by Liz Williams
In the sudden light, something at the end of the room shifted and glittered. The snake-child bowed low and glided smoothly away.
“Prince Cataract?”
“Why, you are from Nightshade,” the thing said. She could not see it clearly, only an angular hulk. An equine head reared up, swaying on a too-thin neck. There was the oyster-shell gleam of a single eye. Teeth snapped in the long jaw. It was surrounded by a pile of—something. She stepped a little closer. She could see the dull shine of scales. Snakeskin? But the pattern did not look quite right. Perhaps the creature shed... She sensed an ancient, bewildered evil.
“Come here,” the thing said. “It is a long time since I tasted the blood of Nightshade.”
Yskatarina took a skittering step back. “You’d know about Nightshade and blood, wouldn’t you? You were the Animus of the women known as the Grandmothers. My aunts.”
“And so you are my niece, one might say. I hear that Yri and Yra are dead. Did you kill them?”
Yskatarina hesitated.
“It does not matter,” Prince Cataract said. “We quarreled a long time ago now, irrevocably.”
“Why?”
“I don’t remember,” the thing said, very bland.
“You are lying.”
“Give me blood, and I will tell you. Or a small piece of flesh,” the thing said, wheedling. “Only a drop... I live off fish and gulls and the snake-kin, these days. But they have ichor in their veins. It is not the same.”
Yskatarina forced a laugh. “I have little enough spare flesh.”
There was a whispering murmur in return, not quite mirth. “You may yet have more than I.”
“What will you do for me, then, if I give you this—this taste?”
“I will tell you what you wish to know.”
“About the vessel that brought you from Mars?” She tried not to sound too eager, but she thought she might have failed.
“What do you know about that vessel?”
“That my aunts, your bonded females, came to Earth via Mars, on a stolen haunt-ship. I am interested in that ship.”
“You understand that I do not know all?”
“But do you know where the ship is hidden? With its records, with details of the hito-bashira?”
“Let me taste, and I will tell you.”
“No. I need more than that.”
“The hito-bashira is an ancient project. I know of it, of course. But I have told you enough, without blood.”
The Animus made a small whickering noise, perhaps of protest or alarm. Yskatarina ignored him. “You will have to take it from my side.”
She pulled the bodice free of its straps and rolled it up, then stepped grudgingly forward. She motioned to the Animus to keep close, for it occurred to her that the thing might try to exact vengeance for the deaths of its women. “Here.”
Somehow, she expected Prince Cataract to be both hesitant and slow. He was not. The long head darted forward and struck. Lightning danced down her side, as though she had been stabbed with a thousand needles. She cried out. Her vision swam black. Then the head was weaving back again, preparing for another blow. The Animus came forward in a rush and dragged her to the comparative safety of the opposite wall. Yskatarina panted with shock and outrage. Her side burned. When she looked down, a spiral of scarlet drops marked the transparent surface of her legs, as though she stood on a thin column of blood. The thing in the chamber clicked and clattered its teeth.
“Now tell me what I came here to learn,” Yskatarina said, above the racing of her heart.
The thing sank back into its pile of skin. “Very well.”
CHAPTER 9
Mars
The Kami that occupied the former Matriarch was becoming accustomed to its new body. At first, the desiccated corpse had proved difficult to animate effectively, as the woman from Nightshade had warned. Limbs flailed, striking out in random directions without control. Had it not been for the assistance of the excissieres, it would have taken the former Matriarch several hours to descend from the room at the top of the Tower. As soon as she had managed to activate the replacement phial, however, the excissieres had taken immediate steps, driven by the unquestioning loyalty engrams that had been programmed into their kind for those who possessed the Matriarchal DNA.
Even now, understanding came and went, ebbing and flowing like some psychic tide. Mars, at least, was not so greatly changed. Accessing the former Matriarch’s memories, the Kami recognized the old clan names of Caud, Winterstrike, and other places, and the Tower was the same. But the influence of Mars was waning. The rule of Earth was starting to slip from Memnos, and Nightshade’s grip was stronger than it had ever been. The Kami rejoiced.
