by Linda Nagata
Her words were an accusation, and they drew from Smoke a fierce scowl. His eyes glittered green despite the torch’s red light. “Your vengeance is done, I think.”
“Only because I invited the Lutawan soldiers to my husband’s house.”
That caught him by surprise. “You wanted the Koráyos to come? You had to know we would kill you too.”
Her shoulders jumped in an angry shrug. “Sometimes there is mercy.”
Smoke eyed her bruised face. “Your husband . . . he beat you when you brought the soldiers home?”
“That’s nothing,” she sneered.
“Did he brand you too?”
Her hand shot to her cheek, gingerly touching the dagger-shaped mark. “I was born with this. But my daughter . . . she was born with a worse mark. He called her cursed and he took her away from me. He took her away! He strangled her. I know he did. If she’d been a boy, he would have let her live.”
Smoke had heard such stories before. He turned to touch the torch to dry hay piled in a manger that was shared between the stalls. Flames crackled and the young wife backed away, looking frightened at last, while the horses threw back their heads and whinnied in panic.
“Open the stalls,” he told her.
With shaking hands she did it and the horses bolted free. Very quickly the fire consumed the hay and then turned its greedy flames to the stalls and the post that held up the ceiling. Gray smoke boiled up, sending small birds fleeing from the rafters. The air became thick and she raised her arm to cover her mouth and nose.
Smoke took his coin purse from his pocket, tossing it to her. She caught it. “They’re all dead now,” he told her. “Just as you wished. You’re free to go north. Maybe you’ll find your way to the Puzzle Lands.”
“I have to find my sister first. She was outside with me, but she ran to hide.”
The fire spoke in a windy voice, but over its dull roar Smoke heard the rhythm of hooves galloping up to the stable. “Smoke!” Rennish shouted. “Don’t toy with her. Finish it now!”
“Go!” Smoke gestured at the windows in back of the stalls, their shutters open to the summer dawn. “Flee to the woods. If you’re seen, you will be killed.”
“I have to find my sister.”
“There are twenty Koráyos soldiers outside. Your sister is dead. Go now, before you die too.”
He wanted her to live, but he would kill her if he had to, if Rennish started to come in. Maybe she saw it in the green glitter of his eyes, because she moved at last, lunging for the closest window.
Smoke walked outside, igniting more hay on the way.
The farmhouse had been set afire, the cattle let out of their pens. Several of the Koráyos soldiers were working to pile brush and hay around barrels stacked beside a shed when one yelped, “Look! Another one!”
The barrels tumbled, a girl screamed. Two swords flashed in the dawn light, and the screaming stopped. Smoke tensed, reaching out along the threads, seeking for the farm wife while Rennish glared down at him from the saddle. “By Koráy!” she swore. “Didn’t you sense another one here?”
In truth he had not or he would have tried to spare her too. “I was distracted,” he growled. He took a cloth from his pocket to clean the blade of his sword, thinking on the woman he had saved. The threads told him she remained safe, crouched in the brush behind the stable.
He looked up again at the sound of running footsteps. Ekemion came, blood on his face and horror in his eyes at the murder he’d just done. “Chieftain Rennish, the one we killed, she cried out for her sister.”
Smoke shoved his sword into his back scabbard. “I took care of her.”
***
The sun’s arc had just broken the horizon when their troop rode away from the farm. In all the long day since, Smoke hadn’t thought of the woman again. Her bloody prayer had been granted and it was over—but not for her. She must have walked without respite to reach the Koráyos encampment in just one day, driven to find him, the knife and the coin purse her last possessions.
More lightning flickered in the night, though now it was far away. The misty rain faltered, then ceased altogether, leaving everything outside the tent damp and glistening in the torchlight: the grass, the brush, the two silver coins that had spilled from the purse.
The Lutawan farm wife got onto her feet, but she was hurting. She stood hunched, wheezing for breath, her hateful gaze bright above the dagger-shaped mark on her cheek as she glared at Smoke.
Chieftain Rennish stepped up beside him. “You said you took care of her.”
