Winterstrike

by Liz Williams

  ‘I don’t know. There’s some kind of alarm. Mother?’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing from the Matriarchy.’ Alleghetta said. We raced upstairs to look out of the attic windows. There was a dull glow just beyond the Opera House: a pallid, unnatural light.

  ‘What is it?’ Thea breathed.

  ‘Don’t ask me.’ There was no sign of fire or flame, just the glow. ‘Ire-palm?’ I speculated.

  Alleghetta was looking at the ’scribe. ‘There’s nothing here.’ She sounded irritated, as though the Matriarchy had elected not to inform her.

  Perhaps you’re not important enough to be told.

  ‘Perhaps they don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘How can they not know?’ Alleghetta snapped, and then I realized exactly where the glow was coming from.

  Alleghetta, those are the Matriarchy buildings. Look – there’s the roof of the Opera and you can see those trees behind it.’

  There was no colour in Alleghetta’s face to begin with, but her skin was the colour of wax. ‘It’s been hit,’ she breathed.

  ‘By what? I didn’t hear anything and we’re close enough, if it was a missile.’ But maybe it wasn’t. I didn’t understand this war, the nature of it. Invisible weapons and ancient technology.

  ‘I have to find out,’ my mother muttered and started punching furious messages into the antiscribe. I opened the window onto a great blast of cold and leaned out, trying to see across the city. There was another glow in the east and I felt even colder, then realized it was dawn.

  ‘I’m going up on the roof,’ I said, and was heading for the stairs before they had time to protest.

  The glow was still there and I’d been wrong: it wasn’t the Matriarchy. I was high enough now to be able to see beyond the Opera roof and I’d snatched up a pair of binoculars as I came up the stairs. The northern wing of the Opera was a melting mass of icy vitrification. It looked like a dripping cake.

  Slowly, I let the binoculars fall. They’d been aiming at the Matriarchy, obviously. I didn’t know whether its personnel had been in night session – it seemed likely, under the circumstances. In that case, given the proximity of the Opera, anyone around the vicinity of the building, outside the Matriarchy, might well be dead. I thought of Sulie Mar, Hestia’s mother and my own aunt.

  I shot back down the stairs, brushing through the pallid winter garden and hurtling headlong down the staircase. I found Alleghetta in the parlour, once more bending over the ’scribe. Someone had lit a fire in the grate and it burned blue and comforting, an illusion of winter normality.

  ‘Alleghetta,’ I said. ‘Half the Opera has gone. They were aiming at the Matriarchy.’

  ‘I know.’ A whisper. ‘I spoke to Sulie.’

  ‘She’s all right?’

  ‘She left before the session ended. Stormed out, apparently.

  Didn’t like what was being said, but that’s typical of Sulie, always taking offence.’

  Even under the circumstances, I smiled. Hestia’s mother and mine were mirror images: one of the reasons there was such a connection between us. Alleghetta detested Sulie; it had always been mutual. I was amazed they’d managed to bring themselves to speak to each other, even given what had just happened.

  ‘She’s lucky,’ I pointed out.

  ‘Well, of course she is.’ Alleghetta sounded as though Sulie had survived on purpose. ‘She was halfway down the street when there was a flash. She was thrown into a snowbank. When she got up and could see again, half the Opera House was gone.’

  ‘That weapon Mantis was talking about—’ The Opera had looked aged, a ruin. Could a weapon that opened a gap into the Eldritch Realm be used to kill buildings? An odd thought, but in this age of haunt-technology, where places were infested with ghosts . . . Could there be a weapon that slew spirits?

  ‘I should go down there—’ Alleghetta began.

  ‘Mother, don’t be stupid. You’ve no idea what’s happening out there. You might be killed. We need to stay indoors until we find out what the situation is.’

  Rather to my surprise, Alleghetta followed my suggestion and remained at Calmaretto. The strike seemed to have reached her where the transformation of her own daughter had not: her face, always taut, now looked old and she looked as though she had shrunk in upon herself. Once, this would not have alarmed me as much as it now did – a diminished Alleghetta would have been no bad thing. But now we were all in this together and the collapse of one seemed to betoken the collapse of all.