Using old codes, the former Matriarch summoned the records from their secret caches, undisturbed for a hundred years. Half-forgotten names flowed past her gaze: Yri and Yra, the sisters-in-skin who had journeyed to Earth, there to initiate a forbidden project. Embar Khair, the warrior who had traveled with them on the first of the haunt-ships. Embar Khair had returned. The ship and the sisters had not. There had been a horned woman, too: Essa? Impossible to know what had become of her.
An excissiere, moving with brisk efficiency, operated the controls of the Chain-connection. Shortly after, the Elder Elaki’s face flowed across the antiscribe.
“You have not changed” was the first thing that Elaki said.
“Think again,” the old Matriarch replied. Her voice was still rusty, the voice box partly withered. “I am Kami now.”
Elaki grinned. “Does your revival make the Matriarch your predecessor, or your descendant? I have been wondering.”
“In either case, she is dead. She fell to a pulp on the rocks.”
“At some point, it would be helpful to have her reanimated, too. She must possess some useful information.”
“The body may be too broken, but we will try. There are many ghosts rising now,” the old Matriarch said. “Gaezelles, ram-horns, others.”
“Frivolities, nothing more. You know my views on such sports.”
“That once included this body.”
Elaki gave a thin smile. “So it did. But you—your body, that is—was still Matriarch. The phial is keyed into your genetic line. It cannot be used by just anyone.”
“You did not approve of genetic dead ends,” the Matriarch said. “I remember what you said at this body’s trial: that Nightshade sought perfection of form. And yet here you are seeking the help of something that was one of the Changed. Now, what of those ‘frivolities’? Shall I send them back to the Eldritch Realm?”
“No, leave them. They are harmless enough. It is the others that we require before we can proceed. The armies. The Sown.”
“Dragon’s Teeth,” the old Matriarch whispered from her decaying throat.
“Just so. You are to begin to raise them. Raise them now.”
Behind Elaki’s visage, the Kami that possessed the old Matriarch could see only darkness: the abyss that lay beyond Nightshade. It seemed to her that it was here that the Eldritch Realm itself must lie: Hades, Dis, the dimension of the dead to which all spirits flew. To those who lived long ago, it had been only fancy, a fairy tale against the end of life. But these days, after the emergence of haunt-tech, spirits were known to be real. And spirits could fly back again.
CHAPTER 10
Earth
Wearily, her side still bleeding, Yskatarina undertook the flight back to the ruin. She clung tightly to the Animus, wishing never to let him go. All the same, she thought she must have fainted, for she woke to find herself on solid ground, with the Animus weaving over her. Wet wood was rough beneath her exposed skin.
“Where are we?” Yskatarina raised her head and saw that she was lying upon the veranda of the mansion.
“You must rest,” the Animus said, anxious.
“No. Not yet.” Yskatarina struggled to her feet, wincing with pain. She leaned a hand against a pillar of wood, breathing in the scent of salt and jasmine. Th
e sea air should have been refreshing; instead, she felt stifled, weighed down by humidity and the lingering heat of the day. Her side burned and stung. “I’ll need the medical kit. Band-stats, and a blood test. Those teeth must have been filthy.”
The thought reminded her of something. Yskatarina smiled as she took a long sliver of ivory from an inner pocket of the robe. It was razor-sharp, bloody at the root. She thought she might have it polished, then mounted in silver, with perhaps a few sea-pearls for contrast, and wear it as an ornament. A souvenir. “At least he gave me what I needed.”
Yskatarina gave a small, grim smile, remembering the pile of skin and the bones it sheltered. The Animus had been merciful enough in its first strike, in payment for the mouthful of Yskatarina’s flesh. The snake-children had done the rest, creeping from the cracks and seams of the room to fall in silence upon the body of their creator.
She did not think anyone would greatly miss Prince Cataract, the creature that had once been an Animus of Nightshade. It had been too easy. But then, perhaps the prince had merely grown tired of being alive. As well as the tooth, she had taken a sample of the skin for analysis. She was looking forward, she found, to having the run of Elaki’s laboratories when the time came. The first to go would be Isti... After Elaki herself, of course.
