Watcher's Web

by Patty Jansen

  “This is the meadow just outside our great capital city of Miran, which bears the same name as the nation. See the clear mountain air? The view over the highlands? Smell the flowers and the freshness of molten snow. That, Lady, is life.”

  In the oppressive heat, humidity and the overpowering smell of tropical flowers, it sounded wonderful.

  The dressmaker tapped the picture. “Which one? We have a lot of work to do.”

  Jessica tore her gaze from the scenery. Wide flowing skirts, narrow waists, tight bodices, not unlike Victorian ladies’ fashion. What was Mirani for I hate dresses?

  She flicked through the pictures and eventually picked a simple design with a straight body piece and straight sleeves. Once again, Iztho seemed appreciative of her choice, but the dressmaker’s face bore traces of disappointment. He took the pictures from Jessica’s hand, put his fingers in his mouth and whistled hard.

  A Pengali female shuffled from the darkness at the back of the shop, clad in a turquoise servant dress. She carried a basket, and several lengths of white tape around her neck. Her huge eyes met Jessica’s. Dark lips moved in a soundless whisper. “Anmi.”

  Jessica cringed. Not that again. She didn’t want to disturb this man’s staff and attract more attention to herself than necessary.

  The servant took Jessica’s arm and guided her towards a curtained door. On the other side was a covered patio, a well-lit, large, half-open room where bundles and rolls of colourful material stood stacked against walls. Half a dozen Pengali, also dressed in turquoise, sat on pillows, each of them surrounded by a circle of fabric pieces in one particular colour. Gazes went to the door, but hands continued to work. Pushing glittering needles, cutting patterns with tiny glass shears.

  The female servant sat Jessica down on a stool—the only piece of furniture in the room. She took the tape from around her neck and measured Jessica’s shoulders, arms and waist, then motioned for her to stand up and measured shoulder height, for which she had to climb on the stool. In between all this, performed without uttering a single word, she scribbled markings on her measuring tape, while her boss looked on. Under his glare, the servant then took the blue fabric, spread it out over the floor, and, using the markings on the tape, drew shapes on it with a piece of chalk-like material. Finally, she ran the shears along the lines, lifting loose pieces out of the fabric, forming a pile of shimmering silk.

  With a final glance and a loud sniff, the dressmaker turned and went back into the shop.

  As if someone had pushed a button, shears clattered on the floor and needlework crumpled in heaps as all assistants abandoned their work, and crowded around Jessica. Rough-skinned hands touched her left arm and pushed up the material of the borrowed long-sleeved dress, ran up the skin to the tattoo on her arm, which had faded back to its usual red spots. Speaking in whispers, they repeated over and over “Anmi.”

  Jessica tried to push them aside, sick with the thought of the previous night. She said in Mirani, “Stop. I don’t want trouble.”

  The servants retreated. Six pairs of huge brown eyes stared up at her. One female, possibly the youngest of them all, stepped forward, speaking in faltering, heavily accented Mirani. “You . . . Ikay.”

  “Yes, I know Ikay.”

  The female waved her finger in the way Jessica had come to understand meant “no”. The young female thought, bit her lip, thought some more, her eyes at the ceiling, where racks held yet more rolls of fabric. “Ikay . . . tell . . . us . . .” She made a vague gesture. “You . . . here . . .”

  Jessica frowned. Ikay had told them she had come here? “Why?”

  The young female continued, “Ikay . . . says . . . meet.”

  “Ikay wants to meet me?” The last time hadn’t ended so happily.

  The servant moved her hand down in a sharp gesture that meant “yes” and that Pengali at the settlement had made with their tails.

  A relieved smile spread over the young female’s face.

  “Ikay knows where are . . . old people?” Damn, her Mirani wasn’t much better than the girl’s.

  Huge eyes widened. “You . . . old people. You Akkar.”

  “I am? What is Akkar? Where from? Tell me.”

  “Akkar fell from sky.” Her voice was little more than a whisper.

  “Where from? Where did they come from? Where are they now?”

  The young female shrank against the wall, fear in her eyes. She whispered, “Ikay.”

