Banner of Souls

by Liz Williams

  Ignoring the smell, Yskatarina poked the thing with her toe. It wobbled for a moment, then was still. She thought of all unnatural things, of the Animus, and herself. It would all come to this one day: the flesh melting down into noxiousness.

  Restless and alarmed, she marched back to the ruin to see if there had been any word from the assassin or from the Mission. To her annoyance, there was not.

  But there was a message.

  The settlement was perched high on the edges of a cliff. At some point, the sea had sheared it away, so that where there had once been houses and a temple, there was now only a jumble of ochre rock marked by a few ragged posts, and a wooden platform that had once formed the temple’s main entrance.

  Yskatarina stood in the cold wind from the sea, wrapped in black fur. She had chosen to wear gloves for this appointment, not wanting her hands to be noted too closely. Her face was half-hidden by a hood and the eye-visor.

  Behind her, at the entrance to where the temple had once been, stood a demon with a curved and upraised sword. Its lips were stained with blood, which Yskatarina knew to be real. The Animus had whispered this to her in the moments before Yskatarina had sent him away to circle in the cloudy upper air above the island.

  Now, she waited for her appointment to come, patience swiftly running out. The being, a kappa, was already late, yet it had been the one to approach her, had left that disquieting message on the little antiscribe. First the disappearance of the assassin, then the Mission’s silence, and now this ... She had again arranged for more creatures to be sent, but she did not hold out hope. The denizens of Cloud Terrace would be on their guard.

  She had told them to strike at the Martian first. With Dreams-of-War out of the way, the Grandmothers could be more easily dealt with. And Lunae herself was just a girl, despite her powers.

  Yskatarina had formed her own opinions of the people known as the kappa, involving timidity, inferiority, lack of real will. She knew little enough about them. They were the dregs of Earth, the remnants of ancient error. Yet how had they known where to find her? How had they obtained her coordinates? It did not accord with the image of an underclass.

  Impatient, she roamed about the platform, then turned to see that the kappa was finally here, waddling and wheezing across the platform toward her. Yskatarina felt a rising distaste. Old error, yes, but so were the gaezelles of the Martian plain ... She could not help but make comparisons.

  “Sorry, sorry,” the kappa panted. “There was delay, the storms ...”

  “This doesn’t concern me,” Yskatarina said.

  “Of course, I understand ...”

  “My time is limited. I need information.” Yskatarina looked down into a bland yellow gaze. “In your message you spoke of a ship, sent from Mars to Earth, one hundred years ago. A ship that Nightshade believes may contain the details of a secret project, to breed a creature called a hito-bashira. And how did you find me?”

  “As to finding you, the place where you are staying is known to us from the old days. We keep a watch. And we do know of an ancient ship,” the kappa said, “but not of its exact location.”

  Briefly, Yskatarina closed her eyes. “Then do you know who does have this information?”

  “Come with me,” the kappa said. She turned and began waddling toward the entrance to the former temple. With a glance up at the Animus, Yskatarina followed.

  The kappa disgusted Yskatarina: the stout, sweating form, the anxious manner, the stringy hair. She thought again of the long legs of the gaezelles, her own artificial limbs, the Animus’s sleek winged shape. These lesser people should not exist. Nothing ugly should exist. But for the moment, the kappa was useful, and could be used. Let her believe that Yskatarina would give her something in exchange.

  “See?” the kappa said, pointing.

  Yskatarina looked in the direction indicated by the kappa’s thick finger. But at that moment, there was a shriek from the heavens and the Animus dropped like a stone. Yskatarina wheeled around, just in time to avoid the swing of the demon’s sword. It was wielded by a second kappa, thinner and swifter, with the green light of fury in her eyes. Yskatarina blocked and the sword skittered from her arm, striking sparks. Behind her, there was a wailing cry as the Animus fell upon her informant in a tangle of black spines.

  The kappa wielding the sword rushed forward. Yskatarina struck up and out, grasped the kappa’s slimy wrist, twisted, and sent the sword flying across the platform. She killed the kappa with a strike to the throat. The Animus had already seen to the first.

