All the Windwracked Stars (The Edda of Burdens) (21 page)

He wasn’t sure unmans had a sense of humor. They never did, on vii. But she glanced at him, whiskers slicked back against an inhuman face, and said, quite dryly, “We all make sacrifices.”

Something chirped on her chest before Cahey could think of a clever comeback. She glanced at a screen on her wrist, a habitual motion. “She is expecting us,” she said, and stepped back, rubbing her hands across her upper arms. She pointed with her chin, across the yard, toward a corridor between two buildings. “You are summoned.”

He stopped dead, keeping his balance despite an uneven stone that rocked under his foot. It was obvious from her gesture that she did not intend to come with him. “I expected the armed escort to continue.”

“Selene,” she said, which did not follow. He stared at her dumbly, and she dropped her hands to her thighs, the claws peeking out of her fingertips. They caught the light with a gem-stone
glitter so he wondered what they were made of, and decided not to find out the hard way. “My name,” she said, when he had blinked at her enough to transmit his confusion. “Selene. If you become lost, or disoriented, or are unsure what to do in a circumstance, ask for me. Even if you seem alone, Gunther will hear you. And someone will fetch me.”

“I’m on my own?”

“You’re never alone in the Tower,” she said. One hand rested casually on the handle of her whip: an implied threat, or mere habit. He didn’t care to find that out either.

And yet. He licked his lips. Astrid and Hrothgar—powerful, tough, physical—were not flukes, but rather indicative. Cathoair knew it was damage, that the people he found attractive were the ones who could at least match him blow for blow, and even more so those who could make a run at beating him. He understood the psychology behind it. He even knew where the kink came from.

And so while many people might be shocked to discover that he found this wiry, lithe unperson sexy, he wasn’t surprised that the candid, predatory expression in her gray-gold eyes sent chills and heat rippling up his spine.
Slut,
he chided—not in his own voice, but in tones of remembered disparagement.

But then he thought, she hadn’t had to give him her name. Or touch him on the arm.

S
elene’s directions were both concise and accurate, and Cahey never quite shook the sensation of being watched as he found his way alone across the yard, through a corridor between two buildings, through a garden and across another yard, this one enclosed on four sides by buildings. He guessed you would call it a quadrangle.

It was quieter here: fewer students, less movement. The ones he saw were mostly older, with two and a half decades, or three. Their robes—dark red, emerald, violet, gold, black, or combinations—fluttered with their movements. A few stood near him in a cluster, under the shade of their mortarboards, notebooks and viscreens clutched to their chests.

One turned toward him, frowning, but he would barely have noticed except for the sensation of her gaze. Because beyond her, beyond the far wall of the garden, was something he had seen only in pictures, in images from the before.

Trees.

Seven of them. He counted. Five green, in various shades, one a reddish violet with leaves like outspread hands, and the third with leaves splotched brown and green and yellow. Well, all of them had spots of yellow, here and there, but the one on the far left was mostly that color. Cathoair held his breath, and couldn’t make himself walk forward.

For now, actually, he didn’t want to. If he got under them, he thought he wouldn’t be able to see them clearly. They were too big, too overwhelming. He and Astrid and Hrothgar and Aislinn together might just have been able to link hands around the largest, but it was as good a chance they might not, either. And they were easily six or seven times taller than he, tall enough that the Defile reflected green-gray light on their topmost branches.

The leaves turned in the wind, rustling, a sound almost like voices. Some kind of fruit swayed heavy in the branches of one, but he didn’t know the name for it. He knew those things used to grow on trees, though, before they were vat-ripened. Things you could eat, and some things that were poisonous.

The bark looked rough. He wondered what it would feel
like to touch it, but there were barrier marks around each tree, showing the line of a force field. He wouldn’t brave that for mere curiosity.

Well, all right, he might have. But not in the Technomancer’s garden.

“Trees,” he breathed. Someone in the nearest group of students giggled, something about new meat, and then got a square look at him on his scarred side and shut up. He didn’t bother to turn and smile at her. Trees were better than teasing spoiled students.