  “Does Ikay know?” This was so frustrating.

  But at that moment, voices sounded in the shop, and all servants scurried back to their pillows, picking up their work just in time before the curtain moved.

  Another Pengali servant came in, accompanied by a young keihu woman, who looked like she’d spent the night in the rain. Rat-tails of dark hair hung loose over her back. Dark eyes burned in a face paler than those of other keihu people, as if she rarely saw sunlight. Her broad lips muttered inaudible words. A khaki tunic hung off her bony shoulders like a poorly erected tent. She wore no jewellery; her lower arms bore angry red marks of recently healed wounds.

  No matter how much Jessica wanted to look away, she couldn’t.

  The dressmaker’s assistant held up an exquisite pink dress before the woman. Other assistants smiled and talked, presumably about how good the dress looked, but the girl just stared, hollow eyes directed at the back wall.

  “Anmi.” The dressmaker’s youngest assistant held out the keihu girl’s hand, motioning for Jessica to touch it.

  As soon as Jessica’s fingers made contact with the scar-crossed palm, a wave of heat shot into her hand. She gasped. Yellow sparks swirled under her skin. Holy shit.

  The young female whispered, “Avya.”

  Yes, Jessica had gathered as much, but . . . a keihu girl? “Are many like her?”

  “Many. Many, many. Pengali in city, keihu children locked up by parents. Say is mad. We do not know what to do.”

  Children locked up in rooms for being abnormal, children who might one day, when forced, or abused . . . She saw the limp form of Stephen Fitzgerald’s body in the sand of the riverbank. That was a dark place in her past where she didn’t want to go. She’d been thirteen. He had been fifteen, drunk and challenged by a friend to make advances. He’d grabbed her, and tried to drag her into the dry river bed. Parts of her memory had never come back, but she knew there’d been a flash, and that Stephen had fallen into the dirt. A bright spot of light hovered over his limp form before winking out. He had failed to get up. Drug overdose, the police had said. Stephen’s parents refused to believe it. Jessica didn’t believe it either.

  It was self-defence—he’d been drunk. He’d tried to rape her.

  That was before she could make the web, before . . .

  It was no excuse. No bloody excuse. Her only luck was that she had supportive parents.

  These girls didn’t.

  “But Ikay . . .” Surely Ikay knew what to do.

  “Ikay can help only strongest. Ones who have avya spilling out.”

  Like her. “What happens to the other ones?”

  “Usually die. See?” She held up the girl’s arm, showing the large red marks on the inside of the wrist. “She cut. Kill themselves. No one can stopping them. Not Ikay even . . . She is losing many children of herself.”

  Jessica pushed away a shiver of discomfort. The pain and burning inside her seemed like years back, but her crazy run towards the central pillar of the solar station had not been long ago. That action might easily have killed her. She, too, had been on the path to self-destruction. She took the girl’s hands, fine-boned and cold in hers. “Can you hear me?”

  Nothing.

  Jessica turned to the servant. “Does she speak Mirani?”

  “Yes. Very well. She helps father and father’s brother in business. Speaks Mirani, and Coldi and Damarcian, and . . .” The servant counted off on her fingers.

  An intelligent girl with a natural talent for languages, just like herself. But she ha
d never gone into unresponsive moods like this. If anything, her fits had been just the opposite.

  Damn it—what could she do?

  The answer was as simple as it was scary: use her body to draw off the built-up energy. Ikay had done it, when they had first met at the tribe.

  She closed her eyes and focused her own strength. Then she opened her eyes again and met the girl’s brown gaze. It was empty, as if all life had withdrawn. Yet somewhere deep within Jessica sensed a knot of heat, so tightly bound it resisted Jessica’s probe. She needed more energy, and that had always come to her on hot and sunny weather, because she absorbed energy from the environment.

  She broke eye contact and turned to the servants. “Bring me something very hot.”

  One of the females left the workshop and the others continued to work without speaking. The girl rocked gently to and fro, still muttering her inaudible words.

