A voice, harsh and tired, broke her from it. Stopping was almost painful, as if her mind was meshed with the spells and separation physically pulled it apart. She found herself aching, exhausted, blinking with dry eyes as Carlyn stood, hand on Tralane’s arm firmly, pale face concerned. ‘’Lane, where did he go?’
‘Who?’ Her head was swimming with marks. Those suspended around her stopped and fixed themselves in place as she looked through them to her friend. They lay on Caryln’s skin like snowflakes, writing out their plans.
‘Tzaban.’ She said the name with dislike, but also worry. ‘He was lying on the floor until just now when he suddenly got up. He was listening. Then he went out. That way.’ She pointed at the door they had entered by and back the way they had come.
Tralane looked where she was directed, and then back at the spot where he had been against the wall. A large patch of smeared blood marked it. There was no telling whose blood it was. Tzaban hadn’t spoken since the fight, nor did anyone want him to. He had changed during it in a way none of them were prepared for, including Tralane who had seen him do it before. This time it had been different. This time he had turned into a monster. There was plenty of vomit not far away after they had been forced to witness the two Karoo fight each other. She still couldn’t quite believe his transformation or witnessing him desecrate the corpse of his opponent in what she assumed Carlyn would understand as a way that was all too human. She swallowed on a sour taste and felt weak. She took some horrible dried biscuit from her personal pocketful of the things and made herself eat. ‘Did he say anything?’ She could see sickly relief in Carlyn’s face as her friend shook her head.
‘Started sniffing, sat up, got up, went out.’
‘There was one left, he said.’ Tralane started to come out of her study haze. She took the water Carlyn offered her and drank, then looked around. ‘Maybe that’s where he went.’
‘Soros says the main door opened five minutes ago.’
Tralane started – another thing she hadn’t noticed. She looked through the astral display to the other shifting clouds that surrounded Soros and Fa’su, the other engineers. ‘Can you track movements on that?’
Soros shook his head. ‘I should be able to but for some reason it doesn’t activate. I think there’s a lot of disruption here. A lot of things are broken and jumbled up. Even if I can tell what things do, I can’t make most of it operate. Lot of protection spells in place that would take a better mathematician than me to get rid of.’ He sighed and Tralane watched him pop a pill out of a packet and drink it down. ‘I gotta stay awake here,’ Soros said, guilty, and then sighed. ‘You know some of it, I think, is down to the shot you made. I’m not saying it’s your fault.’
Tralane’s stomach clenched and she thought she might be sick again. The shot had been much too wide, taking out not only the Karoo but also one wall, a section of ceiling and most of the floor. There was now a tiny walkway at one side of the hall for two metres, instead of ordinary floor, and beside it a drop into the dark rooms below. The walls and fittings were coated in blood and dust, the only remains. When she’d recovered from the surprise of that she’d altered the gun setting radically. Rather late. Now that she looked down she noticed her hands and the front of her were coated in fine grey and red films. She dropped the biscuit on the floor. She might well have destroyed a great deal of valuable research potential, there was no denying it. At the same time, not much of any ancient thing worked first time, even hundredth time.
‘I don’t think that’s likely,’ Carlyn said. ‘So much of this whole place is a mess.’
‘Are you getting much out of it?’ Tralane asked her, trying for water again.
‘Yes. I think that the people who made this were here less than ten thousand years ago. I found some bones and dated them. Later I can see if we can get any blood traces out of them. It’s actually a terrific find. We’ve had bone before but only fragments.’ She smiled and some of her old fire came back with the thoughts of returning to research. ‘If we get out of here I’ll have enough for a lifetime’s work.’
‘Don’t say that. We’re going soon. The city should be here any time.’
‘I think it is already here,’ Soros said. ‘I have a line in from the top. They are reporting fights, engine noise… It’s garbled. Wait. Tralane. They say your daughter’s there.’
‘Isabeau is here?’ Tralane moved eagerly towards Soros and the pane she was struggling to operate. Bits of image flickered in it within the moss-coloured mist it seemed to prefer displaying. Parts of them were undoubtedly the entrance room they had first opened up and parts of the people she knew very well by now. ‘Can I talk to her?’
‘I can’t get the sound to come,’ Soros said. ‘We’re just noting… Wait, not Isabeau. Minnabar.’
Tralane had to resist the impulse to push Soros out of the way. Instead, she stared at the pane and tried to see through the flickering bursts. Then Soros made a small surprised noise and the picture and the sound cleared. Tralane saw Minna standing there among the survivors of the doorside team, some kind of grey overalls on her. She looked terrible and strangely tiny without her hair. But she was alive. Tralane’s fierce joy couldn’t be contained. ‘Min! You’re here! How? Why?’
Minna’s face was painted with dirt and exhaustion but through it Tralane saw an edgy wariness that sounded every alarm bell in her body.
‘Minna?’
‘I’m okay, Mom. It’s a long story. Better left for later. I’m okay. Everything’s fine.’