By Selene’s directions, he had to cross the quadrangle anyway. He reasoned that he might as well cross into the shade of the trees.

The funny thing was, he thought the gravity here was a little unstable. Each step felt slightly different from the last, as if he were somehow walking uphill or downhill on a perfectly flat surface. It might be some effect of the Technomancer’s magic, the same spells that kept the Tower afloat over the city. He certainly wasn’t about to stop one of the scornful students and ask them.

He saw his goal clearly. It was the only door guarded by unmans—a dog and a bull—and the wood was lacquered poppy-red and set with leaded glass windows that glittered in the light of the rising sun. It looked like the door to a palace. Well, the back door, anyway. Set absurdly in a plain gray stone building, over a little granite lintel, with a crystal knocker and no knob.

He presented himself before the bull. Wordlessly, it blinked at him, lowering a massive black head crowned with bronze-sheathed horns. Either one of them was the length of his forearm; taken together, he could have stood within the circle.

“Selene said I was expected,” he said, hoping it was the right thing.

The bull regarded him for fifteen seconds, blinking soulful brown eyes, and ducked his head. Cathoair braced for the charge, wondering if he could grasp the horns and so vault over, or use the moreau’s own weight to throw it to the ground.

But the lowering became a bow, and the unman swept aside, clearing the way to the door.

Cathoair mounted the steps. Selene had said knock, and so he raised his fist to do so, but at the last moment remembered the knocker. He lifted it; it was cool to the touch, still slick with dew. He was first to pass this way this morning.

He let the clapper fall. It struck the plate with a sound as transparent as a glass bell—it went right through his aching head—and the door swung open.

Whatever he expected within, it wasn’t a perfectly institutional beige corridor with perfectly institutional speckled tiles. He glanced over his shoulder, frowning, but the unmans showed no sign of accompanying him. He squared his shoulders and glanced up at the trees, at their boles rising gnarled and curious to either side. The wind stirred their leaves and tried to unpick his ponytail, but whatever it might have been whispering, he couldn’t make out the words. A warning, some part of his brain suggested, and he told that part to quit being so damned theatrical and go work on something useful.

He did not doubt this was a test. He was not unsupervised; rather, the Technomancer was seeing how he would behave when left to his own devices. Would he act like a citizen, responsible and concerned? Or like a criminal, with something to hide?

He wondered if the unmans really could smell lies. At least, he comforted himself, he hadn’t told any. Also, this was the home
of a hero. A potential ally. Something he suspected he would need, if Muire didn’t return. And possibly even if she did.

Alone, Cathoair entered the Technomancer’s tower.

W
ithin, all was still and quiet except for his footsteps, which echoed strangely from the hard surfaces of the empty corridor. There were wooden doors on each side, plain, set with frosted glass windows. He walked between them, hands at his sides, trying to step squarely and lightly so his boots would not leave smudges on the floor.

He stuffed his fists in his pockets while he walked to hide the shaking. When he came to the end of the corridor, the final door lay before him. He looked left and right, but found no guidance, and he could not have seen more than a shadow through the frosted pane. There was a light beyond, so he tapped lightly.

When there was no answer, he pushed the door partly open with his fingertips and slipped through. Counterweighted, it swung silently closed behind him.

This must be the building’s lobby. The tile here was some powdery-looking stone, silver-black and studded with red-black globs. Two staircases with treacherous-looking white marble steps curved up to a landing; beyond the rail he could see that another flight continued. And as if in conscious contradiction of the bland beigeness of the corridor, here fluted whitewashed pillars supported an elaborately medallioned plaster vault, and a dusty chandelier dominated the center of the ceiling.

His footsteps still echoed.

Several dark red auto-adapting chairs perked up when he entered the room, and the closest scampered toward him, full of
hope. At first, Cathoair sidestepped it, meaning to continue on. But he realized after a few moments that there were too many exits and that he had not the slightest clue which of them he was meant to be using. He glanced around, wondering if there was a servant or guard somewhere, but the only sound in the great empty chamber was his breathing and the click of the chair’s disk-shaped metal feet.