She thought back to Prince Cataract. How would she feel if the Animus decided that he wanted to go his own way? The thought was almost inconceivable, and swamped her with dismay.
“It was useful. We now know where the haunt-ship was hidden.” Yskatarina hesitated. She moved to the rotting railing and leaned bone-and-plastic hands upon it. The missing fingers still irritated her. The hot damp night had drawn in now, and there was only an occasional flutter of lightning across the horizon to show that there was ocean there at all. She thought of the Dragon-King, submerging into the depths of the sea as she and the Animus spiraled upward, of the sad, vicious things it contained. She turned from the storm-dark, heading for the inner courtyard and the antiscribe.
“I have spoken to the boat, to Sek. Rule has changed in Memnos, so that is another task accomplished.”
The Animus wove over her shoulder, neck snaking out in a series of popping vertebrae. “Do you trust Sek?”
“Sek is loyal to the Matriarchy, not to any particular Matriarch. If the Matriarch changes, then her loyalty changes with it. She is ours now, if she wants to keep her boat and its modifications. They have the girl on board,” Yskatarina continued. “From now on, she, too, is mine.”
The Animus’s mandibles whispered across her neck.
“Perhaps you should not become too confident.”
Yskatarina laughed. “Why not? Coming here, I realize how isolated Nightshade has become, how limited is Elaki’s understanding. Put in a line to the contact. It is time we made the acquaintance of the hito-bashira.”
CHAPTER 11
Earth
Dreams-of-War woke. There was a chilly light in the east, and the wind blowing through the cracks of the porthole was cool. She was immediately aware of difference, of wrongness. It took her a moment, aided by the armor’s feedback, to realize that this emerged from the salt-laden air, the wetness that created a faint sheen over the surface of the armor. She missed the desert air of Mars with a sudden pang, and as quickly suppressed it.
There was a sound from deep within the junk, a little cry. Across the cabin, Lunae lay curled and unmoving. The kappa’s wide mouth was open, revealing a melon-pink interior and a thick sliver of tongue, but she made no noise other than an occasional rasping breath. Frowning, Dreams-of-War rose from the bed and padded to the door, cat-quiet as the armor’s foot-servos went onto maximum. She opened the door and looked out. The passage was empty. The cry came again: thin, filled with a distant, desolate anguish.
Dreams-of-War looked back at Lunae in momentary hesitation. The problem of having a charge who could bilocate at will was beginning to be brought forcibly home to her. Lunae was long past the stage where she would automatically obey. Dreams-of-War could not help but respect this, yet it was disconcerting all the same. What if the girl took it into her head to undertake a major shift, and ended up in the middle of the ocean? She had not been properly trained in her talents. Hardly surprising, since no one knew quite what they were. And that, of course, included Lunae herself. If she becomes a liability, what then? Dreams-of-War was seized by a claw of resentment against the Grandmothers, who had told her so little. Were they truly dead? Still, she had heard nothing.
The cry came once more. It occurred to her that it might be some kind of distracting trick. She did not like being so hesitant. She thought of Lunae, snatched or slaughtered in her sleep while her guardian was lured off on some wild-goose chase. What if something happened to the kappa? Dreams-of-War imagined the kappa’s wrinkled body, pierced and probed, and her mouth was suddenly lemon-dry. She had no empathy for the nurse, but all the same... Silently, Dreams-of-War cursed her recently acquired emotions. They were supposed to apply only to Lunae, but they appeared to be spreading. It was an inconvenience that Dreams-of-War could well live without. She quelled the rising flood of worry with as much ruthlessness as she could muster and applied herself to more immediate issues.
“Separate,” she whispered, drawing the gutting knife from the armor’s thigh. The armor crept from her skin, to stand unsteadily on the rocking floor of the cabin, until she was clad only in the underharness. “Remain. Protect.”
Armed with the knife, Dreams-of-War locked the door behind her and made her way along the passage. The cries were coming at regular, breathy intervals from within the hold; it sounded like some small creature in torment. Dreams-of-War went down the stairway and found a passage leading through the hold. This part of the junk was damp, the walls and floor salt-slick beneath Dreams-of-War’s bare feet. There was an unwholesome seaweed smell that reminded her of the Grandmothers’ chamber. At the end of the corridor lay a hatch. She hastened to it and looked in through a crack.
