by Mary Gentle
“Follow!”
At the Faris’s word the two golems fell in behind her, their stone tread making the wooden floor creak. A flickering light danced on the tapestried walls.
Ash stared at the backs of the golems. I was so damn close. So damn close to the Stone Golem itself, the machina rei militaris…
She called ahead, “You want to speak to me privately, Faris.”
“Yes. I do.” The Visigoth general walked without hesitation into an arch hung with silk curtains, and hands pulled the material back for her to pass. Ash, as she followed, glanced to one side and saw fair-haired slaves in woollen tunics, House slaves, sent up from the African coast; even one or two men she knew by sight from House Leofric. But not – a swift searching glance – the man Leovigild, or the child Violante.
Leovigild, who tried to talk to me in my cell; Violante, who brought me blankets.
Of course they might be dead.
“Isn’t it nice when you get important enough that people don’t kill you out of hand?” Ash said sardonically, walking into the low, lantern-lit chamber, and throwing herself down on to a stool in front of the nearest brazier. She didn’t look at Alderic or the Faris for a moment, putting back her hood, stripping off gauntlets and sallet, and stretching her hands out to the heat. When she did, it was with a look of complete confidence. “Not won Dijon yet, then?”
It was the ’arif who rumbled, “Not yet.”
She had one dizzy moment, literally light-headed, looking at the ’arif commander Alderic and seeing how he watched herself and the Faris. Identical sisters. One, you’ve followed around Iberia, and trusted your life to in combat. And the other – you cut the throat of, when she was fourteen weeks old.
Ash’s hand moved. She put it down again, not wanting to reach up to the unseen scar on her neck. She settled for grinning at Alderic, and watching him wince at her scarred face. There was still sympathy in his expression, but not to excess. Professional, military … evidently he felt his semi-responsibility discharged with his own confession to her in Carthage.
“Dijon is not yet won by assault.” The Faris wrapped her arms around her body, lifting her robe as she turned. The light on her perfect face showed her tired, but not drawn; campaigning hard, but not starving.
“Assaults don’t end sieges. Hunger, disease and treachery end sieges.” Ash lifted a brow, at Alderic. “I want to talk to your boss, ’Arif.”
The Faris said something quietly to him. Alderic nodded. As the big man left, the Faris signalled to the slaves, and remained standing while food and drink was brought in by men wiping suddenly-broken sleep out of their faces.
The long chamber contained trestle tables, chests, a box-bed; all of it European and probably looted. Among these Frankish items, the war-gear of the Visigoth general, and the red clay and white marble of the golems, seemed jarring.
“Why interrupt my sleep?” the Visigoth woman said, suddenly quizzical. “You could have waited until morning to be a traitor.”
Both of them? Ash thought, nothing registering on her face. Without my saying anything – they’re both assuming I’ve been in Dijon all this time?
Of course – because the Faris will have seen men in my livery on the walls!
And since I haven’t talked to the machina rei militaris, it can’t have told her where I’ve really been.
She thinks I’m here to give her the city.
Let her think that. I’ve got about thirty minutes. I only have to keep them guessing for that long. Stay alive for that long.
And meantime do what I came for.
The Faris stared for a moment. She walked back to the chamber door, past her mail hauberk hanging on a body-form, and gave quiet orders to the slaves. The men left the room. Turning, she said, “The golems will tear you apart if you attack me. I need no guards.”
“I’m not here to kill you.”
“I will doubt that, for my own survival.” The Visigoth woman walked closer, seating herself in a carved chair further off from the brazier. It was as she sat, her body dropping limply down on to the silken cushions, that Ash realised how weary she was. Long silver lashes drooped over her eyes for a moment.
Still with her eyes closed, and as if completing long thoughts, the Faris said, “But you wouldn’t be here, after I’ve taken the city, would you? You’re too afraid of being taken to Carthage again. You haunt me,” the woman added unexpectedly.
“Dijon,” Ash said neutrally.
