Torada consolidated rapidly. ‘The Karoo must face us in unity or we will lose the ground and the artefact to them.’
They agreed and lingered in the eightfold concord a moment, enjoying its relative peace, though a moment later they were asking why she seemed so different and River silently observed that she had matured very rapidly lately and must be congratulated. They swirled, at levels below words, searching out curiosities, and Torada had to remain relaxed and unshielded as they moved around, aware that much as she had trained so hard to place her secrets out of their reach they might stumble across one, as she might find theirs. To discourage such behaviour she did not pry, and this prevented them from being as nosy as they might have been, except for Spire. But Torada knew her ways. She let Spire have a victory – she let her see the truth of what Eth’s loss had meant to her. Then, in that private space where she least wanted Spire to be, she said to her, quietly, ‘You will pay for this.’
The reply came faster than she anticipated. ‘I have found your agents in my city, girl. Don’t overstep your place.’
So, Torada thought, we are prepared to fudge things over with each other for the sake of harmony. But that leaves a lot of agents and the agendas of the Infomancy still to consider. She might play games with the Empresses but the infomancers owed their loyalty to the state as a whole and they would not aid any faction warfare, at least not in public.
The Pantheon closed slowly and she found she was still clinging to Hakka’s arm, but more like a frightened girl now than an Empress. She made herself let go, rubbing her itching palm against her free hand for a moment before making that stop too. ‘That is enough delight for now,’ she said, and saw Mazhd enter the room and look about for Huntingore. He noticed her only second, his bow to her rushed and awkward. How peculiar he was so unguarded, she thought, studying him more closely. Perhaps Night is right to suggest using him as a lever to open that very sophisticated can of worms that is the Infomancy. She says he is biddable as long as matters lean in his favoured direction. Let us see.
To Isabeau she said, ‘We will leave you to your business. From now on the centre of my command will be located at the Infomancy.’ She pretended not to see the suddenly straightening backs and turning heads at this announcement. ‘Mazhd will remain with you since you require expert communications assistance. We will trouble Shrazade Ourselves. Mazhd, you are not to leave Engineer Huntingore’s side on any order but mine.’
He looked at her and bowed his head, one second too long. Ah ha, Torada thought. So I am right. They have their own agendas beneath mine and their own little wars. She let him know that she expected his loyalty to her first, using that language of glances that all the mental adepts easily shared. He looked down for a second, allowing his eyelids to do the bowing for him. To the runner, still gawking at the screen, she said sharply, ‘Go instruct Night and her retinue to meet me at the Infomancy immediately. And tell her to bring my refreshments.’
This last order was one that Night alone would understand to mean bring more of the potion that she had been taking since her bargains with Tzaban. She had given him an enormous gift of power. She hoped that what he had given her in return would not be the end of her. Her body surged with brief, strange fevers and the itch moved around in damnable endlessness from limb to limb and organ to organ. Only the potion would prevent her becoming a scarlet, scratching fiend. For a split second she wondered at her trust in Night, but her instinct to do so was absolute, in her bones. She hurried as much as one could without looking to hurry, longing for the bitter drink.
As she passed Mazhd, she saw him glance suddenly right at her, his nostrils flared. She recalled his particular talents and realised he must know what she had done in allowing the Karoo to inseminate her with his own genes. She saw an image of a woman giving birth to herself; one she picked up from his mind, and knew with sickly dread that he understood perfectly. If the Infomancy found out they could easily have her deposed. The evidence would be irrefutable – she was becoming the enemy
It would be absolute madness to rely on some hunch of Night’s that Mazhd could keep something so monumental to himself. Her alternative was to kill him immediately. It was the only guarantee – she could do it instantaneously, any other method risked him living long enough to write out his memory cache to the Infomancy. Absolute madness – this was also her path – she reflected as they exchanged the look that said all these things to each other. She saw he expected no mercy. For a split second instead of him she saw a pillar of steel in his place and so she did not strike.
Then she was past him and out of the door into the cold damp air of the low clouds that blew in endless pale grey through the streets. She looked up into Hakka’s black eyes. The polearm spike was almost invisible in the threading mists.
‘Killing infomancers will make what comes impossible,’ she said and he nodded with a look of flat hatred for beings whose danger lay in planes he could not access. Still, he accepted it. ‘Hurry. I must arrive at the head of the guard unit.’
He lifted her up into the saddle of the dappled grey horse and for a few cool, blissful minutes, she rode through the streets with him at her side as if they were the only two people in the world.
ISABEAU
Isabeau was too absorbed in her work to notice the Empress’ moments of detachment from the world. Once Torada had given her an order she moved to execute it, and that required immersion in a vast complexity of calculations. Working with the other engineers in this task was exhilarating too, so much so that she didn’t notice she was tired, or anything else except that her eyes felt so dry and she was finding it hard to look at things.
It was a genuine surprise to find Mazhd at her side. She saw him through a blue-white haze of spell symbols shifting around her in the air and gestured suddenly to freeze them in place, concerned that even speaking to him might cause her to insert an error. With equal surprise she saw that the Empress was gone, and wondered when that had happened.