A woman lay supine on a long, raised couch at the center of the room, facing the opposite wall. She was naked. Both of the woman’s legs were missing beneath the groin; Dreams-of-War could see the pale knob of the joints, protruding and polished. The woman’s arms were thin spines of bone, fleshless from the shoulder downward, interlaced with gold and jet. Something was crouched over her. Dreams-of-War saw faceted eyes in a visage half-human, half-insect, a molten black carapace, jointed arms pinning the woman’s shoulders to the couch. A spiked spur the length and thickness of Dreams-of-War’s forearm hammered between the woman’s artificial legs, rotating like a screw.
Dreams-of-War had never seen anything like it; at least, nothing that was bigger than a beetle. Wasp or scorpion? Ant or crab? It was all of these, and more. It should have resembled a patchwork abortion: instead, it possessed a gaunt and unnatural wholeness, a glistening, sinister beauty.
Dreams-of-War had seen worse sights in battle, but this disgusted her. Her mouth filled with bile and she drew a short sharp breath. The woman’s head rolled back. Dark hair fell in a shining sweep to the floor. The woman was grinning, but her eyes were as glazed as glass. The sounds came from deep within her throat. On her shoulder, Dreams-of-War caught sight of a curious symbol, etched into the flesh: a bristling gold-and-black star.
Slowly, the woman arched her spine and began to circle her hips. Dreams-of-War backed away, fled down the corridor, and did not look back. The sounds followed her all the way to the cabin. She assumed the armor like one shutting herself inside a box, confining and safe, and sank down onto the seat by the porthole. She remained there until the sun was up, staring out over the great clean sweep of the sea.
CHAPTER 12
Earth
When Lunae awoke, Dreams-of-War was sitting on the porthole seat, armored knees drawn up against her chest and bristling like a porcupine.
“What time is it?” Lunae asked.
“Almost eight,” Dreams-of-War said.
“Is everything all right?” The
Martian’s face looked pinched around the mouth and her eyes were gritty. Wisps of pale hair had come loose from her plait, giving Dreams-of-War an uncharacteristically disheveled appearance.
“Everything is fine,” Dreams-of-War snapped.
“Where are we?”
“How should I know? The sea looks all the same; I have seen no land. Stay here, don’t answer the door, and don’t take it into your head to go wandering. I’m going to find Sek.”
“Why? Is something wrong?” For Dreams-of-War was emanating a wire-taut sensation, a kind of psychic jangling.
In reply, her guardian turned on an armored heel and marched out.
Lunae crossed over to the porthole and looked through. Beyond the narrow line of deck and the railing, she could see nothing but ocean, stretching hazy and blue to the horizon’s edge. Now that they were beyond Fragrant Harbor, the water had changed to a deep, rolling swell, flecked with foam. Lunae watched, enchanted, as each wave rolled up, green and clear as molten glass.
The junk lurched and swayed. Lunae kept waiting for sickness, but to her relief, it never came. She rested her elbows on the rim of the porthole and watched the sea churn. Then something passed across her vision: a kind of blurring. Lunae frowned, wondering if her vision was affected, and thinking with dread of the Kami. It came again: a sudden dimming of the view of deck and horizon, as if two pillars of heat had passed by. Lunae squinted upward and saw a strange thing.
A woman was hovering above the deck. She wore a short leather kilt. Above was a black metal bodice that reached down to her hips. Long dark hair, unbraided, swept to her waist. She was looking out to sea, so Lunae was able to see her profile: a pale, sharply etched face, with a sensuous mouth. The eyes were hidden behind round lenses, like the eyes of an insect. Her arms were nothing but bone and metal, the shoulders peaked like wings and the fingers skeletal and long, but her body ended at the hips. She had no thighs, no shins, no feet. Lunae stared as the woman moved away, and now she could see that the woman was supported, after all: by two transparent legs ending in spiked heels. Artificial toes tapped across the deck. Despite the height of her heels and the motion of the deck, the woman moved quickly and with assurance. She was soon gone up the steps that led to the upper levels of the junk.