  “Throw them into the sea,” Yskatarina instructed, drawing a long, calm breath. “And then let us be gone.”

  CHAPTER 4

  Earth

  The missive came to Dreams-of-War in a most old-fashioned way: borne within the body of a semiartificial cricket. The creatures had, she knew, been formed for gambling purposes. They were durable, ingenious, put up many good and long-lasting fights, and the war-madams of the city fringes had once prized them as a Martian might prize her armor. But fashions changed and moved onward, to more impressive forms of battle. So when, shortly after her conversation with Lunae, the cricket soared in through the window, Dreams-of-War initially thought that it was a living insect. She swatted at it with a casual hand, but the armor’s servos powered in and caught it gently within her mailed fist.

  Dreams-of-War looked down. The cricket lay whirring in her hand, legs twitching. Coils of brass spun outward, flickering with small fire. The cricket leaped, to land with a clatter on the metal edge of the bed. Letters formed across Dreams-of-War’s palm, glowed with neon brightness before fading to a faint stain on the skin of the armor.

  We must talk. Meet me in the teahouse next to the fortress-temple of Gwei Hei. Four o’clock.

  There was no signature, and no indication from whom the message had come. Dreams-of-War frowned, scenting traps. She looked for the cricket, which was now sitting on the windowsill. Before she could make a move, it was gone, sailing out into the waning sunlight.

  She spent the next hour or so in some indecision. At last, however, the need for action overwhelmed her. First, she went to see Lunae. The girl was sleeping, so Dreams-of-War did not disturb her. Instead, she made sure that the room was warded. She was unable to find the kappa and, reining in her annoyance, she headed out into the fading day.

  Night came early at these latitudes, and the sky above Fragrant Harbor was already diminishing to the color of an old rose. Across the water, the lights of the tenements were beginning to burn. The great torch that stood at the entrance to the fortress-temple of Gwei Hei sent a column of smoke up against the evening sky.

  Dreams-of-War headed swiftly down through the narrow streets, dodging the litters and steamcarts that filled the alleys. People eyed her askance as she passed, but Dreams-of-War ignored them. To the sides of the streets, braziers spilled hot coal-smoke and the fragrance of crisping seaweed into the evening air. At the bottom of the steps that led from the Peak she ran into a column of festival goers, firecrackers snapping around their feet. They wore masks of moths, with long, trembling antennae. They spun around her, never quite touching, moving with somber purpose, as though her presence among them was a choreographed part of their dance. Small cymbals clattered arrhythmically in their hands. There seemed to be no pattern to the sounds that they made and it affronted Dreams-of-War’s sense of order. She stood stiff and still, waiting as they flowed around her. She could see the glint of their eyes through the feathery masks. Their gaze was dull and inward-looking. Some narcotic, no doubt. A variety of substances were rife among the little splinterings of the city’s many cults. She would have felt more comfortable if those eyes had contained a threat.

  Dreams-of-War squinted upward as the last moth-masked woman passed her by, longing for emptiness. Earth, she had long since decided, had too many people in too small a space, and most of them seemed to be crammed into the eroding confines of Fragrant Harbor. At last she was out onto the dock.

 
The ferry, an ancient black hulk, rode low in the water. The steerswoman was already pulling away. Dreams-of-War leaped the few feet from the dock, landing with a clatter on the gangway. Passengers moved hastily aside. Dreams-of-War thrust a handful of coins at the steerswoman and strode up the steps onto the upper deck, seeking fresher air. When she grasped the railing for balance, the palm of her armor came away encrusted with salt and rust. She stood back, reluctant to entrust her weight to the rail. The sea heaved below, heavy with oil and a film of garbage, mainly fish debris. There was a strong smell of rotting vegetables and weed.

  From here, she watched the island fall behind as the ferry made the short crossing to High Kowloon. The tenements were a mass of shadows and light against the ruby sky. The mansion district was clearly visible at the summit of the Peak, as distinct in its own way and place as the Memnos Tower. Dreams-of-War frowned, thinking of the Grandmothers, of Lunae. She did not like leaving the girl, even for this short span. Her thoughts returned with obsessive regularity to that conversation with the Grandmothers, who had told her so little, less even than Memnos. And also to the conversation with the shade of Embar Khair.