After he had spent a few moments in staring and in straining his ears for a sound or any sign of habitation, the chair caught up. Insistently, it nudged his thighs.

“Oh, all
right,
” he said, and sat down, drawing his feet up so he could hug his knees, hunching his ears between his shoulders to wait.

The chair was a little more comfortable than he had planned for, and he was far more tired. It cupped him companionably, seeming aware of all the bruises and sore places, exuding a soothing heat, purring softly as if it enjoyed being put to use. Cathoair, raised to hardship, found he didn’t mind comfort.

Before long he relaxed against the wingback, arm supporting his head and eyelids heavy. He jerked himself upright. The chair obliged. “Thank you,” he said, ridiculously, and then grimaced, but it rubbed its arm against his hand and he felt comforted. He scratched it lightly, as he’d scratch a friend’s scalp, and when his fingernails snagged on the threads of a mended place it shivered and made a low happy noise, the purring redoubled.

At least he could make a chair happy.

He was concentrating on that when a chime—like the pealing of the door knocker, but softer—almost made him knee himself in the face. Adrenaline flushed his system; his heart thumped and his head slammed into the back of the chair as he flinched away from the noise.

“I’m sorry,” said a pleasant voice, male, with the kind of precision of speech Cathoair associated with University scholars. “I hadn’t realized your startle response was so developed. Your pupils are quite dilated. I believe you would have hit me if I were standing beside you.”

“I don’t usually hit things I don’t mean to hit,” Cathoair answered. He slid his feet cautiously to the floor. When he grasped the chair arms and began to lever himself to his feet, it arched up, as if in disappointment. “You have pushy furniture.”

“The chairs are a little domineering,” the voice admitted. “Please, don’t get up. I can’t, and She probably won’t.”

It wasn’t the Technomancer; she was a woman, and anyway Cathoair had heard her voice—on broadcasts and in historical records. It might turn out to be another unman, though. The way it said
She
made him suspect it was.

“Okay,” he said, and settled back. “Selene sent me here to wait for the Technomancer.”

“She’s on her way,” said the voice. Cathoair imagined a young man somewhere in a room, a room full of vii and holotanks, overseeing the entire complex. “She doesn’t move as fast as She used to. I’m Gunther.”

“Gunther—”

“Just Gunther. I used to have a last name, but things changed. Now I’m the computer.”

He used to be a truman, in other words. Like the students here. Like Cathoair’s mother. And he’d somehow—Cathoair guessed he knew how—become a part of the Technomancer’s machine. A constructed servant. Which led Cahey to wonder about the unmans, where they had come from, and how they had been made.

“You’re a fylgja. A fetch.”

Inevitably, he also started to wonder about the chairs. And then he couldn’t stay seated, no matter how sore he was or how much the furniture pouted.

As he rose, Gunther cleared his throat exactly as if he had one, and completely ignored Cathoair’s comment. Was it rude to call the bound dead what they were?

The fylgja said, “I understand you’re a friend of Muire’s?”

“Yes,” Cathoair said, hoping his reinforced caution wasn’t too apparent. “I’m Cathoair.”

“Hello, Cathoair,” a new voice answered. This one, he knew; it was the one he had expected to hear all along.

He turned, and found himself face-to-face with an old woman on a hoverchair. She was skinny and haggard and gray, wearing two heavy sweaters over her robes, one with the collar turned up around her stringy throat.

“Cathoair—?” she asked, with her own voice, unamplified and unaugmented. Ancient as she might seem, her speech was firm, not tremulous.

“Just Cathoair,” he said, face heating.

The Technomancer glided closer, the chair cornering smoothly on its stabilizers. It made no sound except a soft cushiony hiss. Cathoair’s friendly chair withdrew discreetly, clicking softly. Maybe furniture had a pecking order?

“I see,” the Technomancer answered. She was close enough now that he could see that her gray pallor was caused by a network of silver-and steel-and copper-colored lines that braided together with eye-defeating complexity. “Pity. I was going to ask how you were not one of mine. I wondered if you preferred to avoid an education.”

“The Mongrels wouldn’t take me,” he said, quite proud of how level he kept his tone.