Watcher's Web

by Patty Jansen

  “This is the Bachelors festival. We must finish the parade.” Jessica was surprised at how well Sheida spoke Mirani.

  “Do you have an authorisation for that?”

  “Pengali must have the parade, or we will not have good harvests until the next festival. We must bring this offering to the spirits—”

  The harsh voice cut him off. “So you don’t have authorisation?”

  Jessica held her breath, afraid Sheida would make some defiant comment, but he said nothing.

  “Where is this parade going?”

  “The harbour. We have to float the flowers in the water.”

  More footsteps clacked on stone. Jessica wished she could see how many soldiers there were and what they were doing. She cast out for Daya, but sensed only the weak presence of Ikay, in front of the cart.

  Someone rocked the tray. “Flowers, eh? Seems pretty heavy duty for carrying flowers.”

  “We use these for our harvest. No—please don’t get in. You will crush them.”

  A hand rummaged in the flowers. Jessica pressed herself more closely to the layer of pearls. “I have orders to search everyone coming past here.” Footsteps moved along the other side of the cart.

  “You can search us.”

  Jessica bit her lip, imagining Sheida standing up before the soldiers, wearing nothing but a belt.

  “I think we’ll pass. Stick to the main street. Go straight to the harbour. No diversions or we’ll shoot. Don’t think we’re not watching you.”

  When the cart jolted back into movement, Sheida blew out a long sigh. The drumbeats started again, a sweeping five-beat rhythm. Three strong beats, two weaker ones. Females sang and clapped.

  Jessica lifted her head so she could see between the flowers. The cart rumbled past buildings. A shuttered-up shopfront, a tree, empty pavement. “Are we almost there?”

  “I can see the square,” said Sheida, seated at the edge of the tray.

  “Any sign of Daya?”

  “He would wait for us here.”

  “Can you see anyone?”

  A tense silence.

  “No.”

  Damn, where was Daya? Without him, and without the man who could operate the Exchange, the plan would fail.

  A sharp whistle from Ikay brought the cart to a stop. The drummer broke into a different rhythm while people sang and clapped. Jessica felt sick.

  On the map, it hadn’t looked that far from the Exchange owner’s house to here. Daya had been gone most of the night.

  Jessica closed her eyes and reached out in her mind. She had avoided doing this, as it would use up precious energy, and she wasn’t sure Daya’s mind was open to her.

  Daya, where are you?

  A dark tunnel, splashing footsteps, rasping breath. Men’s voices calling in the distance.

  Daya!

  Warmth flowed over her. I’ve been calling you. I’ve no idea where I am.

  What happened?

  We came out of the drain and someone had tipped off the soldiers. Jisson’s been captured, Merilon, too, I think.

  Where are they now? But Jessica knew: the whole plan was falling to pieces. Without Merilon Damaru, the Exchange wouldn’t work; without Daya, she wouldn’t have the strength to disarm more than a few crossbows, and no one in the Pengali party knew how to fly an aircraft anyway. She reached out. “Sheida.”

  The elder started. “Be careful. The soldiers are watching.”

  “Sheida, the Mirani have stopped the other party. They’ve got Jisson. Daya’s running around somewhere in the drains.”

  Before he could reply, a Mirani voice shouted. “Move on, the lot of you. You’re disturbing the citizens’ sleep.”

  Several voices shouted protests.

  “I tell you to move on. I permitted you to tow this . . . donation to the harbour, not to disturb the citizens’ lives. Move, or I’ll order my men to move it for you.”

  Creaking and groaning, the cart jumped back into motion.

  There was more shouting further down the street. Jessica raised her head just above the rim of the cart. Shadows ran across the street ahead. There were shouts and people throwing things.

  A tingle.

  Daya?

  Dark tunnels. An open trapdoor. The flash of light on metal crossbows.

  Daya!

  Sheida pushed her. “Get down!”

  “But Daya’s somewhere out there.”

  All around the cart, people shouted. Further away in the shadows, male voices barked orders. The air chilled; crossbows discharged.