  When I went down to the kitchens, there was a suspicious silence. I checked the little rooms in the basement in which the servants slept and all of them were empty, with evidence of hastily seized garments. It looked as though the staff had taken my advice to heart, and fled, even the loyal cook. I couldn’t blame them. I made the tea myself and carried it back upstairs. No use telling Alleghetta right now – she was where I’d left her, sunk into a chair with a hand over her face. At some level, I thought, she was enjoying the drama.

  THIRTY-THREE

  Hestia — Earth

  First the arch of the Earth, dappled white and blue, then a silent fall through thick clouds. When we came out of them we were flying over ocean, long dreaming patches of azure, dotted and patterned with islands green with jungle up to the summits, very different to the silvery Thibetan shamandoms.

  The ship veered in low over the water, passing high-masted barques and solar-powered sailing vessels. I could see a bay ahead, rimmed with green. A great crimson-sailed ship was churning across it, the circles of laser cannon ports clearly visible.

  ‘A war-junk,’ the kappa said.

  ‘One of yours?’

  ‘Yes. Otherwise we’d be flying higher.’

  We were coming in directly above the junk now and I looked down to see the multicoloured dots of people thronging the decks. Beyond, low buildings covered the steep sides of the bay. I could almost smell it: the lushness of alien plants. Beside me, Evishu straightened, as if paying respect. The ship left the bay behind and came in over a ridge. A small port lay there, sparsely populated with landing craft. I didn’t know much, but these seemed old; their sides pockmarked and stained.

  Then we were down, almost before I knew it. The copter whined to a halt and the kappa stepped down through the hatch. ‘Follow me.’

  The road beyond was masked by trees, affairs like enormous ferns. A sticky strand brushed my face. Evishu took my arm and ushered me to a waiting vehicle. It was streamlined and spined and the crowds gave it a wide berth. I thought I’d got used to it, but different gravity made me stumble in the dust, despite Evishu’s anchoring arm. Blood rose hot in my face.

  ‘What about the – the you-know?’

  ‘Someone is dealing with it.’

  I looked back and saw that a high van with blank sides had pulled up beside the copter. Something was being loaded into it on a gurney

  I ducked into the waiting car and the door slid shut behind me, trapping me in cool air and an abrupt end to the stink of the street. Malay was rank, sweat and spice and shit and a pungent odour of decay. Many of the people I saw held handkerchiefs over their faces, or wore masks in fanciful animal shapes. The heat had made me dizzy. I leaned back on soft leather and closed my eyes for a moment. When I opened them again, I found that we were already moving: the car’s motion an undetectable glide despite the roughness of the road surface. We were moving along a broad avenue, running parallel with a canal and sharing the road with every manner of vehicle: small smoky cars, rikshaws, motorized bicycles and the occasional air-car gliding down amongst the road traffic before veering upwards once more. Compared with Mars, everything seemed compressed into too small a space. Paradoxically, I felt that if I had been outside, I would have suffered from a bad case of claustrophobia.

  ‘Where’s the Queen’s palace?’ I asked the kappa.

  ‘In the city, not far. But we’ll be going to her summer residence, high in the hills where it’s cooler.’

  That sounded better. I miss
ed the cold. The avenue opened out onto a broad sweep of bay and I realized that we were already in sight of the war-junk. The sun was sinking, red in a roseate sky. I saw more kappa, squat toad-shapes holding their mistresses’ parcels, and one over-tall flat-faced thing with mottled skin. The car passed a magnificent colonnaded building, stucco peeling from its façade. Behind it, and the jewel-fringe along the bay, lay a maze of back alleys. We drove past poverty similar to that of the outlying provinces of Mars; leprous children, shrivelled ancients, all watching the car go by without expression.

  I said, ‘This can’t last. Can it?’

  ‘It’s lasted since the war,’ Evishu said.

  ‘Which war was that?’

  A shrug. ‘A gene war. Fought in the hills, over land. What else is there to fight for, these days?’

  We have too much land,’ I said, but I thought of Mardian Hill, the excuse for the conflict with Caud.