  She turned her back on the island and Cloud Terrace and stared grimly ahead as the ferry wallowed toward High Kowloon.

  It took Dreams-of-War some time to find the teahouse amid the maze of passages that led up from the High Kowloon side of the harbor. By the time the ferry docked, the sky had hazed to twilight, and the High Kowloon side was not as well lit as the slopes around the Peak. Dreams-of-War clambered up steps and around the poles of awnings, cursing beneath her breath. The quickest route to the temple was through the labyrinth of the jade market. She strode past skeins of water-colored necklaces, small gods the shade of frogs and leaves, carved lotus and palm. The jade sellers, dressed in the traditional black with the mark of the trade stenciled upon each cheek, were careful not to look at her directly as she went by, but she felt their eyes on her as she passed.

  Then she was again out into the musty twilight and at last came alongside the temple wall: a mass of polished, ancient brick. She could smell incense, something sharp and pungent, overpowering the odor of the garbage that was piled up against the walls.

  The teahouse stood at the end of the adjoining street: a tottering structure squeezed onto the end of a tenement. Trailing plants, spidery in the half-light, sprawled from the balconies of the upper storys. Dim radiance spilled out onto the street. Dreams-of-War paused, uncertain, then strode up the steps.

  The teahouse was empty. Taking care to keep her back to the wall, Dreams-of-War moved cautiously into the room: a jumble of chairs and tables. An enormous steaming urn was set on a brazier at the far end. Stairs led to an upper room; she could hear the murmur of voices. Dreams-of-War went upward.

  Before she reached the upper room, however, someone stepped out onto the small halfway landing. Reflexively, Dreams-of-War activated the hand weapons of her armor, but even as her arm flashed up she saw that the figure was that of a kappa.

  “Don’t strike,” the kappa said quickly. “It’s me.”

  “Nurse?” Dreams-of-War frowned. She could not tell one of the creatures from another, and bundled up as they all were, it was almost impossible to tell them apart by dress. “What are you doing here? I thought you were back at Cloud Terrace.”

  “Come,” the kappa said. She ushered Dreams-of-War through a curtain into a small adjoining niche. There was the reek of tea and old opium: a coarse, burnt smell. “We cannot talk at Cloud Terrace. Too many eyes. Too many spies. The tentacles of the oreagraph spread everywhere.”

  “It was you who sent the cricket?”

  “It was I.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I need to talk to you about the Grandmothers,” the kappa said. “I need to hear your thoughts, warrior.”

  The kappa’s eyes gleamed in the dimness. She spoke with decision, with no trace of the dithering fussiness that Dreams-of-War had always associated with the nurse.

  “What do you know of them, Dreams-of-War?” Somehow it was a shock to hear the kappa speak her actual name. Normally, the nurse made do with a sort of deferential mumble.

  “I know very little,” Dreams-of-War said, taken aback. She did not want to reveal to the kappa how much knowledge she possessed. “The Grandmothers are rumored to be ancient.”

  “And so they are.”

  “How do you know this?” Dreams-of-War almost added, You are only a kappa, but for once thought better of it. The kappa echoed her, however.

  “Because I am only a lesser creature?” The wide, lipless mouth widened into something that could have been a smile. “You are learning tact...I made it my business to find out, because I care about Lunae.”

  “But where did you find out from?”

  “From my people. No one pays any attention to us. But we are everywhere. In the factories and wharves and warehouses, in the spacedocks and the shipping runs. In the homes of the rich and powerful, tending their young as they emerge from the growing-chambers. Menial. Invisible.” The kappa gave a shrug. “Everywhere.”

  Slowly Dreams-of-War nodded. “I see.”

  “What if I were to tell you that the Grandmothers originally came from Nightshade?”

  Dreams-of-War tried to dissemble. “Why are you telling this to me? You know I am a warrior of the Matriarchy and in the Grandmothers’ hire. How do you know I won’t report straight back?”

