian was the path to Heaven. Yet the way was not just open to Consorts, and Heaven was not what he had thought.
Purged of all past illusions, and privileged above all other priests in having been granted the grace to enter this place, Einon saw the truth.
Heaven was not a place of omniscient, incomprehensible beings, merely - hah! merely! - a place of glorious wonders. Those who created these wonders were not divine, though they were as far above the priests who served them as priests were above dumb beasts. Miracles occurred here, yet they were miracles an intelligent man could comprehend.
Much of the creed Einon had lived his life by still remained true. Below, men ruled women: above, women had dominion over men. T’was ever so, and finding the true nature of Heaven did nothing to change the natural order.
Sais had admitted he came from the sky, and he had said his people opposed those who had built this place. Finally the man was honest with him - but only because he had no choice. Despite his one brave and noble act in saving Einon at Plas Aethnen, Sais was not the man Einon had hoped he was. He had withheld truths, spoken strange oaths and used forbidden metal. He called the sky-women evil; in truth, Sais was the evil one.
If only Einon had seen these things earlier! He should never have given Sais the crossbow bolts, but he had still been confused then, lost in fear and uncertainty. He felt stronger now.
He decided to climb out of his box. He was thirsty; perhaps there was something t
o drink here. He used the torch Sais had left him to shine a beam of pure white light around the dark room. This was a strange, barren place. Despite the room’s great size there were no supports holding up the high roof. Once he was out of the box, he pointed the torch at the body he had seen earlier, the sky-woman Sais had murdered.
Someone screamed.
The false Cariad must have been watching him, and had seen the body when he illuminated it. He turned to shine the light in her face and in the moment before she threw her hands up, he knew her. He felt sure he had taken his pleasure of this one, back before she took the Cariad’s place. The thought repelled him.
‘Ah, shut up, you stupid whore!’ he shouted.
The woman kept her hands in front of her face and wailed loudly. Her pathetic cries reverberated around the room.
Suddenly furious, Einon strode over to her and without pausing, hit her with the torch.
She fell back into the box.
In the sudden silence, Einon heard a gasp and shone the torch towards the sound. The skyfool had stood up and was backing away from him.
Einon grabbed the edge of Lillwen’s box, feeling sick, but the moment passed and he pushed himself away from the ominously silent woman. He had been right to hit Lillwen. Rather than the helpless tool she appeared to be, might she not be a schemer who had colluded in this terrible deception? Had she not come to a position of great power while men stood by? For all he knew, she had been the one who had killed the true Cariad, then used her sky-cursed wiles on the Escorai. Certainly her influence had made the Escorai foolish. She had even taken one as a lover, the better to ensure her hold over him.
If he had killed her, it was no bad thing. She deserved it. But he could not bring himself to check, fearful of blood, and certainty.
And what of the real Cariad? He had to know the truth. He took the torch and looked in the few remaining boxes on the sacred ring. All save one were empty, and that contained a sleeping Consort. The true Cariad must be in one of the boxes in the lighted room beyond.
Einon did not let himself look at the body of the sky-woman on her strange floating bier as he passed.
The first five boxes Einon looked in contained sleeping boys. In the sixth, he found a decayed body dressed in black and silver finery. His eyes filled with tears and he looked up, trying to blink them clear. He had hoped - believed, prayed - that whatever else might be disproved this day, the Cariad - the real one - would be reborn as Escori Prysor had claimed. All these miracles were as nothing without this one hope.
His knees gave way and he fell to the floor. He tried to pray, but the words would not come. He pulled himself into a tight ball; his mind hung suspended between enlightenment and madness.
When he looked up next he thought Lillwen was not lying in her box after all.
The woman standing before him wore a black robe, as Lillwen had. Her hair was long and dark, like the deceiver’s. But he realised there was nothing else in common between the two: this woman was the most beautiful, most perfect, most noble being he had ever seen.
He sat up.
His prayers had been answered after all. This was a true Daughter of Heaven, a magnificent, divine creature.
He looked into her eyes; they were a colour he had no name for. He felt a strange sensation tickling the back of his mind, and after an initial moment of disorientation the feeling spread and warmed, opening out like an arousal of the spirit. It was as though he had finally found the missing piece of his soul.
He let out a long, even sigh. Then he leaned forward, brought his hands in front of him and prostrated himself before her. Pressing his face into the chill, smooth floor, he breathed, ‘I am yours.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
When they reached the junction for the command corridor Sais paused and looked around the corner. The airlocks at either end of the corridor both showed green telltales. The Setting Sun had little internal security - what need, on a ship run by telepathic dominatrixes and staffed by mind-controlled slaves? One of the docked ships was his, so the other must be an atmosphere-capable shuttle.
‘What is it?’ asked Kerin. She’d been silent since leaving the Sidhe’s bedroom.
Sais wondered how she was dealing with having just murdered a complete stranger. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it himself, though he understood her anger.
‘I’m just thinking,’ he said. ‘The Sidhe will have a smaller ship, which will have the cure for the falling fire on board. Someone needs to take the small ship down to your world and . . . let the cure out. Maybe I could do that, leaving you to get Damaru and the others back into the comaboxes before they go back down.’