  Within a minute, the servant returned carrying a bowl of steaming water. Sheesh—those volcanic springs were handy—hot water on demand. The servant placed the bowl on the floor in front of Jessica. Sulphuric air rose from it in wisps of steam.

  She stuck out her hands, rubbing them nervously as steam enveloped them. She placed one hand flat on the surface of the water. For a split-second, she wanted to scream. Heat seared her skin and pain flared up her arm, but pain turned into warmth and warmth produced tiny flecks of light which moved up her arm like twinkling stars in the night sky. Her body drank in the energy. Greedy for more, she plunged her other hand in the water. Then she went back to the girl’s unfocused gaze. She found the knot of power and tugged at it with a flush of energy.

  The girl’s mind-voice spoke. Go away.

  Jessica replied. I’m here to help you.

  I don’t want to live like this any more. Images of a dark room with a high window passed through Jessica’s mind. A broken chair lay in one corner. Bed sheets had been torn to shreds. Stains of red marked the walls.

  Your family will miss you. Jessica forced herself to think of her mother years ago, giving her cups of warm milk when Jessica emerged, raged out and tired from her temper tantrums, from the old shed. Tears threatened in the corners of her eyes.

  A flicker of surprise went through the girl’s mind. My family says I’m mad.

  I can help you control this. Jessica thought of how she had learned to make the light with the help of Ikay.

  The knot loosened. Who are you?

  They call me Anmi. Let me help you.

  I’ve had enough.

  No, come. Jessica gritted her teeth and wrenched the knot of heat apart. A wave of sparks swirled before her eyes, bringing a blast of power that flowed from the girl’s body. She gasped, concentrated on a spot in the air and directed as much of the spare heat into it as she could. The spot glowed, and grew, and grew, out of control. Jessica tried to clamp down on the energy flowing from her, but it was as if another mind, a third power, had taken possession of it. The girl’s face vanished to be replaced by the face of a man.

  Daya. And for once, she wasn’t inside his head, but experienced him as if she was next to him, and for the first time, she could see him, but still feel his thoughts and emotions.

  Black eyes stared at her out of a pale-skinned face framed by dark curly hair. Yellowish light gilded long eyelashes, which blinked. Moisture glistened on dark lips, slightly parted. God, he was so much like her.

  His feet slapped on a smooth floor. Freezing air stung through his tunic.

  A dim light on the other side of the room reflected in the smooth surface of a table top or a bench. In one corner stood a shallow metal dish, some instruments protruding over the edge. A man busied himself in the corner under the light, pulling on smooth gloves that reached to his elbows.

  A slight figure dressed in white approached from near the frost-covered window. The silver embroidery of the Mirani emblem glittered on his chest. His uniform was adorned with so many other coloured and glittering markings that he had to be someone high-ranking. His grey hair was cropped short and framed a sharp face with a pointy noise, a jutting chin and skin stretched taut over high cheekbones. His eyes had the colour of a glacier in early morning light.

  Daya said, through shivering lips, “What are you doing with me?”

  The small man passed him with slow footsteps that clacked on the tiles, his hands behind his back. His breath steamed. “No need to worry. This won’t take long. We won’t harm you.”

  Someone grabbed Daya from behind. “Come, over here.” The man pushed him against a wall of metal, cold biting into his back. “Hold still.”

  He tied a strap around Daya’s arm.

  Daya yanked. “Hey!”

  The man restrained his other arm in a similar strap and went to pick up the metal bowl from the table. From this he took several medical instruments. The man had to be a medico; he squirted a spot of cold spray on Daya’s arm. Then there was a sharp prick and the medico was taping a needle to Daya’s arm, with a thin lead attached to a machine. “What’s all this?” Daya asked.

  “It doesn’t harm you. Relax.”

  The medico sprayed cold stuff on his other arm. “Hold him.”

  Someone else pushed his arm into the metal wall, one hand on his upper arm, the other on his wrist. Another sharp prick and biting pain spread from his lower arm.

  “What are you doing to me?” In the dimness, his shoulder pushed against the metal, Daya only saw the medico’s hands, attaching a long strip of tape to his forearm, and untangling a length of wire.