“You will have your price for opening a gate.” The Faris put her hands in her lap. The fur gown slid back, exposing her leg to the charcoal brazier’s heat. Red light gleamed on her fine, pale skin. A self-possessed woman, little different from the woman Ash had seen at Basle.
Looking at the Faris’s hands in her lap, Ash saw that the flesh at the sides of her perfect nails was nipped, bitten; fragments of skin stripped out and the meat showing red beneath.
“The safety of my company is paramount,” Ash said. As if it were a normal negotiation – and might it be? – she added, “We march out with full honours of war. All our kit. Give an undertaking not to contract to the Empire’s enemies in Christendom.”
As if she did not want to look, but could not stop herself, the Faris met Ash’s gaze. With a quiet fretfulness, she said, “Our lord Gelimer presses me hard. Messengers, pigeons, as well as the machina rei militaris. ‘Press the siege, press hard’ – but other commanders could hold the siege, my place is with my field armies! Give me the city and I am in a mood to make it worth your while.”
So Gelimer did make it out of the palace alive. Damn. That’s one rumour down.
Ash briefly considered asking Is my husband Fernando alive? and dismissed both the thought and the odd stab of grief that came with it.
And are they still fighting up in Flanders?
“My money was on Gelimer thinking: the campaign’s going to have to stop for the winter, the crusade’s succeeded so far, it can all wait till spring. Meanwhile Gelimer makes himself a secure elected monarch.” Ash rubbed her cold hands together. “If the real action’s in Flanders, Gelimer won’t send you orders. You’re Leofric’s toy; Gelimer doesn’t want him looking good at the moment.”
She spared a glance to see how the Faris was taking her familiarity with Carthaginian politics.
“You’re wrong. Nothing matters to our King-Caliph but the death of the Duke and the fall of Burgundy.” As if they were sisters, the Visigoth woman said, “Father is ill; he took injuries in the earth tremor. Cousin Sisnandus commands the House. I speak with Sisnandus, through the Stone Golem – he assures me Father will be well, soon.”
At the mention of the machina rei militaris, Ash felt the nape of her neck turn cold. “You can still speak to it? To the Stone Golem?”
The Faris’s gaze slid away. “Why should I not?”
Something in her tone made Ash freeze, hardly breathing, trying to pick up every nuance.
“I tell the Stone Golem what the tactical situation is, and Sisnandus and the King tell me to continue here. I would sooner hear it from Father…” She sighed, rubbing at her eyes. “He must recover, soon. It takes two weeks, a month, to go back in person: I cannot leave here.”
Her eyes opened: her dark gaze met Ash’s. Ash thought, There is something different about you, but could not work out what it might be.
“You’ve heard the other voices,” Ash said. Not knowing, until she heard herself say it, that it must be true. “You’ve heard the Wild Machines!”
“Nonsense!”
The Faris looked for a moment as if she might jump to her feet. Her robe fell back further, disclosing that the woman was wearing her shift, with a belt and dagger fastened over it any-old-how; the signs of a sudden waking alarm. Her hand moved down to caress the curved knife’s hilt.
The Faris glanced over towards the nearest golem. Lamplight shone on its red stone limbs, its eyeless face. “‘Wild Machines’…?”
“They told me Friar Bacon called them that.”
“They told you…” The woman stumbled over her words. Her voice strengthened. “I – yes – I heard what the machina rei militaris reported, on the night of your attack on Carthage. The tremor disturbed it, obviously: it told me nothing but some myth or legend that someone once read into it. Garbled nonsense!”
Ash felt the palms of her hands become cold, wet, with sweat. “You heard it. You heard them!”
“I heard the Stone Golem!”
“You heard something speaking through the Stone Golem,” Ash said, leaning forward intensely. “I made them tell me – they weren’t expecting it – I can’t do it again. But you heard them say what they were: ferae natura machinae. And you heard them say what they want—”
“Fiction! Nothing but fiction!” The Faris shifted around in the chair, so that she no longer looked at Ash. “Sisnandus assures me it is a made-up story some slave must have read into the Stone Golem at some point – probably some slave with a grudge. He has executed many slaves in retribution. A temporary glitch, nothing more.”