Now Tralane was sure it was very far from fine but something in Minna’s face pushed her to be quiet about it – a thing which only turned her initial joy to dread quicker. She searched the rest of the image of the upper room and saw a face she didn’t know. Micklas was there though, and Tralane had learned to rely on her.
‘Mick, how are things?’
‘We’re all right. No sign of any more of those things. There was fighting outside though. Um, the agent who brought Minna back says that she thinks the crew outside didn’t make it.’ She paused and then carried on. ‘We have engine sound outside so we can confirm the city is here, at least close. We’re prepping for an exit within an hour or two. There’s some signals coming that we think are from Glimshard. Just need to refine a few frequencies and order a few spheres.’
Tralane looked at the strange face. That woman. The Glimshard agent. She returned Minna, but Minna stood apart from her, wan, shy, almost cringing in a way that Tralane had never seen before. She didn’t look a bit rescued.
Tralane was still looking at her, puzzled, when she realised the silence waited for her to reply. ‘Um, well, since you’re here now, Minna, I think I could really use your help down here for the last hour or two. There’s so much to do, so much to gather and some of it is definitely your special area. I can’t even figure out the first thing about it.’ She had begun to gabble, she realised, and shut up.
‘But what about the, um, the thing,’ Micklas said, swallowing nervously.
‘Well Tzaban should be back soon from…’ Tralane’s hopeful plan was cut short by a sudden huge commotion at the other end. She saw the room’s tableau break up suddenly and heard a cacophony that the poor transmission couldn’t make sound like anything other than crashing, banging and snarls. She gripped the projection console as she saw Minna shrink and back out of the picture, matched by others also fleeing the doorway. The noise was intense and terrible. She recognised Tzaban’s voice in it, at least his vocal sounds, as there weren’t any words. But what stood out to her as she shouted pointlessly at the glass, was the image of the strange agent, still standing in the middle of the room where she had always been. She alone of all the people there was peering around the doorframe with interest, her face alight with a kind of fascinated rapture Tralane had never seen before, lips parted, hands poised as if to snatch something incredible out of the air.
It was exactly at that moment she became sure that what she was looking at was not human. At th
e same moment she saw the reason why she had not understood the half of the spells in the room. She had assumed they were as written. But they had been corrupted and that was why things didn’t seem to fit as expected. They hadn’t generated impossibilities, the faults had passed the fitness test of syntax for spellcasting. They parsed out – they simply didn’t say anything that made sense to her. She turned to go back to them, but then turned to the pane again, equally unable to tear herself from that sight.
Then the agent moved. With decisive speed she darted to where Minna had gone and in a second she was back, dragging Minna with her by her collar and one arm behind her back. A knife was visible in the collar hand and, as she shoved Minna towards the pane, it moved to her throat. Minna gasped. Tralane stared.
‘What the…’ Soros began but the agent was already speaking.
‘Call off your male. Call it off! Or the girl dies.’
‘Mmom, Mom, she means Tzaban, Tzaban!’ Minna spluttered in a high, terrified voice.
Tralane froze for as long as it took to process what she saw and heard. She opened her mouth, shouted at the pane. ‘Stop it! Tzaban, come back, come back!’ Her own voice cracked at the top of the call which she hoped was good enough because she had nothing else. She leaned over, stared into the pane as though that way she’d reach the people in it. ‘Don’t hurt her! I don’t know what else to do! I don’t understand! Please. Don’t hurt her.’
The next few seconds passed like years. She looked for the other engineers, cowering, some of them reaching for tools but too frightened to move now, plastered back against whatever furniture was near them. The agent didn’t waver but her attention clearly moved back towards the door for a moment and then a creature walked through it which Tralane assumed was the unaccounted-for Karoo male.
It was much less human looking than Tzaban, lithe and sinewy like a giant cat with an elongated head, it was covered in scales that changed in the light so that it mimicked the background exactly as it moved across it, rendering it visible as if it were made of transparent liquid crystal. Its eyes were crystal too, save for black pitted centres, though its mouth was red inside and blood described the curve of its jaws and chin, the long teeth that it displayed in a strange deferential yawn as it approached the agent and cowered beside her.
Tralane glanced back at Minna who was staring at her through the pane as if the force of her stare could transmit information on its own. Behind the fear, her brain clicked pieces together. This woman must be Karoo or else used as Tralane had been. But why would she be here, and how? They had come from Glimshard, so she had been in position far in advance of this day whereas nothing that had happened to Tralane had felt orchestrated at all.
The knife blade was removed, though Tralane watched it go with the thought that maybe she had fallen for a bluff. If Minna, she and the others died, who was left to go through this and tell anyone what it was? There was a hard limit on how much you could eat without leaving yourself nothing at all. Unhappy thinking as it was to do she had to admit the ones who had been culled from the groups were the weakest of all, able to follow others’ leaps of thought and remember them, but people who rarely made original work of their own.