  No, no.

  Jessica shouted, “Ikay!”

  The old female stood amongst a group of females, all with closed eyes, focusing their energy. A long strand of crackling light snaked out to the crossbow in the nearest soldier’s hands. The bead flashed and exploded. He yelled and dropped the mangled weapon, but two more soldiers took his place.

  Too slow; there were too few of them.

  Daya!

  On her belly in the flowers, Jessica pressed her hands together, but couldn’t concentrate. Her ears roared too much; her heart beat too loudly. This wasn’t working. Yes, they could take out the weapons one by one, but there were too many soldiers. They needed . . .

  Holy shit.

  Energy, focused energy, and she was sitting on top of it.

  With both hands, she grabbed an armful of pearls. About the size and weight of a billiard ball, they were perfect—for throwing.

  The first one hit a soldier in the side. He yelped as the pearl fell to the ground, crackling, releasing its charge, which went straight into the bead in his crossbow. A net of blue lightning engulfed the soldier. The bead exploded into fragments like fireworks.

  Pengali cheered. A couple of hands reached over the edge of the tray. Jessica gave them pearls.

  Within moments, the street crackled with blue lightning. Soldiers yelled. Some stumbled about, hands and face bleeding from glass cuts. Besieged by Pengali fighters with knives, others reached for sticks. A drain cover opened, spewing a tide of small bodies like rats. Pengali knives glittered. Jessica passed pearls into questing hands, and flung them into the seething mass of street fighting, as the tide of white uniforms receded.

  The soldiers were retreating. They were winning.

  She passed more pearls over the side, and more.

  Under the trees at the side of the street, a number of soldiers regrouped. A commander shouted orders. One by one, the men turned to the wall, testing their weapons. Some were so badly damaged the arrows jammed in the slide. These, the soldiers flung aside, loosing batons from their belts. Accompanied by hoarse shouts, the men charged back into the crowd, swinging batons at the Pengali, knocking knives out hands. When one soldier went down with a throwing knife in his chest, two others sprang at the Pengali knife-thrower. Jessica hurled a pearl across the heads of the crowd, but it fell short of the mark. In the noise, she didn’t even hear the Pengali’s death scream.

  More soldiers poured in from around the corner, outside the range of the pearl-throwers. The first shot trailed through the air like a firecracker. It hit the ground and brought down half a dozen Pengali in an explosion of blue. The second one took the drummer in the chest. Jessica screamed and turned away, but the spray of blood hit her arms.

  More soldiers streamed into the street until the Pengali were hemmed in by a sea of white uniforms.

  Nowhere to go.

  Still, the Pengali around the cart threw their pearls and Jessica passed them, while glass knives dripped with blood and bodies littered the pavement.

  Then a scream rose next to the cart.

  Light flashed on the curved surface of a charge gun. A gleam of reflection on a silver mane of hair.

  Iztho, aiming his gun at the cart, his face hard and emotionless. Pengali pearl-throwers pushed away from him as his hand tightened around the release.

  No!

  Jessica scrambled up, but trying to get out of the tray was like walking on marbles. She slipped and fell ha
rd amongst the by now crumpled flowers.

  Her hand closed around a pearl to fling at his head, but he was quicker.

  He yelled, “Stand back!” And fired the gun. A flash of blue hit the wheels. The undercarriage exploded in a shower of wood. The tray listed. Pearls rolled to one side, rumbling over the top of one another. Jessica threw herself to the higher side to stop it tipping, to no avail.

  The cloth tore, and Jessica slid onto the pavement in a waterfall of glowing, radioactive caviar. Bouncing, crackling, releasing their charge into strands of blue lightning, which extended from the crippled cart to cover half the street.

  Jessica scrambled to her feet, grabbed mental hold of as many of the strands as she could and screamed, “Please help! Anyone!” She guided the strands to anyone who responded: Ikay, the Amazons, and a warm presence all the way behind the soldier line.

  Daya?