Mazhd was holding out something. She realised it was food and then what he was saying became intelligible. ‘You need to rest.’
She began to protest but he took her by the arm gently and led her to the anteroom – a bare place with a few lounging seats and tables, prints of old schematics decorating the walls. When she sat down she found her legs shaking and a wave of nausea went over her. She picked up the wrapped pasty he had provided and held it, as if she might lose it, while she drained a cup of water. They sat together and he ate with her. The heavy pastry of the case and the solid, congealed meat inside made it slow going. It was a struggle to stay awake and chew after the first couple of bites.
Luckily for her ambition he wanted to talk. They made a few nervous sallies to and fro in a conversation about Tralane, trying to figure out each other’s relative levels of intimacy, then Minna. Isabeau considered him strictly temporary boyfriend material so far, and his job lent him inherent untrustworthiness so her replies were stock social niceties and her honest hopes for their survival.
‘Minna is too valuable to hurt,’ Mazhd said confidently. ‘I expect her to appear in the city of Spire, then I will be able to tell you she is well.’
‘Through the Infomancy there.’
‘Yes.’
‘How can you be loyal, in your position, given we’re in civil conflict now? How do you decide who deserves to know what?’ She held her glass out and he refilled it for her. Whatever he was used to doing he had much greater stamina than she did. Being cared for was nice. She tried to be appreciative and respectful in her questions.
‘Everyone must decide for themselves,’ he said through a doughy mouthful, prepared to lose manners at eating if she was. ‘But mostly the higher you are to the top node, the more power your decisions have.’
‘So if I were at the bottom, just a messenger, and I didn’t want to tell something, but someone four layers up wanted to know, I couldn’t stop them knowing what I know? How would they know to want to know?’
&nb
sp; Mazhd coughed as he chuckled. ‘The higher level operative would have what we call a “nose” for these things although it’s more like having your eye dragged to a certain position because of a movement. A kind of automatic triggering of interest because something moves unexpectedly. You might have a vague awareness of higher nodes, though they often have guards in place, but you would always be able to see lower nodes relatively well. Putting up barriers at that level is not allowed. It would be dismantled and the person would face disciplinary action.’
‘And where are you in this?’ She made a movement with outspread fingers to indicate tracing lines on a plotted page. ‘Shrazade is the city’s top node.’
‘Yes and I am one lower than that.’
‘Is that by talent only?’
‘Everyone starts at the bottom. You go as high as talents and permissions allow.’
‘So you are vetted by higher nodes?’
‘Yes.’
She chewed, pleased it followed logic she understood. ‘Who’s the top top?’ He didn’t answer immediately and she looked at him to see if he didn’t want to or found it difficult.
‘There is some dispute over it. But there does not need to be one person in the top node. There could be many, or none.’
She laughed a little, thinking over it. ‘How do you know you’re even making up your own mind, then? If you’re lower than top?’
He smiled at her. ‘Sometimes you don’t. You have to assume you have a modicum of control but the opportunity for corruption at high nodes is very great.’
‘Sounds like hell,’ she said, taking another bite. Half her mind was still filled with equations. She could see the symbols even though they weren’t there.
‘Did you think that the Sisterhood of the Star were Spire sympathisers?’
This question, gently voiced, made the symbols pause.
‘Yes, but they were honest about it. Living here was a form of penance, I think. They were so sure that ideas alone can be proven right that they thought they could come and teach their ways here and that they’d be doing everyone a favour.’
‘It was what happened in the Rose that made your mind up.’
She saw no reason not to explain it. It was in the past, and no longer relevant. His interest, even at the time, had not been prurient. ‘My encounter with General Borze proved to me that there are processes at work within the individual beyond conscious levels which I could not access to change or deny. The subconscious life of the body has no interest in the world of ideas. Pursuing the body’s goals was much more fulfilling than I had been led to believe.’ She paused, feeling that she was selling out her erstwhile teachers, but then remembering Minna and not caring so much.
‘The sisterhood consider everything must be susceptible to reason and that mind must be made mistress of all lower nodes, as it were. The body has its own reasoning and goals, perfectly obvious ones, however. I tested their theory that one might detach from physical experience. However, I did not feel better or worse for it and what I was doing ceased to have any intellectual meaning at that point. Returning meaning to my actions was infinitely more rewarding so long as the meaning was positive, but my interpretation could go in any direction depending on my mood state, so clearly interpretation is incorrect as an analysis of the meaning of life. It is a creative process entirely. Defining any of the acts bad or good is merely whimsical. Hardly something to base a philosophy on, even a moral one. There was no act in itself more or less meaningful than another. Though some certainly had more energetic and physical response than others.’ She paused to swallow and drink. Mazhd was watching her with interest, a hint of a grin on his face. She continued, aware of how primly correct she seemed and not caring.