  ‘If you won’t let us settle, what else can we do?’ Evishu replied, unresentfully as far as I could tell. I thought of the dry basins of Mars, the empty plains. Did I really want them filled with the children of Earth? But we were all children of Earth, once upon a time. I was guiltily glad when the car pulled away on a wide white road out of town, leaving the slums behind. Now, the view was of tranquil rice paddies, a maze of irrigation ditches turned bloody by the fading sun. We started to climb, leaving the fields behind us and reaching the edges of the jungle.

  ‘Not far now,’ the kappa said, in quite a kindly tone, as though I was a child. Great hanging ropes of vines now fell across the roadway and the car slowed to shift itself over tall grass growing down the centre of the track. The ditches were thick with fallen leaves and undergrowth.

  ‘How often do people come this way?’ I asked.

  ‘More often than you might think. The Queen doesn’t encourage visitors. You’re very honoured.’ She spoke as though she meant it. I forbore from pointing out that the Queen, having been abducted, now had little enough say in the matter.

  The road narrowed until we drove through a tunnel of green, the vegetation rustling along the sides of the car. Above, something gave a sudden shriek, making me jump in my seat. It could have been a bird, but it didn’t sound like one. Evishu leaned forward and said something to the driver that I did not catch. Then we were out into a clearing, and a building glimmered ahead.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Essegui — Winterstrike

  Of all that nightmare time, I sometimes think now that the strangest and most dreamlike night of all was the night of the Matriarchy ball itself. I could scarcely believe that not more than a month before, I’d gone with Thea to a dress store on one of the smarter canals, a place the family had used for decades, and bought a gown. Standing in the bedroom at Calmaretto, with the city in its ominous curfew silence, under threat of invasion and filled with ghosts, I looked at myself in the mirror. The gown – dark red, high-necked, long-sleeved – made me look like a column of blood. I longed to take the armour of my greatcoat, but the thing was too battered for formal wear, so I settled for packing my skating boots into a bag, just in case, and selected a velvet coat from the wardrobe instead, with a growing sense of unreality: we were at war, my sister had turned into a monster, and here was I worrying about my clothes. I took a last look at my swathed reflection and then, carrying the skates, went downstairs to where my mothers and Canteley were waiting in the hall. It reminded me painfully of the night of Ombre itself: I almost turned to see if Leretui was following.

  ‘The sledge is waiting,’ Alleghetta informed me, resplendent in gold brocade that made her look like a pair of curtains. Thea, in bright blue, was similarly conspicuous.

  ‘You both look lovely,’ I said, insincerely. Canteley in black and white, seized me by the hand. ‘So do you!’ Her eyes were brimming with excitement and I vowed to have a quiet word with Alleghetta as soon as possible, regarding the advisability of taking a child into a target zone. But looking at my little sister, I saw that she couldn’t really be described as a child any longer, and was Calmaretto any safer? Maybe Canteley would be better off under my nose.

  When we stepped out onto the garden path it was quiet and dark and cold. Winterstrike under curfew made me realize how well lit the city usually was, with lamplight gleaming from the gilt cornices, from the domes and weir-ward vanes. Now, it had become as much of a spectral city as the Noumenon, a realm of shadows. The only glitter came from the blacklight lamp on the prow of the sledge as it waited at the dock. Alleghetta went first, stepping over the side of the sledge and wrapping herself in furs. Her expression made it look as though she’d locked her face: determined that this night should still, despite it all, constitute her triumph. What must it be like, I wondered as I joined her in the sledge, to clutch and cling so tightly to a dream? My gaze went out to where I’d seen the demothea dancing, and I made myself glare straight ahead instead.

  The sledge set off. The bare branches of the weedwood flickered by and then we were speeding down Canal-the-Less. We shot past the bridge where Leretui had met her disgrace and then the sledge made a quick turn into the Long Reach, the only really straight stretch of water in Winterstrike, which bisected the city across its widest points. Halfway down the Long Reach sat the island of Midis, where the canal split into two semicircles and then joined up again. The Matriarchy hall stood on Midis, separate from the Matriarchy itself and dating from a later and more frivolous period. Looking down the stretch of the Reach, the ghostly gold domes of the hall rose up from the ice, catching the faint trace of moonlight and spinning it back from its reflections. It looked as unreal as I felt. I watched as we shot down the canal towards it, Thea chattering nervously away until I thought Alleghetta might turn and slap her. Only Canteley, swaddled in her white and black furs, was genuinely looking forward to this: she was young enough to find it all exciting.