  I’m here.

  A web of lightning wove over the street, as a wave of panic struck her. They were using up their chance to get the Exchange working—

  You must help me. Daya’s mind voice cut into her thoughts. His mind link gripped her hard and pulled her into a vortex, a maelstrom of light that was so bright her eyes watered. She wanted to close her eyes, but that made no difference because the glow was inside her mind. Still, Daya pulled, his light a powerful presence.

  Where are we? Although she recognised this stream of energy. The very first time she had seen Daya, she had experienced the maelstrom, too.

  I am on the corner of the Barresh town square in front of the Exchange. You are in the middle of the fight.

  Even without words or shared thoughts, Jessica knew what he wanted. The Exchange network used life energy; they could both sense and use life energy—he wanted to send some sort of signal through the network. That was how she had come in contact with him before . . . but those incidences had been mostly accidental . . . hadn’t they?

  A window opened in her vision, and then another one, and another.

  A woman sat half-dozing before an instrument panel, staring out a window into a star-speckled sky.

  A group of workers dressed in blue shared a joke in a hall where screens flickered and the hum of voices provided background to their laughter.

  A man typed on a touch screen, his fingers fast like dancing spiders.

  When Jessica was little and visiting her grandparents in the city, her grandfather had taken her to a shop where hundreds of television screens occupied the back wall. This was bit like that, only each screen displayed a different channel, representing a node in the Exchange network, and the maelstrom of light connected all of them.

  How can we talk to those people?

  We can’t, or I don’t know how to do it. Communication requires a two-way response, a second able mind. All we can do is upset the system, and hope someone traces the signal back to Barresh. Are you ready?

  Jessica was dimly aware that she still stood in the street, and that all this took perhaps a fraction of a second. The pearls still crackled around her feet. She grabbed as many strands as she could reach.

  I’m ready.

  The lightning twisted into a rope, shot into the sky, sucked into the vortex.

  In the world where it was night, the panel flashed, lights reflected in the window. The woman jolted from her doze. On a dozen screens before her, the same image was displayed: a violent street fight.

  In the large hall, the workers stopped chatting. All stared at the screen wide-eyed, as a white-uniformed soldier slashed at a small figure. The image dissolved in snow. Beeping alarms went off, and people ran past.

  The man who had been typing froze. The text on his screen had changed into splatters of blood on a white uniform, a small figure falling, and cheering soldiers.

  The world exploded in a flash of white. Men screamed. Bodies toppled. Lightning crackled. A whoosh of wind tore at hair and clothing. Jessica’s consciousness returned to her body.

  Then there was silence.

  Jessica stumbled, black spots dancing before her eyes.

  At her feet lay a body—the Pengali drummer, his face covered in blood and a hole torn through his chest. To her right, two females helped up a young male, trembling hands clutching his belly. Rivulets of blood pulsed down his fingers.

  A wave of wild panic gripped her. There was no one she recognised, none of the people she had come to love. Iztho—where was Iztho?

  Jessica whirled around to where she had last seen him.

  He was still there; he lay on his belly, very still, his eyes closed, discharged pearls all around him, his hand draped over the gun. With sickening feeling, Jessica realised what he had done. A perfectionist, he wouldn’t have carried a weapon unless he knew how to use it and if he had intended to kill her, he would never have missed at such close range.

  He had known what she and the Pengali were trying to do by throwing the pearls, had seen the process was too slow and, while there was no time for words, had sped it up. He could easily have killed her had he wanted to, but instead he had saved her, and probably a lot of Pengali lives as well.

  Had he paid the ultimate price?

  He lay there so peacefully, as if he were asleep. Splatters of blood caked his hair and his cloak was wet. She brought a shivering hand to the soft skin of his neck. It was warm; a vein pulsed weakly. “Iztho, wake up.” She stroked his cheek, and when he didn’t react, pushed up his shoulder. “Iztho, please.” He had to wake up; she had to get him off the ground, get someone to look after him. “Someone, please help me.”