  The pain, the pain, the pain.

  Jessica wanted to jump out of the vision and grab him, take him to safety. He was hers, and hers alone, one of her kind.

  The keihu girl’s face appeared again, no longer empty, but her cheeks wet with tears. She threw thin arms around Jessica’s shoulders, resting her head against Jessica’s chest. Her whole body shook with anguished cries.

  “You must go and rescue him.” The girl had seen Daya?

  Jessica patted her back awkwardly, her whole body still glowing and throbbing. Damn him. She was in no position to rescue anyone. She didn’t even know where he was.

  A deep voice behind her said, “You’ve quite finished breaking each other’s hearts?”

  Iztho stood there, leaning against the doorframe, his thumbs tucked in his belt. Blood rushed to her cheeks. How long had he been watching?

  He jerked his head at the door opening. His face betrayed no emotion. “If you’re ready, I have something you might find interesting.”

  18

  IZTHO WENT TO a couch against the side wall in the shop, where he had left his screen, and turned it towards Jessica. “The markings on the walls in that cave you were talking about—did they look anything like this?”

  He spoke Mirani and made no attempt to simplify his speech for her sake.

  So he had been interested in her story about the cave. She made a note not to underestimate him again.

  The screen displayed an image of a stone, like a brick in a wall. Carved grooves in the surface depicted, under each other, an arrow, two suns and three people. Her cheeks flushed, Jessica nodded.

  He touched the screen. Another picture displayed an overview of a chamber with a flat dais in the middle, just like in the chamber she had visited with Ikay. The walls were covered in carvings. She whispered, “Yes, like that. Where is this?”

  He cursed, or at least she thought he did because she didn’t recognise the word he uttered. “This is one of the chambers they found on Asto.”

  “Where is that?”

  “It’s the inner world in this system. I’ll show you tonight. Asto is very bright in the evening sky at the moment.”

  “Have you seen this cave?”

  “I can’t. It’s too hot to go there.”

  “Too hot? But . . .” She sought for words. “Can I do this in English?”

  He gave her a withering stare that said I thought you were made of tougher stuff.

  All right. Not in
English then.

  His attention returned to the screen. “Asto wasn’t always the desert it is today. Many years ago, a great civilisation, the Aghyrians, inhabited the planet. They invented many things we use now; they invented things we don’t even half understand. They started space travel at the time Ceren was only a jungle inhabited by savages.”

  The people from the frieze. “Were they tall and. . . ?” She didn’t know how to say broad-shouldered.

  “Yes.”

  “What happened?”

  “The legends say a star fell from the sky, but in reality, it was a wayward asteroid. For all they peered into space, luck was not on their side. It came from behind the larger sun and by the time they saw it, there was little time left to prepare. Our own Mirani legends say the cloud of dust around the planet took thirty years to clear.”

  Jessica’s skin broke out in goosebumps. That’s how scientists said dinosaurs had become extinct. A massive impact, clouds obscuring the sun for years. What a horrible way to die. At the same time, she remembered hearing running footsteps on stone, panting breaths, a slamming door and the rumbling of the earth. She’d thought it had been a vision when she was in the cave with Ikay, but could it be a memory? She clamped her arms around herself.

  “Did anyone survive?”

  “At first, it seemed not, but then, many, many years later, another kind of people appeared on Asto. They called themselves Coldi. No one is quite sure where they came from. Their own history tells of them arising from the dust, and when you couple legend and known history, it seems they are right. Certainly there is no evidence of Coldi presence anywhere else in the inhabited worlds dating from before the disaster. There are rumours that the Coldi are not a real race but were created by the Aghyrians specifically for survival. Other say they’re descendants of those Aghyrians who survived in the caves under the destroyed city of Aghyr, but there’s no proof of that. Wherever they came from, the Coldi have adaptations that help them survive the heat. They came to Asto, or were already there, they found Aghyrian knowledge still buried under the ruins of cities. That’s why we have the Exchange network: the Aghyrian people invented it. They never built it in its current form, but they discovered the principles.”