“I thought I did.”
A shadow eclipsed the torchlight. Smoke recoiled as Dehan the Trenchant came to stand at his other side. The Trenchant was a powerful man, both in the world and in the world-beneath. His years showed in his weathered face and in the gray that ran through his heavy black hair, but he remained strong and vital—and the venom that had always existed between them remained vital too. It made Smoke’s skin crawl, to be standing so close beside him.
“Who is she?” Dehan asked.
“A Lutawan. I don’t know her name.”
Rennish expanded on this. “She was one of the women at the farmhouse we visited this morning.”
“Ah,” Dehan said. “Then she should be dead now.”
The woman had hung the coin purse on a string around her neck. Her lips drew back in contempt as she yanked it off. Her scorn was all for Smoke. “You lied about my sister and then you let her die. I don’t want your coins—they won’t buy back her life!”
She hurled the purse at his face, and out of instinct he caught it before it hit, snatching it from the air with his free hand. It had a slit in it, made by the tip of his sword, and as he stuffed the purse into his pocket a coin slipped out and fell, sparkling, to the wet, trampled grass.
Dehan glanced down at it, then up at the woman. “What favor have you done for my demon son that he defied me and let you live?”
“I have done him no favors! And the favor he did for me is worse than nothing.”
“Your life is less than nothing?” Takis asked.
“My life without my sister? Yes.”
Dehan looked to Takis. “Mercy is not in his nature. Why did he let her live?”
Though Takis and Dehan saw eye-to-eye on most things, on the subject of Smoke she was at odds with her father. “He’s standing there beside you,” she said acidly. “Why don’t you ask him?”
So the Trenchant turned to Smoke, his brow cocked in question. Smoke’s grip tightened on the hilt of his sword. Far safer to keep silent—so why did he hear his own voice speaking unforgivable words? “I don’t care for it—the killing of these women and children. They are not the enemy.”
Thunder rumbled in the north, a growling threat that went on for many heartbeats. Dehan waited until it died away before he answered, his voice reduced to hardly more than a whisper by his fury. “You presume to judge our strategy? You, who have been a soldier for all of a year?”
“It’s just they have no choice in their lives. They’re slaves, just as we were before Koráy came.”
“What of it? You have no choice in your life.”
Smoke scowled. That wasn’t true. He made choices all the time: to answer the prayers or not, to spare a woman during the raids . . . or not. To his father he said, “I choose to serve you.”
“That’s not a choice. It’s your role. Koráy made it so when she bound us to the Koráyos people. If you betray those bonds, you betray yourself. Then there will be nothing left of you, my demon son, and you will cease to be.”
Could this be true? Smoke looked to Takis for confirmation, and was startled when she nodded.
Dehan recalled his attention with another question. “How many others have you let escape?”
“I don’t count them.”
Dehan shook his head. “You pretend at mercy, but it doesn’t suit you.” He gestured at Rennish to step aside, then he indicated the Lutawan woman with his chin. “You have your sword i
n hand. Finish what you started.”
The woman seemed unafraid, her bitter gaze defying him to strike. And why shouldn’t he? She had no claim on him! She, who had betrayed him by coming here, and only because he’d granted her first prayer, but not her second . . . as if it was his fault.
So he resolved to obey his father—that was the easiest thing to do—but to his shock he discovered his will was not his own. He was stymied, caught in some spell, unable to raise his sword against her. He had given this woman the gift of her own life just that morning and now he found he could not undo it. He looked at Dehan in confusion. “The Dread Hammer did not let me kill her before, and I can’t kill her now.”
“Then let her be spared,” Takis said.
Smoke and Dehan were both caught by surprise, so rarely did Takis speak against her father. She settled her sword into its scabbard, then crossed her arms and studied Smoke. “I am not my father. It pleases me to know there’s mercy hiding somewhere inside you, and I honor it now by setting aside the fate she should have met this morning. From that she is spared—”
“Takis!” Dehan objected, but she stopped him with a cold glance.