She made a kind of nod with a blink and a small move of her head to show Minna she was still there, still thinking. Minna looked wretched still and Tralane knew there was something important she was missing. But Minna was safe. The woman stood relaxed and let her go, pushing her towards the Karoo. Tralane tensed, but the creature did nothing except lie down, licking at its shoulder and foreleg where it was wounded. Minna held on to the belt at her waist and where it went over her shoulder. Her stare at the pane was miserable and furious. She mouthed a word that might have been ‘Mom’ but then Tralane thought it was ‘bomb’ and looked at the belt again. Again.
A strange reaction then: as it seemed all the blood drained out of her from head to foot leaving ice in its wake. She felt Carlyn come close beside her.
‘’Laney,’ she said, to show solidarity, and Tralane nodded to show she heard. Around her the others were waking from their stunned reaction.
Tralane looked into the pane. ‘I need her down here,’ she said. ‘She has the skills necessary to fix this stuff and read it. I don’t care which… who brings her. Just bring her.’
The nonhuman woman looked back at her for a long moment, her face idiotic in its blankness. Now there was no more Glimshard charade to keep up and she was revealed as a spy. Tralane didn’t know what her priorities were, but this seemed as good a way of finding out as any. She didn’t underestimate the value of being what she was now. ‘Without us you know nothing. If she doesn’t come here then this entire project will be a big waste of time.’
A lie, but what would they know to contradict it? Half the things they had discovered already they hadn’t had time to document or even speak to each other about.
A sound from outside came through the speakers and everyone in the room, except the Karoo, turned to look at the door automatically. Tralane guessed that Glimshard’s greater forces had arrived on the doorstep.
‘If she’s not here in ten minutes we’re out of here. We have to meet the incoming recovery team,’ she said and reached out, slicing the link spell and breaking the connection. The pane became grey mist.
‘Are you sure that was Glimshard?’ Carlyn said, a shred of hope in her voice for the first time in days.
Tralane pointed to a spiralling cartouche a few feet to her left, filled with tiny characters flickering so fast in their changes that they looked like fairy dust. ‘That’s them connecting threads with the loom, or trying to. Filaments are incoming. I’d bet they’re on the ground outside now.’
‘Or more of those things are trying to get in,’ Soros said glumly and shrugged when she looked at him, as if he was only saying what everyone was thinking. ‘Why did you shut off the link?’
‘So she had to make a decision,’ Tralane said. ‘If Minna isn’t here in ten minutes’ time then we leave everything here and go up to the surface by the safest route. I suggest we bypass the top team altogether.’
‘What about the Karoo?’ Soros insisted. ‘It will find us, even if she doesn’t. We’re better off waiting here for the guard to take charge up there and then come get us.’ He folded his arms and then used one hand to rub his eyes, hard.
Tralane saw his exhaustion telling, but they were all tired. It didn’t mean they were useless. ‘Either my daughter comes here to me or I will go get her. You do what you like.’
‘All this politics,’ Soros moaned, as if it was personally directed at him. ‘I am sick of it. Where is the Empire when you need it? One woman from Spire, is that what they send? One filthy Karoo, that’s what we get to defend us?’
Tralane let his misery pass her by. She turned as she heard the quiet step and drag of feet coming along the hall outside. Carlyn moved back and Tralane went forward to meet Tzaban as he came in, limping, his face full of baleful misgiving aimed at her as he arrived. He opened his mouth to speak but a red bolt spat out from his right shoulder and smothered the wall behind him. He looked surprised, gaze passing her, and then the words became a long groan stopped by a thud as his knees hit the floor and he collapsed into a slumped seated position, hand going to the entry point of the bolt.
Tralane turned and saw Carlyn standing, the gun in her outstretched hand, its muzzle falling slowly as she tried to lift it back up again and take aim. It seemed her arm wouldn’t let her. At her hip the empty holster felt light as Tralane automatically checked it. Her shock at the action was matched by the cut of the betrayal. She saw the hurt and confusion on her friend’s face, the fear and the sickly relief of having done something about it, at last.
‘You idiot,’ she said, moving to take the gun. She was shaking with rage and didn’t trust herself to say any more.
Carlyn gave it up without a protest, her mouth opening and shutting with a soft ‘pop pop’ sound. ‘He’s one of them,’ she said quietly.
&nb
sp; ‘He’s one of us too,’ Tralane said. She disabled the gun, restored it to her side, and looked at the rest of them, standing where surprise had left them. ‘Get me the medical kit and pray he’s not going to die or we really are screwed.’
Tzaban was cold and shaking. The shot had punched a hole right out of him but although it had left a huge bloody debris in its wake it had cauterized its path and the wound only seeped rather than bled. It was an addition to an already considerable list, however, and when she tried to examine him he snarled and told her to stay back, he was having trouble with the pain. She sat down where she was, arm’s reach away, and handed him a sachet of water which he tore open and drank before dropping it from his mouth.
His yellow eyes fixed on hers. ‘That woman up there is a Karoo queen. In here to get all you know for herself. Use it to rise over others, claim this as her own.’
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