  ‘What was that?’ Alleghetta turned sharply in her seat as something dropped down into the canal – something solid, from the hole it left in the ice. But then the hole closed over, as swiftly as it had been made. I looked for writhing limbs under the ice but the sledge was speeding on and the ice was silent and dead.

  Subconsciously, I think I’d been expecting us to be the only people stupid enough to venture out to a ball when the city was under such threat. I’d expected, at any moment, the sky to erupt around me, everything ending in a firework night, but when I looked up, all I could see were the stars, the reach of the Milky Way snaking overhead and the spangle of constellations over the city, interrupted by the bright sparks of the Chain. Usually, Winterstrike was too brightly lit for the stars to be seen; this was like being out on the Crater Plain, where the burn of them had reminded me of what Mars had once been like, before its atmosphere had been released.

  As we came around the curve of Midis, the water-steps leading up to the hall were thronged with crowds and the canal beneath was a mass of sledges. It looked as though the whole Matriarchy had turned out for this. I glanced at Alleghetta and in the dim blacklight glow I thought her face was flushed, triumphant. They’d come in defiance of war, out of an innate and perverse conservativism that suggested one should not flinch merely because of conflict, but I didn’t think Alleghetta would care. Half of Winterstrike was here and that was all she was interested in.

  The sledge was slowing. We waited, impatient and chilly, while the ushers engineered a parking place and we were guided out onto the steps, helped by staff in the Matriarchy colours. Thea took my arm as we moved out onto the terrace, and as she turned to me I caught a whiff of alcohol on her breath.

  ‘Are you all right?’ I hissed as I steadied her.

  ‘Perfectly!’ She stumbled. ‘Whoops! Very icy!’

  Oh dear, I thought. Meanwhile, Alleghetta was staring around with a sort of relentless, sweeping motion of the head, like a gun turret seeing who might have been coming into its sights. Canteley was hurrying ahead, presumably eager to see if any of her peers or scribe-mates were present.

&
nbsp; ‘Good evening.’ I turned to see Gennera Khine. She’d made some attempt to disguise her illicit profession: the bone necklace had been replaced by an iron lattice and iron drops hung from her ears, against a black formal bonnet of disquieting complexity.

  ‘Why, it’s you, Mistress Khine,’ I said. Alleghetta greeted her with a murmur that I did not catch and then we were all going in together, one big happy party. At least it was a relief getting out of the cold: torches lined the steps and we were struck by a blast of warmth. Under my slippers, the ground was already dry and I could feel the underfloor heating seeping up through the soles. Inside, the hall was a hothouse, with great bunches of engineered orchids cascading over the window-frames and light beating down from immense chandeliers. It was so hot I took the velvet coat off and found myself still too warm. There were a lot of women in dresses that were no more than straps and scraps; out on the terrace, I’d have said they were mad, but in here, I envied them.

  Canteley plucked at my sleeve. ‘Essegui, there are cocktails! Can I have one?’

  Ask your mothers.’

  ‘I can’t find either of them. Can I?’

  ‘Oh, go on then,’ I said. Looking around I saw that she was right: there was no sign of Alleghetta or Thea. They’d disappeared in a remarkably brief time and that made me nervous. I couldn’t see the majike either, but when I dispatched Canteley in the direction of the cocktails and headed for the hallway, I glimpsed Gennera marching down the corridor, threading through the crowds with eel-like skill. I seized her arm.

  ‘Where’s Alleghetta?’

  ‘I’d like to know that myself the majike said sourly. ‘I need to speak to her. Never mind. You’ll do.’

  ‘What’s happened?’ I asked, as foreboding filled me.

  ‘I sent out a team to try to intercept your sister. She was seen by the Northern Gate; by the time they got there, she was gone.’