“From that she is spared,” Takis repeated. “But this evening, this Lutawan woman used my trust and my sympathy to get close to you, my beloved brother, to try to kill you, and that I will not forgive.”
She held Smoke’s gaze for many seconds, while the thunder grumbling in the distant mountains faded into silence, and the spell that restrained him unwound.
“What would you have me do?” he asked at last.
“Finish it. Or I will do it for you.”
The woman recoiled, though she seemed more shocked than frightened . . . as if she’d believed herself safe because this morning Smoke had been bound by her prayer. But Takis required justice, and she was a woman too. Smoke stepped forward so swiftly the farm wife had no chance to turn away before his sword pierced her heart and withdrew.
***
After the body was buried well away from camp and Smoke had washed again in the stream, he returned to his mat at the edge of the tent. The torches and lanterns had been put out, the dice had been put away, and the soldiers were sleeping. Closing his eyes, Smoke let the prayers wash over him.
Avenge me.
He thought of answering one . . . or maybe two.
And then? Tomorrow perhaps, but surely not long after, there would be another farmhouse, or a village whose people had offended the Trenchant. Smoke cared nothing at all for the lives of the Lutawan men he would be asked to kill, but the women bound him with their prayers. Why?
The Trenchant had said Smoke’s role was to serve the Koráyos people, but the women of Lutawa called on him to serve them. How could he do both? It was impossible. Neither could he choose between these obligations, but that didn’t mean there was no choice.
His demon nature let him sense the threads that made up the weft and warp of the world-beneath, reaching farther than even the Trenchant could perceive. If he slid away on those threads, abandoning his duty to the Koráyos people, would he cease to be? If he went so far that he could no longer hear the bloody prayers, would he be free?
He needed to know.
Quietly, he sat up. He shrugged into his coat, strapped his sword to his back, then took up his bow and his quiver. His coin purse was already in his pocket.
Ekemion stirred sleepily, not far away. “Smoke? Where are you going?”
Smoke’s glittering eyes cast a faint glow on Ekemion’s puzzled face. “Tell the Trenchant something for me.”
“I . . . what? What do you mean?”
“When you see him again, tell him I do have a choice, and I choose to serve him no more.”
He reached for the threads, dissolved into gray vapor, and was gone.
Nightside on Callisto
A faint, steady vibration carried through the igloo’s massive ice walls—a vibration that shouldn’t have been there. Jayne heard it in her sleep. Age had not dulled her soldier’s reflexes, honed by decades spent on watch against incursions of the Red. Her eyes snapped open. She held her breath. The vibration hummed in the walls, in the bed frame, in the mattress, perceivable even over Carly’s raspy breathing.
Jayne reminded herself that the Red was far, far away, its existence bound to Earth, where it bled through every aspect of life—a relentless tide of information and influence shepherding the thoughts and actions of billions along paths determined by its unknowable goals. Whether the Red was alive, or aware, Jayne couldn’t say, and she had no opinion either on its virtue. She only wanted to keep it out of the Shell Cities. Most of her life had gone to the long defense of their growing union, an association of scattered orbital habitats determined to stay free of the Red. But in retirement, Jayne had found new opportunities.
Less than twenty-four hours ago, her team of four had touched down on Callisto, Jupiter’s outermost Galilean moon and the only one that lay beyond the gas giant’s killing radiation belts. A raft of construction equipment had preceded them, including a gang of ten small mechs that had assembled a sprawling igloo in time for them to move in. It was the team’s task to establish a prototype ice-mining station to supply the expansion of the Shell Cities.
Maybe the vibration was generated by some new construction activity at the launch rail? Probably that was it. But “probably” never was a sufficient explanation. Jayne slipped out from under the shared blanket, careful not to wake Carly, who’d crawled into bed just an hour ago. Each team member worked a staggered, twelve-hour shift. Jayne had taken the first rotation, and her night was almost through.