Oh lord. Ash stared at the Carthaginian woman. And I thought I was avoiding thinking about this…
“You can’t believe that,” she said gently. “Faris. Where there was one voice, I heard many. You heard them too. Didn’t you?”
“I didn’t listen. They told me nothing! I won’t hear.”
“Faris—”
“There are no other machines!”
“There’s more than the voice of the Stone Golem—”
“I will not listen!”
“What have you asked them?”
“Nothing.”
To an outsider – and Ash suddenly conceives of that hypothetical outsider, perhaps because she wonders if slaves or guards are listening at doors – this would seem uncanny: two women with the same face, talking to each other with the same voice. She has to touch her scars to reassure herself, seek out the fading tan that masks the Visigoth woman’s eyes, to know that they are not the same person, that she is not in the same place as the dead baby and the boar wood.
“I don’t believe you haven’t spoken to them,” Ash said flatly. “What, not even to find out what they are?”
The woman’s cheeks flushed slightly.
“There is no them. What do you want with me, jund?”
Ash leaned forward to the brazier. “I’m your bastard sister.”
“And that means?”
“I don’t know what it means.” Ash smiled, quickly and ruefully. “On the most pragmatic level, it means I hear what you hear. I’ve heard the Wild Machines telling me what they are. And I’ve heard them say why they’ve manipulated House Leofric for the past two hundred years, trying to breed you—”
“No!”
“Oh yes.” Ash’s smile glinted. “You’re Gundobad’s child.”
“I have heard none of this!”
“Your – our father, Leofric; he’s been used. Is being used.” Ash stood up. She gave a sudden, wary glance at the golems. They remained still. “Faris, in the name of Christ! You’re the one, you’ve been hearing the Stone Golem since you were born, you’ve got to tell me what you’ve been hearing from the Wild Machines!”
“Nothing.” The woman also rose. She stood barefoot on the furs thrown down on the rough-hewed oak boards, her eyes on a level with Ash’s. Her head tilted a little to one side, studying. “This is some fantasy of a discontented slave. How can it be anything else?”
“This isn’t your war. It isn’t Leofric’s war. It isn’t even the fucking King-Caliph’s war.” Ash turned her back, stalking up and down the chamber, in and out of lamplight and brazier light. “It’s the Wild Machines’ war. Why? Why, Faris? Why?”
“I don’t know!”
“Then bloody ask!” Ash roared. “You might get an answer!”
The nearest golem shifted on its stone feet. Ash froze, waiting until it returned to complete immobility; as she might have done for a large, fierce, not very intelligent dog.
The woman said, “I … heard voices. Once! And— It is some error. Leofric will correct it, as soon as he is well!”
“You know what they are – I bet you’ve even seen them, in the desert – Alderic called it ‘God’s blessing’—”
“Be quiet.” The Visigoth general spoke with a sudden, immense authority. A little helplessly, Ash stopped pacing. She felt herself to be in the presence of a woman who had fought a dozen Iberian campaigns before she ever set foot in Christendom. Unarmoured, without weapons; the woman was nonetheless a warrior. The only crack in her composure came with her shifting, inadequate gaze.
“Look at it from my point of view, jund,” the Faris said quietly. Her voice shook. “I have three armies in the field. That’s my priority. That gives me enough work, twenty-four hours of the day. I do not need to bother with some rumour. Where would these other machinae be? How would we not know of them, and the amirs who must have built them?”
“But you know it’s no rumour: you heard—” Ash broke off.
She isn’t listening to me. She knows what she heard. But she won’t admit it – even to herself.
Do I tell her what I know?
A gleam in the corner of the chamber resolved itself into another body-form, covered by a white harness. Seeking a diversion of the Faris’s attention, Ash moved closer to it. She reached up and touched the breastplate, slid her fingers down over the fauld to the left lower lame, and the newly riveted strap on the tasset of the completely familiar Milanese armour.