‘The Rose Document suggested that to inhabit the physical world completely, in its own frames of reference, was to enter an altered consciousness in which other realities might be entered by repositioning of the focal point of conscious experience. This was correct. Night was correct. The sisterhood’s views were based on deduction and a false assumption of mental supremacy in which events are interpreted rather than created, and they were incorrect as a result. I put my findings in a paper and I was adding to a theory that Empresses are mass focal point controllers, but the Department of Humane Biology refused to read it as it violates the Theory of Hierarchy and Heredity. I considered my research concluded at that point since I have no patience with fools and much else to do in my own expertise. And then Minna was kidnapped and here I am, too busy to return to it.’ She had begun to feel much better now, both from the food and from being able to talk and set her ideas out in a methodical way, as if a pressure valve in her head had eased. She yawned and let her head rest on the chair back.
‘I’d like to read it sometime,’ he said and his face was genuinely interested, no trace of condescension or amusement in it now.
‘Of course. I will send it to you as soon as I have a moment. I must say though that there is one person who is much more peculiar even than Empresses. My Master, Night. Her understanding of the instinctual interrelations of all the facets of the individual is remarkable but her magical skill to weave thoughtforms and place them, to create ideas and to give them to others, is unparalleled. It must be a very similar kind of talent. And I’ve never met anyone like her. Don’t you and she both have some Karoo in you?’
‘Yes,’ he said. His expression had altered very suddenly and she assumed he was experiencing discomfort over this reminder. It was not common knowledge and she only knew because Night had confided in her whilst describing the education of her previous acolyte. Surely it was bad enough being marked out as a Steppelander, as people cared so much about these ridiculous things. Abruptly she felt bad because people were so stupid that truths could be taken as offences. It offended her to the core of her being. Still, she remembered her mother’s exhaustive explanations on the subject of social cohesion and decided she should probably stop talking.
Mazhd was also quiet after that and they concluded their meal in a comfortable silence, him waiting on her until she was done and then clearing up the wrappers and cups afterwards.
‘You ought to nap,’ he said. ‘Tired minds make mistakes. I’ll watch out for you if you like, wake you up in an hour.’
She was nearly asleep anyway. ‘Forty minutes,’ she said.
‘Forty,’ he agreed, taking a blanket from the end of the recliner and laying it over her.
She wanted to ask him how he would be sure not to sleep himself but before she could do it sleep stole her away.
ZHARAZIN
Zharazin watched Isabeau as her eyes closed and her lips moved without sound. When they stopped and the blanket moved more slowly over her ribs, he sat back in his own seat and spent a minute listening to the unfamiliar sound of the flight engines. They were a steady soft background hum that pulsed in waves; a slow ocean bearing them, depth unknown. He felt the resonance through the chair. Everything in Glimshard felt it, he fancied, glasses tinkling in distant cabinets, loose boards creaking now and again, precipitous objects falling unknown in forgotten rooms.
Then he brought his mind back from its butterfly, fanciful circle and let it alight again on Isabeau’s last, shocking declaration. Night, like an Empress, only more peculiar.
He got up and followed imagined gossamer wings outside. The streets were quiet, gleaming under the invisible support fields as if lit by a second, much weaker sun in addition to the real one. Double shadows were cast, one strong and one pale across the ground, his own included. They said the magic pulled light around on itself. He watched his feet meet two other pairs as he passed between buildings and along courts, seeming to take a path through three different worlds to the palace as he followed a line and a timing that no guard would bother patrolling. It was harder than he remembered to climb the walls and make his way over roofs and along balconies to the jump that took him on to the corner of Night’s gable. He used to take this way when he was in love with her and it was easy then. Be
latedly he realised that was more than fifteen years ago and he hadn’t slept in two days.
He dropped into her garden courtyard with considerably more weight than a butterfly, hands to the paving as he waited there to see if he was still on the list of people she wouldn’t attempt to stop here with her guardian spells. Even the pavers were familiar, every pattern of their cut stone faces a map of a hundred past days. He tore his gaze away to the plant near his face. No point getting lost down those lanes.
Nothing happened and eventually he straightened. She’d know he was here now but that didn’t matter, given where she was and what she was about, he figured. In the house of Shrazade she would need all her wits and he needed his to keep his investigation private from the same woman. Keeping his waking mind to the schooled emptiness of meditation was all that would save him from an interrogation. It was almost impossible. Everywhere he looked he saw keys to memory’s gates where in happier times he had stored so much of his knowledge. The immensity of it beckoned but he made himself see them without picking them up, pass them by, when they called to him like sirens.
At last he was where he wanted to be. In her room. On her bed.
He lifted the cover back and pressed his face to the sheet halfway down where the mattress dipped with the shallow imprint of her hip, closed his eyes and breathed.
Something blocked him. His talent for knowing blood normally produced knowledge easily. It swam to the surface of his awareness and confirmed itself with a sure sense in his own bones – like this, like that. But now here he was with his nose, his head full of her and all he could do was tell who she was. This is Night. She has the Karoo in her, about as much as one finger’s depth in a standard tall measure of water. She is able to know the blood, like him. More than he can she knows how it flows between generations, across years, across centuries. Time is only another country to her. And then there is something that he can’t access, right there, like a picture that will not come into focus no matter how long he looks.
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