  “Because you love the girl. I know about your maternal modifications. You don’t like it, do you? But you won’t betray her.” The green gaze sharpened. “Will you?”

  “No,” Dreams-of-War said after a pause. “I will not.”

  “And you do not seem surprised to learn of the Grandmothers’ origins.”

  “I have reason to believe,” Dreams-of-War said carefully, “that there have been links between Nightshade and Memnos for some considerable time.” There. That was sufficiently opaque.

  The kappa’s gaze sharpened.

  “Of course there have. Nightshade gave haunt-tech to the Matriarchy. Everyone knows that.”

  Oh, forget intrigue. It’s too complicated. Dreams-of-War related her conversation with the armor to the kappa.

  “How interesting. The kappa know about the ship, but I didn’t know the details.”

  “The Grandmothers would seem to have fallen out with Nightshade,” Dreams-of-War said, “over the issue of the Kami. And the Kami appear interested in Lunae.”

  “I think it was almost certainly the Kami who sent the assassin. Lunae meets a possessed woman in the street; a short time later, a death-dealer slips past the weir-wards.”

  “And what do you know about the Kami?”

  “All that we really know,” the kappa said, “is that they come from Nightshade. I think it’s time we investigated them.”

  “That means the Mission. There’s no way in. People have tried.”

  “There is a way,” the kappa said. “My people know of it. It runs under the pier that houses the meat market. It’s a runoff from an old culvert that takes the blood down into the rendering tanks.”

  “It will have to be done today, then. We leave tomorrow, as you know.”

  “I suggest this evening, when the market closes,” the kappa said, with narrowed eyes.

  “And you want me to be the one to run the risk,” Dreams-of-War said.

  “You are a warrior,” the kappa replied blandly.

  “Indeed.” Dreams-of-War and the nurse stared at each other for a moment.

  “I do not want to be too long away from the house,” the kappa said finally. “And neither should you.”

  The nurse left through a small door at the back of the empty downstairs room. Dreams-of-War walked back out onto the street. Crowds of people drifted past. She saw kappa, human, other modified beings. For the first time she was moved to wonder about the Changed: what secrets they might hold, what desires they might cherish. Somehow she had never thought of such beings as truly real. The
kappa herself had been nothing more than a mumbling nursemaid, a convenient servant with little more intelligence than a plainshound. Now, this was revealed not to be the case. Dreams-of-War did not like feeling foolish, or wrong.

  She strode angrily down the crowded streets in the direction of the harbor. She had not gone very far down one of the streets of steps when a familiar throng stepped from the shadows. Their faces were concealed behind the masks of moths. Their eyes were dead. They carried blades. And they rushed toward her in a silent mass.

  Dreams-of-War kicked up and out, scything aside a blade. Its bearer hissed and whistled—weird, inhuman sounds that were immediately familiar. The assassin had sounded like this. Two others rushed forward, moving in a quick, strange crouch. Sonar pinged from the surface of walls and armor, or so the remote voice of Embar Khair informed her. Her assailants were communicating.

  Dreams-of-War struck down with a hand-prong between the trembling proboscis of the moth-mask. The dull eyes did not change as the thing crumpled. Seizing the blade, she wheeled around and cut through two others. They fell messily in half without a sound. Dreams-of-War glanced at the bloody blade with approval. She liked sharp things. And the creatures were revealed as organic; blood and slime and a thick, sticky ichor that coated the blade like lace. But a closer glimpse revealed the glint of metal deep within—not so organic as all that, then.

  Now there was only one moth-mask, dancing forward, sting-gun raised. It fired. Dreams-of-War threw herself to the ground, rolling over and lashing out at the assassin’s shins. Again, the blade sliced through flesh as though it were bean curd. Truncated, the assassin fell. A sting shot upward and fell short. The assassin lay twitching. Dreams-of-War snatched off the mask. A rudimentary face was revealed: a slit of a mouth, the round dim eyes. As she watched, the face shriveled and desiccated, like a leaf in a flame. Beneath, there was only smooth silver.