“Bloody hell. Been carting this around with you, then? All the way from Basle? But then, I suppose it fits you, too!”
Ash ran her fingers back up her own armour, where it hung on the body-form, giving the strap that buckled placket to breastplate a solid tug. “Buckles could do with a polish. All these bloody slaves, you’d think you could manage that.”
“Sit down, mercenary.”
With that reminder of enmity, Ash remembered the matter of time, saw no clock in the chamber, could see no moon through the tapestried doorway. I won’t know, she realised. When all hell breaks loose, I won’t know whether it’s John Price putting his attack in, or the rest of the company being caught on their way in through the sally-port.
“You know this isn’t about armies,” Ash said, turning to face the Visigoth woman. “If it was, you’d be fighting the Turk, not Burgundy. Whatever they are, whatever they want, these Wild Machines: they’re getting stronger. You must know that they make the darkness, not some damn Rabbi’s curse. And now it’s spreading—”
The Faris shook her head, loose hair shimmering. “I don’t listen!”
“Do they call you ‘Gundobad’s child’?”
Dark eyes, under silver brows, watched her with a flat lack of affect. The Faris said mechanically, “Nothing speaks to me except the tactical machine. Anything else is history, legends that someone once read into the Golem. Nothing else speaks to me.”
She isn’t seeing me, Ash thought. She isn’t even talking to me.
Is this what she said to Leofric? The day that it happened?
The realisation was sudden, but absolute; Ash imagined both the woman’s first tentative questions to her adoptive father, and the lord-amir’s instant, panicky replies. And now her denial.
But how long has Leofric been ill? Ever since the quake, two months ago? Christus! Was he injured in the earth-tremor, or is it something else—?
And who’s this ‘cousin Sisnandus’? How much does he know? About the Wild Machines, about any of this… How ill is Leofric?
“So what’s ‘Father’ said to all this?” Ash demanded, sardonically.
The woman looked up. “I shall hardly bother him with such nonsense, until he recovers his full health.”
Aware of being on dangerous ground, Ash only watched the woman now, saying nothing.
Have the Wild Machines already spoken through the machina and made House Leofric set a guard on it? Can I ask her that?
No. I’m not getting through to this woman
. Whatever I’d ask her – she doesn’t want to know. She’s shut down for the duration.
And I don’t know what she’ll repeat through the Stone Golem.
The Faris leaned back in her chair. The orange light from the oil lamps limned her brow, cheek, chin, shoulder. She passed a hand over her face. Some of the weariness went, and with it, strangely, some of her authority. She looked up at Ash, her expression acutely indecisive.
“Is your confessor with you?” the Faris said, suddenly, into the silence.
Ash gave a startled laugh. “My confessor? You’re going to have me executed? Isn’t that a bit extreme?”
“Your priest, the man Gottfried, Geoffroi—”
“Godfrey?” Stunned, Ash said, “Godfrey Maximillian’s dead. He died trying to get out of Carthage.”
The Faris put her arms on the back of her chair, resting her weight on it. Ash watched her look up at the plank-and-earthen roof, as if the answers were somewhere in the dirt; and look down again, meeting Ash’s gaze.
“I … have questions I would have asked a Frankish priest.”
“You’ll have to try someone else. They don’t come much deader than Godfrey when I saw him last,” Ash said coarsely.
“You’re certain?”
A chill that was nothing to do with winter twisted in her gut. “What’s one priest, to you? When did Godfrey Maximillian ever meet you?”
The Faris looked away. “We never met. I had heard his name at Basle, as a priest of your company.”
Spurred, impulsive, Ash blurted, “Would you know his voice?”
The colour of the woman’s face altered, subtly; she looked now as if she were unwell.
“You are the only other one,” the Faris said suddenly. “You hear. You and I, both. How else am I to know I am not sunstruck-crazy?”
“…Because we hear the same thing?” Ash said.
It was no more than a whisper: “Yes.”
Armour, golems, the Visigoth camp outside: all forgotten. Nothing else exists but the realisation: She isn’t talking about the Wild Machines now.