The air-skin membrane lining the walls and the ceiling sensed her movement and responded with a glimmer of vague gray illumination. Jayne stood up slowly on sleep-stiffened limbs. A century of existence had left her thin and tough and inclined to feel cold, so over a foundation of thermal underwear she added insulated slacks, a pullover of the same material, thin gloves for her hands, and cozy house boots for her feet—one more layer in the cocoon that protected them from the cold and vacuum beyond the igloo’s walls.
Jayne knew with utter certainty that they were alone in Jupiter system. The Red could not be here—the lightspeed lag in information flow kept it confined near Earth—and no other expedition had ventured so far in years. So their team was on its own, with no backup if something went wrong—which was why the four of them had been awarded this project: They were each experienced, competent, and expendable.
The bedchamber was sealed off from the rest of the igloo by an air-skin lock. Jayne touched the membrane. It felt smooth and hard beneath her gloved hand, but when she swept her fingers across it, the skin lock responded, pulling aside in neat, glassy ripples.
Massive blocks of ancient ice made up the igloo’s walls and ceiling, insulating the interior spaces from background radiation, but it was the air-skin that made the igloo habitable. A semi-intelligent, quasi-living tissue, the skin lined every chamber, locking in pressure, and providing heat and fresh air. If perforated, it would self-seal, and its motility allowed it to repair even major tears.
Jayne stepped past the plastic-panel door into a central alcove with toilets and showers on either side. Two steps ahead, a lock on the right stood open to the easy room with its cushy inflatable furnishings, food stores, and oven, while on the left, another open lock hooked up to HQ, where the work was done. Jayne heard Berit speaking. She couldn’t make out the words, but Berit’s sharp, angry tone confirmed Jayne’s first suspicion: Something had gone wrong.
Jayne resisted the impulse to sprint into HQ. Age and experience had taught her to always attend to basics, so she slipped into the toilet first, and only when that necessity was out of the way did she trot around the corner.
Berit heard her coming and greeted her with a scowl. She was ninety-nine, an age that could be seen in the translucence of her brown skin, in the drape of tissue around her stern eyes, and in the thinning of her bright white hair. Like Jayne, Berit had lived most
of her life as a soldier in the defense force and, like Jayne, she’d been lucky, surviving to tell the tale. The two women had partnered on more assignments than either cared to remember. “What woke you up?” Berit snapped.
“The smell of trouble. Why am I hearing tones of displeasure in your voice?”
“Because I am not pleased.”
Lorelei was their civilian engineer, a petite, soft-spoken woman who, at a hundred-and-three, was older even than Jayne. She provided more details without turning away from a 3D model of the station. “Our mechs are tainted. Something’s gotten into them and they aren’t accepting commands.”
“The Red followed us here,” Berit added, with fatalistic certainty.
When Jayne joined them, they made a circle around the model. “How?”
Lorelei looked up, her deep blue eyes nestled in the folds and rough texture of her dark skin. Her hair was brilliant white and still thick despite the years, confined in a heavy braid at her shoulder. She opened her mouth to speak—and a high-pitched whistle screamed through the igloo. Jayne’s ears popped. The air-skin lock rustled shut, sealing HQ from the rest of the station and muting the whistle, but Jayne could still hear a distant wail of escaping air.
“Pressure suits!” she barked. “Now! Go!”
The suits hung ready on the wall beside the external lock. Jayne had taken only two steps toward them when a faint pop! put an end to the whistle. The igloo shuddered as massive ice blocks groaned against each other. Goddamnit, Jayne thought, grabbing two suits and tossing them to Berit and Lorelei. Goddamnit, if the roof comes down . . .
They’d celebrated when they’d won this mission, knowing they’d gotten it because it was risky and because they were old. Medical technologists in the Shell Cities had learned to minimize the deterioration of old age so that hale and healthy lifespans stretched past a century, but inevitable, catastrophic failure still loomed: a blood vessel bursting in the brain, a heart chamber undergoing sudden collapse, a lung growing irreparably brittle. The cold fact was, none of them had much time left. If they didn’t survive this mission, well, only a handful of unlived years would be lost. But in the meantime they were privileged to set foot on one of Jupiter’s moons and to have the chance of leaving the Shell Cities just a little more secure.