  Three Mirani soldiers had come up behind her. One pointed a crossbow at her, blackened, the slide bent. Blood ran down his tunic from a gash in his cheek.

  Jessica didn’t think the weapon would still be effective, but he gestured with it, and she backed off.

  “At least take him to a hospital,” she said.

  Two soldiers bent, not taking their attention from her. They grabbed Iztho under his arms and heaved him up. He mumbled some incoherent words, his eyes only half open. In this fashion, they dragged him off to where the soldiers were setting up a sick bay for the injured, who outnumbered the uninjured.

  Jessica watched him disappear in the shadows. The last she saw of him was a glimpse of his silver hair. She couldn’t do anything, wasn’t sure she wanted to do anything. Maybe he spoke the truth, maybe he had been forced into bringing her and had fallen in love with her during the trek through the forest. Maybe he had wanted to take her somewhere else and start a new life, but on the other hand, he had lied to her about too much for too long. And she wasn’t ready for what he wanted.

  Maybe if times had been different . . .

  30

  A HUMID SQUALL of wind tore at Jessica’s hair. It whipped up branches of the large trees around the square and sent a flurry of pink petals dancing between rows of soldiers. Mud or blood stained once-white uniforms. Many of the men nursed injuries, but they stood, silent as bowling pins, as the six blue-clad figures walked between them, stopping at the end of each row to type on their screens. The observers the Union had sent.

  They were counting. Checking if their numbers matched those as approved by the Barresh council.

  Seated on the fence, Jessica had counted them in two minutes.

  There were twenty-five soldiers to a row, and there were twenty-five rows. Yet, the Union delegates scribbled their notes and conferred with each other.

  Commander Nemedor Satarin, lips pressed in a thin line, stood at the gate to the airport, flanked by two high-ranking soldiers. Blue eyes staring into nothingness, he clutched a document to his chest, white-knuckled hands clenching and unclenching. His gaze avoided those of the Barresh council, the lines of council guards and the citizens of the city who had come out in their thousands.

  Through the foliage of the red-flowered bushes that edged the airport Jessica could see the purple surface of Daya’s aircraft. Two men in grey had taken off a side panel. He had damaged the engine by leaving from Miran without de
frosting. All sorts of parts and tools lay spread out on blankets. Jessica wondered if this meant that Daya would leave soon; he was free to go after all. She wondered if he cared for the city and their kinship with the Pengali. Most of all, she wondered if he still cared for her; she missed his voice in her mind.

  She couldn’t believe he would give up so easily, but maybe he found her too hard to please. As a handsome and rich man, women would be throwing themselves at his feet. She already saw it each time one of Councillor Semisu’s wives mentioned Daya; a dreamy, swooning look would come over her eyes, and Jessica would feel more lonely.

  The place where Iztho’s craft had stood was empty. Although gossip at Councillor Semisu’s house told her that he had recovered enough to fly himself, Jessica had not seen him again. He had not even sent her a note of goodbye. She liked to think that he had been under strict supervision of the Mirani army and had not been allowed to contact her.

  On the square, all Union observers had gathered in one spot. After some talk, the group moved towards the assembled councillors, the mediator woman from the council meeting in the lead. Her ponytail blew over her forehead as she bowed.

  “I have here the results of our headcount. There are one thousand and twenty-one Mirani military personnel in Barresh. The contract you hold with Miran provides for three hundred and fifty troops. Under Union Law, you have a number of options: you could ratify the new contract and allow the men to stay. You could request that the extra troops leave. It is also your right to renegotiate your contract.”

  Commander Satarin inclined his head. “Miran has already ratified the contract. In addition, I would like to sit down and complete negotiations for our trade relations. Once Barresh is integrated in the Mirani agricultural cooperatives, benefits can flow into this city. But we will need to maintain our troops to protect the merchant class from the whims of the natives.”

  “Natives!” Sheida pushed himself through the crowd. No longer dressed in the insulting turquoise garb, he had gained in stature. Navy suited him.