‘A good plan.’ Kerin sounded relieved. Sais didn’t blame her: in her position he’d want to be safely locked up in a nice secure box waiting to go home too.
‘In theory, yes. Except, there’s a couple of problems. Firstly, I don’t know whether or not the process that sends the boxes back down is automated.’
‘Automated?’
‘Whether it happens by itself, rather than because the Sidhe make it happen. If they usually send it back, I’ll need to work out how.’
‘I am sure you will be able to do that.’
He admired her optimism, but he wasn’t so sure. ‘The other problem is the pilot - the man who controls this ship. He’s probably on the bridge - that’s behind the door in the next corridor - but he may come out when he realises something’s wrong. Even if he stays put, he’s likely to stop any ship that tries to leave - and that includes the one with the cure on board.’ Or mine.
‘Then we will have to deal with him.’ Kerin made it sound so simple.
Leaving Kerin at the junction, Sais crept up towards the bridge door. He was surprised to find it had a lock. It looked like an iris-scanner: always a spacer’s favourite, as they were designed to work with a suit on. He motioned for Kerin to stay back while he went in for a closer look.
As Sais sidled up, the door opened. He froze. It was possible it was set to open automatically when someone approached, but then, why the lock? No, someone had opened it - the pilot, presumably.
Staying to the side of the door, Sais pulled out a crossbow bolt and tossed it through.
The soft and deadly phhhhssst of a needle-pistol confirmed his suspicions.
From inside, a contemptuous male voice said, ‘Gone native, Sirrah Reen?’
The pilot must have a camera covering the corridor. ‘I’ve made the best of my situation, as you’ll no doubt know if you’re monitoring the ship,’ he said. The pilot didn’t rise to the bait and Sais continued, ‘I don’t think we were ever introduced.’
Laughter, almost a snigger. ‘Oh, I know all about you. They share everything with me.’
Sais didn’t have to ask who he meant by they. ‘Lucky you. No, I meant I don’t know your name.’
‘You’re assuming I have one.’ That threw Sais, and the pilot, apparently beginning to enjoy himself, continued, ‘I’ve used a few for convenience, but I don’t need a name with my sweethearts. They know me and love me, and I provide indispensable services for them. I have the life I want. How many men can say that, Sirrah Reen? Or do you mind if I call you Jarek? I feel I know you so well.’
Sais knew he was being wound up, but he still found himself considering the indispensable services this man provided to his Sidhe sweethearts. ‘Call me whatever you want; I’ll just call you pilot. Well, pilot, I’ve got some bad news for you. Your services are no longer required.’
The sound of an indrawn breath told Sais that the pilot didn’t know his Sidhe sweethearts were dead.
‘You’re lying,’ he said flatly. ‘There’s no way one man could defeat a Sidhe.’
Kerin was where he’d left her - outside the range of the camera - watching him carefully. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘I had help. Your surveillance isn’t up to much, is it? You don’t know your girl-friends are dead and you haven’t spotted my friends.’
If the man did have cameras, he might check them now, but Sais heard no movement. When the pilot answered he sounded uncertain. ‘Friends? I’d say that’s extremely unlikely. I’ve no idea how you got up the beanstalk, but I do know you’d have no chance of persuading any of those pious pricks down there to come up with you.’
So he couldn’t see Kerin. Good. ‘Then you really should be a lot more frightened of me than you appear to be, given I just took out two Sidhe by myself.’
No reply. Sais wished he could see the man’s face. Then he heard a sigh. A relieved sigh.
He’d been wrong in assuming there were only two Sidhe. Trying to keep his voice casual, he said, ‘You still in there, pilot?’
‘Yep, and I’ll stay in here and you can stay out there, and we’ll see how long your luck holds.’
Sais said evenly, ‘Is there anything you’d like to share at this point?’
The pilot snorted a laugh. ‘There is, actually: a bit of advice. Rather than staying out there, why don’t you come in here, and I’ll do you the favour of killing you cleanly. Or you can turn that wooden toy weapon round and shoot yourself in the head.’
‘And why would I want to do that?’
‘Because if you’ve really killed two of the sisters, then when the third one finds you, she’ll take your fucking mind apart - and this time she won’t leave anything behind except the pain.’
Sais pushed himself off from the wall and sprinted back down the corridor. The pilot shouted after him, ‘Or you can run, for all the good it’ll do you.’
When he reached Kerin he motioned her to go back down the corridor ahead of him until they were out of earshot.
‘So there is another one?’ whispered Kerin, her face pale.
‘Looks like it.’
‘What is your plan?’
Good question. ‘We still have to take out the pilot and get control of the bridge. We got lucky with the first two Sidhe, largely because we surprised them. We have to assume the third one knows there’s a problem, even if she doesn’t know the extent of it. Once we’re on the bridge, we can lock her out and keep watch using the cameras - Sidhe powers are limited without line-of-sight. And the pilot’s got a weapon that’s way more effective than a crossbow or knife.’